The "Twilight" Zone

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7 (Hunter and Ben's Side)
Chapter 7 (My Side)
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 4

Chapter 1

The “Twilight” Zone
Created by:
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 1

It was a typical afternoon. I was playing my PS3 as I always do after coming home from college. Ben was just sitting on the other side of the couch listening to music on his laptop. No doubt something with ponies in it. Hunter was taking a shower for tonight’s party. It seemed like it was taking longer than usual. But I just shrugged the thought and continued playing my game.

I was just about to beat a tough boss when Ben suddenly got up and ran to his room. The sudden movement distracted me and I had to restart. I really didn’t feel like restarting so I got up to shut off the PS3. As I was shutting off the T.V. also, Ben came down with his electric guitar and started tuning it.

“This better be good.” I said

“Oh, it’s good. Just listen.” Ben said as he finished tuning it and started playing the starting riff to a song that he must’ve been listening to at least 500 times in a row. It was pretty good at first, and then got progressively worse. I hear the shower turn off.

“Heh...sorry. I still need to work on the middle part of it.”

Hunter comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a couple towels. He looked like he was thinking about something.

“That sounded a lot like the better mix of “Like a Spinning Record.”

“Yea, I like it because it’s about Vinyl Scratch and it’s already in guitar form.” Ben was saying as he set down his guitar on the couch. I went to sit on the couch too. As soon as I sat down though, I felt something hard and pointy. I quickly scooted forward on the couch and grabbed the thing I sat on. Hunter looked over and saw what I was holding.

“Mark! You found my favorite watch!” Hunter exclaims as I look it over. The band was printed with a sparkling rainbow-colored lightning bolt. The hard thing I sat on was probably the stud that was on it. “I’m gonna wear this to the party.” I gave it to him and he instantly put it on.

I got up off the couch and headed into the living room. “So is everyone ready for the party?” I say as I grab my chain with the flying apple on it and put it in my pocket. It was something I just found laying around on the sidewalk. I picked it up, polished the crap out of it, and now I carry it everywhere.

Hunter comes into the living room wearing a decent shirt and he covers it up by wearing his sweatshirt. Ben comes in also, slipping a ring on his finger with a jewelled balloon on it.

“Okay. Let’s go!” We head out the front door and are just about to get in my car when I notice a spark of light flash in the living room through the front window.

“Hmm...I wonder what that was?” Hunter said, still in the car.

I went to go check on what it was. As I went through the front door, I noticed that Hunter and Ben were right behind me. Nothing seemed out of place. “Then what was that flash?” I wondered in my head. Then I noticed that the overhead light had blown. When I looked around, I noticed every light in the living room was blown!

Hunter went to check the downstairs rooms while Ben went upstairs to check those rooms. I was starting toward the kitchen when I heard a stifled cough that sounded like it was coming from one of the closets in the living room. I headed toward the closet I heard the noise from. My hand was on the doorknob, and I was about to turn it when Hunter came back and told me that he didn’t see anything. Ben came downstairs and said the same thing.

“Guys,” I said, reaching for the doorknob again, “I think I heard something coming from this closet.” Hunter looked at me with a worried look on his face.

“Well, open the door and we can figure out what the noise was.”

I turned the knob, flung the door open, and there, huddled into a corner behind some jackets, were the Mane 6.

The three of us took a minute to look at them. They were very different than the way they looked in the show. Their fur seemed to have more sheen. Their manes were more real looking. The colors were more radiant even in the yellow glow of the closet light. They looked so soft and precious when they were scared to death in my closet. I knelt down and took off a couple jackets.

“Stay calm, you guys.” I said, aiming the statement toward Hunter and Ben, who just stood there with their mouths open. Every jacket I took off the ponies, I could hear a little squeak. It sounded like Fluttershy. I started thinking of a way to reassure them that they were not going to be in danger of something that wasn’t in any Twilight’s thousands of books. Humans.

I heard a thump from behind me. I look and see that Hunter was passed out on the floor. Ben went over to slap him awake, but I stopped him. Why would I want the first thing for the ponies to learn about humans to be that we are a violent race? Well, we are, but I didn’t want them to know that yet. I turn back toward the closet and see a rainbow streak fly out of the opening of the door and stop behind me.

“Hey! I don’t know who or what you are, but you better start talking.” The blue pegasus looked at me, flapping her wings with ease. The wings were a beautiful baby blue with lots of feathers, each one waving with each relaxed flap through the air. It looked like they were glistening in whatever was left of the sunlight through the window.

I looked into her shiny, violet-red eyes. “I know you don’t know who I am, but I know who you are, you’re Rainbow Dash.” The rest of the ponies noticed the calmness in my voice and started leaving the closet, starting with Twilight. Meanwhile, Ben was trying to pinch himself awake, apparently thinking all this was a dream, but to no avail.

Chapter 2

The “Twilight” Zone
Created by:
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 2

As they all left the closet, they moved near Rainbow Dash, who proceeded to float to the ground. She still had a brave look in her eyes. I just stood there, closing the closet behind me. I looked over at Hunter. He was just now getting up. Ben came over next to me. The silence in the room made the situation even more intense than it already was. Just then the pink pony bounced toward Hunter as he steadied himself.

She started talking really fast. “Hey! What’s your name? My name’s Pinkie Pie, I’ve never seen you before! I don’t even know what you are. Ooh! I know! Let’s have a party! Celebrating something new I found!” As Pinkie turned around to grab her party cannon, she turned around completely and kept looking for it.

“Oh no! Where’s my cannon! I can’t have a party without my party cannon!” I walk over to her, and I noticed her hair was starting to deflate slowly.

“Um…Pinkie? You’re not a cartoon anymore. None of your usual Pinkie Physics are going to work.” I kneel down and put my hand on her head. The mane was soft and squishy like cotton candy.

That seemed to make her more depressed. Hunter came over and thought of an idea.

“Why can’t we just have the party later? First we need to find out why and how you got here.” That seemed to cheer Pinkie up a bit. Twilight Sparkle spoke up, still sitting by Rainbow Dash. “Where are we? Are we still in Equestria? And why do we look so…different?

Ben started explaining, “Well…no. You are not in Equestria anymore. You’re in a place called America.” I noticed what he was saying and added on to it.

“Yea, and you guys are from a T.V. show called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Do you want me to show you?”

Every one of the ponies wanted to know how the three of us knew them so well, so I took everyone into the den. As we were walking, I noticed the ponies were looking around, amazed at all the wonder of our house. As we got into the room, Hunter and Ben went over to the couch while I motioned for the ponies to sit in front of the T.V. When I went to turn around to turn on the media player, I did a double take at the ponies. I counted them up, and noticed that Fluttershy was missing. I left the room, listening to Ben and Hunter trying to explain all the unfamiliar stuff to them.

As I enter the living room, I feel something hit my leg. I look down and see that Applejack followed me.

“What are you doing following me, Applejack?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t seem that interested in all those gizmos and gadgets. I’m a farm mare at heart and I’m proud of it. And you can call me AJ.”

I start looking around the room. “Okay. Um... why are you so friendly to me so soon?”

She gives the carpet a little kick. “Well, I don’t know. It’s just something about how you handled the situation when we first got here.”

“Thanks, AJ.” I kneel down next to the couch and check under it. I hear a little squeak coming from under the coffee table next to me. I turn my head from the couch, look under the table, and see Fluttershy rolled up tightly in a ball, scared to death. Applejack lies down to her level and nudges her with her muzzle. Fluttershy just rolls up tighter.

“Oh come on, Sugarcube. There ain’t nothin’ ta be afraid of. These are nice...uh...whatever they are.” Applejack nudged Fluttershy again. I slowly reached for her mane. I touched it, feel her flinch, but proceed to run the hair through my fingers. It’s hard thinking of a word to describe something so beautiful, but that’s what her hair felt like.

The more I pet her hair, the more I could feel her body start to relax. I was able to coax her out from under the table so AJ could help her up. We were going to head back to the den, but I heard something crash on the floor from the kitchen, so I picked up the dazed Fluttershy and started running. Well, running to the best of my ability with a waist-high pony under my arm. I’m sure she didn’t appreciate all the bouncing.

When we got to the kitchen, I see Ben putting straws into cups and bowls full of Kool-aid. Wait...Kool-aid? I set Fluttershy down on the floor and she takes a seat next to AJ who is already sipping her drink with great interest. Hunter finishes cleaning up the broken glass and sits back in his seat next to Twilight and Rainbow Dash. I quickly pull Ben to the side.

“Ben! Are you crazy? Do you know how much sugar is in this stuff?” Ben looked at me in a daze until something finally clicked in his brain.

“Oh crap. Pinkie Pie’s already on her third cup. Sorry about that... They said they were thirsty while we were waiting for you to come back and start the episode. We only have Kool-aid, and you know how bad the water is around here.”

That was true. The water was really bad. When we first moved here, Hunter was getting tired from getting his stuff moved in. He got a glass of water straight from the tap. When he took a sip, he pretty much puked all over the sink and said it tasted like a rainbow cupcake. I don’t know how he knew what those tasted like, but now we only use the water for other stuff like laundry and watering the lawn. Now for the Kool-aid, I hear you ask, we use bottled water from the store. I have yet to get one of those containers that filter the water by itself.

I go over and lean on the island in the middle of the kitchen. “So, Twilight, how did you all end up here?” Twilight looked up from her drink. I glance over at Pinkie Pie. I can see the buzz in her eyes starting to form. I look back at Twilight who then proceeds to explain what happened.

“Okay, I don’t know how or why we ended up in this place in particular, but I do know where we were supposed to go and why.” She adjusted in her seat, making it look like she was going to be talking for a while. She then cleared her throat. “To start, I was just about to go to the Quills and Sofas store to get more quills. When I got to the Mane Square, Princess Celestia made a surprise visit to Ponyville to tell the town about a special event coming up, The Whinnyinapolis 500. It was supposed to happen in a faraway place on the outskirts of Equestria. I had no idea where it was. Even if I did, my magic wouldn’t be strong enough to take all six of us that far. The Princess said she would be able to do it, but it would be dangerous, and she had only done it once before. Everything was in place and she said she already had arrangements for us to stay there for a little bit after to check out the new city. When everyone was ready, the princess prepared her spell, lit up her horn and a flash of light appeared. But I saw something wrong right before the flash. There was a dark blue mist that got in the way of the spell at the last second. The next thing I know, we’re scrambling to hide from the unfamiliar monsters coming through the front door. This blue mist must have been the cause of why we are here. Oh...I’m worried about what’s going to happen to the princess.”

Hunter got up and grabbed all the bowls and cups. Ben got up to help him. I pondered the situation a bit. I ask Twilight, “So, basically, what you are saying is, the princess didn’t really mess up on her spell, something just got in the way, and now you’re in this dimension, did I get that right?”

“Yes, I think so. Now we need to find a way to get back to our dimension. The problem is, I have no idea where to start and I don’t have any of my books to help me.”

