Sunset Shimmer sat in a large rolling office chair, irritably drumming her fingers. The chair had once been Principal Celestia's. It was the closest thing to a throne in this wretched school, but it was far from what she deserved. Large though the chair was, it barely held her immense demonic form, and she still hadn't worked out how to properly sit back with her wings in the way. Her aggravated tapping had already worn deep gouges into the plastic arms.

She was supposed to be sitting on Princess Celestia's golden throne in the royal palace, not this pale human imitation. How had it all gone so wrong?

The first of the brainwashed high schoolers trudged through the portal into Equestria. Sunset kept a close eye on the sky—she only had a short time to get her forces through before the portal closed for another thirty moons. She had wanted to send a smaller advance party to scout the area around the portal before going through herself, but Twilight's meddling had forced her hand.

Hoof, she reminded herself with a self-satisfied grin. I'll have hooves again.

When there was no apparent retaliation against the vanguard of her army, Sunset motioned with two fingers. Snips and Snails, the only ones loyal enough to entrust with power and free will—utterly sad as that was—flexed their talons and soared through over the heads of the mindless throng. Sunset again checked the position of the moon. She was cutting it closer than she liked, but there would be enough time. After another couple of minutes, by Sunset's reckoning, she finally flew through to join them.

She hadn't felt it in several years, but the warping, twisting feeling of having her entire body reshaped by the portal was unforgettable and just as unpleasant as she remembered. It only lasted a few moments, however, and then she was through. What she walked into was much more painful.

"Argh!" Sunset screamed as she was blasted by a searing ray of light. What was going on? Sunset hadn't even managed to get her hooves under her and she was already under attack! With a flash of black-tainted teal magic, Sunset teleported herself away from the blinding beam and into the air, supporting herself on leathery wings that made her look like some strange cross between a unicorn and a batpony. She used the momentary reprieve to blink the spots from her eyes and take in the situation.

She was in an unfamiliar room that seemed to be made entirely of crystal. Her advance forces, whom she'd been counting on to secure the area, were now in pony form and trapped behind along one wall behind a pink energy bubble. Snips and Snails, looking comically sheepish, were each trapped in a bubble of their own. One of those shields was being maintained by Cadence, of all ponies, and the other by a dusky alicorn whom Sunset had never seen before. A third alicorn, Celestia herself, stood in the center of the room glaring daggers at Sunset Shimmer. What in the darkest depths of Tartarus was all of this? Why were they here? Had they somehow known that there would be an attack?

"Sunset Shimmer," Celestia stated in the coldest voice her former student had ever heard from her. "That is you, is it not?"

Three alicorns and a squadron of guards stood between Sunset Shimmer and conquest. It was impossible odds, even empowered as she was by the Element of Magic. Instead of doing the logical thing and retreating, however, Sunset felt an insane rage rise up as she gazed once again upon the pony who had failed her. Who had abandoned her. Who had restrained and coddled her to the point that Sunset had no choice but to leave, to try to make her own way in a place where there was nopony to hold her back.

"Oh, it's me alright," Sunset growled. "I'm home, Celestia."

Sunset's claw broke through the arm of her chair with a sharp crack. The tip of the arm broke off, leaving behind jagged edges that dug uncomfortably into her skin. With a scream of absolute fury, Sunset picked up the entire chair and hurled it across the room, where it smashed to bits against the wall. How had everything gone so unspeakably wrong? No sooner had she stepped through the portal than she'd been attacked by three princesses, one of whom was supposed to be imprisoned in the moon! Sunset clenched her fists so tightly that her talons drew blood.

"Where is Twilight Sparkle?" Celestia demanded.

"Twilight Sparkle?" Sunset Shimmer feigned ignorance, relishing the moment. "Twilight Sparkle..."

"Princess Twilight Sparkle," Celestia barked. "The one who went to retrieve the stolen Element of Magic from you!"

"Oh!" Sunset exclaimed with a too-wide smile. "Yes, now I know who you mean." Still, she didn't answer, preferring to draw it out. It was some small revenge against the hated alicorn before her.

"Sunset Shimmer." Celestia's voice dropped until she was all but pleading with her former student. Her front hoof pawed the floor, a nervous tell that she normally never have let slip. "Tell me. Where is Twilight Sparkle?"

Sunset's eyes narrowed to slits, and her smile turned predatory.

"She's dead. I killed her."

A sudden silence fell over the room, shock and devastation spreading across the faces of the three alicorns in front of her. It would almost have been worth it all, just for that one moment. But this was not enough. Now, while they were distracted, she had an opening. Now she could—

The sudden attack blindsided her. It had come not from one of the princesses, but from the white unicorn who was even now holding her army prisoner behind his magic barrier. He was powerful—no match for her, but still shockingly strong—and he was very, very angry. With a bellow, he poured his all into another attack that sent the dazed Sunset Shimmer careening into the ceiling. Before she even had a chance to fall, Cadence joined the assault. The perfect pink pony princess screamed with grief and fury as she pummeled Sunset with blast after blast of magic.

Sunset hastily threw up a barrier, only to have it torn down by a masterful stroke of spellcraft from the unfamiliar dark gray alicorn. She wouldn't realize until later that this strange newcomer was Celestia's long-lost sister. For now, she was only another threat, and far too great a threat for comfort.

