“So, you’re from another world.”

“Yes.”

“But at some point in your adolescence, you ran away to a different world.”

“...yes.”

“And then you went back to the first world, stole a magical artifact, ran back to the second world, used said magical artifact, transforming yourself into—let me make sure I’m quoting you correctly—‘a raging she-demon’ and releasing magic into the second world?”

Sunset groaned. “Yes.”

“Okay, just making sure I’ve got everything correct so far. You were then defeated by Princess Twilight who was wielding—did I hear you correctly—the ‘magic of friendship.’ Still right?”

Sunset pointed a finger at her ghost’s eye. “Hey now, I know it sounds corny—“

“Because it is.”

Sunset sighed. “Ray, I know you’re teasing me right now. But if...” She blinked back a few tears and shook her head. “Wow, did not expect that,” she muttered to herself.

Ray hovered closer. “Are you okay?” it said.

“Yeah,” Sunset said, gripping the flight yoke a little tighter. “I think everything’s coming back to me at once.”

They flew on in silence for a while.

“It was like my soul was exposed,” Sunset said finally. Ray just hovered in place, so she continued. “It wasn’t just a ‘magic all the nasty away’ beam, it... It brought out all the nasty and showed it to me. In painstaking detail.” She blinked away a few more tears. “Only a little of what I did that night was actually magical, so there was only a little stolen magic for the Elements of Harmony to purify. Everything else was just... me.

“And so there I was, at the bottom of a crater, and knowing exactly why I was there. And when she offered me her hand, I had a choice. I could have slapped it away.”

“But you didn’t.”

Sunset shook her head. “I didn’t. She helped me up, she helped me make friends...”

She glanced at Ray. “Friendship really is the strongest magic in Equestria, you know. I know it sounds hokey and cheesy and stupid, but it’s the truth. It opens up spell possibilities that don’t exist otherwise, it makes magic more powerful than it would be otherwise...”

“Do you think it would help here?”

“Yes,” Sunset said without hesitation. “The Magic Of Friendship doesn’t just mean giving the Fallen a hug and thinking everything’s magically better. It can mean us standing united against adversity.” She thought for a second. “It could mean making friends with the Fallen that are willing to be friends.”

Ray gave Sunset what was clearly intended to be a stink eye.

Sunset shook her head. “I studied under Princess Celestia, an alicorn with the magical capacity to move the sun itself. She was the ruler of Equestria...” She blinked a few tears away. “Still is, probably.” She shook it off. “Anyway, there were two rules when it came to Equestria’s foreign policy.

“First, if we stood together, very few things could truly threaten Equestria. Twilight and her friends proved that several times over.

“And second, no enemy is more truly defeated than one that becomes a friend.”

Ray hovered in place for a moment. “I still don’t see how that can help against the Fallen.”

“Well, it worked in Equestria, largely because Celestia could drop the sun on anyone that opposed us. She never would, of course, but by the time any would-be threats realized that, they’d already negotiated a very favorable trade agreement, or whatever. The threat was just to get everyone to be reasonable.” Sunset bit her lip. “So now, we just need a Celestia.”

“Well, we don’t have one,” Ray said, and Sunset couldn’t tell if he was irritated with the conversation, or if this was the ongoing bitterness toward the still-inert Traveler.

“So,” Ray said after a moment, “what happened to bring you here?”

“Well, me and the girls from that school had a bunch of adventures. Had to do a lot to clean up all the magic that I let loose into that world, and for a while we had some magic of our own to use. We learned, we grew, we had fun...” She sighed. “And then we graduated and went our separate ways. I wasn’t from that world; it was only by a fluke and Principal Celestia’s kindness that I could go to that school in the first place. But when it came to colleges...” She trailed off.

“So you went back to Equestria?”

“Mmhmm. I still visited the other world fairly often; we were all still good friends. And they went on to do some really great things.”

Sunset stretched. “In the meantime, Princess Twilight decided she wanted to open some portals to other worlds...”

“And... check,” Spike said, rolling up the scroll with a flourish. “That’s the end of the pre-launch checklist.”

