Harold and Kumar Go to Equestria

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"Huh?"

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"This isn't possible!"

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"Harold! Kumar! Explain this!!" Twilight Sparkle's shriek woke up the apartment at an uncharacteristically early eight-o-clock.

The two friends stumbled into the den from their bedrooms and saw the worst possible thing.

Twilight Sparkle had figured out how to use Harold's laptop.

Kumar turned to Harold. "I thought you had a password on that, you stupid motherfucker!" Harold cringed.

Twilight Sparkle, in her human form as always when in the apartment stared in horror at images on the screen. "Fuckyoukumar wasn't very hard to guess considering it is your fourth most common utterance." Kumar stared death at his friend. "Since you two don't want me to leave the apartment, and I need to do some research on the portal, I thought Gee Twilight, remember how Harold used this thing to look up cultivation techniques a few days ago? So I used the google here and typed transdimensional portal and here is this cartoon drawing of me and this blue hedgehog character at the top of the screen." Harold clapped his hand to his forehead "So I said that's weird! I wonder if there are any more pictures of me. And guess what?" She turned the screen to face them and it was full of Twilight Sparkle.

Even in the black shorts and tee-shirt they had scrounged up for her, she was stunning. The look of utter incomprehension on her lovely face was slowly being displaced by panic.

"Twilight... maybe we should go to the other side so you can freak out over there." Harold went over to the mirror and opened it, revealing the pleasant night sky beyond. "Sound won't penetrate and you are going to be yelling."

She nodded dumbly and transformed into her alicorn form, walking out of the clothes. The apartment was much more habitable now that she had repeatedly zapped it with cleaning spells, but Equestria was much nicer than Earth after all and if she was going to have a meltdown, better to have it on her home turf anyway. The laptop floated behind her as she walked through the mirror, followed by the grubby and miserable duo.

A quick spell on the other side summoned a table and some easy chairs to the moonlit field. She sat down and moved the laptop to the table and leaned back. "I am calm. I am listening. Please, start explaining."

Kumar leaned over to the laptop. "It's easier to show you, I think." He opened up the dailymotion website and searched My Little Pony s1e1. Harold crossed his fingers.

Twilight Sparkle watched in utter silence, fascinated as the story of the two sisters was told. Then the scene changed and she saw a cartoon version of herself laying on grass as she had five years ago, talking to herself about the Elements of Harmony. To her credit, she didn't freak out, yell, or turn Harold and Kumar into flying oranges. She just fainted.

Twilight woke up in a bed to the smell of spices and fresh cut flowers. She heard voices downstairs. This is Zecora's tree! Twilight got out of the bed, arranged herself in the mirror on the wall, and went through the door. She looked down and saw Zecora and Harold sitting next to each other while Kumar sat with his head in his hands. "She'll be fine, Kumar. It was just the shock." Harold spoke in comforting tones. "It wasn't your fault."

"Yes, it was my fault! I said not to tell her, I said that it was better if she didn't know, and then I fucking showed her the cartoon without warming her up! We're lucky all she did was faint; you know how she is..."

"How am I, Kumar?" Twilight walked down the stairs calmly. "I was wondering how you two seemed to know so much about us. So, how am I? We spent some time together at a party, I visited your apartment three times, but you are acting like you know me very well indeed. So tell me, how am I?" While she spoke she walked walked down the stairs and stopped, standing in front of Kumar, who had gone pale and was trembling.

"Good-natured. Neurotic. Devoted to lists and schedules. Creative. Obsessive about details. Phenomenally intelligent. Prone to panic attacks. Gentle, kind and loving. Brave. Self-sacrificing. You absorb and correlate knowledge unlike anypony else. You have a warm and beautiful heart. And you are merciful and forgiving to your opponents and to your friends who have done wrong. Like me. I hope." Kumar looked miserable.

Twilight blushed crimson and looked down. "I don't know about all that, Kumar. I mean, 'a warm and beautiful heart' sounds like a fairly subjective judgement. And I'm not 'phenomenally intelligent.' Or all that brave, I spend a lot of time worrying for a brave pony. Neurotic, yeah I'll own up to that, but I mean, gee whiz..." She scraped the ground bashfully with her hoof. "And sure, you're still my friend, but," she cleared her throat, "the question is, upon what do you base all of those opinions?"

Harold looked at Zecora.

You highness, humans it would seem
have seen us as though through a dream.
They watch us come and watch us go,
they watch our lives on a TV show.

"People don't know it's real. They think it's a fictional television show. Its like a play and you are all characters." Harold spoke quietly but clearly. "The actors are human beings speaking your voices and the action is drawn by computer animators. When we opened the portal, it was by accident, but we wanted to be able to go to Equestria because of what we had seen on the television show."