“We can worry about that later. For now, let’s head back into the den and watch one of the episodes.”

Hunter takes everyone back to the room. When they all get settled, I notice that they are sitting in the same formation as they did in the kitchen. Twilight and Dash next to Hunter, Pinkie and Rarity next to Ben, and when I sit down on my side of the couch, Fluttershy and AJ huddle next to me. I look around for the remote, and I see it over by the TV. Everyone, including me, looked too comfortable to get it, so I had an idea.

“Hey, Twilight? Can you use your magic to get me the remote? It’s that long thing with all the buttons on it.” Twilight looked over at me and nodded her head. I look over at Ben and Hunter. “So guys, what would be the best episode for them to watch?”

Hunter only had to think for two seconds before he came up with an answer. “What about the episode where they first meet Zecora?” Ben thought about it for a second. “Nah, let’s watch the one with Trixie.”

Every one of the ponies shook their heads with disgust. Twilight, still concentrating on the remote, looked like she didn’t want to relive that memory. I thought of a good one. “Why not just the Gala episode?”

That must’ve been the episode of choice because everyone seemed to get a happy shine in their eyes. Pinkie’s eyes had the most, though, because of that buzz she was on. I notice that the remote wasn’t next to me yet.

“Um...Twilight? Is there something wrong?” I say, looking at her, then looking at where the remote was still sitting. She looks discouraged, concentrating on focusing her magic into her horn, but nothing is happening.

“I...I can’t...use my magic! Why isn’t anything happening?” Twilight looks totally freaked out. I try to explain things to her, because I think I know what’s going on, but Hunter starts saying it first.

“It’s probably because, in our dimension, magic isn’t real. Moving stuff without touching it in any way is completely impossible. The same thing goes for any other spell you know you can do, it just won’t happen. The same thing goes for you too, Rarity.”

Rarity tries to move a pillow, but the same thing happens. Nothing. So everyone just sits there. Since Twilight can’t use her magic, and Rarity can’t either, how are they going to get home? I get up and get the remote. I sit back down and turn on the TV. I also turn on the media player with my external hard drive hooked up to it. I look for the episode, find it, and push play.

Chapter 3

The “Twilight” Zone
Created by:
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 3

The scene opened up looking at the sky. There was the sound of something bouncing. The camera zoomed out and there was a trampoline being bounced on by nothing. There was a book closer to the camera just open and sitting there. I knew something was wrong the minute I saw that Pinkie wasn’t on the trampoline, and Twilight wasn’t next to the book. I sat there with my mouth open. The scene went to in front of Rarity’s boutique but nothing was happening, but there were still bouncing sounds. After a bit, the bouncing stopped and it panned over to Spike. He was saying his normal line as if the ponies were still there interacting with him. I looked over at Hunter and Ben who also had the same expression I had.

I had to shut it off. I just couldn’t watch the show without the characters in it. Ben got up and faced us to tell us what we all already knew.

“Do you guys know what’s happening here? Since the Mane 6 are here, they’re not going to show up in any of the episodes! Even the reruns!

“What’s a rerun?” Dash turned to Hunter. I looked over at her, reaching over Fluttershy (who was huddled in a ball, apparently because of the growing tension in the room) and put the remote on the couch.

“A rerun is when a TV show plays an episode that it has already played.” Rainbow Dash looks as if she understands, and so do the other ponies. AJ taps me on the arm.

“So do ya think that’s the cause of all our random cases of Déjà Vu?” I think about it, then nod.

“That’s one way of putting it.” I look at the time. It’s already 10 o’ clock at night. I start yawning, which causes a chain reaction, and everyone starts yawning. I get up off the couch, breaking Fluttershy from her ball. “I think it’s time to show where you ponies are gonna be sleeping.” Everyone lazily gets off the couch.

Hunter stretches his arms and yawns again. “Okay, so, who’s gonna be sleeping in who’s room?”

“It should be up to them.” I said, nodding toward the ponies, who were also stretching. “But we can still show them the choices they have.” Ben and Hunter nodded in agreement and we all headed upstairs.

The three bedrooms are all in a row on the top floor. First it’s Ben’s room, then Hunter’s, then mine. We walk down the hallway and stop in front of Ben’s room. The ponies walk in with us and examine the room. Rarity jumps in delight and squeals like she saw a giant jewel. She must’ve noticed the walk-in closet on the other side of the room. She lands on the floor and runs inside. Ben slaps his hand on his face.

“Well, that’s one. Who’s gonna be the second one?” Ben says as he sits on his bed. He starts bouncing a little on it, which triggers Pinkie Pie’s reaction to having fun. She releases her stored energy and jumps on the bed, scattering blankets and pillows around the room. Ben gets off the bed, walks over to the wall, and gets a running start to join Pinkie with all the bouncing craziness. The rest of us escape out the door and continue down the hall to Hunter’s room. I could still hear the noise of all the bouncing as we enter the next room.

The four ponies take time to look around the room. I step on one of the books that were taken out of the bookcase. It makes a crinkling sound that makes Twilight’s ears perk up. She looks over at the book under my foot and then she notices the bookcase next to the door. She trots over and starts looking through them. Hunter walks over next to her.

“So, I see you found my extensive book collection. I know I don’t have nearly as many books as you do, but feel free to look through as many as you like.” He pulls out a few and places them on the floor. Twilight just stares at them, expecting them to open. Hunter kneels down and opens up the first book. “Oh yea, I forgot you can’t use magic.” Twilight lays down and starts reading the first page. When she looks done, she tries turning the page, but fails. “How am I supposed to read this if I can’t even turn the pages?”

Rainbow Dash comes over in front of Twilight. I take a glance at where she was coming from. The hammock that Hunter has in his room (yea, I don’t know. He bought it to see what it felt like to have one) was swinging back and forth. “Oh come on, Twi. How do you think I read all those Daring Do books?” She says as she flips a page with her hoof.

The hammock stops swinging. I look over at Dash. “So, I see you like the hammock.” She flies back over to it.

“Yea, it feels a lot like a cloud. But, I don’t know, something just doesn’t feel right. It’s not poofy enough or something. But I’ll deal with it for now.” She lays on it, putting her forelegs behind her head. She then proceeds to use one of her wings to make the hammock start swinging again.

Hmm...not poofy enough. What would be soft and poofy enough like a cloud? I put the question in the back of my mind. I take Fluttershy and AJ out of the room, leaving Twilight and Rainbow Dash content with where they are. I head back to Ben’s room.

I open the door to his room. The place looks like it hasn’t been touched in weeks. Must’ve been Rarity’s work. Ben and Pinkie Pie are passed out on the bed. Rarity is laying on a stacked pile of clothes in the closet. Her hair is all wavy, like it gets when she’s either stressed, tired, or both. I leave the room and head to mine, Fluttershy hovering in the air next to me, Applejack trotting quietly behind me.

I let the two remaining ponies into my room and follow them inside, closing the door behind me, and flicking the light on. Fluttershy blinks rapidly in the sudden light. I hear a chirp from my pet bird, Roger. Fluttershy hears it and flies over to the cage.

“Ooh...a bird! And it’s so...so...pretty!” Fluttershy realizes how loud she’s being and quickly shuts up, still looking at the bird.

“Here, I’ll take it out for you. His name is Roger, he might like you, considering how great you are with woodland creatures.” I say, opening the cage, letting Roger hop over onto Fluttershy’s mane. While she’s busy being amazed by the bird, I notice Applejack near my beanbag chair. She gives a wondering look and places a hoof on the unsquished part of it. As that part starts moving under the weight, she freaks out and turns around to buck it. When she does, however, the chair squishes with the blow and stays where it’s at.

“AJ, what are you doing? That is called a beanbag chair and it won’t hurt you. See?” I lay on it, letting myself sink into the sea of contained beads. AJ looks intrigued. I have a little trouble getting out of the chair, but I get out eventually. “You can sleep on it tonight if you want.”

“It does look mighty comfortable. Sorry about buckin’ it.” She places a hoof on it again, testing the sturdiness, and then gets her whole body on it. She lays down and yawns.

“You didn’t do anything to it that can’t easily be fixed.” AJ lays her head down and closes her eyes. I look back at Fluttershy, who is quietly singing to the bird. “Hey Fluttershy,” I say in a whisper, “Do you wanna put Roger to bed for me please?” She reluctantly nods and puts the bird back in the cage. She then grabs the cover with her teeth, floats up over the cage, and drops it on top.

“I have nowhere else you can sleep, Fluttershy, unless you’ll be okay with sleeping at the foot of my bed.”

“That’ll be okay. Do you have some sort of a blanket for me? It looks like Applejack might need one too.” She says, flying over to my bed, landing, and sitting where I told her to.

I go over to my closet. Looking through my clothes and other assorted things, I see a couple blankets sitting under a pile of socks. I take one of them and throw one over AJ. I take the other one and give it to Fluttershy. She takes it and nuzzles under it. I grab my pajamas off the floor and...uh...how am I gonna change into them? Hopefully, since AJ is almost asleep and Fluttershy is under the blanket, I can put them on without them seeing anything. I quickly take off my jeans and slip on my pajama bottoms. I slip on a random shirt and get on my bed. I slip under the comforter, taking great care as to not jostle Fluttershy in the process.

I can’t even begin to fall asleep. As tired as I am, my brain is keeping me up, displaying the craziness of events that happened today. Then I think about how the party would’ve been like if we actually went. That thought doesn’t last long because it almost instantly gets replaced by the miracle chance of something from another dimension coming into our house. Thinking about the day, for what seemed like an hour or so, finally made me tired enough to get some sleep.

I had the weirdest dream. I was sitting in an empty field, next to a tree. It was very peaceful. I looked around. Nothing but rolling hills of grass as far as I could see. I look up into the tree, and notice it’s an apple tree. The tree has strategically placed branches so I can easily climb up and grab an apple. The sun catches a spot through the leaves and hits the apple. The beautiful color makes me want it even more. I take off a bit of the apple with my teeth and chew. The taste of the apple is so horrid, I spit it out instantly. I look at the apple in my hand. There is some aura of darkness in the apple that grows around me, sucking me in. I end up floating in a dark blue place with stars everywhere, like I’m in space or something. I look around. All I see are stars and dark blue space. Then some of the stars move together into a group. I see the group of starts starting to form into a shape. After a bit of moving, the shape starts becoming recognizable. The shape is Nightmare Moon. I start trying to get away, but nothing happens. Her eyes look directly into mine. She starts speaking to me.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here? I didn’t expect this! A guardian? And to think I got rid of those mares forever!” Her voice boomed throughout space. Every syllable made the place tremble. I feel something in my pocket moving. The chain! As it leaves my pocket, I watch Nightmare Moon pull it in front of her face. “How did you get this? This is one of the Trinkets of Trinity! I thought I got rid of these!”

