15 Years Later(4BBY),
Outer Rim Territories/Wild Space
Utthar
Sunset Shimmer’s Bedroom
Sunset Shimmer lied on her bed as she snored off in the middle of the night. She’s in a deep sleep, evidently tired and worn out. The past few weeks had taken a toll on her, from presiding over the publishing of her school’s annual yearbook to dealing with a magical accident in which her best friends, those whom she considered family had their good memories of her wiped out, leaving only bitter ones from a time when she herself had lost her way[1]. Sometimes she wondered as to why these magical accidents always involved she and her friends, of all the people in the world. But they were given a tremendous responsibility to protect their home, and it's a duty that she would always answer, no matter what . But today, she felt that she deserved a little rest to replenish her energy bar. Balancing high school life and the occasional hero work was indeed challenging and she needed to be mentally and physically fit to handle it. After all, considering her somewhat magical origins herself, her friends would look to her during any mayhem and she must be in sound mind to deal with it.
In her sleep, she had a rather peculiar and strange dream she never before had dreamt of. In this dream, she sees a vision of a man, or at what she can make out as one, with his face covered with a black cloak with only his yellow burning eyes visibly striking out. It seemed like he was in some sort of deep sorrow, and this was fueling his rage. She had never seen someone with this much hate and anger before. She too had her downs, when she became estranged from her mentor Princess Celestia due to her own greed and ambitions but she had never had this much of hate and vengeance in her, or so she thought. This mysterious man was joined by another cloaked figure who appeared older and whose eyes were also burning yellow, Sunset could barely make out his face to be that of severely disfigured and from the expression he was giving,he was clearly and evidently evil. “ The Force is strong with you, a powerful Sith, you will become” The disfigured figure said to the other person, in a deep raspy voice which would unsettle anyone hearing it. The visions then shifted towards the younger man who was in a rage, with hate flowing through his veins, yielding a glowing blue coloured sword which acted as some sort of weapon that she is alien to and was using it to slaughter no other than unarmed children ! Countless innocent and harmless children were brutally murdered with their bodies pierced and cut through gruesomely with the glowing sword.
Who could do something as cruel and vile like murdering children ?? This was not the work of any normal person, but a monster, one which was not capable of feeling any remorse or guilt in his actions, She thought. She then found herself in a volcanic environment, in which she finds another man, this one, unlike the earlier two did not seem to be imbedded with the dark side. He was instead a middle aged man with blond hair and beard. He too had a blue light sword, and seemed to be engaged in a duel with his corrupted counterpart, who surprisingly to Sunset, had the same skin tone. “ You were my Brother, Anakin !!” he shouted out loud towards his opponent, to which Sunset felt a sense of great disappointment and pain, going by his tone. “ I HATE YOU !” his counterpart screamed back, with nothing but anger and hate inside of him. The two then continued their duel [2]. Sunset then heard another voice, this one much more peaceful and filled with serenity and comfort who said, “ Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering” [3]. It seemed to be some sort of a warning, but before she could give anymore more thought about it, her dreams then brought her to the next location.
Sunset then finds herself in a mythical place surrounded by the openness of space, nothing but the endless amounts of stars surrounding her. This amazes her and at the same time confuses her. She could feel an unusually strong magical aura in this mythical place she’s in, nothing she ever felt before. “ To preserve the balance, you must undo your doing,” Said a spiritual voice, coming from what Sunset deduced to be a female around the age of her early 30’s. However she couldn’t find the source of this voice, only being able to hear it coming from ev everywhere of her surroundings. Right after that voice, followed the previous peaceful, serenity-filled voice who said, “ I sense a great imbalance in you, Sunset Shimmer”. Imbalance ? in her ? That’s not true, she thought. There had never been more clarity in her since the incident during the Fall Formal, when she learnt the hard truth. Whoever this voice was, he had to be wrong, she thought, but then again, is he ??? Maybe there is some imbalance in her, that she herself is not privy to, even after the Fall Formal. Sunset then heard herself, and she was sure it was her own voice and not some doppelganger mimicking her. “ I know what I must do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it”
Sunset startled awake from her deep sleep. Her dream ended with an ominous sentence by the same female voice earlier saying “ The Force calls to you, Sunset Shimmer, as it always has' '. Sunset found herself sitting on her bed in the middle of the night, trying to comprehend what she had dreamt of. ‘ What is the imbalance in her bank ? What did that girl in her dream mean that the Force calls to her ? Or more importantly, what is it that Sunset, or more clearly the dream version of her had meant ?’ All these were the questions that were raging inside her head. Her logical mind told her to dismiss it as just a stupid dream, something that is of little significance, but at the same time, her gut was saying otherwise. ‘Should she write to Princess Twilight about this nightmare ?’, she thought for a brief moment before deciding against it, not wanting to trouble the Princess with trivial matters. After all, it could just probably have been a normal meaningless nightmare. Sunset then turned to the right side of her bed, where lied a photo frame of her friends together taken in a photo booth during their time in Equestria Land last summer.[4]
She picked up the frame to cherish it. Her friends were everything to her, and she would do anything to protect them, even if it meant giving up her own life for their wellbeing. She owed them a great deal since the Fall Formal and if not for them, she could not imagined how she would have turned up. ‘There is and will never be any imbalance in her and it is thanks to this group of girls’, she thought. Whatever those voices in her dream said about her, they were wrong. She then placed the frame back on her nightstand before turning her head towards her alarm clock. “ It’s three in the morning. I should probably get back to sleep,” she said it out loud to herself, in reference to the time. As Sunset tucked herself and went back to sleep, something within her had awakened from being dormant. Something that she herself never knew she had within her and it was calling out to her. It was ready to show itself not just to Sunset but to others who share the same power. Power that Sunset could call it as magic, but far more stronger and powerful than the magic she has ever experienced.
