Book four of "Who We Become".
After discovering the magic of friendship, Sunset Shimmer's senior year was one of the happiest times of her life. But it's been almost two years since graduation; all her friends have moved on to studying abroad, to pr...
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'Long distance test attempt four. Conditions are favorable, and we're optimistic for a positive result.'
Twilight's notebook sat open next to their newest model of the radio and a gramophone record playing a Sapphire Shores song. Twilight herself was standing by, on a hill behind the castle. Once she and Sunset were finally able to set their minds to it, finishing the construction wasn't too difficult. They'd done most of the heavy lifting the night they visited the human library, and soon had a fully functional one-way radio. However, there were still plenty of ways to improve on it, and simply recreating human technology was never really their goal. Right from the start, it had always been about studying the potential relationship between human technology and Equestrian magic.
A light was visible in the distance – Sunset's signal that she was in place. Twilight turned to face the radio transmitter, which was already turned on, powered by a long cord feeding into the castle. Twilight closed her eyes, and cast out her magic aura. She was searching for the radio signal. It was easy enough to manipulate tangible objects. In that regard, magic worked a bit like hands – able to grab hold of something and maneuver it according to the caster's ability. All unicorns could do that, to varying extents. Things like teleportation and altering the growth of plant life were much more difficult, requiring the caster to have a lot more knowledge on arcane principles, but there was still something physical that was being altered in some way. But manipulating something that wasn't tangible? Unfortunately, in this regard, magic was also like hands – utterly useless.
There. Twilight finally felt the signal. Utterly useless wasn't an entirely accurate description, really. It was more so mostly useless. Magic was also intangible, so it actually could interact with forces like radio waves, but learning how to touch something that wasn't touchable definitely required a certain kind of skill. As odd as the sensation was, Twilight wrapped her magic through the radio signal. Their goal was to amplify it so that Sunset would be able to hear Twilight, even though she was well beyond the range of their device.
The record played its song, but Twilight tuned it out. Although the music was a little distracting, it was a lot better than trying to speak into the mic herself, and of course sound was essential to their test. If all went well, Sunset would teleport to her any moment and tell her she'd heard the song.
There was the smell of dust burning. Twilight immediately let go of the radio signal, and began preparing to teleport instead. Before she got the chance, the transmitter exploded. "Aah!" Twilight threw her hooves over her face and was knocked to the ground. Bits of wood and metal rained on her.
"Twilight!" Sunset teleported to her side immediately. She used her magic to clear the debris off of her, then knelt down beside her. "Are you okay?"
Twilight groaned in response.
"Here, keep still." Sunset gently began checking Twilight for injuries.
"I'm fine," Twilight insisted, pushing Sunset's hoof away. She stood up, grunting from the effort. She noticed Sunset still looked concerned, so she smiled and added, "Really, I'm okay."
