//------------------------------//
// The Secret Life Of Sunset Shimmer (Gunsmoke — Fanfic) 
// Story: Sunset's Isekai 
// by Wanderer D 
//------------------------------//


Sunset's Isekai
The Secret Life Of Sunset Shimmer (Gunsmoke — Complete)
By Wanderer D







Desert Mirage sighed as she materialized in the middle of the plaza, quickly checking her messages to see if there was anything brewing, before starting to make her way through the busy streets of the city.

Space Battle Cruiser (SBC) Glocken, which became the capital city of the world of Gun Gale Online after crashing into Earth and turning everything else into a wasteland with mutations included, was always, always, packed with people, and most of them knew exactly who she was due to an unfortunate series of events. Granted, they did not know of her extracurricular experiments.

"Hey, Desert Mirage!"

"Mirage! Join my party!"

"Desert Mirage! Please train me!"

"Marry me!"

Rolling her eyes, she ran into one of the alleyways and pulled on her hood, activating her camouflage. After a patch about a year prior, it didn't work as well within the city as it did before—simply obscuring her avatar instead of rendering her fully invisible as it would in the field—but that wasn't much of a problem. All she needed was to not be instantly recognized, and as long as she walked fast, she wouldn't really be noticed unless someone was determined to talk to her.

"Ugh, I hope I don't have to quit the game or take a sabbatical until people forget me." She shook her head. "I bet Surgeon and the others don't have to go through this stuff all the time."

She navigated the alleyways and would have just emerged back into the city proper, having lost her pursuers, if she hadn't noticed the sign, and even more importantly, the cutie mark on the logo. A yin-yang-like sun on the corner of a cocktail glass. Her cutie mark.

Narrowing her eyes, she walked back to the door and studied it. The worn stone arc around the wooden door was an odd choice for a door, given the location. Glocken was supposed to be the remains of a large space battle cruiser—the lore of the game being that it was the ship's carcass used to recolonize the planet—containing technology long forgotten after the crash. Even if the human-changed parts of the city would have some bricks, the door looked completely out of place in this environment.

In fact, it looked more fit for a fantasy game, or maybe one of those locations in the world map that had a more rustic image. She considered the door, glancing behind her. To be completely fair, she was very curious about it, and well, she was supposed to meet "Moonie" for a date at a bar a little later.

If this was a decent bar… maybe she could kill two N00bs with one shot. She quickly sent a DM out informing her lover of the location on the map, then pushed the door open.

Despite her expectations, it didn't creak, and she heard a silver chime announce her presence. 





Just past the door was a short corridor that opened up into the bar itself. From her angle, she couldn't see much other than tables and a lot of pictures and posters, but she was definitely not alone in there. She could hear two voices.

"So wait… that  was your project?" someone, (a teenager's voice) asked.

"Yep! And it's just about ready. What do you think?" an oddly familiar voice responded.

"I think you have a guest, but that sounds amazing! Oh! Can I tell Luz?"

"Yep! I had her among others in mind when I thought this up."

"That's amazing, Sunset! Thanks!"

Mirage stopped at the door, both in shock at what she was seeing, and at hearing the name.

The bar had indeed a multitude of pictures and posters, some with very familiar looking people and ponies… like one of an anthropomorphic Twilight Sparkle who looked like a rocker, or pictures of Principal Celestia or Princess Celestia… and a gorgeous anthro version of Rarity in a cowboy getup. 

There were a pair of guitars, a plant growing up one of the corners, a small terrarium next to the bar with an odd white spider in it, and more importantly, at the bar itself, a young… duck-teen of some sort... was smirking at her with a knowing glance, while behind the bar was… herself, in an old west bartender's getup.

"It's okay," the duck teenager said, crossing her arms cockily. "Take it. Breathe it in. It's real."

"Lena!" the other Sunset chided. "That's not how we greet guests."

'Lena' rolled her eyes but slid off her seat. "Well, it's a personal visit so I guess I should get going. I'll go tell Luz and her friends."

"Hey, just Luz and her crew, alright? I don't want everyone in the Boiling Isles to rush through that door when I pick you up."

"Got it!" Lena said, picking up a backpack and running to the door. "I can't wait! That'll be awesome!"

"Stay safe!" Sunset-at-the-bar shouted as Mirage followed the duck teen with her eyes, noticing that, as she opened the door, it wasn't Glocken but some sort of forest out there.

"What. The. Hell." Mirage finally said, "Is going on?"