“Wonderful!” Princess Twilight said with a smile. “Now, what’s first on the launch checklist?”

Spike rummaged in his bag and pulled out another scroll. “Launch Checklist for Mirror Portal Mark II,” he read. “Step one: verify pre-launch checklist.”

Twilight bit her lip and looked at Sunset with a slight smile. “I mean, it’s on the checklist...”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. She looked just past Twilight to see Spike vibrating with barely constrained glee. She looked back at Twilight and smirked. “Get on with it.”

Twilight smiled back. “Pre-launch checklist verified.”

Spike checked it off. “Unicorns at the ready?”

Sunset looked across the room to Starlight Glimmer. “Ready,” they said together.

Spike checked it off. “Instrumentation ready?”

Sunset looked to the corner where, behind a panel of crystals and gauges that would put Vinyl Scratch’s soundboard to shame, Starswirl the Bearded sat. “Instrumentation ready,” he said.

“Still can’t believe that’s him,” Sunset muttered to herself.

Spike checked it off. “Last step is to fire the spell, Twilight,” he said.

Twilight nodded and pulled him close with her wing. “Thanks, Spike.” She glanced at Sunset and Starlight. “On my mark,” she said, flaring her wings and igniting her horn.

On cue, Twilight, Sunset, and Starlight fired a specialized spell at the focusing crystal in the center of the room. The energy passed through Starswirl’s instrument panel and fed into the crystal arch at the other end of the room. Slowly, the arch filled with energy until it passed a threshold and filled the entire archway with a swirling miasma of energy.

Twilight cut off her spell and trotted over to the arch. Sunset and Starlight kept their spells alive, but their job was now keeping the system stable, not charging it.

“Anything?” Twilight asked, not taking her eyes off the arch.

“I have something,” Starswirl said. “Focusing the apparatus now.”

“Unstable?”

“Only moderately. I wager we’ll have about two minutes to anchor the portal once we’re locked.” He turned a pair of crystals slowly. “Unicorns stand by...”

With a start he threw the biggest switch on his panel. “Instrumentation locked.” He looked at the portal with narrowed eyes. “One minute, Princess.”

“Call me Twilight,” she said reflexively. Grabbing four crystal-infused rods in her magic, she trotted through the portal.

The remaining unicorns waited anxiously, though not nearly as anxiously as Spike who was twitching his wings nervously. After a very long fifteen seconds, Twilight reappeared through the portal.

“Portal anchored,” she said with a wide smile.

Starlight and Sunset released their spells with a groan. Starswirl made a few final adjustments before nodding in satisfaction and stepping away from the panel. The three of them approached Twilight.

“Well?” Sunset said.

Twilight grinned and nearly vibrated in place. “Come take a look!”

“I’ll stay put here for now,” Starswirl said with a tired smile.

Twilight nodded. “Okay, okay, but Sunset? Starlight?” The two nodded. Twilight made a noise suspiciously similar to “squee!” and led them through the portal.

When the light from the portal (and the transformation-induced nausea) faded, Sunset pulled herself to her feet. “Human world,” she said.

“Mmhmm,” Twilight answered. “Though more muted skin tones.”

Sunset looked her over. “But you kept your mane.”

Twilight smirked at her. “Yeah, you did.”

“Um, girls?” Starlight said, pointing at something in the distance, “what’s that?”

They followed her gaze and saw a gigantic polished sphere hovering in the air, glowing with a subtle light.

“That,” said a mildly accented voice behind them, “is The Traveler.”

They turned around to see a middle-aged man in outdoor gear and a friendly smile. “Though if you’re asking that,” he said, “then I’m guessing you ain’t from around here.”

Sunset laughed. “When she saw what you were able to do with Light, the technological advances you were making, Twilight practically begged Celestia to open trade routes with you.”

Ray hovered closer. “You were here for the Golden Age?” he said excitedly.

“Oh yeah,” Sunset said with a smile. “All of us were over here at one point or another. Rainbow loved the stuff on Mars, Applejack helped with the plants on Mercury, and something about Io fascinated Fluttershy.”

