The slumber party, such as it was, was going well. They had made themselves at home in the living room after Twilight had been sure to cover all of the couches with blankets. Her parents had a rule about dog fur on the furniture, and the teen assumed that would extend to unicorns as well, so precautions were taken. The three had relaxed with a movie on the couch, grateful for the distraction after a long day until the food had arrived. With the movie now over and food still being munched on, the question of what to do had resulted in a certain revelation.
“I was being facetious,” Sunset groaned as she snagged another slice of pizza. “I can’t believe you’ve actually been taking notes. Not just that, but you already had pages of notes on slumber parties from before to reference for comparison.”
“Of course I took notes. You didn’t expect me to read a reference book and not take notes, did you? I hoped this information would become relevant to me at some point and wanted to be prepared.”
“You have a reference book on slumber parties?”
“Not currently, hence the notes,” Twilight said in a tone that screamed this should be obvious, “but the library does; Slumber 101: All You Ever Wanted to Know About Slumber Parties but Were Afraid to Ask.”
Sunset just sat dumbfounded as she tried to process Twilight’s apparently serious statement before opting to let it go, deciding that continuing that conversation would be more trouble than it was worth. Luckily, Spike decided to interject.
“Well, I can’t believe that you ordered a pizza without any meat on it,” Spike huffed. “Couldn’t you have gotten some sausage or pepperoni, maybe some bacon?” The pup’s eyes seemed to glaze over at the thought of these carnivorous delights.
“Sorry, Spike,” said the pony lifting her slice of pizza with a hoof, “if I was back in my human body, I might have taken you up on that offer, but ponies don’t eat meat outside of seafood, and anybody who ruins a perfectly good pizza with anchovies deserves to be banished to the moon for a thousand years.”
“I can’t believe…that!” Twilight waved a frantic hand in the direction of the unicorn.
“Please don’t tell me you’re one of those people,” said Sunset around a mouthful of pizza, “I don’t have access to the Elements right now to have you banished.”
“What? No, not the anchovies,” Twilight said making a disgusted face and pointing at the pizza Sunset was holding, “That! How are you grabbing things without an opposable thumb? For that matter how do you lift it to your mouth? Horses aren’t capable of that range of dexterity in their joints.”
“First off, I’m a pony, not a horse,” corrected Sunset with a huff. “Second, I’m an Equestrian pony not one from this world. I’ve seen the horses and ponies here and outside of some vague physical similarities, we are nothing alike.”
“Four hooves, mane, tail; not seeing a lot of difference,” Spike teased.
“Aside from the fact I can talk,” Sunset quipped.
“Hey, I can talk,” the puppy said, “doesn’t mean I’m not a dog anymore.”
Sunset opened her mouth to retort but was cut off as Twilight’s phone started to ring. Sunset and Spike quieted instantly, not wanting Twilight to have to explain the number of guests she was hosting.
Seeing the name, Twilight answered happily, “Hey, Shiny.”
“Wow, Twily, only two rings. Usually, I have to call at least twice to get your attention away from whatever project you’re working on; three if you’ve 'just made a breakthrough',” teased the voice on the other end.
“I’m not that bad,” the girl grumbled.
“Sure you’re not,” her brother placated. “Look, I was just calling to let you know that I won’t be home tonight. The captain asked me to pull a double again since one of the other guys called out sick.”
“Oh, okay,” the teen replied, relieved at the thought of an easy night hiding her guest.
“Hey, don’t be too excited. Just because I’m not home to remind you to get some sleep doesn’t mean you should be staying up all night. Honestly, you need to get out of the garage more often.”
“Lab!” Twilight corrected in reflex.
“Seriously, have some friends over.” Her brother continued ignoring her comment. “It’s not good for you to be cooped up alone all day. You need to go hang out and get some sunlight.”
“I was out yesterday.”
“True, so maybe go hang out with some of the people from the Friendship Games team again.”
“Err…I don’t know if-”
“Twily, I’m just looking out for you. I don’t want you to be alone all the time.”
Casting a gaze toward her two companions who were busying themselves with what remained of the food she said, “Don’t worry, BBBFF, I’ve got plenty to keep me busy this weekend.”
“Alright,” sounding anything like that was the case, “well I better get back to work. Goodnight, Twily.”
