//------------------------------//
// Chapter 13: On The Shoulders Of Giants 
// Story: I Don't Need Magic 
// by Undome Tinwe 
//------------------------------//

Two hours into their attempts to develop an effective scanning waveform, Twilight was ready to pull her hair out in frustration.

It wasn't because of the work; they were making very good progress, having already solved most of the problems related to scaling up the tracking system. Twilight was cautiously optimistic about finishing before they had to leave for the party.

No, the source of her frustrations was her research partner.

All morning, Sunset had been distant with her. She hadn't been rude – in fact, it felt like she was going out of her way to be pleasant and positive when talking to her, but every time Twilight tried to engage her in casual conversation, she would only give a brief reply before steering the conversation back to work.

Sunset was also literally keeping her distance from Twilight, choosing to work on the other side of the lab except where collaboration was strictly necessary. It was a lot like yesterday afternoon, and Twilight despised it.

She knew why Sunset was acting like this, of course. Twilight's reaction to the magical mishap yesterday, while justified, had definitely poured a proverbial bucket of cold water over the cozy warmth she'd been enjoying with Sunset. Still, Twilight had agreed to move on with Sunset, and as such, she'd been determined not to let that incident color her interactions with Sunset.

Sunset, it seemed, didn't felt the same way. Twilight had tried to give her some space yesterday to deal with her guilt, but in her absence, she'd forgotten about Sunset's habit of self-flagellation in situations where she truly believed herself to be at fault.

Well, Twilight was done interacting with Sunset from across a metaphorical chasm. It was time for some direct intervention.

"Sunset?" Twilight called out to her research partner on the other side of the lab.

"Yeah?" Sunset turned to face Twilight, one hand tightly clutching the marker she was using to write on the whiteboard next to her. "Did you figure out how to scale the waveforms for the high-power regime?"

"Not yet," Twilight replied. "I still need to figure out how to suppress the higher harmonics. I was just wondering, who else is going to be at the party tonight? I don't remember Pinkie Pie telling me."

"It's going to be the two of us, Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack," Sunset replied. "Scootaloo's probably going to be there as well, which means Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle are too. And I think that's it."

"Oh, it'll be nice to see the Crusaders again. How have they been doing?"

"They're fine," Sunset said. "So, can't you just filter out the harmonics?"

"Okay, I'm getting tired of this." Twilight stood up and walked over towards Sunset, who looked taken aback at her sudden movement, like a cornered mouse. "What's wrong with you today?"

"What are you talking about?" Sunset asked as she backed away slightly from Twilight.

Twilight continued advancing towards Sunset. "I'm talking about how you've been avoiding me all morning."

Sunset's confused look remained. "Err, Twilight?" she said, waving her hands in front of Twilight. "I'm right here. I've been here all morning."

"You've been positioned on the opposite side of the room all morning," Twilight said bluntly. "You won't talk to me except when absolutely necessary for our work, and you keep deflecting my questions. I know the normal social convention is not to call you out on it and do some ridiculous social dance where I try to figure out why you're acting that way while pretending that nothing is wrong, but I've never been one for inefficient social conventions."

Twilight's tone softened as she continued speaking. "Please, Sunset, I'm your friend again, and as a friend, I want to help you."

Sunset sighed. "I – I just didn't want to lose you again. Things were going so well. After fifteen years, we're finally talking to each other again, and we're even friends now! And then I got cocky and tried to diffuse the lattice without thinking about the difference between magic in this world and Equestria."

A bitter laugh escaped from Sunset. "That just keeps happening to me, doesn't it? Every time things start going well, I let my ego get the better of me and ruin it. This friendship we have, it's like glass. Broken glass that we've kinda glued together and hope won't fall apart when we touch it. I'm so scared I'm going to knock it over a break it into a million pieces."

The raw emotion in Sunset's words struck Twilight right in the heart, sympathetic pain assailing her as she finally understood Sunset's overreaction. Despite Twilight's frustration at Sunset's actions, a pleasant warmth was already spreading through her mind at the knowledge that Sunset cared so much about their friendship.

Still, it was time to set things straight. "I appreciate your efforts, but it's not necessary. Yes, I freaked out yesterday over the whole magic thing, but I meant what I said about wanting to move on, and I want to get past my issues." Unlike yesterday, the smile she wore was truly genuine. "So while I'd prefer if you didn't zap me with magic again, please don't try and distance yourself from me. Besides, it's hard to be friends with someone who keeps trying to keep you at arm's length."

"I guess you're right," Sunset said. "I knew it was stupid, but I really didn't know what to do, and I didn't want you freaking out again."

"It's something I need to work on," Twilight admitted. "You've probably noticed by now that the presence of magic makes me uncomfortable, and while I have good reason for my reaction, it's not exactly productive. I need to get past this, and you don't need to hold yourself back from talking about it."

