• Published 29th Mar 2016
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Sunset Shimmer is MAD about EVERYTHING - Justice3442



Sunset Shimmer, practitioner of friendship, twice savior of Canterlot High, alicorn. She's offered to help Twilight's new student as the whole group travels to the Crystal Empire for a Crystalling. Should be a relaxing, stress free trip. Right?

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Chapter 15: Big Damn Alicorns

Chapter 15: Big Damn Alicorns


Sunset’s horn glowed turquoise and a bubble-like shield formed around her a mere instant before the baby’s magical blast would have certainly been a low point of the roller coaster of a day she was having. The blast flew up and added yet another hole to the castle as Sunset fell on top of the book she was saving as well as Twilight Sparkle. Everypony else in the room cringed as both alicorns fell to the floor with a solid ‘thud!’ Spike was quick to rush over to the desk, and peeked over the side.

“They’re okay!” Spike announced. “I mean… there’s a lot of wings and legs down here and they’re all tangled up with each other, but they’re all moving at least!”

“Ow!” Sunset exclaimed. “Twilight, would you please get your legs untangled from my, er, wing?!”

“I’ll do that when you get your other wing out of my face!” Twilight shot back.

“Sorry!” Sunset said in an exasperated tone, her wing covering Twilight’s face as one of Sunset’s cheeks was pressed up against Twilight’s. “The wings are new and I’m still getting used to carrying them around! I’m certainly not used to getting into tangled heaps with other ponies because I had to risk my life to save a book!” With some effort and a slight gritting of her teeth, Sunset lifted her wing off of Twilight’s face and turned to look Twilight in the eyes. “I mean, what’s wrong with you?! Why would you even tempt fate like that?!”

Twilight let out a frustrated grunt as she tugged on her wings. “Well I didn’t know fate was listening!”

Pinkie giggled. “Silly Twilight, fate is always listening and waiting for ponies to say something like that so it can make a bad situation worse at our expense!”

“See!” Sunset said as she pulled a front leg out of a tangle of Twilight’s legs and one of her wings. “Pinkie gets it… As worrisome as it is that she and I are on the same wavelength here.”

Pinkie rushed up to the desk and excitedly poked her head over the side. “Ooo! Maybe we magically mind-melded or something! Hey, how do you feel about melted marshmallows as a delicious type of adhesive?”

“I, uh, don’t?”

Pinkie whimpered slightly and backed away.

“… Okay, I feel better now,” Sunset said.

Twilight grimaced. “Well, I’d feel better if we were detached!”

“I’m working on it!” Sunset said through gritted teeth.

The two alicorns continued to struggle, their limbs and wings only slowly getting untangled from each other.

Shining Armor poked his head over the desk. “Maybe we should start evacuating just to be safe? It looks like it might take you two a while to get untangled there…” Shining glanced up. “Also it’s starting to snow in the library.”

Sunset shot Shining an indignant look. “Look, Sugar Flank—”

Shining raised an eyebrow as Twilight cringed.

“—This is not that big of deal!” She grunted as she attempted to pull her legs out of what a looked to be an orange and purple game of alicorn Twister gone wrong. “We’ll both get out of this mess and we’ll take a look at that spell and have that heart fixed in a jiffy!”

-o~Quite a few jiffys later~o-

“DAMNIT TWILIGHT!” Sunset roared from the alicorn heap that was now covered in a thin layer of white snow. “THIS WOULD BE SO MUCH EASIER IF YOU DIDN’T WEIGH SO MUCH!”

“THAT’S ALICORN WEIGHT!” Twilight retorted angrily. “IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU TOO IN A SHORT WHILE!”

“SURE! IF I GORGE MYSELF ON TREATS LIKE YOU! DON’T THINK I DIDN’T NOTICE YOU SNEAKING A WHOLE BOX OF COOKIES BEFORE WE GOT ON THE TRAIN!”

“AGAIN! ALICORN APPETITE! JUST WAIT FOR IT TO KICK IN!”

“OH, I’M CONCERNED ABOUT ‘WEIGHT’ ALRIGHT!”

Shining Armor peeked his head over the desk again. “Uh… girls?

“WHAT?!” Sunset and Twilgiht snapped in unison.

“There’s, er, still the issue of Crystal Empire subjects freezing to death outside…”

“Ugh! FIIIIIiiiine!” Sunset said. “Start your stupid evacuation!”

