First Princess on Earth
The sky shattered.
Once, the magical energy required to bridge the worlds was a mere sip, possible even for a single unicorn to perform with the right spell and practice. But after years of drift, the distances were so vast that the greatest magical powers in all Equestria were required.
Lightning tore at the sky, striking the snowpack in a dozen places and melting huge patches of blasted white permafrost. The wind roared, and for a second the aurora cut the sky even during the height of midday.
Then a pony landed on the snow.
Sunset’s hooves touched lightly at first, wings she could barely control spreading by reflex. She shuddered, tucking them back in a moment later.
She soon stood in a melted slurry, sloshing around her hooves and making her shiver. “This is it, Sunset. The largest stretch of unoccupied land on their whole planet.” Her voice echoed strangely off the snow, sounding somehow more alone than she already was.
Sunset stared up for another few seconds, as though saying farewell to the last vestiges of magic from her home. There was no telling if Equestria would ever be close enough to reach, even in the vast lifetime of an Alicorn. And even if it was, almost every creature she knew would be long dead.
“No turning back even if I wanted to. The only ones who could open the door are on the other side.”
Sunset adjusted her heavy winter jacket—it was one of the few things she’d brought, a final gift from the princess who had once taught her. Celestia’s own cutie mark was sewn into the corner. She was probably imagining things, but it felt as though the jacket was warmer than it should’ve been.
Sunset wasn’t completely alone on the ice. Before her was a row of near-identical buildings, each one standing tall on strange concrete stilts. Leave it to humans to do things the hard way. Instead of adjusting the climate to suit their needs, they’d insisted on trying to somehow survive it.
Sunset tucked her wings back into the slots in the jacket, pulling the hood up over her head and making her way towards the nearest building. Unlike all the others, there was light shining out through one of the nearby windows. This had to be the one.
Snow swept under the structure in an uneven drift through the stilts, nowhere actually reaching the floor above. Sunset found the nearest human stairwell, and climbed her way past the flags of some human countries.
Too bad you’re not here to ask for advice, Day. But you’ve got your own kingdom to start.
Sunset reached the door, a massive steel slab ringed with rubber and with a handle out of reach. She twisted it with magic, then stepped through it into a little room packed with human survival gear. The sudden transition from blasting cold to cozy warmth reminded her a little of the California sun she’d left behind.
Sunset hung her coat, looking back at her reflection in the polished metal wall. She was a full head taller now, her horn sharper, her body leaner. It barely felt like this body was her own.
Everything I ever wanted. Yet now that she’d finally reached it, the reward didn’t seem so much deserved as it was necessary.
A little face appeared on the other side of the glass, a pegasus mare wearing a light jacket. Her eyes widened as she saw Sunset, and she hopped up, hovering to take the door in her mouth and open it for her.
“Hello,” Sunset said, waving with one wing. There would be no concealing her true nature with the jacket off. There was no real point. She couldn’t take command of this colony if she pretended to be just another pony. “I believe you’ve been waiting for me.”
The pony landed as soon as she was inside, bowing suddenly to the ground. “Forgive me, Princess! Princess, uh… you’re new. Of course you are. You’re the human sent to lead us in crusade, yes?”
“Not exactly.” Sunset reached down with a hoof, lifting her back up. “The supply of human princesses was… nonexistent. I’m the substitute, recently promoted. Is everypony hiding in this building?”
“We’re, uh… we’re using all of them,” she said feebly, hurrying to catch up with Sunset.
The Alicorn didn’t slow down. She could hear voices coming from just down the hallway, past a scenic lobby with lots of human flags and a little model of the planet.
“It feels warm in here, but I see you haven’t made alterations to the weather outside. What kind of spell are you using?”
“None,” the pony said. “There’s something called a ‘reactor’ in one of the buildings. The human got it working for us.”
The human. She turned those words over in her head, wincing at their implication. They’d come to preserve the integrity of humanity’s future, and already some human had reached them. So much for the perfect place to build a secret city. “I need to find Director Golden Vision, is he in this building?”
He was. Sunset met with the leaders of the Earth Colony in the human cafeteria, where they’d erected a sort of temporary city hall.
“We knew somepony would be coming for us,” Golden Vision said, as soon as all the awkward bowing was over with. “It’s a shame we couldn’t find a human to fill the position.”
