Sunset found herself standing in front of the statuesque portal in the hours before school began. She put her hand up to it, but the marble didn't separate. The statue of a rearing horse that also served as the gateway to her old home was shut up for at least another thirty moons. In a way, she was happy. She had fulfilled her promise to Celestia. She had completed her mission. She had brought true friendship back to Equestria.
But in another way, she was terribly sad and lonely. Even though she knew she had wonderful friends waiting on her back in this world, she missed her Equestrian friends. Evil though they had been, they were still her friends and they always would be. But they're in Tartarus, serving lengthy sentences, she thought, and the only hope I'll have of seeing them again is to go back and beg Celestia to let me. What if…what if she doesn't?
She didn't have time to ponder that thought anymore because she was knocked down by Pinkie Pie. "WELCOME HOME, SUNSET!" Pinkie screamed, "I'M SO WAY BEYOND EXCITED TO SEE YOU!"
"Pinkie!" Sunset said, "it's great to see you too, but I'm right here!"
"Oh, sorry!" Pinkie whispered.
Sunset returned Pinkie's embrace and before she knew it, her friends had surrounded her, chattering and asking her rapid fire questions about what had happened. Sunset looked at a nearby clock and saw they had quite a bit of time before their first period. So she sat them down and told them the entire story.
Their mouths opened wider and wider as she told them of the bloodshed in The Crystal Empire and of how cruelty and spite had overtaken their old friend Twilight. She told them of Rainbow Dash and her arrogance, and her human friend of the same name blushed a bit. She was embarrassed at just how close their personalities were, even though she was a human and the other Dash was a pony.
"So," Twilight said, "how did you get Princess Twilight and the pony Dash to quit fighting?"
"I didn't," she replied, "they did that on their own. I just kinda pushed them in that direction."
"Wait just a cotton pickin' minute," Applejack said, "if the pony version of me's dead, then why ain't I dead?"
"Because the dimensional continuum doesn't work that way," Twilight stated matter-of-factly, "the jumps between worlds cause the transcendent nature of personalities to reoccur in the subsequent universes, but the actual subjects involved and what befalls them, be it life, death, marriage, and the like cannot transcend those dimensions unless they make a manual effort to transcend said dimensions."
She finished, blinking and smiling. Applejack's mouth fell open, and then she smiled. "I'm just gonna have to take yer word for it, Twi." The girls all laughed and embraced each other. Then they went into school, ready to face another day as the best of friends.