Filly Steps (Edited 11/5)
If Sunset laid very still and kept very, very quiet, the day before couldn't possibly have happened. She was disabused of this notion in extremely short order.
A cannonball of purple fuzz launched itself into her bed, shaking the mattress with a dull creak of springs. It immediately began bouncing over her from one side to the other, adding to the cacophony with its incessant shrieking.
“FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL! FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!”
When ignored, the little hellion resorted to nudging at her with its skull, digging its horn into her kidneys.
“M’up, m’up. Wha’ time’sit.” Sunset mumbled into her pillow, eyes tightly shut. Perhaps if she didn't move, the problem would go away.
“Seven. I think. Which means it's time for school!”
Sunset slowly rolled to a sitting position, and leveled a balefire glare at the tiny thing standing over her. To her credit, Twilight stared back with the quiet innocence only found in small children and the intellectually challenged. Sunset blinked slowly and released a slow breath.
“If I get up will you please stop shouting?”
The foal stared for a few seconds more, before nodding once.
Sunset rolled her eyes and slid off her bed, falling to the tiled floor of her bedroom with a quartet of soft clicks. Without a second glance back she made her sleepy, fumbling way downstairs to the kitchen at the base of the tower.
She slammed the door open with her characteristic lack of restraint, and swung her telekinetic aura around with the same. She slumped at her dining table, the coffee engine rattling and chirping behind her. The quiet clicking of the foal’s hooves roused her imperceptibly.
“How did you even get in here? I don't even think Celestia could enter my tower without permission, let alone my bedroom.”
The filly invited herself to sit at the spot directly across from her.
“I-I spent the night. Don't you remember?”
Memory flickered and sputtered behind her eyes. This early in the morning, her brain wasn't firing on all cylinders yet.
The conversation with Celestia only barely been bearable. She had been all “joy of responsibility” this and “this is the opportunity you've been waiting for” that. All while her heart broke with every word.
Then the Pink One had shown up, and things were spotty after that. She made a mental note to probe her psyche for any evidence of tampering. She'd probably forced some kind of emotional connection between her and the filly.
Who was chattering about something or other. She had a sudden realization that she should probably feed her. The filly probably counted as a “houseguest”, and learning on an empty stomach was supposed to be difficult.
“-and I didn't prepare a study guide, what if they give us a test our first day and I fail and they decide that I'm not cut out for school and-”
Sunset nodded and made hopefully affirmative noises. Her horn lit up, a glow of telekinesis clattering porcelain and silverware. The foal’s prattle died down in awe as she levitated no less than six separate objects.
A cup of tar-black coffee set itself in front of Sunset, and a cup of tea before Twilight. Bowls clattered to the oak surface of the table, promptly filled.
“Relax. It's just magic kindergarten.” She took a deep gulp of the lifegiving liquid inside her mug. “You can read, you're already ahead of the curve. They're not going to spring a test first day. Heck, I don't even think magic kindergarten has tests.”
She leveled an eye at Twilight, who was poking the contents of her bowl with her spoon, muzzle scrunched into an expression of sheer confusion.
“M-miss Shimmer, what is this?”
“Muesli. Eat up, it's good for you.” She prodded her own bowl of fruit and oats. “Now hush. Mornings are for breakfast, coffee, and quiet contemplation.”
Twilight’s lips moved, as if committing this to memory. “Er. Contemplating what?”
“How absolutely wrong my life has gone.”
The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Sunset Shimmer was in hell. She'd walked Twilight on the short trip to the CSGU campus and had to deal with the filly hiding underneath her, while she listlessly spoke to faculty and found out where Twilight was meant to actually be, managing to get her into her classroom before the bell rang to announce the start of school.
Then, instead of taking a well-earned midmorning nap followed by lunch at a cafe and returning to her alchemy experiments, she sat at her study desk surrounded by a flurry of paper.
Suddenly she stopped. She was overthinking this. Plans, dusty primers far beneath talent… that was Celestia’s method. A method that had held her back for all these years. The only way she had gotten as far as she did was her own hooves-on approach.
She smiled to herself and brushed aside the drifts of failed lesson plans. She cracked open her copy of Starswirl’s Principles of Sorcery; A Primer and a clean sheet of paper. Dipping her quill, she began to write.
Sunset smiled despite herself as she waited at the foot of the great stone steps leading into the CSGU building. She sat on the edge of a fountain that dominated the courtyard. Water burbled cheerfully beneath a granite statue of Celestia reading a book to a foal nestled under her wing.
She watched the lavender filly carefully navigate steps half as tall as she was. Even if she was technically Sunset’s replacement, even if Sunset hated foals, even if she'd been ejected from the Princess’ tutelage and saddled with this responsibility, she had to admit that Twilight was cute as a button.
