//------------------------------//
// A High Note Survives 
// Story: Magical Curiosity 
// by Comma Typer 
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In her head, everything became noise.
After Princess Twilight Sparkle left, Sci-Twi trotted through the city in a daze, eyes focused straight ahead—disoriented.
Screams, shouts, more crack!’s and bang!’s. These rang out to her ears, and that hero instinct jolted her into approaching a powerless pegasus. His wings already scratched, he was massaging them with a hoof.
Twilight touched his bunned mane. He looked up and saw her face. “I can a-accompany you back to school. That’s where Sunset’s patching everypony up.”
The pegasus shivered, recognizing her. “Tw-Twilight?!”
She nodded. “Yes, it is, Zephyr.”
Zephyr gulped. In a rattled voice, “S-So, are you gonna solve this pony problem or…?”
Twilight turned away, hiding her pained face. Breaking the truth to him was not going to be easy—so would be breaking the truth to everyone else in the world.
Then, she turned back to him. “No.”
Zephyr bent his head back. “Tell me that’s a joke.”
A sigh. “No.”
“Oh.” He looked down, continued massaging his wings. “I see….”
After helping Zephyr up and sending him on his way with some improvised bandages, Twilight resumed her solitary journey.
Hectic was the atmosphere, crack!’s and bang!’s springing up every minute or so. Pegasi crashed through windows or roofs, and more were tripping in the sky and falling to the ground. Magical plants bloomed to life with accidental thanks to the Earth ponies as they barreled through walls with their sudden strength. Unicorns were floating things around in their magic surges—or, perhaps, turning one thing into another unintentionally like an orange into a frog that landed right on a mare’s face, leaving her shrieking.
Twilight’s ears folded back at that.
More of her senses came back to her as time passed. She remembered to check the faces of everyone she passed by.
Except, of course, they did not have the same faces anymore. Good thing magical horses had colorful coats and manes with hues that matched their previous forms. Oh, and there was the “magical” part of it.
Twilight looked up at her horn. The only word she was able to mumble out in horror was, “Forever….”
Thoughts flooded her mind. Maybe her career would not be in any particular field of conventional science at all. The idea of being a masterful mage was not as far-fetched as it had sounded before. What a cruel irony it was, having built up much of her life to pursue a science, to advance technology, and now, the most likely thing to happen to her was researching magic.
A plan years, if not more than one full decade, in the making. As of fifteen minutes ago, it was thrown out the window.



She stood in front of her manor. It looked pretty normal. No shattered windows, no floating furniture, and no one being turned into potted plants. It had remained unharmed, unscathed.
The house itself, that was. That did not say anything about its inhabitants.
Twilight hesitated to raise a hoof to the glassy front doors.
Then, with one of the biggest gasps she had ever made, she knocked.
Immediately, hoofsteps came down.
The doors swung open.
Silence as she looked on her daughter. Awed silence.
Twilight rubbed her snout, then her wet eyes.
She hugged her mother, now a gray and purple unicorn.
Out of the hallway came Night Light, a unicorn, too. He wrapped the two mares in a hug as well, their embrace warming.
“You’re OK!” Twilight Velvet shouted, pulling her closer. “We were so worried!”
But Twilight herself heard none of it, as she glowed the doors closed and simply cried on their shoulders, slowly lugged through the halls.



