This story is a sequel to My Little Planeswalker: Twilight's Spark
After several months without hearing anything from Princess Twilight, Sunset Shimmer's once-unshakable faith in her friendship begins to falter. Then when an unknown party destroys the portal between worlds, she soon finds herself awakening her planeswalker spark in a moment of anguish.
Arriving on an idyllic plane where different aspects of the soul are brought forth by day and night, Sunset soon finds the very foundation of her identity fractured. The Sunset that returns to Equestria is not herself, but a monster long thought to have vanished, seeking revenge for everything she had lost.
A Magic: the Gathering crossover. Cover art by GaelleDragons on DeviantArt.
Chapters (9)
Oh my God.
Oh my God!
If this were anyone other than Twilight, I would say there's no way she's not doing it on purpose.
... somehow, I'm less surprised by Starlight having joined the Great Work than by the Phyrexians being something approaching subtle.
Missing an "r" at the end.
So Sunset's in Lorwyn and phyresis is or is going to be in Anthropia. This is going to be something, all right. On another note, is there any specific reason for why Sunset is still a human?
Ohhhh boy. Where to start?
First of all, there's the fact that Tezzeret is a substitute teacher in CHS... for some reason. I didn't read the story for Kaladesh, but I'm pretty sure that his presence was eventually very bad in the end.
Second, the human Starlight Glimmer is apparently going down the Phyrexian route. The only character I've known to get off of that path was Karn, and that was after he had all the glistening oil purged from his body and a planeswalker spark transferred into him. And he was resisting compleation the whole time too. Can't say it looks too good for Glim-Glam here...
Third, the statue portal is missing somehow. In hindsight, that's probably the reason Tezzeret was here in the first place.
And... hmmmm. Just what happened 200,000 years ago?
Mmh... you have my attention yet again. Looking forward to seeing where this one goes...
Don't be too hard on Mister Vigor, Sunset. He's just disappointed that CRISPR doesn't come in giant purple blob form.
You know, on Kaladesh, Tezzeret can just barely get by with his arm visible. How's he managing it on Anthropia? (And what does he think of the Internet?)
It does, yes. Eventually.
Huh. Very interesting to see magic get acknowledged on a national level. Have there been any official statements, or did Twilight just blurt out something top secret?
If you're trying to flatter me, it's working.
Hmm. Very interesting data regarding the magical nature of Anthropia, the Mirror, and the structural integrity of CHS's cafeteria tables.
Oh dear. Do not neglect your Bacon Horse. It will not end well. (But seriously, Sunset, pick a Twilight and kiss her already.)
Oh shit... though it does make sense. When all are one, then by the identity property, all are equal.
This promises to be very interesting indeed. I just hope Sunset will have somewhere to come home to by the end of it. Whether she'll have a horn, hands, or both remains to be seen.
Also, nice planeswalker. No self-protection, but on a three-cost, three-loyalty 'walker that can give you the guildmaster the Boros never had by turn six, that seems fair.
Shit.
I genuinely, genuinely do not think I can take a Phyrexian infiltration/invasion of Anthropia. Especially if they've already gotten to Starlight. Tezzeret stuck as a substitute shop teacher is one thing and also funny, but glistening oil taking root in a beloved world when Sunset's gonna be unavailable due to being mind-screwed by Shadowmoor and thus will be unavailable to do heroing business. I get that a plane like Anthropia is way less ideal for them than Mirrodin was, but still.
So... yeah. I'll follow it for the time being, but I'm letting you know in advance if it gets too dark for me I'm gonna stop reading. I just... really, really do not like that aspect of Phyrexia.
8536962
The series will have a more-or-less unambiguously happy ending, but I’ll say upfront that it will get very dark at times. There will still be plenty of lighthearted situations, but it’ll be against a backdrop of very high stakes.
8536978
Well... that's a little reassuring at least. But I'll stick with it as long as I can.
8536729
Sunset’s been in the human world for such a long time that the transformative effect of the plane has seeped into her soul itself, making human her “default” form. If she’d sparked earlier, she would revert to a unicorn after planeswalking away.
well let hope sunset meet the graywatch or twilight find her and two go off planewalking and make love
Hey, what about if you play with the mtg rules a little, and transform sunset in a creature, that is still a planeswalker?
