Life at Canterlot High

"Er...girls?"

"Yeah, Rainbow?" Applejack responded.

"Would anyone wanna explain why we're spending our afternoon in the school labs...again?"

Applejack shrugged. "Sunset an' Twi said they wanted ta meet us here."

"Ooooh! You think they've got a super-special birthday surprise planned for us?" Pinkie speculated.

Rarity raised an eyebrow. "Darling, nobody here has a birthday today."

But Pinkie just waved her off. "Pfft! When's that ever been a good reason not to celebrate them?"

Fluttershy giggled, petting Angel, who was sitting on her lap as she sat in the corner. "I know Twilight was really excited about something earlier. She had all these notes and books she wanted to go through."

Rainbow chuckled. "Hehe, sounds like a typical day for her." Then she grimaced. "Wait...we don't have an extra-long study session we agreed to or anything, right?" As she saw her friends all give her a collective shrug, she clasped her hands together and started talking to the ceiling. "Please don't let it be that, please don't let it be that, please don't let it be that..."

As she continued her praying, it was here when the door of the lab finally opened, revealing their two absent friends. Sunset and Twilight smiled to the group, entering and closing the door behind them. The girls all noted that the two were wearing lab coats, and immediately a sense of familiarity came to them. But they said nothing, at least for now, as Twilight cleared her throat and started to address them all. "As you know, we've been at our work of protecting the town from magical threats for some time now."

Pinkie laughed loudly. "Well duh, Twilight! No need to go all 'as you know' on us!"

Twilight blushed, clearing her throat again, though this time with a slightly embarrassed sound to it. "Anyway...me and Sunset got to talking, and we decided that it might be a good time for us to start doing some serious research on our capabilities."

There was silence for a while, and the other girls all gave each other uncertain looks. Sunset, who was much better at reading the room than twilight, stepped ahead of her spectacled friend to speak to the rest of them. "Look, I know the last time we did anything scientific about our magic it didn't end up...all that successful."

Rarity pointed to her. "Sunset, dear Sunset...you ended up blasted into a wall!"

Twilight adjusted her glasses as she turned to her Equestrian colleague. "You never mentioned that."

Sunset blushed, scratching the back of her head. "Well...I kinda didn't want to remember that part." After seeing the smirks she was getting from all of them, she sighed, speaking up again. "The point is...we all have a better handle on our magic. It's not just showing up at random times or unleashing itself in uncontrollable bursts like it used to."

Rainbow folded her arms, looking her usual confident self. " Yeah, we're getting pretty great at it, aren't we?"

Sunset's smile returned. "Exactly. And because we're able to control it more, now might be a good time to see just what kinds of things we're dealing with."

Stepping forward, Rainbow planted her right hand, now a fist, straight into the open palm of her left. "Alrighty then! What are we gonna do first? Test to see how much Pinkie's power can blow something up? Maybe see if I can break the light-speed barrier?"

Twilight, though at first amused by her friend's enthusiasm, whipped out a clipboard and gave a shake of her head. "I think we need to start small, Rainbow. Best to wait until we've gathered more data before moving onto more, shall we say, exciting endeavours?"

Rainbow folded her arms, giving a quick pout. "Hmph! That's no fun!"

Fluttershy walked beside her, offering her a brief pat on the shoulder, before looking to Twilight. "So what is first?"

Here, Twilight gestured to Sunset, who took the next turn to speak. "Well, I think it might be worth trying to see if our pendants are limited to just those who have them." She and Twilight walked over to a nearby chalkboard, and Sunset took a photo from Twilight's clipboard and struck it on. The others saw that it was a photo of Gloriosa Daisy from Camp Everfree, whom Sunset now gestured to. "We know from the day we first got these gemstones that others were capable of harnessing their power. So clearly there's no real limit on their wielders."

Pinkie scratched the side of her cheek, then smiled. "Oh, so if I were to give mine to Fluttershy..." She took off the artefact in question, then offered it to the friend beside her who, after a moment of hesitation, accepted it. Pinkie, clapping her hands together, eagerly awaited what was next. "Go on, Fluttershy! Try it!"

Fluttershy looked around, and after seeing Sunset give her a smile and a shrug, the group's resident animal-lover took a deep breath, then took off her own pendant, replacing it with the one that had been given to her. At first, nothing happened. No magical reaction, no glowing, not even the tiniest peep. After waiting for a while, Fluttershy glanced over to the closest table, which had a number of stray pencils laying on top. Nervously, she reached out, taking the nearest, then held it tight in her hand, concentrating in the same way she did when activating her own magic. Here, there actually was a reaction, a glow from the pendant, and the girls all leaned in closer, anticipating what the outcome would be. But there was not the usual sparkly explosion that Pinkie had, and instead there just seemed to be no outcome whatsoever. "Um...what now?! Fluttershy rightfully asked.

Sunset and Twilight looked to each other, equally uncertain, but then the former was distracted by the sound of a bird tweeting at the lab's window. An idea came to the Equestrian, and she again looked to Fluttershy. "Can...can you understand him?"

Fluttershy looked to the aforementioned bird, and she too listened to it for a time. After hearing that sweet-sounding birdsong, she smiled, nodding once before looking to her friend. "Yes, I can."

