Chapter 12
Luckily Shining Armor had just gotten off a long shift and was not in the mood to put too much thought into the scene he had stumbled upon. Twilight tried to explain to him how it was research for one of her projects, and Shining just shrugged and accepted it. He knew his sister was a genius, and it was easier just nodding along than actually trying to comprehend the science behind her research most of the time.
A half-hour later, Shining Armor was heading down the road toward CHS with Twilight in the passenger seat next to him. He’d readily agreed to drop her off, though he did give her a questioning look at the backpack and duffle bag that she had carefully placed in his back seat. They didn’t get as much time to hang out as they used to since he’d started with the Canterlot PD and got assigned to the night shift. He figured the ride would give them a chance to catch up.
“So, Twily,” he started giving her a knowing smile, “how’s school going? Aside from heading up the Friendship Games team that is. Anything interesting happen? Something you might want to tell me about.”
“W-What?!” Twilight yelped. “I, um, I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Shiny.”
“Twily, I’m a cop. You don’t think you can keep the truth from me, do you?” He leveled his bright blue eyes at her in a serious stare.
“Wait, you know?” Twilight questioned; her mouth agape, “and you’re laughing about it?” Shining Armor was her BBBFF and knew that he’d always try to look out for her and protect her, but she was pretty sure that breaking reality with powerful unidentified energy would prompt more than a light chuckle from her brother.
“Well, normally yes, but I’m not on duty at the moment so I’ll let it slide. Just don’t make a habit of it.”
“Huh?” the teen asked, as it was all she could manage at the lackadaisical attitude her brother had to finding out she’d broken reality and practically kidnapped a magical talking unicorn from her plane of existence.
“Come on, I was the captain of my Friendship Games team, too. You think I don’t remember what fun it was to get an early rise out of those Wonderdolts?” Twilight just stared at her big brother as her brain tried to work through what he was saying. “I’m so proud of you, Twily. Captain just like your big bro. I know you’ll do great.”
“Uh…thanks,” Twilight mumbled, uncomfortable with the praise.
“I’m not going to ask what’s in the bags, plausible deniability and all,” Shining said with a smirk. “I know whatever you have planned for that stupid statue will show CHS not to mess with Crystal Prep. Just be careful okay? Cadance texted me about yesterday and I don’t want to have to go back into the station to bail you out.” Shining gave his sister a friendly ruffle of her hair and laughed. Twilight only managed a weak chuckle in response as she tried to brush frazzled strands back into place.
***
When they reached Canterlot High, Shining Armor dropped Twilight off across the street near the trees she’d hidden in the previous day. She got out of the car and carefully grabbed her bags from the backseat.
“Good luck, Twily,” Shining called out the window. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” With a wave and a playful wink, he pulled away, headed back home to get some much-needed sleep.
Twilight bent down and unzipped the tops of both bags producing a fluffy head from each. Spike, used to this mode of travel, popped out with a happy look on his face as his tongue lolled out of his mouth. Sunset, on the other hand, practically flopped out, her forelegs dangling over the edge as she gulped in air.
“Sunset, are you okay?” the scientist asked worriedly.
“Uh, y-yeah, fine,” she panted. “Just never flying coach again.”
“Aww, it’s not so bad,” said Spike. “How else are we supposed to go to all the fun places like school, the library, and the electronics store?”
Sunset cast a knowing stare at the spectacled scientist's idea of fun, which caused the teen to blush a bit and mumble something about just liking the company, before turning back to the purple dog.
“Normally I prefer entering through the front door on my own feet.”
"Feet?" The scientist puzzled, but the unicorn continued on without giving the girl the chance to question the hooved creature's turn of phrase.
“Now, if you can just get me over to the statue, I can get back to enjoy my unimpeded mobility as I try to figure out what happened to my friends.”
Carefully, Twilight hefted both bags, and after checking that there were no cars coming, the teen crossed the street and made her way back in front of the mirrored surface of the plinth where she had stood yesterday when all this craziness started.
