Sunset's Extradimensional Tourist Agency

Chapters

Prologue
Twilight, Fluttershy and Spike, Part 1
Twilight, Fluttershy and Spike, Part 2

Prologue

While the Friendship Games had ended with a lot of destruction, it had for once accomplished its stated goal of helping the two schools get along. Still, it was an awkward coterie of high school girls whom found themselves sitting around a large picnic blanket, spread out on the front lawn of Canterlot High School. On one side sat Sunset Shimmer and her five closest friends at Canterlot High. As if an invisible line demarcated the two groups, on the opposite end of the blanket sat Twilight Sparkle and the five girls she had grown close to at Crystal Prep. The only girl there who seemed to really be enthusiastically partaking in the food was Pinkie Pie, who had of course brought cupcakes with extra frosting.

“So, uh…When are they going to get that statue fixed?” Indigo Zap asked, the large horse statue still wrecked from the battle at the Friendship Games.

“Yeah, what she said! That thing was totes rad!” Lemon Zest added, wearing a set of headphones, listening to music with one ear while the other was uncovered.

“Not until I investigate the magical portal further and make sure it’s not damaged,” said Sunset Shimmer, crossing her arms. “The statue itself isn’t a portal to Equestria, but the base itself facing the school is. Dark magic like what Twilight was throwing around and the creation of several rifts in the immediate vicinity could have affected it.”

Sunny Flare, who had been busy playing a bit of cat’s cradle with some string she had brought along, perked up at that. “I still can’t believe magic really exists,” She commented, before sighing, beginning to daydream, “It’d be great to have magic like you guys do. Of course, I don’t think I could put up with being a pony in that other world of yours. I like having hands. Try doing this with hooves,” Sunny Flare wiggled her fingers to emphasise before tying the string up to create a diamond shape.

“Oh my, I’d think it’d be nice to be able to talk with all sorts of animals,” Fluttershy said in a quiet voice, petting Spike, the purple-and-green canine companion of Twilight Sparkle. “I wonder what Angel Bunny would say if he could talk.”

“Probably to tell you that your hands are the most divine thing ever,” Spike said as he wagged his tail, eliciting a giggle out of the pink-haired girl.

“Count me out!” Applejack exclaimed, “I work on a farm, y’know. I don’t think ah’d wanna hear the cows during their milking time, or the trees when we’re pickin’ apples.”

“Trees don’t talk in Equestria,” Sunset said, “Well…apple trees excluded, they tell you to go and eat pears instead.”

“What?!” Applejack looked aghast, eyes so wide that it looked like her freckles would disappear under the scrunched skin of her cheeks. “You’re not pullin’ my leg are you Sunset?”

“Seriously,” Sunset said in the most deadpan voice possible. She managed to hold a straight face for ten seconds before letting out a giggle, “Oh, your face! You should have seen it!”

“Aw, shucks!” Applejack said, burying her reddening face underneath her Stetson hat, as most of the rest of the girls joined in on Sunset’s laughter. Twilight Sparkle and Sour Sweet, who had been engaged in a quiet conversation to the side, both looked up, having missed the joke. Looking at one another, they shrugged. Lemon Zest had, for her part, been eating nacho chips with salsa, falling into the zen with her music. Crumbs dribbled down the side of her shirt as she was pulled out of the zone at the laughter.

Sunset Shimmer could see Rainbow Dash was about to make a comment. However, it never came, as she felt the magical portal behind her activate. Quickly turning around, she saw a familiar purple face come stumbling through the base of the shadow.

“Well that certainly didn’t just happen and fundamentally alter our perception of reality on a level that just seeing magical transformations didn’t before,” Sugarcoat mumbled.

“Sorry I’m late girls! I didn't get your messages until just now because I was caught in this time travel loop and honestly, it was the strangest thing that's ever happened to me!”

The girl whom Sunset had now dubbed in her head as Princess Twilight to separate from the human world’s version of Twilight paused, her eyes bulging as her line of sight locked with Science Twilight.

“Maaaaake that the second strangest, ehehe,” Princess Twilight giggled nervously.

Sunset thanked her former mentor that she had a quicker reaction time than Pinkie Pie did to this bizarre scenario, and grabbed the shell-shocked human Twilight’s hand, pulling her onto her feet. “Girls,” She said to the six students from Crystal Prep, “This is Princess Twilight Sparkle, also a pony from Equestria. Twilight, this is, er…” She fumbled about for a nickname, before settling on one, “Also Twilight Sparkle, and perhaps Science Twilight would be a good name before we all get confused.”

Then images crossed through Sunset’s mind of ‘Science Twilight’ cackling out loud in a giant laboratory, throwing aside a piece of cloth to reveal her latest doomsday device. She shivered, trying to suppress the surprisingly salacious images of Mad Scientist Twilight. Dr. Frankensparkle? Twilightstein? Sparklestone?

“Uh, er, hello, um, Twilight,” Princess Twilight said with a light blush in her cheek, rubbing her head in confusion before holding her hand out for what she had understood to be a common form of greeting in her last two trips to the human realm.

“Er, hello I guess?” Science Twilight responded, also seemingly unsure of what to do. Nevertheless, she too held her hand out to shake.

A sudden thought struck Sunset Shimmer, as she recalled a classic film she had once seen. She meant to yell ‘Don’t Cross the Streams!’ out loud, but all she could do was watch as time slowed to a crawl, the hands of counterparts reaching out to shake.

“So Griffons and Dragons and even Cerberuses are real things that exist and can talk in Equestria? That is like, so, COOL!” Indigo Zap gushed over the stories Sunset Shimmer and Princess Twilight Sparkle had been pressured into telling the other eleven humans.

“Yeah, and that Discord guy sounds hilarious!” Rainbow Dash added.

