Chapter 2 - No Love Lost
“And that brings us to now, Princess.” Sunset Shimmer sipped her raspberry tea, putting on a smile for an alicorn who had, by the bags in her eyes, been awake all night.
Or, rather, what should have been night. The clock said it was supposed to be five in the morning, the day after what everypony was calling ‘The Incident’ (because nopony actually knew enough to call it something better). Despite being the ‘dark’ hours of the morning, if you didn’t own a clock, it was still the late afternoon/early evening of the previous day. Celestia’s sun hung in the west, wrapping the horizon in copper and rose, as it had for the past nine hours.
See, as soon as she was let go from her official questioning (thanks to that Sentry guy’s testimony), Sunset had beelined, at full gallop, towards the Canterlot villa of Princess-in-Training Mi Amore Cadenza. She’d have teleported… if she’d ever actually been there or seen the place.
It would have been a lot more convenient if Cadance just lived full-time in the Celestial Palace like Sunset, but she had apparently wanted a place of her own when she was a teenager, and the full Princess was all too permitting.
Fine by Sunset, up until now. Sunset Shimmer was… not exactly a fan of Cadance. She had never particularly liked Celestia’s adopted niece, forced to compete with her for her mentor’s full attention – and her opinion certainly didn’t improve when Cadance had the nerve to just show up to Court one fine, sunny morning as an alicorn.
The only good thing about that day was it caught Sunset onto the idea that anypony could become an alicorn, if they met the right criteria.
Just… what were those criteria, exactly?
Cadance had them, and she was… well, Cadance. An unimpressive specimen.
Sunset’s working theory was that it had something to do with her royal legacy, since it couldn’t have been based entirely on magical prowess. Cadance was apparently the last, lost descendent of a long line of Princesses-in-Exile, from some northern “empire” that had vanished a millennium ago, back when you could still call a city-state and its satellite villages an empire.
Whether it was true or not, as with many stories Celestia told, was impossible to prove.
So, for the longest time, Sunset dreamt of learning that she was actually also the secret scion of a lineage of pony royalty herself – though the vision she saw in the mirror led her to realize such a connection might not actually be necessary.
In any case, despite Sunset’s dislike, the two of them never interacted much. If Cadance were the newer of Celestia’s two students, Sunset absolutely might have tried to sabotage her, but by the time Celestia plucked Sunset out of obscurity, Cadance had been there for years. Any attempt to dislodge her from the Princess risked damaging Sunset’s own standing even worse.
So Sunset simply didn’t bother to bother Cadance; it was easier to just never give her the time of day like she did all the other irrelevant ponies in the periphery of her life. Likewise, Cadance left Sunset alone, presumably warned away from her by Celestia herself.
When the annoying obstacle to Celestia’s attention transformed into the Princess (to-be) of Love, Sunset could do little but fume and console herself that love was an insipid thing to be the Princess of. It wasn’t the glorious Day. It wasn’t the vacant domain of mysterious Night. It wasn’t powerful, progressive, industrious, untouchable Flame, like Sunset had picked out for herself. It was just an abstract relationship that ponies had managed just fine without Cadance for millennia.
In any case, Sunset was able to swallow her disdain and pay her rival a visit. She could pretend to be nice long enough to brush her “disagreement” with Celestia under the rug, and they could go back to mostly ignoring each other. Hopefully.
The roads were remarkably… wet. Rain hadn’t been scheduled for that day, so Sunset had no idea what that was about; only an assumption that it must somehow be connected to the Incident.
Two guards were posted at the gate, and that seemed to be… it. Just those two. Maybe it was the hour, but it just seemed so sparse a detail for what her eyes insisted was seven-ish PM.
Insultingly, they didn’t take her credentials as Royal Student as permission to go right inside. Instead, they insisted the Princess-in-Training wasn’t seeing anypony, on account of being asleep, and was not to be disturbed. They stopped responding to her arguments about five minutes in, but Sunset would not allow them the pleasure of silence in turn.
Fortunately, the racket had the effect of drawing just the mare she wanted to see out of the villa, blearily plodding down the garden walk to see what was going on.
