Chapter 2 - The Fool and The Emperor
“What are you two talking about?” Sunset asked startled
A mirror was held in Sunset’s face in Twilight’s purple magical aura, there on her forehead was her cutie mark.
“...Wha?”
“Your hooves too.” Twilight said
Sunset held up her hooves. Each held a two toned sun on it as well.
“Huh, that’s different. All of them?”
“Yes all of them.” Twilight stated. “It’s like the rainbow power transformation we had to use to defeat Tirek and got me this castle...but that was temporary, and this lacks the really gaudy hair stuff.” Twilight put her hoof to her chin.
“SWEET CELESTIA DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?” Twilight shouted excitedly, startling both Sunset and Celectia, “I CAN ACTUALLY STUDY THE RAINBOW POWER MODE NOW! OH JUST THINK OF THE POSSIBILITIES!”
Celestia held up a hoof.
“Calm down Twilight,” Celesita said, “Sunset is your friend, not an experiment, and is just getting resettled back home besides.”
“I’ve experimented on Pinkie…” Twilight stated bluntly
“Ok Twilight, That’s creepy.” Sunset scrunched her nose, memories of a much darker Twilight coming to mind.
Celestia took Sunset in her wing.
“Twilight,” she said, “we don’t know if this is related to the ‘Rainbow Power’ phenomenon or not. It could just be a side effect of years of magical build up.”
“That’s even more reason we need to look into it, Princess!” Twilight said.
Celestia began to walk covering sunset with her wing protectively.
“I will be escorting Sunset to her room now Twilight,” Celestia stated with a tone of finality, “we have much to get caught up on. I haven’t gotten as much of a chance to speak with her over the last few years as you have.”
And with that Celestia and Sunset left Twilight alone with her thoughts. The wheels started turning in her mind, rather rapidly, but turning, things had happened quickly it took her a moment to process the realization.
“Wait...Waaait….Sunset called Princess Celestia Mom…” Twilight promptly fainted.
“You're going to ask me about this aren’t you...Mom.” Sunset sighed.
“Heavens no,” Celestia said smiling, “you’re my daughter and i haven’t seen you in a long time. It may have only been about 3 to your perspective but to me it’s been 25.”
“I’m sorry.” Sunset blurted out, “I should have listened to you. I should have ignored that mirror. I should have…I should have been the perfect princess you wanted me to be.”
“Sunset, my little sun,” Celestia stopped holding the young unicorns face in her hoof, “While losing you hurt me deeply, as well as your mistakes, your round-about path has brought you back to me. Right now that is all that matters.”
“Of course.” Sunset rolled her eyes. “Facade, off.”
Celestia frowned as she resumed walking.
“Sunset, I’ve been worried sick about you for 25 years. You betrayed my trust, yes. I was hurt in a way I only ever hurt once before, yes. But it has been 25 years, and you have come back to me with barely any of the little time I have to spend with my daughter wasted on your misadventures. 25 years is nothing to waste, and everything to lose. I am truly, honestly, overjoyed to have you back with so little lost.”
“They weren’t wasted.” Sunset stated bluntly “I found the friends you always told me to find.”
Celestia sighed.
“You borrowed Twilight’s friends, the other elements-”
“SHUT UP! They are MY friends.” Sunset shouted at Celestia. “Twilight may have helped me find them, and they may be similar to their counterparts, but they are NOT the same.”
Celestia recoiled from sunset’s words, they stung, they bit, she hated not wearing the facade. But only Luna, Sunset, and Discord could tear it off and she’d from experience in private with Sunset it was better to just leave it off.
“I...I’m sorry Sunset.” Celestia sighed a pained expression on her face.
“Are you going to tell me that Twilight is the same as her counterpart?” Sunset glared defensively.
“I said I’m sorry, Sunset, and that’s FINAL.” Celestia retorted.
Sunset smiled as if to a private joke and started to break down laughing.
“What’s so funny Sunset?” Celestia asked quizzically
“Three years, Twenty five years,” Sunset said as she continued to laugh, “nothing has changed. We still get under each other's skin. Our pride won’t let us do anything else.”
Celestia looked at Sunset for a moment, she was home and nothing had changed between them, she joined in.
