Leaning back on the chair, she threw her pen on the table and sighed. The test was challenging, but not something she had any problems with. Nothing else to do, she looked around to see how everyone else was doing.
Twilight had already finished too and was eating some snacks. Others were still writing, some looking relaxed, the others stressed and worried. Derpy stuck out her tongue and Sunset chuckled.
Bon-Bon raised her hand. After the teacher came to her, she pointed to a question. The teacher took out her own pen and wrote something on the paper.
Sunset looked up to the clock above the blackboard. Ten minutes left. Watching over her friends, only Rainbow was constantly looking up to the time and removing the sweat from her brow.
When the time was over, the teacher went to each student in the front row and signaled them to collect the tests from the students behind them.
If there was one thing Sunset loved about Wednesdays, then it was the food in the cafeteria. Usually Granny Smith gave out on this day something of her own, giving the usually more dry assortment a wider variety. Luckily today it happened too, so when it was her turn to choose what to eat, she pointed immediately at the "special offer".
Sitting at the table with her friends, they began eating, enjoying the potatoes with the homemade sauce. Especially Rarity seemed to enjoy it, as she shook her head with each bite. Sunset never knew that having a sauce with apples would even taste well, but somehow Granny made it possible. She took a mental note to ask Applejack later about the recipe.
Soon a flashing light got their attention, which turned out to be one of Trixie's magic utensils. She probably bought some new gimmicks or learned a new trick and wanted to show it off.
The magician bowed and then stretched out her arms, showing both sides of her hands. Suddenly, a bright red card appeared out of nowhere in her left hand. With a quick flick, she threw the card and caught it with her other hand, but it suddenly turned blue.
Moving her free hand over the card, a fan of different coloured cards appeared in the place of the previous single card. At last, Trixie put a black cloth over the cards. The next moment the cloth shot away and Trixie now held a bouquet of flowers in her hands. The students applauded her as Trixie bowed again.
Sunset: Have you chosen a movie, Pink?
Pinkie: yep! charlie chaplin the circus
Twilight: That's a classic.
Rarity: Pinkie, why not Way Down East?
Rainbow: ugh, again a romantic drama?
Rarity: A reminder that we had already watched two Chaplin movies.
Sunset: We agreed to circle, today is Pink's turn. Besides, a comedy after today's exam is needed
Applejack: Agreed
Twilight: Sunset and I might be a bit late, we're going to try to reverse the gems effect. But we should finish by 9 PM.
Rarity: Good luck!
Rainbow: Again?
Fluttershy: The sooner the better.
Rainbow: Will it even work?
Applejack: Don't encourage Twi to write an essay again, Rain!
Rainbow: Twi, NO. I can see you typing from here
Fluttershy: I just want this to stop.
Applejack: We all want it
Twilight: We have to try it, as soon as we find the right variables it will be easy, now, we are just guessing and experimenting to make even anything work.
Applejack: Well, that was surprisingly short
Rainbow: Yeah
Twilight: At this point everyone of you knows anyway what we are doing.
Rainbow: Then why did you even write it?
Sunset: Girls, calm down, we're going to be late for our lessons
Pinkie: btw sunny, don't forget the waffles!!!
Sunset: Don't worry ;)
Sunset couldn't concentrate, constantly glimpsing over to the teacher trying to explain the current topic to the student next to her. Personally, as she had learned it in Equestria, Sunset knew how to learn something on your own, while for some it wasn't anything they were used to doing.
She stood up and went to them, throwing a look at the section of the book the student was reading.
On this one she could help.
She got back to her place, ripped a blank sheet of paper and sketched a few animals on it, then cut them out with scissors.
After that she returned to the student and placed the animals on the students notebook. Both he and the teacher were watching her closely drawing arrows and moving the animals around. When done, a visible joy in his eyes showed Sunset that it helped him.
The teacher thanked her with a handshake.
It was all planned perfectly, school ending at 4 PM, getting some rest, having enough time to make the waffles for the movie night before going to Twilight at 6 PM. But no, she had to run out of eggs. She quickly put on her jacket and ran outside.
Carefully watching both sides of the road, she crossed the street. She was still beating her head for procrastinating her duty, if she only had looked in the morning if she had everything…
On the way, she crossed Vinyl standing before her music shop. Leaning on the door, the DJ spent her time kicking some random stones on her ground. Her headphones were resting on her shoulders.
Normally Sunset would have passed her, but seeing her eyes looking down and her usual smile she always had not being present, it made her stop. It was obviously a difficult time, especially for someone like her. She approached her and, once in sight, put a hand on Vinyl's shoulder. When the eyes met, she gave a merciful smile. The DJ sighed and looked back to the ground.