Like Gideon, but forever, not indestructible and is still a planeswalker.
Sunset the Redeemed 1RW
Legendary Planeswalker — Sunset
+1: You gain 2 life.
-1: Target creature gets +2/+2 and gains vigilance and haste until end of turn.
-6: Sunset the Redeemed becomes a 6/6 red and white Angel Avatar creature with flying, vigilance and lifelink, named Daydream Shimmer. It's still a Planeswalker
And Principal Celestia continues to be terrible at her job. First five students from another reality, and now a teacher?
I may be misinformed, but didn't the great aurora stop happening once Oona was defeated? I thought Lorwyn and Shadowmoor had permanently merged.
8538031
I’d thought about this, but I wanted her to have something that makes her mechanically unique. The token generation ultimate will be a recurring theme for her.
8538098
I think that a creature planeswalker is unique enough (and after some thinking, I realized it would be better if it becomes indestructible).
At the end, is just a matter of liking, if you like to confuse judges, make a planeswalker creature (is a planeswalker, so it can be attacked, and it's a creature, so it can block... you could actually make a planeswalker defend him/herself)
Oh. This is going to be fun.
Explanation received. Thanks, Rosheen!
Also, you seem to be writing up a storm lately. The fact that the quality remains as high as it is at the same time is impressive.
8539318
It probably helps that I haven’t started at my job yet.
I know I sound like a broken record, but that card seems just a little broken... maybe having it start with 4 loyalty counters instead of 5 would help? Otherwise, that's a ridiculously short TTU to get that big of a hasty indestructible flier with first strike... I mean, end-of-line ridiculous. That's up there with Death and Taxes on the list of things I wouldn't enjoy playing against...
Well, this old Sunset doesn't seem too happy at the moment. I wonder just how long it'll take for her to come back to her senses.
I have a feeling that Sunset will have Mardu colors by the end of this story.
8539507
True, I was worried that having her at 4 would make her slightly less durable than she should be for 6 mana, but that’s probably less of an issue than I thought at first. I’ve tweaked her just a bit.
Hmm hmm hmm. Now I have to wonder, how long have good!Sunset and evilSunset (or RW!Sunset and BR!Sunset, I suppose) been separate beings? I rather doubt that they were discrete entities before the first EQ movie, so now I wonder if the split was caused by the Elements at the end of the first movie or if it only occurred (at least in full, metaphorical "cracks" might have been around longer) right at the moment of sunset (har har) and evil!Sunset is kidding herself about having been imprisoned in her own mind since the Fall Formal. Her dialogue would hint towards the first, but she could very well be, well, wrong, or she could just be kidding herself to separate herself from her past actions as a halfway decent person.
On another note, I think I will enjoy seeing her eventually brought down. I absolutely cannot stand people with the level of self-centered, whiny egotism she's displaying. God, at least Bolas has some class to go with his god complex! Also doesn't hurt that he can, y'know, actually put his money where his mouth is in that regard.
Huh. Rosheen by day. A lot more coherent, but just as explicitly expository.
As for Sunset, well, it's all there in her solar taijitu cutie mark. Like the sun, she balances between extremes of creative and destructive force. Never truly dark, but her light can still be a terrible thing. And beyond Lorwyn's mentality-altering day-night cycle, it's going to be a lot harder for her gentler half to reassert control.
Of course, that ties into the whole "balance" part of things. The best outcome will be Sunset accepting all of herself. The question is whether she can.
8540074
Heh, I never even intended this particular bit of symbolism to be there. I’m pleasantly surprised by how well it works.
I am, as has come up before, quickly working to catch up on MLP, having only just started watching it this year.
With that in mind, I am approaching the end of season 6 but am not sure if I will get to watch the Legend of Camp Everfree or the other Equestria girls shorts/episodes after that this weekend. Can anyone tell me if I am at risk of spoilers for those episodes or no?
8541426
Not currently, but future parts of the series most likely will.
8541441
Thank you very much. I understand the impossibility of keeping it spoiler free forever, but as I am very close to seeing that movie and episodes, I figured I should find out if I can start your story straight away or wait till after the weekend.
8538364
Indesructability isn't important for PWs becoming creatures.
Unless she ceases to be a PW, she needs damage prevention (or at least combatdamage. Even if indes, she would still recieve the damage, reducing her loyality and that way force her to the grave.
