As if creating a suitable imaginary friend hadn’t been challenging enough, Sunset still had two more obstacles before her. First, she had to devise some method of escaping from Ft. Featherworth, and then, once she was on the run and (presumably) safely isolated, she had to figure out how to manifest Starlight Glimmer into reality. Obviously, the ideal plan would involve an alliance with some of her fellow inmates, but thanks to her altercation in her first week, the other prisoners were, at best, suspicious of her, and at worst, outright hostile. There was no telling who would squeal on her if she approached them for assistance. Getting help from outside was a similar non-starter. Sunset had burned quite a few bridges when she first fled from Equestria, and her widely publicized trial had likely incinerated the few that remained. Even if there was somepony willing to help her, she had no way to ask, as she was certain that any sort of communication would be carefully monitored. In other words, Sunset was on her own.
The first notion that came to her was to provoke a prison riot and escape in the confusion. Granted, this would only be a partial solution, as Ft. Featherworth had numerous passive security measures, such as automatic locks on many of the doors, strategically placed canisters that sprayed out some sort of crowd control gas (Sunset guessed that it was vaporized sleeping potion, but she wasn’t too keen to find out), and of course, the very big walls that surrounded the facility, topped by netting made of magically reinforced cirrus clouds designed to keep pegasus inmates from simply flying out of the yard. Thus, with the magic inhibitor on Sunset’s horn, simple physical barriers such as these were actually quite formidable.
Still, such barriers could be overcome, at least in theory, provided that Sunset maintained her physical conditioning. It would simply be a matter of waiting for the right opportunity. Of course, in a maximum security facility like this, naturally occurring opportunities were few and far between, so, in addition to analyzing the prison’s defenses for weaknesses, Sunset also began to consider various means of creating opportunities of her own. The first possibility that came to mind was distraction: after all, there was a limited number of guards on duty at any given time, and pulling their attention in multiple directions could create the opening she needed.
Her first idea, therefore, was to instigate a prison riot. It didn’t take Sunset long to realize that this was unlikely to serve her interests, though. The major downside of the lack of harassment she received from her fellow inmates was a complete and utter lack of influence among them, which meant that she lacked the clout needed to instigate a riot while staying on the sidelines; if she wanted to start something, she’d have to do it herself, which would put her at the center of attention from the very start, even if she managed to avoid serious injury in the initial scuffle. What was more, failure after starting a riot would almost certainly mean increased levels of scrutiny afterwards, making escape exponentially more difficult. No, she eventually decided, raising a ruckus should be my last resort.
Thus, she moved on to her next idea: tunneling out. Granted, this would take a considerable amount of time without magic, but if there was anything that Sunset had in abundance, it was time. However, even when ignoring that factor, this approach had its drawbacks. First and foremost, Sunset would need to keep her little side project secret for its entire duration, and the regular cell inspections meant that any escape would either need to be very well hidden, or it would have to originate from somewhere else in the facility, and there weren’t many places other than her cell where Sunset could get any degree of privacy for very long. She briefly considered trying to pry a grate off of a ventilation duct near the ceiling of her cell to allow her access to the grounds, but the actual air ducts that ran throughout the prison didn’t appear to be intended to support the weight of a pony—indeed, there was a good chance that they were designed to be relatively flimsy precisely for that reason.
She might have still considered it, were it not for an incident in late summer when a squirrel got stuck in the ventilation system. The racket that the little critter managed to make as it ran around looking for an exit kept Sunset (and most of the other inmates) awake for an entire night. Sunset could only conclude that even if the ducts could support her weight, there was no way she could move around them and avoid detection.
Still, having no better ideas, Sunset began devising a tool for digging, if only so she’d have something ready if inspiration did strike. As far as plans went, it didn’t exactly inspire any confidence, but it was better than nothing. After thoroughly examining her cell, she decided that the best hiding place would be within her mattress, which meant that before getting started producing a chisel, she’d need some means of sewing up her mattress in case guards decided to inspect it. It was as she was trying to puzzle out the best way to acquire or fabricate a needle that a third option occurred to her.
