Back to Equestria

Rainbow Dash slowly opened her eyes, only to find the words “Jefferson Memorial” hanging directly in front of her face. She lifted up her hands and pushed aside the tourism map, which she had apparently been using as a blanket when she fell asleep last night.

After a short while of reading, most of the girls had started to drift off last night. Rarity and Applejack were both laying with their heads planted onto the tables in front of them, and Twilight was currently using an opened book on Physics as a pillow. Fluttershy was curled up like a dog in one of the larger chairs, and Pinkie must have fallen asleep while watching the movie-box-thing because her face was lying up against the glass, allowing the moving pictures to light up her face with a colorful glow.

Rainbow Dash yawned to herself as she sat up from the couch, looking down to the various Indiana Jones books that were strewn across the floor. She squinted as she looked across the room at a clock on the wall, since telling time in the dim, windowless corner of the library was near to impossible.

The clock read 5:35.

Rainbow Dash was used to waking up early in the morning, but since she wasn’t able to jump out of her window and into the open air of Ponyville, she just sat on the couch, watching the hand of the clock slowly tick around in a circle.

That lasted about 15 seconds.

“Psst … Pinkie”

Pinkie’s eyes suddenly shot open at the sound of her name, although since her head was resting against the movie-box they stared directly into the bright light of the machine, which was currently playing some kind of soap opera in a foreign language.

Pinkie jumped back in surprise and landed in front of the box, saying in a half-dazed tone, “No entinedo senor, no quiero aquellos carmelos …” as she rubbed her eyes.

Rainbow Dash quietly chuckled to herself as she said, “Shhhh Pinkie, everypony is asleep. How long did you stay up watching that thing anyway.”

Pinkie lowered down her hand and let out a yawn before replying to the rainbow haired girl, “I don’t know really, but you wouldn’t believe all the stuff they have on this TV, that is what this thing is called, they have like shows for food and for cars and there are some boring ones and there is also some really super neat ones …”  Pinkies volume continued to elevate as she talked.

“Really ? Did you see any of those flying car things ?” Rainbow Dash replied, she had read a little bit about some kind of flying machine in the one of the Indiana Jones books, but they didn’t really go into enough detail other than that it was called a “plane”.

“Yeah I think I saw one once, but I can’t be super duper sure since there seems to be a lot of shows with stuff that's like not really real.”

“Huh ?”

“Well like some of them are like made-up-story kinda stuff, but some are like real-life-real kinda stuff, but I can’t be super sure cause I don’t know what is real here and what isn’t.” Pinkie finished off her run-on sentence with a beaming smile.

“Dang, I really kinda wanted to see what one of those things was like, cause I mean cars are really cool and all, so can you imagine one that could fly ?”

“Well why don’t we just go there silly ?” Pinkie replied as she pointed past Dashie and towards the tourist map she had thrown down onto the ground only moments before.

“Huh ?”

Pinkie jumped over and picked up the map, pointing towards a building that was only a couple blocks from where the library was. Rainbow Dash wasn’t exactly sure how Pinkie had managed to read the tiny print all the way across the room, but was too distracted by the prospect of seeing a plane to care.

“The National Air and Space Museum ?” Rainbow Dash questioned as she read aloud the text near the place Pinkie was pointing.

“Yeah, look! It has the word air and space! Those are both flying words!”

“I guess …” Rainbow Dash replied cautiously, she didn’t want to end up in some boring museum, but as she thought about it a little longer, anything was better than staying in this library for the next few days with Twilight.

“So let's wake up everypony else and go!” Pinkie exclaimed slightly too loud, causing Applejack to roll over and mutter something about apples before falling back asleep.

“Shh, let's just like leave a note or something and go ourselves, plus Twi would probably say no anyway if she was awake.”

Pinkie nodded in response and soon the girls found a sheet of paper and a pen amongst the various items strewn across the floor.

Rainbow Dash grabbed the pen and set it in her mouth, and leaned over the sheet of paper that she had just set down on the table so that she could write out the note. But, as she attempted to to write out like she and all the ponies normally did, it seemed impossible to control the pen and all she succeeded in doing was marking up the paper with scribbles.

“Dashie, I think you’re supposed to do it like Spike does.” Pinkie replied as she stuck out her hand and pulled the pen from the rainbow-haired girl’s mouth, and set it into her hand as she wrote out the message.

HEY TWILIGHT !

Me and Dashie went to go see planes at the National Air and Space museum we saw on the map thingie, we’ll be back later !