The other Sunset Shimmer chuckled. "Sorry, that was Lena, she's my student and she got very excited about some news I had for her, so that side-tracked the usual greeting." She cleared her throat and motioned with her hand at the room they were in. "Welcome to Sunset's Isekai, my little bar in the omniverse."

Mirage crossed her arms. "Not the multiverse?"

"I did say that before, but some people got confused because their multiverses were somehow finite and able to be destroyed by powerful beings. Me being able to move past way beyond that limit was kind of hard to explain, so I changed it to 'omniverse' and then Spell-Jammed an explanation that made it digestible for them."

"Oh?"

"Bubbles," the bartender replied, motioning for Mirage to get closer and take a seat. "Multiverses are bubbles, with more bubbles within but also part of a bigger bubble. The boundaries of the mini-bubbles inside the bubbles are easier to breach and reach each other since they are packed closer than the other multiverses which are not only separated by the bubble-boundary, but also by considerable space between them."

Mirage sighed. "I guess in an oversimplified way…"

The bartender shrugged. "It helps most people imagine it, and those that understand why it's an oversimplification know enough to fill the gaps themselves."

Mirage chuckled, picking up a menu. "Fair enough. So… that explains why you're me."

"It took me a moment to realize that was the case, but yes," the bartender grinned. "When there's more than one of us in this room, I usually go by Isekai to avoid confusion."

Mirage looked at herself. Her camouflage duster was singed and scraped in some areas, her armor telling of many a gunfight her two guns holstered at the side carefully maintained, not to mention that she looked and sounded older in here than in Canterlot City itself, made it hard for even people that knew her to connect the dots.

She shook her head and glanced at Isekai. "So why do you have an old-west bartender getup?"

Isekai grinned. "You know that Rarity you were ogling earlier? She's the Bulletproof Heart, out of your favorite Lone-Ranger type of story, and she never gave up sewing and designing clothes. When she came here, she insisted on making this for me, so I use it occasionally because…" she threw her hair over one shoulder and gave Mirage a smoldering look. "It's fabulous."

Mirage chuckled, glancing at the choices in the menu before sliding it towards Isekai. "I'll take a glass of bourbon. On the rocks."

"Coming right up!" Isekai said. "So, what about you?"

"Me?" Mirage crossed her arms and leaned on the bar, observing her counterpart move around. "Well, in this world I'm called Desert Mirage." On a whim, she transformed back to her normal form. "And in Canterlot City I'm just regular old Sunset Shimmer." She became Mirage once again, grinning. "I've graduated Highschool before the girls, since… well, I didn't really need to be in highschool, and also because of personal matters. Over here, in Glocken, I'm Desert Mirage, a gunslinging scoundrel, mercenary, legend, and hunter. Fun times."

Isekai raised an eyebrow as she put down Mirage's drink on a coaster. "I feel like there's a story behind this."

Mirage nodded, not answering yet until she had sipped her first taste of the whiskey. She hummed in appreciation, and nodded. "Oh, there is." She paused, considering where to start. "So this whole thing began because, after the Battle of the Bands, I realized I was miserable."

"How so?"

Mirage sighed and slumped forward. "Miscommunication, mostly," she admitted. "You know how bad that can get, I imagine. But yeah… I was trying really hard to please the girls. I'd cancel plans, ignore concerts I wanted to attend, didn't give myself time to relax… I went to their parties, their events, their homes, their everything... at the cost of my own happiness."

Isekai winced. "Ouch. That's… a lot to deal with. Was this because of guilt?"

Mirage nodded. "Yeah. Even after the battle of the bands I couldn't shake the guilt over what I had done… and almost done. After the Friendship Games, things didn't get any better. Sure, I was more involved, and the girls were trying their best to include me into what they loved, but weren't thinking about me in the sense of also doing things I liked."

"In my case, I found the girls willing to listen most of the time, especially after the Battle of the Bands," Isekai said.

"Well, yes," Mirage drawled, sampling her whiskey once more, "but mine listened in a very… self-oriented way," she said neutrally. "I'd say I felt like going to a concert, and they'd take me to one they wanted to go to, never offering to let me choose, or even asking. The one time I did tell Dash about going to an event, she essentially said 'no way, let's do this instead'."

Isekai shook her head, and Mirage chuckled.

