This story is a sequel to Dazzling Sunset: Sunset Amulet

It's been two weeks since the Battle of the Bands and around a week since Sunset Shimmer saved the lives of the three Sirens. Now, Canterlot High is trying to push the trio to reform the same way they had Sunset Shimmer. Unfortunately, the Dazzlings aren't so easily broken as their savior.

Speaking of, Adagio and her sisters have been keeping an eye on Sunset, wanting to know why the jewel saved them. They find out more than they expected and immediately jump in to help the person who selflessly helped them.

Warning: Mention of self-harm

The newest and hottest game on the market is Sword Art Online, or SAO. A VRMMORPG, Virtual Reality Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, Sword Art Online takes the player into a virtual reality world of swords and shields. Only 10,000 copies were sold online or in stores. But quickly, things go wrong and the fight goes from fun, to survival.

To escape the game of death, the game must be cleared. All 100 floors of the floating iron castle, known as Aincrad, must be conquered. If you die in game, you die in real life. The NerveGear will fry your brain. The same goes if the NerveGear is removed while you are in the game, you die.

Sword Art Online is a game of swords and shields with no magic. The game isn't designed to handle their Equestrian Magic. Sunset Shimmer must make sure that her friends and guildmates escape the game, or at least survive long enough until the game is defeated.

This story is a Serial Novel Society story: Updates will be at least on a weekly, Tuesday, basis.

*Pre-knowledge of Sword Art Online is not required. The Pilot Episode covers all you need to know.
**First Featured Tuesday, November 12, 2019. Also on 12/3/19, 12/10/19, 01/14/20, 2/11/20, 2/18/20, 2/25/20, 3/3/20, 3/10/20, 3/17/20, 3/24/20, 3/31/20, 4/14/20, 4/21/20, 4/28/20, 5/5/20, 5/19/20, 5/26/20, 6/2/20, 6/9/20, 6/23/2020, 6/30/2020, 7/28/20, 8/4/20, 8/18/20, 8/25/20, 8/27/20, 9/1/20, 9/8/20, 9/15/20, 9/22/20, 9/29/20, 10/20/20, 10/27/20, 11/3/2020, 11/10/20, 11/17/20, 12/1/20, 12/8/20, 12/15/20, 12/22/20, 12/29/20, 1/5/21, 1/19/21, 2/2/21, ICE, 2/23/21, 3/2/21, 3/9/21, 3/16/21, 3/23/21, & 3/30/21.

Want to know what is happening outside the SAO in the real world? There is a story for them! Link to the Asides.

A big thank you to my editor, Void Runner.
A special thanks to SuperSonicHeroes and Wildfiretiremile. Each helped a lot with Beta Reading!
Also, a special Thanks to Badwolf231. He helped me as this project got started.

- Sword Art Online is owned and created by Reki Kawahara.
* Cover Art created with art elements from Orin331, Frye-Medi, and flutterdashrarijack.

There are many who dislike Sunset Shimmer. Recent happenings have brought that to a head which has resulted in her death. But that's hardly the end for her.

____________

Inspired by reading WAY too many Isekai LN's and Manga.

This started as an experiment to try shorter chapters. I gave up on that later on.

When the Princess refused Sunset Shimmer the reward which was her right as a pony of talent and excellence, Sunset was determined. She would prove her mentor wrong, she would prove her worth, prove her worth as a pony and as a princess in her own right. The Mirror offered promises. It promised Sunset many things.

The Mirror lied.

The land that laid beyond the Mirror was barbaric beyond all her worst expectations. Ape-like beings strode through this world, arrogant, violent, vicious beyond anything in Sunset's experience. Slavers, savages, brutes, carnivores.

They put her in chains like cattle, and told her she was livestock. Then the brutes tried to give her as a gift to those whom even brutes feared, to the eastern savages. To a people who said there were only two things in this world: those that ride, and those that are ridden.

And so if she has any hope of ever proving herself worthy of being a person again, Sunset Shimmer would have to show that she could be one who rides - that she is...

Dothraki.

Sunset Shimmer just wants to take it easy at her new high school, get her spot at the food chain set up, maybe beat up a few jocks, and dating the popular girl who won't stop making eyes at her would really bring it all together. Then what starts as a plan to save the girl she... let's say "really likes" from her worst enemy/best friend goes way further than Sunset ever imagined.

Sunset Shimmer had everything. Personal protégé of the Sun Princess herself, top marks in the School for Gifted Unicorns, and the honor of being dubbed the greatest arcanist since Starswirl the Bearded.

Until she threw it all away.

In the last moments before leaving Equestria forever, her destiny is snatched away right before her eyes. Once upon a time the story of the lives of herself, Twilight Sparkle, and the path of Equestrian History went one way, a story that we all know well. But in every stand of woods there is a path untrotted, one with a different story and new experiences.

About the deleted comments.

Discussion of this and other works can be found on my Private Discord Server

New cover by DVixie. If someone knows how to contact them I'd be appreciative. It more accurately portrays the current evolution of the story.

Arc One, Filly Steps: Complete.
Arc Two, What Twilight Learned Today: In Progress.

Twilight Sparkle has transfered school and gained a new group of friends. But she also has come in contact with magic from another world and lost herself to the temptations of power.

Sunset Shimmer knows of tempations and magic and does everything she can for the girl who quickly became her closest friend and maybe even a little more.

When a vicious nightmare feeds on Twilight's insecurities and fears, what will Sunset Shimmer do to stop it?

This story takes place after Friendship Games but before Legend of Everfree and contains shameless Sunlight (Sunset- Human Twilight)-shipping. You have been warned

Sunset Shimmer fled from Equestria in search of the destiny that Celestia sought to deny to her. She dreamed of finding great glory and power in a strange new world. But she emerged on the other side of the mirror in a harsh cruel world beset by demons and troubled by division, conflict and racial animus: the world of Remnant.

Now, years later, Sunset has completed her studies at Canterlot Combat School and is ready to attend Beacon Academy. She hopes that in the more progressive Kingdom of Vale her appearance as a pony faunus will not be held against her the way it was in Atlas, and she can rise as high as her talents permit and seize with both hands the destiny she still yearns for.

Sunset finds herself assigned to lead three fellow freshman at the Huntsman Academy: Jaune Arc, who dreams of becoming a hero elevated above all others; Pyrrha Nikos, a peerless warrior who has everything that Sunset wants and hates everything about it; and Ruby Rose, a simpler and more honest soul who simply wants to save as many people as she can, and who might just light the way to their salvation.

Together they are Team SAPR, and together they are plunged into a world of mysteries, magic, allies and enemies, robot girls and Atlasian black ops experiments. It won't be easy, but if they can work together, teach Jaune how to fight and maybe learn to get along as friends along the way, then they might just save the world.

Original Cover Art by Mix-Up
Current Cover Art by MRK50
Now with a TV Tropes page

Also with a Discord Server