How To Get To The Other Side
“So…” Twilight looked around them. There wasn't much to see. The inside of the microwave bot looked like, well, the inside of a microwave, even down to the large glass disc that could presumably rotate. And also the absence of any convenient escape hatches. “What do we do?”
Sunset took a deep breath. “I guess getting out of this thing has to be our first priority. I imagine Sundown wouldn’t put us in here if it wasn’t fairly secure, but maybe we can force something with the two of us. Or with your magic.”
Twilight looked sceptical, but had a look out of the glass front. She reached out with her magic and grabbed a storage box on the outside. “All right… I think the open button was about… here?” She bashed the box into the front of the droid a few times. “I can’t really see what I’m doing… and we don’t even know if that button will work or if Sundown locked it somehow.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks for trying,” Sunset said sadly. She sat down on the hard metal floor of their culinary prison.
A minute later, the vibration and motion came to a sudden stop. The inside of the robot felt very dark and quiet. “I guess this is the charging station where the robot sits overnight,” Sunset commented, just for something to say to fill the sudden hush.
Twilight just nodded despondently. The silence stretched around them.
After an unknown number of minutes, a couple of thuds made Sunset look up. The corner of the warehouse still looked deserted. Then a small glowing point in the distance appeared and started moving towards them. It seemed to be a small screen, held about waist height, and in the faint illumination it provided they could see the face of…
“Pinkie Pie?!” Sunset exclaimed.
Pinkie’s eyes lit up at the sound of Sunset’s voice, even muffled through the glass door. She turned behind her and called something, and soon Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Rarity turned up behind her.
They all clustered around the glass door of the dormant microwave robot. “Oh no, she caught you,” said Fluttershy in sympathy.
“I’m so glad you’re all here!” Sunset exclaimed. “But… how? Why? Sundown was saying she changed our text messages to tell you to keep away…”
Applejack nodded. “Yep, we got yer message tellin’ us to leave it till tomorrow. It seemed a mite odd, though, so Rares and I wondered if something weren’t quite right.”
“So they phoned me!” Pinkie interrupted. “And I thought to myself, Pinkie, how can you tell whether this message is really from your friends or not? And I tried smelling it but then I realised text messages don’t smell of anything. But then I remembered I still had this GPS tracker gizmo from last time! So I thought I’d see if you were at home or at the cinema or what, and then I saw you’d come out here after all, and I thought, would they really tell us to wait and then come here to have all the fun for themselves? And I decided no, of course they wouldn’t! You’d want us all to come and join you so we could all have fun together!”
“Pinkie!” Twilight cried. “You’re a genius!”
“I get that a lot,” Pinkie said with a smile. “But thanks.”
“So they got the van, came and collected us all, and we made our way in through a side door,” Rainbow Dash concluded. “We even managed to be a bit subtler than last time about opening the door.”
“And that was really exciting because I wouldn’t have thought that exploding candy inside a door lock would count as subtle, but everyone else seemed to be happy about it so that makes me happy, and now we’ve found you that makes me happier! Now we just need to break that glass to get you out and I’ll be happiest!”
Applejack and Rarity caught each other’s eye. “Shall we?” said Rarity, gesturing to the glass panel. She put up a large crystal shield on Sunset and Twilight’s side of the door. Applejack cracked her knuckles and delivered an almighty punch. The glass shattered inwards, the crystal protecting the imprisoned pair from harm.
When the shards had all fallen, Rarity made a couple more gemstone platforms for Sunset and Twilight to climb on. They staggered out of the robot and hugged their friends. “Thank you for coming for us,” Twilight said, and Sunset nodded fervently.
Twilight looked behind her at the smashed robot. “First up, let’s make sure this automaton doesn’t wake up and start emitting unsafe levels of unshielded microwaves.” She poked around and added, “Aha. Here’s the charger. Pinkie, would you do the honours?”
“With pleasure,” came the reply. One shake of exploding sprinkles later, Twilight nodded in satisfaction.
“Okay. Good job,” Sunset said. “Now I need to let you girls know about earlier. A... variety of things went wrong, but chief among them is that when I tried to read Sundown’s mind, something weird happened with my magic and she got to see my mind too. I don’t know how much she saw, but it was enough to tell my history... We have to assume that she now knows every ability or secret of ours.”
“Oof,” Applejack said. “That sure don’t help.”
“Unless it does,” Rarity mused.
Sunset frowned at Rarity, but she didn’t have time to figure out what she meant. Once again the lights flashed on and they saw Sundown’s familiar mask riding towards them on top of the kettle robot, with another robot following her which looked like a gigantic version of an old eighties radio.