“You know, if I were you—and technically, I still am—I’d take care of that magic inhibitor before trying to escape.”
“Well, Starlight, that certainly would be in-character for you,” Sunset admitted. “After all, being able to use magic would render all of my other obstacles foal’s play. But given that another pony has attached this ring to the base of my horn with their own magic, I doubt it will come off physically until the spell has had time to wear away on its own, and that won’t be happening until after I escape. It’s not like the unicorn who recharges the spell is going to forget to do her job.”
“She might not forget to do her job, but that doesn’t mean she’ll always do it well. The definition of complacency is doing the same thing over and over and expecting exactly the same result.”
“Cute. Did you come up with that on your own?”
“Well, technically, you did, but in this context, that doesn’t matter. The point is that if you continue to be a model prisoner, eventually, the unicorn who resets the binding on your inhibitor is going to get sloppy. After all, deep down, everypony wants to believe you can ‘reform,’ right? And a pony who is changing her ways is less of a threat, isn’t she?”
Sunset had to concede this point. “Okay, so they’re going to mess up sooner or later. How exactly do I take advantage of that?”
“How should I know? You only just came up with the idea that it might be possible a few seconds ago. But I bet if you think about the problem the way I would, you’ll come up with something.”
According to the personality she’d established, this meant seriously considering ways to use magic to bypass a system specifically designed to restrict it, but Sunset figured that it couldn’t hurt. After all, she still had the backup plan of (somehow) digging her way out. At first, she didn’t know where to start her speculations, but she soon realized that the basic magical theory of how inhibitors work were considered public knowledge and were thus available from the prison library, even if the specific spells were kept confidential. In essence, there were two spells: one that prevented the wearer from manifesting a magical aura around their horn, and another that prevented the ring from being pulled off or otherwise removed through physical force.
Fortunately for Sunset, she soon realized that this system had a glaring oversight: internal casting. It was fairly common knowledge among scholars that it was possible for ponies to cast magic on themselves without producing a magical aura—indeed, pegasi and earth ponies used this method almost exclusively. However, it was uncommon among unicorns, who generally preferred to cast magic on themselves externally, as the process was identical to all of the other spells they cast on a regular basis. As a result, magic inhibitors offered no obstacle to internal magic, if only because nearly all forms of internal magic were useless to a unicorn making an escape attempt. Or, to put it in simpler terms, the Equestrian penal system had overlooked shapeshifting.
To be fair, such an oversight was in some respects understandable. Though the art of shapeshifting was theoretically possible for any being with significant magical reserves, it was considerably less intuitive than the magic earth ponies used to coax abundant crops from the ground, or the weather manipulation magic of pegasi. Meanwhile, unicorns tended to find it much easier to cast glamours to disguise themselves when they needed to alter their appearance; it was far more practical than devoting oneself to learning the ins and outs of a completely unfamiliar aspect of magical theory. That said, Sunset had difficulty believing that she was the first unicorn to come up with the idea of shapeshifting out from under a magic inhibitor, so her first task was to figure out what was keeping all the other unicorns in Ft. Featherworth from attempting this themselves.
A few hours in the prison library revealed this obstacle to be the restriction of information. Granted, Sunset hadn’t exactly expected anything with a title like Shapeshifting for Morons any more than she would have expected manuals on crafting a shiv, but there were chunks of standard reference works that had been redacted with black markers to avoid providing any information on shapeshifting beyond occasionally admitting that it was possible. Presumably, the idea was to deny inmates access to the theoretical grounding that would allow for effective experimentation. Sunset briefly wondered if this had the makings of a potential civil liberties lawsuit, but she decided against it. After all, even if she could find a sympathetic lawyer who could actually win, it would still mean revealing her intentions, which would only result in extra scrutiny.