"If that's what you want." Sunset and Twilight stood awkwardly a few feet from each other. "So, uh, what now?"

Twilight shrugged. "Well, we've been working for a while now; maybe we should take a break?"

"Sure. What do you want to do?"

Twilight looked around. "Well, maybe you could give me a tour of your lab? We've mostly been cooped up in this little corner of it, and I wasn't really in the right mindset to appreciate it last week when you showed me around the rest of the place."

"Do you really want to know?" Sunset asked. "There's a reason I haven't offered to give you a more in-depth tour."

Twilight took a moment to ponder that question. It was true that she'd been avoiding thinking about Sunset's work at Equinox Labs ever since she arrived. In her mind, she'd been unable to decouple the idea of magic with Sunset's work.

And yet, the developments themselves were completely mundane – none of the new technologies Equinox had "discovered" relied on magic to function, for obvious reasons. Even despite her distaste for magic, she had to admit that said developments had led to massively positive benefits, both for society and for the advancement of science. And now she had the chance to see the place where these cutting-edge technologies were being developed.

Twilight could feel the magic-averse, cautious part of her slowly losing ground to the scientist at that prospect. "I'd love to know more about what you're doing here."

"Alright, let me give you the VIP tour, then." Sunset bowed grandiosely, a smirk on her face as she rose back up. "Let's start in the chemistry section."

Twilight followed Sunset to the far corner of the room, where a series of differently-shaped containers sat on a series of shelves next to a fancy-looking refrigerator. Liquids and solids of various colors and textures sat in those containers, each neatly labelled. Some of those labels were easily recognizable, like water or hydrochloric acid, while others had long chemical names, only a few of which Twilight vaguely recalled from her undergraduate chemistry classes. On a nearby table, a plethora of various pieces of equipment that Twilight assumed were related to chemistry sat, ready for use.

"This part of the lab is where I do work on developing new chemical processes," Sunset said. "For most large-scale industrial processes, you guys are way ahead of us. But there's a lot of things you've missed out on because of how you think about everything in terms of atoms. There's so many reactions you haven't found yet because you're analyzing them purely in terms of bonds between atoms, which we didn't start doing until pretty recently."

"How else would you look at chemistry?" Twilight asked.

"With the alchemical paradigm, of course," Sunset replied. "Humans had alchemy for a while, but you guys abandoned it a few hundred years ago."

"I wouldn't say it was abandoned. We simply developed a better understanding of matter actually worked and the field evolved into chemistry. Alchemy was a combination of actual chemical insights and supernatural nonsense; chemistry distilled it into actual science."

"That makes sense for your world, since there isn't any magic here. But in Equestria, alchemy's a legit field, and we don't really think of it as being different from what you would call modern chemistry. Chemistry can tell you all about the various bonds that can form between atoms and molecules, but alchemy looks at the magical essence of things, to see connections that can form in the astral plane. When you see that, you can synthesize compounds that you wouldn't be able to otherwise."

Sunset picked up a bottle of blue liquid from the shelf. "In the beginning, I was just 'inventing' non-magical processes that had been around in Equestria for a long time. Stuff like Nicked Flannel's Transmutation or New Tone's Precipitous Botany."

Peering into the bottle, Twilight saw a silvery crystal growing out from its base, with many branches sprouting from the center and suspended in the liquid like a tree. "Eventually, I ran out of stuff I could pull from my classes that didn't need magic so I got creative. I started trying to recreate some of the magical alchemical techniques without magic."

Sunset walked over to the table and placed her hand on a complex series of tubes connected to an open flame. "A few months ago, I finally figured out how to pull off a lesser version of Brown Cell's Acceleration with just a heat source and a lot of selective mixing. We sold the patent to a perfume-making company, and the first batch of their special scents should be hitting the market in a couple weeks."

Sunset's attention turned towards a cylindrical metal container with various wires sticking out of it and a complicated interface attached to its front. It looked like a centrifuge, but when Sunset popped open the lid, Twilight realized it was more than that.

In addition to the holes lining the edges of the circular disc within where one would insert the samples to separate, the center of the centrifuge contained a crystal surrounded by an arcane symbol. Twilight recognized a few of the symbols in the circle as alchemical symbols from this world.

"This is one of my current projects," Sunset explained. "I'm trying to create a non-magical version of Somnambula's Sleeping Spray, which I'm hoping is gonna become the next big anaesthetic." She gingerly plucked out a vial of purple liquid. "It's made from a blend of different flowers, though I'm working on extracting just the active ingredients, and at the right concentrations one whiff of this will knock you out for the whole night without any side effects."

She returned the vial to its arcane machine. "I can substitute a lot of the magic with some careful centrifuging, but it turns out there's still a core spark that I can't provide without magic, which is why I need the crystal. I'm hoping I can move past that one day."

