Visiting Equestria
Chapter 8
Visiting Equestria
After a quick ride in her car across town, Sunset had arrived at City Park. Once she had parked her car, she walked through the park and soon arrived at her destination: the empty pedestal that once held a statue of a horse rearing up on its hind legs. Of course, she knew that this simple structure of white Lego bricks also housed something very special: the interdimensional portal to Equestria, the universe she had originally came from. And very soon, she was going to pass through it.
Sunset stopped in front of the portal, taking a moment to reflect on the significance of what she was about to do. She had first come through this portal over six years ago, when after her falling out with her teacher Princess Celestia, she ran away to this world. It was a rough start, to say the least, but once she made herself familiar with how everything worked in the Lego World, she had wasted no time making her presence known, ensuring that everyone knew that she was not someone to be messed with at all.
After five years of establishing herself as the most wanted criminal in the Lego World, she had finally managed to discover an opportunity to not only return to Equestria, but also obtain the power she had so desperately craved. She had made the necessary preparations, waited for just the right moment, and finally made her move.
Unfortunately, her brief return to Equestria hadn’t gone quite according to plan, and she was forced to come back to the Lego World to chase after that source of great power she desired. Although she eventually got what she wanted, it was only in the aftermath of her defeat by Princess Twilight Sparkle that she realized just how far she had fallen.
Although only a year had passed since those events, a lot had changed for Sunset since then. She had gone from a hated criminal to a beloved hero, and became great friends with the girls who she had once fought against. Yes, life for her in the Lego World had dramatically improved… but the same couldn’t quite be said for Equestria.
As far as Sunset knew, much of Equestria either never heard of her or only remembered her as that bratty former personal student of Princess Celestia. Sure, Princess Twilight knew how much she had changed for the better, but there were no guarantees that such word would’ve spread beyond her own close circle of friends.
Still, Twilight had assured her that all she really had to do was pick up her new magic journal, and if she wasn’t comfortable with doing anything else before returning to the Lego World, then that would be completely acceptable.
Sunset glanced down at the shoulder bag hanging over her right side. She had made a quick stop at her apartment to leave behind her old magic journal, as requested by Princess Twilight to ensure the contraption that forced the portal open could remain functional. She also had a few nonessential provisions stored in that bag, but there was still plenty of room for the new journal.
Well… let’s get this over with, Sunset thought as she sighed. She placed her left hand onto the front surface of the pedestal and saw it began to shimmer and ripple around the point of contact. With a little more pressure, her hand passed through the surface, and soon she stepped forward to completely pass through. Once she had entered the portal, all she saw was a very bright swirl of all the colors of the rainbow. She screamed as she was pulled around and felt her body being stretched and twisted out of shape.
Sunset Shimmer was on her way back to Equestria.
On the other side of the interdimensional portal, the contraption surrounding the Crystal Mirror suddenly began powering up on its own. First, the magic journal on the Equestria side of the mirror glowed brightly with magical energy from its mount atop the contraption. That energy was then caught by a pair of coils and transferred down a series of cables, then forced through a pump system with a pair of pistons, weaved through a loom, and finally discharged from a pair of rods directly into the mirror itself. Once that magical energy entered the mirror, the interdimensional portal was opened, its bright glow illuminating the dark room it was stored inside.
Just seconds after the interdimensional portal opened, the mirror briefly flashed much brighter and something was flung out from it. The expelled object tumbled across the floor and came to a stop just inches away from the wall at the other side of the room. What had just emerged from the mirror was a pony with an amber coat, a wavy mane and tail of faded red and yellow, and a Cutie Mark of a half red and half yellow sun.
Sunset Shimmer was back in Equestria.
The contraption quickly shut off, plunging the room completely into darkness. Sunset was lying on the floor on her back, still dazed from her interdimensional journey, and struggled to make sense of where exactly she had ended up. It wasn’t long before she heard a series of taps behind her; three quick taps, a brief pause, and three more quick taps. Suddenly, she began to hear stone blocks grinding against each other right behind her. Soon, light began pouring into the room as the wall behind Sunset somehow parted open, though the sudden change from darkness to light left her momentarily blinded, causing her to shield her eyes with her forelegs.