Besides, unlike most ponies, she actually did have a place to start from, because she’d already shapeshifted herself on multiple occasions. How else could anypony describe the transition between her human and equine forms? Even if she didn’t quite know why the transformation occurred, Sunset could easily recall what the experience felt like—the sensations of pulling, pushing, and twisting, of expansion and contraction, of dissipation and materialization. Granted, it was hopelessly complex, but the mirror had been changing her species. If she was to rid herself of the inhibitor, all she’d need have to do would be to shift from unicorn to earth pony, and the metal ring would simply fall off harmlessly.
“See? There’s no problem that magic can’t solve!”
“It’s a potential solution; I’ll grant you that,” Sunset responded, “but that means it’s time to look for potential problems, and I can spot a big one right away: I have no idea how to cast magic internally in the first place.”
“That’s why waiting for the guards to screw up is important. I’m willing to bet that if you can manifest even a fraction of your aura beneath the inhibitor, that will be enough to kickstart the process. After all, the hardest part of learning to manipulate magic in the first place is producing an aura.”
“Shapeshifting shouldn’t actually require an aura.”
“Maybe not, but I bet it’s easier when conditions are similar to normal spells, and that includes making magic glowy stuff, even if it’s just a miniscule amount underneath an inhibitor ring.”
Sunset considered this. “I suppose you have a point... but it still won’t be easy.”
“I never said it would be easy. Just that it would be possible.”
“True, but the very difficulty might create another complication. Remember, from what little we overheard, imaginary friends appear to manifest in the real world accompanying a surge of magical energy. That could cause huge problems if you appear in reality too early, especially since it seems I’m likely to forget about you until you have a chance to remind me.”
“Yeah, but that also means you’ll have a pony on the outside to help you—and one to whom you’ve given considerable magical abilities at that.”
“But what if you don’t appear on the outside? What if you’re inside the prison grounds?”
“Well, then I guess I’ll have to start helping you right away, won’t I?”
At the very least, one thing was clear: if Sunset wanted to deal with the inhibitor on her horn, she needed to figure out exactly what it was doing, and since the lack of information prevented her from learning from others, she would need to turn to experience as her teacher. It didn’t take long to figure out the most sensible way to do that; indeed, the fact that it had taken so long for Sunset to even seriously consider the possibility of trying to cast a spell with her inhibitor on only emphasized how much her time in the human world had changed her. More to the point, it showed how useful it was to have a second persona with a different set of instincts: only somepony like Starlight, who was completely enamored pushing magic to its limits, would continually insist that magic was the best way to overcome the inability to use magic.
Thus, Sunset sat in her cell late one night, trying to decide what spell to cast.
“It should be something simple—a process so familiar that I’ll know immediately when the inhibitor is interfering.”
“Levitation,” Starlight replied confidently. “It’s the first spell most unicorns learn, right? You’ve done it countless times in the past, so you should be able to feel the spell going awry.”
Sunset nodded. “Right,” she said as she glanced at the pillow on her cot. “Time to find out just what’s going on here.”
The first step, clearly, was to attempt to cast a spell normally, simply to make sure that the inhibitor was actually working correctly. The more she thought about it, the more abashed Sunset felt that she hadn’t thought to make sure that her magic was actually being inhibited—she vaguely remembered thinking that there might be some means of keeping track of her attempts to use magic, but it only now had occurred to her that she could just claim any such records (if they even existed) could be attributed to force of habit. So, as per usual, she concentrated on the pillow—but before her spellcasting progressed any further, she was interrupted by a sharp stap of pain on her forehead.
Almost instinctively, Sunset raised a hoof towards her horn to check for damage. Finding nothing amiss, she took several deep breaths to allow the headache to subside. “Well, it definitely works the way it’s supposed to.”
“Darn,” Starlight said. “Looks like we didn’t win the lottery. I guess we’ll have to earn our way out.”