Just then, a bright light flashes and I see a white hole rip through the darkness. Nightmare Moon gets sucked up in the hole, along with the dark blue space. Before the hole closes back up, I see a glimpse of Princess Celestia.

And there I am, sitting in white emptiness. I feel the chain back in my pocket. What just happened? Was this a dream, or a vision? The white space melts away slowly, leaving behind the empty field I was originally sitting in. I’m back sitting against the tree. I look down and see the apple next to me with a bite taken out of it. But there’s something unusual about the teeth marks. It’s not a human’s mouth. It looks like a horse took a bite out of it! I pick up it up and feel something on the other side of the apple. There’s a note. I take the note off the apple and read what it says.

“Now you know. Stop her before it’s too late. Next time, you won’t be so lucky. Be ready. I’m counting on you guys.” The signature is barely legible, but somehow, I know it’s the Princess. Everything fades into darkness and I wake up to something soft rubbing against my face.

Chapter 5

The “Twilight” Zone
Created by:
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 5

I run into the room where the party stuff is getting set up. “Hey guys, shut up for a second.” Everyone freezes and the room is dead silent. I hear the thump again, but this time, everyone hears it.

“What do you think it is?” Twilight asks.

“I don’t know, maybe just something falling on the floor.” Ben said, getting off the ladder he was on.

“By itself? I don’t think so.” Hunter replies.

Pinkie Pie shakes a little. “Do you think...it’s...zombies?” She starts to cower towards the corner.

“I thought I locked the door when we left. There should be no way anyone could get in.” I start heading up the stairs. I flip the light switch for the stairwell, but no light turns on. I flip the switch up and down a couple more times. Still, nothing happens. The light must’ve blown ou- oh...crap... “Uh...guys? I don’t think the girls are alone here. The light’s blown out like when the ponies got here.”

“Who could possibly be here? And how?” Hunter starts heading up the stairs to follow me. I start climbing the stairs and everyone follows Hunter and me.

“I have no idea. Princess Celestia must’ve sent them to find the Mane 6.” I reach the top of the stairs and move over to the side to let everyone else up.

“Why would the princess make the same mistake twice? She’s not known to do that.” Ben says, being the last one at the top of the stairs.

“Maybe it was something else that pulled them into this dimension.” I said, starting to walk down the hall. “Let’s at least find out who it is. When I heard the noise, it sounded like it was coming from Hunter’s room.”

“Then let’s go!” Pinkie Pie bounces ahead, but Ben grabs her back to the group.

“We should probably send someone in by themselves. Mark, you should go.”

“Eh, I shouldn’t. Remember how freaked out the girls were when they first met us? We should send one of them in.” I stop in front of Hunter’s room. I can only imagine how whoever is in the room feels.

“That could be a good idea.” Twilight says. She doesn’t say it quietly though, because I hear the rustling in the room stop, as if the thing recognized Twilight’s voice.

“Uh oh, I think it heard you Twilight.” I motion for her to go through the door. I open it, let her through, and close it again. Everyone else just sits by the door, waiting in anticipation.

All of a sudden, we all hear a loud “Spike?” through the door.

“Spike? What’s he doing here?” Rarity says.

I back away from the door. “I don’t know, but I hope he can adjust quickly because we all have a ton of questions for him.” I open the door. Twilight comes out with Spike on her back, but when he sees the 3 of us, he freaks out and hides behind the ponies.

Twilight gets Spike and pushes him in front of us. I kneel down to his level since he only comes up to my knee. “Hey there Spike.”

I stick out my hand to shake his claw, by he just runs back behind the ponies. I stand back up.

Twilight gets him again. “Spike, these guys are okay. They’re not going to hurt you. Now shake his...uh...claw thingy.”

“But Twilight...” Spike groans, “I’ve never seen these things before.”

“Spike, darling, would you do it for me?” Rarity says, blinking rapidly into Spike’s eyes.

“Oh, all right.” Spike blushes and walks back over to us. I stick out my hand and kneel down again. I shake his claw and I notice my hand engulfing it, so I try not to squeeze so hard.

“My name’s Mark. This is Hunter, and this is Ben.” I get back up. Spike walks back over to the ponies, still looking at us. “Apparently, according to a vision the three of us had, we are the assigned guardians of the Mane 6.”

“How did you guys end up being the guardians?”

“Well, we haven’t really figured that out yet, but we think it’s because of these.” Hunter shows Spike his watch, Ben shows his ring, and I reach into my pocket to take out the chain, but I feel something else in there too. I take it out, and it’s a piece of paper that looks like the note I read in the dream.

“Whoa guys! This is the note from the dream!” I hand it to Spike. He looks it over.

“...too late...won’t be so lucky...counting on you guys. What’s it too late for?” Spike hands back the note. I stuff it back into my pocket.

“I don’t know, but it’s probably the reason why you’re here too.” I hear the oven beep, signalling the cake being ready. “Let’s go downstairs. I need to get the cake.” I start walking downstairs.

“But, I don’t even know how I got here! I’m freaking out because Twilight didn’t come back to the library. I was running around Ponyville asking everyone where she could’ve gone. That’s when Princess Celestia showed up and announced that the Representatives of the Elements of Harmony were missing.” He’s still talking as we enter the kitchen. “I asked her where they could’ve possible gone. She said she didn’t know, but she was able to reach some kind of inter-dimensional rift. That must’ve been the dream you guys had. Anyway, I went back to the library because I was so tired from running around everywhere, and I crawled in bed for a quick nap even though it was noontime. I fell asleep and the next thing I know, I wake up in an unfamiliar place looking all...” He looks at his claw, “...weird...”

“Well that sure answers a lot of questions.” Ben says. “I’m sure it does.” Spike goes over to the table and takes a seat. Rainbow Dash was asleep face-down on the table. Spike taps her on the shoulder. She quickly lifts up her head and acts like she was listening to the whole thing. “So are you guys having a party or something?” Spike looks into the living room.

“Yea! We’re celebrating something new I found!” Pinkie bounces up to Spike.

“Couldn’t you just use your cannon thing?” Spike pushes Pinkie away a little.

“That’s the thing Spike, anything normal in our world, isn’t normal in this one.” Twilight walks over to him.

“So that means...” He tries blowing his fire breath, but nothing happens. “Aww...does that mean you can’t use your magic Twilight?”

“Yep, not even magic exists in this dimension.”

I finish decorating the cake with the help of AJ and Fluttershy and we take it into the living room. “So back to this interdimensional rift thing, how do you think it got there?”

Hunter grabs a drink from the punch bowl. “It must’ve ripped when the Mane 6 got here.”

Twilight is getting some cake. “I don’t know anything about that. It could’ve been in one of the pages that were ripped out.”

I sigh loudly, “Geez, we won’t know about anything that’s going on until we have them.”

Ben chimes in. “The problem is, we have no idea where they would be, and even if we did, how would we get them?”

“We could just fall asleep and see if one of us can have another vision.” Hunter shoves a piece of cake in his mouth.

“That’s a good idea, too bad it’s only one in the afternoon.”

Spike finishes off a bag of chips. He has a look on his face that is bigger than when he’s eating jewels. Weird. “Yea, so what are we gonna do in the meantime?”

“Let’s at least finish this ‘party’ first.” I say, grabbing the empty bag from Spike. “Then we could just...I don’t know...go outside into the backyard and do something out there.”

“But won’t anyone see us out there?” Spike looked worried. “What will they do when they see us?”

“Don’t worry about that Spike. For some reason, other humans here can’t see us.” Rainbow Dash flew around in a little circle.

Spike couldn’t really understand, but I didn’t really want to explain all the recent events to him, so we put the party on hold, and Twilight pushed him out the back door with us all following. I was the last one out and Hunter was already herding up the ponies into a circle.

“So, what do you ponies want to do?” Hunter clapped his hands together. The ponies started yelling ideas at him.

“Tag! Freeze Tag! Hide and Seek! Hoofball!

Those were just some of the ideas they threw at the three of us. Then I pointed them toward the pool. Hunter checks his watch and sees that it’s 2:00. I make a suggestion that we stay out here for at least a couple hours.

“If we play in the pool the whole time, we’ll be super tired and be sure to sleep well tonight.”

Rainbow Dash flies over the pool and gains some altitude. I change into my swim trunks inside really quick and rush outside. Hunter does the same thing, and Ben waits for Hunter so he can change. Meanwhile, Dash is waiting in the air for us to be ready. When we finally are, she proceeds to tuck herself into a ball and drops from a hundred feet straight into the pool, barely making a splash.

Huh? How could that happen? I look over at Hunter, who is pretty much rolling on the ground laughing. Then it looks like he gets an idea.

“Hey Rainbow Dash, come over here!” She climbs out of the pool and shakes most of the water off her body. Then she trots over to Hunter. “Hold onto my arm, I wanna see something.” She grabs it and he raises his arm with barely any effort. “Holy cow Dash, you are super light!”

She blushes and says, “Well, yea. It’s these hollow bones I got. How else do you think my wings can support me?”

So then we all get in the pool and play around for what feels like a couple hours. Rarity didn’t seem to mind her hair getting soaked. Fluttershy actually did pretty well with swimming, which would probably be from swimming with her fish friends. Pinkie Pie was using the slide the whole time. AJ was competing with Dash to see how long they could hold their breath underwater. The only one having the slightest problem was Twilight. Her being a bookworm probably didn’t prepare her for the stress of being in water.

When we were finally tired of the pool, I noticed I was really tired and it was dark out. I ask Hunter what time it was. He said it was 7:00, way later than I wanted. I grab some towels from the towel carrier thingy and hand them out. I look up into the sky and notice the moon was out already. There was something strange about the usual markings on it. There seemed to be a silhouette of Nightmare Moon on it. Has the rift opened up already? Nah, I must be seeing things. I do a double take and it disappears. “Okay guys, let’s get inside. I am super tired so let’s go to bed early tonight.”

Everyone piles inside, dripping water on the kitchen floor. I lay my towel down with a couple others on the floor. “Okay, so what is going to be the sleeping situation with Spike?” Why did I ask that? I know he wants to sleep in the same room with Twilight. Sure enough...

“I’ll sleep with Twilight. I am her number one assistant after all.” Spike hops up on Twilight’s back.

I laugh. “What does being her number one assistant have to do with sleeping in the same room with her?”

“I don’t really know...”

“Well, at least it was an easy choice. Let’s head upstairs. We don’t really need to show you the room since you had plenty of time for that when you got here.”

We start heading upstairs. I get up about halfway until Pinkie Pie runs ahead and stops in front of me.

“Wait! What about the rest of the party?”

“Oh. I guess we could finish it...”

So we go back downstairs and finish the party. It goes on for a little while until everyone has a zoned-out look in their eyes. Despite the sleepiness, I still have help cleaning up everything. When we finally finish, it’s 10:00

“Alright everyone, time for bed. We kinda got a big day tomorrow.” I say, waving everyone upstairs.

This seems new to Hunter. “What are we doing tomorrow that’s such a big deal?”