“Sorry about that,” said a voice behind Sunset. “I didn’t know what time you’d be here.”
Sunset removed her forelegs from over her eyes and looked up. Her vision was still a little blurred, but she could see that, upside down from her perspective, a purple pony was looking down at her. “Princess Twilight?” she asked with a slight slur in her voice. “Is that you?”
Once her vision finally came into focus, Sunset saw that it was not Twilight, but rather a unicorn with a lilac coat, a violet mane with aqua streaks and the front curled over to one side, and eyes with medium blue irises.
“Nope!” responded the unicorn with a smile on her face. “Starlight Glimmer.”
Sunset chuckled nervously and muttered, “Oops. My bad.” She then curled herself forward, pushed off the floor with her forelegs, and attempted to stand upright on her hind legs. Almost immediately, she wobbled around and waved her forelegs uncontrollably as she struggled to adjust to her new center of gravity. After a few seconds, she finally managed to steady her balance, and let out a sigh of relief.
“Um… what are you doing?” asked Starlight.
Sunset turned her head back and saw Starlight giving her a weird look. Sunset glanced down at her body and suddenly realized that she was no longer a Lego minifig, but rather a pony, which was supposed to stand on four legs instead of just two. With a giggle of embarrassment, she dropped her forelegs down onto the floor. “Wow… that feels so weird after all this time,” she remarked as she idly scrapped her right front hoof against the floor. She returned her gaze towards Starlight and added, “Starlight Glimmer… you’re Twilight’s student, right?”
“Uh-huh,” answered Starlight with a nod and a smile. “She asked me to meet you here and take you to the library to pick up your new journal. C’mon.”
As Starlight turned away and began walking down the hallway outside the room, Sunset followed after her. It was definitely a little awkward going back to walking on four legs again, but thanks to her past experiences of living as a pony in Equestria, she was able to adjust rather quickly. Now that Sunset had a better look, she saw that Starlight’s Cutie Mark consisted of a purple four-pointed star over a white four-pointed star and above it were a pair of aqua wisps of magic.
After only a few steps, Starlight suddenly stopped and said, “Oh! I almost forgot.” She quickly turned around and returned to the room with the mirror, then tapped her hoof twice against the floor on a thick black line that marked the boundary between the hallway and the room that contained the Crystal Mirror.
Sunset watched in amazement as the stone blocks began shifting around again. This time, they gradually reformed the wall that had parted open only a minute earlier. It wasn’t long until the last of the stone blocks slid into place, forming a perfectly smooth wall that left no sign there was even a room behind it.
“It was Twilight’s idea to keep that mirror hidden inside a secret room,” explained Starlight. “It’s mostly to prevent any unwanted visitors from trying to sneak through.”
“That’s actually a pretty good idea,” admitted Sunset. “That’s not exactly an option on the other side, since it’s out in the middle of a public park, so I guess it’s nice to be sure that at least one side will always be secure.”
As Starlight began walking down the hallway again, she continued, “The only way to get through that secret door is to knock on certain blocks in a specific order. I’ll show you the secret knock when we come back. It works on both sides, so you won’t have to worry about getting trapped inside that room if you visit again.”
“Sounds good to me,” remarked Sunset as she resumed following Starlight down the hallway. After a few steps, she asked, “So, uh, where’s Princess Twilight?”
“Well, she wanted to give you the journal herself, but then she and her friends were called away to solve a friendship problem,” replied Starlight with a tone of disappointment. “It happens a lot around here.”
“Really?” asked Sunset skeptically as she raised an eyebrow. “Just suddenly called away like that?”
Starlight stopped in front of a large set of double doors and used her magic to open them, revealing a massive room with a large round crystal table in the middle surrounded by six large thrones and one smaller throne. “This is the castle’s throne room,” explained Starlight. “You see that table in the middle? That’s a magical map of all of Equestria. Whenever there’s a friendship problem, the ponies needed to solve it will have their Cutie Marks glow, and their Cutie Marks will also appear over the location on the map of where they need to go to solve it. When their Cutie Marks glow again, that means they completed their mission and they can return home.”