Sunset Shimmer looked out from the balcony of her new room, slowly sipping tea. Chamomile, her favorite. Apparently Celestia had ensured an adequate stock. Considering the expense of the flavor on the other side, it was nostalgic. Though not nearly as nostalgic as the fact who she was having tea with.
“They really are different; experiences, psychology, society.” Celestia stated plainly
“Yeah, it was a lesson I had to accept in order to trust Twilight after facing her counterpart.” Sunset sighed, “Though some things definitely stay the same. I do want to make friends with Twilight’s friends. Not because they are Twilight’s friends, nor because they are my friends’ counterparts. Even if I expect that knowing their counterparts will make it easier.”
She smiled into her tea.
“Just like knowing her friends made it easier for her to befriend mine.”
Celestia nodded.
“Sunset,” she said, “I think that’s enough reminiscing. I think it’s time to stop thinking about the past, and think about the future. I’ll admit, and I think you could guess, I had considered how I could push you to get a crown.”
“I kinda gave up on the whole crown thing after the whole fall formal debacle” Sunset smiled sheepishly
“You gave up on something?” Celestia raised an eyebrow
“I found something more valuable.” Sunset smile became genuine
Celestia gave a soft chuckle
“You sound like Twilight.” Celestia returned the smile
Sunset shrugged.
“Perhaps she’s rubbing off on me.” Sunset said. “Anyways, the future then. What is your plan now? You always have one.”
“I don’t.” Celestia admitted, much to Sunset’s surprise. “I honestly don’t have a plan. How could I ever plan for this Sunset? as far as I knew it was impossible to summon The Rainbow without a conduit.”
“We had a conduit.” Sunset said. “Me.”
Celestia, thought about that for far longer than most would think she would need to think about anything, but what she was dealing with was unprecedented, eventually she settled on the most pertinent question she possibly could answer.
“Can you control it?”
“No.” Sunset shook her head “You know as well as I do that The Rainbow can’t be controlled. Only summoned, and hopefully directed.”
Celestia sighed and rubbed her temples.
“So that’s our replacement,” She said sadly. “You.”
“Replacement?” Sunset asked curiously
“The elements.” Celestia nodded “We still don’t have access to them. The Tree still needs it’s fruit to repair the damage Discord did to it.”
“I’m not a wea-”
“I know,” Celestia interrupted, “Do you think I’d ever let you be? I told Twilight you aren’t an experiment, and you certainly aren’t a weapon. I’m not happy with this state of affairs, but we make do. so your future.” Celestia thought for a moment.
“My future.” Sunset sighed.
“I could crown you right now.” Celestia suggested “I certainly can’t claim you don’t deserve it, but I don’t know how the public would take a non-alicorn being granted full royal status.”
She pondered a bit as she took a bite of some cake.
“You sure you don’t want some cake dear?” Celestia asked, proffering a slice.
“No, Mom,” Sunset said, rolling her eyes, “ I don’t have your sweet tooth, just your taste for tea. How you don’t get fat, I have no idea.”
“Ah,” Celestia said smiling, “you sound like Discord. Or does he sound like you? No matter. I could simply give you a symbolic crown like Blueblood, but that was never on the table for you.”
“No it wasn’t.” Sunset admitted
“Then we are in agreement, a unique solution will be needed.” Celestia nodded
“Unique solution?” Sunset blinked
“Sunset as far as i can tell you are a walking breathing Element of Harmony. I can claim as much as I want for both the sake of appearances, and for the sake of their confidence confidence that Cadence and Twilight are my equals, but in your case I’d be understating your status.”
“Wait…What?!” Sunset gasped out.
“You said it all those years ago, that you could surpass me. I certainly can’t rule that possibility out now can I?” Celestia smiled proudly.
Sunset promptly fainted.
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Surpass Celestia? Could it mean Queen? Wait, how do you surpass a God?
5669633
Wait a tic, i was gonna make one of my trademark well reasoned replies drawing off analyses of primary and secondary sources.
Then i remembered, i'm writing the damn fic.
Keep reading.
Okay, it has to be said: This story is not good.
It's nothing personal, really. The idea is interesting, the execution is somewhat flawless and the dialogues are good. That is pretty much it.
While the dialogue feels natural, the characters themselves don't. It feels like out-of-character-behaviour, but I can't put my finger on it.