Her greeting died in her throat as she noticed the way the filly slumped at the withers. The flagstones beneath her hooves smoked as her expression hardened. The universe winced and ducked for cover as Sunset got angry.
Then suddenly she took a deep breath and cheered up. As the foal approached she took a gamble and stole a play from Celestia’s book, tucking a forehoof beneath Twilight’s chin and forcing her to look up.
Turquoise eyes met violet ones full of sorrow. They stared at one another for a moment, before Sunset’s eyes drifted towards her muzzle and she puffed out her cheeks. Startled, Twilight broke into a fit of giggles.
“Hey squirt. Did you make any friends today?” At this point she might as well put on a pastel-rainbow wig.
“Um. Not exactly. I wouldn't call them ‘friends’ seeing as how we've only known one another a day. But there was one filly that I liked. We read a book together.”
Sunset smiled as her rage cooled. Twilight was just worn out from her first day. Turquoise telekinesis wrapped the filly and pulled her up, settling the tiny thing on her own shoulders.
“I never checked- am I supposed to take you home?” She glanced over her shoulder, accidentally brushing her snout against the filly’s cheek.
Twilight tilted her head and pressed back, settling her forelegs around the mare’s neck.
“I guess so. Cadance was supposed to watch me tonight, my parents are going out.”
Ah. There was the anger again. She furrowed her brow and sighed, rubbing her forehead with a hoof. Of course Cadance. Her life wasn't going well enough without being forced into close contact with the Pink One.
She tipped her head back again as she briskly trotted off out of the courtyard. “Um… Where do you live again?”
A sleepy voice murmured around the vicinity of her ear. “434 Sunward Way.”
Her eye twitched. One of the thoroughbred districts. Naturally.
The walk over didn't take very long, and likewise jimmying open the gate with her magic. But, Twilight had fallen asleep, so she kept her tread as even as she possibly could as she made the final approach to Sparkle Manor. It wasn't enough that Twilight was apparently a minor noble, a member of the elite. It wasn't enough that she had aced her entry exam, including hatching a baby dragon.
No, the house just had to be tasteful and cozy-looking. Hanging off the side of a mountain tended to restrict the size of residential buildings and the size of property plots. But that didn't stop thoroughbreds from testing the city’s foundations with the largest and most ostentatious estates they could manage.
In contrast, most of Sparkle Manor's plot was well-kept lawn. It even had a solitary apple tree with a rope swing, and some new-looking playground equipment. A flagstone walk bisected the grass, leading up to the steps of the wraparound porch. The building itself looked only sixty or seventy feet on a side, and three floors tall. As opposed to Blueblood Manor, for instance, inside whose ballroom alone could easily fit this entire house.
The sort of house that she'd dreamed about, growing up in the drafty orphanage tucked against the mountain itself as far away from the castle as one could get.
She took a deep breath and stared at the door. Twilight was waking up, and digging in her saddlebags for something. Twilight’s weight leaning one way while she stood there indecisively meant that she toppled over readily, the door snapping open with a loud bang as she hit the floor of the foyer and slammed her head against hardwood flooring.
Two Twilights stood over her and poked her, before calling out something. Sunset couldn't tell, it sounded like her ears were stuffed with cotton wool. She struggled onto her stomach and held her aching head, willing the world to stop spinning.
The squirt was doing something, a complicated dance? No, copying… somepony. She stiffened and frowned as her vision cleared, Twilight sitting before the Crown Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.
Cadance for short, Cady to her friends. To Sunset, Pink One, the life-stealing bitch.
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Nice. I can't wait to see how this continues.
This really is going to be fascinating to watch play out, I'm crossing all of my fingers that sunset gets the alicornification she deserves. (After her sorely needed attitude change of course.)
Battle lines are drawn.
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TONIGHT, FIGHT NIGHT!
In the red corner, standing at four feet six inches and weighing in at two hundred fifty kilos we have the Nuclear Nag herself; SUNSET SHIMMER!
In the blue corner, standing at five feet eleven inches and weighing in at two hundred kilos, it's the Princess of Love, Mi Amore Cadenza!
It's a three-round no-holds-barred fight to a fall, and the heart of a cute little filly swings in the balance!
Yeah Sunset does not like Cadance, this makes me wonder if Twilight will get caught in the middle.
So far this is looking great. Can't wait to see the Sunset Cady interaction. Also, the cover art for this is the cutest thing ever.
9145024
It truly is my greatest find. Whenever I'm stuck on writing I just stare at it and words flow again.
I know that Sunset and Cadence are kinda cousins, but I’ve always wondered why the former hates the latter.
9145034
Cadance represents everything that Sunset has been working hard for her entire life. Celestia's attention, approval, care, affection. A title, ascension.
