Chaz Spence stood looking at his desk, studying the results of the latest tests for the hundredth time. The study required concrete evidence, otherwise all funding would be withdrawn, and he and his lab partner would both miss their doctorates. His fellow researcher, Lynn Truman, stood leaning against the filing cabinet, watching Chaz reread the latest results. She knew what was at stake should they fail to find the needed results. She looked at her watch for the tenth time, and glanced at the schedule again. They were set up for another test, and were waiting on the next test subject to arrive soon.
"Don't worry… we're going to find what we're looking for sooner or later. We came close on the last test." Lynn said, trying to cheer Chaz up. He finally straightened up and started towards the lab.
"We'd better, or it's all over for the lab. Are all the cameras and data recorders ready?" As he asked, the door opened, and in walked their test for the day, Gypsy Banks. Gypsy was a student at the University, and a self-professed witch. Chaz and Lynn had lots of grant money and their doctorates invested in this experiment.
They were hoping to scientifically prove that the magic that witches and Pagans believed they used was a measurable scientific phenomena, and if they could prove it was real, maybe magic could be used as an alternate energy source; perhaps, even one that would never run out. In order to test that it existed, they had designed and built an isolation room quite a bit similar to the clean rooms at Intel. It was surrounded with cameras recording in every spectrum; infrared, thermal, ultraviolet; two high-speed cameras, one filming in black-and-white and one in infrared. They had also setup magnetometers, several gravimeters, a scintillator, Geiger counters, several bolometers, a net of load cells embedded in the floor, CCD and CMOS cameras all around, and a vast array of basic temperature, pressure and every other kind of sensor they could get their hands on, along with a high-density EEG net array worn as a hat. At this point in the experiment, they were not taking any chances on missing the data that could prove that magic was a measurable phenomenon.
"Thank you for coming today, Gypsy. As I explained to you the other day, we are running an experiment to prove that magic, like what you believe you have access to and can use… no offense, has physical properties and can be explained by science." Aaron explained in short. Gypsy shook hands with Lynn and Chaz.
"I remember… from the interview the other day. I just hope I can help with this… not that I want to disprove magic or anything, but if it can help someone further their education, then I'm willing to help." Gypsy replied. Chaz and Lynn led her into the testing room and hooked up the EEG to her.
"Okay… once the test starts, we just want you to try any magic you can… levitation, mind reading, summoning spirits, anything you can think of. The main thing is that you do it in the clean room here… that way, we know that there aren't any wires to help you levitate or anything… not that we don't trust you or anything, we just have to prove it's the real deal, y'know?" Lynn explained. Gypsy nodded and sat down in the middle of the room. She had asked for a pillow and some candles, and the scientists agreed. They left the room, and started recording on the camcorders and logging data on all the other instruments. They planned on the experiment lasting about two hours, and so they sat down at the control console to monitor the readings the sensors sent back.
About an hour and a half into the experiment, Chaz had dozed off, and Lynn was listening to music on her headphones with her back turned to the monitors, when the EEG graphs began spiking. Several minutes later, the load cells started reporting less weight on them, and soon after, the Geiger counters started rapidly pinging. Finally, an audible alarm sounded. Chaz fell backwards in his chair, and Lynn spun around, ripping her headphones off in the same movement.
"What the hell? We're getting readings from almost everything!" Chaz exclaimed as he picked himself off the floor. Lynn looked up from the monitors to the clean room, and gasped.
"Never mind that… what's happening to her?" They both stood up and looked towards Gypsy, or rather where she had been. Where Gypsy had once been, she was now mostly transparent and hovering two feet off the floor. Chaz made a quick check of the cameras and found that they were all recording and seeing exactly what the two scientists were seeing. Just then, several more alarms began sounding.
"Nononono! This can't be happening now!"
"What is it? What's wrong?" Lynn shouted over the alarms.
"That's the battery backup for the computers… we just lost all external power. We've got maybe ten minutes of battery left before everything shuts down except the camcorders!" They both leapt into action, running around to all the computers and saving all the data to a handful of thumb drives and to the hard drives in the computers and to the University's network server. As the network save was about to finish, the ground started to shake. "Now what? An earthquake in Chicago?!" Chaz asked no one in particular as they both ran for the nearest doorway. On glancing back at the experiment room, they were shocked to watch as Gypsy faded from view as the ceiling came crashing down, the lights, even the emergency lights, shut off, and the quake grew stronger. At some point during the quake, they had been knocked unconscious, because when they woke up and Chaz grabbed one of the High-Definition camcorders, which had a fully charged battery, they walked towards the door, the sun was higher in the sky than it had been when they started the experiment with Gypsy.
Their lab had been in the warehouse district of Chicago, so they were vastly unprepared for what they saw when they opened the door; they were in a forest.