“But what about...” Ray trailed off and looked toward their destination.

Sunset followed his gaze. The clouds around the Last City were growing larger as they approached.

“I didn’t talk to The Traveler,” Sunset said quietly. “It was just kind of... there. Every so often it would head off to one of the other planets for a week to check on the terraforming, see how things were, then it would come back to Earth.” She closed her eyes and let herself get lost in the reminiscing. “When it wasn’t near, you could still feel its presence. The Light that it infused into everything. But when you were next to it...” She grinned. “Ideas came quicker. Things fell into place faster. Stuff worked better than it was supposed to. It was like we all became better versions of ourselves. And that’s what it wanted.”

The jumpship broke through the cloud cover. As the approached the tower, they flew close enough to see The Traveler’s injuries close up. Sunset pressed a hand against the glass and blinked back tears.

“Do you know what hurt it?” Ray asked, his flat voice the saddest that Sunset could remember.

She shook her head. “I didn’t survive long enough to see...”

Sunset ran into the room housing the portal. “Twilight!” she yelled in relief. “Thank Celestia; are you okay? Have you seen...” She motioned outside. “That?”

Twilight turned from the portal, her face carefully neutral. “Have you seen our friends?” She said sharply.

Sunset shook her head. “No one’s answering on the comms, and none of the comsats have signal.” She ran closer. “You don’t think...”

Twilight turned her attention back to the portal. “You’ve seen what’s out there, Sunset Shimmer,” she said. “You tell me.”

As if to answer her, the ground shook.

“Higher magnitude, shorter interval,” Twilight muttered. “Sunset, that wasn’t a rhetorical question.”

Sunset blinked. “I’m sure they’re—“

“Stop.”

Sunset felt the blood drain from her face. To an outside observer, Twilight was completely closed off and composed. But Sunset knew the tells. Knew that the moisture at the corner of her eyes was involuntary. Knew that the fingers rubbing against each other was a nervous tic. Knew that those lips were pressed together too tightly for Twilight to be anything other than terrified.

“As Princess of Equestria, and the acting Princess on this side of the portal, I need you to answer honestly: are our friends okay?”

Sunset bit her lip and forced down the bile. “There’s no communication with the other planets, Princess,” she said. “Practically speaking, we should assume the worst.”

Twilight nodded. Her breath hitched slightly. “Get through the portal,” she said, “and tell them—“

“No.”

Twilight blinked. “Sunset—“

“You’re going to destroy the portal. You’re going to make sure whatever is out there isn’t going to make it back to Equestria. And you’re not about to ask me to go back to Equestria without you.”

Twilight bowed her head. “I can’t just turn it off,” she said softly. “Whatever this is, it disrupts Light. It works on a quantum level. If I want to keep it from finding Equestria, I have to break the connection to our universe completely. Permanently.” She raised her head and looked at Sunset. “Please,” she said, “I know how hard it was for you to be trapped away from home; don’t make me be the one to do it to you again.”

Sunset shook her head. “You’re here. My friends are here. I’m already home.” She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Do what you need to do, Princess.”

Twilight nodded and walked over to the portal. “I already gave a message to Starlight and tossed that journal through. Only thing left is to destroy the anchor crystal.” She pulled a milky white crystal from the center of the arch, deactivating the portal.

“So now we just blow that up?” Sunset said.

Twilight smirked. “Sort of.” She clenched the crystal in her fist, and her fist began to glow a deep purple.

Sunset gawked. “Magic?”

“Our magic and the Traveler’s Light aren’t that different. There are some different constants, but the basic rules are the same.” She opened her fist and let what was left of the now-pulverized crystal fall to the floor.

Sunset smiled briefly before another tremor shook the building, bringing their thoughts back to the situation.

Twilight frowned. “Of course I don’t discover that until...”

Sunset did her best to smile and put a hand on Twilight’s shoulder. “You discovered it in time to save Equestria.” She scanned the edges of the room and walked over to a rifle leaning against the wall. “Want to try and save a few more people?”

