Recursive Parenting - CH00
Sunset Shimmer couldn’t believe it had been seven years since she left. It felt like yesterday that she had packed up her few belongings from the latest foster group home, and shipped off to college. Well, one undergrad and most of a doctorate degree later, she was finally back in her hometown to stay. She had gotten a fellowship at the local university that would allow her to finish her research for her dissertation, which she hoped to defend within the next two years.
The Equestria State University campus in Canterlot may not be the most advanced, but working for Dr Whooves would give her access to experiment data results from Argonne labs, and even some allotted time on the super computers to crunch numbers. It didn’t hurt that the stipend was handsome enough to compete with a junior professor’s salary.
The greater Canterlot metropolitan area hadn’t really changed much. As a smaller city, there wasn’t as much hussle and bussle, in particular near the suburbs where she was driving herself at the moment. Sunset had just finished unpacking the last box from her move, just eight days after the movers dumped them all in her new home, and for some reason, now that she no longer had anything else to immediately distract her, she was feeling pretty nostalgic.
Nostalgic enough to hop in her car and drive to the high school Celestia was now a principal of, from what she last heard. The school day had ended hours ago, but usually faculty and staff stayed for a couple hours, and Celestia was always a workaholic. Sunset hadn’t really kept a good way of contacting her when she left town, and this was the easiest way to see her.
However she may have overestimated how late Celestia would work on a Friday, seeing as the school grounds she pulled up to looked completely abandoned, and the sky was already darkening. Well, there would be other opportunities. Sunset put the car in park, and stepped out to look at the building. It was very pretty, and clearly well funded as suburban schools in affluent neighborhoods tended to be.
She walked up to the main entrance doors,and as she expected, they were locked. Sunset turned around and sat on the steps. She had tried, and she would try again another day, but for now she would take a moment for her mind to clear itself. Her reunion wouldn’t happen today. Celestia would keep for tomorrow, or maybe the next week. Sunset tried to keep a positive attitude that she had been able to get this far.
She looked out to the setting sun, and simply took in the view. Once the sun was over the horizon she would drive back to her new place, and break down all the boxes for recycling, and maybe read some of the peer reviewed journals she had been meaning to get up to date with this month.
As the sky darkened and the first stars came out, she noticed the full moon in the sky. It looked huge, a clear sky of stars surrounding it. This was the type of magical night in fairy tales. In the back of her mind, she noted how unusual it was to see the stars so well when the full moon was out, as she stood up to go back to her car.
Before she could take more than a few steps away from the stairs however, the school statue began to glow with an otherworldly light. Sunset was frozen as someone stepped out of the light before the statue once more seemed to be made of stone.
The light had ruined Sunset’s night vision so she couldn’t quite see the being beyond the fact that they looked human in form. She slowly approached, noticing that they were quite a bit shorter, about the size of a young teen, dressed in an oversized jacket, and in a skirt much too short for her apparent age.
The girl seemed to be out of sorts, walking in a stilted manner as if both her legs were asleep. As Sunset’s eyes finally began to clear up from the earlier flash of light, she began to feel a growing sense of unease, almost as if she were falling down a rabbit hole.
The girl seemed to finally notice Sunset, and let out a yelp before tripping backwards and falling on her back, her eyes wide and frightened. Funnily enough this calmed Sunset down a bit, as it was clear the girl didn’t expect to see her either. Hopefully she could explain why she looked exactly like a fourteen year old clone of herself.
“Are-are you ok?” The large biped said in a disturbingly familiar voice. Sunset Shimmer was trying to figure out how best to respond, as her thoughts raced. She had just been turned into a similar creature herself, tough smaller. Sunset was also trying to figure out how much the creature had seen of her entrance into this new realm.
“I’m fine… you simply startled me…” Was her eventual reply, a couple seconds after the silence had become awkward, as she studied the larger biped. Her mind pegged it as female, perhaps since it seemed to share a mane with a similar color and style as her own. The creature reached out a foreleg, or rather a minotaur looking arm, seemingly to help Sunset stand back up. After just a brief pause, she decided to accept the help, though her grip was quite awkward.
After standing up again, and patting herself off, she carefully took a few steps backwards to gain some space from the stranger. Sunset wasn’t sure of her bearings, which were surprisingly well lit for night time, and there was a local guide right in front of her. First, she needed to figure out how much she knew. “Do you mind telling me how long you’ve been out here?”
“Long enough to see you come out of a statue… as if it were magic...” Was the deadpan reply. Well, it seemed that Sunset wouldn’t be able to easily bluff her way out of that display of magic. The stranger moved past her and patted the statue base before turning back. “What was that, and who are you?”