Twilight nodded and didn't say anything for a while, just absorbing all of that information. Then she spoke. "How could this be a coincidence? How could someone on Earth know about Equestria? About us as individuals? How... how accurate are the stories?"

"We have no way of knowing, do we? I suppose only ponies who have actually lived through these events could tell us."

"Then perhaps I should watch this show. Can we watch it on your computer?"

Kumar reached into the black knapsack and pulled out three DVD cases. "We have the first three seasons here." He placed them on the table.

"Oh my gosh, what's wrong with us in this picture? We all look like we are on different drugs. The only one that looks normal is Angel. Look at my smile!" Twilight held up the DVD, opened her eyes as wide as she could and did her best to imitate the vacuous, open mouthed smile on the cover of the season one case.

Kumar and Harold were rolling on the floor helplessly while Zecora made bleating zebra noises. When he was able to stand, Harold showed Twilight how to open the DVD drive and the show started. Actually the commercials started. "Whoa. Hey, what is THAT? Toys? Of us? Is that Princess Celestia? WHY IS SHE PINK?" It took twenty minutes just to get through the commercials with Twilight alternately asking questions, making fun of ridiculous toys and laughing uncontrollably. Zecora was beside herself as well.

"So the whole point of this show is to sell these toys to little girls? And you guys are watching it? What's up with that anyway?"

"Don't be a hater." Kumar reached into his pocket. "I have a suggestion." He pulled out a jay of Equestria's finest. "Perhaps this will help you understand the appeal."

Twilight looked at Zecora, smiled and shrugged. "For research purposes."

As the vapors filled their lungs and the room, Twilight Sparkle settled in to watch ponies with her friends. She frequently interrupted the show with comments like "it wasn't really like that," "they skipped over about ten intermediate events" and "Spike drank that punch? No wonder he was wearing that lampshade!" When they got to the part with Nightmare Moon though, Twilight got very quiet. She watched the rest of the second episode in near silence, nodding at some points and shaking her head at others. Finally, after the Elements of Harmony cast the nightmare spirit out of Luna and she was reconciled with Celestia, Twilight stood up and ran off, crying. Harold nudged Zecora who nodded and chased after her.

The two men looked at each other quietly, the Harold broke the silence. "Well, that wasn't quite what I expected."

"Me either." They sat in quietly, wondering what Zecora and Twilight must be talking about for almost ten minutes. Finally, the alicorn and zebra walked back out of Zecora's bedroom. Twilight's eyes were puffy and Zecora still had moisture under her eyes.

"I'm sorry I freaked out there guys, but that was... well, it was very close to what actually happened. Cleaned up a bit, edited so that kids could watch it, I think. For example, in the ghoultree forest, they didn't show the horrible illusions that the trees were displaying... like me seeing my father stabbing my mother to death or Pinkie seeing her sisters buried in a landslide. That damned forest wasn't spooky, it was horrifying."

She sat down on the couch while Zecora joined Harold on the loveseat and leaned against him. "It was too much, all those memories flooding back at once. But what really hurt was seeing Luna and Celestia reconcile like that." Tears started to flow down Twilight's cheeks again as she looked at Kumar. "It was one of the most beautiful and intimate moments I've ever seen. It was just me and my best friends, with whom I had just had soul-to-soul contact I might add, and we saw a thousand-year reconciliation between the two most powerful ponies in Equestria. The triumph of love and family over jealousy and shame. When we drove out the Nightmare, we saw Luna's soul as it was freed of that thing, and she was so full of overwhelming guilt, she nearly destroyed herself on the spot."

Her tears were flowing freely again, but her voice remained strong. "She still has some pretty severe control issues. Imagine not being in control of yourself for a thousand years."

Kumar smiled wryly at that. "Yeah, I've experienced her control issues myself."

Twilight wiped her eyes. "Don't be fooled. She can be very easily hurt, so please Kumar, be careful with her." He nodded seriously. "But what really gets me is that moment, a moment that changed my life forever and taught me how to forgive, that frankly shames me every time I consider not forgiving somepony for something I imagine they've done wrong, that tender, life-altering event has been put on a television screen and used to sell toys. I feel... violated. I feel that Celestia and Luna especially have had their privacy stolen and sold." She looked unhappily at Kumar and Harold as comprehension dawned on their faces.

"Oh God." Kumar covered his mouth with his hand.

"Twilight, I'm so sorry. I never looked at it that way." Harold leaned forward, holding Zecora's hoof.

"It isn't your fault, guys. You didn't know, you just thought we were cartoons. But somepony obviously does know our story and somehow they are getting that information to the writers of that show. And that means one thing to me."

She put her hooves together in front of her and leaned her chin on them pensively.

"There is another portal."