Sunset's planeswalker cards remind me of the one I made for Spike, except reversed in a way. Yours is much more flavorful, though.
I wish to congratulate you.
It would have been EASY, with how this plot is going, to do the same story with Sci-Twi/Midnight Sparkle. Ignoring the initial step from Anthropia, the lore supports this duel personalities more with those two. We have clear examples of Midnight Sparkle still being in Sci-twi to the point that in Legend of Everfree she clearly was on the verge of changing into Midnight on at least 2 occasions (the obvious glow of a horn that never appeared in her final form)
However it was the better choice from a Narrative point of view to take this path. Midnight Sparkle isn't exactly a great villain in and of herself, compared to what she means for Sci-Twi. Her motivation is simply, "I will destroy/consume everything." Evil Sunset has a much more developed personality AND motivation, and while the TV show does not demonstrate any such split in either Legend of the Everfree OR Rainbow Rocks, it is quite easy to establish a hidden and suppressed darkness, that the Elements of Harmony are not a cure all, that the resentment of loosing contact with her first friend and her way home could cause not only her planewalker spark to bloom, but give her darker half more power and influence.
And you did this quite well.
My only curiosity is this. If we accept that it was the power of Shadowmoor's fading magic that flipped her personality, and up till this moment, there was no risk of her turning evil, without the power of the fading Aurora, what stops Sunset the Redeemed from re-establishing control when they land on Equestria?
I mean a case could be made that her recent resentment has cause them to be more equal in power then they have been since being hit by the Elements of Harmony....or that all Shadowmoor did was undo the magic of the Elements...that Sunset the Redeemed was merely just her conscience in control....But still, away from Shadowmoor, it should be a harder struggle.
Also....its going to be interesting seeing how Sunset the Exile plans to avoid being hit by the orbital friendship cannon again, given she is charging headlong into the place where Celestia and Twilight are most powerful, and this time without the Element of Magic.
Eager to see how this goes.
8542592
Inspiration struck me. Look at this.
Sunset the Redeemed 1RW
Legendary Planeswalker — Sunset
+1: You get an emblem with "prevent the next point of damage that would be dealt to a Sunset planeswalker you control"
-1: Target creature gets +2/+2 and gains vigilance and haste until end of turn.
-6: Sunset the Redeemed becomes a 6/6 red and white Angel Avatar creature with flying, vigilance and lifelink, named Daydream Shimmer. It's still a Planeswalker.
8538098
So Sunset will be a kithkin? Niwce.
Sunset, the Shimmer 2BWR
+2: Target player gain 3 life and sacrifice a creature.
0: Deal 1 damage to target creature or player and gain 1 life.
-5: Put a token of a target creature from any graveyard.
-13: Gain an emblm that says "Prevent all damage from non-token sources. At the beginning of each battle phase put a 4/4 white Elemental creature token with death touch, life steal, haste and 'at the end of the battle phase banish this creature unless all damage from it was prevented'".
Tezzeret on Anthropia. That's bad, because it means Nicol Bolas has interest in that plane. Glistening Oil on Anthropia with him? That's horrible!
(evil)Sunset seems to be the queen of the denial when it comes to her feelings towards twilight.
8555574
She's actually a lot more honest with herself than good!Sunset about the fact that she even has a crush, she just doesn't always know how to make sense of those feelings.
A key difference between the two personas is that Sunset's darker self makes absolutely no attempts to deny herself of her own emotions, no matter how cruel or vindictive they may be.
Ah yes, Sunset's mysterious stoplight aura. (There were a few points where her magic appeared to be golden...)
Oh, and alicorn gorging. I always like that concept.
Now that's a very interesting choice of words. How could this aspect of Sunset act at all, much less without the rest of her knowing about it?
Or she's lying through her teeth and this is a suboptimal choice of words. One of the two.
A field trip, she says. Ms. Frazzle arranges field trips. That jerk nearly destroys universes.
Be nice, Sunset, you're a guest in someone else's continuity.
As for Discord's defeat... that definitely felt too easy. Sure, Sunset's good at mindgames and Fluttershy is Discord's giant, glowing weak point, but he just sat there and took it without doing anything to try to fix the problem. And knowing Discord, he would've been busting out the third aid before you could say "Markov chain." Also, his dissolution could have some massive ramifications on Equestria's metaphysical environment, though that remains to be seen.