Sunset brushed away a non-existent drop of sweat, still feeling out of sorts from her earlier panic. Thankfully, the contact between counterparts of two separate dimensions hadn’t blown up all of existence. Even her theory that it may have been localised to their own dimension didn’t pan out, as nothing happened. There wasn’t even any visible sparks flying between the two Twilights’ hands, or any sort of mysterious sensation exchanged that would hint at a transfer of energy or emotions or memories that might destabilise the world or require somebody’s death or a memory wipe or the destruction of the portal. Not for once was she glad the movies were wrong.

However, it did spark an idea she had been forming in her head ever since the Sirens had been defeated, now that the main reason she had hesitated over doing it had been proven to not be a worry.

“Yes,” Princess Twilight said. “Spike here may be a dog, but if he were to go through the portal, he would be turned into a dragon. Spike, the Spike from Equestria that is, is just a baby by dragon standards, no more than three feet tall. I don’t know how old this Spike would be since the ages of people here and in Equestria don’t always line up.” Reaching out a hand to pet this different but similar Spike, she continued lecturing, “He might be a newborn dragon, maybe the same age as the Spike I know, or he could be several dozen feet tall instead.”

“I’d love to be several dozen feet tall,” Spike piped up. “Then Twilight wouldn’t have to carry me around, I could carry her around!”

“Yes, until everyone panics and phones in to the emergency hotlines about a twenty foot dragon flying around, or worse, they call the talk radios. You’d be too large to pet anymore, too” Sugarcoat said. She had gotten a little bit better with her blunt assessments since the end of the Friendship Games had jolted her out of her shell, trying not to be negative all the time. It was still a work in progress.

Spike whined a proper canine sound at that response, getting another pet out of both Fluttershy and Princess Twilight.

“It must be so cool to have wings all the time!” Rainbow Dash said. “I only get them here when I pony up. I’d love to be able to fly whenever I want instead. Then again, if I did have wings all the time, I couldn’t fly outside of campus anyways. Other people would see me,” She sighed.

Sunny Flare had a finger on her lips in quiet contemplation, but decided to be the next to talk, “Does anyone find it strange that we’re all so accepting that magic exists? Before we came here for the Friendship Games, I would have laughed at anybody who said so, but now we’re all strangely blasé about it. Hell, Principal Cinch went from ‘Magic exists?!’ to blackmailing Twilight into using magic to win.” She winced as she was reminded of her own part in that debacle. “Er, sorry about that, Twilight.”

“It’s OK,” the Twilight from Crystal Prep said, “I already forgave you and Indigo and Sour Sweet.” Sugarcoat had been a little bit harsh in her blunt assessments but hadn’t really been a jerk overall, and Lemon Zest was actually one of the nicer girls she had known even prior to the Friendship Games, so there was no need to reconcile with those two.

“Oh, oh, I know!” Pinkie Pie said, eyes lighting up with a fever. “Maybe God is actually a hands-on god and for whatever reason he’s decided to focus on Canterlot High School specifically and he makes it that we react to magic the first time we see it and after that we’re all like whatever? And then that also explains how the counterparts of all of us that Twilight knows all happened to be gathered in the same place when she first met us! Maybe it’s not even a single God but a pantheon of Gods and they all take turns plotting out our daily lives, like some sort of writing team! Heeheehee!” She laughed while jumping around, hyper as always.

For the second time that day, the group as a whole was left staggered at the full import of what Pinkie Pie had just said. The Crystal Prep students were quicker to recover, writing off Pinkie’s words as that of a madwoman on a sugar high. Applejack, however, just mumbled to herself, “Couldn’t be, could it? Then again, she was right the last two times with her ridiculous scenarios, so could it? Nah, I refuse to believe it.” Thus saving the world from a plot that would break down into a prolonged debate between free will and self-determination, she shook her head and started placing mental bets on which of the Crystal Prep students would break under Pinkie’s rambling onslaught first.

“You know, something bothers me,” Rarity said, drawing Sunset’s attention, as Pinkie Pie turned her attentions to Princess Twilight and Science Twilight both.

“What do you mean?” Sunset asked her fashionista friend.

“Weeeellll…” Rarity trailed off for a second, before pointing at the two Twilight’s, both of them nervously trying to avoid Pinkie Pie and her steadily worsening mannerisms, “If this world and the world you come from have counterparts, then that must mean there’s a Pinkie Pie in Equestria, right? What if the two Pinkie Pies were to meet?”

All idle chatter and attempts at conversation around the picnic blanket stopped, as everyone froze for the third time that day at the scenario Rarity had just pondered aloud. Everyone except for one. “That’s a GREAT IDEA!” Pinkie yelled out loud, somehow finding the arm length to grab all other twelve of the girls and one pooch on the front lawn in a single embrace, “Oh, oh, I could go to Equestria and meet my pony me I’d bet she’d love sugar and ice cream and cake and pie too and don’t forget cupcakes we could eat cupcakes ALL DAY LONG and I wonder if Other Pinkie Pie also has a pet ooooh I bet she’d just love to meet Gummy-“

Pinkie Pie would have continued her prattling, but for Princess Twilight putting one hand over her mouth. “Not happening,” She firmly said. “One Pinkie is already one too many, and we already had a too many Pinkies incident.”

“Two of her, that would be a disaster!” Sour Sweet said sounding concerned, being the first to respond after Princess Twilight, before muttering under her breath, “But some women just want to watch the world burn. Bring it!”

At last, the kernel was popping, and while Sunset needed to give it the right amount of butter and salt, and stop using movie analogies while she was at it, she decided this was the right moment to throw a rat’s head in Twilight’s bed. She still shuddered at the brutality of that scene, even if Rarity had assured her gently that the horse head was just a prop and not a real equine’s decapitated skull. “Actually, Twilight, I think it has better chances of happening than you think.”