“I really don’t know. I’m just so tired.”

Every one goes upstairs, goes in their assigned rooms, and everything becomes quiet in the house. I take AJ and Fluttershy into my room. I get into my PJ’s, feed the bird and put it to bed, and scoot under the covers. I make sure the two ponies are comfortable, say good night, and shut my eyes.

A moment later, I feel the covers moving. I open my eyes and see AJ pulling them back to get under them too. That made Fluttershy do the same thing. This made me uncomfortable.

“Uh...girls, what are you doing?” I shift over on the other side of the bed.

“I’m so cold, and...and your blankets are so warm.”

“Yea well, stay on that side of the bed with Fluttershy.” I pull up the covers and shut my eyes, waiting for the expected wonders to enter my slumbering mind.

Chapter 6

The “Twilight” Zone
Created by:
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 6

For some reason, I expect to be in the same field I was in during the other dream. I’m not there though. I’m on the couch in the house. Why would I start here? I get off the couch and start heading outside. When I reach the front door, I hear something behind me.

“Whoa Nelly! Mark what are you doing in my dream?” It was Applejack

“What do you mean in your dream? This is my dream. Huh. If we’re each in each other’s dreams, then our dreams must’ve connected somehow.

“How did that happen?”

“I don’t know, but you did fall asleep in my bed, right? Didn’t Fluttershy do the same thing?” I look around the room.

“She sure did, but where is she?” Applejack jumps up on the couch and sits down.

I sit back down on the couch next to her. “She may not be asleep ye-“
I got cut off by the sound of something falling down the stairs. AJ and I look over at the stairs in time to see Fluttershy land at the bottom.

“There she is” We run over to her and help her up. “You okay, Fluttershy?”

“Umm...yes. I’m...fine.” She stumbles a little when I let her go. “How did I get here? And...why are you in my dream?”

“I don’t know how this happened, but our dreams have been connected together into one dream.” I’m still wondering how this dream is so normal. “There’s not really anytime to explain. Nightmare Moon could appear at any moment and I want to be ready. I was gonna leave the house and see what happens.”

I open the front door. All I see is white. I walk out with AJ and Fluttershy onto the front step. The door starts closing as soon as Fluttershy stops next to me. I try to catch the door from closing, but I don’t make it. I reopen the door, but there’s nothing there, just...darkness.

“Um...what’s going on here?” I turn back to the ponies. “This is really different than last time.”

“Should we go through the door?” AJ looks raring to go.

“Um...I...I don’t think we should.” She backs away from the door, almost falling off the step.

“Come on, Fluttershy, where else could we possibly go? If we go through the door, it might take us somewhere.”

“Oh...okay...I just...hope nothing bad happens while we’re in there.”

“Fluttershy, it’s completely dark in there, besides the stars. Something’s bound to happen to us.”

“Guys, quit talkin’ and let’s go!” Applejack starts going toward the door.

Before I have a chance to enter, something drags me into the void and I black out. When I come to, I’m just falling. I look around and see the stars in the same formation as when I met Nightmare Moon the first time. I look around and see AJ, still knocked out, falling, but at a fair distance from me. Same thing goes for Fluttershy. I’m starting to think that the door was the door to the interdimensional rift. Since it’s all dark and space-like, Nightmare Moon must’ve somehow created the rift to get rid of the ponies. But, Spike was sucked through also so she must’ve not found a way to close it correctly. I’m wondering all this when Fluttershy starts stiffing.

“Hey, Fluttershy, I think I’ve figured out what’s going on here.”

“Wha?... Huh? Waaaaaa!” (Imagine her usual scream volume)

“Fluttershy! Get a hold of yourself! We’re just falling. It’s not like we’re going to hit something.”

“But...We’re falling! What’s not to be scared of?”

“It’s just a dream. We’ll be fine.”
That’s all I get in before I notice the stars moving like they did before. Applejack starts waking up. When she see the stars, she freaks out also.

“Mark? Wh...What’s going on?

“I think Nightmare Moon is coming back for me.”

Fluttershy and AJ look at me. “What are you talking about?” AJ flips over so she’s falling back first.

I hear a voice in my head. “I have you right where I need you. How can you be such a foal to fall into my trap?”

“I didn’t know it was a trap!”

AJ and Fluttershy must’ve not heard the voice because I hear AJ say, “What are you talking about? This is a trap? What’s gonna happen to us?”

“Listen to me girls, try to wake up, escape from this void. I’ll find my own way ou-“ That’s all I could say before I got pulled further into the darkness, away from the ponies.

What is my brain doing to me, pulling me around everywhere? I’m beginning to think it’s not just my mind travelling around this place, but my soul itself. I keep getting pulled deeper. Then everything just stops. I’m sitting in space with nothing happening. Then Nightmare Moon starts appearing.

She starts walking toward me. Well, whatever you would call walking in space

“You little foal. How could you fall for such an obvious trap? And you call yourself a guardian. Hah! I laugh at your foolishness!

“Okay, okay, I get the point that I was stupid. What are you going to do with me?” My heart starts pounding against my chest.

“I’m going to keep you here forever! Those Elements were lucky to escape from me, but now that I have one of the Trinkets of Trinity guardians, there’s no way you can stop the rift before I finish my business.”

“And what would that be?”

“Silence! Why would I tell you? I’m going to imprison your soul in this rift so you can’t do anything to stop me!

With that, I felt something squishing me smaller and smaller. I could feel my mind being locked up along with the rest of me.

“Now you’re stuck in this place forever!”

She pulls me along with her. Her ways of travel are peculiar and Steve Magnet’s description is pretty accurate. She flies around the void, using the empty stars as jump points. I have no idea where she’s headed, but it feels like we’re not going to get there soon. My mind is locked up, but I still think about what is happening outside this realm of mysteriousness.

Chapter 7 (Hunter and Ben's Side)

The “Twilight” Zone
Created by:
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 7, Part 1
(3rd Person View)

Fluttershy tries to shake Mark awake, but he doesn’t show any signs of getting up soon. Applejack tries also, but still nothing.

“He might still be stuck in his dream, Fluttershy! We gotta go tell the others!” Applejack runs to the door and tries to pen the doorknob. Her hooves are slipping, trying to turn it. She backs away to let Fluttershy try.

She flies up to it, and while still in the air, grabs the knob with her teeth and does a little barrel roll, opening the door. They leave the room. Applejack gallops over to Hunter’s door and bucks it hard enough to make a loud noise, but not to break down the door. Fluttershy taps quietly on Ben’s door.

“Come on, Fluttershy! Ya gotta make them hear it! Like this!” She bucks Ben’s door. Hunter opens his own door, rubbing his eyes.

“What’s going on girls?”

“Mark’s not waking up! There’s something wrong with him!” Applejack says, getting ready to buck Ben’s door again.

Ben opens his door in time for AJ to buck him in the stomach. He falls on the ground, writhing in pain.

Twilight comes out of Hunter’s room in time to see this. “AJ, you really have to control those. Look what happened again.”

“Oh Celestia...Ah’m sorry. Are you okay Ben?”

Ben gets up, still holding his stomach. “I’ll be *cough* fine. Why’d you *cough* wake us up?”

Fluttershy starts going back to Mark’s room. “There’s something wrong with Mark. Come and look.”

Hunter opens Mark’s door and sees him lying still on the bed. Ben goes over and checks his pulse. The heartbeat is steady and the breathing is relaxed. “He’s still breathing, but he has coma-like symptoms.”

Pinkie Pie jumps on the bed and slaps Mark in the face. No response. “What could’ve happened that he’s not waking up?”

AJ calls everyone’s attention. “I think I know what’s going on with him. Last night, Fluttershy and I were cold, so we got in bed with him.” When Hunter and Ben heard this, they snickered a little bit. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. Please continue.” Hunter looks up towards the ceiling.

“Anyway, when we all fell asleep, I saw him in my dream, but he said I was in his dream. It was all kinda confusin’ ‘til he figured that our dreams were connected together.”

“What do you mean connected?” Twilight said.

“It was kinda hard fer him to explain, but it might have to do with the trinkets. Being near him out in this world linked us together in the dream world.”

“We get it AJ. Now get on to the part where you think Mark isn’t able to get back here.” Rainbow Dash was hovering in the air with her forelegs crossed.

“Okay well...We all started the dream in this house, but when we left; the door didn’t head back into the house, but instead, a void.”

“And this is where you lost him?” Rarity said.

Fluttershy spoke up this time. “Well...no. We all got pulled through the doorway into the void and just...fell. We were falling for a while, but then...something dreadful happened.”

Applejack jumps up and shouts. “He got pulled away from us!” She lands back on the ground, recollecting her cool. “But he helped us by telling us to wake up before Fluttershy and I got dragged in also. So we did, and here you are.”

Twilight taps her chin. “So, Mark is trapped in his mind? I think I read a book like this before. It was about a pony whose colt could separate his soul from his body and travel around the ghost world. But one night, the poor colt travelled too far from his body and got lost. So the father had to regain his own talents to get the colt back in his own body before the ghosts grabbed him and permanently had his soul in the underworld. This is probably a rough concept of what happened to Mark.”

“Brilliant. There’s only one problem. How are we gonna find him in the void?” Hunter said, sitting on Mark’s bed.

“It was kinda strange how the author wrote it. The father was able to find his colt by listening to the noises the colt made, then calling back, expecting an answer. I’ll bet we could do the same thing with Mark.”

“So how would we all be able to get to the dream that he’s still in?” Rarity tossed her mane a little.

“I guess we could try the same way that Fluttershy and I did. But we should pick a better spot for it. Let’s take him downstairs and set him on the couch.” Applejack tried pushing Mark off the bed. “Boy, this sucker’s heavy!”

“Here. I’ll get Fluttershy to help me pick him up.” Rainbow Dash nudges one of his arms to get under it and sits him up in the bed. “Come help me guys!”

Hunter and Ben grab Mark and pull him off the bed onto the backs of AJ, Twilight, and Rarity.

“Hey Twilight, *oof* where’d you learn to lift like that?” Applejack struggles to hold up the upper part of his body.

“How do you think I was able to carry Tom?”

“Hey! I thought I told you to never speak of that again!” Rarity huffs a little.

Hunter gets annoyed. “Girls, just take him downstairs! I don’t care how you do it; just get him on the couch!”

The three ponies go over to the stairs and let Mark fall, hitting every stair on the way down.

Ben is laughing hysterically. “I don’t think he meant like that!”

Hunter jumps down to the bottom and gets under the arm of Mark and lifts. “Ben, help me drag him to the couch.” Ben jumps down also and they work together to set him on the couch. “Oh and Twilight, where’s Spike?”

“He’s a heavy sleeper so nothing will be able to wake him up at this hour. He’ll be fine. Anyway, how are we gonna sleep to be connected in the dream?” Twilight jumps on the couch next to Mark.