“Goodnight, Shiny.”
Seeing the teen’s conversation was done, Spike asked, “Everything okay, Twilight?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Shiny just called to say he’d be out all night,” the girl replied. Seeing the unicorn raise an eyebrow at this, she continued, “Work, you know.”
Sunset nodded at that but a puzzled look remained. “That still begs the question, where are your parents?”
“Oh, they’re out of town for a party. Mom’s an author and she’s got a new book coming out soon. She didn’t want to get stuck going alone so she roped my dad into going with. Shiny…er Shining Armor that is, my brother, is supposed to be keeping an eye on me, but he’s a cop and keeps getting called in to work nights.”
“Well, at least it works out well for us,” smirked Sunset, “you don’t have to explain the impromptu slumber party.”
“Are you kidding, if they found out Twilight was having a party, they’d probably throw one of their own in honor of the occasion,” interjected Spike causing the aforementioned girl to shoot him a glare.
Weakening, Twilight just added, “Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m not big on socializing and between them and Cadance they’ve been on me to try and make some friends.”
“Well, since this is such a special occasion,” said Sunset hoping to liven the mood, “what does your research suggest we do next?”
Twilight smiled and pulled out her notes, “Well, we could watch more movies, but maybe we should wait until later when we’re more tired and we want something to do to relax. We could give each other makeovers, though that may be hard as I don’t know the first thing about pony fashion styles, or human ones for that matter, and even if you gave me a makeover, I’d just have to wash it off when you were done so we could go to bed.” Twilight continued to skim through her list of slumber party-appropriate activities quietly crossing them off until she reached an item at the bottom. The teen adjusted her glasses as she looked up from her list and silently appraised the unicorn. “Have you ever played any video games?”
A spark lit in the pony’s eye and a devious look appeared on her face that hadn’t graced it since before the Rainbow had wiped it off. “What system do you have?”
***
“Wanna go again?” the unicorn asked with a smirk. The teen next to her just stared dumbly at the screen, her avatar’s blood coming out in spurts as the announcer proclaimed her death.
“No more,” Twilight said, conceding her defeat as she buried her head in a throw pillow. Losing to my family is one thing, but being crushed repeatedly by someone without fingers is more than my ego can handle.” Sunset just chuckled in response. “Seriously though, you never did answer my question. How can you even do half the combos when you don’t have fingers?”
“Short answer, magic,” replied Sunset as she logged off the system and put her controller on the coffee table.
“But I thought you were trying to conserve your magic in case of an emergency,” said Twilight, lifting her head from the cushion.
“I am.” The little pony glanced at the curious girl and sighed, “Should have figured I wouldn’t get away with a short answer around you.” Fully turning towards Twilight, Sunset straightened up and adopted a lecturing tone. “When humans think of magic, they always seem to picture big showy spells like you’d see wizards do in the movies, but for the most part, that’s not what pony magic is.”
“So you can’t teleport or cast fireball?” asked Twilight trying to hide the disappointment in her voice.
“Oh, no I can cast those, and pretty much every other popular spell on the Ogres and Oubliettes spell list,” Sunset giving the teen nerd a knowing smirk that resulted in a blush spreading across the girl’s lavender skin. “But that’s because I’m a unicorn. Unicorns have conscious magic, in other words, we learn to cast those big flashy spells by drawing on the magic in our mana pools. That’s the kind of magic I’m avoiding using so that my pool will be full in case we need them.”
“Alright, then what kind of magic are you using to kick my butt at video games or to hold the pizza earlier.”
“Right, so unlike unicorn magic that draws on your mana pool, all ponies also have forms of inherent magic. Magic is a part of us, like the autonomic responses in your body, some forms of magic are just a part of us that can’t be turned off; things like hoof manipulation and our Cutie mark magic talent fall into that category. Heck even coming to another world doesn’t seem to affect it, though the sample size on that might be too small to make definitive statements.”
“So you’re saying things like closing the portal or using levitation will drain your magical reserves, but using inherent magic draws from a pony themselves?”
“Exactly. If I was a pegasus or an earth pony, this wouldn’t even be an issue since their magic is all inherent. A pegasus doesn’t have to think about standing on a cloud, they just do it, same with an earth pony farmer’s connection to their crops.”
