The Best She Can, or, The Rising of a New Dawn

by King of Kings

New Friends and Enemies

As Inner Light was looking for the library in Ponyville, he saw a purple unicorn walking towards his destination with a dragon on her back. Not being one to pass up an opportunity to make a new friend, he trotted up to the unicorn with a smile on his face, and said “Hi there!”

Meanwhile, Twilight had had enough of the ponies in this town wasting her time trying to make friends with her. Didn’t it matter to any of them that she was trying to avert disaster? Of course not, all that mattered to them was friendship. Ugh, give her a break. Suddenly, she heard yet another annoying voice saying “Hi there!” from behind her. Maybe if she kept walking, they’d think that she hadn’t heard them? No such luck, as the voice continued.

“My name is Inner Light, and I just moved here today with my mommy! What’s your name?” He asked, politely.

By now, Twilight had had enough with all of the ponies in this town trying to make friends with her, so instead of stopping for the colt, she continued with her plan of pretending that she hadn’t heard him, and just continued on her way to check on the music preparations, muttering something that sounded like “mumble ponies mumble town royal business mumble mumble,” to Inner Light, who took this as a cue to get out of there and go warn his mommy that another pony might be there to harass them.

Twilight had taken a few steps when she quickly whipped around as she heard a familiar sound emanate from behind her. ‘Wha…but I thought that I was the only unicorn that was strong enough to know how to teleport!’ she thought to herself, frowning, before she smirked to herself and thought, ‘oh well, I’ll just piggyback a teleport onto his teleport and…wait…that magical signature he’s heading towards…it CAN’T be…not the legendary lost unicorn battle mage Sunset Shimmer!’

Meanwhile, back at the Golden Oaks Library

‘Well, it appears that I was right in where the elements have been kept all this time’ Sunset thought, closing the book that she was holding in her hooves. ‘Now hopefully the spark is a spark of fire like I thought, or, failing that, the trap that I laid out for Her Majesty, Nightmare Moon, will be good enough to stop her in her tracks.’

All of a sudden, Sunset felt her son’s familiar magical signature trying to teleport into the library. She quickly lowered the barriers, allowing her son’s teleport through, and raised them back up as soon as she felt the reason that her son didn’t just walk to the library like she had expected him to. Apparently, one of the royal guards must’ve tracked them to Ponyville or something, because she felt another pony trying to piggy back a teleport on her son’s. ‘that was a close one’ she thought to herself.

Outwardly, she thought, ‘uh-uh,’ she thought, disapproving. ‘Don’t you know it’s considered rude to stalk somepony’s son?’ At first she was shocked when she actually heard a response, but that shock quickly turned to anger when she heard what the response was.

‘Stalk someone’s son? That’s rich considering you probably killed that poor colt’s parents and brainwashed him into calling you mommy!’ Twilight responded, having been told about Sunset Shimmer by Celestia.

When Sunset responded, it was all she could do to not leave the other pony a vegetable. ‘HOW DARE YOU! IF IT WEREN’T FOR ME, MY SON WOULD BE DEAD RIGHT NOW!’ as it was though, the other pony had given Sunset something to think about. Why had he called her his mommy all those years ago? Surely he had already had parents, and for that matter, what had happened to his parents? Knowing what she did of his cutie mark magic, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer, but she at least had to try. So, after finishing her mental deconstruction of that unicorn’s last ten minutes in order to make sure it didn’t remember encountering her, or her son, and then she turned to her son.

“Hey sparkie?” she said, with a serious tone in her voice, despite the playful name she had used.

“Yes mommy?” Inner Light asked, worried about the look in her eyes. It was a look that generally meant that something really scary was about to happen.

“What happened to your actual parents?” Sunset asked, gently.