It’s more than that. It’s our fault we couldn’t understand them well enough to know they didn’t have princesses. We should’ve realized they weren’t like us. “I met a promising candidate, but she wasn’t going to be ready in time. There were no human Alicorns, not one on the entire planet. None was close enough to respond to conditioning once they were brought to Equestria, either.”
The longer she stood there, the more ponies slipped into the room. Quietly, unobtrusively—but word was obviously spreading.
“Well, Princess Sunset. Everypony in the Earth Colony will want to meet you. I’m sure you’ll want to address everypony… but I shouldn’t tell you how to do your job.”
Because you haven’t been doing yours? Sunset thought. She bit her lip, fighting back what the old Sunset might’ve said. “I’ll do that, but I do have a few questions first. I thought the plan was to adjust the climate. It’s very snow out there, Director Vision.”
“Ah, yes.” He winced, looking away. “We’ve, uh… had a spot of trouble adapting the Empire’s warmth emitters. Their magic seems to… rely on the Crystal Heart. Which we don’t have.”
No wonder you all look like you’ve just seen Tirek. “That’s a very serious setback. But I can’t believe that Cadence would’ve failed to consider it. She was part of the planning committee, I remember. There must be a way.”
Somepony else stepped up—another unicorn. A gangly mare this time, wearing what had to be a “borrowed” human labcoat from the way it trailed on the floor. “Princess, uh… Princess…”
“Sunset Shimmer,” she supplied.
“Princess Sunset,” she continued. “Princess Cadence did include instructions, but they were more complicated than any of us have been able to figure out. Possibly Alicorn-level magic? We were waiting for our princess.”
General mutters of agreement filled the room. She could feel it then—hints of resentment that she’d implied they hadn’t been working. Just because it looks like they were hiding out in these human buildings doesn’t mean it hasn’t been hard for them.
Sunset couldn’t risk angering them now. She needed their cooperation, maybe more now than ever.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. Ponies of Earth Colony—I know you didn’t really come here to build a city. Most of you are here because our monsters followed us to Earth. You’re here to protect creatures who cannot yet protect themselves. Together we will finish the first task, so we can go to work on the second.”
Time passed. Sunset had much to do to organize her new ponies of the Earth Colony. Without the magic working that would change the climate and make way for their new city, they were barely surviving. Only thanks to the human structures had they survived as well as they had.
The “human” her ponies had referenced wasn’t just some old book, either. Using the site of human construction meant that they had their first human refugee.
He was even more eager to talk than most of the ponies in McMurdo were to meet their new princess. Sunset recognized instantly what she was looking at, when the pony barged their way into her thaumaturgical workshop and scattered her nervous “magical assistants.” Really they were just the best unicorns she’d been able to find.
On the workshop between them was the future crystal core of Summerland, only a few light blue scraps as it grew within the intricate circle of runes. An immensely delicate spell, one that could be easily disrupted by almost anything that touched the table.
“You,” he said, his voice so harsh that several ponies in the room with them actually gasped. “You’re the one everyone told me to wait for, yeah? The… leader? Prime Minister of… Horses. Something like that.”
Sunset rose from her seat, letting the spell fade from her mind. “Take five, everypony,” she whispered, before moving between the intruder and her work. He was a unicorn himself, which unfortunately meant he could probably buck up the spell regardless. She would have to handle this delicately.
“I am,” she said, spreading her wings slightly as she’d seen Celestia do a dozen times before. Sunset Shimmer wasn’t much taller or stronger than an ordinary pony, so she didn’t have those same advantages. But she still had confidence. “I understand we owe you a great debt. You were the one to get the… ‘reactor’ running again. The device heating these shelters.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The pony insisted on wearing what would’ve amounted to fully human clothing. Boots on all four hooves, a lab coat, and the stretchy black underclothes that many of the humans here had probably worn prior to the Event. “I was glad to help. I wasn’t going to let you primitives freeze to death out in the snow or anything. That just wouldn’t be…” He shook his head definitively. “Every one of your damn… people… kept telling me that I had to talk to you when you got here. The one in charge was coming, she’d be able to get me home again.
