Magic in the Air
The unwelcome sun crept over the dusty, concrete yard sectioned off from the rest of the world with metal fences. Four people were there, more than the place had seen in years.
Cinch stood over a rusty steel barrel. She held Sunset Shimmer’s not-as-enchanted-anymore book in one hand and the sirens’ pendants in the other, transferring the magic from the former into the latter while the sirens gathered fuel for the fire. She had reasoned that if all of the magic was released at once as the book burned, the pendants might not be able to absorb all of it.
And she was right to be careful about the matter. Either the pendants weren’t very good anymore, or the book’s magic was too strong and deeply rooted, but the transfer process went by incredibly slowly. Cinch watched the ink comprising half of the messages inside—those received from the sister book—slowly vanish, letter by letter.
Squeezing the red gems in her palm, she could feel not only a warmth against her skin, but a peculiar electricity. It alarmed her only for a moment. The book shimmered and got lighter. Cinch opened her hand, but the book stayed there, obeying her will.
She wondered if Twilight had felt the same after her transformation. The realization of a new power over reality itself. Cinch drew the gems away from the book, as if pulling a string. She was sure the motion was pointless, but it helped her focus on draining the magic that much faster. She knew it was possible now that she had more control.
Was she in a particular hurry, though? No, come to think of it, she had all the time in the world. Cinch brought her hands close once more and slowed the flow down. Absorbing the magic too quickly could’ve been what drove Twilight over the edge.
Every now and again she felt like a part of her was on fire, and the magic was a pleasant, soothing balm. Whether it was just another mind trick or some kind of acclimatization process, Cinch didn’t care. She just endured.
Cinch sensed new magic slowly approaching from behind. Six concentrated shapes, one of them noticeably weaker than the others.
Aria, who had been lazily walking by to drop a wooden chip into the barrel, glanced in their direction. “Hey, the Rainbooms are here.”
Cinch ignored her, so Aria looked between the woman and the girls in the distance and simply shrugged before walking away to look for more flammable material.
As the magic vessels drew closer, Cinch silently raised the hand clasping the three pendants and threw the almost drained book into the barrel.
She heard a voice. “Principal Cinch?!” It was a familiar voice. Obnoxiously loud. Made her think of the color pink.
“What in tarnation are you doing?” said another.
“For that matter, what are the Dazzlings doing here?” A boyish, raspy voice.
Cinch squeezed the pendants again and made their range extend. The magic from the vessels began flowing through the gems, into her. Evidently, her mastery of the trinkets had grown quickly and considerably. It had been a good decision to practice on the book.
She heard various gasps and groans from behind her as the vessels were emptied.
Someone was still strong, though. “What are you doing, Cinch?” a young male voice boomed over the rest.
“Principal Cinch, please!”
That voice. It held a much deeper place in Cinch’s mind than the rest. Twilight.
Twilight, Sunset Shimmer’s newest friend.
Cinch turned around.
Seven pairs of eyes, wide in shock, greeted her. She recognized the so-called “Rainbooms”, or “those nice girls”, or simply the friends of Sunset Shimmer, all of them hunched over. Beside them stood Twilight and her brother.
“What the heck happened to you?” said Shining Armor. The look on his face, one he shared with the rest of them, was delightful.
His inquiry prompted Cinch to raise her eyebrow and examine her free hand. The skin was completely black. As she raised it closer to her eyes, a faint blue glow reflected in it.
Cinch lowered her arm and shrugged.
“Turns out my skin is overly sensitive to sunlight,” she said in a voice that was no longer entirely hers, now possessing a subtle undertone of a furnace’s roar.
Her mocking tone shook Shining Armor out of his stupor. Anger overtook his features.
“Whatever you’re about to do, I won’t let you!” With that, the protective brother rushed the perceived threat.
Cinch waved her arm at him. "Sit down, young man!" she boomed.
Chunks of concrete shot up around Shining Armor. The jagged pillars jutted out, trapping him. The girls gasped.
Cinch clenched and unclenched her fist several times and turned to the drained vessels. She slowly looked over them. “I’m wondering—how did you find us?”
Behind her, she heard the sirens’ steps.
“Woah, when’d this happen?” said Sonata. “You didn’t even float in the air or anything.” Everyone ignored her.
The first one to gather her strength was Rainbow Dash. She stood up.
