Sunset’s plans of amassing power here, revenge on Princess Celestia, all of that was long gone. The only thing she felt and thought right now was panic and the need to figure out what the Tartarus was wrong with this dimension!
It wasn’t long before Sunset realized the entire city was somewhere she didn’t want to be. Heck, walking through the rest of the town made her want to go back to that school. Astoundingly, things were more normal back there.
It was miles before she found any signs of life outside the school and the people she found could only technically be called 'alive'.
All the adults, the few people who populated this city, were just like that lunch lady, more robots than people. They went through what looked like pre-programmed routines - picking up garbage, tending to plants, fixing the road - but when they finished, they just stopped. The adults in the stores stood perfectly still behind the counters until Sunset came in.
None of them were much for conversation; just laughing at Sunset’s ‘hip ways’ anytime she asked them something more complicated than the time of day. At least she knew this city was called Canterlot now, just like the place she left.
There were no other teens out here, making Sunset feel like she was the only real person in this entire city.
From far off, Sunset heard the school bell ring. Maybe the streets would be less lonely soon.
She was getting hungry. Maybe she should have stayed for lunch.
There were plenty of stores downtown, a convenience store just on her left looked tempting.
“Hey there, kiddo!” The clerk greeted her with a creepy smile when Sunset stepped inside.
Sunset didn’t talk to him. He wasn’t a real person, that much she was convinced of now. He didn’t seem to mind the cold shoulder either, none of them did.
She looked through the things in the store, trying to find anything useful, or any food she might be able to steal. She saw something that caught her interest right away.
A map!
Despite a recent vow to never pray to Celestia again, Sunset found herself hoping to Celestia that this was just one insane town on an otherwise relatively normal planet.
Sunset took and looked over the map. It showed Canterlot to be a geographically impossible location. Every biome possible was crammed into this one city!
To the north were tundra and snowy mountains. To the east was desert and a canyon. To the south were swamp and jungle. To the west was a beach and ocean. Then the city had eight different nature reserves, all of a different type, all inside its borders. The city was clearly enormous.
When she was done gawking at it, she realized something else…
Every border of this city was surrounded by inhospitable terrain that stretched on for two hundred miles until the map ended! There were no roads leading out into, let alone through, those wastelands.
No way that was a coincidence. Something put those deserts and frozen mountains there. The longer she stayed here the more certain Sunset became that she’d entered into the lair of some evil god. Something trapped people in this city, because why else would it be set up as a cage like this?
Sunset needed to get out of this city if she could. For all she knew, she could end up like one of these mindless adults if she stayed here too long.
The obvious choice would have been that portal, but it would need thirty months to recharge. It wasn't like she could go crawling right back to Celestia after that big fight, either, crying that the outside world was just too scary for her.
Testing the cage was the better idea. But which of these biomes would be the easiest to go two hundred miles through?
“Hey!” Sunset called out to the guy. “This is a long shot, but do you know what’s on the other side of this desert?”
“Nothing!”
“Nothing?” Sunset asked.
“Yep!” He kept his huge smile on. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Well, that’s disturbing.” Sunset looked back down at the map. She already knew she couldn’t get a lot of information out of the adults. One more question and he’d start talking about how he can’t understand the young folk.
Her stomach rumbled again.
If she was even going to attempt to escape she’d need supplies. But right now, it’d been almost a day since she’d eaten and she didn’t have any human money.
This store had plenty of candy on display, baked goods, and pizza too. It wasn’t like Sunset had never shoplifted before, though that was more for the thrill than necessity.
She wondered if stealing something would piss off whatever god was sleeping here. The store clerk was so robotic he might not even notice if she just grabbed everything and walked out.
As the guy stared forward blankly, Sunset stepped out of his sight and pocketed a few candy bars as stealthily as she could. She’d move up to bigger targets if she got away with this much.
Just as she pocketed the fourth and final candy bar, she felt a poke from behind that made her jump halfway across the room.