“Wow,” said Sunset in astonishment. “I remember Princess Twilight writing to me about this, but she never really explained how it all works.”
“Believe me, we all still don’t completely understand it,” said Starlight as she closed the doors and resumed walking down the hallway with Sunset. “All it really does is tell us who needs to go where, and in many cases, it’s for something that can’t exactly be postponed, which is why Twilight and the others had to leave so suddenly.”
“That must be stressful, huh?” remarked Sunset uneasily. “Never knowing when you might be called on to save the day… dropping everything at a moment’s notice…” Her tone had gotten a little saddened as she spoke. She turned to Starlight and asked, “How does she do it?”
“Sorry,” replied Starlight regretfully. “She just told me to give you the journal.”
Sunset lowered her head and sighed.
“Hey, believe me, she was just as disappointed that she had to miss out on this chance to see you again,” assured Starlight. “She’s very proud of all the things you’ve accomplished. In fact…” She stopped and pointed down another hallway to the left. “A few doors down that hallway, well, it’s just an empty room right now, but she’s planning to use it for something she’s calling the ‘Gallery of Creativity’. It’ll pretty much be a little personal museum filled with small-scale models of all kinds of moments you and your friends have had on your adventures in that other world.”
“That sounds interesting,” remarked Sunset. She turned back to Starlight and asked, “When you mentioned small-scale, how small are we talking?”
“She said that the height of one of those ‘minifigures’ would be no more than an inch,” replied Starlight.
“Wow, that’s pretty small,” said Sunset in astonishment.
“It was really the only practical option,” explained Starlight as she and Sunset resumed walking. “Plastic is actually a very difficult material to obtain here in Equestria, which also explains why that project has been taking so long to get done. I once offered to help speed things along by using a series of transfiguration spells, but I was quickly discouraged when she mentioned that many of the models would require thousands of little pieces. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still like to help Twilight in any way I can, but for that much effort, you’d practically need to build a factory.”
Sunset chuckled and remarked, “Yeah, well, Lego parts in the other world are made in a series of factories, so that doesn’t really surprise me.”
It wasn’t long before the two ponies arrived at another large set of double doors. “Well, here’s the library,” noted Starlight as she used her magic to open the door, then she and Sunset stepped inside. It was another massive round room like the throne room, only this room had walls that seemingly consisted of nothing but bookshelves all around, from the floor up to around hallway towards the high ceiling, with the upper half of those walls consisting of large windows. Within the room, there were a few round tables and some chairs, with a few additional bookcases in various locations.
“Ah, right where I left it,” remarked Starlight as she trotted over to the table in the middle of library. Resting on that table was a single book with a reddish-brown hard cover with a symbol on the front cover that resembled Sunset’s Cutie Mark on the left half and Twilight’s Cutie Mark on the right half. That journal was soon enveloped in Starlight’s turquoise magical aura as she levitated it off the table and over towards Sunset.
However, while Sunset held out her hoof with the expectation of physically grabbing that book, Starlight had expected the other unicorn would take control of it with her magic and thus released her hold of it when it was only halfway between them. As a result of this misunderstanding, the journal simply dropped to the floor right in front of Sunset.
Sunset and Starlight stared at each other in awkward silence for a moment. Sunset grinned in embarrassment and then reached her hoof out towards the journal on the floor. She attempted to grasp the journal, but it took her a few failed attempts before she finally realized that hooves just weren’t built for grasping objects. She let out a sigh of frustration and mumbled, “This would be so much easier if—”
Starlight cleared her throat, then once Sunset’s attention was at her, she silently pointed her hoof up at her own horn.