“Princess Twilight came to CHS to look for Sunset Shimmer,” she said quietly. “We took her to that fair of yours.”
Rarity joined her friend.
“When we found out that the book was missing, Sunset and Princess Twilight hurried to the portal.”
Out of the corner of her eye Cinch noticed Sonata cross her arms at the mention of a portal.
“Before they left, we promised to help on our side,” said Twilight. “I used the shards that Sunset took from you three”—she looked at the sirens—”to put together another magic detector.”
It was Applejack’s turn to speak up. “Twilight here noticed that you and Sonata had disappeared from the fair at the same time. We sort of put two and two together.”
“Especially with what Fluttershy’d told us before,” said Rainbow. “About you driving from the direction of our school one night. And saying something about its ‘current state’ and 'magic' and all that.”
“And with what Sunset had told us about your visit to Equestria and the conclusions you’d drawn from it,” said Applejack. “After we’d confronted her about hiding that from us, I mean.”
Suddenly Pinkie Pie inserted herself into the explanation, speaking in a tone entirely inappropriate for the girls’ predicament. “And then we remembered that the page got burnt! And Rarity and Fluttershy recalled seeing you in this park, which seems like a good place to burn stuff, I guess! So we put more twos together, I didn’t have time to count the twos, sorry; but anyway, we put them all together and came here!”
“And when we say ‘we put it together’, we mostly mean ‘Twilight put it together’,” Rarity said, glancing at their newest friend. Twilight blushed.
”Yep!” exclaimed Pinkie. “And Twilight’s thingy is what helped us find you here!”
Cinch smirked, which made the girls recoil.
“Well, it would appear I’ve underestimated your intelligence. And—” she looked at Fluttershy, who whimpered under her gaze “—I’ve underestimated the threat.” Cinch straightened up. “But not by much.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Twilight.
“Well, Twilight”—Cinch took out her lighter—“now that all the magic is drained from you, I’m going to burn Sunset Shimmer’s book.” She gestured at the barrel. “After which the way to Equestria will close for more than a year, trapping our equine friends on their side and allowing me to drain the portal’s magic at my leisure, shutting it down forever.”
“What?!” cried several voices at once. The loudest one belonged to Sonata.
“No!” she shouted, squeezing her eyes shut and collapsing on the concrete. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” Sonata repeated with waning strength as sobs started shaking her form.
Aria spoke up as well, “More importantly, all this magic’s ours to drain, don’t forget that!”
Twilight finally found her words. “Please don’t do that! Sunset is my...” She looked around at the other girls. “...Our friend!”
Shining Armor pounded on the stone surrounding him. “Cinch, don’t you dare!”
“Oh be quiet, kid,” scoffed Aria.
“Why are you doing this?” pleaded Fluttershy, having finally gathered her courage.
“It’s very simple. You’ll thank me later,” Cinch said. “You see, unlike any of you, I’ve actually been to this alternate world that the portal in front of your school leads to. I’ve experienced the so-called ‘magic’ firsthand.”
“Hey! We ARE from there!” Aria protested.
“And it is from that experience that I learned how dangerous magic is,” Cinch continued, still ignoring the siren. “In their world, they use magic to spread ‘friendship’. While they evidently don’t think twice about mind control, I can’t allow the same force to infect our world.” She put her arms behind her. “And make no mistake, it had already started to spread, even if none of you realized the true consequences.” Cinch shook her head. “For an outsider, however, it is beyond obvious. The sudden behavior change in the entire student body of CHS, the same thing spreading to my students, and even to me. I’ve been able to resist its influence, unlike all of you!”
As Twilight stared at Cinch, her eyes sparkling with wetness, Adagio stepped forward, keeping her cool despite the transformed woman’s sudden outburst.
“Actually, Abacus, there was never any magic in you. Or in any of the students in Crystal Prep,” she said. “Or, for that matter, in any of the students in Canterlot High, aside from these six”—she gestured to Twilight’s new friends—”and Sunset Shimmer, of course.”
“Yeah, we checked,” Aria said.
Cinch blanched. “What?!”
“It’s true,” said Twilight in a quiet voice. “My magic detectors never picked up any magic that wasn’t the portal or these girls.” She looked at her friends with a timid smile and whispered, “My friends.”
