"I'm sorry your highness! I didn't realize--"
"Your highness?" Twilight shook her head. "No, I'm not royalty! I'm just your run-of-the-mill genius prodigy with magical friends from another world! Which... now that I say that, I'm not that run of the mill."
"Don't forget your talking dog," Spike pointed out.
Sunburst rose from his prone position, and further rose when Starlight leaned down and pulled him up. "Biped. Forelimbs are for gripping, not locomotion."
"Right." The stallion--or, was it still 'stallion' in this world?--adjusted his cape. "Right, right. It's... a pleasure to meet you, miss Sparkle. And your talking dog. I take it that's normal in this world?"
"Actually no. It's pretty unusual." Twilight paused. "Aren't talking dogs normal in your world?"
"If you're talking about the diamond dogs, I'm pretty sure they're actually some sort of giant shrew--"
"We can debate scientific classification later," Starlight interjected firmly. "Right now we need to find Sunset Shimmer, all of her, and see if we can recombine her into her usual self."
"Right! Well. About that." Twilight rubbed the back of her head. "The rest of the Rainbooms are trying to track down individual components of Sunset's manifested psyche based on their understanding of her intrinsic profile, but, well, that's five to seven, and that's assuming they can find all of her."
Sunburst nodded. "And the remaining two personas?"
"Had some good luck there. One of them is intelligent enough to at least stay nearby--oh, there she is now." Twilight turned and waved at the figure coming out of the brown-red building. "Sunset! Over here, your brother came to help!"
The two native equestrians looked over, and Sunburst's eyes widened as he took in the image. He wasn't exactly sure what was considered normal in this world, but he could reasonably guess that this version of Sunset was definitely not it. There was something about the way the feathered boots flowed gracefully over the ground as she walked, the way her otherwise bare arm muscles slinked under her cutie-mark shoulder bracers, the way her fiery hair seemed to rise endlessly into the air, that seemed to project an otherworldly presence.
Oh, and the giant glowing wings and horn made of pure golden light, those were pretty big clues as well.
"Hello, Sunburst." Sunset's voice was calm and serene, even as her red-rimmed eyes turned to him. "It is good to see you again, even in such dark circumstances."
Sunburst swallowed. "Hey, Sunset. You... seem pretty calm, all things considered."
"I am comprised of Sunset's sense of harmony, her wisdom, as it were. To panic in this situation would service nobody, myself least of all." She turned to Starlight Glimmer. "I take it he is here to assist in the reunion?"
"Yes, basically. Why don't we all head back to the lab, look over the notes?"
"That does seem like a good decision," Sunset noted, absently dusting off her arm. "It will, at least, give us an overview of the problem, from which we can derive a course of action."
Sunburst watched her slowly stroll back to the school, swallowing awkwardly. "Yes, there's definitely something wrong with her. She's usually so much more... direct and active."
Twilight nodded. "Yeah. Don't get me wrong, she's a good person and all, but she's usually more... uh..."
"Abrasive?" Starlight offered.
"....domineering," Twilight replied. She knelt down, picking Spike up and walking off. "Come on, let me show you the lab. Maybe we can actually get something done, now that we have the original engineer with us."
"Well, I'll see what I can do." Sunburst started after her, his legs somehow moving into a rhythm that felt oddly natural. "But it might be good to know what progress you've made thus far?"
"There's a lot of theoretical technobabble that I can't quite parse. I'm not a native magical student--most of my work is in applying magic to the particular set of laws this universe imposes, instead of operating under the originating set of laws in the Equestrian universe. Starlight and Sunset have more of the technical know-how, I'm just the one that runs the system and collates the data."
"It's very important data," Starlight assured her. "And being honest I'm more of a juryrigger then a constructor like Sunset is. It's not like there's only one way to be intelligent, after all." She glanced at the ground. "My own 'brilliance' really causes messes, whenever I try to apply it."
"Well, not all the time," Sunburst offered. "I mean... you did kind of save Equestria recently."
"Yeah, but... I sort of broke the changeling hive to do it?"
"That wasn't you, that was Thorax."
"Well I was the one to tell him to--"
Spike snorted. "So, hey, is this actually important, or are you just going back and forth for no reason?"
"Spike!" Twilight cried.
"What? You and Sunset do this a lot too!"
Sunburst chuckled wryly. "Well, I suppose we should focus on what's going on now. Do you have the waveform records on hand? A fractal morphic cascade was purely theoretical before all this, but then again so was the ICKE formula back when I first created Sunset, so--"
"Created?" Spike tilted his head. "Like I was made by my mom?"
"No, Spike." Twilight opened the door. "It's more like, um... it's like... a computer program! Sunset was a computer program that got to be alive because of magic. You understand that, right?"
The dog nodded. "Not at all."
"Eeerugh." Twilight shook her head. "Anyway. Let me just... put you down here, where you'll stay, and I'll get all the data that I need from over there, and you and Sunset can catch up."
"I mean, sure, if she's OH SWEET CELESTIA you're right next to me." Sunburst chuckled awkwardly, scratching his beard as he managed to smile weakly at the fragment of his artificially generated sister. "You know, with all the light and the stuff, I kind of thought you would be a little less hard to miss, you know?"
"Silent arrival is often the way of wisdom," Sunset replied, unperturbed.
"Kind of thought it was having sense beaten into you," Starlight deadpanned.
"Wisdom can arrive in many ways."
Starlight blinked. "...what do you know. Even Sunset's wisdom is snarky."
Sunburst took a breath. "We'll get this fixed, Starlight. I promise."
"And it might even happen before Sunset!"
The two of them turned to Twilight.
"Cause, you know. Sunset. The time. And, the... girl..." She chuckled awkwardly. "I'll just... leave you with the notes."