Snips and Snails, freed from their prisons as the ponies holding them channeled their magics toward attacking Sunset, tried to come to her aid but quickly found themselves trapped again, this time within a barrier erected by the uniformed white unicorn. He did so without dropping the spell holding the brainwashed ponies, and Sunset's estimation of this guard captain went up another notch.

Celestia stood trembling in the center of the room as the others vented their fury. She did nothing but watch as her loved ones assaulted her former student; the student who had killed another of her students, whom she had loved as her own daughter. Tears streamed freely down her muzzle.

One of the ponies tried to use their magic to lift the crown off of Sunset's head. Through her own rage and addictive rush of the Element of Magic's power, Sunset's logic finally reasserted itself. She knew when she was beaten. Immediately encountering three alicorns and a squad of guards, all of whom were prepared for her arrival, was something that she had not planned for. She sent a quick pulse through the mental link that bound her slaves, issuing the command to retreat. Using a final burst of magic to erect another shield, she used the scant moments it bought her to dive back through the portal and into the hated human world. Apparently the softhearted ponies on the other side decided to let her minions go, for most of them managed to rejoin her before the portal sealed again.

Sunset's anger exploded with the force of a bomb, blasting out the wall of Celestia's office and opening it to the hallway beyond. With her rage vented for the moment, she pinched the bridge of her nose between two claws to assuage her growing headache.

Get it together, Shimmer, she scolded herself. There's no setback you can't overcome. You've got thirty moons to make a new plan. Start planning.

"For realzies?"

Adagio and Aria, sitting at a small booth in a small diner in this wretchedly small city, both gritted their teeth at the ditzy expression.

"Because I think this place is the worst," Sonata continued, oblivious.

"I think you're the worst, Sonata," Aria sniped back.

"Oh yeah? Well I think you're—"

"Ughhhhh!" Adagio burst out. "I'll tell you one thing. Being stuck here with you two isn't making this world any more bearable." She forced out the last word through a clenched jaw.

A sudden flash outside caught Adagio's eye. She turned to look, her eyes widening as a pillar of light shot into the sky. None of the humans around her seemed to have noticed anything. That, combined with the resonance in the pendant she wore around her neck, made her all but certain that she was witnessing something impossible: Magic, in a world where there was none. Ignoring the odd looks the other patrons gave her, Adagio raced out of the diner for a better look.

The surge of magic had already faded by the time her sisters joined her. They stood staring for a long moment, waiting to see if anything else would happen. Nothing did, but there was no denying what had just happened. As if to confirm her thoughts, Adagio's pendant gleamed with an inner light that had nearly gone out in the thousand years they'd been trapped here.

"Did you feel that?" Adagio demanded. It was rhetorical, for she knew full well that the other sirens would have felt the same thing she had. "Do you know what that was?" She waited for a long moment, her disbelief rising as the others failed to catch her excitement. Sonata finally gave a clueless shrug, prompting Adagio to practically dive forward and seize Aria by the shoulders.

"It was Equestrian magic!" she exclaimed.

"But this world doesn't have Equestrian magic," Aria drawled in reply. Sure, she'd felt something, but Equestrian magic in this world? That was just stupid.

"It does now," Adagio purred. She didn't know how it was possible, but the pendant didn't lie. "And we're going to use it to make everyone in this pathetic little world adore us." Wherever that magic had come from, however it had come to be here, she would find it and make it her own.

Aria and Sonata exchanged a quick glance. Something had changed just now. Something had sparked inside, and Adagio was burning with long-forgotten energy and confidence. Even her old swagger had started to return, that almost-subconscious sway of her hips that enraptured those around her even before she used her magic.

In a moment of unspoken agreement, Aria and Sonata moved up to stand beside their leader. The sirens were back.

"What in the world was that?"

She leaned forward over her terminal, fingers flying as she tried to record the strange phenomenon that her computers had just picked up. Some sort of massive energy surge had just occurred near the center of the city. Her eyes flicked across the confusing, often contradictory data, and she allowed herself a slight hum of satisfaction. She'd been right.

A few days ago, while monitoring airwaves and energy supplies to see if the Mayor's plan of free city-wide wi-fi was at all feasible—part of an independent project she'd taken on for her studies—she'd picked up an anomaly near the middle of the residential district. It appeared to be a power source, not tied in to any of the city's infrastructure as far as she could see. More fascinating still, it didn't appear to match any kind of known energy: It wasn't electrical, not thermal, not even nuclear. Her teacher had shrugged off the impossible readings as a glitch and suggested that she ignore it, but her too-curious mind would not let her. For the past few days, she had been staying long after school hours to record and analyze everything she could about the strange power source.

She pinned one last note to the growing billboard of interconnected events and ideas that hung on the wall behind her computer, then stepped back and adjusted her glasses to get a better look at it. That energy spike just now had been even bigger than the last, and she knew it wasn't just her instruments acting up. She was going way outside the parameters of her independent study, but if this didn't vindicate her, then nothing would.

Speaking of spikes...

"No doubt about it, Spike," Twilight Sparkle said with confidence. "There's definitely something going on at that school."

Spike barked in reply and wagged his tail happily.