As soon as school let out Sunset went straight to the parking lot and jumped on her bike to head home to drop off her school bag and change before driving down to Canterlot University. As she was about to step out the door she glanced at her guitar hanging on the wall by her bed. It gave her an uneasy feeling, but she pushed it down and returned to her bike.

By the time she arrived, Rarity and Applejack were already there waiting for her, Applejack with a bass slung behind her back. Fluttershy's car pulled up a few minutes later and she and Pinkie climbed out. Fluttershy grabbed a small bag from the back seat, which Sunset assumed held her tambourine. Rainbow walked up carrying a guitar case six minutes after the time they had agreed to meet.

After Rainbow received a brief scolding from Applejack for her tardiness the group headed inside. Sunset lead them to Doctor's office. She knocked and heard some papers shuffling around before a familiar voice called out "Come in, come in." The girls stepped inside.

Doctor took a small stack of papers and dropped them into a drawer, then turned to face Sunset. "Ah, hello. You must be Sunset's friends she mentioned on the phone. Shall we make our way to the labs then?"

"If you're ready."

"Of course. Follow me." He stood up and walked out the door passed them. He lead them down a stairway and down a long hall. When they reached a locked door Doctor pulled out a keycard opened and opened it.

"So now are you going to tell me what exactly it is you're doing?" Doctor asked as the entered the lab.

"We'll find out together in few minutes." Sunset said. Pinkie was the last to enter the room, shutting the door behind her.

"Well, that’s a bit ominous, but, alright, if you say so. Do what you need to do for your experiment, just don't break anything." He turned and walked into a smaller room meant for observation. He took a seat in front of the window.

Sunset grabbed a lab coat from a rack by the door and traded it for her jacket. She also pulled on a pair of gloves from the observation room.

"Okay then. Fluttershy, you're up first. Just grab your tambourine and come over here." Fluttershy pulled her tambourine out of her bag and walked to the spot Sunset had indicated.

Sunset went over to one of the machines, grabbed a few electrodes from the side, and walked back over to Fluttershy. She started sticking them on Fluttershy. She also stuck one on her tambourine. "Alright Fluttershy, just started playing when I give you the signal." Fluttershy nodded.

Sunset picked up a clipboard and pencil from the side counter and walked over to the machine she had hooked Fluttershy to. She glanced at Doctor, who looked back at her with a slightly confused expression. She looked back over to Fluttershy and gave her a quick smile and a thumbs up.

Fluttershy started playing. She seemed nervous at first, but she got more into it as she went on. Sunset looked at the monitor on the machine and noted the unusually high level of energy it was detecting from Fluttershy. After playing for about a minute Fluttershy began to glow visibly. When Sunset looked back to the monitor she was confused when she saw it's readings.

The readings on the monitor had taken the shape of a butterfly. She quickly looked back at Fluttershy just in time to see the electrodes all pop off of her as a pair of yellow wings flashed into existence on her back. Her hair grew into an ponytail far longer than it's natural state and ears disappeared, replaced by a pair of pony ears on top of her head. Sunset grabbed a stopwatch off of the counter and started it.

She then flashed incredibly bright. A dozen or so transparent pink butterflies shot out away from her. All of the lights in the room had inexplicably gone out, but the butterflies were luminescent, one even landed on Sunset's nose.

Oh boy. Sunset thought. That's what I was worried about.

After a few seconds the lights came back on and the butterflies faded away. Fluttershy's wings, ears, and ponytail remained though.

Sunset looked over at Doctor who's mouth was hanging open. He closed his mouth, stood up, and walked up to Sunset.

"Sunset, what... was... that?"

"That, Doctor, was magic." Sunset looked to Fluttershy and tossed the stopwatch to her. "Here, stop it when the transformation wears off, okay." Fluttershy nodded and put the strap around her neck.

"I'm sorry, but did you say 'magic'?" He asked with a look of disbelief.

"I did. I can explain, but you'll have to wait until we finish. It's a long story." Sunset picked up another stopwatch from a cabinet under the counter.

"Huh? Magic? So Derpy really was being serious..."

"Wait, what did Derpy say?" But Doctor had already zoned out. He returned to his chair in the observation room, mumbling to himself as he watched.

"Oh... kay? Well then. I guess you're up next Applejack." Applejack swung her bass around to her front and walked to the same spot Fluttershy had been standing on moments ago.

"You can start whenever you're ready." Applejack smiled and started playing a song that was more energetic than Fluttershy's. Applejack had started glowing after only a few seconds. Sunset had had her eye on the clock while she was watching Fluttershy, so she did the same for Applejack.

Only a few seconds into her song and Applejack had already begun to glow the same way Fluttershy had after almost an entire minute. It had taken Fluttershy a minute and a half to fully transform, but Applejack had taken only 50 seconds. She jotted this down, already going over a few theories as to why it had taken Applejack only a little over half the time it had taken Fluttershy.

Maybe it's because she was playing a different instrument? Sunset thought as she started the stopwatch Or it could be because Applejack was just more into it than Fluttershy was. Maybe it's because she ponied up for the first time last night, and Fluttershy ponied up days ago?

It only took Applejack two more minutes to finish her song. Sunset tossed her the timer, but before she could say anything to her, Sunset was suddenly buried under a pile of translucent, sparkly apples. "Huh? What the?" Sunset climbed out of the pile, dazed from having them all dropped on top of her before turning around a picking up one of the apples.

It felt like a totally normal apple to her, but she could see through it. She started thinking more as she studied the apple. Weird. In Equestria it's impossible to conjure food out of thin air. I guess it's possible that some of the general rules of magic might be different over here. Then Applejack tried to take a bite from one of the apples.

