"Shall we give it another go?" Sunset Shimmer asked her friends/band mates. They always practiced their songs after school to stay at their peak performance. Usually, it was just the six of them, but today, Sunset had invited their new friend to join them. Twilight Sparkle, the former student for Crystal Prep sat quietly in the corner of Sunset's garage, because the school's music room was closed after school.
"Sunset, We've already played this song eight times," Rainbow Dash replied with a loud groan, "we know it backwards and forwards, why do we have to keep playing it?"
"Well, if you were listening to when I first explained it, I'm really close to figuring out what happens when we 'pony up,'" Sunset explained, "Or, for when we play music, that is. After what happened during the Friendship Games, I realized there's a whole new can of worms that I have no idea how to even begin explaining." Up until now, Sunset hadn't noticed the general annoyance of her friends. We've only been practicing for, she paused for a quick look at her phone, two hours? Wow, time sure flies when you're studying magic. Or, trying to.
Sunset focused back on her friends standing around her garage, they were clearly taking advantage of the time after the song. They were just idling chatting with each other, except for Rainbow Dash, who was still flying around the room groaning and mumbling to herself about how her fingers were sore. Wait, Sunset immediately thought, flying!? It was at that moment that she noticed that nobody's transformations had reverted, and as she reached for the top of her head, she realized that included her! Everyone still had pony ears, long hair and in Fluttershy and Rainbow's case, wings.
"Uh guys," she started, "why haven't our transformations reverted?"
Rarity was the second to realize it, "I don't know darling, I thought you almost had it figured out."
Before Sunset could comment, Pinkie Pie interjected, "Maybe we broke it!" She gasped in shock at her own thought and started speaking much faster, "What if the song magic is like a computer and because we used it over and over and over and over again, something happened and it froze! What if we're frozen!" She gasped again and froze herself in the position she was standing, pretending to be stuck.
"Yeah, ah don't think that's why," Applejack said as she turned back to Sunset, "Any ideas there sugarcube?"
"Well," Sunset started again, "I'm not totally sure, but-"
"Who cares why!" Rainbow Dash said as cut Sunset off, "I can keep my wings now! How awesome is that!" She tried to continue but was silenced by Applejack putting her hand over the rainbow maned girl's mouth.
"Continue," Applejack said back to Sunset.
"As I was saying, I think Pinkie Pie might have been on to something with her computer analogy."
"So you mean we are frozen?" Fluttershy squeaked as she started pacing back and forth, "how will I care for all my animal friends if I can't move?"
"No Fluttershy, you're not frozen, you're walking around right now," Sunset said with a slight tone of annoyance for being interrupted so much, "I meant, maybe the magic is like a frozen computer, maybe we have to reboot it. And if we 'pony up' when we play music, how do we reboot the 'computer?'"
This question caught everyone else off guard, Sunset became well aware of this when everyone started looking around at everyone else, expecting them to have the answer. It was then that Twilight stood up from the box she was sitting on, a look of realization on her face.
"You play the song again and the transformation should revert after you finish it!" Twilight exclaimed, causing Fluttershy to jump to the ceiling of the garage out of shock, staying up there with her wings.
"Exactly," Sunset stated.
"But what if I want to keep my wings, I like being able to fly!" said Rainbow Dash, who was defensively holding her wings as if they could be pulled away from her. This, of course caused her to start falling to the ground before she'd realized what she had done and corrected herself.
"Rainbow," Rarity started, "We can't just live our lives looking like half ponies, the only reason we're fine at school is because nobody would believe anything they said about magic. But I'm pretty sure they would believe it if you stuck like that though."
"Fine" Rainbow sighed, slowly floating back down to the ground, almost as though she was a deflating balloon.
"Well, lets get playing so we can fix this, I'd say I have enough research for today," Sunset said as everyone got their instrument ready again. "Twilight," she tossed the notepad and pen she had been taking notes with to her, "mind taking notes on observations you make while we play this time, I know you said you wanted to understand magic more. And to be honest, even I'm not one-hundred percent sure that this will work." Twilight fumbled around with the notepad after just barely catching it and simply nodded. Sunset could tell how excited Twilight was to get to watch something that was new to her, as she had been the entire practice.
And with a few more minor adjustments, and a song choice, they were ready to start. As usual, Pinkie counted them in while banging her drumsticks together, "One, two, three, four!"
They all started in unison, save for Twilight, with one of their better songs, "We've just got the day, to get ready, and there's only so much time to lose. Because tonight, ya we're here to party, so lets think of something fun to do!"
"Shake your tail 'cause we're here to have a party tonight!" They ended the song with a much better mood, it felt as thought the last two hours didn't even matter. Unfortunately, for the sake of their pony ears and Twilight's notepad, their last song didn't matter either.
"Well, that didn't work," Sunset said as she looked around at her half-pony friends.
"Thanks for the heads up there, Captain Obvious." Rainbow Dash said with a grin and a fake salute to the flame haired girl.
" I was so positive that playing another song would, for lack of a better word, unfreeze the magic," she replied, shrugging off her friends sometimes rude nature.
"At least it didn't make it worse," whispered Fluttershy, as if tempting fate, "I'm sure you could figure out anoth-." Fate had been sufficiently tempted.
At that moment, everyone in the room, except for Twilight, was lifted into the air with a bright flash of light.