Twilight jotted that down on her clipboard. "Okay then, that's that established. The pendants, no matter which of us is wearing them, would still activate our magic, but the skills themselves wouldn't change."

Applejack took hold of a chair and sat herself down in it. "Huh, guess that makes sense. We were still gettin' super strength an' speed before we got them pendants after all."

Glancing over to her, Sunset smiled. "You're not wrong, Applejack. Which brings us neatly onto our next test." She reached out to Twilight, and the latter gave her the clipboard. After flipping over the front page on it, Sunset again gave Applejack her full attention. "As you say, our powers came to us before we got them. But we also know that our powers are diminished if they're taken away." She gestured to herself. "My losing my pendant during our fight with the toaster robot was proof enough of that."

Twilight frowned at the memory. "Honestly, how many times do I have to tell Chips, don't give the robots a desire to punch things!" Slowly, she noticed her friends were all giving her odd looks, prompting a shrug on her part. "What? It's just common sense, right?"

Looking from Twilight to the rest of the group, Sunset eventually cleared her throat. "Yes, well, we still need to see just how much losing those pendants affects us. So..." She walked over to a battle in the corner of the room. "Pinkie? Rainbow? Rarity? Could you come and stand on top of this for a moment?" She watched as the girls paused, showing clear uncertainty. But in the end, their trust in Sunset won out, and they followed her instructions. One by one, they began to stand on top of the table, and after giving a quick nod, Sunset faced Applejack once more. "Now then...use your magic and lift them, if you would."

Applejack too seemed uncertain, but her curiosity was apparently just as great as Twilight and Sunset's right now, and so, after spitting into her palms and rubbing her hands, she sauntered on over. Placing a finger to her pendant, she activated her magic, and before long she was lifting the table with the three girls like it was no issue whatsoever. "This okay?"

Sunset gave her a hearty thumb's up. "Great!" She then looked to the three girls, watching them hold onto each other. "You okay there?"

After making sure they all had their balance, Rarity called down to her. "Y...yes, I think we're alright, darling."

Sunset now walked forward, right up to Applejack, reaching out slightly. "Okay...I'm going to take your pendent off now, Applejack." Her friend was understandably worried, but as before, she trusted the words of her friend.

Twilight, in the meantime, took a step closer to this whole gathering, noticing for a moment how concerned Fluttershy was being off to the side. "If anything goes wrong, I'll use my telekinesis to keep the three from falling." Those words assured the girl, but only slightly, and Twilight soon gave a silent nod to Sunset. "Okay, go ahead."

Sunset nodded back, reaching out further and, very slowly, took Applejack's pendant off. Immediately, there was a change, and the farm girl wobbled slightly. Twilight immediately let her hands glow, ready to catch whoever fell, but Applejack called out first. "It's okay...I got em!" She was struggling more than before, and the girls above held onto each other closer. Sunset, now very wary of what was happening, took a single step back from Applejack. Then she took another, and another, and another, and sweat started to pour down Applejack's face. "Okay...gettin' pretty hard now."

"Alright, I think that's enough," Sunset declared. She rushed forward, getting the pendant back on as fast as she could, and immediately they could all tell that Applejacks' strength had returned, as the strain completely disappeared from her face. Carefully, she set the table down, and the three girls quickly hopped off it. Sunset, waiting until the last one was off, let out a deep sigh. "Okay, everyone alright?" There was a pause, but after looking to one another, they gave her a simultaneous nod, much to her relief. "Good."

Pinkie, who had been biting her nails in worry for some time, walked over and placed one hand on her hip. "We couldn't have lifted the table without people on it?!"

Rainbow rolled her yes. "Oh please, a table would have been nothing to AJ, with or without her powers!"

Tipping her hat, Applejack smirked. "She ain't wrong."

Meanwhile, Sunset and Twilight were whispering to each other for a time, writing notes down on their clipboard and going back and forth over what they'd witnessed. The others watched, and after coming to some sort of conclusion, it was Twilight who eventually came forward. "Alright then. We've established that our powers are still present without the pendants, though they diminish with greater distance. We know they can't be used to give each of us the powers of others, so we must act on the assumption that the powers we possess, speed, speaking with animals and all the rest, are unique to us."

"Sort of like how manipulating plants was something only Gloriosa could do when she had them," Sunset added.

Rarity tapped her chin for a time, glancing out of the window to several of their fellow CHS students outside. "Mayhaps there are other talents among people that would be activated by these pendants? Would, say, Applejack's brother display some power if he were given one?"

Applejack chortled to that thought. "That'd be something to see."

Twilight took her glasses off as she looked to her fashionista friend. "It's entirely possible. We'd need to call him in to know for sure."

"How much more do we need to know? We use our powers fairly well already," Fluttershy added.

Sunset walked over to her. "If there's one thing we've all learned together, it's that it never hurts to be prepared and know just what we've got at our disposal." There was a murmur of agreement between them, after which Sunset looked back to Twilight. "Having a second set of eyes during all this has certainly helped. My last time experimenting with this wasn't nearly this informative."

Putting on her glasses, Twilight smiled to her, taking her hand. "Hey, that's what friends are for, right?"

Holding the offered hand tenderly, Sunset smiled right back. "Hehe, no argument there, Twilight."