Not for the first time since she'd returned to Canterlot, Twilight found herself assailed by an uncanny sense of déjà vu. The arcane centrifuge would've been right at home with the things she'd designed as a teenager, and she felt a slew of memories brimming to the surface at the sight of the marvel of science and magic.

She remembered the long nights alone in her lab, basking in the wonder of discovery, and allowed herself to touch the centrifuge in her reverie. As she slid her hand across its smooth metal surface, she understood what had driven Sunset to create this lab.

When she looked back up, Sunset had already moved on to the next part of the lab, where rocks of various sizes were strewn about, interspersed with even more scientific equipment.

"This is the geology section of the lab," Sunset said as she walked through the jagged field. "To be honest, I haven't been able to do much here since most of the development in the field came from Earth Pony magic, and I only took enough courses in it at CSGU to hit the minimum requirements.

"Most of my work here is just trying to figure out what different dowsing spells actually fixate on and seeing if I can do what those spells do with technology. I haven't had any luck so far, though; the closest I've come is figuring out that the dowsing spells for gemstones seem to cause a resonance with crystalline structures, which causes the magic to be reflected back like in the magic tracking spell."

"If it behaves similarly, have you considered trying to map the dowsing spell into sound waves like we're doing?" Twilight asked.

Sunset pressed her hand against her forehead. "I can't believe I didn't make that connection." Twilight could see the gears turning in her mind as she spoke. "Yeah, if we can map the Echo spell into a sonic form, we should be able to do the same with the Gem-Finding spell." Sunset smiled at Twilight. "Thanks for the advice."

"Don't mention it," Twilight replied, her gut churning as she suddenly felt a bit sick. She hadn't really been thinking when she'd thrown out that suggestion, her mind still running on scientific analysis mode, but now that the rest of her brain had caught up with her she realized the implications of what she'd done.

Ever since she had arrived here to help Sunset, all of her contributions had been towards finding and catching whoever had stolen Sunset's journal, and despite her abhorrence of magic, Twilight had justified her work with it as a necessary evil.

But the advice she'd just given Sunset had nothing to do with their search. Did that make Twilight an accomplice is Sunset's work? She still didn't agree with Sunset's use of magic; it was reckless and dangerous and Twilight still hoped that it would all go away, even if she knew that wasn't going to happen. And when she'd asked for a tour, she'd rationalized it as being an observer, someone who wanted to know more about Sunset's work but still didn't approve of it.

Now, she couldn't even claim that flimsy excuse anymore, and her conscience was quick to remind her that aiding in the spread of magic would only lead to pain.

And yet, was that what she was doing? Sure, her insights were magical in nature, but Sunset's ultimate goal was to achieve the same effects without magic. Surely, that was a worthy goal? After all, Twilight had already admitted that magic wasn't all bad, and there was no reason some good couldn't come out of it. Maybe what Sunset was doing was for the best, using her magical abilities to find mundane ways of helping people. She couldn't be faulted for that.

"Twilight, you okay?" Twilight looked across the room and saw Sunset staring worriedly at her. "You kinda zoned out there for a moment."

"I'm fine," Twilight said, filing away her thought for later. Right now, she wanted to learn as much about Sunset's work as possible, ethics be damned. "So, what else are you doing here?"

"Not much here," Sunset replied. "But you might find the climate science part of the lab interesting. Come on, I'll show you."

As they continued with the rest of the tour, Twilight became increasingly less certain in her resolve to oppose Sunset's work. Seeing marvel after marvel, all created through mundane methods with only magic as a guide, made her truly realize the scope of what Sunset was doing. This woman was single-handedly changing the world, mostly for the better, and Twilight couldn't find it in her to try and stop Sunset.

As they returned to the part of the lab dedicated to physics and Sunset showed her the Dragonflame Antenna she had designed, Twilight resolved to pass on the offer Sunset had made to Dinky. Twilight was certain that she would learn much at Equinox, and Equinox could use her help too.

"…And that brings us back here," Sunset said as they returned to the containment lattice.

"Thanks for the tour, Sunset." Twilight smiled at Sunset. "It was very enlightening."

"I'm glad. I always wanted to show it to you." Sunset looked away from Twilight as she said that, a small blush on her cheeks.

"Really?"

"Well, yeah. You were one of my best friends, and the only one who really understood what I was doing back then. I wanted to show you how much I'd managed to achieve since then." Sunset still refused to look at Twilight.

"If you wanted to impress me, then you've succeeded," Twilight said sincerely. "You've done a lot here to make the world a better place." And all without having to bring magic into the world, she wanted to add, but now was not the time for that discussion, not when they were trying to rekindle their friendship.

"Thanks," Sunset replied. "So, ready to get back to work? We've still got a magic thief to find, and we'll lose some time tonight because of the party."

"Good point. I'd like to get something working before we have to leave." As Twilight returned to her computer, she couldn't help but smile. She had her friend back again, and this time she wasn't going to let her go.