Shards of Sunset

by fmriver

Equestria Girl, Interrupted CH00

Sunset had always prided herself in being a mare of action. As she jumped through the portal under the Wondercolt statue, she didn't let her confusion at the crystal walls delay her for even a second from moving on wards. Starswirl's Mirror had been in an out of the way alcove, and once she was sure her return had not been detected and she was not in danger of any pony coming by, she took a moment to evaluate her surroundings.

Well, this didn't go according to plan and I just started. Time to figure out how to make the best of this mess. Sunset's original goals had presupposed that the mirror was still at the Canterlot Castle. She had planned -hoped- to raid one of the lesser royal jewelry collections. They were not very secure, due to the fact that Celestia had been receiving gaudy gifts for millennia, and Sunset had been able to break the minor tracking enchantments since she was a filly. She knew of one that was kept in a closet off the main ballroom, which would be perfect for her purposes. It was the one Celestia dumped the most gaudy of jewelry, items too heavy due to excess use of gems or being actual solid gold. She also hoped to find as many magically charged gems and other magic materials from the labs along with some tomes from the library.

She would have had enough riches to live comfortably after converting it to cash, and with the materials she would have been able to create a simple energy converter attuned to electricity and magic, along with a magical focus in lieu of a horn. She would have access to some magic again, though it would have been a trickle in comparison to what she naturally produced as a unicorn. She would be set for life beyond high school, and never have to return to Equestria again. Originally her biggest risk -fear- had been that Celestia would have the mirror itself guarded in order to capture her. However it seemed that Celestia had cared so little that she had gifted the mirror away.

Sunset focused once more on the current situation. She would need to get some intelligence on where she was. At first glance she had theorized it may be a secret base in the crystal catacombs beneath Canterlot Castle, but the view from windows proved that not to be the case. The late hour meant it wasn't much to see, however the city below was clearly not Canterlot, and the full moon allowed her to make out the plains going out passed the horizon.

---

Hours later, Sunset felt that she had begun to get an idea on what was going on. At this point, she was debating returning through the mirror for the night, and trying again the next evening, but she knew that the risk increased with each trip. She had actually hit pay dirt when she had stumbled into the Crystal Palace's library entrance, as there had been some booklets for the temporally displaced crystal ponies, which went over quite a bit of the latest changes in Equestria, along with some newspapers. So... Cadence has come up in the world. Crystal Empire huh? It's unlikely to have as many priceless artifacts laying around, but I'm sure I can find something worth my time?

She was trying not to think too hard about the fact that Celestia apparently found a more pliable version of herself and made HER a princess. Even her name is derivative! I mean Twilight Sparkle is such a knock off of my name!

The booklet didn't have details on how this Twilight Sparkle had ascended, however it did provide a quick summary of what seemed to have been highlights of her adventures leading up to her recent coronation. Of particular interest to Sunset was her first adventure, where she had rescued Princess Luna -and wasn't that another shocker?- from the moon using the Elements of Harmony, which must have been mystical items of unfathomable power to be able to reach that distance. This was the most likely culprit, as it would be in line with what little she had learned of Cadence's.

If I had one... I could even shove it in a Celestia's muzzle! I could... I could show her... If Sunset had something like that, it would neatly solve all her problems on the other side as well. The lack of fence-able gold and jewelry wouldn't matter if she had access to magic. Sunset's thoughts began traveling down darker paths as she skulked through the Crystal Palace. She was finally back near the royal bed chambers, and the more she thought about taking a chance and simply stealing this Twilight's element, which she actually used as her day to day crown!

She began slowly exploring each room looking for the one with the newest princess. The first room was empty, though it seemed to have been in use recently from the state of the covers, and the far flung pillows on the floor. Sunset looked around carefully, finding nothing of note beyond some how to guides for speaking modern Equestrian.

The next few rooms were unoccupied. Sunset kept going on wards until she was in the southeastern facing rooms.

She found somepony laying in one of the oversized beds in the largest suite yet. She crept in as quiet as a cat, trying to make out what was in the room.

She carefully passed the bed, making her way to the vanity on the far end of the room, where she could barely make out some jewelry glinting thanks to the moonlight.

It felt like it took forever to make it to the vanity. Sunset debated if a small light would be worth it to see the details of what was on the vanity.