Knock! Knock!
Nothing.
“Twilight, it’s us.”
Sniffles.
“Twi, open up.”
More sniffles, something being shuffled around.
“You’ve been in there for more than five hours. You’ve got to come out sometime.”
Nothing but sniffles.
“We know your door’s not locked, Twilight.”
Nothing.
Then, the door handle glowed red.
Sunset and her friends trotted inside.
Twilight’s room was one ornate mess. Elaborate designs with stars and galaxies as the theme over a plethora of stuff somehow uncluttered in the many shelves and cabinets there, crowding up the room yet with none of the cramped ambience one would get from such a place.
Through the window, the moon shone gray on a Twilight Sparkle seated on the bed, looking down on her blanket and her sheets.
Looking down on her hooves, that ruthless reminder of who she was now.
Spike closed the door with his claw and locked it, leaving the room to themselves.
They then approached Twilight, taking up both sides of her bed.
Twilight wept silently, levitating her glasses out of her face only to float her box of tissues up.
Sunset said nothing.
Everyone said nothing, not even Spike. No words were spoken. No gestures were made. Only looks, only nudges, as minutes elapsed under the moon’s glow, glinting on Twilight’s mane and her glasses.
Sunset drew out a long sigh. “How do you feel, Twilight?”
Nothing.
A wipe of her eyes with some tissue, then floated it away to the trash can. With eyes red and drained, with speech broken and waned, “Awful. More than a-awful.”
Sunset then hopped on to the bed.
So did everyone else, even Spike. The bed creaked under the weight, but it held up.
Twilight covered her face, guilt bubbling up. “It w-was all my fault! I sh-shouldn’t have asked y-you to take me along! After that, I-I’ve been nothing but trouble!”
Sunset pat her on the head, ruffling her mane a bit. “Twilight, it’s OK. You didn’t mean—”
“I should’ve known!” Twilight shouted, pushing Sunset away with the force of her voice. “I should’ve known that there’d be a catch! A million catches, but I let curiosity get the better of me!” and shrouded her head with both forelegs, burying herself in sorrow mingled with more tears.
Felt another hoof on her mane, tugging on her hair.
She exposed her face again, seeing Rainbow Dash slightly pulling her purple mane.
“Yeah, Twi!” she encouraged, wings flapping. “You almost did nothing wrong!”
Twilight groaned. “Thanks, Dash.”
Rainbow became nervous, baring her teeth a little and scratching her head. “What I meant was...I would’ve done the same thing, but, you know, duty calls when you’re the captain of every sports team!”
“It was nighttime,” Sunset corrected with a cutting glare at Rainbow.
Rainbow blushed. “Heh-heh!” Then, pulling Twilight closer with a hoof wrapped around her neck, “But, no matter what, we’ll still be here for you!”
“Even if it means being together as ponies this time,” Rarity said with a tiny chuckle, her eyes twinkling.
Applejack raised her head to see Twilight better, lifting her hat to do that. “It’s gonna be mighty awkward to be goin’ round as English-speakin’ ponies.”
“Who also have magic,” Fluttershy added, spreading one wing and then admiring it, “and can fly some of the time.”
“Don’t forget that we’re plucky high school teenagers!” Pinkie yelled, grinning.
Twilight opened her mouth, then looked back down at her hooves. Stuttering, “W-We’re going to h-have hooves l-longer than we’ve had h-hands!”
Buried her face again not with hands but with hooves, crying.
Seeing nothing, feeling her moist tears on her hooves.
“I’m going to live seventy or eighty years as a unicorn...and that’s if ponies live as long as we do, if not longer! What’s going to happen in a century?! Is no one going to remember—wait, they’ll remember because we have history books, but then we’ll have generations of ponies and other creatures and—” wheezed, wheezed, wheezed until her head became light.
And was immersed in a hug, her friends’ hairy hooves encasing her in loving friendship.
Silence. Beautiful silence, drowning in harmony.
“We’ll be together until th-the very end, Twilight,” Sunset said, voice choking. “No matter what happens.”
Then, Twilight opened her eyes.
Saw Spike, her faithful dragon, hugging one of her forehooves with his claws.
Surrounded by her friends, she extended both forehooves all around them and hugged them back.
As they glimmered a little under the moonlight.



Many hours later, it was ten minutes to five in the early morning.
Or ten minutes to five in the very late night.
Right outside the school, the portal still swirled, guarded by a few ponies in police uniform. Despite the unusual circumstances, the least of which was their magic and their new bodies, they stood still, ready for any threat that might come to the portal.
The front doors opened without anything touching them, Principals Celestia and Luna trotting out as Luna levitated a phone and a glove to slide screens and press buttons with. Their manes flowed and gleamed in faint grace under the night sky.
Celestia looked up, seeing the moon over there. “Luna, any updates?”
Luna cleared her throat. “All of them are more than willing to submit to us princesses.”
“Even Queen Novo from the South?”
“Even her, sister.”
Celestia shook her head, mind reeling from her jumbled thoughts. “I just wanted to give back to the school, not become a diarch of the whole world.”
“But thou knowest that we must take this responsibility, Celestia,” replied Luna, looking to the moon as well, “lest utter disaster would befall upon billions.”
“Billions…?”
Not wanting to talk about any potential disasters for the meantime, Luna glowed her horn blue. “Tend to your post, sister. Raise the sun over this fair Equestria for the first time.”
Celestia gulped. “‘Equestria’, huh? Might as well go for that.”
Her horn glowed yellow.
The moon slowly descended, causing all the guards’ heads to turn. The dark sky brightened into a comforting yellow, stars twinkling out of sight. When the moon reached the horizon, the sun appeared right beside it and poured out its light and shine for all to bask in.
The moon dipped beneath the hills and mountains. The sun rose above them.
The crow of a rooster broke many’s spell of sleep. A dozen birds flew out of their nests and chirped, welcoming the day.
And then, it was Tuesday morning on an Earth that no longer was.