After having Twilight double-check that no one was around, the tiny amber unicorn hopped out of the duffle bag. Taking a couple of steps towards the statue, Sunset turned her head to the scientist.
“Don’t forget, you have to make sure you delete all your files on this. I don’t want anything or anypony being torn though a dimensional rift again.” Twilight looked pained at the comment but didn’t say anything only nodding in response. Sunset didn’t seem to notice as she continued, muttering more to herself, “Hopefully this incident is enough to finally convince Tw…”
Remembering where she was and more importantly who she was with, Sunset stopped short, eying the teen. “Never mind. The point is I think this is enough for me to convince the princesses that the portal is just too dangerous, and we should work on closing it permanently, so really your research will be moot. Hopefully, with the portal closed, that’ll mean no more magical mishaps for this world.”
“I don’t know. I think this was actually pretty great. Only really had one drawback and that’s about to be resolved,” Spike said shooting the unicorn a glare.
“Sorry, dog, no more magic means you’re back to eating on the floor, and hopefully back to, what I can only assume, is a normally pleasant puppy,” Sunset retorted earning a growl from Spike.
“Whatever,” the pony said, breaking the tension, “Guess this is goodbye. Good luck, Twilight.”
The tiny unicorn walked up to the statue base, placed an amber hoof on the stone surface, and nothing happened. The stone did not give way and allow her to pass through into the rainbow vortex of the portal. There wasn’t even the faint rippling aura or the tingling sensation that Sunset should be able to detect indicating the portal’s location. There was nothing to indicate there was anything more to this plinth than the stone it was made from.
Rearing up on her hind legs, Sunset began to frantically pound on the surface that should be a doorway to her homeworld that was now stubbornly remaining shut to her.
“Where’s the portal? Where is the portal?!” the tiny pony cried in mounting panic, before whirling on the scientist with a harsh gaze and demanding, “What did you do?”
“W-what?” the nervous girl stuttered. “I d-don’t know. I thought…”
“Of course, you don’t know,” the unicorn growled, turning back to face the portal. “As if it wasn’t bad enough being forced to try and fix the stupid portal in a world that actually has reference material on building and maintaining magical items,” the unicorn said bitterly, “now I get to do it in a world with no understanding of it! This is just great because doing magical research has gone so well for me on this side of the portal.”
Lighting her horn in the familiar crimson glow, Sunset attempted to scan the thaumic output of the portal to see how out of sync it was with the Equestria. When the results came back, the little unicorn’s already large eyes grew. “No, no, no, no, no,” she voiced in panic. “This-this isn’t possible.” Firing up her horn, Sunset ran the scan again only to be met with the same results. “No, it can’t be this low. With thaumic levels this low there won’t be enough mana to power the…Buck it. If it’s power we need…” In an act of fear and frustration, the unicorn charged up her horn once more and fired a scarlet beam at the statue’s base in the magical equivalent of hitting it to make it work.
The beam flickered a bit as Twilight watched the pony, seeing her grunt and then desperately poured magical energy into the plinth to no avail. The lack of reaction, however, didn’t deter Sunset as she only gritted her teeth and pushed more magic into her blast. Twilight could see the unicorn’s horn flare with the additional power, but she also noticed the pony start to sag and start to sway on her hooves.
“Sunset, you need to stop,” she ventured, “I don’t think this…”
“No, you didn’t think, Twilight,” Sunset shouted, her concentration broken and the power winked out on her horn. Sunset’s voice sounded ragged and she looked worn out, unable to fully focus on the person in front of her, “and look where that got me! I’m stuck here, like this! Do you know what they’d do to me if they knew I was here? It was bad enough when I wasn’t a foot tall but now just look at me! And as if that wasn’t bad enough, now I find out the magic that was in this world is practically gone, which means I can’t even rely on my magic; the one thing that might protect me in this Celestia-forsaken dimension. But, hey, it’s fine, I’m at the mercy of whatever number of people who are probably still out to get me with no reliable way to defend myself, but don’t worry about it since Twilight Sparkle has some grand plan to fix it already outlined and bullet-pointed complete with a dance number, group hugs, and magic rainbows.”