Looking at the bed she could see that the pony on it had cocooned themselves into a huge ball of white sheets. After a couple seconds she created a soft light from her horn, aimed at the table top of the vanity.

There were a couple books beside an open jewelry box. Peering inside, Sunset carefully removed some gold hoof covers, below which she could see a stylized peytral, with suns, moons and six sided stars in a subtle filigree surrounding a large emerald. It was almost a twin for the one Sunset remembered seeing every morning on Celestia's neck, though that one had only had the sun on it. It weighed at least a couple pounds, the gold enchanted to lighten when worn. Maybe I will have something to fence after all... the gems seems to be magically charged as well! Maybe I'll luck out once more and she'll also have some magic tomes in the book pile too...

She carefully packed the jewelry into her saddle bags, making sure they wouldn't make noise as she moved. She looked at the gem encrusted jewelry box for a moment, debating if she should take it as well. It looked to be too bulky, and this was much riskier, with an equestrian princess sleeping mere steps behind her. She turned her attention to the books for a moment, quietly shuffling them to see each cover.

The first was a treatise on economic theory, which meant it was useless. One thing humans had surpassed Equestria on was in money. For goodness sake, ponies were still stuck on a gold and gem standard. The next one was actually very interesting, as it was related to transformation magic, and she took it. There had been a bookmark on a spell to detect if a pony was under a disguise, but the whole book seemed to be filled with useful spells.

A noise from the bed froze her as Sunset's heart suddenly tried bursting out of her chest. She extinguished the light and waited. It seemed she was still asleep. Sunset turned on the light again and packed the book into her bag before turning to inspect the rest of the room. There was one last thing to find now, the crown.

She noticed a bedside table on the far end of the bed that seemed to have things on it. Slowly, Sunset crept over, her ears trained on the bed at all times.

There you are... a crown was sitting on top of an opened book. Likely the princess's bed time reading material. She grabbed the crown and stuffed it into her bags, and would have begun making her way out of the room if she hadn't glanced at the open page beneath the crown. Sunset Shimmer was intimately familiar with that hoof writing.

It was her own after all.

Sunset's thoughts raced as she realized who was on the bed behind her, but she couldn't focus on any of them as she looked at the words. A part of her couldn't help but point out that it was no wonder the jewelry was so familiar, as another asked itself why was it out on her table like this, all while she read an account about her first time seeing Philomena be reborn, which at the time she had thought had been her death. She begged Princess Celestia not to banish her, and wrote 2 whole pages worth of apologies.

Right below was Celestia's response, calming her down ....'I want you to remember this whenever you have doubts, you are dear to my heart, and nothing will ever change that. I would never do anything as silly as send ou away from my side for an accident.' ... funny... took you just three years to change your tune...

Sunset leafed through, until she found the last page with writing on it. The gaps of time between messages had grown by the end there. The last page had 2 messages from Celestia.

The second was a summons to come attend her. Sunset remembered that was the day she was shown the mirror for the first time.

For some reason a part of Sunset was disappointed. As irrational as it was, she had expected to see something meaningful, perhaps a final message calling her back from the mirror, an apology or anything. Instead, it was simply a book chronicling the slow descent of their relationship into banality. No proof that the princess had any remaining affection for her prodigal apprentice... except for the fact that the journal was on her bedside table after all these years.

What did it mean? why couldn't Princess Celestia ever come clear and state her feelings? Sunset's mind continued to circle around itself, as she sat by the sleeping form of the most important pony in all Equestria.

---

Celestia woke up for some indeterminable reason. Her internal clock let her realize it was the middle of the night, a time she rarely failed to sleep through. An almost imperceptible sound caught her attention, felt by the tiny movement in the air more than by her hearing. Somepony uninvited was breathing in her room.

As none of her usual wardings had gone off, it likely wasn't an assassin. Their aura was hidden quite expertly, but as only a few ponies had the talent and training to hide their magic that well, Celestia thought it likely to either be her sister or Pinkie, trying to set up a prank perhaps. She carefully shifted her wing to provide a gap through which to look out.

The shortness of the pony immediately removed Luna as the culprit. Celestia felt a pang of true annoyance once she realized what the pony was pawing at on her bedside table. That was one of the few personal things that Celestia kept close to herself.