Slowly Sunset pulled her in into a hug, which Vinyl let happen. A light twitching of her body showed Sunset that she was crying. She kept hugging her as long as was needed.
The waffles could wait.
Yes, making waffles while also reading a book might not have been the best idea. However, the crimi was all about cliffhangers and Sunset hated them so much that she had to continue reading whenever possible. Occasionally she even forgot the time and let some waffles burnt up.
With record speed she finally finished the book, even the waffles were still in the making. Disappointed by the obvious ending, she threw it in the pile of other books she had read through.
Sunset didn't remember getting so much into reading again, the last time was when she was studying under Princess Celestia. How lucky was she that her high school had a library, she wouldn't be able to afford all these books by herself.
She almost forgot how fascinating she found human literature when she first came here. As in Equestria a library was the place to look up any information, she learned a lot about this world firstly through the books. Later on she found out about computers and got herself a phone, but there was still something fascinating about books in itself. Probably it was the familiarity from her home world.
A smoke reminded her that she forgot to look at the time again. Annoyed, she threw the black burnt waffles to the bin.
Messaging Twilight that she had arrived, she still had to wait a bit too long at the door for her liking. But she was let in nonetheless, so she didn't complain.
Reaching Twilight's room, she glanced quickly at the big experimental device that was built for any visible changes, which she didn't find. Next to it was a blackboard with a bunch of formulas written on it. She then went to the table and looked at the familiar open book. Skimming through the messages, she only found more scientific and magical jargon regarding the device the Twilights from both worlds were exchanging with each other.
Next to the book was a blue gem in the form of a diamond. Carefully she picked it up, examining it again. She could feel the magic it possessed. Even though it was Equestrian magic, she didn't encounter anything like that before. Sometimes she wondered if Star Swirl's reasoning of banishing magical objects into this world was plain laziness or not caring for what would happen to this world.
A hand on her shoulder signaled her that her help was now needed. She looked over the device again, before looking at Twilight and raising her head. The reaction was just her usual nervous smile. Sunset couldn't blame her, to build a device in this world that would be able to manipulate magic was not an easy task, predetermined to fail multiple times before having a success.
She put the gem into the outline for it and put her hands on the lever of the device. Watching Twilight typing on her computer, she waited for the signal. Seeing a thumbs up, she pulled the lever and immediately went to the control pad on the device.
All the displays were flickering, while a light emitted from the gem was crawling through different pipes. When finally a certain lamp glowed green, she slowly turned a rotary control, watching a display with a number starting from 20 Hz climbing up.
A mixture of hope and determination pushed Sunset to keep the slow pace. She didn't know how many times she had helped Twilight to do this experiment without any success, and with this run showing also no success, she had to stop herself multiple times wanting to just skim through the numbers quickly.
But she couldn't do it, they could have missed an important data point or the device could have needed just a bit more time to work as intended. It was slow and time consuming, but it needed to be done.
The number reaching now over five hundred, she sighed and looked over to Twilight. She was staring intensely at her computer and listening carefully into her headphones. One thing to admire about Twilight was her endurance regarding anything researching or, in this case, experimenting.
Sunset kept going. Double checking at each number, not accidentally skipping any range, it was tedious.
Six hundred, seven hundred…
Casting a glance at the clock, she realized how they were now operating this machine for half an hour. It didn't help her morale that they weren't even close to half way through. They would be late for the movie night, but their friends would understand it.
Suddenly, when she was going above eight hundred, she heard a quiet noise from a speaker, which went silent again the next moment.
Surprised, she looked at Twilight, who had turned her head to her too. Quickly she turned her view back to the display with the number and even more slowly turned the control to make the number go down.
There it was again, a short, quiet noise, quickly fading away. Sunset felt a hand on her shoulder and a face watching over her on the device.
821.43 Hz.
With as little turning as she could do, she made the number slowly climb up again. Her hands were shaking, her breath became quicker and quicker, it didn't help that she could feel the excitement of Twilight too.
Then it happened. A pitched sound came from the speakers, this time not fading away.
823.15 Hz.
The two girls looked at each other, cheered and then fell into a hug. As time passed, they suddenly even heard their own voices make the same sound. Granted, it wasn't still their whole voice, but it was a beginning. Sunset saw Twilight now scream, raising her hands to the air and jumping around, and she didn't stop herself from doing it too.
When they calmed down and the sound was still audible, Twilight went to her computer, rifled through the readings and took down notes, before going to the blackboard and putting some more formulas and numbers on them. Meanwhile, Sunset grabbed a pen and wrote to Princess Twilight about their first success.
Soon, the sounds would be back again.
