Prologue: On Mirrors and the Breaking Thereof
Sneaking through the Crystal Palace was honestly a far simpler endeavor than Sunset Shimmer had thought it would be. Her little brother having figured out where she had disappeared to and begging her to come home was an unpleasant surprise at first, but she had quickly realized that she could turn the situation around and milk Sunburst for information with him being none the wiser. He had made the Crystal Empire sound like an impregnable fortress, protected by the strongest of shield magicks and the fiercest military on the continent.
Instead, Sunset found herself rolling her eyes as she walked unhindered with no more protection than a cloak and a wallflower spell. Another pair of guards trotted past her, chatting with each other about one of the new maids. Even the noise of her knocking over a vase of some sort as she got used to being quadrupedal again had been brushed off, the two guards that discovered it even blaming each other for the noise.
Clearly, if this was representative of the Guard at large, she’d have to make some changes to it once she took over the world.
Sunset grinned to herself. Once she got her hooves on the Element of Magic and figured out how to turn herself into an alicorn, Equestria wouldn’t know what hit it. And once she was Queen, Equus would be but putty in her hooves. Finally, finally, Celestia would know just how large of a mistake she made when she tossed her aside. Perhaps she could even get her brother to see reason and the two could rule together.
She was shaken out of her fantasies of the Great Queen Sunset and the Not-As-Great Prince Sunburst as she rounded the next corner. Her grin widened. Now this looked like a hallway with rooms fit for a princess. The feeling as she stalked forward practically confirmed it as well. The pressure on her horn, the sheer power she felt emanating from one room, was so thick she could almost taste it. The Element of Magic had to be there. And so, with a soundproofing charm on the hinges and her reinforcing her night vision charm, Sunset swung open the door.
True to form, the giant hunk of crystal moved soundlessly through the air and Sunset could see inside perfectly. A young dragon slept in a padded basket near the nightstand and a purple alicorn snored peacefully on the bed. The thief grit her teeth upon seeing the latter. Twilight Sparkle, the usurper. Her replacement. From everything that Sunburst had told her, Twilight was the mare that had stolen all that was rightfully hers. Idly, Sunset wondered if Miss Sparkle knew that she was naught but a pawn in Celestia’s great game of politics, molded to replace what Sunset could have been had she not broken free from the Princess’s shackles and sought power for herself.
Her eyes then fell upon the crown sitting on the nightstand, or more specifically the jewel embedded in it. The Element of Magic. Running a quick diagnostic spell over the area, she moved forward as quietly as possible. She stopped short once the spell’s results got back to her, though–not in worry, but in surprise. Sunset ran the spell again. Surely an artifact as important and powerful as this had at least some defenses…or not. Upon the results turning up negative once again, Sunset mentally shrugged and levitated the crown into her saddlebags. She wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
She momentarily paused. That turn of phrase worked on Earth, but not so much on Equus. She was back to work soon, though, choosing to contemplate the implications of that after the heist.
Quickly, she examined the replica Element she had crafted based on Sunburst’s description. For being made of paper mache and with Sunset having never seen the actual artifact, it was surprisingly good. Still, it wouldn’t fool anypony for more than a second, but she didn’t need it to as it was. A quick self-sustaining illusion spell took care of that. As long as nopony thought to check the Element for any spells for a few days, and given the lack of defenses she suspected nopony would, she would be safely in the human world with the mirror closed behind her before anypony noticed anything amiss. She would have two full years to drop out of the high school she had been hiding out in, forge some new documentation, and experiment on the Element of Magic.
Sunset smiled giddily as she placed the false Element on the nightstand (by hoof, this time; she wanted to make sure the illusion held up) and turned around, ready to exit the room. So happy she was with her near-successful heist, in fact, she forgot about the dragon-sized obstacle between her and the door and promptly tripped on his tail.
It was then, as Spike rolled over in his sleep, that Sunset made her first and only mistake, but one that cost her the heist. She reflexively opened her mouth.
“Shit!”
Had she not swore aloud, she might have succeeded. Spike was a heavy sleeper, after all, and tripping on his tail would not have woken him. Twilight was a heavy enough sleeper that the tinkling of gold on crystal as the Element of Magic spilled out of Sunset’s saddlebags and skidded across the floor would not have woken her. But alas, Sunset’s expletive of surprise woke the purple mare from her slumber.
Twilight’s eyes flicked around as she yawned herself awake, but she jolted upright when the little light from outside glinted off of her Element. Eyes wide and very much awake, Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria repeatedly glanced between the Element of Magic and the cloaked figure that had gotten back to her hooves.