“Um… so… explaining what you saw may take a while… but... my name is Sunset Shimmer, what’s yours?” Sunset replied as she tried to think up how to explain the details of the portal without giving away too much, though it might already be too late given the wide-eyed look of shock now on the native.
“That’s weird, cause MY name is Sunset Shimmer.” was the reply.
An hour later found both Sunsets in the older’s new home. In that time, they had quickly established that while their worlds seemed seemed to have both had many similarities, the difference were quite large, even discounting the change in species.
Now the elder had begun grilling the younger woman over all the details to map how similar their pasts were. “OK, so let me get this straight kid. So, you’re also an orphan right? Annnnnd… you ran away through this magic one way mirror… want to tell me what you were running away from?”
“No, not really Doc… but I guess I should be able to open up to an alternate version of myself right?” The younger Sunset replied sarcastically, before sighing, and wilting under the stare she received. “Ok, ok… So, let me start from the beginning. When I was a young filly, my talent in magic was discovered and I was so amazing that I was invited to live at the royal palace and learn magic there. I wasn’t ever adopted by anyp-anyone, but I did have an apprenticeship under the crown.”
“OK, well, that sounds nicer than getting passed around a bunch of foster homes at least… Also, don’t call me Doc. I’m a doctoral candidate, and if the ethics committee ever suspects someone of passing themselves as a Phd, they drum them out of the program. Since Sunset Shimmer is a 24 yr old woman in this world, I get to keep the name. Got it squirt?”
“Ugh! Fine… Shimmer... I guess a new name in a new world makes sense… So, what about you? How was your childhood?”
“Well SUNNY… I ended up in the system, never ended up adopted by any of my fosters, but I was still pretty lucky, the families I got weren’t the worse. I probably would have become a high school dropout or something, but I came to the attention of one of my teachers my freshman year, and she became my biggest supporter… for while anyway…”
“I got a scholarship to go into higher education, and took it. Now I’m a rising star in the theoretical physics and applied mathematics fields, getting to study how the universe is held together! Well… after seeing what I saw today… most of what I thought we knew just went out the window... So… How common was it for kids to be taken into an apprenticeship like you were?”
“Actually, I was the first royal student in over 300 years,the youngest in the records too, so it was a really rare and great honor. It was in the papers for a while. It was great… at the start at least...”
“That does sound pretty amazing. So… if your life was so amazing… Why did you decide to jump into a magic portal?”
“... I… I don’t want to talk about it right now. Let’s just say I have something to prove, and my research told me that the best way to do it was to come here.”
Hours later, Shimmer was laying in her bed, wide awake as her mind refused to stop analyzing the insanity of having a child version of herself sleeping on her couch. Her younger doppelganger had acted very maturely for the most part during their conversation, and the drive home. It was clear that she had no clue about how stuff in the modern world worked though, which would be a red flag to anyone that would care to pay attention, and Sunset knew that someone would sooner or later.
In the end, she was a kid. A kid that had no idea how to act like a normal kid, just like she had been at that age. There was a hidden part of Sunset’s heart that had always wished someone had rescued her, had given her a place to live and someone to depend on as family. That dream had finished dying by the time she was Sunny’s age, as teens never get adopted. She knew that was the seed for what led to her estrangement with Celestia years ago. This situation was allowing her to fix history in a way, for another version of herself anyway.
Sunset’s heart began to beat faster as she realizes what she was contemplating. She had no illusions about how hard it could be to open her home to someone else, as she had lived it from the other side. If the girl was anything like she had been at that age, and if anything the signs pointed at her being worse, then this would be a very rocky ride with an ungrateful brat. However, didn’t she owe it to herself, to prove that Sunset Shimmer was worthy of a home and affection?
As her decision settled in her mind, her body finally began to relax. There would be freak outs later, and stress around the details of fostering a clone with no paper trails in the real world, but for now she had finished the most crucial step, where she decided to be there for that 14 year old girl drooling on her couch for as long as Sunny would let her.
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Pony Sunset being raised by Human Sunset?
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Someone take this idea and run with it!
8959591
I know right?!
Huh, I thought of a weird variant of this a while back though human Sunset was closer to thirty and the story would start right after the first movie. I.e. Sunset was living with herself all this time and we get to see the reactions Principal Celestia and the humane 5have to her living situation. Other odd one I thought of around the same time was staying at Aloe and Lotus’s spa as a result of helping them fend off a violent customer.
well this will be a awkward family I WANT MORE
8993311
yea i did meant that comment as i said it would just kinda hurt the story if you did it either way i do want you to make this a full story
8959640
8959640
Well I am working one one, but I want to finish Making Family's real path first. I only have a chapter or so written, but the concept throws in a few more elements I like into the mix.