Scanning

"I wasn't trying to be dramatic, I just...Oh, I don't know. Of course Twilight told you about the changelings and what happened to me. Of course you document disappearances. Of course you've been extra careful since the invasion."

I stood stock still as warm magic flowed over me, tendrils of power crawling over my skin. Probably under my skin, too, but I couldn't feel that. Celestia paused the scan, and smiled at me.

"Well, you are right," She said. "All of that is true. And yet I can't do anything, because I need to know more than that something is going on." She returned her attention to the scan.

The meeting with the Elements had devolved quickly after my climactic question. Any answer Celestia tried to make was drowned out by the curious clamor of the others. I had ended up recounting most of my story, both for the Elements who hadn't heard some parts of it, and for the Princess. Afterwards, she had taken Twilight and I aside in order to conduct a more thorough magical exam on us.

It hadn't taken her long to explain that yes, ponies disappeared. Yes, she wanted to stop it. Yes, she had been doing her best for as long as she had been Princess. I'd felt pretty stupid after that.

"Your idea does have merit, though." She said, as she finished the scan and moved her aura to Twilight. "If we could find this Nexus, it would surely tell us something worth knowing about the gem. Besides that, cleaning out a nest of such vermin would be for the best all-round. Hmm." She finished with Twilight, and took a few notes before giving her diagnosis. "Your progression is not catastrophic."

We both sighed in relief at those words.

"I think it would be best if we could get Luna to do something about the dream sharing. If she works on it from within, as it were, it will be much more strongly bound than if I fumble with it. Expect her in your dreams as soon as you are both asleep." She looked over the top of her notebook, and both of us nodded.

"Also Wes, you said that when you arrived here the place you found yourself was nearby the changeling hive?"

"Yeah." I replied, surprised by the question. "It wasn't very far at all. They caught me in their patrol perimeter."

"Interesting." She mused for a second. "Well, I don't know if we will be able to find the place but if we can, I'd like to investigate for magic residue. A spell with such an interesting effect must have been pretty powerful, and in an isolated location it's not impossible for traces to linger. Who knows? Maybe we can figure out how to return you to your world."

"Really? Isn't that great, Wes? Wes?"

Twilight's enthusiastic voice floated past me, my train of thought derailed, each successive idea slamming into the huge mental roadblock that had just appeared.

I could...go home?

Home? To earth? To my family? To college? To my stupid professors, and friends, and favorite foods, and music, and even my brother's awful cat?

I fell to my knees, suddenly faint.

"Wes!" Both Twilight and Celestia caught me in their magic. I felt tingly as they lifted me off the floor.

"Sorry." I mumbled, still lost in my mind as they lay me down on a nearby couch. Images flashed across my inner eye; the shimmer of stoplights on rain-slick pavement, the smell of the computer labs, billboards and store logos, a taste of my fathers homemade beer, the scent of fresh-cut roses from my mother's garden.

Home.

Something, something I'd locked up, tied down, choked, cut, starved and killed, stirred in my chest.

Home.

I dared to hope. And suddenly, I needed to cry.

"I..." I swallowed a sob. "Sorry..."

"Wesley Kilmer." Celestias voice was gentle, but brooked no argument. "Never, ever, apologize for crying."

Given permission my sobs broke loose, and I curled up on the couch and sobbed.

When I was done, I opened my eyes to find myself covered by white feathers from one side with a lilac shoulder curled up against me on the other. As I recovered, I sniffled and sat up. Celestia and Twilight were sitting on the couch next to me.

"Do you feel better?" The princess levitated a kerchief to me, and I blew my nose noisily.

"Yeah," I said. "I...I guess I needed that. Um." I stopped myself from apologizing, and took a minute to scrub my itchy eyes.

"I thought it was a little weird," Twilight offered. "You didn't seem to be interested in much of anything, but I wondered why you were never once mentioned getting back to your world."

"I-I killed the thought." I mumbled, my mind dredging up my first few weeks in my cell.

