The Other Sunset Shimmer

by Jerec the Ascendant

A New "Home"

Following Celestia, Sunset Shimmer finally exited the hospital. With the princess’s help, they were able to avoid the wheelchair ordeal; the weather was beautiful, and Sunset was eager to be outside again. Near the hospital entrance, the two encountered a chariot pulled by a few pegasi. Sunset was confused by the old style of transportation, but upon seeing the city around her, she stopped paying any attention to the chariot. All the cities she knew from back home were very modern, but this one was different. It looked as though it was from the Renaissance era. Sunset snapped back to attention when the chariot suddenly took off.

"I've decided to test your abilities - to see how well you've adapted. We’re going to walk to the castle,” Celestia said, noticing Sunset’s greening cheeks. “Don't worry, I'm not going to ask anything too strenuous of you. During our walk, you can tell me more about yourself and your world." She smiled brightly, happy to learn about the unknown.

Celestia had never gone through the mirror, she just knew what she had read from Starswirl the Bearded’s notes - though he hadn't written much about the land on the other side. She only knew that it was much like Equestria at the time, but that there was no magic. Starswirl had banished three trouble-making sirens there because of this curiosity. Celestia always wondered about the other world, what it was like and how the inhabitants appeared. This Sunset Shimmer had given her a short summary and a very brief description, which had only left her starved for more.

They began their walk toward the castle. It started in silence, Celestia trying to decide which question to ask first. She finally selected one, and looked down at Sunset.

"Could you describe what you looked like as a..." She gave Sunset a probing look. "Hu...man? Did I get it right?"

"Yes, that’s right." Sunset said with a sigh. She looked down, her ears flattening. “That’s what I was.”

"I'm sorry,” Celestia quickly said, her own ears flattening. “Maybe we should give you more time."

"It's alright, I just..." She took a deep breath and looked up at Celestia, feigning a smile. It was a fruitless display, though. Celestia watched with furrowed brow as the new pony tried to answer her question. "Anyway, as a human, I was pretty tall I think. I feel really short walking like this. Humans stand and walk on only our hind legs. We call our forelegs ‘arms’, and at the end of them we have little fingers for holding things.”

“Fingers?” The princess asked, with a raised eyebrow.

“They’re kind of like a minotaur's paw, only without the fur and a thinner hide.”

She raised her eyebrows higher.

“Anyway. My hair looked similar to this, for the most part, but I didn't have a tail. I didn’t have fur either; instead we wear clothes. I wore knee high boots, a skirt, a purple shirt, and a leather jacket. And my skin was the same color as my fur."

Celestia looked off, trying to picture such a creature - though she didn't have much success. She rearranged the image in her head multiple times, but it just never ended up looking quite right.

"Perhaps when you've mastered telekinesis you could draw me a picture." She looked back to Sunset. "So what is your world like?" she asked. Sunset struggled with the question, stuttering and squinting her eyes in her search for a good starting place. "I should be more specific, I saw you looking with interest at my chariot and at carriages as they go by. Why is that?"

"Oh, well, in my world we don't use those as transportation anymore, though we certainly never had flying ones. Now we use vehicles we call automobiles. I wish I could explain more but I don't know enough about cars to even begin explaining. All I know is that they are self-propelled through some chain reactions in what we call an engine." As Celestia watched with great confusion, Sunset became very disappointed with herself.

She wished she knew more about her world than she did. She realized now that she didn’t pay attention to many important aspects. As a teenager, she was preoccupied with having fun, but now that she had lost her home world, she couldn’t help but feel that she had taken advantage of all its perplexing mechanics.

"I'm sorry that I can't tell you more,” she said, her ears flattened again. “I suppose I preferred having fun over understanding the important things in life." She looked back down, some tears forming in her eyes. She could have done so much with her former life. She began to think that maybe she deserved to have lost it.

Celestia sighed quietly. "No. Once again, I'm sorry. I keep reminding you of the life you could have lived."