"It's not that they didn't care… It's just that I wasn't able to get  across that I felt that they just wouldn't give me a chance to be me, and they were doing their best as best as they could, while still being focused first on their interests. I mean, it's not like I have that many years over them, but… well, it's a very teenage thing to do, right?" 

"You'd be surprised how many hundred-year-olds act the same way."

Mirage blinked at and snorted, glad she hadn't been drinking at that exact moment. "They're my friends," she insisted for clarity, as if she had to defend them even though she knew Isekai hadn't implied otherwise, "they had my back all that time in their own way, but we never broached the subject." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I fully admit that a big part of it was because I kept quiet, just expecting them to put two and two together because I was honestly terrified for a while that they would push me away if I was honest." She licked her lips as the bitter memories surfaced. "And that's what eventually boiled into a real fight among friends. I almost fried Rainbow Dash."

"Okay," Isekai said, nodding. "But how do you go from insecurities like that to this?" she asked, motioning with her hand at Mirage's getup. "Mercenary and legend you said?"

"Well… have you heard of Sword Art Online?"

Isekai sighed wearily. "You didn't."

Mirage grinned. "I didn't play that one, no, but the technology allowed me to join Gun Gale Online, where I created my current persona: Desert Mirage," Mirage responded with a small smile and using her hands to motion at herself. "Looking at you, I guess that I was pretty close to how I would look a couple of years older." She took a deep breath and nursed her drink, looking at the whiskey with a contemplative eye. "In many ways, as silly as that initial fight was, it turned out to be what I—we really needed.

"The girls kind of realized that they were drowning me with their best intentions. I learned that in many ways, I was holding myself back for selfish reasons… admitting what I loved and what I wanted to do was terrifying in many ways."

Isekai nodded, patting Mirage on the shoulder. "Standing up for who you are is not as easy as some people think… not when you feel you might lose so much just for being honest."

Mirage smirked, taking a deeper drink. "I thought they'd drop me as a friend, and… well, I almost managed that by keeping those things secret, rather than helping them realize what was happening, instead of putting the burden only on them." She smiled more gently. "I don't know how different things might've been if I had, but Gun Gale allowed me to meet not just new friends… but peers in a way. 

"My frenemies respected me for being me. I didn't have to pull my punches, or not be 'too good' at something because it would offend anyone who hadn't fully forgiven me. Proving my worth at something without fearing that I'd be judged just for being me was liberating."

"I remember shortly after Twilight cleansed me of the out-of-control magic," Isekai said, "the students would walk on eggshells around me at first, then, when they realized I wasn't going to do anything to them for existing, the petty bullying started." She grimaced. "It was cut short really quickly by the girls and the principal, but it made me very cautious about trusting until much later, when I had earned their forgiveness."

Mirage snorted, shaking her head at the memories. "Yeah. I went through that… and the Battle of the Bands… and the Friendship Games. After that, I formed a strong bond with Twilight, and went to visit her often at her lab in Crystal Prep."

"Wait… Twilight went back to Crystal Prep?" Isekai asked, blinking. "That… doesn't happen often."

"Really?" Mirage tilted her head, then half-turned, looking at the wall of pictures, trying to spot any of the gang. While she did see a couple, they were all outside of school, so guessing correctly if any of those universes was like hers was really just a gamble.  "Well… Cinch was fired when it came out that she had been bullying the students. Her efforts were deemed divisive, affecting the minds of young people to turn them into little more than troops loyal to herself" she said, straightening up in her seat. 

"Thankfully most of the student population saw her real colors during the Friendship Games, and the transition was pretty seamless. While Crystal Prep's status as a tough school was appreciated, let's just say not many parents embraced that at the cost of stressing their kids to the brink, or suffering abuse in the guise of education. Turns out, getting rid of her actually was beneficial results-wise, and Cadance quickly became the favorite principal of both students and parents."

"Well, the multiverse is fond of variety," Isekai said, shrugging. "But I'm glad things worked out for everyone."

"Hell yeah, they did," Mirage said, leaning in. "Twilight set up base there. She has her lab, and helped me and the girls with our powers through some experimentation on the transformations. We all got to know the Shadowbolts pretty well that way, even if for most of us it was just friendly rivalry at first. After the last tournament… well. I guess we're still rivals, but closer to friends now."

"Well, school rivalry is not a bad thing as long as it doesn't get too crazy, I think," Isekai said.