“I got it. AJ and Fluttershy you go near where Mark is sitting and try to fall back asleep. It should be easy since it’s the middle of the night. Twilight and Dash, I’ll sleep on the couch with enough space for one of you to be next to Fluttershy. Ben you sleep close enough to the group with Rarity and Pinkie.”

Everyone gets comfortable on the couch and the floor, and the room is quickly filled with snoring.

Pinkie Pie wakes up in the house first. She’s where she was laying in the real world. She gets up and looks at all the others still sleeping where they were, only one thing is missing. Mark isn’t where he was supposed to be. Rainbow Dash starts moving.

“Rainbow Dash, look!” Pinkie helps her up.

“Huh? Wha...” Dash widens her eyes when she sees what’s wrong. “Where’s Mark?”

“I don’t know! Wasn’t he on the couch?”

Meanwhile, everyone else is getting up. They all notice that Mark is gone.

“Well, that proves that he isn’t anywhere near his physical body.” Hunter says, touching the couch where Mark was supposed to be.

“So we have to find him. I guess the linking dreams thing worked, but why are we back at the house? I thought no two dreams were different?” Twilight rubs her head with her hoof.

“Yea, but Mark’s dream is still running in his mind no matter where he is, so we all got in his dream without creating a separate one.” Ben says. “Let’s try to same scenario that got Mark to where he is now. Applejack, Fluttershy, where did the three of you go after you got here?”

“Well...um...we just went out the front door, but there was nothing around, just white space.” Fluttershy says.

“Then let’s go out front and see what happens.” Twilight leads everyone outside and huddles on the porch. Ben slips a foot off the step and lands it on the white space. It’s solid under his weight.

“Hey guys, the white space is able to be walked on! Let’s give each other some space out here.” He says, stepping completely on it.

Everyone spreads out and the door to the house closes.

“Okay everypony, this is the part it gets a little unsettlin’. Hunter, go ahead and open the door.

Hunter turns the doorknob and pushes the door open. It’s the same outer space look as before. “I guess we have no choice but to head inside. Ready everyone?”

Every pony hesitantly nods their heads. Hunter gets a running start and jumps in. He’s followed by Twilight, then Rainbow Dash, then the rest, with Fluttershy being the last one.

They start falling. Looking at all the stars around them, then Ben notices something strange about one of the moving stars.

“Hey! You see the star moving over there? It looks like it’s using the other stars as a sort of jumping point.”

Hunter looks over where Ben is point. “You’re right! And look again, there’s a flash of light that stays for a bit at every couple points. What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll bet Mark is with it.”

Pinkie Pie is doing trick in the air. Then she stops and it looks like she notices something. “Hey! Do you hear that?”

AJ looks at her. “What is it Pinkie? I don’t hear anythin’.”

“Exactly! There’s no whooshing sound going past my ears!”

“Whoa! She’s right!” Hunter checks his ears along with everyone else. “If there’s no whooshing noise, then that means there’s no air!”

“That would make it a lot easier to call and listen for Mark. But if there’s no air, then that means Fluttershy and Dash can’t fly.” Ben keeps checking his ears.

“Well, Nightmare Moon really pulled all the stops on this one.” Twilight says.

“DID I HEAR SOMEPONY SAY MY NAME?”

Everyone looks around. They turn towards the little jumping point. But when they do, the point becomes larger and closer. The ball of light stops in front of them and the light dissipates. Nightmare Moon starts appearing out of the light. She gets in front of everyone, but she seems to be standing in space while everyone else is falling. Mark is in some kind of cage made out of the energy of the dark.

“Look you guys! There’s Mark!” Twilight points at the cage.

Mark looks up from his slump. “Whoa, guys! You came back for me! You don’t know what Nightmare Moon has been doing in this place while I’ve been imprisoned!”

“Silence! I didn’t say you could talk! Now, for the rest of you...”

“What are you gonna do with us?” Ben says.

“I have no reason to deal with you! I’ve got all I need to keep you from stopping me!” She starts to turn back into a ball of light, but something else happens.

Mark is on one side of the cage sticking his arm out. He’s holding his trinket out. “Come over here! This could get me out, and hurry!”

Ben and Hunter quickly lean themselves to get closer to Mark. When they close enough, there’s an unlocking sound and the cage disappears from around Mark just in time for Nightmare Moon to fly away in the ball of light.

“Now what?” Mark says, putting the trinket back into his pocket.

Before anyone says anything, the void melts away and they are left standing in the living room of the house.

“Oh...did we defeat her?” Mark scratches his head.

“I didn’t see anything happen to her, so probably not.” Ben says.

“Can we just get back to our bodies and wake up out of this crazy dream guys?” Hunter says as he’s walking out of the living room. Everyone follows him and back to the couch and finds themselves.

“I can’t thank you guys enough for saving me. I’ll tell ya, it was pretty crazy what I saw. I’m just glad my mind is free once again.” Mark finds his body sitting on the couch.

“Yea, yea, we’ll talk about it on the other side.” Hunter fades away from the dream. Pretty soon, everyone fades away also. Mark takes a little time before he does the same thing.

Chapter 7 (My Side)

The “Twilight” Zone
Created by:
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 7, Part 2
(1st Person View)

Nightmare Moon drags me around for a while. I'm just sitting in the cage created by darkness, following her from star to star. Then I feel her starting to slow down. I look through the bars of the cage and examine the surroundings. She stops near a rift in the void.

I feel myself shaking. I look around the inside of the cage but nothing is near me. My heart starts to race as I look back toward the rift. From where I am, I can’t really see anything in there, so I angle myself to catch a tiny spot of what’s through the hole.

When I’m finally able to see anything, I can’t believe it. It’s showing Ponyville! Nightmare Moon floats in front of the portal, pulling me closer and unknowingly letting me see better. The sudden movement knocks me off my feet and I land hard on the floor of the cage. Not only does my butt hurt, but, somehow, I also have a pain in my cheek as if somebody slapped it. I get up, rubbing my cheek, and go back looking through the bars. I pull my hand away from my cheek and notice something unusual about it out of the corner of my eye when I grab the bars.

I examine my hand and notice a cartoonish-like outline around it. I hold it up to the light of the rift and notice that it looks like it was animated. I look down at my shirt. From what I saw, it was all cartoony too. I was turning into a cartoon! It must be because I’m so close to the Equestrian dimension. But how could this possibly happen? I try to get Nightmare Moon’s attention.

“Hey, Nightmare Moon, what’s going on with me?” I pull on my cheek and it stretches farther than it’s supposed to, and I let go, making it bounce back to my face.

“Be quiet, guardian. I need to concentrate on this for it to work.” Her horn starts glowing, making the rift glow also. I see the overview of Ponyville in the rift start to shake until it started to not look like anything. Then it slowed down and started showing the Ponyville Post Office.

There were mailponies running around everywhere, sorting letters, and filling saddlebags with envelopes. Pegasi were taking off to where they were assigned. Through the illusion of chaos, it seemed to be very organized.
Nightmare Moon made the view pan around the room until it stopped on a grey mare with a blond mane. She was getting ready to take off, but was having a bit of trouble. Her saddlebag had a single package sticking out of the top. That’s when I saw Nightmare Moon’s horn start to glow again.

The portal started glowing; drawing the poor pony towards it with some kind of suction that only affected her. She started flailing around, trying to get away, but it was no use. When she was pulled through, Nightmare Moon closed the portal just in time for me to see Celestia come out of nowhere and almost make it inside.

“Ha! That makes me laugh every time she tries to get through, but then fails!”
She sticks the gray mare in the cage with me. I look at her, still cartoon-looking. She notices me and tries to focus both her eyes on me, but one always ends up looking somewhere else. I stick out my hand for her to shake it.

“Hello Derpy”

She looks at my hand, apparently wondering what it is. “Uh, how do you know my name?” She figures out what I’m trying to do and sticks a hoof up, so I shake it.

“Well, it’s kind of a lengthy explanation. I don’t think I have enough time to explain it.” I go back over the bars. “What’s the package for?”

Derpy sits on the floor of the cage. “Sorry, I’m not supposed to tell anypony about it until I get to where I’m supposed to go.”

Just then, Nightmare Moon takes off, so Derpy and I tumble around the cage, making it feel like I fell down stairs or something. When everything is steady, I get up and look where we’re going. I look around and notice that I’m not a cartoon anymore, and neither is Derpy.

“What the…? What’s happening to me?” She looks at her hooves and body. “Why do I look like this?”

“Well you see, you’re not in your dimension anymore. We’re kind of in between my and your dimension.”

“How did that happen?” She sits down again.

“That’s another thing that’s tough to explain.” I slide down the bars and sit down too. I look over and Nightmare Moon and notice that she’s slowing down again. What is the point of us traveling around so far everywhere? I can’t think about it in time for her to stop.

She looks like she’s waiting for something. She sighs impatiently and taps her hoof on nothing, but I still somehow hear a tapping noise. After a while, the void looks like it’s shaking like crazy. I look over where Nightmare Moon is looking and see a rift starting to open.

There’s a flash of light. When it dims away, there is a rift that shows the street that my house is on. Nightmare Moon turns toward the cage. She opens the top of it just enough for her to magically grab Derpy out of the cage, float her toward the rift, and just before she throws her through it, I say something.

“Derpy, don’t go anywhere! My friends will be able to find you if you stay where you are.”
I’m not sure if she heard me or not, but I start wondering how the rift opened without Nightmare Moon doing anything. Pretty soon, the portal closes on the scene of Derpy lying in the grass.

I slump down in the cage again. So this is how she does it. She pulls the ponies from one dimension, and throws them into another. But why? She already got rid of the Elements of Harmony. And what was in Derpy’s bag that she couldn’t tell me about it? I hope Hunter and Ben hurry up and find her before anything else happens.

Nightmare Moon starts jumping around once again, but we only flew around for a little while before I see her ears perk up, and she says in a booming voice that rattles my brain.

“DID I HEAR SOMEPONY SAY MY NAME?”

She turns her head where she heard it and flies toward the source. She’s going slowly though as if actually looking for whatever it is.

Then I hear something in my head. “The 3 together will release the surrounding darkness.” It sounds like Celestia’s voice. How was she able to reach my mind? Man, if I ever get out of here, I have so many questions.

I think about what she said. The 3 of whatever must mean the trinkets, but what darkness would it release?

Nightmare Moon flashes her horn, which makes us jump straight to the noise. I sit against the bars of the cage, still thinking about the message. Oh wait! Duh! The cage is surrounding me and it’s full of darkness! Why am I so oblivious sometimes…

I hear a voice that’s not Nightmare Moon.

“Look you guys! There’s Mark!”

It sounds a lot like Twilight. I look up from my slump and notice the whole gang floating in the void. “Whoa! Guys! You came back for me! You don’t know what Nightmare Moon has been doing in this place while I’ve been imprisoned!”
I pull out the chain from my pocket and run to the side of the cage closest to the group.