“Huh?” was all Princess Twilight could muster.

“Princess, er…Celestia,” Sunset started, and winced as she heard the expected multiple surprised gasps behind her. Hearing that the Principal of Canterlot High’s counterpart was also a princess was due to surprise the Crystal Prep students. Tartarus, she didn’t even think her own friends knew it either. “When you gave me a new book to talk with her last time you were here, she and I got to talking again. She asked me if I was planning on ever coming home.”

“And are you?” Princess Twilight asked excitedly, even as Sunset saw disappointed looks on the faces of her close friends at Canterlot High as they clued in to what Sunset was talking about.

“Only for short vacations, I think,” Sunset said, making sure to make it clear before misunderstandings could crop up. “Magic has cropped up in this world, partly because of me, partly because of the Sirens. I have a duty now to defend this world from the consequences, and also to make sure Starswirl didn’t dump any more of Equestria’s problems in this world.”

“Wait, what?” Lemon Zest butted in, “Sirens, like those wicked singing fishwomen from the Odyssey?”

“Something like that,” Sunset replied, hastily continuing, “I want to see my parents and my sister again, don’t get me wrong. But the Princess and I had a little argument about the Sirens, and, well…”

“Well what? Spit it out!” Princess Twilight said in an annoyed tone, as all the other students were engrossed in the sudden conversation. Twilight wasn’t normally as aggressive as she was being, but her ears had perked up at someone saying they had been arguing with Princess Celestia, and she just couldn’t help herself.

“I told her that if Starswirl was allowed to dump the Sirens with impunity into this world, and if it’s not a problem for me to stay here, then people from this world should be able to visit Equestria!” Sunset blurted out.

Sunset was beginning to get a sense of déjà vu much like the time everyone had inadvertently made comments relating to her turning into a demon, as once more everybody froze up. Then they all started speaking over each other.

“That’d be pretty co-“

“What, and turn into a big bad nihilistic demon like Sparkles did? That’d be so awes-“

“I’d like to be a tre-“

“Ohoho, I wonder what it’d be like designing clothes for pon-“

“Would I be a pony, or a griffon, or maybe a DRAGO-“

“Yes, because meddling with the forces of portals after Twilight already just about destroyed the world would be such a great id-“

“No.”

Despite the impressive amount of jabbering the other girls were doing, Princess Twilight found it easy to cut the conversation off. “That won’t be happening, Sunset Shimmer. There are too many things that can go wrong.”

Sunset shrugged. She had expected that comment. It was a good thing she had prepared for this. “That’s a shame then, Twilight. I had already discussed this with Princess Celestia and gotten her blessings to do this, even charge money for people to visit Equestria, and we both went over the many things that could go wrong and decided the benefits far outweighed the few possible problems that might happen.”

Seeing Princess Twilight go “Uh, uh, uh” was incredibly satisfying to Sunset. She had scored a bullseye in a way Crystal Prep’s Twilight could only dream of.

Princess Twilight gulped. The thought of going against Princess Celestia in anything seemed to easily override any concerns she had earlier. “OK Sunset,” She said, “But I’m not going to let you do this willy-nilly. Let’s negotiate.”

Even as the other girls were chattering with one another about the possibilities of visiting Equestria and supposedly becoming ponies, some less excited than others, Princess Twilight and Sunset Shimmer found themselves working out the terms.

“No more than four new people at a time through the portal, ten overall” Sunset Shimmer said. “I’ve studied cross-dimensional physics, and the portal should be able to handle that many at once.”

“Three people, and only one extra who has been through before on top of that for four total,” Twilight objected. “I don’t think you’re wrong with your calculations, but I want to err on the side of caution.”

Sunset wanted to make a snarky comment about her and caution, considering Twilight had apparently gotten caught in a time loop, but decided not to. “Three and two,” She bargained.

“Fine,” Twilight said in an exasperated voice, rolling her eyes. “But you have to give me their names as soon as you’ve determined who’s coming. If you’re going to go with this preposterous idea of extra-dimensional relations, I want to have their counterparts at the mirror portal when they come through, if I can find them. Great, I guess that means I’m going to have to find Trixie no doubt.” She rolled her eyes again, and Sunset couldn’t blame her if Equestria’s Trixie was anything like her Trixie, who was a nice girl but still rather boastful. “And when Pinkie Pie comes she has to be the only new person, the incidents that will surely come from your Pinkie and mine meeting will be too stressful for any other new ponies.”

Sunset was quick to agree with that. Pinkie and Pinkie was certain to test the wits of wherever the mirror was, be it in Canterlot, Ponyville or the Crystal Empire. “Once a week for thirty-six hours,” She stated. “School and work weekends line up on this side of the portal and in Equestria. Depart at mid-morning Saturday and come back late Sunday evening.”

Twilight wrinked her nose. “With that sort of timeline, they’ll miss doing all their homework.” Seeing Sunset’s frown, she sighed, “Fine, fine! I’ll help you chaperone the first few myself, but after that I intend to find others who I can trust to help, except for Pinkie of course. And you might have to chaperone them on your own! But your plot is gout if you slip up on any of them!” She stabbed her finger into Sunset’s chest a few times to be clear on the point.

“Er…” Sunset rubbed her head, placing the phrase that Twilight had just used, not having heard it used in such a long time. Deciding to stay on the better side of tact and not tell her what the human equivalent was, she said, “Alright. There may be some people who want to eventually live in Equestria, and perhaps ponies or griffons or other creatures who want to live here. The latter scenario is a long time in the making, none of us here are exactly government officials, but the human world is large enough nobody will question a few disappearances.”