She didn’t really say anything; she just took two sluggish blinks, unlocked the gate with her magic, and gestured with her head for Sunset to follow.
The garden was well-kept, even if all the heart-shaped topiary seemed a bit on-the-nose, but the manor itself? It felt more like the occupied territories of a teenager’s expansionist bedroom, than the lavish estate of a prospective diarch. It wasn’t unclean; the dishes were washed, just not put away. Didn’t Cadance have a maid? Or was she legitimately just doing it all herself?
There were posters on the walls, for movies and stage plays and the odd travelling band. It didn’t really come as a surprise that the Princess of Love still held onto the posters which that Post-Crush duo had gifted her at the concert she dragged her aunt and a thirteen-year-old Sunset to: every album cover they put out, instrument they played, and autograph they signed was absolutely plastered with hearts.
–No, Sunset didn’t have an autograph from Kiwi Lollipop hidden in her room, too precious to get rid of and too embarrassing to display. Don’t be ridiculous. She’d never listen to such bubbly pop, regardless of how heart-thumpingly bassy their synths were or how cool Kiwi was.
Moving on.
Sunset was worried Cadance would make her sit down on one of the couches in the parlor, whose cushions housed dozens upon dozens of assorted pink, red, white, and sometimes yellow or purple plushies, but after a moment’s stop to correct the alignment of the most cuddly-looking manticore Sunset had ever seen, Cadance guided Sunset, mercifully, into the breakfast nook of the kitchen, where there was actual open seating.
Perched upon that oversized wooden chair, Sunset gave her own account of yesterday’s events, and now it was time to see where Cadance was at. Sunset grinned as pleasantly as she could, given the circumstances, and summed things up as follows: “So, yeah. Now I’m your student, for the time being.”
Cadance blinked. “…Right now?”
“Oh, no, I just wanted to make sure you knew. I don’t mind waiting until you’ve settled in to actually resume my studies. I’m sure you’ve got a lot on your plate.” Sunset did mind waiting, but again: play nice.
“…I barely know the first thing about magic.”
Well, that was certainly true. Princess Cadance had only had about a year at that point to adjust to her new horn, which she had, demonstrably, not. As she held her teacup aloft, the power in Cadance’s cornflower aura was undeniable, but there was an unsteady wobble to it, constantly micro-adjusting to thread a needle between the strength to lift it and the gentleness not to crush it in her levitative grip.
Finishing off the cup, she set it down with a clank that made her flinch and check for chipped ceramic, before admitting, “If anything, I should be your magic student, from what I’ve heard.”
Logically, Sunset was certain this was nothing but flattery, but… banish her if she didn’t like having her ego stoked all the same. She couldn’t help but chuckle. “I bet I could teach you a thing or two, Princess–
“But, right, when it comes to my education: obviously, I don’t expect you to pick up where the Princess left off. Here’s the thing: so much of it was independent study, anyways, and the bits that weren’t… Well, I’m sure she keeps curricula around…” She waved her hoof around. “…Somewhere.” Frankly, Celestia probably didn’t write a banished thing down, but if Sunset got to keep her position as Royal Student without ever having to attend any lessons, left alone to her devices in a castle full of mystical lore… and perhaps negotiating access to the various chambers and archives forbidden to her… all the better!
Cadance was about to respond when the front door lock started fidgeting, so she switched gears to pouring herself another cup.
Trying not to sound nervous, Sunset asked, “Oh, were you expecting company?”
“You could say that.” Cadance cleared her throat and raised her voice to holler, “It’s not locked!”
After a moment’s pause, a large and familiar stallion muscled through the front door, chiding, “Well, it should be. We still don’t know if you’ll be the next targ– Shimmer. What are you doing here.”
Sunset blanched, crudely clinging to her composure. “Oh! Shining Armor! What a surprise! I could say the same!”
“I live here.”
“…At the villa of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza?”
“Yes.” His answer was immediate and entirely serious, but beneath that single word was just a subtle inflection of how-on-Equus-did-you-not-know-that.
Over a series of calculations that spanned barely a microsecond, the social arithmetic updated itself in Sunset Shimmer’s head, coming to a conclusion that slapped her across the face. “Oh. Oh! That explains how you made Guard-Captain so young!” She glanced at Cadance with a conspiratorial grin, delighted to have sussed something so scandalous out.