Nightmare shouts her usual booming voice. “Silence! I didn’t say you could talk, but you’ve sure been doing it a lot of it! Now for the rest of you…”

No one is noticing me as I stick my arm out the cage with the chain in my hand.

“What are you gonna do to us?” I hear Ben say.

“I have no reason to deal with you! I’ve got all I need to keep you from stopping me!” Nightmare Moon starts to shine back into the light ball, but then Hunter notices me.

I shake the chain. “Come over here! This could get me out, and hurry!”

Hunter grabs Ben and they adjust themselves to get over to me. When they get lose enough, I notice an expression of pain on the pony of darkness as the cage makes an unlocking sound and the cage disappears from around me. It happens just in time for the ball of light to fly away.

I put the chain back into my pocket. “Now what?”

No one has time to say anything before the void starts to melt away and we all end up standing in the living room of the house.

Even though I know it isn’t true, I still have to ask if we defeated Nightmare Moon or not. Ben says he didn’t notice anything happen to her, so we might’ve not.

Hunter gets impatient to get out of the dream even though I haven’t told about what happened and that Derpy is somewhere close to the house, that is, if she did what I told her to and stayed where she landed.
We all follow Hunter into the living room and everyone stand near their bodies. One by one, they fade away from the dream. I start talking to Hunter.

“I can’t thank you guys enough for saving me. I’ll tell ya, it was pretty crazy what I saw. I’m just glad I’m out of that cage.” I go over to my body as Hunter starts saying something back.

“Yea, yea. We’ll talk about it when we’re all out of this crazy dream.” And he fades away.

I look at my body. It looks like it was dropped down the stairs or something, along with red marks on both my cheeks. What were these guys doing to me? I suppose I could ask them about it in the middle of them asking me questions about what I saw. I touch my hand and everything goes black.

I open my eyes to see Spike running into the room.

“Guys, guys! Look who’s outside!”

Chapter 8

The “Twilight” Zone
Created by:
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 8

“What’s wrong, Spike?” Twilight rubs the tiredness from her eyes.

“It’s that crazy gray pegasus! I woke up this morning, looked out the window, and noticed her just sitting there in the grass.”

So she did listen to me. “I know who that is guys, it’s Derpy.” I run into the front room.

“Wait! How could you know that?” Ben runs in after me.

“I’ll tell you when we go get her and bring her back here.” I open the front door and run outside towards the direction where I think she is. I look behind me and see the rest of the group, trying to keep up with me, except Rainbow Dash of course. She flues up next to me. While I’m running, I look over at her and notice a look of strain in her eyes.

I stop in front of Derpy.

“What’s going on RD? I noticed you were actually trying to keep up with me.”

“I don’t know. I’m just not feeling good today.”

Derpy looks over at me. “Hey! It’s you and Rainbow Dash!”

Rainbow Dash creates a strained smile. “Oh…hey Derpy…”

“Let’s get back to the house, girls. We can explain everything there. Come on, Derpy.”

I start walking back to the house. Rainbow Dash decides not to fly and just walks next to me. Derpy is trying to keep steady while flying, but she keeps doing barrel rolls and somehow not crashing into anything.

“So, Derpy, about that package, who was it for? I have a feeling that you realized where you need to go.”

“Uh…okay. If you say so.” She lands on the ground and lets me take the parcel out of her saddlebag. Its not very heavy. I shake the box, but the only thing I hear is a bunch of papers rustling. I figure it must be the packing paper or something.

The three of us get back to the group and we all head back to the house. We all huddle into the kitchen and I plop the package onto the table. Derpy sits at the table and we all start telling her about what is going on, answering any questions to the best of our ability.

When we’re finally done talking, I pick up the package and look at it while Derpy is taking all the information in.

The box itself was labeled in a language I couldn’t understand. It did look a lot like English, but there was always a letter off or switched around with other letters. I gave it to Twilight so she could read what it said.

“Okay, so, the return address says it’s from the Canterlot Castle. It must be from the Princess.”

“Then let’s open! I love surprises!” Pinkie Pie bounced around Twilight.

Twilight looks hopelessly at the box until Hunter picks it up and starts ripping off the paper. When he’s done, there’s just a box, but it’s not just any box, it’s the box that is used to hold the Elements of Harmony.

“Why would Celestia send us this?” Ben looks at the box closer.

I grab it from him. “There’s obviously something important in it. When I was on my way back from getting Derpy, I heard ruffling papers in there when I shook it.

“Open it already then!” Pinkie was obviously getting more and more impatient. Applejack was trying to keep her from bouncing.

I start opening the box and notice the lock was missing. “Isn’t there supposed to be a lock on this or something?”

“She must’ve taken it off before wrapping it up.” Hunter says.

Everyone crowds around me while I lower the box so everyone can see too. I was right about the papers. I pick one up and look at it. This language is even more different than the one on the box. There’s only half of each letter on the top of the page, but I look at the bottom of the page and the other half of each letter is there. Everyone else grabs a page and looks at it while I’m wondering what this is supposed to be, but they can’t figure it out either. It’s as if the language is supposed to be looked at from the top and the bottom at the same time.

I glance at Derpy who is still sitting at the table, and do a double take at her eyes. One is pointing towards the table and the other is pointed at the ceiling. That gives me an idea…

“Hey Derpy,” I say, placing the page on the table in front of her, “see if you can read this.

She moves her head down and begins reading, looking like she understands what it says. “…hidden pages…trinkets…enter dreams…interdimensional…”

“You can actually read this? That’s amazing!” I take the paper and look at it again. I still have no idea so I let her read some more. “Start it from the top, reading it out loud.”

She nods her head and begins reading. “These pages are in the secret language of the Scattered Eyes. Relatives of this clan are the only ones who can read this. Anyway, these pages are in this language because these are the hidden pages for info on the Trinkets of Trinity.”

“So these are the pages that were ripped out of my book? That’s funny. Even if they were still in there, I wouldn’t be able to read them anyway. Please continue reading, Derpy.” Twilight chuckles to herself.

“As mentioned earlier in the book, the trinkets were destroyed. This is not true. That story is just a way to keep evil from looking for them. They were actually sent to another dimension to be taken care of by a few selected individuals. Once taken a hold of one of the trinkets, this dimension and its inhabitants will be able to be seen by the caretakers. The trinkets were created to give the users the ability to enter between dimensions through REM sleep. The trinkets can cooperate with the Elements to take them across the dimensions also.”

“These pages are telling us what we know already. When are we gonna learn anything new?” Hunter states.

“There’s gotta be something that we don’t know already.” Ben says. “Keep reading, Derpy.”

She continues, “When going into another dimension, one will take the traits of that dimension. Looks and physics will be changed. However, there could be other things that happen. Once in a dimension different from their own, their body is unnoticeably going to det…deter…”

“Sound it out, Derpy.” Twilight laughs a bit.

“Deeeteerrreeeeorrraating.” She struggles.

“Deteriorating. Good.” I say. “Wait…doesn’t that mean wasting away? Rainbow Dash, I think it’s already started with you.”

“Seriously? Well…I do feel a little sick.” She rubs her belly with a hoof.

“You said that when I was running to get Derpy and you could barely keep up with me.”

“That’s right, RD.” Applejack speaks up. “Usually, at the speeds you go, you would’ve been long there before Mark.”

“Yea, that’s right!” Hunter checks his watch. “It’s only 9:00? Let’s get something to eat.”

Everyone agrees while I get the papers back into the box. I head up to my room and put the box under my bed. I also take time to change my shirt. When I head back downstairs, I start to notice how crowded it’s getting in the house.

“I really hope that no more ponies get sucked into this dimension because it’s getting really busy here.”

“Yea, but it’s the ponies! Who wouldn’t want them here?” Hunter grabs some cereal out of the pantry.

“I guess you’re right, but we can’t keep this up much longer.” I sit at the table.

Fluttershy looks over at me and notices my shirt. “Is…that…me?”

I look down at it and notice I put on the shirt that has Fluttershy standing and saying “yay”. It’s one of my favorite shirts. “Uh…yea, you’re one of my favorite ponies in the series.

“Oh really? That’s… nice…” She looks a little creeped out but can’t help but blush. Meanwhile, Hunter is putting cereal in front of everyone. Derpy shoves her face into the bowl without asking what it was. Twilight just looks at hers. Spike picks a bit of cereal out and stares at it.

“What is this? It looks like something I would feed Pee Wee.”

I laugh a little, “Spike, it’s called cereal. More specifically, these are called Cheerios. It’s like oats, but condensed and honey is added to it.”

Spike sniffs it, licks it, and I see a gleam in his eyes. He then picks up the bowl and pours the cereal into his mouth.

“Now the rest of you should eat too. Meanwhile, let’s talk about the hidden pages.” I pop a Cheerio into my mouth. “First of all, why do you think only that section was written like that? I mean, they did say they lied about destroying the trinkets.”

“They probably wrote it so that even if the pages were found, no one would be able to read them, except of course, relatives of the Scattered Eyes clan, which Derpy is obviously one of them.” Ben says, shoves cereal into his mouth.

“But the pages that were still in the book said nothing about who created them.” Twilight said.

Spike tosses back another bowl into his mouth, chews for a bit, then swallows. “Mmph…wouldn’t the ponies who wrote the sections be the creators of the trinkets since they know what they do?”

“Not necessarily Spike. Even though they did record their findings, they could have just wrote down what the actual makers said them to. For all we know, there could be some things they decided not to record and we’ll find out soon enough what they are.” Twilight puts her head on her hooves.

“Well, we didn’t finish reading the section, but we’ll do that later. What’s the date today, Hunter?

“It’s Monday…Oh…”

“What’s going on guys?” Twilight picks her head up.

I quickly get up from the table. “It’s 9:00 on a Monday! We gotta get to class!”

Ben freaks out also, “Oh crap, that’s right! With all this stuff going on, we still have school to go to!”

Me and the guys run out the kitchen and head up to our rooms to get ready, leaving the girls and Spike in the kitchen with a dazed look on their faces. I run down the stairs with my laptop and backpack and run into the kitchen, gasping from breath.” You girls have to come…with us. I don’t…wanna leave you…alone. Because who…knows what will…happen.” I run back towards the front door as Ben and Hunter are coming down the stairs. As I’m opening the door, I say to them, “They’re coming with us.”

I head toward the car and throw my stuff into the back. Meanwhile, Hunter calls out to me.

“What do you mean they’re coming with us? What are they gonna do there?” He’s saying as I herd the ponies into the SUV.

“I don’t know, but we can’t leave them here.” I hop into the drivers sear. Ben is already in the passenger sear next to me. I look back. The car is even more crowded then before with ponies scattered everywhere. “Hey Rainbow Dash, you should go up on the roof again but with Fluttershy this some to save some room.

Fluttershy’s eyes widen, “Wh-What? Are…are you serious? I don’t think would be able to hold on up there.

I scoff. “Oh come on. You can hold your ground against a giant pegasus tornado. I think you’ll be able to withstand being up there.