"In our case… we're more like sister schools now," Mirage explained, sipping her whiskey, then sighing as she tilted the now-empty glass, making the ice click against it. "Crystal Prep took us in for the rest of the school semester while Canterlot High was rebuilt, this time with some Equestrian investment and magical engineering to make it much more resistant to incidents in the future. In that time, I essentially graduated ahead of the others."

Isekai hummed as she reached over to serve more whiskey for Mirage. "So why the rush?"

Desert Mirage grinned just as the door opened once more, the bell ringing across the bar. "So there you are!" a familiar voice spoke. "I've been looking for you, dear."

Isekai took in the woman that walked in. She was taller than Mirage and was wearing a black ops armor. The lower half of her face was covered with a deep blue bandanna, and the ballistics helmet on her head covered most of her hair, except for a long dark-blue ponytail that flowed out of it. 

A half moon decal on her right shoulder armor was scratched with bullet and flame marks, and she wore a black cloak that fit under the shoulder guards and flowed around her like living darkness. 

The visitor walked up to Mirage and kissed her, before turning to face Isekai. She then gaped for a moment, looking from the bartender to the other guest silently before sitting down a bit more heavily than she probably would under normal circumstances.

"Nightmare Moon," Mirage said, taking the other woman's hand with her own, "meet Sunset Shimmer."





It had just started raining when she reopened the message to check it again for clues.



Hey Moonie, I found a strange-looking bar in Glocken in the 3rd District. You should be able to spot it. Come see me there.

~Mirage



"Is that…?"

"I think so…"

"Wow, I never thought I'd get a chance to see her in the flesh!"

"Hang around long enough and you'll see other big names, kid."

"I wonder what it's like being in the same team as her?"

Nightmare Moon smirked, pretending that she wasn't listening to the comments as she closed the messages and strode purposefully through the streets of Glocken—and through the space other players opened for her—in search of Desert Mirage.

As a long-time top ranked fighter in the history of Gun Gale Online, and part of the team that won the last tournament (which had exploded into something almost too incredible, even for this place), she was afforded a lot of respect by everyone, and she drank it all in.

Her partner/best friend/lover should be somewhere nearby, as the last location she had appeared in the map was in the immediate area. Nightmare Moon climbed up a ramp to a bridge overlooking the part of town she was currently at: still modern, but with a sense that the first settlers had attempted a more turn of the 20th century appearance, with neon signs and even some brick walls. 

She looked down at the whimpering masses as they strolled under the bridge, covering themselves from the rain, and only paid attention to passing familiar individuals she had encountered before or seemed remotely familiar.

No one of interest, really, but perhaps she might spot a mutual acquaintance of Mirage and herself. Still, she was used to hunting from an elevated position, and with the assistance of her Hawkeye skill, quickly zeroed-in on a familiar-looking theme on a particular door a couple of blocks down. She couldn't really make out the exact details, but the color-scheme and parts of the design were obvious.

She took a running leap, jumping from the bridge to the top of a nearby building and dashed down to where she had spotted the door, jumping onto another two rooftops before grabbing onto a drain pipe and using it to control her fall in front of the strange door.

Despite the oddity of it, she had to acknowledge that Mirage had been right. The moment she saw it, she knew it was the bar. It looked distinctly out of place with the rest of Glocken, not even accounting for Sunset's Cutie-Mark being on it, so as far as clues went, this was pretty obviously the correct place.

She opened the door, silver bell chiming, and stepped inside, out of the rain, which pixelated off of her coat in seconds. It took her a moment to get her bearings. For some reason the moment she had entered this area, everything had suddenly felt much more… real. Which was silly, of course, since she was in a game.

She frowned. Except of course, where Sunset/Mirage was involved things were never that easy.

"...Equestrian investment and magical engineering to make it much more resistant to incidents in the future. In that time, I essentially graduated ahead of the others."

She smirked, recognizing her lover's voice immediately. She stepped into the bar proper, making a show of gracing the place with her presence. She was, after all, Nightmare Moon, and the dwellers of Glocken would stand in awe of her. She immediately spotted Mirage at the bar and grinned. "So there you are!" she purred, "I've been looking for you, dear."

She glanced up at the bartender and blinked, forgetting what she was going to say after. She looked from Sunset Shimmer down to Mirage, who smirked at her with a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Nightmare Moon, meet Sunset Shimmer."

Admittedly Nightmare Moon had had a few surprises in the last couple of years that had left her stumped. Interdimensional travel, meeting her pony double in dreams, discovering Twilight and Sunset's dimension-bending experiments, getting a girlfriend, resurrecting her girlfriend, and meeting her pony double in RL among others. So to say that she thought that what she was witnessing was impossible would be a gross overstatement. It still, however, made her mind go blank for a moment.