“If you want to believe that’s the reason why, sure,” he dismissed. “I’m asking again: what are you doing here, Shimmer?”
Cadance answered for her, her tone mediative. “Sunset was just letting me know she was happy to continue her teachings under me, to the best of my ability.” She took a sip of her tea and added, letting her exhaustion slip, “Which is fine by me. What’s one more massive responsibility suddenly thrust upon me overnight?”
“Right.” Shining strode up to Cadance and gave her a peck on the cheek, with a dash of haste and embarrassment that he hadn’t done so already. He continued, “And I’m assuming Sunset conveniently left out the part about how Princess Celestia dismissed her in disgrace, just two hours before the Princess disappeared.”
Cadance turned a judgemental eye to Sunset. “She didn’t mention anything like that at all, no.”
Sunset smiled and pointed a hoof at Shining. “That’s because I haven’t been properly dismissed!” She couldn’t let herself sound too menacingly smug, nor too indignant at Shining’s interference. “The paperwork was incomplete when the Princess vanished! She hadn’t gotten around to signing off on it.”
Shining’s eyes narrowed. “How did you learn that?”
Sunset chuckled, genuinely this time. “I figured it out all by myself when you, Raven, and Kibitz were the only ponies surprised to see me in the castle. Raven was kind enough” – or obsessively devoted enough to bureaucratic procedure – “to inform me of my unchanged status until the necessary royal signature can be acquired.”
Sunset was only 80% certain that would hold up in a court of law, but it was all she had.
“Sunset…” Cadance took on a wary tone, pressing closer to the meat-shield that was Shining. “You didn’t make Celestia disappear just to retain your prospects as a potential Princess, did you?”
It was a disarmingly naïve question. Sunset had watched the Day Court’s politics for years. You didn’t just ask your suspected conspirators if they were conspiring against you. What was Celestia teaching her?
…It also implied Cadance believed that Princesshood was part of Sunset’s life trajectory, before… all this.
So stunning was Cadance’s question that Sunset nearly fell out of her chair. Once she caught herself, she shook her head vigorously enough to mess up her hair. “What? Of course not!”
Cadance cast her eyes to Shining, raising a brow.
“It’s a possibility we can’t rule out,” he said.
Her horn lit up to thread the loose strands of crimson and gold back into her mane. “Uh, yes, you can! A scheme that idiotic would totally blow up in my face! Be–Besides being evil, of course.”
“‘Blow up?’ Care to expand on that?”, Cadance invited.
“Well, for one, you haven’t even finished your Princess training, so I can’t imagine you’ve been taught whichever mystic, sacred ritual Celestia uses to ascend ponies like you or me into alicornhood.” For all Sunset knew, Cadance didn’t even know how to move the celestial bodies, and everypony would have to deal with the wrong, lowercase kind of ‘eternal sunset’ watching over them for however long it took either to bring Celestia back, or for one of the two of them to learn cosmic manipulation on her own.
“And even if you did know how,” Sunset continued, “and you did make me the Princess I deserv– if you did make me a Princess? What would I even be inheriting, when the crown came to me? A nation in chaos?” Of course, Sunset was pretty sure she could handle a nation in chaos – it just sounded like a pain in the flanks that she could do without.
“I mean, I would be Princess before you. I take it you don’t trust me to get things under control?” She… didn’t seem that hurt by the implication, like there was an unspoken ‘either’ at the end there.
While the answer was ‘yes’, Sunset pretended it was ‘maybe’ instead. Something, something, when you’re in a hole, dig slower. “Well, okay, maybe you do, but maybe you don’t! Just, realistically, a Princess straight-up vanishing is the scale of problem Equestria hasn’t faced in centuries, if not millennia.”
Cadance did not appear to react one way or another, which Sunset could not be confident was a good thing, so Sunset decided to recontextualize it in a way that hopefully took most of the insult off. “You haven’t exactly had a chance to prove your rulership skills one way or the other, have you?”