Sundown pointed a finger at the group and snarled, “I am getting completely fed up with you girls! Breaking into my lair! Destroying my robots! Taunting me with your magic! So this – stops – now!”
The friends flashed into costume and soared into the air.
Sundown reacted immediately. She jumped down and ducked out of sight behind one of the shelves. Sunset couldn’t follow where she’d gone because jets of steam shot out from the kettle towards the Rainbooms, forcing them to scatter.
Sunset looked at the robot and called out, “It’s got a spout. Pinkie, wanna cut to the chase?”
“You got it!!” Pinkie flew up towards the giant kettle and pulled out an apple pie, which started glowing. With a cry of “Anyone for steamed apples?”, she threw the sweet pastry in a perfect arc towards the robot’s spout.
Suddenly a laser beam shot out of the air and smashed the pie before it could enter the kettle-bot. The crumbs scattered and exploded harmlessly.
Sunset’s eyes combed the air for the source of the laser. She spotted a drone hovering near the ceiling. “Looks like we need to take out the drone first!”
“On it!” yelled Rainbow Dash, disappearing upwards in a blur.
The small machine dodged out of the rainbow’s path a few times and then fired a laser straight into the head of the blur. Rainbow Dash dropped to the floor, rubbing her shoulder. “Man, that thing has good reactions!”
“Can’t I just punch it?” asked Applejack plaintively. She zoomed down towards the kettle, which was still venting steam into the atmosphere.
One of the steam pipes angled towards Applejack. Rarity sighed. “Do try to be careful, darling!” she called, throwing a barrier between Applejack and the targeted jet of steam.
This allowed Applejack to get close enough to lay hands on the caterpillar tracks, and she started ripping them apart with gusto. But suddenly the radio robot emitted a loud, high note, and Rarity’s crystal smashed.
“Applejack! Get out of there!” Rarity cried. She magicked up several more crystals but they all instantly shattered at the sound.
Applejack looked up in concern, straight at the steam pipe, just as it started venting… Then suddenly she was snatched out of the way by a rainbow and deposited in the shelter of a block of shelves. “Thanks, Dash,” she murmured.
Sundown’s cackling voice echoed from the radio’s giant speakers. “Hahaha! Looks like it was even easier to neutralise your powers than I’d thought! Do you give up yet?”
“No way!” Sunset yelled. “Rainbooms, regroup!” The seven girls flew out of the kettle’s range and ducked down behind a shelf.
“Okay, anyone any ideas?” Sunset asked urgently. “How do we stop that drone shooting Pinkie’s sugar bombs and the radio smashing Rarity’s crystals?”
“If only I had a laptop on hand, I could try to hack their control frequencies,” Twilight sighed.
After a few seconds, Fluttershy hesitantly said, “Um… I think I might be able to handle the drone. Especially if Twilight helps me.”
“Of course,” said Twilight in surprise. “What do you need?”
“Let me tell you while we’re up there,” said Fluttershy, heading for the ceiling. Twilight shrugged at Sunset and followed.
“It oughta be possible to get behind that noise-makin’ thing ta smash it,” mused Applejack. “Dash, reckon you could dodge the steam while carryin’ me?”
“Ugh,” grumbled Rainbow Dash. “Carrying anyone in Speed is such hard work. But yeah, sure. Let’s go.”
“Which leaves us to take out the ridiculous kettle thing,” said Sunset to Rarity and Pinkie.
“If the others can stop that beastly noise from destroying my beautiful jewels, we’ll be fine.” Rarity sounded aggrieved, as if the shattering tone were a criticism of her personal taste.
“We’d better be ready. Let’s get back out there.”
Sundown was calling out in a mocking tone, her taunts amplified by the radio robot. “Come out, come out, wherever you are! I didn’t think superheroes were meant to play hide and seek!”
Sunset took to the sky, and looked above her. Fluttershy was chatting to someone or something, then hissed to Sunset, “They just need another minute or two!”
She floated higher, so she could see the pair of large robots. Sundown was back to standing on top of the kettle droid, which had given up trying to move on its damaged treads and was just standing still, steam pipes ready to shoot. The radio was behind her, and as Sunset watched, a rainbow trail arrived behind it. They were noticed by the villain watching from atop the kettle, of course, since Rainbow Dash wasn’t really capable of being subtle. But she still landed Applejack in a position where the bulk of the radio was shielding her from the kettle, so despite Sundown’s best efforts aiming steam, Applejack was able to lay into the radio bot. It directed some unpleasantly loud boom tones at her, and then abruptly cut off: Applejack had obviously broken the connection.
