Certain constants persist across all instances of a given person, and one of them is that Twilight Sparkle will always be concerned about tardiness. This particular Twilight could teleport to Canterlot High moments before the first bell… in theory. In practice, that required enough power to leave her giddy, exhausted, and in no condition to pay attention for several class periods. Instead, she rode a bus that got her there a good half an hour before the school day began. Sometimes, she saw faculty driving or flying to work.

Today, she saw Sunset Shimmer repeatedly hitting her head against the Wondercolt statue’s plinth.

Twilight teleported to her side and grabbed her shoulders. “Sunset! Stop! What’s wrong?”

Sunset swung her head forward again, though much more slowly, just resting it against the marble. She sighed. “It’s nothing important. Just really stupid.”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. Magical reinforcement.”

Twilight felt some tension leave her. “Is it the lawsuit?”

“No, that cleared itself up pretty fast.” Sunset straightened up and ran a glowing hand over the thin cracks in the statue, mending them. She turned around, revealing a wholly unmarred face. “Since no one’s actually drafted any magical laws other than my suggestions and most religions and I have agreed to mutual non-interference—“

“Don’t you fight malicious deities?”

“Yeah, but gods aren’t religions. Point is, no court on the planet would actually rule on the suit. Plus, I still don’t know who filed the thing in the first place.” Sunset grimaced. ”I guess I could find out, but that would be horribly invasive.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

Sunset sighed again as she slumped against the statue. “Do you follow my magic safety vlog?”

Twilight sat next to her. “Yes, but I don’t check EweTube that regularly. Why?”

“Well, I’ve covered the most obvious dangers, so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about Equestria. Give people some context, show them a culture that developed with magic and the need to use it responsibly.”

Twilight nodded. “Seems reasonable.”

“Of course, just talking about a place no one’s ever seen wasn’t going to work well, so I included some visual aids. Your counterpart took some photos of towns and ponies that I included in the video.” Sunset gave a tired grin. “You really should watch it. You’d love it.”

“I will. So, what went wrong?”

Sunset tilted her head back and groaned. “I underestimated the stupidity of the Internet.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Let me guess: There’s porn.”

That got a snort. “Yeah, but I expected that. See, I also showed everyone what I looked like back home.” Sunset’s headgem lit up, and a three-dimensional illusion of an adorable little unicorn manifested before the two girls, standing at about eye level.

A high-pitched squeak slipped out of Twilight’s mouth. She covered it, but couldn’t hide her wide-eyed wonderment. Her hands muffled her words a bit. “It’s like it’s specifically designed to appeal to the part of my psyche that’s still six years old.”

Sunset chuckled. “Yeah. Though if I went home now, I’d probably be taller and have wings. Still, about forty percent of the comments were about cuteness. Or diabetes, which apparently counts.”

Twilight folded her hands in her lap, gripping her hands in one another so she wouldn’t try to pet the illusion. “So, what went wrong?”

“Well,” said Sunset, bitterness creeping into her voice, “it seems there’s a new branch of Shimmerism now.”

“What?”

“In a matter of hours, people decided they’d rather worship me as a unicorn than me as a human. And this group is calling themselves, I kid you not, ‘The Church of the Divine Bacon Horse.’” Sunset shook her head. “So, yeah. That’s why I’m beating my head against a wall.”

After a few seconds, Twilight said, “Honestly? I’m tempted to join you.”

Author's Notes:

Inspired by this video review of Sugarcatharsis (Relevant bit starts at 1:36.)