Where was it? Pinkie dug through the large chest in her room. Many objects flew through the air before she was satisfied. It was the third container that Pinkie had searched in the last five minutes and Rainbow Dash was beginning to get concerned. Only once had she seen Pinkie so agitated and that was something she tried not to remember.

"Pinkie, are you sure it's here?"

"It's so here. So very very... very here." Rainbow shivered slightly at the tone of her voice.

"I just think that maybe you should take a break. It's not like it's the end of the world or anything," She remarked, completely oblivious to the direness of the situation.

Pinkie turned with a manic gleam in her eye as she began to speak. "But that's just the kicker isn't it, Dashie? I don't think we'll ever have another party ever again unless I find the thing. Never. Ever. Again!" Her unnatural smile went slightly crooked, "Hehehe... I wonder if there are parties in..." Pinkie shook her head as she got back to work.

"Maybe I should get Twilight," Rainbow mumbled to herself.

"AHA!" Pinkie announced and stood up with a small black object in her hand. She quickly began to draw a circle on the floor in her room.

"Uh, why are you drawing a circle on your floor? And what is that thing?" Rainbow asked as she pointed to the item in Pinkie's hoof. It looked like a small black cube with crimson red lines running through its entirety. As Pinkie spit out the chalk, Rainbow realized that an intricate design of ruins and lines spanning the interior circle had been drawn on the ground. It definitely unnerved her how much it looked like those cultist circles in more dangerous areas.

Rainbow was pulled out of her musings by incomprehensible muttering from Pinkie. Suddenly, the cube began to go bright blue and darkness seemed to seep from the lines. Something about it felt very wrong to her. The whole getup just kind of made her feel uncomfortable.

"Pinkie, whatever you're do—" That's as far as Rainbow got before a dark red substance thickly flowed from the cube into the center of the circle. It slowly traced the chalk glyphs as it spread throughout the circle and began to glow. Rainbow began to back away as feelings of nausea and dizziness overcame her. It quickly overpowered her and she fell to the ground, unconscious.

When she woke, Pinkie was long gone and a small coating of ash covered the floor of the room.

—

It wasn't long till the smoke obscuring Pinkie's vision cleared. When it did, she found herself surrounded by strange bipedal, fur-less creatures. They had thin claw like appendages on the ends of their forelegs and variously styled manes adorning their heads. Besides that, they were fully clothed from back hooves to neck and a very small snout on their faces. Most ponies would have been frightened by such creatures, but this wasn't Pinkie's first time here. Indeed she had come many times before, but never somewhere with so many of these strange beings.

They were apparently called 'hyumaans' and had a very different yet somewhat similar culture to ponies. One of the biggest differences was they lacked the magic necessary to influence the weather or lift objects with their mind. They actually had no magic whatsoever. But right now, these thoughts did not matter to Pinkie. She needed to find somepony. Or rather someone. She knew what the person looked like, but not where to find her. The rune she had cast a spell with had been calibrated to place Pinkie close to her, now she just needed to know how close.

Many of the people around her were staring wide eyed at her and most of them parted to let her through. According the the first hyumaan she ever met, ponies like her don't exist on the planet and aren't thought of as possible to most people. Before long, Pinkie realized that she found who she had been looking for and that person was looking down at her with quite a considerable level of surprise.

Neither of them talked for what felt like hours until Pinkie decided to break the ice. "Hello, Miss Faust. I'd like to talk to you about The Hub."

Author's Note

So intense!