“Oh…All right then…if you really think so.”

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy leave the car and head toward the roof. I hear a thud as Dash lands on the car and a tiny tink of Fluttershy’s landing.

“Okay! Are we ready?”

Everyone nods and we back out the driveway, heading toward the college at a speed that Fluttershy would be able to handle. I frequently check with Dash on how she’d doing, not without getting strange looks from the other drivers. As usual, the drive is another awkward situation, but I better get used to it because I have a feeling that there’s gonna be a lot more of them.

I pull into the parking lot and the vehicle stutters to a stop. “Heh, I think I gotta get some gas.”

“You don’t say…” Ben says with his look that he’s perfected with the frequent saying.

“I guess I can get some after school. For now though, I’m just gonna worry about how we’re gonna get the ponies around.

“That’s a good thing to worry about.” Hunter says

And we all start heading toward the front doors.

Chapter 9

The “Twilight” Zone
Created by:
Thatoneguy9495
DarkMephiles
Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 9

I grab the handle to the door and pull it open. “Okay, besides the two that wanna hang out with us, who does Spike and Derpy wanna go with?”

“Hold on, someone’s missing.” Hunter looks around. “Where’s Fluttershy?”

I look around also and my eyes stop on the car. The poor thing looks like she’s glued to the roof. I run over to the car and talk to her.

“Fluttershy, you can come down now.” I say, trying to pry her hoof out from under the roof rail thing. Her mane is all frazzled from the wind.

She picks up her head, her teeth chattering. “Never...again.”

I look over the group and give them a thumbs-up, signalling that she’s all right. “Oh all right, I just wanted to see what would happen. Come on, I have to get to class.”

She jumps off the roof and lightly lands on the ground. I walk with her back to the doors and we all head inside.

Apparently, class hasn’t started yet and I can tell because everyone is walking around, going to their locks, picking on lower class men, going to other classes. You know, usual school stuff.

“Umm, Mark?” Hunter nudges me. “We don’t have to separate the ponies because we all go to the same class, remember?”

“Oh yea, I guess I derped a little.” I slap my forehead.

Derpy looks over, “What was that?”

“Oh. Heh, umm... nothing.” I put on my bad poker face.

We all head to our class, keeping the ponies from hitting anyone walking around. It’s quite comical really, but the three pegasi have it the easiest because they can fly over everything. Well, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash are doing well. Derpy is going all over the place.

She starts heading right towards someone, and I’m thinking in my head, if she hits him, something’s gonna go down right here, right now. So I just watch in horror.

When she touches him, the guy doesn’t seem to react. She just goes right through him as if nothing was there to being with. When the ponies see this, they stop dodging everyone and walk normally behind us, letting people walk right through them.

Hunter see it too. “Well that’s convenient. If we weren’t holding the trinkets, we wouldn’t even know they actually existed because they can’t do anything to let us know about them.”

“And then they couldn’t be helped.” Ben says, dodging around a group of people standing in the middle of the hallway.

We get to our classroom. Since we still have a half hour until class starts, no one is in the room. “Well, that’s a relief, guys. Now, we can tell the ponies what we do here.”

Since the room is a computer lab, we take our seats in front of a few computers. The ponies stare at the computers like they’re aliens or something

Hunter leans back in his chair. “In case you’re wondering girls, which it looks like you are, these things are called computers. They’re wonderful creations. They can do math, writing, play games. Anything you can think of, they can do.”

So then the ponies start shouting random things.

“Make dresses?”

“There’s a program that can make templates of them. It’s much easier than drawing.”

“Draw?”

“Sure thing, it’s called Photoshop, and it measures everything out for you.”

“Make invitations to parties?”

“Better than you would think, but you can still make good ones yourself, Pinkie.”

The only one that doesn’t seem interested is Applejack. I’m starting to feel like, out of all of us, she would be the one that would fit in the least.

The bell rings and people start coming into the classroom and sitting at their computers. The ponies just stare at theme, but Pinkie Pie decides to go by the door and just bounce in one place as each person comes in. It’s all we could to make it look like we were not noticing and stifling our laughs.

When the final person comes in, the bell rings, and the teacher tells us to continue working on our stuff.

“Hey Ben, do you have the music that I want done for the game?” I open up my game maker program and pull up the game I’m working on.

Ben opens up FL Studio. “Not yet, I have to mess around with the bass some more.”

“Well at least you’re working on it.”

The ponies are sitting under the table. Twilight pokes her head out and looks at Hunter. “We’re bored. Can you give us something to do?”

Since Hunter doesn’t have anything to do until I give him the beta test of my game, he thinks of an idea. “Why don’t you guys write a story or something? I can write it down for you since you can’t really hold a pen.”

“What’s that?”

I lean back in my chair this time. “A pen is like a quill, but there’s no ink bottle because the ink is already in the container, see?” I take a pen out of my backpack and place it on the ground.

Apparently, people have been looking at us because the teacher comes over and stands behind us. “Is something wrong boys? Who are you talking to?”

“Uh...nothing’s wrong Mr. Piers. Hunter just uh...dropped his pen.” I nudge him with my elbow. “He has nothing to do right now so he was gonna write a story or something.”

“Oh really now?” The teacher crosses his arms. “Here Hunter, I’ll give you something productive to do. Take this CD down to the robotics shop. The Robotics team needed a new logo so they asked me to make one. It’s on that disc and I’m too busy to take it there myself.”

Apparently not busy enough to eavesdrop on people.” Ben says under his breath.

“What was that Mr. Claythorne?”

“Um...nothing...”

“Uh huh. I have something for you also.” He goes back to his desk.

I see Hunter get up to leave. He motions for a few of the ponies to follow him. Twi, Dash, and Pinkie head out the door with him. Some of the class were looking at him weird so I shook my head like he was beckoning me instead, just to make it look normal.

Mr. Piers comes back with a card. “Here is a security card. I need you to grab a couple speakers from the teacher resource room. Mine have been going in and out lately and it’s frustrating.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Piers.” Ben gets up, grabs the card, and leaves the room. Applejack and Rarity follow him without him even looking in their direction. That leaves me with Derpy and Fluttershy because Spike went with Twilight.

I look under the table. Fluttershy is curled up, trying to sleep. Derpy is nuzzled in the space that’s left. I keep looking, wondering what it would be like if they were actually together. Derpy might need the kind heart of someone like her. Then that makes me wonder what Derpy’s parents were like. I shake the thought out my head and refocus on the computer. That story is for another time...maybe.

I’m messing around with the game a bit, putting in a couple more trees around in bare spots, adding a few obstacles, and progressing the story a bit. It’s really time-consuming, but it’s worth it if I want to win the contest at the end of the school year.

I look at the clock to see what time it is. Almost an hour has passed by, but Hunter and Ben haven’t been back yet. I look under the table and nudge Fluttershy and Derpy awake. I mouth the words “come with me” to them and they get up. I walk over to Mr. Piers and tell him that I have to go to the bathroom. I don’t really have to go, but he lets me go. I quickly walk out the classroom door.

As soon as I get out in the hallway though, I run straight into Hunter.

“Dude, Hunter! Where you been? It should not take you an hour to drop off a CD at the robotics thing.”

“I know that, but something’s wrong. AJ and Rarity lost Ben!”

“How could they do that? The resource room is just down the hall.”

Rarity and AJ show up next to where Pinkie Pie is standing next to Hunter. Rarity looks like her eyes are tearing up.

“We made it to the room, but Ben didn’t grab the speakers. We were looking around inside and we got separated a little bit. But when Applejack was looking for him, we could not find him at all.”

We start walking down the hall towards the resource room. When I told Mr. Piers that I was going to the bathroom, I didn’t know I actually had to go, and bad.

“We can look for him after I go to the bathroom. For some reason, I really have to go now.”

As we walk down to the bathroom, Hunter thinks of a reason. “Maybe it’s because you haven’t gone in, like, two days.”

“That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.” I start walking faster.

“Hey, I’m just saying.” Hunter shrugs his shoulders.

We make it to the bathroom and I leave everyone out front and head for the door. When I reach it, the door opens and Ben walks right into me.

He’s shaking his hands from the excess water that paper towels can never get.

I push his shoulder. “Are you stupid? Why’d you leave AJ and Rarity alone? Who knows what could’ve happened!”

Ben backs away with his hands up. “I’m sorry guys; I just really had to go.”

“It shouldn’t take you an hour to do that.”

“Yea, well, that’s my problem. Anyway, let me go get the speakers really quick.”

I push open the door. “Good. We’ll wait here. I have to go anyway.” I go in and do my business. When I come out, Ben is standing there with 2 medium-sized speakers under his arms. We head back into the classroom and tell Mr. Piers that the jobs were done.

While Ben was hooking up the new speakers, Hunter sat at one of the desks that were scattered around the room and pulled out a piece of paper and another pen. Twilight, Spike, AJ, and Dash are over there with him. Rarity is by Ben’s computer waiting for him to get back, and Fluttershy and Derpy are back at their spots under the table near me.

The time goes by pretty smoothly. Then the bell rings for lunch. We take off toward the cafeteria. I grab extra side dishes such as carrots, a couple apples more than usual, and other things. Hunter and Ben do the same thing and the lunch ladies are giving us weird looks. Ben escorts the ponies to a table and we all sit at it.

The ponies take turns grabbing random things off of our trays. No one seems to notice the food randomly disappearing into thin air.

Lunch continues on pretty smoothly until the bell rings for us to get back to the classroom.

Once back, the ponies are full and tired from the day so far, so they all take a nap under the table. It was really hard for me to not kick them while I’m swinging my feet back and forth.

Hour by hour goes by. Ben finishes his song and starts working on another. I finish another section of my game and I give it to Hunter so he can debug it. Nothing really happens besides that.

I’m relieved when the bell to leave finally rings. We pack up our stuff and Hunter pokes each pony awake. They were scattered all over the place under the table in various positions, so they looked really uncomfortable.

I open the front door and breathe the fresh air. “Ahhh... It feels good to not be in that stuffy room.”

Ben walks up next to me and does the same thing. “I hear ya.”

I beckon for the ponies to come with us and we walk down to the car. Fluttershy didn’t want to be on the roof again so she found some room to fill and ended up being squished in the back of the car.

Just as we’re about to take off, someone comes jogging up to Hunter’s side of the car. He rolls down the window to see his girlfriend trying to catch her breath.

“Hey Kay, What’s going on?”

“Hey...Hunter...were you guys...at the...party on Friday?”

“Uh...sorry, we kinda had other things going on.” I say to her while she’s trying to fix her hair.

“So we’ll see you at the next one then?”

“Probably, as long we don’t have anything else come up.”

“Awesome.” She reaches through the window and hugs Hunter. “See you guys later.”

She gets into her own car while I back out and it takes forever to get out of the parking lot, but when we do, it takes another forever to get through the traffic and back to our house. As I’m driving, no one is saying anything. Even Pinkie is silent, which makes the quietness even more awkward.