“Same with Spike then, right?”
“Wait, what about me?” asked the canine in question, the sound of his name drawing him from the food-induced snooze he had been enjoying.
“Your magic, now that you can talk, I guess you have inherent magic too,” replied the young scientist. Pausing for a moment, her face scrunched in thought before turning to the amber unicorn, “Though I’m curious now, why that is. Do dogs in your world have inherent magic to talk? Wait, do you even have dogs in your world?”
“Yeah, there are plenty of dogs in Equestria, but they don’t talk. They’re just pets, same as you’d find in this world,” the pony stopped for a moment to cast an appraising eye on the purple pup, “well unless you count the Diamond Dogs, but you don’t seem the type.”
“Well then how is Spike able to speak?” asked Twilight exasperatedly, still searching for an answer to her original question.
“Hmm,” Sunset began tapping a hoof to her chin, “that’s a good question. Obviously, he came into contact with the stray magic when your device opened at the school, and that magic would be what you had collected from the portal, specifically the portal’s magic as well as the Harmony magic you siphoned through it, but neither of those should grant sapience.”
“Are you sure?” asked Spike, a hint of worry in his voice.
“Positive,” replied the unicorn. “The portal’s magic is just that, a portal like what opened in the hall so it can’t be that. As far as the Magic of Harmony, well granted it’s not fully understood, but seeing as you didn’t get blasted into a crater, turned into a statue, or banished to the moon, I tend to think it wasn’t Harmony.”
“Banished to the moon? Wait, you were serious? That could have happened?” the nervousness the dog had before growing to panic.
“The moon, Tartarus,” Sunset recited then almost as an aside continued, “It might have picked somewhere new this time I suppose, but yeah banishment is a definite possibility with the Elements, but that didn’t happen so it makes me wonder what other kinds of magic you pulled out of the portal. I mean, Spike didn’t turn into a person, so it wasn’t the transformation magic.”
The pup only whimpered in response to all the things that could have happened to him today and hopped into Twilight’s lap. Petting him slowly to calm him down, a memory of a similar scene at the animal shelter sprang to mind.
“Those weren’t the only places I siphoned energy,” Twilight said absently, as her mind tried to recall the details of the event.
“Where else did you find magic,” the pony asked a tinge of nervousness in her voice.
“W-well, after you came out of the plinth, you were hurt and I wasn’t sure what to do aside from find help, and it turns out there’s an animal shelter not too far from Canterlot High.”
Twilight was worried how Sunset might take the fact that she had been taken to see a vet, but the pony’s gaze seemed distant through the teen’s ramble until finally uttering a single word to cut her off, “Fluttershy.” It came out as barely a whisper, but the mere utterance seemed to bring a torrent of emotions to the little pony, from scowl to morose sadness, to an apparent moment of clarity that sparked a mad dash by Sunset for one of Twilight’s many notebooks. Flipping to a clean page, the sheet was quickly covered in what the teen made out to be a combination of complex mathematical formulas coupled with arcane diagrams and runic markings. Whatever it was, the result seemed to please the unicorn.
“I think I know how I can get back,” Sunset said with a grin.
***
“You want to magic blast yourself back through the mirror?!” Twilight repeated for the umpteenth time. This time it carried a tone that reflected her concern for the unicorn’s sanity and questioned if her previous head wound might have left lasting damage.
“For the last time, Twilight,” Sunset began exasperatedly, “I’d rather not be blasted by any rainbows ever again, but I think that a massive release of Harmony magic near the portal would be enough to trigger the connection between our worlds and I should be able to ride the thaumic wake back through to Equestria. I’m just recreating the conditions that brought me here in the first place.”
“Fine,” the teen said, flopping onto the couch in a huff. “Even accepting that you can’t guarantee the Harmony magic will actually travel back along the original path as I hypothesized, you said the source of the massive energy surges I picked up were from the blasts of rainbow magic. How do you plan on acquiring more Harmony magic to recreate that phoenomenon?”