"What do you mean?" Celestia asked.

"I couldn't afford to hope," I said. "I didn't have the energy for that. When-when they had me, I couldn't do anything more than take each day one at a time, as best I could. Splinter held me together, held me up as best he could, but even then...I almost didn't make it through those first weeks. Despair was eating me, and he's the only thing that kept it from consuming me whole. He didn't know anything about me being from another world. At the time, the only goal we could hold onto was survival. Everything else was secondary." I frowned. "Even the things I did in Ponyville came out of that mindset, I think. Find some shelter. Find some food. Make sure your going to be OK, after that, THEN you can live your life." I drew in a deep shuddering breath. "I killed my hope of getting home. I did it to survive. And now, it seems that even a little hope hurts."

"Oh Wes..." Twilight's voice was filled with compassion.

"Not daring to hope... It breaks my heart that this would happen to anyone in my realm." Celestia stood, and stepped away from the couch. "I can't tell what will happen, but if I can help you return to your home, please don't hesitate to call on me. Although I speak as merely Celestia, and not the Princess of the Sun, my might is not inconsiderable. And any friend of Twilight's is a friend of mine."

"Th-thanks." I managed, swallowing another sob. I rubbed my eyes again. Despite the discomfort the sobbing had brought me, I my heart felt lighter. I nodded once, and then again more firmly. "Thanks. I will."

"Um, Princess..." Twilight's sounded uncertain, but she forged ahead as Celestia turned towards her. "You said that you were looking for signs of a summoning spell. But... that means.... you think that someone brought him here? On purpose? For a reason?"

I snapped my head around at that. She flinched away from me, and I tried to soften my gaze.

"I...don't know." The princess sounded troubled. "Well, I thought so, from your story. But you didn't?"

"I...you know, I don't really know," I said. "I didn't even think about it. As far as I could tell, the changelings were just as surprised to find me there as I was. I never saw any sign of magic, or any sort of spell. I just fell asleep in one world, and woke up in another. I've never really thought about a purpose behind it." I frowned. "I wasn't in the best frame of mind, I guess, when I drew that conclusion, and I really haven't had the leisure to re-think what happened until now. Um. Here's an odd thing. Several of the, the races I've met in Equestria match up with beings from human myths. Unicorns, pegasi, and dragons, specifically. Is it possible that something like this has happened before?"

Celestia frowned at that.

"I can't definitely rule it out," she said. "But if so, it was before Luna and I ruled. Several thousand years ago, at the least."

My eyes widened a bit at that. I'd picked up the idea that alicorns were long-lived from the tales of Nightmare Moon, but having millennia casually thrown into conversation like that really brought it home.

"Just...just how old are you?"

"Wes!" Celestia laughed. "Don't you know you should never ask a lady her age?"

I cast my eyes down, slightly ashamed. I guess it was rude, at that.

"Honestly though," She continued, "I'm not entirely certain myself. It was quite a while before I decided to start keeping track. That's not the point, though; Luna and I didn't rule Equestria until something like two thousand years ago. At that time, we gained a little more insight into what goes on in the kingdom. All I'm saying is that sort of thing should have come to our attention, much as you have, if it happened when we were in power."

"Actually," I said frowning, "Two thousand years sounds about right for me." I cast my mind back to Greek mythology. They came before the Romans, right? A few hundred years BC, or something? Though that only accounted for the myth of ...dragon legends were much more recent, even in the middle ages in Europe, and I had no idea about Unicorns.

Celestia shrugged her wings. "Well, I have no idea." She admitted frankly. "As I said, if it happened, it was before our time. Although, maybe..." She frowned. "It's possible that some dragon legends contain mentions of humans, now that you mention it. I've always translated those to be about Diamond Dogs, but that never really made a whole lot of sense to me. The myths call them 'Tuatha', and they are cunning despoilers, usually tricksters who steal gold and gems from innocent dragons who overcome them with brute force."