Shining Armor quickly turned and hurried off outside.

Sunset turned to face Twilight, the two mares basically muzzle to muzzle and locking frustrated, irate eyes with each other. “Thanks Twilight! As if enough hasn’t happened to me, I’m now cold and wet! So seriously, thanks for that!” Sunset said sarcastically.

Twilight grit her teeth. “Hey! You’re the one who can’t seem to figure out a place to put your wings that doesn’t make this situation worse!”

“I already apologized for violating your ‘private zone!’ Besides, we wouldn’t even be in this mess if you hadn’t said that stupid thing that almost got the book baby blasted!”

FINE! That’s my fault! But we’d have been free of each other minutes ago if you could figure out basic wing coordination! I know I struggled at first, but not to this degree! I doubt even the baby would have this much trouble!”

Sunset’s body shook with rage. “MOMMY LOVES ME BETTER THAN YOU!” she blurted out.

Twilight’s pupils shrank and a trepidatious expression marched onto her face. “She probably does…”

Sunset’s eyes flew open wide and she pursed her lips momentarily and looked away from Twilight. “Ah! This conversation isn’t going how I thought… Abort! Abort! Starlight! Help untangle us!”

Rarity poked her head over the side of the desk. “She’s unavailable, dear.”

Sunset and Twilight looked at each other in confusion.

“Well, what the heck is she doing?” Twilight asked.

“She’s drunkenly trying convince Princess Cadance to declare her friend a wizard.”

“Oh…” Sunset replied. “Uh… Is it working?”

Rarity turned and looked down a library aisle while a haggard-looking Cadance held the baby in a bubble and listened to Starlight. The bubble shook and vibrated as the baby flew about in it, firing off blasts and smashing at the sides with her hooves. Starlight spoke to Cadance with an excited, if slightly removed from reality, energy.

“And… and Sunburst has sooooo many books on magic! Like sooo many!”

“Uh-huuuuuh…” Cadance replied.

No like… Like his entire house is full of books!”

“Right, sure…”

“No! Really! Just like… imagine a building… but full of books! I mean… Can you even comprehend that?!”

Cadance looked about the library she was currently standing in. “… Probably…”

So many…” Starlight uttered.

Rarity turned back to Sunset and Starlight. “No,” she answered simply.

Sunset sighed.

“Well… where’s Sunburst?” Twilight asked.

“He made a book fort,” replied Rarity, “and now Spike is trying to coax him out of the book fort that Sunburst is hiding in while sobbing to himself.”

“Wow…” Twilight uttered.

“What?” Sunset said.

“Nothing just… nostalgia,” Twilight replied as her eyes went distant.

“Okay then…” Sunset uttered. “Well, Rarity could you…”

Rarity looked down at the tangled mess of limbs and gave it a critical eye. “I can probably help untangle you two, but it might take a while… Maybe if I had a little help… Pinkie…?”

Pinkie was next to Rarity in a flash. “Yes ‘um?”

Twilight and Sunset suddenly shared very worried glances.

“You wouldn’t to still have that stylish crowbar on you, would you?” Rarity asked.

Pinkie grinned wide, thrusted a forehoof into her mane, and pulled out a pink crowbar. “Of course! I always keep my trusty crowbar on me in case of prying or breaking into vending machine emergencies!”

“I am not comfortable with this solution!” Sunset said.

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “How bad do you want to be unstuck from one another?”

Sunset went silent as she mulled over the question.

Her cheeks turning crimson, Twilight chimed in, “There’s several orange feathers that are lodged in a place that I would like to privately remove sooner rather than later…”

Sunset cringed. “And I keep saying ‘I’m sorry!’” With a defeated sigh she looked up at Rarity and Pinkie. “Fine! Just… just be careful!”

-o~ Some rubbing, tugging, and pulling later~o-

With a shift of Pinkie’s crowbar, a glow of Rarity’s magic, and a final ‘pop’ Sunset and Twilight finally found themselves uninhibited by each other’s limbs and wings. Both alicorns rose to their hooves and gave themselves a once over, Twilight doing a little bit of preening before folding her wings back up.