“Well, I’m going to have to, soon enough,” Cadance groaned, casting a glance out the bay window of the breakfast nook, to a sun in pretty much the opposite place it was supposed to be. “Anyways, Shining, dear, do you buy this?”
Shining studied Sunset with a glare that still didn’t like her or her face one bit, but which no longer bore any accusation. “While we can’t completely rule out her involvement with The Incident… it is very unlikely. Unless she was somehow able to mastermind this entire plot – abduction, artifact theft, and weather sabotage –” – so the rain definitely wasn’t an accident – “in the hoofful of hours between me showing her the door and discovering her with Flash Sentry, she’s not our prime suspect, either.” With a sigh, he added, “Things would have been so much simpler if she was.”
He sat down at the breakfast table, joining the two of them and resting his weary head on his hooves. “Instead, Sunset here is the reason Bracer Impact gets to go home to his husband and foals. He was the only guard with any coronal signatures from Miss Shimmer on him, and they matched the profile of a CPR spell. Whatever the other facts are, she did save a stallion’s life, when she could have fled the scene of somepony else’s crime instead. For all she knew at the time (as she claims) the looking glass was just down the hall, and nopony could have followed her.”
Cadance stared into her tea before downing the whole cup and taking a deep breath. “So why didn’t you, Sunset?”, she finally asked.
Sunset gulped. The truth was not compelling and it revealed her weakness, but she didn’t have anything else prepared. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. It wouldn’t have been right.”
Shining rolled his eyes.
“Hey! I saw that. Look, listen, okay, maybe I could have moved on if I didn’t hesitate in the first place. Maybe if I was the one who put him on the floor like that, I would have been able to rationalize past it. But the moment I started thinking about what if I was in his shoes, I just… had to do something.” She shrugged.
Cadance hummed, refilling her tea for the… honestly, nopony in that room knew how many times she had done so at that point. “Well, that answers that.”
That wasn’t an acknowledgement. The tone was off. That was a dropping-of-the-subject. Either Cadance didn’t believe Sunset, or she wanted to project skepticism, or – Sunset allowed – maybe she was just so tired she didn’t really have a response.
After a few awkward moments of silence, Cadance asked, “Why did Celestia dismiss you, anyways?”
Sunset opened her mouth to answer, but Shining cut her off. “Snooping where she shouldn’t be, against Celesia’s orders, and getting rebellious when she got caught. After enough repeat offenses, she decided enough was enough. That’s what I was told.”
So he was given – or was choosing to give – a very vague picture. The latter seemed unlikely, given his responsibility for Cadance’s and the state’s security, but his thoughts on the matter were proving more conflicted than Sunset took him for. “Did you have anything more specific to add, Shimmer?”
It was unclear what Shining wanted. He could have been prompting details out of her, or he could have been evaluating her honesty and discretion. “Both of you already know it had to do with the missing mirror, so… not really. Just… that I’m still upset with the Princess and her decision.”
“I understand,” Cadance assured her, and it sounded reasonably genuine.
Then she hummed.
The next words out of her mouth were ice. “You know, I could just say no. If a Royal signature is the only thing stopping you from being dismissed from Celestia’s service, when she clearly didn’t want you as her student anymore, then I just have to sign those forms as acting Princess, and you’d be officially dismissed.”
It took every ounce of composure not to start screaming and shouting at Cadance. After all the effort she went to, making a fantastic case for herself…
“But,” the Princess-in-Training continued, “that seems kind of mean. I don’t know you very well, outside of the rumors…”
Sunset cringed. She would have to do something about her reputation. If there was anything left she could do.
“But I don’t give too much credence to rumors, and I have never heard a single unkind word about you from Celestia.”
Sunset blinked, jaw going slightly slack.
That was surprising. Sunset kinda figured Celestia groaned and nagged about her to the nearest listener the moment Sunset was out of earshot, so… was Cadance lying, or was Celestia?
“And even though it would seem you have your flaws, like any other pony – myself included – you don’t seem too bad. If nothing else, Celestia had to see something worthwhile in you if she made you her student in the first place.”
Pity. That was what she saw. A sight that evoked pity. No need to spit that out, though.
Instead, “So… what are you saying, Princess?”