"That...sounds completely opposite to what fairy tails in my world sound like."

"Well, if you were a ten-ton reptile, you might decide to play your strengths as well."

"Hah. I guess."

"Well, that's all I can think of." Celestia made a note in one of her books. "I'll have someone look into it. Maybe we can discover something." She frowned. "The point still stands, though; if you were brought here, and I'm no longer entirely sure that you were, why? If we can find a motive, maybe we can move a little closer towards an answer."

"Sombra said..." Twilight stopped, and then restarted as we turned to her. "Sombra said something about why he wanted you, didn't he?"

"You could hear that?"

"He was loud."

"Um. Yeah, I guess he was. At the time, I thought he wanted to possess me because I was the nearest available body. He talked bout this," I tapped the gem, "as if it would make the whole thing possible, but he also said that he liked-" I furrowed my brows, trying to remember, "the fact that I was fit, and that I knew human math and science."

"How much do you know?" Celestia said, interested.

"Honestly? Not too much. I was about halfway through college. I was in engineering, so I do know some, but I was never the top of my class, and I hated homework. Hush!" I said, as Twilight gasped at that. "It's allowed." Celestia giggled a little at her student's grimace. "Um, math should be the same, and most of Equestria seems to be functionally close to Earth, but I don't think we do everything the same way. You don't use electricity, and your information infrastructure is easily eighty to one-twenty years behind ours or more. If magically transmitted mail can be equated to electric telegraph. And I have no idea about weapons, but I don't know how much good human weapons would do against your magic. Most human weapons are ranged, and magic shields..." I frowned in thought. "I really have no idea what parts of what I know would make me valuable. I have even less confidence that I could remember any of the useful bits. My mind is like a steel trap...but only for completely trivial tidbits."

"Well, anything could be important. Make a note if you think of anything else."

I nodded.

"Now!" The notebook snapped shut. "This meeting has been more than I expected, but I can honestly say that every second was worth it. However, as loath as I may be to say it, we must adjourn for now."

Twilight rose, and hugged her.

"Thank you Princess," She said. I echoed her, and we departed slowly.

ZOOOOOOOOM.

"Cars-"

ZOOOOOOOM.

"Are-"

ZOOOOOOOM.

"AWESOME!"

I looked up from where I was hovering, laughing a little as I watched Twilight pilot a Nascar racer around the oval circuit race I'd conjured for her in the dream world. Hopefully this would be the last of these dreams, but I'd taken the opportunity to try showing her some of the things from Earth before the chance was gone. Her jaw had dropped at the cities, she'd been flabbergasted at airplanes, she'd loved computers, even though they didn't usually work in dreams, but she'd fallen in love with cars. I was surprised that I could make them work, but then, this was one of the most realistic dreams I'd ever managed.

I focused for a second and smiled, before snapping my fingers and summoning a Ferrari. I touched the rearing horse on the steering wheel and settled into the seat, before gunning the engine and zipping out into the track. In a few seconds, I was creeping up on Twilight, trying to sneak around the inside of the curve. Even in a dream, the feel of the acceleration made me smile. It wasn't the same as real life, but the fact that you could do stuff like this made me almost sad that dream sharing was so dangerous.

"My, my." I jumped in surprise, swerving and almost crashing, when Luna popped into existence in the seat next to me. "This is fascinating. What an ingenious machine."

"It's called a car," I said. I shifted once, listening to the thrum of the engine, and frowning. "I'm pretty sure that I'm getting the acceleration wrong, but whatever. That's dreams for you."

"You seem rather knowledgeable about the workings of my realm."

"Yeah, well...I studied dreams for a while. Read lots about it. Kept a dream journal. I tried to be aware of when I was dreaming, and control them. I haven't really done anything in that vein for the past year, for obvious reasons. But this is something else. I've never been in a dream this realistic or consistent."

"The more ponies in a dream, the more real it becomes. Now that I am here, your perceptions should be nearly as sharp as waking."