“Look,” Sunset said, flipping the pages to the notebook back to Twilight’s earlier scribblings, “as I said before, Harmony magic is a product of the Elements of Harmony uniting. The Elements have already manifested in this world in the girls who helped the princess defeat me, so all we have to do is locate them and siphon some of their magic. Hopefully, uniting them in your device will be enough to trigger the power of Harmony and send me back to Equestria. No blasting necessary.”
“So we’d have to track down your friends-”
“Former friends,” corrected Sunset, trying and failing to hide the hurt and anger in the words.
“Former friends,” Twilight amended, “then we hope we can catch them when they ‘pony-up’…ugh, is that really what we’re calling it?”
“Trust me it wasn’t my idea,” Sunset sighed.
“So assuming they are ‘ponied-up’, we siphon some of their magic without being noticed and then set off a large magical blast on the front lawn of CHS to send you home. I don’t know,” Twilight said nervously, “there’s a lot of supposition in your plan.”
“Do you have a better plan?” snapped the unicorn, causing the girl to flinch. “Sorry, sorry,” Sunset said and took a few deep breaths to calm down. “Look, I know it’s not a perfect plan, Tartarus, it’s barely enough to constitute a plan, but it’s the best we’ve got if I’m ever going to get out of here.”
“And you’re sure we can’t just ask for their help?”
Sunset shook her head, “That would be a bad idea. We want Harmony magic. If my name comes up, Harmony would be the last thing we’d get.”
“And I guess it would be weird for me to ask if they'd let me scan them,” Twilight stated.
“She’s speaking from experience on that one,” commented Spike, earning him a glare from the teen.
“It would probably be best if they didn’t see you then either,” Sunset cut in, a bit of nervousness in her tone. “We-we wouldn’t want them getting suspicious if they see the same person stalking each of them.”
Twilight saw the truth in the statement but sensed there was more to it and that Sunset was hiding something. Her focus was diverted from that thought however when her phone rang. Swiping it off the table quickly and glancing at the name, Twilight answered, “Hi, Cadance.”
“Hey, Ladybug,” Cadance chirped out on the other end of the line. “Just calling to check up on you, and I was wondering if you wanted to hang out tomorrow. You know just me and you, get some fresh air and a little retail therapy.”
“Shiny put you up to this didn’t he?” Twilight countered irritated at her brother’s interference.
“Okay, yes, but don’t be mad at him. He’s just worried about you. You need to get out and live a little. There will be plenty of time for you to be cooped up in a lab when you’re at Everton.” The dean’s tone didn’t hide well the bit of disdain she held for the aforementioned institution.
“Cadance, we’ve been over this before. Everton is where I want to be. Just think of what I could discover with those resources at my disposal.” And no Cinch breathing down my neck. “In fact, I’m still working on my admissions project right now so I’ll be too busy to go clothes shopping with you.”
The comment seemed to gain the unicorn’s attention as her ears perked up and she hopped up closer to Twilight cocking an ear to listen in on the call.
“Come on, Ladybug,” Cadance continued to needle, “It’ll be fun. We can hit a few stores, you can help me look at wedding dresses.”
“What?!” Twilight shouted. “Shiny proposed and no one bothered to tell me?!”
“Oh, Twilight,” Cadance snickered, “You know you’ll be first to find out when he finally pops the question, but we both know it’s just a matter of time so it can’t hurt to start looking.”
Twilight opened her mouth to deny the request once again when Sunset placed a hoof on her shoulder. The unicorn wore a wide grin. She pointed to the phone, well as much as she could lacking the necessary digits, and nodded repeatedly. Twilight was confused by Sunset’s vehemence but opted to go along with it.
“Okay, Cadance, I guess we can go. I mean, what kind of LSBFF would I be if I wasn’t there to help my future SILBFF?”
Cadance chuckled, “Pick you up tomorrow morning, say ten?”
Glancing at the amber pony still wearing a knowing grin and nodding, Twilight replied, “Sounds good, Cady. See you tomorrow.” Hanging up the phone, Twilight raised a curious eyebrow at the little pony. “What was that about? I thought we had to figure out how to acquire the Elemental magic to get you back home.”
“We do,” Sunset replied, “and I know just where to start.”
Twilight let out a groan, “And I have to go shopping to do it?” Twilight asked with a bit of a whine.
“Don’t worry,” Sunset said with a smirk, “you’ll be simply fabulous, darling.”