“That’ll be for Princess Celestia and Luna to decide,” Twilight said, adopting a contemplating countenance. “You will be talking to Princess Celestia, won’t you be?” Her leery smile hinted that yes, Sunset Shimmer was going to have to talk to the Princess eventually, and Sunset had no chance of backing out of that inevitable meeting. Former mentor and former student would have to talk pony to pony once again.

“OK, OK!” Sunset held her palms up in surrender.

Princess Twilight frowned, “Now, since there is nobody who has already been to Equestria by yourself obviously, that means only three people can come through the portal the first time. Have you decided who to take yet?”

“Actually, I have,” Sunset smiled. “Given who they are, I think I’ll be able to leave them with you for the weekend, and talk to Princess Celestia right away.” Turning her head, she picked out the three people in question she had in mind.

Twilight’s mouth opened in surprise, eyes widened. “Oh,” She said. Well, she supposed she should have expected this as soon as Sunset had started talking about this mad mad mad scheme. “One last thing,” She said aloud. “I suppose if you’re coordinating all of this while I merely find ponies and occasionally chaperone, I guess you’re kind of starting a business, aren’t you?”

“I gueeeeeeeess,” Sunset responded, not quite certain where the Equestrian Twilight was going with this.

Twilight smirked, “So shouldn’t your business have a name?”

“Yeeeeees,” Sunset said, dragging her words out, all while panicking and trying to come up with something clever.

The seconds dragged by, and Twilight continued to poke and prod, “Well, what is it?”

“Give me a minute!” Sunset snapped, the mischievous look on Twilight’s face not happening. Huddling up to herself, feeling the smooth leather of her jacket under her hands, she thought about it. Then she had an epiphany. “Yes, I have it now.”

“And?”

“My business!” Sunset pointed her finger up to the heavens, declaring it for all to hear, “Will be known as Sunset’s Extradimensional Tourist Agency!”

There was silence. Then-

“You really should have gone with a professional consultant for a name,” Sugarcoat said.

“Yeah, what she said,” said Lemon Zest, still rocking her head to the beat of the tunes on her headphones.

Author's Note

I wonder how many people will be able to spot the joke (well, reference) in the story title.

I have a number of humans that I will definitely be doing, and the rest can come by general request. Most humans I don’t have a specific order I will do them in, though I intend to do a very slow-burning overall story arc to this. HOWEVER, I will cater to some extent depending on comments. If people want a fan favorite or whatever to show up right away, I can do that.

The ‘no more than three humans at a time’ rule serves two purposes. In-universe, it means that the ponies can keep a handle on whoever comes through the portal, especially if one of those cases happens to be Pinkie Pie. As an author, it means I don’t have to keep track of too many characters at a time, like this chapter where there are thirteen humans and a dog all at once and I feel like I have to give them all lines :pinkiecrazy:

Some changes that deviate from the end of Friendship Games or EG in general, mostly based on my personal preferences for how it should have turned out:

‘SciTwi’ never transferred to Canterlot High School. She did, however, go back into regular classes at Crystal Prep, making friends with the Shadow Five.

The time difference between Sunset Shimmer leaving Equestria and the first EG movie is 5 years, or two instances of ‘thirty moons’ passing. This is mostly just my headcanon about how Twilight shouldn’t have gotten her Cutie Mark, become Celestia’s student, done all her studies, then gone to Ponyville and done everything there in just two and a half years. Doubling it to five years sounds nicer in my head. Some of the dialogue in Friendship Games implies it really was only two and a half years, but it’s vague enough you can handwave it away (like Sunset Shimmer not knowing what the Friendship Games was not because she hasn’t been a human for four years but because she went elsewhere first before attending Canterlot High School).

Sunny Flare is nearly a blank slate. She has like three lines in the movie, one being ‘Seriously?’ and the other calling out to Principal Cinch when she tries to run away during Midnight Sparkle’s rampage. Hell, pretty much all the Shadow Five do, but Sugarcoat and Sour Sweet have pretty clear speech mannerisms, Indigo Zap is like Rainbow Dash on steroids, and Lemon Zest expresses a lot more personality through her mannerisms than her lines. I can work with those, but Sunny Flare has little to work with aside from general annoyance at Twilight, so I’ve made her basically with no quirks aside from a bit of a temper.

Also, since I haven’t watched anything past episode 13 of Season 5 (and episode 17 only just aired while writing this), this will probably break from canon with the second half of Season 5.

Twilight, Fluttershy and Spike, Part 1

“So you all know what to expect, right? We've made sure she's not around, too, right?"

"Yes Twilight, Pinkie's long gone. The receptionist at the train station verified she left earlier to visit her sister Maud."

"Good, good, I don't want Pinkie around throwing a Welcome to Ponyville party until we get people who won't be freaked out by her. Oh, I hope I’ve left enough time for the Starswirl the Bearded museum on the itinerary!”

“Erm, Twilight?”

“Yes Twilight, we know. You’ve only gone through the checklist five times today!”

“You don’t understand! If we take too much time and they go back through the portal later than planned, they might oversleep once they get home and that would mean they’d miss school!”

“Um, excuse me…”

“Well, what happens if somebody comes through the portal and they remain a human? What then, Twilight?”

“Er, Twili-“ The speaker stopped short, seeing a few stray hairs in the Princess’s mane defy gravity and start poking upwards, and glared at the other creature in the room. “Don’t set her off, or I swear, I’ll do it Spike!”

Spike swallowed, a visible gulp showing for a split second as his throat bulged. He didn’t want to be subjected to The Stare.

“Ehehe. What then? It’d be rude to send them back, but they’d be so huge compared to us, and I don’t know what to doooooo!”

