This story is a sequel to Gunsmoke
Sunset Shimmer meant to visit another video game. Wild West games are always fun, right? But then things go wrong and Sunset's alter ego, Desert Mirage, becomes trapped in an entirely different world. This isn't a video game. The choices she makes matter. With a real chance of hurting somepony, Mirage decides to head home as quickly as possible. That'd be a lot easier if her way back hadn't been stolen. But Mirage has far more to worry about than mere card thieves.
The Bulletproof Heart is on the hunt.
A collaborative project with Wanderer D and a crossover of Bulletproof Heart, Gunsmoke, and Sunset's Isekai. This one's just for fun, folks!
Bangin' cover art commissioned from KorenCZ11.
Chapters (11)
Not canon, bummer still should be fun.
Me right now: Yes yes yes yes, for god sake yes yes yes. This will be epic.
Oh hell yes.
Well Chapter 1 reminds me of an old movie quote...
media.tenor.com/aXcCfCXloq8AAAAd/god-say-yes.gif
I'm hyped. I'm hyped for more Bulletproof Heart. I'm hyped for more Mirage. I'm hyped just knowing there's more chapters coming! The first chapter alone was amazing!
YEEEEEHAAAAAAAAA!!!
I still consider Isekai-related BPH stories to be an AU from the canon BPH stories.
On the other hand, those are canon to Gunsmoke and Isekai ;)
This story sent me on the most bizarre journey of visits, remembrance, and sadness I've been on for a good while now.
So far, this story isn't evoking the same sort of spaghetti western atmosphere that BPH did, but maybe that's the point, and this isn't a BPH story so much as a story with the BPH in it.
Ah ha, yes! That's the ticket! I need to look at this not as Yojimbo, but as Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo.
Welp, this set of events is going to lead to a very heated first contact.
11538830 yeah, I feel it gets a bit closer to that feeling later on, but Mirage's antics wouldn't evoke that feeling given how out of place she really is here.
So this "Mirage" is from another fanfic? just a bit confused, good writing thus far nevertheless.
11538912
Indeed, she's the Sunset Shimmer of Gunsmoke. We tried to gradually reveal elements of both hers and Rarity's pasts throughout this story without getting too deep in the details.
I'm confused as to why Mirage would have sent a party to kill the Bulletproof Heart. Maybe they misunderstood what Mirage wanted?
11539073
Desert Mirage didn't send them; Autumn Blaze did. Just like the Bulletproof Heart didn't send a group after Desert Mirage; Autumn Blaze did. In both cases, it was almost certainly with the intention not of killing them, but of pissing them off and getting them to meet.
The fulcrum to this whole mess is Sunset's Isekai; I don't know how yet, but it is.
Somewhere in that world, the door to Sunset's Isekai is going to appear. But WHEN and WHERE? Not even Discord knows.
11539103
I guess I can see that.
This is, in fact, what a gunfight between experts would probably look like. Modern gunfighting is really emphasized by the modern adage, "I'm up, you see me, I'm down"; they don't take place in the open, but from behind rocks, trees, and hillsides as the combatants try to maneuver to disorient their opponents and get into a position where they can actually hit them. (It's also why soldiers seem to shoot so many times and barely hit anything; it's all about maneuvering, and a hail of lead landing all around you makes that difficult to do)
And now we add in magic, and that just adds brand new dimensions to everything.
Let's see what happens next HA HA!
Yep, very heated first contact for sure.
From killing a group of riders to blasting an airship full of (presumed) innocents and nearly killing her friend from another dimension in the process...man, Sunset is gonna get a heaping helping of trauma from this trip.
I wonder if rarity will realize that mirage is a different sunset to the one she know on her own.
11540532
Part of it comes down to "when are we?"
It seems like this is before Rarity found the Isekai, in which case trying to explain it wouldn't do any good. And if that is the case, it's never going to be explained in this story, because Rarity would have known exactly what she was walking into when she found the door. Ergo, it will not be explained here, but it
willmean a great deal of things will begin to make sense to Rarity later.Looking forward to how this explanation goes. I know this isn't canon but I wonder exactly when this story fits in compared to Isekai and Sunset at Little Longhorn.
lol video game logic fail
Added to my read list!
Definitely the most "Bulletproof Heart" chapter so far.
Enough so that I can't help but put some music alongside their conversation about killing. Listen or ignore at your leisure: You Need to Face This
Susnet what you need to know what BH Rarity knows. The choice isn't alwqys good v evil. Many times its two evils. You have to figire out whoch is the lesser evil.
Ah, so it's after Rarity visited the Isekai. Well that simplifies things except for the unfortunate fact that she got her card yoinked too.