“Hey, knock it off,” barked Spike.
“Sunset, I…” Twilight started, tears starting to form behind her dark frames.
“Things break, Princess, and no matter what your intentions were, once they break, there’s no fixing them. Only the pieces are left behind and someone to pay the price,” Sunset’s fury seemed to die with that thought, but her anger remained. Looking away from the tearful scientist she added bitterly, “and I’m tired of it always being me.”
Sunset walked over to the duffle bag she had occupied on the way over and hopped back in. “You said you have readings on the ‘energy’ that you were researching right?” she asked grumpily.
“Y-yeah,” the teen responded once she realized the nod she was giving wouldn’t be seen by the unicorn who was refusing to make eye contact at this point.
“Good. I need to see those as soon as possible to see if I have any hope of getting myself out of this bucking world.” With that said, the angry amber pony curled herself into a cat-like ball within the bag and closed her eyes, clearly indicating the discussion was over.
***
Twilight’s memorization of the Canterlot’s bus schedule came in handy and after a long silent ride back to Twilight’s house, the bespectacled girl opted to bypass the front door and head straight for the detached garage behind the house. Unlocking the door and climbing the stairs, Twilight flipped the lights on in the room that was built above the structure.
Originally it had been planned as a workspace for Twilight’s mother as a quiet place for her to work on writing her novels. However, after a few of Twilight’s experiments got a little more explosive than she had planned, it was decided that the space would go to the teen as a sort of lab to try to mitigate the property damage to the main house. The space was similar to the one Twilight had created for herself at Crystal Prep, though this one seemed less confined and had a few more personal touches including a few star charts and a Daring Do poster.
Setting down the bags, their occupants popped out of their bags, happy for the release from their confines. Twilight could see that Sunset was, understandably still upset, but wanted to try and start making up for her mistakes so tried to approach the surly unicorn.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” she finally managed to get out though it was barely more than a whisper. “I just wanted to learn about the strange energy coming from Canterlot High. I didn’t know it was magic or how it works. That day at the portal was supposed to be my first field test, but the energy spiked and my device just started absorbing it. I don’t know why that happened.”
At first, the fiery pony didn’t respond, and just fixed her eyes on the teen in an intense glare. The intensity in those cyan orbs caused Twilight to shrink in on herself just as she did when confronted by all the other students of Crystal Prep.
“Is there anything you do know?” Sunset seethed, her anger finally boiling over. “You’re supposed to be so smart, but did you ever think that you shouldn’t be messing around with things you don’t understand?”
“But I want to understand,” Twilight responded, on the brink of tears.
“But you don’t. And worst of all, you put the lives of my friends, the only ones I have left, in danger.” “Whatever Spike and the princess were dealing with had serious magic and now there’s no one left in the castle to check on them or even knows that there was a problem.” Sunset thought, remembering the increase in Harmonic magic. Sunset could only hope that the two would be alright until she could get back to help them.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” Twilight struggled out as fighting the tears that threatened to pour down her face. Turning away from the unicorn, Twilight went over to the computer desk and pulled up all the readings she had involving the mysterious energy she had been tracking the last few months. Grabbing a binder, she turned nervously and opened it and placed it on the desk for the aggravated pony who hopped up on the chair and began to look them over. “H-here’s everything I have on the energy readings,” she said, unable to look Sunset in the eyes. “I…It’s almost lunchtime, I’ll go get us something to eat.” The teen then hurried back out of the room leaving the two quadrupeds alone.
Spike watched Twilight disappear back down the stairs, surprised and rather impressed that Twilight had managed to hold out as long as she had. He knew how bad she was when it came to confrontations. He almost wanted to follow after again to give her another pep talk but didn’t want to miss this opportunity to finally confront the interloper.
