Sunset's Apartment
Wednesday Afternoon
"So what did you want to talk about?" Sunset asked Juniper as she welcomed her into her apartment. Sunset had gotten a rather vague text from the pigtailed girl.
"We need to talk. After school," the text said. The terseness implied it was something serious but that she couldn't leave a record of.
"I've been thinking about what the other girls said about the other Twilight's last moments," Juniper said.
"And," Princess Twilight said as she approached Juniper.
"They said she was begging for help, in fear, screaming, and reaching out an arm trying to escape," Juniper said. Her eyes narrowed. "Are those the acts of someone wanting to kill themselves. If she saw death coming toward her, wouldn't she have, you know, embraced it?" Princess Twilight and Sunset's eyes narrowed in contemplation.
"Well," Sunset said uneasily. "I never really wanted to become a demon or kill anyone." Sunset looked down in shame. "I mean, I was willing to brainwash others into becoming part of my army, I never wanted to become a literal monster. But the magic in Twilight's crown brought it out," Sunset felt Princess Twilight put a warm hand on her shoulder. "Sometimes I think that the crown was showing me what I would've become if Celestia had given me alicorn magic before I really grew up."
"Maybe the other me was just frightened by the event," Princess Twilight. "But once she was swallowed up, she embraced it."
"And the screaming?" Juniper asked.
"Maybe it was from the heat inside the sphere?" Princess Twilight.
"Well...could there have been...something else going on in her mind," Juniper said. "Like, if magic brings out what is in our heart, then maybe there was something else that could've been in her heart besides suicidal thought."
"Well, according to her brother and sister," Sunset said. "She wanted to get out of Crystal Prep. But how does that lead to vaporization?"
"Well...what if she wasn't...vaporized?" Juniper said. Sunset and Princess Twilight turned to her in shock.
"You think she wasn't?" Princess Twilight said. "We found a melted shoe! What else could've happened to her?"
"I have a guess," Juniper said. "But first. Show me where this all happened."
Sunset and Juniper ran into Canterlot High's front lawn. The former was wearing the red amulet around her neck, while the latter was carrying a modified Geiger Counter. After realizing that magic was an odd member of the electromagnetic spectrum, Juniper figured the device could be modified for measuring magic.
"This is the spot where she vanished?" Juniper asked, looking at the picture taken of the burn mark. The area was now largely covered in grass and dirt after several weeks.
"Yep," Sunset said. Juniper put the tube of the Counter over the area. It suddenly started beeping and beeping.
"Wow," Juniper said in amazement, "there is still some latent magic left."
"Magic spells don't go away," Sunset said. "All spells leave a signature or residue of some kind." Sunset pulled out her amulet. "I don't see what the point is. We've analyzed this area dozens of times." The amulet absorbed trace amounts of magic.
"Well, maybe we've been looking in the wrong place," Juniper said.
Crystal Prep Cafeteria
One Week Later
"So when's the cast coming off?" Lemon asked Indigo. The Shadowbolts were at their usual table.
"Three weeks," Indigo said uneasily, struggling to hold a knife and fork with her bandaged hands. "Then I'll be as good as new."
"That's great," Sour said happily. She then narrowed her eyes in frustration. "YOU MORON! YOU COULD HAVE DIED!"
"You nearly wasted your athletic potential on impotent rage," Sugarcoat said in an unimpressed tone.
"Yep," Indigo said, accepting her friends' criticism. "I also have to go to counseling twice a week."
"If I were the doctor, I would have put you in a straightjacket," Sunny said in a serious tone. "Don't ever, ever, ever do that again." Indigo sighed.
"Hey guys," Juniper said. Juniper looked like she was suppressing a grin.
"Hey June," Sunny said. "What's going-,"
"Private meeting, library, now," Juniper said. Juniper's friends followed her into the library.
"OK June, what is it?" Sunny said.
"Well, Princess Twilight, Sunset and I studied the magic in the place Twilight disappeared-,"
"Don't you mean 'was vaporized'?" Sunny said. Juniper's grin continued to grow wider.
"We looked at the magical residue," Juniper said, almost shaking with excitement.
"And?"
"We didn't find a single trace of your Twilight," Juniper said. "No particles, no remans nothing."
"And why are you smiling about that?" Indigo asked. Juniper's face twisted into a happy grin.
"Well that alone isn't the good news. But we've been studying the latent magic in the area. And now that we've been looking properly we found traces of...portal magic," Juniper said.
"Portal magic?" Sunny said. Hey eyes and the eyes of everyone else widened when they realized what she meant. "June, do you mean to tell me-"
"Yeah," Juniper said. "Your Twilight wasn't vaporized, she was teleported." A mixture of relief and confusion fell on their faces.
"Teleported?" Sugarcoat asked. "Where?"
"Since this is wormhole magic, there is one place she most likely ended up," Juniper said, her face brimming with excitement. "Equestria."
Sci-Twi is in Equestria. Makes you wonder where she ended up if Princess Twilight hasn't heard of a lookalike.
You know, weirdly enough, way before you posed this:
today, I'd been having thoughts of my own about Sci-Twi being sent to Equestria by that ball of magic.
I mean, her pendent had absorbed the portal's magic (if I remember things correctly), hence why it wasn't working during the Friendship Games.