“You are my actual parents, mommy!” Inner Light said, protesting, and tearing up. Did this question mean that his mommy didn’t want to be his mommy anymore?
“Hey, it’s all right…don’t cry, mommy’s here.” Sunset said, as she wrapped her son into a hug upon seeing his reaction to the question, and remembering her own reaction to a very similar question from…”I was just curious is all.” She continued. “Say, you didn’t happen to pass a mean unicorn on the way here, did you?"

“Boy did I ever!” Inner Light said, perking up as his fears were assuaged by this confirmation that yes, his mommy did, in fact, want to be his mommy. “It was just after I got the five Elements of Harmony! I tried talking to her, but all she said was something about how she had royal business to do!” Inner Light said. “So do you think that this is the one mommy, huh, do you?” He asked, hoping it was just another royal guard that been sent out on a patrol mission.

“Well, since she couldn’t find me again, I’d say that yes, this is her new student.” Sunset said, musing.

Her son noticed the downcast expression on her face and thought that it was his fault and that he had done something wrong with finding only five of the six elements. As such, he adopted a similar expression as he said, “I’m sorry that I was only able to find five of the elements, mommy” he said, looking down.

Sunset stopped her musing, realizing that the expression on her face could be misconstrued as disappointment, trotted over to her son, and wrapped him in a hug. She smiled as he immediately returned the hug, and reassured him that she wasn’t disappointed with him, saying “ssh…it’s all right sparkie,” she said, as she ruffled his mane. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

All of a sudden, a gasp was heard emanating from the entrance of the library, and Inner Light immediately buried himself further into the hold, whimpering. Sunset wasn’t entirely sure what was up with this, as she had seen her son go up against Royal Guards to keep her safe, but she DID know what had preceded the action, and with this knowledge in mind, she looked toward where the sound had come from, and saw an Earth pony standing in the doorway, leading her to think that her son had had a bad experience with an Earth Pony at some point in the past.

Scowling, she said “what do you want?” as she figured that that was the safest question to ask the mysterious pony that had somehow broke all of her barriers that had been set up around the library. She had learned over the years that if you acted as though you belonged somewhere, ponies wouldn’t question it either.

“That was just SO cute!” The pink pony squealed, before saying “Um…is there anything I can do to help, by the way?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“Don’t you think that you’ve done enough?” Sunset said angrily, before remembering that a bigger threat was on its way. “Actually…” she began, in an apologetic manner “Now that I think about it, there is something that you can do to make up for scaring my son half to death like that…”

“Wait, you two are…” Pinkie began, before being interrupted.

“Do you want to hear about how you can help, or, do you want to hear the story about how I adopted my son, something which you’ll no doubt hear about later if you help me out now?” Sunset said, injecting equal parts impatience and urgency in her voice.

“Ooh! I wanna help! I wanna help! What do you want me to do?” Pinkie asked, excited, as it seemed as though she would get a new friend from this which was something that she absolutely loved to do.

“There’s a unicorn coming here that’s not me or my son, obviously.” Sunset said, not trusting the pink pony’s common sense to pick up on that. “I need you to distract her so that I can get my son and myself away from here and somewhere safe from her. Can I count on you?” She asked, with a pleading tone. Truthfully, she could just let her son know what the purple unicorn had said about her, but that would be too close to her original motivations for following that magical surge all those years ago.

Sunset unfortunately was unable to get her son to tell her what that had been about in the library, but she had respected his wishes up to a point. They were, after all, on a mission to free an alicorn that could just go into his mind and see what was wrong there. She did feel bad about her plans, but she knew that what she was doing was for her son’s own good.

‘I wonder if that’s what Celestia thought…’ whispered a treacherous part of her own mind, before she justified her actions with, ‘Celestia wanted to use me to clean up her own messes. All I want to do is see what’s wrong with my son, so I’m pretty sure that there’s a big difference there!’ she thought, effectively shutting down those thoughts.

Author's Note:

In this chapter we get to see Twilight Sparkle and how deep Celestia's machinations run in this parallel universe! Next it's the Summer Sun Celebration, with a twist!