It had been a trying two weeks, and life had returned to normal for most of the town of Ponyville. The shops had all been reimbursed by the Royal treasury, and were busy restocking the shelves and displays they had up. The fillies and colts had returned to class; fortunately, Cheerilee had prepared for how hard it would be. Everypony in her class knew Twilight and loved the violet mare, and she had taken a couple days to come up with lessons that could help the children deal with their feelings about Twilight's untimely passing.
About two and a half weeks after the funeral, one of the Unicorn Guards came rushing into the throne room, where Luna and Celestia were quietly talking.
"Your Majesties… a Trixie Lulamoon to see you. She says she has information about Princess Twilight's murder!" Celestia and Luna both responded,
"Send her in at once!" The guard trotted out into the hallway where Trixie was waiting, and she was shown in. "It's alright, Guard Caramel. You can leave us." Luna said to the guard who was still standing inside the doors. He bowed and left, closing the door behind him.
"I'm sorry for interrupting Princesses, but I have information about what happened to Twilight Sparkle." The Princesses eyed her with curious suspicion. They both knew that she and Twilight did not get along at all, and had been involved in several magic duels, and that Trixie was known for being the biggest bragger in Equestria.
"What do you know, Trixie?" Celestia bluntly asked. She and her sister had sat down on their thrones.
"Umm… I don't know how to say this any better, so I'll just say it… I am responsible for Twilight's death." The Princesses did not breathe for over a minute. When they gathered themselves, Celestia rushed Trixie and backed the pale blue-maned mare against a pillar.
"Guards! Escort this… pony… to the prison block, and make sure to put every magic ward you can think of on it. She is officially being charged with the murder of Twilight Sparkle!" Celestia shouted to the guards she knew were just on the other side of the door. They burst in the door and rushed over to where Trixie sat, backed into the pillar.
"Make this easy on yourself and come along quietly. We will use force, if we have to… and would not mind it one bit." Caramel said, saying the last part quietly so only Trixie could hear it. Trixie stood and the two guards, one Earth Pony and one Unicorn, led her off towards the prison cells deep under the castle. Along the way, they were joined by another Unicorn Guard and two Pegasus Guards. Later that night, the Alicorn sisters went down to the cell where Trixie was.
"How did this happen? Why?" Celestia shouted; her voice cracking.
"Trixie…" Luna slowly walked forward, fighting to keep Nightmare Moon from taking over, "how dare you attack another pony?! Let alone do something to kill somepony!"
"I fully accept whatever punishment you feel I deserve. This was all my fault. I know I'm guilty, and I won't try to change your minds about the punishment." Celestia and Luna backed off a few steps when they saw tears forming in Trixie's eyes.
"Would you care to explain how this happened?" Celestia asked, sitting down next to her sister, and placing a comforting hoof on Luna's wing. She could see that Luna was struggling to contain Nightmare Moon.
"Alright, this is what happened…" The light blue pony began.
She explained that she had challenged Twilight Sparkle to another magic duel, though this time; it would be a no holds barred duel until one pony was left standing. Twilight refused at first, so Trixie kept harassing her with weaker spells until the violet unicorn turned and started bombarding Trixie with slightly stronger spells. At the start of the duel, they started by taking turns casting various spells on each other; as the duel wore on, they both started casting their bigger, potentially more dangerous spells at each other.
They had both been throwing their most powerful spells at each other, and were both growing tired. Twilight could feel her opponent charging a spell; it seemed to be a massive fireball and Twilight readied her own surprise. As Trixie let off the fireball, Twilight let her own spell loose; she caught the spell and absorbed it to power up her own spell.
She misjudged how powerful Trixie's spell had been. As her body absorbed Trixie's spell, Twilight's horn began to glow a blinding white. Twilight was well aware of what was happening to her; her magic was being overcharged by the spell she absorbed.
As her magic reserve reached maximum and continued past the danger level, she tried to fire off every spell she could in an attempt to use up the excess magic, but due to her panicked state, she could not focus enough for long enough and every spell she tried failed. Her horn started to flake apart from all the power coursing through her body, and cracks were beginning to show along its whole length; bright light was shining through her coat from someplace inside her. As Trixie watched in horror, all the energy Twilight had absorbed released itself all at once in a massive explosion. The explosion threw Trixie almost three-hundred meters away from the explosion, leveled a whole section of the Everfree Forest, and the shockwave broke most of the windows in Ponyville.
"We tried teleporting to what it seems was your duel, but one of you had cast a shield around the area that blocked even us from teleporting to you. We eventually got through…" Celestia could not hold back the tears any longer.