Although MY thoughts about were her being found in Equestria's Everfree Forest (of all blessed places) by my OC Wolf, and being taken in by her and her adopted family til they could find a way to get her back home to her family.
I'm sure what you're planning is WAY different, though.
Also, and I don't know WHY the heck that I never noticed it BEFORE this, but there's neither a "Tragedy" OR a "Death" tag on this story, so THAT should have been a huge clue to ALL of us as to her true fate.
Anyway, yet another excellent chapter, and I can't wait for the next one.
I knew it, I knew it! It’s like Justice League where Superman is vaporized but is teleported to another time. Here, it’s a different dimension.
~*A Few Chapters Back*~
Here.
Alone.
Somewhere Else.
I was not expecting that, honestly. But Sci-Twi wishing she was somewhere else makes a lot more sense (To me, at least) than the alternative.
So, it's possible that she's alive and somewhere in Equestria. The question now is where?
Canterlot, Ponyville, and The Crystal Empire are out, since the ponies in these locations know her counterpart.
I also highly doubt she's in The Everfree since that place is dangerous from the get-go and I don't think Sci-Twi has any survival skills (I mean, sure, she might've read up on camping/survival training books, but she's probably never utilized them).
woohooo, my theory that she isn't dead was right, but not what i expected in where she went.
And this is about to prove my philosophy when it comes to books and movies no body no death
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I honestly thought the "Human Twilight is in the ether" theory was a really interesting idea.
But I felt if Twilight became something of a ghost, then the HuMane Girls could just use the Elements to revive her, or something like that. And I explicitly didn't want to write a story where the solution involved using some kind of spell that could solve the problem in a few minutes.
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Well, when the story was first published, I didn't have a "Death" tag to put on. So...
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That's kinda what I was thinking, like her physical being being destroyed but like a copy of her being stored in the aether. And sunset would somehow figure out a way to pull her out.
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Again, it's a cool idea.
But, again, it doesn't really fit into the kind of story I'm writing.
10028046 Ah, I see.
Huh. So I guess my theory about Twilight being in a magic ether wasn't completely off. Though, this raises a good question about WHERE she ended up. Canterlot, the Crystal Empire, and Ponyville are immediately off since anypony there would've recognized her instantly. So my new theory is that Twilight ended up in a village that the Mane 7 have never been to before, and that's why they don't recognize Twilight. For all we know, she could've met the Shadow 5's pony counterparts and became friends with them. Or Twilight somehow became leader of the village through saving the townsponies in some way. It's gonna be hard to say how things will go when the others finally meet Sci-Twi, but I'm gonna assume she won't be too happy to see her longtime tormentors back and think they've come to continue hurting her.
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The main reason why I wrote this story was this: I felt that Friendship Games didn't really dive deep enough into the bullying that Twilight went through during her time at Crystal Prep, nor did it really show how the Shadowbolts evolved from their experiences. Also, while Sunset was supposedly going to do more to study magic, we don't see much of that after the Friendship Games,
I think the main issue with Friendship Games is that it was originally written with a subplot of Sunset thinking of going back to Equestria. Which explains why the plot feels a bit...empty.
I felt like Twilight (seemingly) dying would set the stage for a more powerful story than Twilight just becoming another she-demon. Not only that, it would do a better job at exploring the twin issues of bullying and scientific research.
Twilight's death is a driver for both the Shadowbolts and Sunset. As the short summary indicates, they only learned the value of a person once that person vanishes from their life. Them pushing Twilight into near death makes the Shadowbolts see just how horribly they've behaved, and the classmate they scorned was a human being who deserved to be happy. For Sunset, the incident is a serious wakeup call to how lackadaisical she has been about studying magic.
As a character, Juniper allows these two plots to intersect. Juniper becomes a test case to see if the Shadowbolts actually learned not to exclude others and not give in to peer pressure. Sunny does this by protecting Juniper from a nasty prank, not only becoming a better person, but also earning Juniper's trust. Also, by learning to be the forgiver and put aside her grudges, Sunset manages to get Juniper's help to solve the mystery of Twilight's disappearance.
In other words, by giving love and trust to one lonely person, the Shadowbolts discovered that they may also have a chance to make amends to another lonely person. And Sunset, by learning to swallow her pride and give the Shadowbolts the chance she got, she is able to make more progress in studying magic.
The idea would be that in order for the Shadowbolts and Sunset to learn of Twilight's survival and plan to make amends to her, they would first have to grow up and learn true kindness and friendship. I honestly felt this would express the themes of friendship better than the usual "let's fight some magical monster" story.
Finally!
I was holding out hope this entire time that this would happen but each chapter I read kept making me doubt myself. But yay!
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What were your other theories regarding the fate of human Twilight, if you don't mind me asking?
I knew it!!
Well she could have traveled back in time to Equestria, or the future. That's bad right?
Apart of myself still believes Sci Twi in fact didn't survive.
Wait what!?
Which is something all 6 of you should do like Indigo is doing!
I'm gonna be completely honest here, that was kinda my second guess as to what happened to her in this AU story. But didn't feel like saying if it was true or not. But damn, it is now!
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For the Sunset studying magic plot, didn't they address that in Mirror Magic where Starlight helped Sunset realize that she shouldn't keep worrying about all the bad things that may or may not happen in the future and focus on the good times with her friends in the present? So there was some resolution with Sunset learning not to be so paranoid to the point where she misses out on the good times with her friends.