Cadance just kinda showed up one day and auto-got all of this, and Sunset felt herself being edged out.
i dont recall cadence being brought up in ch1
Sunset is impressively salty. Haven't seen this much salt in one place since the Dead Sea.
9145039 I find it funny how both Sunset and Cadence were initially orphans, but Cadence only had a better life because of her being the sexy foreigner.
Man, screw Candance! Right Sunset?! Nah, Lovebutt is okay. But Sunbutt 2.0 is still better. Nice chapter.
9145056
What's referred to happened between the chapters. Continuing on in Ch1 would have lessened the impact of the last line being "Your student", and the whole scene doesn't sound interesting in general. It would just be a ton of
"You're clowning. I sense clowns."
"No I'm completely serious."
"Bullshit."
Cadance going "I CAN'T TAKE ALL THIS FIGHTING YOU'RE TEARING THIS FAMILY APART"
9145057
The Cargill Salt Mine under Lake Erie yields about 2.5 million tons annually, making it the saltiest place on Earth.
Next to Sunset's bitch ass.
Good continuation. Sunset's resentment of Cadence at this point makes sense, what with her being an Alicorn. Little Twilight is just so cute. The only thing I want to see is Spike brought into the fold, though I will its not strictly necessary.
9145083
Dont forget the Dark Souls community.
Im really loving this story. Keep Writing This Pls!
My one complaint so far is that you're over using pronouns in some places. The very end of this chapter is a good example. It's hard to tell what's happening to who because there are too many pronouns in a paragraph where multiple people are doing things.
I love how this, by only citing Sunset's reactions, shows how utterly incompetent Celestia is as a mother - starting on how apparently either didn't realize she became Sunset's mother figure out worse, that she realized and didn't do Jack to change the situation. Someone will get more hurt until this gets better, and most likely it'll be Sunset herself.
oh wow
Really hope that relations between Sunny and Cadenza don't fall into blatant shipping.
Maybe in this story there will be armed neutrality...
Sigh
what you did there, i see it.
Y'know, Sunset, the FIRST timme you said Pink One I thought you meant the OTHER Pink One.
9145120
Spike is literally a day old here.
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Absolutely not. While I like the idea of Sunset and Cadance sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, ShinyDance is an amazingly heartwarming ship.
If anything it'll be SunLight
I'm sensing that Sunset really hates Cadance...
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Alicorn Sunset is Best Sunset.
Actually Sunset is best Sunset.
Adorkable Momlesetia must also be added to make the fluff.
9145020
Twenty says Purple Smart wraps both around her hoof before the end of the second round.
9145216
Being entirely honest, I actually dislike any non Shinydance ships involving Cadence, in part because it was canon and in part because despite everything they are quite literally made for eachother.
On the other hand, SunLight's just plain cute.
But so is ChryLight...
Also yes. Day old Spike will probably be required to show up anyway. But I fully expect him to be as babies do, IE: Gnaw everything and cry.
9145276
They are and it's ADORABLE!
Plus how can I deny Flurry Heart the right to
eradicate life as we know itexist.9145270
How was it put in Twin Twilight Tales... ah right. "I don't take sucker bets."
9145284
Wise of you.
9145282
That tiny terror's trials must temper the ponies, yes.
9145284
Of course, if you're the one rigging them game... Unless Purple Smart has also gotten to you already, too. Which is possible.
"...forced some kind of connection" huh. Well good to see one of my bigger worries regarding Cadence show up.
9145314
Ahahaha...
Please don't continue this avenue of questions and theories. Don't want to give away the game too soon now.
9145316
Sunset's concerns are unfounded.
I go with the usual take that Cadance's love magic only works on OTPs, not crack-ships. She can't bond two creatures or even force love upon somepony, but she is capable of repairing or strengthening a pre-existing bond.
Sunset is just convinced she's the devil.
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And I am now imaging Cadance wearing a wearwolf mask and gloves, running up and down the castle hallways and screaming "I AM THE DEVIL! I AM THE DEVIL! I AM THEDEVIL!" ad infinitum
9145020
I think you may have mucked your measurements as 250kg is about 555 lb’s. I seriously doubt that Sunset is that heavy, (not that I would say so to her face).
Well that's a slightly new one for me.
9145346
Actually...
If pony size is, as has been estimated from comparison to other creatures and surrunding objects, approximately around the size of the bottom end of Shetland pony size, they can weight around that sort of weight. It's a bit of an estimate - a google search indicates a pretty wide-spread range of results. If Starlight)_Glimmer just did a google search for "shetland pony weight" for instance, the first result says 200-350kg (for "under 12hh", i.e. hands). I've seen tables which suggest as little as 70lbs (which is from a table-based estimation and seems to be an outlier) and people talking on forums about their ponies at around 100-150kg.
(I would broadly have placed it in the 100-150kg area myself, from a rough median.)