She looked back at the rafters. Fluttershy was giving Twilight Sparkle a thumbs up. The hovering drone was still patrolling the air, but found itself enveloped in a purple magical field and tugged towards Fluttershy. It righted itself… but then wobbled unstably as it found its rotors getting tangled in extra thick strands of spider silk. “Yay! Good job, everyone!” said Fluttershy, presumably to the band of spiders she’d found on the ceiling. The drone was now hanging from a web at an awkward angle with its camera pointed hopelessly off to one side.
Sunset grinned. “Pinkie, Rarity? You’re good to go.”
As shields appeared blocking the steam vents, Pinkie produced a pair of choc chip cookies. With a gleeful bound she cried, “I think it’s time for a chocolate–”
“STOP!”
“Aww, what now?” Pinkie asked Sunset dejectedly.
“That wasn’t me,” Sunset said drily. She gestured to Sundown, who had raised her hands angrily. “It was her.”
“Ugh! Fine! You win!” Sundown yelled, her voice sounding lonely without the radio amplification. “Can you please stop destroying my robots now?!”
Sunset moved down to levitate in front of Sundown’s perch on the kettle. “Really? You surrender?”
Sundown growled in frustration. “...Yes. Look, I’ll power them down.” She jabbed at some buttons on her controller, and the various lights on the robots went off.
Sunset felt her friends gather each side of her, hovering as a group of seven. Sundown looked at them and said morosely, “Is that the reason for the ‘power of friendship’? You get a whole team of magical abilities and the ability to coordinate them?”
“That does come in handy at times, but it’s not the main benefit, actually, no,” Sunset said, her hands spread wide in openness. “Remember I’ve done my time as a villain too. I can honestly say life is more fulfilling with friends you can trust.”
“Ugh, spare me.” Sundown scowled. “Take your kooky inventions and go.”
Sunset exchanged glances with her friends, and then slowly moved forwards. “We could do that,” she agreed. “But I feel like maybe we could help you with something more.” She landed on top of the deactivated kettle-bot next to her other self.
“I don’t need your pity, or your friendship!” Sundown cried.
“That’s true, you don’t,” Sunset said casually. “But think about what you saw in my mind before. We’re similar, at least, aren’t we, you and I? We respond to things in similar ways, even if I make worse mistakes than you do? Then take a look in my mind one more time, at what it feels like to experience friendship. Even if I made a total mess of my villain days… look at what it was like for me to have friends I could trust for the first time.”
She extended a hand. Sundown stared at it for an endless minute. Then slowly she reached out her own identical hand, and touched it.
FLASH
The two Sunset Shimmers stood atop the robot. Then, gently, one pulled the other into a hug. The one with a mask pulled it off. Then she surprised everyone, even herself, by bursting into tears on her other self’s shoulder.
The other Rainbooms smiled understanding smiles and drifted down to the floor.
At length, the host disengaged from the other Sunset Shimmer and looked around at her guests. “I can’t remember the last time I let anyone see my face,” she said, wiping her eyes. She jumped down from the robot and then stood awkwardly among them for a few moments. “So… what now?”
“We are all big believers in second chances,” said Twilight Sparkle with a rueful smile. “So it’s up to you. You can make a fresh start. What do you want to do now?”
“Hah. A fresh start sounds great, but I still have the police of three cities looking for me. Unless...” She paused, and then reached into her jumpsuit and pulled out a blood-red pen. “I guess I could delete all their records on me, with this…”
Rainbow Dash slapped her forehead. “Oh yeah! We forgot to zap the magic thingie with the rainbow laser!”
“Doing one last crime to give yourself a clean slate is one idea, I suppose,” Sunset Shimmer said. “But I have another option in mind. I saw when you touched me the second time: you really like magic, don’t you?”
The short-haired Sunset Shimmer nodded vigorously. “So much! I want to take all your geode necklaces and try them all out and study them all. …I’m not going to actually try to,” she added, seeing the way some of the others were looking at her. “But when I got this pen, I immediately wanted to investigate all its capabilities. I kept detailed records, in my own private code, of course. There’s still plenty to learn even from just this one artifact.”
“How would you like to go somewhere where not only do you have a clean slate, but you get to study dozens of magic artifacts and hundreds of spells?”
The wide-eyed look spoke for itself.
“Don’t be a stranger! Come back and visit sometimes!”
The group assembled out the front of Canterlot High waved as the girl with the short red hair stepped into the statue.
“How are you doing?” Twilight Sparkle asked Sunset softly.