Rather than speak immediately, she simply slumped onto one of the seats at the bar, staring at the pair. Mirage passed her a beer labeled Viper's Milk and she greedily chugged down half the bottle before she was able to speak. "How?" she finally managed to ask. She then blinked, feeling the beer hit her. "Wait, I can feel the alcohol?"

Mirage grinned and leaned over to pinch her cheek.

"Ow!" Nightmare Moon gasped, touching her cheek with her hand. "That shouldn't have hurt!"

"Welcome to being me," Mirage said. "It's like when you were in the Real World, Moonie. We're not in the game at the moment."

"Welcome to Sunset's Isekai," the bartender said, grinning just like Mirage. "You can call me Isekai to avoid confusion."

It clicked then. "Figures. This is like the Restaurant from Another World," Nightmare Moon said. She turned to Mirage, "You know, the one with the dragoness that became a waitress?"

"Oh," the bartender chirped. "You mean Restaurant Nekoya? Yeah, same idea, although they only reach one other world and I reach them all."

Nightmare Moon smiled, feeling more at ease now that this Sunset Shimmer had identified herself as a fellow anime fan. "I guess you've watched the series too?"

"Nope!" Isekai said, smiling as she pulled a menu from under the table. "Nekoya and I have an agreement, so I order food from them occasionally."

Nightmare Moon's eyes went wide as she stared at the menu. "Y-you mean it's real?"

Isekai nodded.

"Dragonball?"

"I'm a Saiyan when I'm in that dimension."

"Naruto?"

"I've met a few."

"One Piece?" Nightmare Moon asked eagerly, "What abo—"

"Is this a Shonen Jump convention?" Mirage interrupted, shaking her head. "I thought you were a proud gamer, Moonie, not a weeb."

"So I guess we won't be watching Food Wars together?"

"Carry on."

Nightmare Moon laughed, resting back on her seat. "I never said you couldn't be both a weeb and a gamer."

Mirage grinned and leaned into her. "I think it's adorkable."

"So you and Luna?" Isekai asked after watching them snuggle.

"Yep!" Mirage replied, the grin still in her face. "One of the reasons for graduating early instead of taking it easy and slow." Nightmare Moon watched as Mirage stretched to grab her whiskey and took a sip, her grin fading into a warm smile. "My transition into GGO was really crazy… when the girls thought I was abandoning them, when our friendship was almost destroyed… but in the end, it allowed me to be honest with myself about who I was and who I wanted to be in this world."

She took Nightmare Moon's hand in hers and squeezed. "And being honest with myself and with others helped me reconnect with Celestia back in Equestria, and to become friends with the pegasus version of Rainbow Dash as well… and then to come back and fix my relationship with Rainbow Dash here.

"I made friends with the Shadowbolts… and SciTwi. And I made good friends in GGO. People that even risked their lives to help me and the girls. And finally…" she turned to face Nightmare Moon, who leaned in and gave her a peck on the lips. "I got the badass girl as any good main protagonist should."

Nightmare Moon raised her eyebrow, amused. "And who made you the main character?"

Mirage laughed, leaning into her again and everything was right in the world.





Sunset walked slowly around the bar, her hand touching the tables or stopping to straighten a picture frame. Finally, she hung up the one containing Nightmare Moon and Mirage, both slightly drunk, taking cover behind two tables and "shooting" at each other with finger guns. 

She smiled at the scene, then glanced over at the bar, thinking of her new plans and the value of the lesson Mirage had learned as well. That sometimes things needed to change a little to become something greater.

And she intended to make it happen. She walked around the bar and pushed open the newest door behind it. Nope had made good on her delivery service and had even helped set up the many desks Sunset had ordered.

She walked to the front of the room, checking the blackboard, the materials and even making sure none of the dangerous magic books had made it to the bookshelf before turning around and smiling at her newest project.

The walls were decorated with mystical symbols, ancient devices and even pictures of familiar faces, all garbed in appropriate scholastic attire for their different worlds.

"I wonder how many lessons we can teach here?" she muttered, sitting behind the teacher's desk. She heard the bell ring and stood up, smiling. "I guess we'll be finding out soon," she said to herself as she walked out of the room, waving at her newest guest. "Welcome to Sunset's Isekai!"