Spike marched over to the desk and growled, “What exactly is your problem, huh?”
“Excuse me?” the unicorn said turning toward him with a raised eyebrow.
“You. What’s your problem? Practically since you’ve gotten here, you’ve been nothing but a big jerk.”
Slamming the portfolio closed, Sunset hopped down from the chair and stalked over to the purple puppy, who was now standing at the same height as her. To his credit, the pup stood his ground and stared the perturbed pony in the eye.
“What’s my problem? My problem is I got pulled, unwillingly through a dimensional rift to a world I don’t belong in. I’m stuck as a unicorn, which is just begging for some conspiracy nut or government goon to grab me and drag me away for who knows what. Oh and, I have to fix a magical portal that the greatest minds of my world couldn’t fix in a world when we had magic at our disposal from the other side, a world, where according to this,” Sunset levitated the binder and let it drop with a slam next to the puppy, “magic is disappearing. At this rate, there might not be enough on this side for the portal to connect to, and the only pony who might know I’m gone or how to fix the portal is probably in danger at this very moment and there’s nothing I can do to save her until the portal hopefully opens naturally in oh 2 years!” Sunset shouted trying to glare the pup into submission.
“You’re this angry because you have to wait?”
“Twenty-seven moons, that’s how long it’ll be for the portal. Two years over here, and way more on the other side of the portal. Years when my friends might be in danger, and I’m stuck here!”
The little dog wouldn’t be cowed, though. “And how is yelling at Twilight supposed to fix those problems?!” he shouted. Not willing to back down, the purple dog squared himself and eyed the pony, “Fine, so you have problems. So does everyone, and Twilight has enough without you making them worse. You’ve already ruined her project to get into Everton. Something that she’s been desperate to get into and spent months of work researching, and now she can’t use any of it. Something she’s willing to do to protect you despite how you’ve been treating her and what it meant to her. She’s made a mistake and she’s trying to make up for it and help you. It was an accident and she wants to make it right, but all you keep doing is reminding her how badly she screwed up.
“You want to get back to your world to help the ones you care about, fine, I can respect that, but stop hurting the ones I care about.” The dog turned in a headed for the door saying before he left, “I’ll be out back making sure the bunnies aren’t trying to get in again. We already have enough trouble with unwanted pests around here.”
The response caused the amber pony to freeze, remembering the teen scientist’s counterpart and imagining what she would have to say about Sunset’s treatment of her counterpart. Considering the second chance the pony princess had extended to Sunset after the first time when Sunset had stolen her crown and then proceeded to bully and torment her when she followed Sunset to CHS.
After being blasted by friendship magic in the form of a giant rainbow laser and supposedly learning about the Elements of Harmony enough to actually contribute to them in the battle against the sirens, here she was bullying another Twilight Sparkle. Clearly she had learned nothing. Not even a day back in the human world and here she was back to her old ways. She was angry and scared and she was going to take out those frustrations on whoever was available. Sure Twilight had a hand in creating Sunset’s current predicament, but there was no way she could have known what would happen. She didn’t even know what the energy was let alone that it could pull her through a broken interdimensional portal that Sunset just happened to be on the other side of.
Sunset blinked and as she did the anger went out of her eyes fell at the realization. Raising a foreleg, she administered a solid face-hoof and dropped her head in shame. This is why it was better for everyone if she was just done with these futile attempts with friendship. Obviously it just wasn’t something meant for her. She was better off alone where she couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.
***
Twilight had no idea what to make for lunch. Her little interaction with the pony this morning at breakfast had not provided enough data to determine what she could and could not eat. Compounding that was Twilight’s limited knowledge of cooking and her ability, as her family put it, “to burn water.” As such, she had settled on the classics, simple peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all around, as well as a variety of fruits and veggies.