Sunset suddenly smiled and, with a bit of hysterical laughter, remarked, “How could I have possibly forgotten about that?!” She then concentrated on the journal and, after quickly reminding herself of her old magic lessons under Princess Celestia, was soon able to magically pick up that book. As she watched that book floating around under her own magical power, she couldn’t resist some further laughter of excitement. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed being able to do this all the time!” she remarked excitedly.
Starlight simply smiled and rolled her eyes at seeing the other unicorn get so excited over something so mundane as merely levitating a single object.
Sunset eventually stopped swinging the journal around and brought it up to in front of her face, then flexed her magic power a little more by quickly flipping through all the blank pages of that new book. But once she closed that book, she frowned as she suddenly realized something odd about her magic. “That’s strange,” she muttered. “I’m pretty sure my magical aura used to be a different color.” The previous times she had used magic as a pony, the color of her magical aura was the same aqua color as the irises of her eyes, but this time that aura was more of a reddish orange color.
“Then again, my hair used to be a brighter shade of red and yellow,” noted Sunset as she glanced back at her own body, though that was a change she was already well aware of. “I wonder if spending too much time outside your original universe causes subtle changes like this…” she muttered to herself. She then shrugged and remarked, “Oh well, doesn’t seem like anything serious.”
Sunset used her magic to open her bag — which she had noticed was no longer a shoulder bag slung loosely over her shoulder by a thin strap, but was now a saddlebag held onto her side by a thick strap tightened around her barrel. She was about to place the new journal into the bag, but stopped when she glanced inside and saw the various items that were already in there. “Oh, uh, I’d better move a few things around,” she muttered, then used her magic to levitate all of those items out of the bag, placed her new journal into the emptied bag, then began to place the various items back into the bag.
Sunset chuckled and remarked, “Magic sure makes things a heck of a lot easier to move around than using just two hands.” As she spoke, she placed the items into the bag one at a time. First was obviously the journal, followed by her phone — notably still in the form of a printed 1x2 tile Lego part — then a pair of headphones, a can of spray paint, a bottle of orange soda, a carrot, and an apple. There was only one more item left, but before she could put it into the bag, Starlight suddenly took hold of it with her magic and levitated it towards herself.
“What’s this?” asked Starlight as she tried to examine the strange object. One end of the dark grey object had a short shaft that went off to one side, and the other end had three prongs that curved back in equal directions away from each other.
“That’s a grapple gun,” answered Sunset with a smile as she took the object back with her magic. “Very useful for reaching high places. Here, I’ll show you how it works.” She prepared to aim the grapple gun at one of the additional bookcases in the room, but hesitated as she took another look at the object in her magical hold. “Actually, I’m not sure if it’ll work like this, so I guess I’ll just try my best with my hooves,” she muttered as she sat down on the floor and held out her forelegs, then levitated the grapple gun down to her front hooves. It was a little difficult to hold onto the round handle between her flat hooves, but she managed to get a firm hold on it.
Starlight was certainly curious to see how such a gadget worked, so she sat down next to Sunset.
“Okay,” began Sunset as she held the grapple gun out in front of her, “all you have to do is aim it at your target, squeeze the handle to fire it…” With an audible burst, the grappling hook suddenly shot from the gadget and flew over onto the top of one of the extra bookcases, with a long cable extending from the gun to the grappling hook. “Then once you’ve latched onto your target, just squeeze the handle again to bring it back to you.” The cable was quickly pulled taut into the gun, then the grappling hook was pulled towards it. Since it was hooked onto the top of that bookcase, it ended up pulling the bookcase over, spilling all of its books off its shelves before it toppled over. As the now loosened grappling hook fully retracted back to the gun, Sunset stared at the mess she had caused, then chuckled nervously and simply said, “Whoops.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” assured Starlight as she stood up. She first levitated the bookcase back upright into its proper place, then she levitated all of the spilled books and placed them all into a series of somewhat neat piles around the front of the bookcase.
“You’re not gonna put those books back on the shelves?” asked Sunset.
“I’m still not quite familiar with Twilight’s system,” admitted Starlight, “so I’ll just let her deal with it when she gets back.”