"It's okay. I just need to remember that what's been done has been done, and that I should focus on living this new life." Sunset put on what she hoped was a brave face, though she knew that her mentor could see through the façade. "I'll answer to the best of my ability any other questions you have."

So they continued on their way, Celestia avoiding touching on any more sensitive subjects. Eventually they reached the castle, and at the sight of it Sunset froze, her eyes wide. Everything from the drawbridge up to the towering turrets amazed her. Nothing in her extensive studies had prepared her for seeing a real castle.

“Ah, yes,” Celestia said, giggling at Sunset’s awestruck face. “I suppose living in the castle is one of the perks of being my student.”

Sunset couldn't speak; her only reply was a sudden snort followed by many happy squeals as she clapped her hooves together. She had always dreamed about living in a huge castle when she was younger. Gazing at her new home, she began to feel like a real princess. She found herself thinking that maybe being trapped in this world wasn’t all that bad.

"Shall we go in?" Celestia asked, still amused by Sunset’s giddiness. "I want you to see your room - your counterpart’s old room. You'll be staying there. It hasn’t been touched since that fateful night. Perhaps we can attempt to solve some of the mystery behind her infiltration of your world and your ‘exile’ here," she added, her voice brimming with hope.

Sunset's grin faded. "Alright,” she said. "I think I know the perfect place to start, and it will give me a chance at vengeance.” Sunset’s brow lowered over her eyes, and she bared her teeth. “It's time to read her diary."

Celestia held back a laugh, but couldn’t help smiling at her new student. "Ah, vengeance. Thy name be reading a diary.” The princess - being such - hardly had her time for fun and mischief, and she found it difficult to contain her excitement. She kneeled down, bringing her face to Sunset’s. “To be truthful, that sounds like a very interesting idea."

Eager to begin, and to introduce Sunset to her new home, Celestia wrapped a foreleg around the young unicorn and lifted her into the air. As Sunset’s stomach whirled, the two flew inside the castle.

Author's Note:

My editor, Molly Wormdirt has decided to work on the other side of "The Other Sunset Shimmer". It's up, here is the link to it: Sunset's Journal

Comments

[Winter Rosario]

First

[Greatazuredragon]

Sunset's last diary entry:

[ssokolow]

Sorry, I have to give this a downvote and stop reading at the end of chapter 10.

As others have pointed out:

1. You spend too much time on hardships that run directly counter to what's shown in canon (eg. Sunset learning her new body when, canonically, it doesn't take that long to go the other way and asymmetric adaptation is a hard sell that you haven't attempted to justify.)
2. You're too willing to skip things which should take a while
3. You prefer flawed explanations like flexy-hooves over perfectly reasonable ones that are common in other fics like "hoof magic" or gecko-toe frogs.

All in all, this comes across as a mild example of an "I want it this way, so it will be this way. I don't need to explain or justify." fic, which is one of the classic marks of a bad fanfic author and one of my pet peeves. (In more extreme cases, I call them "I'm too lazy to come up with original character names for my original story, so I'll just steal them from this fandom" fics.)

I've given you roughly 12,000 words (roughly 1/10th of the maximum a professional editor will allow for a first novel) to show improvement and I haven't seen any evidence of it (and, by this time, expectations are starting to solidify), so I'm out.

[BronyCrystal]

7048943 BHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Anyhoof Liking the story soo far. and keep up the good work my friend by the way i'm a pony artiest sooo if this story get batter i may just give u a awesome fan art ;3 sooo ya till then Have a great derpy day

[Nopetrain]

There is nothing Sunset Shimmer about this Sunset Shimmer. No explosive temper, no goal oriented determination, not even intelligence I dare say. She ain't got sass or mojo, nothing is remarkable or even similar in contrast to the other Sunset. I'd hate to whine about this character being OOC, cause that's kind of a shitty thing to complain about. Technically you can do what you want with any character. Even so, this SS and the things happening to her are plain boring. It seems more like the author personifies him/herself in this version of SS.