Twilight’s hand glowed purple again. “It’s like you read my mind.”

“So the portal is completely destroyed?” Rainbow Dash said, tapping the side of her ramen bowl with her chopsticks.

Sunset nodded. “And from what I’ve seen of the Darkness since then, I’m glad we destroyed it.”

Rainbow grimaced and swore under her breath. “The girls are not going to like that,” she muttered. “I don’t like that.”

“I don’t like it either,” Sunset said a little defensively.

Rainbow shook her head. “Not saying you do. Just...”

Sunset added a grimace if her own. “Yeah.” She took another bit of her own ramen. “You told the other girls about...”

Rainbow looked over Sunset’s shoulder. “See for yourself.”

Sunset turned around to see a titan wearing bright pink armor, an even pinker afro, and a pink-and-white shotgun aimed at her face.

The titan pulled the trigger.

Sunset blinked away the flash. “Pinkie Pie.”

Pinkie nodded.

“Did you just shoot me in the face with a Party Shotgun?”

Pinkie nodded.

Sunset felt her head with her right hand. Sure enough, a cardboard party hat poked out of her hair. She looked at her left hand to find it holding a pair of cake pops, one chocolate and one vanilla, both with colorful sprinkles.

She turned around to hand one to Rainbow, but she was already holding up two of her own. “I was in the blast radius,” she explained.

Sunset turned back to Pinkie and, without breaking eye contact, ate the chocolate pop. “Do I want to know?” she said finally.

“Nope!” Pinkie said

Sunset nodded, then lunged forward and threw her arms around Pinkie. “I’m so happy to see you,” she whispered.

Pinkie hugged her back briefly, then abruptly pulled away and stepped to the side and yelled “Twitchy tail!”

Sunset blinked in confusion. “But we don’t eve—“

“SUNSET SHIMMER!”

Sunset barely had time to not-recognize the voice before she was attacked by a hunter-shaped missile with pink hair. “Oh my goodness I was so worried when I saw you and you didn’t recognize me but then I got Rainbow’s message and you’re here and you’re okay and I was so afraid you were gone forever and...”

Sunset managed to push the hunter away to arm’s length. “Wait, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy pushed her bangs behind her ear and nodded.

Sunset choked out something between a laugh and a sob and pulled her back into the hug.

“I missed you,” Fluttershy said.

“I missed you too,” Sunset said. “Even if I didn’t know it, I missed you.”

After another moment, Fluttershy broke the hug, patted Sunset on the shoulder, and stepped aside to let the titan that had just arrived in.

Sunset took one look at her and facepalmed. “Of course you were.”

The blonde-haired titan tipped her Stetson. “Like I said,” she drawled, “I had a hunch it would work out. Though I was still a mite bit surprised it worked out this quickly.”

Sunset smiled and held out her hand. “Good to see you, Applejack.”

Applejack grasped her hand and pulled her into a hug. “Good to see you too, Sugarcube.”

“No hard feelings from earlier?”

Applejack smirked at Sunset. “Wouldn’t mind some help with a patrol or two.”

Sunset smiled back. “It’s a deal.”

Applejack went to sit down at the table. Sunset looked out into the city and saw a warlock in a white robe and purple hair running up the street, muttering “excuse me” and “pardon me” and “sorry, darling” the entire way.

Sunset chuckled to herself. “Never change, Rarity.”

Rarity finally ran up, only slightly out of breath. “I do apologize for being so late, Darlings, but—“

“But you were caught in the throes of inspiration and you just had to seize the moment?” Sunset interrupted with a smile.

Rarity clutched her chest in mock offense. “Sunset, dear, why ever would you think that?” she said. “Besides, the inspiration came years ago, I just had to pull the result out of my vault.” She handed a warlock bond emblazoned with Sunset’s cutie mark to her. “I do hope you find it satisfactory; I haven’t quite convinced dear Eva to disclose all of her secrets...”

“It’s perfect,” Sunset whispered, blinking back a few tears and running her thumb along the band.

Author's Notes:

Yes, it's a modified Party Crasher +1. No, I don't know how she did it.