-Pinkie Pie

P.S. If you could get me some more candy that would be super.

“That's how the humans wrote stuff on the Tee-Vee.” Pinkie explained as she finished the last period and set the note onto the table in front of Twilight.

Rainbow Dash silently nodded, and the two girls proceeded to make their way out of the library and into the morning air. The girls walked down the stone steps of the Library and towards the almost-empty parking lot, heading towards the Delorean.

“How far away is this place ?” Rainbow Dash asked as she retrieved the keys to the Delorean from her pocket.

“It looks like it is only a couple of blocks over.” Pinkie replied as she looked down at the map she was holding, despite the fact that she was holding it upside-down.

“Lets just walk over there then, but first lets get some of that money Twilight had.” Rainbow Dash said as she slid the key into the door to unlock the Delorean.

“But isn’t that Twilight’s money ?” Pinkie replied with a slightly confused frown on her face.

“Nah, she won’t mind.” Dashie nonchalantly replied as she reached into the car and pulled out a couple of the green sheets of paper.

“Oki doki loki” Pinkie said with an upbeat smile spread across her face.

Rainbow Dash slammed shut the door, and after a quick glance at the map (And turning it around right side up) the two girls headed off in the direction of the museum.

“They went to a museum !?! They just got up and went alone to go explore a world we know nothing about !?!”

Twilight was close to hyperventilating as she paced back and forth in the library, with the remaining girls watching her from a safe distance.

“Umm, well. They did go together so they weren’t really alone.” Fluttershy sheepishly remarked from behind the couch.

“Yeah sugarcube, I’m sure they're fine.” Applejack added as she dared to walk up to the enraged Twilight, setting a comforting hand onto her shoulder.

“Ugh, I guess they will be. Those two have done worse before...” Twilight replied with a sigh as she tossed the note down onto the floor and sat down into a nearby chair.

“Anypony find anything useful while reading last night ?” Twilight asked as she turned the chair around to face the table covered with her various books.

“Well we had been doing all that driving and I had been awake so long I didn’t really get a chance to read any of those *fascinating* books you had laid out. A girl must get her beauty sleep you know.” Rarity said from while she sat on top of the table next to Twilight's.

“Umm … I really was trying to find something … but some of it was hard to read and I found a book with pictures of animals and I kinda got distracted. I’m sorry.” Fluttershy sheepishly remarked as she got out from behind the couch.

“I wanted to see if they had apples ere, and I found out that apparently apple refers to some sort of religion in this dimension, cause there was a lot of books worshiping someun’ called Steve Jobs. But, other than that I didn’ really learn much.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t be more help Twilight …” Fluttershy stated again as Twilight opened back another book and began reading.

“Well, here is what I found out.” Twilight started to say, not letting her eyes leave the book as she talked, “I started out by researching about possible references to magic, most of which lead to fiction books, but the few non-fiction books confirmed what we had already feared, that no one in this world understands magic.”

Twilight paused for a moment to allow this to sink in.

“Although, while I was searching for things on magic I found several different myths that referred to a man known as Merlin the Bearded. Most of the myths say he was a powerful magician about 1500 hundred years or so ago, which is in fact almost the exact same time period that Star-Swirl the Bearded left our world and came to this one. I’m pretty sure we can safely assume that Merlin is the alias that Star-Swirl took when he came to this world.”

“But Twilight … didn’t you say it was a myth ?” Fluttershy sheepishly asked.

“Well, if there's one thing that we learned from our experience with Nightmare Moon, it is that sometimes myths can turn out to be true.” Twilight replied.

“I suppose you’re right,” Rarity said.

“Anyway, as I was saying,” Twilight began to say, switching herself back into her lecture mode.

“The fact that Star-Swirl visited this world about fifteen hundred years ago solves a least a few of the questions I had about this world. For one, this explains why we have a similar language to the humans of this world, because when Star-Swirl came to this dimension he must have taken back with him much of the knowledge of this world. Including the language, which he taught to the various tribes of Equestria. He also obviously took some of the knowledge of architecture and basic technology as well, since many of our buildings seem to resemble ones from the same time period that Star-Swirl went to.” Twilight lifted up a nearby book and turned the cover around so that the other girls could see, it read “6th Century English Architecture” and had a picture of a large stone castle on the front that closely resembled the castle in Canterlot.

“But, more importantly than all that,” Twilight continued, “is the fact that since we know Star-Swirl the Bearded came to this world AND returned, that it is possible for us to get back home.”

“Yay.” Fluttershy replied with a small smile.