For a small moment, there was silence as Sunset and Twilight stared at each other in the dark. The two mares were locked in a standoff, neither quite sure what to do in this situation. That is, until Twilight opened her mouth, and Sunset decided that she was too far in to just cut her losses.
“I’d love to stay and chat,” Sunset said, cutting Twilight off, “but I’ve gotta bounce.”
She grabbed the Element of Magic and bolted, making it out the door, closing it behind her, and running considerably far down the hall before Twilight’s first cries of “Thief!” reached her ears. An explosion followed soon after, as the door to Twilight’s room blasted open and discharged a large amount of expanding air, a suddenly wide awake young dragon, and what looked to be bits of flaming bedsheets. Sunset winced and resisted the urge to rub the base of her horn. Clearly she had forgotten to remove the soundproofing charm on the hinges and whatever Twilight had just done had shattered them. The hinges, not the charm–well, the charm itself had gone with it, but the doors were pretty clearly on the floor. The alicorn herself emerged moments later, fury in her eyes and moving so quickly that she lost her hoofing on the smooth crystal floor and shoulder-checked the wall.
Sunset just ran faster, not even bothering to let out the string of obscenities that she wanted to. It had not been in the plan to antagonize any of the alicorns until she was one herself. Directly engaging with one–even one as new to the power as Princess Twilight–would be detrimental to her health. And, if what Sunburst had told her was right, all four known alicorns were in the building.
In hindsight, Sunset’s heist attempt was a stupidly risky plan she had put together over a lunch break. Ah well, she was in far too deep to turn back now. She spared a glance back at her pursuers. Twilight was charging after her with Spike on her back, and both looked pissed. The other doors were beginning to creak open as well, their occupants curious as to what commotion woke them up at such an odd hour of the morning. Sunset didn’t give them the chance to see her, though, lighting her horn and artificially dumping more power into her legs.
She needed the speed boost, too. Twilight, having latent access to earth pony magic, was both faster and stronger than her. After that display of blasting her door off its hinges, Sunset didn’t doubt that Twilight was far more powerful than her when it came to unicorn magic too, albeit with less control. The one advantage that Sunset had over her right now was that the princess still seemed half asleep and was solely focused on getting her crown back. Maybe it was the adrenaline taking over, but Sunset felt herself grinning wildly.
Applying a sticking charm to her right forehoof, she pivoted ninety degrees on it to make a turn in under half a second. The suddenness and sharpness of it forced Twilight to slow down while Sunset just kept moving, and the orange-furred mare’s eyes glistened as she caught sight of the room she was gunning for. She hurriedly glanced around as she ran to find something–anything–to make her escape easier in the meantime. Sure enough, her eyes fell on the vase and stand she had knocked over earlier.
Grateful that not using magic for a few years hadn’t weakened her one bit, she picked up the column-shaped stand in her telekinesis and hurled it backwards. She expected to hear it being caught as Twilight stopped moving suddenly, or perhaps even a thud as she ran into it face-first.
She did not expect a flash of violet light in front of her as Twilight teleported, but perhaps she should have. Alicorn, right. Well, two can play at that game.
A short charge of magic later, and Sunset popped through space in much the same manner. In an outpouring of aquamarine light, she arrived just outside of the room containing Star Swirl the Bearded’s Dimensional Mirror, sans her cloak. Turning to the momentarily dumbfounded alicorn, she gave a cocky grin and a mock salute before rushing into the room.
That brief expression of hubris proved to be her undoing, however, as Twilight soon followed her. In a moment of terror, Sunset realized the mare was gaining on her and she tried running even harder towards the Mirror. It didn't quite work, though, and she yelped as she felt the magical pressure in the room increase rapidly and ducked on intuition. Doing so allowed her to dodge a blast from the irate alicorn that instead struck the Mirror. Ordinarily, Sunset would have just kept running and hoped for the best, but the Mirror’s frame spontaneously changing color to a golden hue and the Mirror itself gaining a bluish tint actually gave her pause for once.
Unfortunately, Twilight, still adjusting to her new strength and rather clumsy as a result, did not stop. Instead, she crashed right into Sunset, and momentum carried the two ponies and a dragon right through the malfunctioning portal.
Nary a moment later, a rainbow blur sped into the room. Rainbow Dash would have flown right after them into the now-swirling vortex that was the Mirror, but she never got the chance. Before she or anypony else that was entering the room could do anything, the Mirror imploded.
Once Sunset came to, the first thing she noticed was her form. Four legs, a horn, fur–it seemed that she was still a pony and hadn’t been transfigured back into a human. Pity. She might have had access to magic as a pony, but Twilight was surely still monumentally pissed and she wouldn’t have had any experience in a human form.