A familiar girl was laughing where Sunset had stood just seconds ago
“You can relax! It’s just me.” Dash lowered the rose-colored sunglasses she was wearing now. “I thought I saw you in here! Where the heck did you go after lunch? We didn’t see you for the rest of the day!”
“I kind of skipped class,” said Sunset. “Something important came up.”
“What could possibly be more important than school?” Dash asked.
“Um. You know.” Sunset shrugged with a forced smile.
Dash frowned with pity for a moment, thankfully misunderstanding her.
“You know, we’re really not that angry at you from before,” said Dash with a smile. “We get you’re new. You’ll learn how to behave soon enough. But there’s really no need to go playing hooky.”
Sunset tapped her fingers on one of the shelves. She was just going to come out and ask a risky question.
“Out of curiosity, does something horrible happen to you if you skip too many classes?” Sunset asked.
“Absolutely!” Dash took off her glasses like it really was something dramatic. “You don’t have any fun! You don’t learn anything! You don’t get new experiences! You don’t get to hang out with all your friends! Trust me, the school's the place to be when it’s open. Summer breaks a nice change of pace, but most of us would rather be in school.”
Teens that preferred school to summer break? That had to be the biggest sign something horrible was going on here. At least it didn’t sound like she was going to explode if she played hooky.
“Are you feeling okay?” Dash asked. “You look worse than transfer students usually look.”
“Well I’m starving for one,” said Sunset.
“Oh.” Dash put her glasses in her pocket. “Have you tried… eating?”
“Haha.” Sunset rolled her eyes. “No, I haven’t tried eating. I don’t have any money.”
“So?” Dash laughed. “Oh! I get it! You don’t know how money works. Hey, guy! Can we have a pizza?”
“Sure thing, kiddo!”
The clerk took the pizza out from behind the glass and handed it to Dash with that creepy smile on his face.
“See? All the food is free!” Dash took a bite of the pizza and offered Sunset another slice. “Isn’t it great here?”
Free food? Sunset blinked down at the pizza. That would be convenient, but maybe too convenient. There had to be a limit.
“Can I get ten pizzas?” Sunset asked.
“Sure thing, kiddo!”
The man took out ten pizzas stacked on top of one another. Sunset didn’t even know where those came from!
So food was taken care of.
Of course, Sunset would need other things if she was going to get through the desert. A backpack, a first aid kit, a knife…
“Come on! You can admit Canterlot is the best, right?” Dash asked.
“Sure. Hey, is everything in this town free?” Sunset asked. “My old school was very different, you see.”
“Yeah, I get it! Everyone was a transfer student once, you know! Nobody expects you to be normal,” said Dash. “Food is free but you gotta pay for clothes and stuff. Basically, anything at the mall costs money except food.”
“The mall.” Sunset knew where to go at least. “Do you have a job or something? I really don’t have any money at all.”
“Don’t your parents give you an allowance? Everybody’s’ parents should give them one.”
“My parents are dead,” Sunset said flatly.
The closest thing she’d had to a parent for the last ten years was fucking Celestia and everypony knew how that turned out.
“I don’t think parents can die.” Dash was left scratching her head. “They’re not bugs, you know.”
“Well mine did.”
“Have you checked since you got here?” Dash asked.
“Checked what? They died before I left.”
Dash just rolled her eyes like Sunset was being ridiculous. She took out a small, black, rectangular device.
“What is that thing?” Sunset asked.
“A phone. How did they not have phones where you’re from? Ah, never mind that was a rude question.” Dash pressed a button on the side of her ‘phone’. “Hey, where does Sunset Shimmer live?”
There was a jingle, then a voice came out of the phone.
“Sunset Shimmer lives on 452 Sunset lane,” the device announced.
Sunset had a house?!
“Hey! That’s just down the street from Pinkie Pie!” Dash put her phone away. “We should go over there and scope the place out if you haven’t gone there yet.”
“Uh… yeah.”
A strange sense of morbid curiosity compelled Sunset to follow Dash over to where her ‘home’ supposedly was…