Fluttershy and Spike both turned to glance at Twilight Sparkle, who was beginning to crone on a mad song, wings spread out and beginning to gnaw on one hoof. The two looked back at each other, and began to take counteraction.

Or at least, they would have, until the mirror that Twilight had set up shimmered, and out came Sunset Shimmer in pony form.

“Oh Twilight!” Sunset wailed, her mane somehow looking even worse than Twilight’s. “It’s horrible back there I tell you, absolut- what in God’s name happened to you, Twilight?!”

“God?” Fluttershy asked.

“Sorry, human thing, think like Celestia but more hands-off and usually thought to be male,” Sunset said, her attention diverted from the purple Princess Pony whose perplexing prosaic perditions was prodigiously powerful enough to peel paper off the palace walls. Let it be said that Twilight Sparkle should never be allowed to compose poetry. “You must be Fluttershy, right?”

“Um…yes…” Fluttershy said, hiding behind her mane. She had only once caught a glimpse of Sunset Shimmer, and it had hardly left the best impression. The yellow-furred unicorn had been running through the halls of the Crystal Palace at night with a cloak on, the Element of Magic in her grasp. Even though she was reformed, she still found herself scared.

“Oh, sorry,” Sunset chuckled nervously, “It’s a little weird for me to know who you are, I guess? But you do look amazingly like my Fluttershy, even down to the mannerisms and shyness and, and there I go again.”

A yelp interrupted the awkward conversation before it had a chance to reach an awkwardness singularity that would herald the end of ponykind. “SPIKE!” Twilight Sparkle yelled, mane and body fur drenched in water, “What was that for?!” If one was to listen carefully, they could hear her molars grinding together.

“You were doing it again,” Spike said, setting down a bucket he had had to the side filled with water just in case. He sighed, “Remember Twilight, you’re a Princess now, you can’t get into a panic in front of other ponies, especially not like that.”

“Uh…wow,” Sunset said, wondering how things would have turned out if she had known Twilight was so neurotic back when she was the alpha bitch of Canterlot High School. She probably would have chosen her words more carefully when confronting the girl until she was a bundle of nerves prone to being set off at the slightest spark.

With those words, Twilight finally noticed Sunset Shimmer’s presence. “You’re here!” She said, moving quicker than Fluttershy or Spike had thought possible of her, as she pounced at Sunset, hugging her. “And you’re a pony again, too!”

Sunset wriggled her nose. She had forgotten what wet horse smelled like. It was a smell maybe only Applejack or Fluttershy could love.

“Well, well, it’s too bad we're not allowed cameras, or else this would be perfect for blackmail.”

In a sense, it was a good thing that she was buried under Princess Twilight Sparkle, because as surprised as she was at that moment, Sunset suspected she would have been airborne in a way that would make most Pegasi envious.

“Now now Spike, that’s not very nice,” said the next visitor through the portal, and Sunset craned her head around to verify her theory was true.

Sunset sighed a breath of relief. The Human Fluttershy had become a pony on stepping through the portal and into Equestria. She looked somewhat different from Equestria’s Fluttershy, based off what she had briefly seen so far, a little bit shorter and younger looking, and a different mane style, but still. Fluttershy was a pony, and Sunset wouldn’t have to refund everybody’s money.

Well, it was hardly extortion, much as she wished to. Too much and if Princess Celestia heard about it, she might call off the deal, and then Sunset wouldn't have an excuse to come back to her first home. "Why did you have to teach Spike how to use a computer anyways," Sunset grumbled softly to herself so the Twilight from Crystal Prep wouldn't hear.

“This is really weird,” Said Science Twilight, lifting up a hoof and examining it. “Sunset said we could do this, so let’s see,” She said, attempting to shift weight to her back hooves and stand up on her hind legs, only to trip backwards, “Woah!”

“Watch it Twilight!” Said the human world’s Spike, now changed into a dragon, as he caught her before her head slammed against the floor. Looking back and forth between the two Spikes, Sunset noted the formerly canine Spike was over a good foot taller than the native Spike. Dogs had a shorter lifespan than dragons by several magnitudes, so canine Spike was undoubtedly older in relativistic terms, which translated over past the portal.

“This is still so trippy,” Equestria’s Spike said, crossing his arms. “So that’s what I’ll look like in a few years, eh? Rarity won’t know what hit her.”

Princess Twilight rolled her eyes as she extracted herself from Sunset’s limbs, “Sure, Casanova.” Turning her attention to her dimensional opposite, who had sat down on the floor on her plot, desperate for sweet sweet stability, she said, “So, uh, other me, how you’ve been?” Slowly looking her over, she noted that, as expected, Science Twilight was only a unicorn and not an alicorn.

“Just f-f-fine,” The unicorn Twilight said, teeth chattering at her near-date with the crystal floor. Taking a couple of deep breaths, she calmed down, and started talking again, “Lemon Zest actually convinced me to go out to a concert. Some of the things they can do with synesthesia is so trippy, but ugh, too many drug-pushers there! Shiny would kidnap me and lock me in a nuclear bunker to keep me safe if he ever knew about that,” Wrinkling her nose, she looked around the room, eyes wide at the sheer amounts of crystal. Galloping over to an open window, she peered out at the town of Ponyville from up high. “So this is Equestria. I saw brief glimpses of it through the portals at the Friendship Games, but being here is something else!”

“Told you so,” Sunset butted into the conversation, looking smug. It would have made a better impression if it weren’t for her messy hair. Thankfully for her, though the mirror portal was used for travelling dimensions, it could still be used as a reflective surface, and exercising magical muscles through deliberate will that instinctive use of had faded over time, her horn glowed a soft gold as she straightened out her mane and body fur with magic. For good measure, she wringed out the small amounts of water Princess Twilight had gotten on her.