The second thing she noticed was that her surroundings were surprisingly plush. The kind of plush that made one want to sink into their mattress and never get up. The kind of plush that Sunset hadn’t felt since Princess Celestia had shown her how to walk on…clouds.
She hadn’t cast a cloud-waking spell.
Her eyes shot open and she sat upright so quickly she almost fell off of the cloud she was on. Gulping, she looked downward. That was a good kilometer drop to the ground, at least. Lighting her horn, she considered how much mana it would take if she were to teleport versus if she self-levitated down. Too much either way, she thought, but she had to get off this cloud before Twilight realized that she was awake.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Sunset turned at the voice, surprised to see not Twilight, but her dragon friend speaking. Twilight herself was unconscious on the cloud next to him.
“Oh?” Sunset taunted, though it was false bravado. “And what would you do to stop me?”
Spike shrugged. “I can’t. But with the amount of magic you were flinging around back in the Crystal Empire, you probably wouldn’t make it to the ground without going splat.” He grinned, holding the Element of Magic. “Besides, I already pilfered your saddlebags. You’re not going anywhere until Twilight wakes up.”
Sunset sat down with a groan. Loath as she was to admit it, the young drake was right. She didn’t have nearly enough strength to make it down in one piece as she was now, and even if she did, magically taking something from a dragon that wanted it was notoriously difficult. She wouldn’t just kill him and take it either. Grand larceny, gaslighting, and forgery were all fair game to her, but she was above murdering a child, thank you very much. Besides, she needed Twilight alive and well to figure out what she did to the Mirror, and Sunset assumed that killing her friend wouldn’t award her any brownie points with the princess. She was running low on those as it was already.
“How are you awake, anyway?” She asked, deciding that she needed something to kill time. “Shouldn’t you have been knocked out with the rest of us?”
Spike cringed. “Dragons are a lot hardier than most ponies give us credit for.” He shivered. “I saw the whole thing in the Mirror. Speaking of,” he held up a shard of broken glass and pointed upward, “we’ve got a bit of a problem.”
Sunset slowly looked up at the Mirror–or at least, where the Mirror used to be. The glass was entirely gone, shattered as they passed through, she presumed. Its floating frame was in shambles, bent every which way and even torn apart in some places. Even as she looked, a piece of it ripped off and began its long journey to the ground.
The decrepit Mirror, however, was not what caught Sunset’s eye. No, even as disappointing as that was, she was mostly paying attention to what was above the Mirror. The night sky stretched from horizon to horizon, displaying its sparkling stars in foreign shapes. Sunset had spent long nights studying the stars both on Equus and on Earth, but never had she seen anything like this. And the stars were only part of the story, for across the sky stretched two great, ethereal arches, glistening in the light provided by not one, not two, but three moons.
Sunset felt her jaw drop. This was entirely new to her. She was still expecting to have wound up on Earth, but given how it felt like clouds worked here she suspected that they were in a new universe altogether. Really, she only had one response to it.
“Oh shit.”
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That's a very great start! And since it will be more focused on character interaction in Kirby's crazy universe, then I'm expecting a lot of nonsense shenanigans. This will be fun.
Oh boi and this Sunset has been to earth too...... that could get dark given Shiver Star.
11334137
Thanks for the encouragement! Rest assured, there will be many shenanigans. Hopefully Twilight won't have completely pulled her mane out before she accepts that the Kirby universe has a...let's call it a loose grasp on physics.
11334410
Oh don't worry, I have plans for once we get to Crystal Shards. :)
Great start thus far. I am looking forward to more in the future. If I may ask which games will you be doing?
11334464
I plan on covering most of them, but Twilight, Sunset, and Spike won't necessarily be directly involved in the plot of every game that happens while they're on Popstar. Also, I did mess with the timeline a slight bit for narrative reasons, so the games aren't necessarily in release order. I'll expand on the exact order I plan on having the games be in a bit more in next chapter's Author's Note.
11334714
I'm sure that they will at least get involved in Planet Robobot's plot, and this will be grandiose when Twilight will get her hooves on an Invader Armor.
11334783
Certainly. Robobot is a planet-wide catastrophe; our heroes are getting involved whether they want to or not.
That's still a long ways off, though. For now, we've still got some early games to get through.
Alright so,don't Know How I didn’t notice this Earlier,just saw the Thing on updated Stories and decided to give it a go.
I'm Curious because of this Being Based off one of my Favorites Stories of the Site and that is more character Focused so sure,Let’s go For yet another Adventure with Ponies and a Pink Puffball.