“Honestly? I’m feeling pretty good,” replied Sunset with a smile. “Obviously I’m glad you’re not going to have any more trouble with hackers or thieves taking your stuff.”
“But this place you’re sending her, Princess Celestia’s School for…”
“...Gifted Unicorns,” Sunset supplied. “Technically we don’t know for sure she’ll actually be gifted on that side of the portal, but it seems a pretty safe bet.”
“Isn’t that where you used to study? Where the dark magic got too tempting for you?” Twilight’s tone was concerned.
Sunset nodded. “Yeah. I thought about the risks. But I think from what I saw in her mind, and what she saw in mine, she’ll be well equipped to make the right choices there.”
“And what about if she ends up the prize student of Princess Celestia? You won't be... jealous?”
This time Sunset broke into a broad grin. “No way. I can’t think of anyone more suited to it.”
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Of course human!Sunset would have megalomaniacal tendencies. Makes perfect sense.
And the giant kitchen droids are very much something that would appear in the show.
Nice story!
... Oh! Huh. The Sunsets' powers are similar! Cool! Each is technically breaking into private locations!
And now they're on similar paths!
Does the cover art come from an EQG special?
Dreadnought
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Oh, good point, I should list my sources in the description. No, I composited it myself from this screencap from Mad Twience and this clip from one of the EqG shorts. Applied a slight gradient darkening to try to fix the light levels a bit and make it look vaguely like Sunset's illuminated by the screen the same way Twilight is.
10489684
Composited? You're going to have to teach me that trick.
Dreadnought
10489691
It's basically just using the Fuzzy Select tool in GIMP :) There are a few good tutorials out there: this one covers the basics nicely, and there's more advanced ones like this and this. And then just practice.
This was a fun romp true to the spirit of EQG.
Overall, this seemed very reminiscent of EqG. That's good, but also a mixed blessing, I think; the downsides being that the pacing is a little fast and the portrayal of tech (and the magic involved) leaves me scratching my head and internally debating things such as whether a magic stick with an allegedly "short range" could actually intercept and send text messages to a group chat.
Awwww...I just realised all the titles are song lines from the Rainbooms
The reaction of every green player met with air superiority.
The other reaction of every green player met with air superiority.
Good stuff overall, especially the resolution. But as the comments attest, there were a few points where the characters had me tugging at my hair. Still, glad I finally got to this one. So sorry I missed until now. Thank you for it, and best of luck in the judging.
10498237
Hehe. So since there isn't likely to be a sequel to this, I may as well explain here: Twilight's not quite right with her interpretation of Sunset's magic item's powers, but I never found a place to spell it out more precisely. The clue is that the pen was being used to forge letters. What it does is let Sundown perfectly pretend to be anyone else in communications, whether that's forging their signature, or getting anyone's password. Would that allow you to send messages to a group chat? I think so, assuming the chat isn't literally SMS but something with a web interface like WhatsApp or Facebook chat.
And as for pacing... I do get comments on several of my fics saying similar things. Amusingly, this fic was meant to have quite a bit more to it (while still fitting into 15k words for the contest), and then after I cut it down it was meant to have a third action scene before I combined the last two. I guess I still don't quite know how to write short stories
I'll very happily take any comparisons to EqG though, because that's exactly what I was going for
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Haha. AJ being the ground pounder frustrated with the utility flying creature, and Fluttershy having the spider spells... Yep, makes sense to me.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it. And you definitely don't need to apologise for "only" reading it a week after it was published! Thanks for reading and commenting, and I'm glad the resolution worked for you. And thank you for running the contest without which I wouldn't have written it!
This was good. Not the biggest fan of how Micro-Chips was portrayed here, but other than that quite good (especially for something written for a contest). I will say the whole pen thing makes a lot more sense now that you've explained it. Then again I was using my go to view (that it's "Magic") to interpret it, so it didn't really interfere with my enjoyment of the story that much.
Gripping, and a headcanon I am more than willing to accept :) You write action really well!
soloquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Motivational-Quotes-Stay-Amazing.jpg
Oh wow, and what a good ending! :D
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Thank you very much for reading and commenting! I do love it when readers leave a comment after each chapter. I'm very glad you enjoyed it!
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And then I realized I've read and reviewed all of your stories to date but never followed you, so I fixed that! :D
This enjoyable experience was faithful to the essence of the "My Little Pony: Equestria Girls" franchise. It was full of fun and entertainment, and celebrated the values this franchise is known for.
William thomas
Professional Jewelry Retoucher
You can has review!
what i don't really understand is, if sundown has all these arrest warrants, why isn't sunset having problems with the law and mistaken identities