Cinch’s thoughts halted.
This could not be.
This went against everything she knew about magic.
Though... Had she really known anything about magic before absorbing some just now?
With the new knowledge granted to her by this act Cinch could not lie to herself anymore. She’d been doing it for months, but today marked the end of her self-delusion, the hasty assumptions that had driven her.
More and more things clicked in her head. “Friendship is magic”. It was true, but not in the way she had concluded after hearing about the Crystal Heart. Magic didn’t create friendship.
Friendship created magic. Just like Princess Twilight Sparkle had been telling her.
Cinch recalled those stories she’d been told during a train ride in the world of Equestria. Her entire problem with them had been that the equines used friendship just to generate magic, and not in any meaningful way. How did she forget those thoughts? How did she manage to block them out of her memory?
Cinch also recalled the last evening of the Friendship games. Her students rushing to help the Wondercolts save everyone who was about to fall into the gaping rift. New friendships were born just then, unbeknownst to either side, and that was what gave the five girls new magic to replace what Twilight had taken. The magic that Sunset Shimmer was able to use to save the entire world… and Twilight.
As everyone else watched her with bated breath, Cinch looked at the glowing pendants in her blackened hand, the stones bursting with magical energy. She thought back to the entries she had read in the book, the warmth that emanated from Shimmer and Sparkle’s words to each other.
That warmth made Abacus felt very nostalgic. More nostalgic than the aroma of lemon and cinnamon tea, or the rhythmic thumps of a train speeding by in the distance, or the sensation of wind against her face.
“I was never going to give you your pendants back,” Abacus said, turning her head to the sirens. “I was not about to let three magical creatures roam the world I’d have just cleared of magic. It was naive of you to expect me to do it.” Aria glared at her. Sonata also tried to. Adagio just looked at the ground. “I didn’t tell you, but they”—she gestured at Twilight and her friends—”were willing to give you three yet another chance. And they didn’t even know I had been using you from the start. They still want to be friends with the three of you.” She stared into the eyes of each siren for a moment. “But that is rather foolish of them, is it not?”
Abacus waited and watched.
Adagio, Aria and Sonata glanced between each other, the CHS girls and the principal.
Then Sonata stood up. Looking Adagio in the eye, she nodded towards the six other girls. Adagio pursed her lips, then looked at Aria. Aria shrugged.
One by one, the three sirens walked over to Twilight and her friends.
Abacus didn’t watch them reconciling. She slowly spun around, took the book out of the barrel and dusted it off before putting it on the concrete beside her. She looked over the empty lot, over the metal fence and the warehouse behind it.
Someone called her. Abacus turned back to face the nine girls, six of whom were looking at her with solemn expressions and shimmering with subtle magical colors—even Twilight, though hers was still weaker than the rest, not having fully blossomed yet after being gifted to her by Sunset Shimmer. The woman looked over the girls and nodded, and the girls nodded in response.
Abacus sighed, threw the three glowing pendants on the ground, took off her glasses, put her arms behind her back and closed her eyes. If the sirens’ accounts were true, things were about to get bright.
Fanart by my friend once again (he drew a picture for the original as well). Though you won't find this one on his DA: he's refusing to upload it there because he thinks it looks too much like blackface and people on DA will shout at him for it or something. 
By the way. I couldn't resist including that little bit about how the humane5 got their magic back in FG. NOBODY I've watched react to that movie (and I think I've seen most, if not all reaction videos out there) understood how they got their magic back. Well, my immediate thought was that they didn't, they got NEW magic from the new friendships that were formed out of, you know, having their lives saved. So basically what we should take away from this is that Pinkie Pies can probably amass the largest amounts of magic out of anyone in either world 
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Aw snap, Cinch, you screwed up BIG TIME.
Rainbow to the face
It's decent, but feels a little abrupt for me. Like it fits with all that has happened, but the change of view is too easy.
Oh. Ooooh.
And there we have it.
Hmm, so here comes the rainbow. Can only wonder what comes after. Especially what’ll happen to the pendants.
Also, love the art of Abacus here. Especially the horns!
Like I've said on the Wiki, an Abacus is a calculating device - logical, passionless and perfect. It says a lot about the woman that she has that name and perhaps give us an insight into her mind and how it works. It is to her credit that, no matter what her feelings are, she cannot deny clear fact when it is rubbed in her face.