She had taken her time carefully making the sandwiches and slicing the fruit, partially due to her perfectionist nature, but more so due to her desire to postpone returning to her lab and having to face the upset unicorn again. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to this treatment. She was subjected to similar abuse at Crystal Prep nearly every day. Now though, from the pony, was different. Twilight felt she deserved the unicorn’s ire. Unlike what the other Shadowbolts did to her out of petty jealousy, Sunset had a legitimate reason to blow up at Twilight, and that only made the scientist feel worse.
Once she had procrastinated as much as she could reasonably justify, Twilight gathered up her offerings and headed back outside with all the enthusiasm of a convict heading for the gallows. Pushing open the door, Twilight was surprised to find Sunset staring, not at the readouts she had requested, but instead at her ‘conspiracy board’ surrounding the mystery of Canterlot High.
“I’m sorry, Twilight,” the pony said in a quiet, sullen tone, before letting out a depressed sigh. When Sunset turned around, the teen could see that the mare’s eyes were red and a bit puffy, like she’d been crying. “I think we need to talk. You deserve an explanation.”
Sorry for the late post. School started back up and my computer was commandeered for e-learning, and I learned my lesson trying to edit on my phone. I might have to switch up posting days, but we'll see.
As a side note, things are worse than Sunset thought and her default setting for things going wrong is anger. Luckily she got a good lecture in from the voice of reason. 
Stats
Page generated in 0.05 seconds
Total duration
991 users online
2,825,877 hits today, 2,328,677 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Yay, biggest chapter so far. ^_^
Yeeah, spent last ours stalking you, checking online status every so often.. Welp, it's still 30 min till wednesday here, so i'd say you nailed it ;) And (as if it's not obvious by this point) yes, love this story. Just hoping you'll manage it to the end - 've seen so many great fics drop dead in the middle, it would be a shame to add your story to counter. :)
10414884
Haha. Had to do a double check this was the longest, but you're right. I'd actually looked at the next chapter which is sitting around 5k at the moment so there might be a new leader soon unless it gets broken up.
With all the positive feedback it's hard to disappoint, so I plan on finishing this story. Life is proving less condusive to that sentiment so there may be a break or slowdown in posts, but there's time to worry about that and it won't be next week.
Spike can annoy me sometimes, but he kinda had a point. But still, a little annoying.
Poor Twilight.
Yeah, Sunset-splosion was bound to happen at some point, and you worked it into a parallel of the Friendship Games one. Spike the voice of reason once more, yanking beings out of rants and/or anxiety spirals is a Spike specialty in any dimension.
Sunset high stress and an issue we all know is bad in Equestria. Sunset, it's okay to have a relapse
I can't blame Sunset for beign harsh, I get it, but the way she threated Sci-Twi was awful. I hope Sunset gives a propper apology to Twilight and explain her behaviour as the result from the Anon-a-Miss incident.
Also, Shining Armor is acting like a fool in this fic. Nobody cares about the competition!
Hope things will get better for Sunset soon along with her possibly turning back into her human form and seeing her friends again
So nice to know my fears about human!Shining being a dumb jock douche were well founded. I mean a cop encouraging his sister to go out and vandalize a rival school over what amounts to a pissing contest sounds like such a great guy...
10415795
Yikes, when you put it that way I guess he deserves a smack on the head to see how much he fucked up.
10879733
Plus for a cop he isn't even in tune with his personal environment which means he has just forced his sister to do something she doesn't want to do. Does he even know anything about his beyond the fact that she should be in a school for smart kids who from a young age are above average in intelligence. Those kids are usually sent off to the smart schools as soon as they realize because it better for them than schools who are used to dealing with average kids who may be good but they aren't going really special like the smart kids and the teachers will rarely wish to face that they might be wrong.
Come on dude, seriously?
Sunset Shimmer needs to have a serious talk with her "Bestie".
Aren't you girls supposed to be genuises? How am I the one spotting the obvious? You need magic right?
Take it from the pendent. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Ok that statue is TOTALLY blowing up again, guaranteed