“I’m saying I’m willing to give you another chance.” She smiled uncomfortably, internally debating something until she added, “Besides, no matter what else is true about you, there just aren’t a lot of mages in your generation who have your level of talent. I’m just gonna come out and say it: I might need somepony as versed in magic as you at my side. There’s… There’s a lot going on right now.”
Hope was not an emotion Sunset felt very often. She didn’t need it. She had everything she could hope for.
‘Had’ being the keyword.
Hope felt like teleporting into the stratosphere without any way of knowing if somepony was going to catch her. It was sickening. Stomach-churning. Once she became an alicorn, she would never need to hope again.
“So… that’s a yes?”, she ventured.
“Yes, Sunset, you can continue being the Royal Student.”
Shining Armor shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He looked like he was biting his tongue. He settled on saying, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson, and you won’t repeat the mistakes you made under Princess Celestia’s tutelage with Cadance. I’m going to be watching you.”
Sunset really wanted to protest against that. She’d already secured the bag, so it probably couldn’t hurt to just ask, “Why?”
“Because it’s his job,” Cadance answered for him, “and he does it very well.” Again with the mediation. “Now, I think we’ve all had a very long day… literally… so I think we should end this discussion here. We can go over the finer details later.”
Fair enough. Sunset did feel a yawn coming on. “Fine. Keep in touch; you know where to find me.” She clambered out of her chair and made for the door. She was halfway outside when she remembered to add, “And I almost forgot – Thank you!”
These words did not come to her instinctively. It would be a lot easier to manipulate ponies if they did.
With that, Sunset was gone – very gone. In a flash of aqua she was back in a palace dorm she had all but expected never to see again, twice-over.
Nothing had changed since yesterday morning. The palace staff never received any orders to pack up her things, nor had Sunset’s demand that everypony stay out of her room been infringed upon by overzealous cleaners. All her overdue books remained unreturned: stacked in any free corner, or used as coasters for the old dishes and cups she couldn’t be bothered to take back to the kitchen.
And yet, despite everything being the exact same, give or take a few specs of dust, and despite how little time it had been, Sunset couldn’t help but feel an aura of… nostalgia? alienation? both?
It was probably due for some redecoration.
After she got some sleep.
Her bedsheets still trailed off the bed where she’d awoken, groggy, from a recurring nightmare brought on by terrible sleeping posture.
–A nightmare that, in retrospect, may have pushed her to be a little reckless with her pursuit of knowledge and get herself caught.
Too tired to fuss with the blinds on her western-facing window, she instead buried her head under a pillow to blot out the sun that should be over in the east.
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11814805
Do those kinds of stories really exist?
11820455
I've definitely seen at least one story where, instead of fleeing through the mirror, Sunset teleports in uncontrolled rage to a random spot that happens to be Ponyville, and ends up filling in Twilight's spot among the Mane 6, though I don't remember much more since I couldn't get into the writing style.
But I'm assuming Fever isn't talking about Sunset literally taking Twilight's place, and is instead talking about Sunset being the leader of her own Mane 6 set in general, in the same way that Lunaverse Trixie heads her gang of background ponies. From what I've seen, these Bearer-swap sort of fics are usually set in a "Bizarro Universe" where it's not just the Bearers who are different, but also things like the reigning Princess.
Therefore the difference from other swaps manifests in the way EiM's setting is merely the result of an unexpected change in events that spirals out of control, rather than an altogether different universe. All the ponies you know are here... just ten years younger.
I am so glad to see someone else come to the same conclusion about captain nepotism.
Really interested to see where this story goes.
11829769
Strictly speaking? Not every conclusion Sunset jumps to is entirely correct.
Celestia is a graceful manipulator, at least as I see her. She puts the ponies she needs in the places she needs them, well in advance of when she needs them. When the stallion Cadance hit it off with in secondary school just so happened to bear a cutie mark ever so similar to the one that's been carved into the Tree of Harmony for centuries, encouraging Cadance to encourage him to apply for the Royal Guard was just Celestia's way of putting a pin in him.
But Sunset has no way of knowing any of that. She sees the deliberate appearance of nepotism and assumes that's as deep as the rabbit hole goes.