"Hmm." I slid around the inside of the corner, barely scraping past Twilight's car. "So, any thoughts on how to stop this?"

"It should be simple enough. However, I had a few thoughts. Before doing so, what do you remember about the changelings fortress?"

"Um, oh! You're thinking of looking for clues in my memories?"

"Indeed."

"That...is very clever. Hum, let me stop Twilight." I concentrated, and the car peeled away around us, the parts dissolving until we were sitting in empty air, still racing around the track. We quickly caught up to Twilight's car, and I tapped on her window.

The look of shock on her face was amusing for about half a second, until her broken concentration led her to swerve and she went into a tumble. I winced as the car flipped and spun. I reached out with my dream control and stopped it in mid-air.

"That...that was mean." She protested, as she squeezed out the window, sprouting wings and flapping over to us. Twilight was as good or better at dream shaping than I was, but she seemed to try and fit things into her previously understood paradigms, instead of simply breaking the laws of physics at a drop of a hat, as I tended to do.

"Princess Luna, welcome!"

"Thank you, Twilight. You were having fun?"

"Oh yes! Cars are great! I'll have to see if I can build one."

I saw her eyes glaze over as her brain kicked into overdrive, trying to work out a thousand details all at once.

"Um, Twilight? Maybe you can work on that later. Right now, the Princess wanted me to try and re-create what I could of the changelings fort, to see if we could learn something about where it was."

"Will that work?"

"It should." Princess Luna replied. "If thy memory works the same as that of a pony, there may well be details that you would not be able to recall while awake."

"I've heard that theory," I said. "The idea that you don't actually forget anything, you just lose the ability to bring it to the front of your brain, right?"

"Correct. Although the more often a memory is retrieved, the more contaminated with imagination and change they can become. In all honestly, there may be little there for us."

"Well, let's give it a shot." I spun in place, imagining the two ponies and myself teleporting, and muttered "Changeling-fort, Changeling-fort, Changeling-fort." When I looked up, we were standing in the arena.

Twilight glanced around, and shuttered a little. All over the place, pieces of dead changelings and visions of dying ponies faded in and out. I concentrated, trying to calm my heart and bring back some semblance of control to the dream, and it stopped. The details of the stonework sharpened, and the grains of sand seemed more distinct.

"I fear this place is no good for our purposes," Luna said. "Not only have you been here far too many times for any of these details to remain consistent, but there is much to much emotion in this place."

"Well, maybe the cell?" I led them out of the arena, banishing the gateway with a thought. I had very rarely walked this course; most times, I was dragged back, comatose. I knew the turns by heart, though, and soon enough, we stood before the two cells. The door stood wide on one, and in the other, an orange unicorn slept.

"...Splinter?" I whispered, suddenly feeling a little weak.

"Simply part of the dream," Luna said. She stepped forward, and took a closer look. She froze for a second as she got closer. "Oh my...what did you say this ponies name was, Wes?"

"Splinter."

"Hum." She stood there, staring at him for a moment. "Well, mayhaps from his cutie mark my sister can discern where he disappeared. Perhaps there would be a lead there."

I looked at her curiously for a second. Did she know Splinter? But how could that be? She met my gaze coolly. If she did, she wasn't willing to share anything about it.

"Maybe I should try and remember Fallen Leaves, as well."

"Good thinking."

We examined the cells for a bit, but they didn't seem to be much good, either. Not only could were they pretty much useless, since they were inside, but even when I tried to look out the window for landmarks, things shifted constantly between several different views. As the sky faded from blue to black, and stars danced blurrily through the bars, I had an idea.

"One more time," I said, spinning around. When I stopped, we were in a clearing. "This is where I appeared." I concentrated, thinking of when I'd woken up, and the blue sky faded quickly to black, a thousand glimmering stars appearing above us. This time they were rock-steady. I'd only been here once. I'd only seen this sky once.

Luna looked up, taking in the vista.

"Yes." She said. "This might work."