The apple popped. There was a small puff, a little flash of light, and any evidence that the apple had ever been there in the first place was gone. "Huh? What happened?" Sunset tried to take a bite from her own apple, only to have it do the same. Never mind.

She picked up another and tried to stab it with her pen, only to achieve the same result. "Holographic apples. That's a new one."

She finished up her notes on Applejack's test and called Rainbow over. She plugged Rainbow's guitar into a monitor in the observation room where Doctor was watching from. She pulled another stopwatch form the box and gave Rainbow the signal to start playing.

Just as Rainbow raised her hand to begin there was a flash from across the room. They both paused and looked over just in time to see Fluttershy click the button on the timer she had around her neck. "Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the that. Just set the timer over there on the counter, I'll get to it in a minute." Sunset said, pointing to one of the side counters.

"So should I start now?" Rainbow asked.

"Go for it." Sunset said, turning on the monitor in front of her. Rainbow grinned and began her song. It was one that Sunset had heard before. She would swear Rainbow played that song at every opportunity she got. She calls it "Awesome as I wanna be".

Rainbow started to glow only 25 seconds after starting. Five seconds later she had wings and a ponytail. She was the fastest to pony up out of the three by far. She also seemed to be enjoying it the most. As soon as her wings had formed she was hoovering two feet off the ground.

Sunset started writing down the information from her monitor, but when she looked back up at Rainbow, she did a double take when she noticed that the cable connecting her monitor to Rainbow's guitar was turning rainbow colors. It looked like a tube was being filled with a colorful liquid coming form Rainbow's guitar.

Then it exploded.

The monitor in front of her displayed an image of a cloud with a multicolored lightning bolt shooting out of the bottom. It was only there for a second, but when it disappeared there was an explosion of vibrant slime from the monitor.

The entire upper half of Sunset's body was covered with an odd rainbow fluid, but boy was she really grad she had on a lab coat. She was shocked for a moment, but then quickly came to her senses and grabbed a test tube from the table in the observation room and scraped it up her coat until it was full of the strange substance.

She capped the tube and put it in her pocket to look at later. She pulled off the lab coat and gloves and wiped her face with the inside and put it one the desk.

"Well, I definitely didn't see that coming" murmured Sunset as she glanced at Doctor to see if he'd been hit by the blast too. Fortunately for him he hadn't moved, and had simply kept watching from his chair in the corner. He'd only gotten a few drops of the goo on his shoulder, but he looked like he'd been hit square on nonetheless.

Rainbow saw what had happened and rushed over to the door to check if Sunset was okay. She stuck her head in the door as Sunset said something under her breath.

"Hey, are you alright?" Rainbow asked in a concerned tone.

"I'm fine, just a little sticky. That stuff doesn't actually tastes kind of like a fruit smoothie, I just hope that whatever's in it won't hurt me." She answered.

"You ate it? Why"

"I didn't eat it, some of it landed in my mouth when that thing went off."

"Is... is he okay?" Rainbow pointed at Doctor, who had gone slightly slack-jawed after the goo had shot out from the monitor.

"Uh, Doctor? Are you alright?" He nodded his head a little and stood up.

He walked out of the observation room and over to the front door and pulled his phone from his pants pocket. "I'm... fine. I've got to make a phone call. I'll be back in a minute." With that he stepped into the hall.

Sunset picked back up her clipboard and the several pages of notes she'd taken down and walked back over to where the others where waiting.

During the incident with Rainbow Applejack had lost her ears and tail as well. She grabbed the timers that Applejack and Fluttershy had set on the counter. Fluttershy's read 4:47, and Applejack's said 5:23. She jotted these down and sat down on one of the counters and wrote down a few of her theories. Doctor walked back into the room a minute or two later.

Finally, Rainbow's wings and ears faded. Rainbow stopped the timers and tossed it to Sunset. Rainbow's reading was at 5:32. Once she had written this down she turned to her friends and began questioning them on their experience.

They spent another hour at the lab before Sunset was satisfied with her notes. Once they had put everything back how it had been when before they had arrived they called it a day and everyone decided to leave. Doctor had to get home to help Rose cook dinner. Pinkie, Fluttershy, and Rarity decided to go to sugar cube corner for doughnuts and milkshakes. Applejack had chores to do on the farm. Sunset gave Rainbow a ride home, she had to cram for a test on Monday that she hadn't studied for at all. Once she was by herself Sunset headed back home.

She dismounted her bike and dropped her helmet by the door. She pulled her notes from her pocket and put them on her desk to look over later. She was about to head to her bathroom to take a shower when she felt something still in her pocket, so she pulled it out, but she stopped to look at it before setting it by her notes.

In her hand was the vial of a colorful liquid she had scrapped from her coat. She stared at it for a solid minute, pondering it's existence.

She's spent five years in this world, and in her time she had never seen even the slightest hint of magic. Sure there were people who claimed to have magic, but they had almost all been proven fakes. Yet here she was, proof that the magic that this world should have none of was now an undeniable fact of life resting in the palm of her hand.

It served as a reminder to her that if she ever tried to get back on the path she was on when she first came to this world it would surely end poorly for her, and that she had to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. Sunset scaled the stairs to her loft and walked over to her nightstand.

"I don't know what you are." Sunset said to herself, placing the vial next to her alarm clock. "I don't know how you work, I don't even know how you can exist in this world, but I promise you this. I won't stop until I do."

With that, she returned to the floor and stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind her without any further hesitation.

Author's Note

I am so very sorry that it took me so long to get this chapter out, and I can't really blame anyone but myself for that. I'll try to get part three out sooner, but I can't make any promises. On the bright side, this is the longest chapter I've written thus far. As always, feel free to leave any questions, concerns, criticism or tell me about any errors in the comments section. I'll see you next time my lovely readers.

-Red