“Fair enough,” muttered Sunset as she levitated the grapple gun out of her hooves and back into her bag. She turned back to Starlight and asked, “Are you sure she won’t be back anytime soon?”
“Pretty sure,” replied Starlight apologetically.
Sunset sighed, then after a moment of awkward silence, she finally stated, “Well… back to that secret room, I guess.” The then instinctively attempted to stand up on her hind legs again, only to suddenly wobble around before she quickly got back down on all four legs. She gave an awkward smile as she chuckled and muttered, “Right. Pony.”
Starlight was unable to suppress a faint giggle before she followed Sunset out of the library, then magically closed the door behind her.
As they began walking back down the hallway, Sunset turned to Starlight and asked, “So it was really Twilight’s idea to build that secret door?”
Starlight nodded and replied, “Said it was one of the first things she added to castle after it first appeared. In her words, ‘Secret doors are cool.’”
Both Sunset and Starlight giggled at that quote. “That’s something I would’ve expected to hear from Spike,” remarked Sunset. “Speaking of whom, did he actually manage to keep that hat he got in the other world?”
“Well, yes and no,” replied Starlight. “He did get to keep it, but it didn’t change shape with him, so it no longer fit his head. Fortunately for him, Rarity was generous enough to make him a new one that looked the same as the old one and would actually fit him. She even custom embroidered that detailing on the front. He still likes to wear it around every now and then, and in fact it was when I first saw him wearing that hat that I had first heard of the word ‘LEGO’.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t really surprise me,” remarked Sunset under her breath with a smile.
After a few more seconds of walking in silence, Starlight slowly asked, “So… what’s it like back there?”
“In the Lego World?” asked Sunset as she looked over at Starlight.
Starlight nodded with a smile.
Sunset took a moment to consider her answer, then replied, “Well, it’s pretty different. And not so different at the same time. It’s kinda hard to explain.”
Starlight glanced away as she said, “Heh… guess you kinda have to go there to really get it, huh? I, uh, don’t suppose…”
Sunset raised an eyebrow and asked, “You really think Princess Twilight would be okay with that?”
“I don’t know for sure that she wouldn’t be okay with it,” Starlight slyly replied.
“That’s not a particularly compelling argument,” muttered Sunset with uncertainty.
Starlight sighed and said, “She wants me to learn as much as I can about friendship, and I’m certainly not gonna learn a whole lot by just hanging out here in her castle all by myself.”
Sunset took a moment to consider Starlight’s request as they continued walking down the hallway. Eventually, Sunset spoke up, “Well, I haven’t seen you before in the Lego World, so I doubt you’ll run into yourself.”
“Now there’s something you don’t hear every day,” muttered Starlight.
“So just try to lay low,” continued Sunset. “Don’t draw too much attention to your—”
Starlight immediately scoffed and dismissively remarked, “You’ll barely even notice I’m there!”
“I suppose introducing you to my friends could be a nice distraction,” admitted Sunset.
“But you’ll also totally notice I’m there!” added Starlight excitedly as she leaned close to Sunset. “And it’ll keep your mind off of other things that might be bothering you!”
Sunset chuckled and lightly pushed Starlight away. “Easy there!” she said playfully, “First, you gotta show me that secret knock to reach the portal.” She stopped walking and gestured over at the seemingly plain empty wall that she knew was actually the secret door into the hidden room.
“Oh! Right! Of course!” said Starlight with a nervous giggle. She then walked along the wall and felt her hoof along its smooth surface. “First, you need to find the one and only block that can do this.” She then pushed in one of the solid blocks on that wall about a few inches back. “Now watch carefully.” She then started tapping her hoof on the stone blocks surrounding that pushed-in block in a specific order — top left, top middle, top right, a brief pause, bottom right, bottom middle, and bottom left. Once that sequence was completed, the stone blocks that made up that wall suddenly began moving around on their own, grinding against each other as they magically shifted around. In only a matter of seconds, the wall had once again parted open to expose the secret room and the Crystal Mirror hidden inside.