"And saw the aftermath of your so-called duel. I do not think we'll ever forget what we saw in the crater your duel left behind. When Celestia discovered whose remains littered the crater and told me, we both vomited. Not even Nightmare Moon would do something like that!" Luna shouted at the prisoner. Celestia stood, followed by her sister, and began leaving the prison block.
"We'll discuss your punishment and when we decide on a fitting one, we will return. Until then, if you even try to escape, every guard in Equestria will have orders to bring you back to the castle, regardless of how or in what condition." Celestia coldly said. Celestia had left the cell Trixie was being held in, and Luna was about to turn to leave, when she heard Trixie give a grunt followed by a pained scream. The Princess of the Night turned in time to see Trixie break her horn off her forehead. Blood trickled down her forehead, and Luna fainted after she yelled for her sister. Celestia rushed back to the room to find her sister on the floor unconscious, and Trixie bleeding with her horn lying on the floor at her hooves. Not knowing what else to do, the Princess teleported the two of them to the Emergency Room in Canterlot's hospital.
Before Celestia could say anything, Nurse Redheart saw what condition Trixie was in, and managed to hit the emergency call button for the doctor before fainting. Doctor Whooves came barreling down the hallway towards the Princess and Trixie. Once he got to them, he took one quick look at Trixie, grabbed the nearest gurney and rushed her to the operating room. Once he had a chance to take a closer look at Trixie, he knew what he would have to do. No unicorn's horn had ever been successfully reattached, and the way hers had broken off damaged her scalp and hairline in such a way that he had no choice but to remove the rest of her horn and stitch her scalp closed. The procedure took close to eight hours; a good portion of which was trying to keep Trixie anesthetized deep enough. Unicorn's horns are full of nerves all the way up to the tip, and anytime he tried to remove any of the remainder of her horn, Trixie kept waking up.
Once he was done with the surgery, the Doctor put Trixie in the Intensive Care ward on suicide watch. Celestia stayed with the troubled young unicorn for the first forty-eight hours, and then when she had not woken up, Celestia left instructions for the Doctor to let either Princess know the moment Trixie's condition changed. To prevent Trixie from pulling out the stitches, the Doctor had one of the Unicorns on his staff put Trixie in a magically induced coma. Four days after she had arrived at the hospital, she woke up.
"Uhh… my head. Where am I?" She asked as she fought to open her eyes. The bright hospital lights hurt them, and when she realized, Celestia turned the lights down low. She had received word from the hospital that Trixie was starting to wake up, and had teleported herself there right away.
"You're at the Canterlot Hospital, in the Intensive care ward. I brought you here after you broke your horn off." Celestia said as gently as she could.
"I'm so sorry, Princess. I'm sorry I was always such a show-off and a bragger. If I hadn't been, Twilight would still be with us." Trixie said before breaking down crying again.
"I'm sorry, too. I let my anger and feelings about the situation cloud my judgment. My sister and I talked it over before I calmed myself down, and we had settled on sending you to the Frozen North to work for the Diamond Dogs in the coalmines, and had drawn up all the paperwork and signed everything before stopping for a second to think about it. Princess Luna still stands by her decision to send you to the Frozen North, and we would need to agree to tear up the prison orders. Luna is famously stubborn, and it would take months…"
"I wouldn't want you to try to free me. It was my mistake to be so overconfident that I couldn't stand the thought of being bested by Twilight or anypony else, and I took things too far and now I have to pay for it." Trixie sighed.
"Doctor Whooves says you should stay here for about a week, and if you'd like, I might be able to extend that a bit, in case you want to say goodbye to anyone. So far, nobody besides the Royal Guards, Luna and I know any specifics of what happened. The Doctor might know, but he knows better than to say anything." Celestia said. Trixie thought for a few minutes, before replying.
"While I appreciate you keeping this all quiet, I think the townsponies have a right to know what happened. I know it'll be like wearing a coat made of meat and walking into a pack of timberwolves, but I feel it should be done. Unfortunately, I'll probably end up needing guards to keep me safe until I get to the Frozen North." Trixie let out a sad chuckle. Celestia placed her hoof on Trixie's.
"I'll take care of everything. We'll have the town meeting back in Ponyville. Don't worry, Trixie… despite everything that has happened, I won't let anything happen to you. I'll set everything up for three days from now. Is there anything you would like before then?" Celestia asked the young mare.
"I'll be alright. Not to be rude, but I'm feeling tired…"
"Not a problem, Trixie. I should be going, too." The Princess said as she got up and left the room. "Don't worry, Trixie. You are not the only pony to have done something foalish like what you did. While I can't say that I condone such behavior, just know that something similar has happened to more ponies than you might think." Celestia said with a slight wink as she left the room and let the door close behind her. As the Princess left the room, Trixie could swear she caught a glimpse of several scars along the Princess' hind legs and around the base of her wings.