One wonders just where this evil thought that directed her towards attempting to gather all magic in herself came from. You see, we've learned that it didn't come from her so that means that there is, to quote Applejack "another magical so-and-so bent on world domination" running around. Worse, it's an intangible one that can play with its host's mind.
It is in the nature of the Elements to change people; always for the best and only in the way of healing what is wrong about them. Sometimes, as Sunset Shimmer found out, the revelation that the Elements provide are painful indeed and take weeks or even months of horrible self-awareness to fully come to terms with. I suspect that Abacus Cinch will never be the same woman again after next chapter's events or... just maybe... maybe she'll be going back to who she was before cynicism and ambition soured her heart.
Amazingly well done.:D
7577453 I can see it feeling this way. Well, I can't really say anything other than in the picture of Cinch's mind I've got in my head it's reasonable, maybe I could've painted a better picture of it outside of my head
7577519 I'm afraid I don't have any other magical entity involved in this. You may notice that while Cinch is draining the book, Aria comes by and doesn't mention anything out of the ordinary - meaning Cinch was simply filling the gems with the magic, even if they were under her control. It's when she decides to quickly drain the Rainbooms that she changes. Either she made a mistake in a hurry to nullify their magical potential, or perhaps she thought she would need the power in order to defend herself against a possible combined assault by the sirens, Rainbooms and Shining Armor. Regardless, she remained more or less in control the whole time, the only shift in personality that occurs is that she stops questioning or resisting magic. And we've seen with Twilight that magic itself can do that.
7577582 Thanks!
7577454 I too was delighted by that picture when my friend showed it to me. It's a bit of a liberal interpretation but I liked it so much I've since forgotten what I had imagined and substituted that with the picture.
7577409 To her credit, she also allowed the day to be saved in the end! Maybe they'll spare her
Nine?
Isn't it 10?
Or was Sci Twitter just
The nine girls plus the Twilight
7577774 The "true" "humane 6" and the three sirens. Sunset and Pony Twi are in Equestria.
7577782
Ah my faults
I read that like sunset was there
7577791 To be fair it doesn't clearly state that in this chapter (unless you do count the number of the "magic vessels" that Cinch feels and such), but the last chapter did end on the plot point of Sunset having gone to Equestria to write in Twilight's book which has to be kept there. Either way, no biggie
7577453 I.. actually expected it to go the other way. it works for me, but yeah, I got thrown a little bit on this one.
now... the fact she was turning into a kind of Tiefling looking thing? COOOOOOOOOL!!!!
7577834 I think refusing to change her stance in this situation would've been too absurd even for Cinch. So far she managed to hold onto her assumptions because all the evidence could be interpreted either way. A straight declaration that the very basis of Cinch's whole idea is false? Nobody can argue that. Then again I suppose that declaration might not have come, in which case, well...
Also, as far as the Tiefling thing goes, I just want to stress that the horns were not my idea
Another story down the line may reference this scene and clash with the depiction in the art.
7577867 true, they did point out her original idea was wrong. maybe im just use to people going in for a penny, in for a pound. Cinch i calculating, but when all the calculations fall... she knows when to stop. still surprised me, though. even if it was just a bit.
awww... fair enough on the depiction clash then. still, the art is really cool. honestly ive enjoyed the little art bits through this one.
7577950
Thanks
I initially only wanted to draw the chapter 2 picture because I wanted to get the mood across better than I could with words alone, but then I decided to make half-assed illustrations to all the chapters because why not.
Well, time to taste the rainbow. Bitch.
Shouldn't hurt her too bad, though. She's figured things out.
If there's one point of criticism, it would be the one shared with 7577453. It's a little abrupt. Especially since I don't understand why a person like Cinch, who not only knows how lying can get people to do what you want but also believes that's how the world works as a whole simply doesn't go:
"I've revealed my plan to you, and you are all obviously against it. Even you, Adagio. None of you can stop me by force. Explain to me then why I should believe a word you say when you have so much to gain from lying?"
Or heck, argue they're all infected and can't be trusted to remember things right. The brainwashed victims are the first to tell you they're not brainwashed.
I know the intent was to show Cinch being faced with the truth and breaking down, but the truth she's shown doesn't feel convincing enough for a person of such strong convictions, you know?