But 200-250kg is not a hugely unreasonable estimation, then, for them as does not know better, not bein' horse-breedin' folk and what has to google it and/or for people not pedantic enough to spend ten minutes research to collate an estimate just for a comedic comment post (like I do, because I AM that pedantic).
(And if Starlight_Glimmer assumes ponies are bigger that bottom end Shetland ponies,, then 200-250kg is definitely in the ball-park and even quite low.)
I mean, that said, I don't know, you - or anypony else in the audience, for that matter - might be a horse-breeding/owning person and thus DO know better than me with nothing but google estimates to work from (and if anypony is - and I mean this with no sarcasm what so ever, just genuine interest - please do tell me what your ponies weigh, because one can never have enough data points).
9145324
Well, given what I know of Sunset’s desires and Cadance arrival, plus the fact that Cadance seems to twist ponies with her magic(even if it’s not “evil” it certainly doesn’t sound like all of these relationship recoveries would happen naturally, which means it would be classified as mind control), I can easily see why someone would hate the princess of love. Especially when that someone has busted their ass and still not achieved what Cadance blundered into by accident.
9145369
As it’s difficult to actually ascertain how big ponies are in Equestria, using real life comparisons won’t give accurate measurements. Being magical at heart, Equestrian ponies probably have different bone and muscle densities. As for describing the size and weight of ponies, I suppose it will vary form writer to writer, so you can describe them how you wish.
Cadance huh
Ahhh yes, i guess i can see why Sunset would consider Cadance that
I’m half convinced Sunset’s just gonna turn and leave without saying another word, if only to try and not start shouting in front of her new pupil
9145406
Not really, we've had a reasonable spread of evidence over the last eight seasons to make some reasonable approximations, within a borad error margin.
Aside from the comparison to things like cows, animals, fruit, we had at one point an explictly mentioned "eight foot" candy cane in an easy place to make a comparison which comes out at broadly the same height as someone on my local ponythread who extrapolated from a shot with the cows from season one.
When it comes down to it, the animators could not have done a halfway decent job if they didn't have a least a broad idea of how big something is compared to something else. So there is no reason to suppose an equatrian apple is not the same relative size as a terrestrial one.
Thre's a good discussion here that I discovered just - a good find for me, since it even mentions the poster who calcualted from the cows and even more of the instances that I'd forgotten about.
The results are fairly consistent, placing ponies around the three-foot shoulder height (and so roughly four foot to the top of the head, but that's not a good measure for quadrupeds) - as good a correlation (and attendant error margins) as you could expect.
As to "magic means different biology," I am always a believer in Occam's Razor, which means we don't have throw out everything just because magic. (And nor should we, that's poor writing.) Unless we are discussing Discord, where that is explictly his schtick. So I don't personally see why ponies should have a vastly different density to terrestrial creatures just because. And at the point the arguement becomes "I think ponies are made of marchmallows" verses "I think Applejack if made of dark matter" or something, it's not a useful debate to be having.
What people want to choose to do in their own stories or art is entirely their juristiction. If (the mataphorical) you wants - as some people do - to say ponies are the size of house-cats or are eighteen feet tall or whatever[1], that is entirely up to the metaphorical you; but in the absense of being explictly told the frame of reference I should be using for something, I'm going to default to Occam's Razor and the empirical evidence as collated by people as daft as I am.
(Though I for one will quite happily listen to anyone who wants to spend the time and effort to draw-up an alternative biology in detail, because I am willing to forgive nearly anything if it shows the writer has showed they have thought about it (even if they are not 100% correct) and that sort of thing would be fascinating reading.
I'm an engineer, if you want to sway my opinion, use maths/science or at least that you spent as long thinking about it as I do/would/will.))
[1]If, for example, many years ago, long before G4, you fight a wargame with your then-four-year old sister using your eldest sister's Gen 1 ponies and you own 28mm Aotrs ground force.
Nope. Sunset became far too nice far too quickly.
9145562
She's not nice, or being nice. In her own words, she's not a monster, and she's just not being a cunt to a five year old.
9145346
9145369
Ponies are around four foot at the withers as per the candy cane and numerous other estimates, and because I say so.
A good healthy weight for a terrestrial pony of that size is around 250-300kg.
But in real life not everypony is the same height. Sunset is a bit taller than average, as is the mare Twilight will grow into. Dash is small, compact- under three foot.
The mass of the three tribes varies quite a bit- Earth ponies tend to be heavier than the average because they tend to be fucking jacked. Pegasi tend to be lighter as they have hollow bones and more slender builds. Like a swimmer or a dancer as opposed to a tank.
Unicorns tend to be somewhere in the middle, as their method of expressing magic doesn't lend itself to physical prowess.
That look on Twilight's face is absolutely adorably hilarious!
9145639
Sunset Reset is hot garbage