And there's the underlying trauma. I liked how this conversation was handled.
One of my biggest thoughts here was that you really grasped the pressure that Sunset was under, and how that would explode in a most spectacular way. "Bring it, bitch!" was the most GGO Desert Mirage thing to say at the most inappropriate time. Although Tempest was really itching for a fight too.
I was right: The Isekai is the fulcrum for all of this, precarious though everything is.
The real interesting part though, is that she's collecting Isekai business cards. It's only natural that we assume, of course, that this is pointless; after all, not just anyone can use a card.
Autumn Blaze is not just anyone, though, and she doesn't have a card. She has at least two complex magical constructs, apparently has the knowledge of what they are, and is presumably on her way to someone who specializes in complex magical constructs. She doesn't want to go to the bar; she wants to invoke a divine intervention, and damn but she might have everything she needs to do it.
Oh look Kirins, your attempt at making no conflict has resulted in even greater conflict amd death. Hope you all pay for that.
And Sunset their are only two people to blame for tempest. Autumn Blaze and Tempest herself
That took a couple twists I didn't expect. Tempest x Neighsay being one of them.
Little Longhorn's about to see some trouble if BH Sunset being there leads Autumn Blaze there. That kirin seems to know enough about the cards that she's related to them but there's no clue to what extent she knows.
Hopefully by this next encounter, Sunset has a better grasp on her emotions. Poor gal, this did end up with some unfortunate consequences that could have been avoided...
Ooof. We're getting a trail of destruction that everyone involved wishes didn't happen. Poor Mirage. And poor everyone in Mirage's path.
Rarity again gets it. Sunset, look at superman. If your adopted world has a superman show need to look up is Cardboard speech
Sigh.
Never try to consume an energy field larger than your head.
...What the hell just happened?
The muteness was a ruuuuuusee.(?)
That was a crazy plan Rarity had there with the potions last-minute and thank god it worked. Speaking of...
Video game logic strikes.
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11544113
Part of me wanted to find that image for the Author's Notes. A much bigger part of me didn't want to go page-by-page through a comic I hadn't read in over ten years just to find that one scene.
Thank you for taking the time.
11544118 It needed to be done!
Thanks. I'm now about to make my dnd party have a collective heart attack when i jump off things. That was so goddamn clever!
Well, I guess that's one particular "expected" result when you punch a hole though x-many layers of the multiverse.
So it looks like the Autumn's muteness wasn't a ruse then and she was just that blindingly-pissed that she was interfered with.
Sunset seemed rather undisturbed from meeting her other self. My guess is that it's a mix of Mirage being partially obscured through whatever armaments and the immediate and absurd life-or-death situation taking higher priority. She'll have a lot more questions later.
One-liners are very important.
Trying to think of what the creature that Mirage doesn't have a name for is. My guess is that it has something to do with FFVIII and VI.
11544928
If you don't utilize "Daredevil" in the next chapter I will be disappointed in you. Unless you use something more thematically appropriate, I suppose.
All that amd no creaper. Shame
Been playing FFX myself. It was nice seeing these guys.
11544947
That's a heck of an ask. It'd had better be pretty grand and out there for something like Daredevil. 444 is already just barely thematic enough because of the blues guitar though all the interworld-techno-fuckery kind of balances the rest of it out. We'll just see how deep the craziness goes.
I may have kinda missed out already on earlier opportunities to link some of the more thematically accurate songs from the cutscenes but there also hasn't been a whole lot of downtime in the story...
11545120
Eh, I suppose that's fair enough. In truth I'm mostly just glad to see someone else out there who enjoys the Ace series.
...
100%-ing that game was a trial, though. My multiplayer skills in AC7 are rock-bottom.
Meteors, lightning storms, tornadoes, dismembered bits...Man, I can only imagine if there's a sizable portion of the town and town's population still left standing after all that.
Heh.
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Back in the day I actually did reach the point where I could identify a gun's make and manufacturer in Borderlands 2 by the sound it made. Turned it into a game figuring out what the enemy was shooting me with while I was reloading behind cover. But that was after over 600 hours of playing a game that I was pretty obsessed with at the time.
I love this line!
Absolutely wonderful story! Looking forward to reading more.
... oh.
Highwind.
I get it!
Well, that happened. It was fun and really enjoyable, and I wish I had more coherent things to say but I can't really figure out how to say them. So to try and cover everything, Thank You both for the fic!
Also, I so want to see BPH Rarity try GGO now. The other players thought Mirage was bad? Wait until they see the intuition and reflexes of a true living legend gunslinger. The cheating claims and hacker slurs would be almost instantaneous.
And first place for the final chapter reactions? I'm honored!