“For your sake, I hope that awkward analogy comes from my personality instead of yours,” Sunset replied as she closed her eyes to try again. This time, she’d be much more deliberate in her spellcasting, mindful of the actual process she was using in her attempt to lift the pillow from the cot.
Her observations were... interesting, to say the least. She had assumed that the inhibitor worked like a solid barrier, preventing her from collecting magic in her horn. What was actually going on seemed to be more akin to a powerful magnet pushing back against another magnet with the same polarity. Magic wasn’t gathering at the base of her horn and going nowhere—it was being repelled back into her body. These two magical flows colliding in the area around her skull had the side effect of creating a nasty headache, but it was probably safer to the wearer than allowing unused magic to amass in a part of the body where it couldn’t be easily discharged.
However, as in physics, so in magic: the force that pushed her magic back towards her forehead would also exert a force on the ring in the opposite direction. Something had to be keeping that sucker from flying off of her horn, and it wasn’t the actual physical properties of the inhibitor itself, because anything that dug into a horn’s bone tissue to create friction could cause permanent damage, and Celestia, being a simpering fool, would doubtless consider that to be excessively cruel.
No, it had to be some sort of adhesive spell—and one that would naturally erode over time due to the constant flow of magic that moved throughout a unicorn’s body even when they weren’t trying to cast spells. That was why the inhibitor had to be taken off every three months or so—the adhesive spell needed to be recast. And Sunset was willing to bet that if the spell wasn’t cast consistently across the inside of the ring, that would create a weak point that could allow her magic to push back against the ring, allowing her to unscrew it from the grooves of her horn. Of course, this would likely also result in the biggest headache she’d ever experienced, but it would be worth the effort. All she had to do was wait for her caretakers to slip up—and to top it off, she wouldn’t even need to go to the trouble of figuring out how shapeshifting actually worked, which she quite frankly hadn’t been looking forward to.
However, there was a flaw in this plan, and it took Sunset several months of fruitless waiting to figure it out: this was Ft. Featherworth, the highest-security prison facility in Equestria outside of Tartarus, which meant that her caretakers weren’t going to slip up. She could play the role of Little Miss Penitent all she wanted, but plenty of her fellow inmates had tried that exact tactic in the past multiple times, and, she realized, it was fairly common for the more senior guards to instill their newer coworkers with stories of attempted violence that had resulted from past mistakes. But what really made her desired plan impossible was the fact that there wasn’t one single guard, or even a group of guards whose job it was to reapply the inhibitors. Rather, the task was methodically cycled through all of them, with extra care taken to ensure that newcomers hadn’t forgotten any details from their previous stint, doubtless to ensure that Sunset’s much-desired opening was never afforded to anypony.
“Damn it,” Sunset groused to herself as the full weight of her realization hit her while she lay on her bed. “I was really hoping to avoid complicated magic.”
“I know,” Starlight replied in an effort to console her best friend and creator, “but look at it this way: You have a chance to explore the very frontier of magical theory, and once you’ve undone the damage Celestia has done, you’ll be able to share it with all ponykind!”
“I suppose you have a point, but first I have to figure out where to start.”
“I’m pretty sure you already have. Doesn’t the inhibitor redirect your magic back into you?”
Sunset’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah... and shapeshifting would have to be internal, wouldn’t it?”
Starlight grinned. “Maybe this inhibitor isn’t the obstacle everypony thinks it is.”
Of course, whether the inhibitor was an obstacle was still something of a moot point. After all, even if it was redirecting Sunset’s magic back into her, that didn’t change the fact that she had no idea how to make that rerouted magic actually do something. The knowledge that earth ponies and pegasi did this sort of thing instinctually was not particularly helpful; because they relied so much on instinct, it meant that any actual theories that could have been useful in achieving some level of understanding was scarce at best, with nearly all of the literature having been written by unicorns, most of whom attempted to describe the processes by making analogies to unicorn magic. This, to put it mildly, left much to be desired, particularly for a unicorn trying to put those theories to a practical use. Besides that, if any of those theories about general earth pony and pegasus magic had even tangentially addressed the possibility of shapeshifting, they would almost certainly not have been allowed in the prison library in the first place.