With a heavy inhale, Twilight turned towards Sunset. “Uh… Sunset look… I know we both said some things we probably regretted, but, erm, about today… and uh… I guess me letting Starlight become my student… I just want to say—”

Much to Twilight’s surprise Sunset shuffled over and gave her a side-hug, wrapping both a foreleg and one of her wings around her.

Er…” Twilight uttered a bit taken aback by the surprise affection.

“What the heck happened to you, Twilight?” Sunset said in a somewhat wistful tone. “Your flank used to be beautiful.”

Twilight furrowed her brow and tried to look behind her. With a sigh she declared, “I need to visit the little filly’s room for a second, please try get things prepared here.”

Sunset let go of Twilight and nodded. “No problem.”

“Sunburst the Goateed!” Starlight shouted out. “I mean… We can workshop that, but… think about it….

“… No problems beyond the ones we already had,” Sunset said.

With a small nod, Twilight’s horn glowed purple and she teleported out of sight with a ‘Pomf!’

Spike wandered over towards Sunset. “Uh… You know Twilight was probably trying to apologize about the whole ‘not making you her personal friendship student’ thing.”

“Oh, I know,” Sunset replied with a nod. “But I’m still dehydrated from my last cry session, so unless Twilight wants to watch me eat snow while I becoming a sobbing mess, I figured it was best to sidestep that conversation until after the empire is no longer in peril. How’s my rule 63 counterpart doing?”

“What?” Spike replied in confusion.

“Sunburst. How’s Sunburst doing?”

“Oh… He keeps crying and saying that this is worse than some sort of ‘jock-strap’ incident.”

Sunset eyes widened. “So HE’S Fire Crotch!”

“… What now?”

Sunset shook her head. “Just a little thing that happened back at Celestia’s school some time back… It’s not important except we now know that Sunburst is really good at digging holes.”

“… What… like… physically or metaphorically?”

“Yes,” Sunset replied. “The baby?”

“The thread and needle is not holding on the bubble shield!” Rarity cried out in a borderline panicked tone.

“I’m rubbing melted marshmallow over the cracks as fast as I can over here!” Pinkie’s frantic tone replied.

“You know who probably knows a lot of spells about babies?” Starlight asked. “Sunburst.”

Cadance let out a strained groan.

“Barely contained,” Spike answered.

“Right, just going to forego asking about Cadance and Starlight…” Sunset said as she picked up the spell book and flipped through it.

‘Pomf!’

Sunset glanced over to a purple flash as Twilight reappeared.

“Alright, I’m back,” Twilight said. “Are we all set?”

Sunset nodded. “I turned the book to the page we need!” She said turning the book to face Twilight. “Other than that we better fix this quick. Cadance’s shield is being held together by thread and marshmallow and her quickly fading desire to not watch her baby murder some pony.”

“Okay…” Twilight took a deep breath and trotted up next to Sunset looking over the book. She looked at Sunset. “You ready to do this?”

Sunset smiled. “Girl, I was using magic to harass stuffy nobles with summoned cockatrices before you even had a cutie mark.”

“Uh… Alright,” Twilight said. “I’m guessing that’s objectively true…” Twilight trotted over to the pile of crystal shards, Sunset followed. Taking position in front of the shards, Twilight’s horn began to blaze with purple energy as she unfurled her wings and her eyes suddenly burst with bright white energy. “Well, let’s get started.”

Sunset took a position opposite Twilight, the shards in between them. Her own horn glowed turquoise at first then blazed into a fiery orange that brought with it the faint scent of burnt ozone. Sunset’s own eyes filled with white energy as her wings extended to their full span. “Yeah, time to be big damn heroes again…”

The two alicorns leaned their heads down as beams of energy fired from their horns. Slowly, both mares raised their heads, bring up with them the crystal shards that drifted back together in the shape of a heart. Cracked as it may be, the Crystal Heart floated in place, glowing with a warm, purple glow.

Twilight smiled in relief. Sunset smiled proudly to herself.

“You see?” Sunset said. “Nothing to it! I mean of course you and I had this.” Sunset chuckled. “Could you imagine how boned we’d all be if us two couldn’t save the—”

The Crystal Heart suddenly came undone, returning to a pile of shards on the floor.

“… day…” Sunset finished weakly.

Twilight glared daggers at Sunset.

Sunset rubbed the back of her head. “Okay… that one was on me…” she said shyly.

Author's Note:

Thanks to Nova Quill who's story All Work and No Play inspired a line.