“What did you tell her, anyways?” Alicorn Twilight asked, eyebrows furled as she investigated every inch of her counterpart, surveying her in the name of magical research. Sunset thanked her lucky graces she had brought along Science Twilight, because her Fluttershy would have been a nervous wreck by now if Twilight had decided to inspect her instead. “You did tell her we don’t eat meat here, right?”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “That, and all sorts of things. I even set up a mandatory lecture for people to attend before I would allow them to come to Equestria.” Her eyes widened as she began to flashback, and she started shaking just like Crystal Prep’s Twilight. “Speaking of which, all the students at Canterlot and Crystal Prep are crazy!”

“Er, we weren’t that ba-“

“That’s not a very nice thing to say, Sunset!” Princess Twilight scolded her friend, though she had vague memories of saying something similar a long time ago. “Whatever do you mean by that?”

The bright-coloured unicorn managed to stop trembling long enough to say, “Do you remember when I estimated I’d get a few dozen people interested in coming over?” A nod of the head prodded her to continue. “Well, I might have been a liiiiittle conservative in my estimates, and since so many people attended, I had to run more than one lecture.”

“How many?” Princess Twilight’s tone was flat.

“Just about everyone came out!” Sunset hollered, letting her nerves loose in a comical mirror of what Princess Twilight had been going through before anybody had come through the portal. “Most of the teachers, basically all the students, even some of the alumni who were around for the Fall Formal and Battle of the Bands came! Even most of Crystal Prep showed up. I asked people why they showed up, I thought most of them wanted to be able to learn a little bit of magic or be able to fly, and some of them did, but most of them just wanted to experience what it’d be like to be magical fricking ponies!”

Princess Twilight looked to her counterpart, only to receive a ‘It’s your responsibility now’ look that was universal even when accounting for the change from a primate form to that of an equine. Sighing, she went over and grasped Sunset in her hooves again. “Sunset, it’s OK,” Twilight said, attempting to calm her friend down even as she was mentally rescheduling all her weekends for the next year to deal with the influx of human-ponies. “They probably just think the idea sounds neat, and for most of them it would be a sort of exotic vacation, like if we were to go to Prance or the Griffon Kingdom.” Secretly, she kept the thought to herself that some of them would probably turn out to be griffons or zebras or even minotaurs. That was a bridge to be crossed later, however.

Sunset choked out a sob, then got a control on her emotions. “Thanks Twilight,” She sniffled a bit, “I just, I had memories of how I was treated in the school before the Sirens came, and I didn’t want to disappoint people and have them hate me again. Kind of silly of me, wouldn’t you say?”

Princess Twilight just pet Sunset a bit, all while Science Twilight looked on, a little bit envious of the friendship the two of them shared, one she was only beginning to develop with her classmates at Crystal Prep, and also a little bit embarrassed to see such an intimate scene.

Then the Princess' eyes wandered, and caught sight of Spike and his counterpart. Sighing, she turned back to the two unicorns. "OK, this is going to get confusing quick if we don't clear this up right away. We can't leave with two Twilights, two Spikes and two Fluttershys. We might have an idea of who we're referring to each time, but I don't want somepony on the street wandering why you're getting called Twilight."

"So a different name then?" The other Twilight asked. "How about, um, Sparks?"

"Yeah, no." Princess Twilight shot that idea down quickly. "Even a name close to that would be suspicious. I have a spell ready that will change the colouration of your fur and hair, and I'm thinking something darker would do for you. How about, hmm...Midnight?"

The other Twilight froze for a second before beginning to tremble, and Sunset's eyes widened. As the brightly-coloured mare moved to comfort her fellow visitor, Twilight was quick to apologise. "Sorry, sorry, sorry!...Was it something I said?"

"Yes," Sunset bluntly said as the unicorn Twilight slowly began to calm down under her steady hooves. "That name has a certain meaning for her already, one she doesn't respond well to. Maybe...Moonlight would be better?"

"Of course, of course!" Twilight bobbed her head, happy to agree with Sunset. As much as she had come out of her shell over the last few years (much like Spike had done so literally), it also had brought out her inner empath. It hurt her to realise she had hurt another pony, however unintentional.

Moondancer was enough of a lesson for a lifetime.

“Oh! You don’t have a Cutie Mark?”

All attempts at further conversation on the science and magic nerds’ side of the room was halted, as three heads turned around over, looking past where the smaller native Spike was attempting to get the elder Spike to continue standing on two legs into dropping down on all fours, where the two Fluttershys were.

“Uh, no. Sunset did tell us what they were, though. What does yours mean?”

“It means I have a special connection with animals, and can talk to them.”

“Wow,” The younger Fluttershy said wistfully, sitting down, head resting on her front hooves. “Talk to them like they say words, or that you just have a deeper understanding of their feelings?”

“Both,” Said Equestria’s Fluttershy, doting on her doppelganger. It wasn’t very often she was able to talk with somepony whom had the same interests as her. That it was herself, just from a different dimension didn't really matter much. "Twilight tells me you volunteered at an animal shelter, is that true?"

The temporarily-equine Fluttershy nodded, similarly happen to have find someone of like heart.

"Well, I think Twilight wanted to take you three on a tour. I hope we can stop by my place, I take care of many animals here."

"That would be wonderful!"

“Well,” Sunset Shimmer said to Princess Twilight, turning their attention away from the two Fluttershys as they both looked over and noted Twilight of Crystal Prep, now Moonlight, also lacked a Cutie Mark, “That’s interesting, I guess.” The two of them looked at one another again, and both came to the same conclusion.

“RESEARCH!” The two cried in unison.

Moonlight slowly backed into a wall. Walking backwards on four hooves came quick when dire times called for it, and she began to regret ever leaving the safe confines of her laboratory in Crystal Prep.