That wasn’t to say that Sunset didn’t make any progress as week after week slid by. With some practice (and a bit of luck), she managed to “get out of the way” of her ricocheting magic, allowing it to disperse throughout her body, rather than letting it all smack her in the forehead. Aside from the immediate benefit of not getting a splitting headache every time she tried to cast magic, the resulting sensation was actually quite pleasant, similar to the “pins and needles” feeling that came after sitting on her legs awkwardly for long periods of time, but with the usual stabby pinpricks replaces with gentle pulsations. The feeling seemed oddly familiar...
“It’s the mirror,” Starlight declared. “This is the exact sensation you felt when traveling through the mirror between the human world and Equestria. You do remember what happened next, right?”
“Of course,” Sunset replied. She’d gotten used to having her imaginary friend give voice to any insights into the minutiae of their magical experiments. It just seemed to be more “in character” for her. “It was like being stretched and molded like wet clay. We’re almost there; we have nearly every piece of the puzzle now. All that’s left for me to do is to figure out how to regain control of my magic once it rebounds.”
This problem stymied her for quite a while, until she received a sudden burst of inspiration from the most unlikely source she could have imagined. It happened during a recreation period on a frosty afternoon in late winter... or perhaps it was early spring. (Sunset had never particularly cared for the pomp and ceremony of seasonal transitions, and her time in the human world with its unaided seasonal changes had convinced her that it was an unnecessary waste of ponies’ time and energy.) In any case, Sunset had decided to take a break from her regular study sessions in the library, mostly because the librarian on duty this month seemed to be getting wary of her repeated requests for magic theory texts. Thus, she found herself sitting in a corner of the prison yard, watching her fellow inmates as they exercised and did their best to assert their dominance over one another.
It hadn’t been fifteen minutes before a scuffle broke out, though thankfully it happened on the other side of the yard, which meant that Sunset had the opportunity to watch the grey mare who’d accosted her when she’d first arrived demonstrate that she had yet to learn anything from that experience. The inmate was apparently having an argument with another member of her clique, and eventually she became so enraged that she charged straight at her associate, a pink pegasus with a yellow mane. However, rather than return the charge, the pegasus simply waited until the last minute before sidestepping her opponent, then grabbing her by the mane and throwing her into a table where a group of prisoners were in the midst of a relatively-high-stakes game of Go Fish.
As the yard descended into chaos, Sunset felt a sudden sense of enlightenment grow within her. Up to now, her effort to reclaim her magic had been brute force efforts to stop her magic so it could be recast like a traditional unicorn spell—an idea that now seemed patently ridiculous. Instead of fighting her magic, she needed to move with it, to use the energy it already had to redirect it to her own ends.
“You do realize that no scholarly journal would ever accept an explanation that vague, right?” Starlight commented.
“Yeah, but who cares? They can translate it into academic jargon after I topple Celestia’s regime. The only thing that matters is whether it works.”
And it did. That night, Sunset was filled with exhilaration as she directed her magic throughout her body like a conductor leading an orchestra. Suddenly, it made sense why so many earth ponies and pegasi relied on raw instinct to use their magic; it wasn’t about making your magic do what you wanted it to do, it was about letting your magic do what it wanted to do, which happened to be what you wanted to do as well, because it was your magic, after all. No doubt most unicorns would consider this to be a meaningless distinction (or outright nonsense), but as Sunset discovered, it made all the difference in the world. Weeks of stagnant progress evaporated of over the course of a single night. By the time the sunrise began to creep across the horizon, Sunset had managed to levitate a feather she’d pulled from her pillow. It wasn’t very far away from her hoof, but there was no denying that it was floating in the air, and there definitely weren’t any currents of air in her cell that could explain it away.
She’d done it. All the pieces of the puzzle had been gathered, and all that was left was to put them together.