A search of her wayward student's rooms had revealed the counterpart journal was unaccounted for, and Celestia had desperately hoped that Sunset had taken it with her. She had galloped to her rooms and pulled it out. An inspection of the enchantment confirmed it so, but sadly more than that. The connection magic was strained to near the breaking point, as it seemed there was a lack of a magical field wherever Sunset had ended up. While Celestia wanted to write to her, it would have probably eaten up the last of the magic in Sunset's journal to do anything more than a single message each way. Celestia made the difficult decision that it would be more important that Sunset have some way to communicate back to her in case she needed rescue, than for Celestia to send a message for purely sentimental reason. Celestia made sure to always leave it somewhere that she would hear if a message ever came however.

Celestia's thoughts froze as the pony shook her head, giving her a profile. It was a very familiar hair style on a Unicorn mare. Celestia's heart began to race, and her eyes watered. Was it possible that her little Sunset was back? Some instinct prevented Celestia from moving and confronting the mare however. Instead she quietly spied on her as she silently hoofed her way back out of the room.

The moment that the door closed, Celestia sat up, quickly deciding what her next step would be. She would not allow another loved one to be lost due to inaction again.

Author's Note:

Sunset is a deeply conflicted character in EQG. This what-if scenario was simple, what if Celestia and Twilight's rooms were flipped from canon. As always prefer 'for want of a nail' trope in divergence fics, so that is what this is exploring.

Sunset has NOT been redeemed via magic, and she's slightly traumatized from the Pony perspective by what she lived through in the human world.

I have 2 ways this one could go.

First is that Celestia lets Sunset return to the mirror, following her, and then sends Twilight through the mirror to convince her to return to Equestria and evaluate Sunset's living conditions. In that one the fact that Twilight is not trying to recover the crown, but befriend and redeem her would make a very AU version of the first movie.

The second is that Celestia confronts her at the mirror and stops her from returning to Canterlot High. Then proceeds to incarcerate her at the castle ('home arrest') and try to redeem her by talking to her, using Luna to guide her dreasm, and pony psychologists to evaluate her. On the flip side, if Sunset Shimmer suddenly disappeared from CHS... This mystery kicks off changes on that side too, as more and more things begin to come out. (or at least if I ever write it, it does).

Comments

[Ze1a7in]

Both those alternatives have potential.

[Vaguely Demented]

I like the second option more, but would read either.

[Wolfblood17]

Wow. Every single one of theses story ideas with any plot line set choices would make for an amazing story, honestly. The hard part now would be deciding which story would be done first and with which story line to do it with. XD
Either way, I would so read any of these.

[Corine]

I don't know why everypony wants Sunset to be hurt fighting Nightmare Moon. I don't think Sunset would lose because Nightmare Moon is the parallel to Sunset stealing the element of magic. Just like Sunset Nightmare Moon did everything to guide the main 6 to blasting her with the elements.
If I had the skill the way I would do The Mirror and the Moon is have Sunset ditch the ponies she needs to get to Ponyville and set a trap to even things out for a fight with Nightmare Moon but have those ponies follow her and she tries to ditch them some more times before giving up. When the trap basically beats Nightmare Moon Sunset would call out Nightmare Moon for faking, Nightmare Moon would get Sunset to reveal she wants Celestia to adopt her and they would end up agreeing to work out things Celestia and Sunset admits the ponies she met are probably her friends. Friendship, therapy, working things out with Celestia and Celestia trying to force the elements out would be done in the next arc.

[Swine]

Out of all of your stories I've read, this is the one I hope you come back to the most. I absolutely love this idea. We dont get enough sunset fics with her doing stuff other than 'anonamiss happened now all my friends are mean' or 'man I used to be such an asshole'. Having her come back for some gold is definetly in character for pre rainbow laser sunset, and her being back in equestria (or never leaving in the first place) is such a unique and rarely explored story line.

As for which way I think it should go from here, having her fight luna trying to escape would be the most likely situation, but considering sunset hasn't used magic in like 3 years and luna is an alicorn, sunset (despite putting up a hell of a fight) would probably lose. Weather she succeeds in fending off luna long enough to get to the portal or getting blocked off from escape I really cant say since both paths have their benefits, although I'd like celestia to have an active role in this story and sunset staying seems to be the best bet for that.