With the secret door now open, Starlight turned to Sunset and eagerly asked, “So? What do you think? Can I go back with you?!” She was so excited that she actually jumped in place a few times — not unlike what her friend Pinkie Pie would typically do.
Sunset looked over at the Crystal Mirror as she considered her choice. After a bit of thought, she shrugged and smiled as she replied, “Oh, what the heck. Why not?”
“YES!!” shouted Starlight excitedly with an enthusiastic jump into the air. Once she landed, she ran over to the mirror and offered, “Here, let me activate it for you!” She then fired a quick beam of magic at the journal mounted atop the contraption, unleashing its magical energy which then passed through the various stages of the contraption and finally was discharged into the mirror, once again forcing open the interdimensional portal to the Lego World.
“Did Twilight build this thing, too?” asked Sunset.
“Actually, I’ve been told that it was built by some scrapyard engineer by the name of Rusty Wrench,” admitted Starlight. “But Twilight assures me that she did the math herself, and as long as nothing breaks, we shouldn’t have to worry about getting stuck on the other side.”
“That’s reassuring,” mumbled Sunset as she rolled her eyes.
“C’mon, Sunset!” said Starlight excitedly as she rushed towards the steps in front of the mirror and gestured towards it. “After you!”
Sunset walked over to the mirror and asked, “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Once she stopped walking, she briefly pointed her muzzle out towards the hallway outside the room.
“Oh! Right!” responded Starlight with another awkward giggle. “Silly me!” She ran back to the black line on the floor at the end of the room and tapped her hoof twice against it. Once again, the stone blocks shifted around and soon reformed the wall that kept this room hidden. Of course, with no windows into this hidden room, the only illumination was now coming from the magenta glow of the opened interdimensional portal.
With that security system back in place, Sunset walked up to the Crystal Mirror, then stopped and looked back as Starlight. “Well, see you on the other side,” she remarked, then turned forward and stepped through the interdimensional portal.
Starlight could barely contain her excitement over where she was about to go. She took a deep breath to somewhat calm herself, then remarked to herself, “Alright… Time to Lego!” She then ran up to the Crystal Mirror and jumped through the interdimensional portal.
Starlight Glimmer was on her way to the Lego World.
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I like the touch of the Mirror being behind a hidden wall. Seems like a good idea. And yes, secret doors ARE cool
VERY nicely done; I mean...
...wait, what?
...I've made my fair share of bad jokes/puns, but this...take it away, Dr. Wolf:
Y'know, if Twilight needs a source of plastic, I'm sure the Lego world could spare a pile of bricks.
Aww, this was fun. Not particularly earth-shattering but fun.
8925349 Something tells me that trying to transfer a ton of LEGO bricks between worlds would run into all sorts of complications, especially over the process of payment.
8925332 I had come up with all of this back when I was writing the second story, and the only reason it hasn't been mentioned again until now is simply because Equestria hasn't been shown again until now. The quote of "secret doors are cool" originally came from Vitruvius in the Lego Movie Videogame (and in fact, it happens to be my favorite quote in that entire game).
8925348 A little reminder, pony Twilight tried the same thing back in the second story, but in that case, all of her friends were around to point out what a bad pun it was. Here, Starlight didn't have anyone around at that moment to give any reactions, so I guess she saw no reason not to say it.
8925349 8925511 First, most brick-built objects passing through the portal to Equestria would simply turn into a real life version of those objects (such as that cart of books that pony Twilight got at the end of the second story), meaning many of them would no longer be made of plastic. Second, the reason plastic is so hard to come by in Equestria is simply because I doubt they've got the kind of infrastructure necessary to refine and shape such a substance. Third, I've actually already got in mind how the people of this Lego World manufacture Lego parts and where they get all that plastic from, but I'm waiting until a later story in this series when I hope to have a good opportunity to describe it.
8930365
(shrugs) eh, fair enough
I'm glad to see this story again. I couldn't see it sooner cause my labtop had problems.
Sunset's magic aura changed? I do remember that in the 3rd Lego story Sunset's hair changed but her magic is changing? Is there a connection to that?