Fractured Sunlight Cover Picture
A My Little Pony: Equestria Girls fanfic by Oroboro.
Twilight Sparkle has spent her life in the shadow of a childhood trauma. When she was nine, her only friend Sunset Shimmer died in front of her, and it was all her fault. She threw herself into school and science, graduating early before deciding to take some time off before college. She notices some strange energy readings from Canterlot, where her brother lives, and figures that investigating might get her something to write a thesis paper on, which will look great for college.
She finds Sunset Shimmer.
Can be found here.
This fic provides examples of:
- Alternate Self: The focus of the fic is on "Sci-Twi" (Princess Twilight's human alternate) and specifically her relationship with the human version of Sunset Shimmer she knew as a kid.
- Artistic License: Literally. Every chapter has a single piece of art, and the author continuously reminds the audience that they are the artist's interpretation, rather than exact representations of events. There's no reason for Dash and Twilight to have put on full baseball uniforms for their quick game, for example.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: All of the Rainbooms are biologically not quite human any more, as evidenced in their bloodwork—Twilight says at one point that a pint of their blood could power a truck. Sunset is different even from them, with a horse blood type and a few other oddities that help confirm her story about being a transformed pony.
- Bizarre Human Biology: One of Sunset's first challenges after being transformed into a human was when she got a period. Ponies don't have those, so she literally thought she was dying.
- Laughing Mad: When Sunset explains she's a magical unicorn from another dimension, and there's a Twilight who is an alicorn princess, Twilight falls over laughing helplessly for thirty minutes. When human!Sunset died, she and Twilight were in the middle of playing a game where they were magical ponies, so the whole thing seems like a cruel joke for Twilight.
- Magic Music: The Rainbooms can activate their magic (and in particular their pony forms) through music. That makes it pretty simple to prove everything to Twilight.
- Rare Blood Type: Sunlight has type K blood. That's a horse blood type.
- Shown Their Work: The references to horse/pony biology (and the differences from human biology) are accurate. Sunlight's type K blood type is a real horse blood type, and she had no idea what periods were at first because horses don't menstruate.
- Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: The entire reason Twilight is in town. She detected a strange energy and decided to investigate. She gets the Rainbooms to agree to be studied, and she makes a surprising amount of progress, quickly identifying differences in their biology likely caused by the magic.
- Trauma Button: When Twilight first sees Sunset, she faints. Twilight later refers to her as a "walking, talking trauma trigger."