The pacing is horrible. In the first chapters everything happens and now we have a whole chapter for something that seems like a single conversation. You could probably cramp all what has happened to this point in a single 2500 word chapter and if you fix the pacing we might encounter the 3500-words-limit and, if you excuse that run-on-sentence, it wouldn't feel different at all.
The idea itself is good and it is executed almost, not perfect but almost, flawlessly. (The difference between perfect and flawless, is for me that flawless things can still have faults that don't relate to themselves and thus can't be perfect.) BUT PLEASE ATLEAST TRY TO MAKE IT BELIEVABLE!
The best I could say is that I feel a certain distance to the events in your story that I can't quite ignore. I'm never really 'in' the story (suspension of disbelief and all.)
Your grammar is okay, a few spelling errors on the way, but nothing serious. I'm not a grammar obsessive and I will and have ignored a lot of faults in other and your story, but I have my breaking point. Good thing is you stayed under it. Barely.
You should focus on longer chapters and try to fix your character behaviour and my major complaints are gone. Otherwise: Great story. I will continue following and reading it.
Twilight 'I have a giant sparkly crystal in the middle of town' Sparkle thinks the hair was gaudy? Wow.
5669633 Jesus.
5671671
What we know about her
1) She's human(humans aren't ponies)
2) She's all the worst aspects of twilight (Twilight who causally uses mind rape spells, and who experiments on her friends), with none of the influences that made twilight a good pony.
3) She's proudly wears a shadowbolts insignia in the merch and will be the villain along with them in the next equestria girls movie
But the important thing is her role in the narrative, it gives me a wedge in the Twilight/Sunset Relationship. A bad experience that certain aspects of Twilight's personality can remind Sunset of, some underlying tension to exploit.
I used to wonder what editing could be, until you all shared it's magic with me ahhhhh.
Interesting story. I really like the time dilation aspect, it explains so much about the movies. I've also been wondering what the heck Sunset is after that finale in Rainbow Rocks, and it looks like this story will explore that.
See I told you that you could write a good fic. You've pinned the time difference very well, it's like something out of Doctor Who and it does a nice job wrapping up the time lapse between the comics and the movies well done.
The interactions with the characters also seem very spot on and realistic. I'm interested to see where this is going to go.
Also from your previous chapter
Basically EG 2's subtle reference to Scott Pilgrim VS The World
Interesting story. I kinda feel embarrassed that I had the gall to argue with a great author like you. At least compared to my fics. Keep writing. I'd like to see more. There's some grammatical errors but nothing too distracting.
5681409
I'm listening to my editor now!
Also ARGUE WITH ME! MORE COMMENTS, I FEED UPON THEM!
Ahem MOAR please!!!!!
5683660
I'm like starcatcher, granting your pony wishes.
5669633 I don't like the fact that you refer to them as "Gods". Not because I'm religious, but because it has very, very negative connotations. At least for me! HAHAHAHAHA! But seriously, god is supposed to be perfect. Therefore everything he makes should be perfect.
Yet nothing in this world is perfect.
Damn it. Theological debates again.
5672476
Argument is flawed, for the pony-Twilight example. The Want-It Need-It Spell only came out under extreme mental and emotional stress. It was not a casual usage. The reformation spell was going to be used on Discord, the most powerful being Equestria has ever seen - and also a villain who had already held the country/world in his candy-coated iron grip before. Entirely justified and ethical, you don't treat an enemy who can steal control of the world and heavens with kid gloves lest your entire species face danger.
She did not experiment on Pinkie so much as 'scanned her', based on the machinery in Twilight's basement. Even if she did, there were no negative connotations like the way you used it.
Also, Twilight in this chapter is very OOC and seems based on what I've covered in this very post. So far in, I'm liking the idea, hating the lack of proper capitalization, and the lack of certain characterizations.
5873761
"Works every time." That implies she's used it before on several occasions.
Oh yeah reformation spell, I'll keep that in my back pocket.
Needs a lot of cleaning up. Trivial mechanical errors are all over the place, but more than that your prose is weak. You tend towards uncomplicated sentences and fragments that don't have a lot of detail or description beyond the bare minimum to tell the story, which makes everything come off flat and bland.
I can't say I'm a fan of your plotline either. It deviates pretty strongly from what we know of the characters, and without the support of a well-written backdrop it feels rushed and poorly thought out. It could be interesting, but it will take more effort to pull it off.
5669633 by being Kratos...or chuck norifs!