Spike, the ever-so-faithful assistant of Princess Twilight Sparkle, and secretly an undercover agent raised, educated, trained and given orders by Princess Celestia to do everything possible to make sure Twilight Sparkle never succumbed to some of her more neurotic impulses, failing only once over an incident with a doll, held his finger up as his new dragon friend was asking another question about this wide wide world of Equestria. Pulling out a checklist, he defused the crisis in process as he went through the items on the list, “Introduce one another, check. Take a tour of Ponyville, oh Twilight, we’ll be late if we don’t leave in the next thirty seconds!”

It may have not been enough for Sunset Shimmer, but it was sufficient to stop Princess Twilight in her tracks. And as much as Sunset would deny it with a red face, where Princess Twilight Sparkle went, Sunset Shimmer followed.

“Oh my,” Said the younger Fluttershy, as they turned the bend of the road. As the result of a cosmetic spell that Princess Twilight had pulled out, this Fluttershy was now coloured in a rich tone of red that Princess Twilight had matched rather close to her friend Applejack’s big brother. Twilight had wanted to call her 'Butterfly', but Sunset had nixed it as sounding too close to Fluttershy's name, as well as Fluttershy's own Cutie Mark literally being three butterflies. As a compromise, they had come to the name of Monarch. It would be very difficult to mistake Monarch for Fluttershy when coupled with the different heights, apparent age, cheekbone depth and general muscle tone of the two. “It’s a lovely cottage you have there.”

“Why thank you! I just know you’ll love meeting some of the animals I have here. I know you said you had an Angel Bunny, I wasn’t too surprised after hearing your Twilight had a dog named Spike,” Said the elder Fluttershy. Normally she was rather withdrawn when it came to meeting new ponies, but when the pony you were meeting was you from another dimension, you really didn’t have to worry too much about it, right?

Sometimes, Fluttershy’s logic was just a little weird. Probably from living next to the Everfree Forest, where who knows what kind of plants that have psychedelic compounds in could be growing. Bless her little pony heart.

“These are really good!” Spike said, trotting by his master-turned pony on all fours as he chomped on a ruby. “They taste a lot like sugar!”

“And how would you know what sugar tastes like, mister?” Moonlight interrogated him, still finding it weird that she was eye level with him for once. “As far as I recall, I never gave you anything with sugar in it. It’ll rot your teeth and gums, you know!”

“Aw, come on Twi-er, Moonlight,” Spike whined, as he used the name the group had decided to give the human world’s Twilight to avoid confusion and also assure nobody who overheard them might actually take a closer look at Moonlight.

The recolour spell the Princess had given her wasn’t quite as much a change as Monarch had gone through, getting rid of the streaks of pink in her mane for a uniform purple, and darkening the shade of her coat to a more fascinating midnight bluish-purple. Although her clothes had disappeared through the portal (and Sunset had thought of that, and kept a spare change of clothing in the event they were somehow all naked coming back to their own world), she had kept her glasses. With that, her younger body and being just a unicorn, it was possible to tell a family resemblance between the two Twilights, but only with some scrutiny.

It had taken her several minutes to calm down from her freak out once she realised that she was practically naked. Even though Sunset Shimmer had told everybody at the audience about the portal and its strange adherence to the clothing customs of each world, it still didn’t feel like a possibility until it had actually happened.

“Don’t ‘come on’ me, Klaus!” Although Sunset had vetoed Twilight's names for her and Monarch before coming up with better names, nobody had thought of one for her dog-turned dragon. After contemplating it for a little, Moonlight had been a rather fitting name for herself, as she was moonlighting from her regular studies to do advanced studies on magic. Picking a random feature on a canine body, she had come up with a name for her Spikey-wikey that sounded close to ‘claw’. With a vicious grin, Moonlight realised exactly what to do, “You know, now that you can think and talk on a sapient level, it means I can teach you all the joys of proper hygiene and help you brush your teeth!”

Klaus yelped, standing up on his hind legs again as Spike did normally, “I’ll be good, I’ll be good! Lemon Zest gave me a couple of pieces of candy when she was picking you up for the concert!” He confessed.

Moonlight grinded her teeth, finding the extra molars of an equine mouth rather useful for accomplishing that. She would be having words with Lemon Zest over her choice of ideal food for a dog alright. “Then that’s alright, Klaus. Just, sugar can be bad for you. It tastes good, but it can hurt your body.”

“Eh, he’ll be fine,” Spike said walking side by side with them, as he ate his own emerald, saving the prized baby blue sapphire of his collection for last. “Dragons regrow their teeth.”

"Not...helping..." Moonlight grit her teeth even harder.

Over to the other side of the motley crew, Sunset Shimmer and Princess Twilight Sparkle were speaking quietly with one another.

“So you got Pinkie Pie out of Ponyville?” Sunset asked. “Smart idea.”

“Yes. I didn’t really know your Pinkie for all too long, but the Pinkie here will throw a party at the drop of a hat. Monarch would have been terrified to be exposed to Equestria like that.”

Sunset rolled her eyes at the use of aliases for the two humans and canine that had accompanied her to Equestria as they walked over the short bridge, steadily getting used to the cantering pace on four hooves that had once been the only type of walking she was familiar with. “I suppose. One of her animals died in the shelter, so it’s a good thing this happened when it did. See? She looks right at home there.” As soon as Fluttershy and Monarch had come in to the front of the cottage, the former had been introducing the latter to many of her animals. A white-furred bunny familiar to all from both dimensions had hopped up and, with a little bit of prodding from Fluttershy, jumped into her red-furred counterparts’ legs, where he was now enjoying a good deal of pampering.