I pull up into the driveway, get out of the car, go through the front door and plop down on the couch. I was so tired; I didn’t even realize I was doing it until my head hit the pillow.

“I think we shouldn’t go to school tomorrow.”

Chapter 4

The “Twilight” Zone

Created by:

Thatoneguy9495

DarkMephiles

Ben_is_not_dead_yet

Ch. 4

I shake my head, hoping to get whatever was bothering me away. I want to sleep some more but I feel it again. I open my eyes and see Fluttershy touching my forehead. I sit up, making her back away a little. I’m breathing more than usual. I look at my bedside clock. 6:22 a.m. I slept for 7 hours? I still feel tired though. Rubbing my eyes, Fluttershy starts talking to me.

“Um...Mark, is it? Are you okay?” She says, scooting back next to me.

“Yea, I’m okay, I guess. I just had the craziest dream. I had a dream about Nightmare Moon. It felt like a dream, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like more of a vision.” I say, wiping the sweat off my brow.

AJ jumps up on the bed also. “I hope you ARE okay. You’ve been thrashing around all night. Kept us up.”

“I’m sorry about that. It’s just...wow...it seemed so real.” I get up off my bed and slip my jeans on over my pajamas. I change into a different shirt. I take a second glance at my clock to check the date. It’s a Saturday, March 14th.

“Come on, let’s go downstairs for some breakfast.” I’m still thinking about the note in my head as I head downstairs with AJ and Fluttershy. When we get to the kitchen, I see Ben and Hunter getting breakfast ready. I check the clock again. 6:45 a.m. (gee, time sure flies, doesn’t it?) Why are we all up already? On Saturdays, I’m usually up at like 8 and play games until everyone else is up. I take a seat and lay my head on the table. Ben turns around and sees me.

“So you had a tough night sleeping too, huh?” Ben says, flipping some of the hash browns in the pan. I guess he remembered that the ponies are vegetarian. But he still makes eggs for me and Hunter. Hunter sits at the table. The ponies take their usual seats.

I raise my head off the table. “Yea, I had the weirdest dream. At first I was sitting in a field, then I ate a rotten apple. The next thing I know, Nightmare Moon is there, saying something about me being a guardian. She also looked at my flying apple chain and recognized it as one of something called the Trinkets of Trinity.”

Twilight looks over at me. There’s a glaze of tiredness in her eyes. I think these ponies aren’t used to being up this early, with the exception of AJ. But since no one was able to sleep, it makes sense that everyone is dead tired.

“Did you say the Trinkets of Trinity?” Twilight says, “I’ve heard of those. I read about them in the same book about Nightmare Moon and the Elements of Harmony. If I can remember correctly, the trinkets were forged to replace the Elements when they were thought to be lost. But when the Elements were found, there was no need for the trinkets and they were sent to a faraway place to be destroyed. That’s all I was able to read because when I turned to the next page, I could see in the binding remnants of pages that were ripped out.”

Ben puts a plate of hash browns in front of Rarity and Rainbow Dash. “That dream you had, Mark, sounded a lot like mine, only mine took place in a city.” He headed back to the stove to fill up the rest of the plates with breakfast. I helped him place them on the table in front of the remaining ponies.

Every pony instantly stuck their faces in the food and started eating. Every pony besides Rarity. She was just sitting there, waiting, with a disgusted look on her face.

“Hey Rarity, do you want a fork or something?” I said, grabbing a fork from the drawer.

“Yes dear, that would be most helpful.” She says as I put the fork next to her plate. She places her hoof on it, and fails to pick it up. I get an idea. I run to the drawer with all the miscellaneous stuff and grab the roll of tape.

“Okay Rarity, stick out whichever your dominant hoof is.” She sticks out her right foreleg. “Now, do you want the fork on the inside or the outside of your hoof?” She says the outside, so I place the fork on the outside of her hoof and wrap the tape around it, like, 5 times. She sticks the fork into a section of hashbrowns to test the sturdiness, seems satisfied, and proceeds to eat.

“Okay,” I say, taking my seat and starting to eat, “Since Ben had pretty much the same dream I had, what was your dream like, Hunter?” He looked up from his food.

“Umm...It was kind of like both of yours, with Nightmare Moon and everything, but mine didn’t take place in a city or a field. I was floating amongst the clouds.”

Ben was just finishing his food. I didn’t even notice him sitting at the table. “So do you think there’s some kind of hidden meaning to where we were in the dream? It might have something to do with the trinkets.”

Twilight looked long finished with her breakfast. “Probably, but, remember what I said, when I wanted to find out more about them, the pages were ripped out.”

I get up, stack all the plates up, and put them in the sink. “So, now what? Do you ponies wanna see where you really are?”

Fluttershy speaks up. “Oh...I don’t know...what if somepony else sees us? I don’t wanna any extra attention...”

“She does have a point there, Mark” Hunter says, getting up from the table, which gives a signal for the ponies to get up also. Ben gets up too.

He stretches his arms, “What’s the worst that could happen?” I’m still tired so I get everyone into the living room. I throw myself onto the couch. When I turn over from landing facedown, everyone is getting on the couch too. “The worst that could happen is, if we see any other bronies out there, they’re going to do whatever it takes to take them from us.” Rarity looks over at me.

“There...are...others?” She says, with a tremble in her voice.

“Sure there are. There’s a whole fan base about the wide world of Equestria. I’ll explain it on the way to wherever we’re going. So does anyone have any ideas?”

We take some time to discuss places to go. There’s the library, the zoo (Though I don’t think Fluttershy will appreciate the poor animals being locked up), the local racetrack, the party store (so we can finally have that party for Pinkie Pie). The apple orchard wasn’t open this time of year, so that didn’t make it as a choice. There was also...hmm...where would Rarity want to go? I grab the newspaper we were using to find events or locations and I flip through it until I see a page advertising the local fashion show. That could work, but none of us actually wanted to go to one of those with Rarity. There had to be someplace we could compromise on. Maybe we could just drive around and show the ponies various shops around town.

There were only so many hours in a day, and it was already 8:00. We all decide to have that party for Pinkie. I look in the phonebook for the closest party store and find one that doesn’t open until 10. Great. What are we gonna do for two hours? I guess we could drive around, letting the ponies examine the unfamiliar environment until the store opens.

“So it’s settled, we show the ponies around, and then go to the party store to grab supplies for Pinkie’s party.” I get off the couch and go grab my car keys. When I head into the living room, everyone is waiting for me by the front door.

“Okay, is everyone ready?” Everyone nods and we head out the front door. It’s a good thing I have an SUV because I don’t think we would all fit in a mid-size car.

The ponies gasp at all the wonders of the suburbs. I understand because it’s very strange being in a new place. I go over near the car and call the ponies over. They glance over at me and look at the big thing behind me.

“Whoa! What is that?” Rainbow Dash exclaims. She flies over to the side. The other ponies walk over also.

I lean on the car door. “This is a lot like your wagon back home, but it’s self-propelled, no horses needed, and you can go really fast in it.”

“I like going fast!” Dash does a back flip and lands on the roof. I open the back door and let the ponies go in at their leisure. Rainbow Dash is still sitting on the roof, so I let her stay there. I just hope nobody sees her there while we’re going to the store.

I hop into the driver’s seat while Hunter gets shotgun. Ben is fine with getting in the back with the ponies. I start the car, freaking out the ponies. I roll down the window and yell at Dash to hold on tight and stay low. When I start to back up, I look in the rear view mirror and see every pony lean forward. Fluttershy is scared out of her wits. I reassure her that everything’s gonna be fine. I finish pulling out of the driveway and head toward the store. Every once in a while, I checked my mirror to look at what the ponies were doing. They were mostly trying to look out the window while staying steady on their hooves. Pinkie Pie waved at someone in a car, but they seemed to not notice and kept driving.

When I get to a stoplight, I open the window again and check on Rainbow Dash. Someone pulls up next to my car just in time for me to yell up to her.

“Hey! Buddy! What are you yelling at?” The guy in the car glares at me. “It looks like you’re talking to your roof!”

The light turns green and, since I didn’t want to talk to him, I gun it, leaving him sitting there in a bunch of smoke from my exhaust. That was strange. Why did he think I was just talking to the roof of my car? Couldn’t he see a bright blue Pegasus sitting up there? Then I remembered that I was going to talk to the ponies about the brony community. It will still take about 10 minutes to get to the store, so that gives me plenty of time to tell them as much as I can. They listen to Ben, Hunter, and I tell them various things such as all the stories, music, and pictures. I wouldn’t dare tell them about “that” part of the internet though.

We arrive at the party store. Pinkie looks out the front windshield of the car and sees the various colors of the hundreds of balloons sitting in the front window of the store. Then she starts bouncing around the inside of the car. Ben opens the door and she tumbles out, landing on her back. While she’s getting up, everyone else gets out of the car. Rainbow Dash jumps off the roof and lands softly on the pavement.

To my relief, the parking lot has no one in it, just empty cars.

“Okay ponies,” I say, opening the doors to go inside the store. The store must’ve opened early. It was only 9:00. I look at the open hours on the sign on the door. It said it opened at 10 on weekdays and 9 on weekdays. Whoops...

I continue, “Don’t touch anything, for some reason, the guy Pinkie waved at and the guy at the light didn’t notice you. I don’t know why, but maybe no one else will see you in the store. If you touch something, or carry it around, they will definitely see that though. Stick close to us.”

We all get inside and Pinkie instantly runs off down one of the aisles. Ben runs after her and I can see a bunch of people staring at him with weird looks on their faces. I split the rest of us up. Hunter gets Dash and Twilight to get plasticware and streamers. I take AJ and Fluttershy to get a tablecloth and junk food. Rarity joins Ben and Pinkie to get balloons and everything else.

About half an hour later, (yes, it took that long. But that was only because Rarity thought every color clashed with every other color in the store.) We all meet up at the front and pay for the stuff. There’s so much stuff, it fills up the trunk of the SUV and a bit of the space where everyone is sitting in the back.

As we are driving back, I talk with Twilight, Hunter, and Ben about the situation with no one seeing abnormal animals that totally belong here. I’m also thinking about why it’s only the three of us that can see and interact with the ponies. Then Hunter comes up with a probable explanation.

“You know how Nightmare Moon called the special things we have the Trinkets of Trinity? Maybe they’re special because they allow us to let the ponies exist in our dimension. I mean, if we didn’t have these,” he looks at the band on his watch, “we wouldn’t be able to help the ponies go back to their dimension and they would be stuck here forever. Why didn’t Nightmare Moon think about sending the trinkets and the ponies to two separate dimensions?”

I pull into the driveway and everyone helps bring in the party things. We start putting up the stuff and baking the cake. While I’m waiting for the cake to finish baking, I hear a subtle thump that sounded like it came from upstairs. No one else seems to notice because they’re too busy talking and making noises when they put up the streamers and balloons.