(Or he smelled a rat and is phasing out to prepare countermeasures...)
Aside from that, nice suspenseful buildup. I look forward to seeing the trap spring shut.
8555628
The "destroying the portal" bit is lie on Sunset's part. An admission isn't necessarily a truthful admission.
Okay, I'll be honest: the premise of this story doesn't do anything for me, and I'm only reading it because I feel it will be necessary to grasp everything else about this universe. And that latest chapter certainly didn't allay any of those fears, especially since it concluded with a card referencing my single least favourite story point MtG has ever done (yes, including the return of Phyrexia, though that is a close second).
I'll keep on trucking. But I'm frankly not too hopeful.
Given the nature of fragile representations, the darker Sunset may have just very nearly killed herself. In any case, she's almsot definitely setting up her own defeat on multiple levels. Between stealing some very notable souls, the apparent friendship feedback, and letting her light side interact with others, she's made quite a mess of things.
(Though part of me can't help but feel that trapping Luna like that was still too easy. And feel free to chip in with your own lucid dreaming, Sunny Light. If Grumpy Horse can do it, so can you. And I'm surprised no one was sticking by Fluttershy's bedside.)
As for the cards, good stuff, though the last one is narrow enough that it'd likely only see print in a planeswalker deck.
well... at least the story is not progressing to a hopelessly dark story and you gave us something to cheer up on (go Sunlerina).
Well, I'll freely admit that I'm sort of biased against the card. The Amonkhet block was by far my least favorite to play... however, given that evil!Sunset seems to be playing her role as this story's equivalent to Nicol Bolas to a T, I guess I don't mind the reference to HOU.
TBH, it's twisting my brain trying to keep up with the evil!Sunset that was brought out to play by Lorwyn's ambient magic. Guess it was high time for my love of a good challenge to come back and bite me in the ass, eh?
I admit I don't know what to think of Dark-Sunset. I mean she pretends to be the 'true Sunset Shimmer', the one before being rainbow-zapped, but even in the first movie Sunset Shimmer, while a villain, had her standards, including NOT physically hurting other (like Spike during the Fall Formal). This one looks more like the 'raging She-Demon Sunset Shimmer'.
8557091
Or a Sunset themed deck. Either way, that activated ability is some very neat foreshadowing that the two sides of Sunset are going to have a full on Planeswalker duel.
8557435
I was already planning an explanation for that next chapter when I posted this. I know what I’m doing, don’t you worry.
Oh, boy... another entity to keep track of: ballerina!Sunset
No offense, but if you keep up the growing list of characters with duplicate names, soon it'll take quite a bit of coffee to keep up with the story...
This chapter reminds me of Twilight's dollhouse spooky memory nostalgia.
Stealing Luna's soul felt way too easy. Sunset got that spell from a book, so this can't be the first time someone's tried to do something like this.
Then again, the changeling takeover from the S6 finale happened, so subduing alicorns is hardly impossible.
8559116
It should probably be worth noting that alicorns, despite being ageless and having powers far more advanced than most ponies could ever achieve in their lifetimes, aren’t actually fully godlike. They’re more akin to archmages: immensely strong, but still able to be subdued if you can catch them off-guard and suppress their magic.
And besides, both of the Royal Sisters both have a pretty consistent track record of losing to the Villain of the Week.
Can't see anything bad happening if she sucks all the souls of the elements into her body. No way they could create rainbow fueled mind magic inside her brain...
It certainly provides psychological distance.
Luna not resisting could be for one of two reasons: Either futile struggles against Nightmare Moon convinced her that there's no point in doing so, or she's planning something. Or a third option I haven't considered.
I am utterly astonished that Dash did not punch her midway through that sentence. At the absolute latest.
This is disturbingly accurate.
I'm assuming Sunset untied herself at some point, but spelling it out might be nice.
... Oh, you acknowledge that in the very next section.
Such are the perils of commenting as I read.
In any case, the deck definitely still feels stacked in Sunset's favor. Especially when random bits of the environment oh-so-conveniently happen to be nearby in just the right way for her get out of sticky situations. At this point, I'm beginning to think someone's giving her just enough rope to hang herself.
8563211
Yeah, I meant to explain that, but it must have slipped my mind. Fixed.