“And here you are. You’re back, and I’ve got a few thousand kilometers to get back home. Something tells me the US government is going to have some bigger fish than sending a C-130 out here for one crusty old scientist. I don’t know how you’re going to get me back to the mainland, but… I don’t know how any of you got here, either. No one will tell me fuckin’ anything.”
Sunset winced as his horn briefly sparked and hissed with the energy of his words. Any moment, a stray wisp of magic could undo everything they’d done for hours.
She glanced over her shoulder, then met his eyes. “Would you walk with me? We can have this conversation somewhere private.”
He raised a suspicious eyebrow. “If you’re thinkin’ of offing me in the dark somewhere, I wouldn’t. I’ve kept to myself about how the reactor works. Do you want the rest of its twenty-year service life, or do you want about… a week? Because that’s how long you’ll keep it if I’m dead.”
Sunset’s eyes widened. A few of her ponies gasped. Unfortunately for her, she couldn’t rely on their ignorance to insulate them from the human’s harsh words. Everypony in her camp could speak perfect English.
“Absolutely not, uh…”
“Tucker,” he said. “Call me Dr. Tucker.”
“Dr. Tucker,” she went on, advancing on him. “I swear that no harm will come to you. I would not harm the pony who did such a great service for the ponies of Earth Colony.”
“Pony…” he repeated, rolling his eyes. “Fine, fine. Outside then.” They left, to her ponies’ great relief.
Sunset didn’t say anything until they’d shut the door again, protecting her crystal. “How much did they tell you, Dr. Tucker?” she asked. “About what happened to your world?”
“Nothing,” he said. “For a while, I thought they were as confused as I was. Except their accents were… academic, and not one of them seemed to know what the hell they were doing. Given I look like you, my running theory is that you’re responsible for it, somehow. Either that, or I’m in hell.”
Sunset told him everything. There was no playing coy like she’d done with Lonely Day, avoiding tainting her perception of Equestria by waiting for the princesses to reveal the critical information. Tucker was so tainted by Equestria at this point that they couldn’t really make it any worse.
By the time they’d finished their conversation, they had made it all the way back to the lobby, and the little model of the globe.
“So I can’t send you back,” Sunset finished. “It’s going to be a long time before we have that ability, decades at least. But even if I could, there’d be nothing to send you back to. Your loved ones are almost certainly not there. Your society is gone. Everything that was ever built to support it is gone.”
Dr. Tucker’s expression was unreadable. He watched her in a daze, occasionally glancing towards the window. “I wished you were wrong,” he said. “I want you to be wrong more than… anything. But considering how long I’ve been ignored. Considering every method of communication that went unanswered… I must at least entertain that some of your insane story was true.”
He slumped to the floor, looking away from her. “And I am erased.”
She settled one wing gently on his shoulder. He tensed under her touch, yet he didn’t push her away. “But there is a place for you, even so. My ponies and I are going to build a nation here. I’m going to bring the summer sun to the Antarctic, we’re going to raise crops… and eventually, fight monsters. Maybe you’d like to help with that.”
He didn’t answer for a long time. Finally he looked up. “Can you… tell one of your ‘ponies’ to sew me some pants that fit?”
She laughed. “I think we can arrange that.”
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This was my request. Great job with it and thank you for the great work!
Imagine if they'd ruled together. I imagine things would've gone very differently indeed...
I do always appreciate a Sunset who has greatness thrust upon her.
Excellent snapshot of the first days of Summerland. Thank you for it.
Dr.Tucker is a human nuclear engineer working in Antartica, and hes been told he has to start from scratch and work up to fighting monsters?
I m waiting to see how long before he utters the immortal words.
Hold My Beer.
Always happy to see more of this setting, though I do have a minor nitpick in that I wish sunset and the others from equestria seemed to realize that the usage of the word 'princess' differs greatly between (most?) human cultures and equestrian culture. Since it does seem like that sunset and company take the word to mean something akin to a potential heir or child of a fundamental truth of the universe, but they don't seem interested in explaining the difference in meaning, even when/if they are aware of the different meanings attached
That’s the thing about literal world-changing events- no one really knows how to handle everything, so they try to wait on someone who does know. But even the ones in charge don’t know, they’ve just been shafted by fortune and have to learn along the way.
A short story, but by the time I'm at the end of it.....
....It's alllll just coming back to me. All the things that have and will.
Pants.
This guy has the right priorities :D