“I remember that day,” Moonlight said as she trotted over, placing herself next to Twilight. None of the three realised the unintentional irony of Moonlight sitting next to Twilight next to Sunset. “Sour Sweet was actually nice for the whole day after learning that. Huh, I wonder what she thinks about Equestria.” The three started eavesdropping on what wasn’t exactly a private scene.

“Oh my, that three-headed dog sounds really interesting. I certainly wouldn’t mind having one at home to play with.”

“On second thought,” Moonlight said, raising a hoof to adjust her glasses and cursing her inexperience with the less nimble limb endings, “Perhaps we should take that tour through Ponyville next.”

“Yes, we wouldn’t want to end up with Flutt-, er Monarch bringing home a Cerberus. The first thing it’d probably do is to break our new statue. Er, no offense,” Sunset rubbed her head as she looked over at Moonlight. Inside though, she was thinking, Yes! Finally I get to do that to someone else!

Moonlight rolled her eyes. “None taken.”

Author's Note

Will somepony get their new Cutie Mark before their trip is up? Maybe :scootangel:

I'm not too much a fan of the alternate names myself, but I'd drive myself nuts if I had to keep differentiating between counterparts through other indicators. Fortunately, not EVERY human will have a pony counterpart that Princess Twilight can find, but still.

Unfortunately, while this is a quick update, don’t expect another one for a few days at least. Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up soon so I’ll be busy. That, and I’ll probably be writing multiple chapters concurrently. If a scene doesn’t quite fit with one set of characters it might fit with another. Same with jokes.

As a fanfic writer, I have sometimes used the greater freedom of being able to edit my work even after being published to more than add a line or two here and there in earlier chapters and outright put in whole new scenes. If I do end up doing this at all, I'll make a note of it in the author notes, where the scene starts and ends, and what date I added it in.

Twilight, Fluttershy and Spike, Part 2

“It’s a hole,” Moonlight declared.

“It’s more than a hole!” Spike exclaimed with a passion none of the visitors had heard from him until now. “This is where Twilight and I lived for over two years after we moved here from Canterlot!”

“In a hole?” Moonlight asked.

“No, not a hole, and stop doing that,” said Twilight, a little annoyed at how much of a sarcastic streak her counterpart suddenly appeared to be showing. “It used to be a giant tree until it was blown up.”

“There are a few special species of giant trees in Equestria that can have its insides hollowed out and still live,” Sunset explained, being the only born-pony alive to have spent a great deal of time in the human world, and thus understand the magi-biological differences between the worlds. As a result, she had moved to clear up the confusion Sunset knew was certain to result in the human-turned-ponies at the idea of literally living in a tree. “It’s not the cheapest form of shelter, but a number of souls, ponies and otherwise, like the idea.”

Both Moonlight and Monarch blinked. “That sounds amazing,” Monarch finally said. “Do you, um, have any pictures of it, or any other giant trees around?”

Twilight paused, and thought about it. “There are some pictures I keep back at the palace. Er, Zecora does live in a tree house as well, but it’s in the Everfree Forest, and there’s just enough risk of going into the Everfree that I refuse to take the three of you there. Remind me when we return to the palace then and I can show you.”

Klaus ambled towards the edge of the hole, and took a sniff. “Yep, there was a tree here alright,” He said. “The faint smell of paper, pony and, um, birds?”

“Several birds nested in the tree, and one of the owls stayed full-time,” Twilight confirmed. “I’m actually surprised you can still smell that, it’s been several months since Tirek’s attack.”

“Who was this Tirek, anyways? You told me briefly about him when we were fighting the Sirens, but all I really got was that he was another of the many creatures Starswirl and the Princesses banished or imprisoned and all seemed to return on their thousandth anniversary.”

Twilight ignored the biting comment at the end. Sunset may have been reformed, but she was still a high school student, and from the little that Twilight Sparkle had seen of human culture, sarcasm was a big thing. “He was a centaur whom was able to steal the magic from sapient creatures. He started with earth ponies, then pegasi, then unicorns and finally stole Discord’s magic. I managed to stop him with help from the other princesses, but he destroyed my home before we could seal him away again.” A few tears dropped down the size of her muzzle. “He imprisoned my friends before the end, taunting me as he forced me to trade my power for their safety.”

“Oh no,” Monarch gasped, hoof at her mouth. “That must have been awful. I had my magic taken away from me once, and I don’t even normally use it. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to confront somebody who went mad on power and threatened to destroy everything towards his own selfish ends, and feeling powerless.” Her eyes widened, and then her ears drooped. Slightly blushing, she offered a weak apologetic grin to Moonlight. “Er, no offense.”

Moonlight rolled her eyes again, getting the feeling this was going to become a running gag. “None taken,” She grunted, repressing a growl.

The three foreigners and one expat gazed over the hole, wondering about what once was.

“Huh,” Spike said, looking at a small pocketwatch (fireproof, of course) he carried around on his arm. “Time’s up Twilight, the train’s going to be here soon.”

“Oh, there’s a train? What’s it like? Diesel, a diesel-electric generator or purely electrical?” Monarch asked as Twilight turned herself around, leading the rest of the group down one of Ponyville’s side streets. Despite Monarch’s timid personality, something about the magical land of Equestria had done her good, bringing out her more inquisitive side.

Twilight wrinkled her nose, having to actually think about the question. She knew what the answer was, but despite the time she had spent in the world, her and Monarch were operating on entirely different spectrums of technology. She had only an elementary knowledge of electricity, mostly in the realm of weather and electro-thaumato-magnetic interference. There were some devices that ran off of electricity, but most everypony used devices running off the ambient magic. And what in Tartarus was diesel? “A steam-driven engine with its source of heat fueled by magically-charged gems, state of the art. It used to be run by horsepower, which some of the frontier lines still do I think.”

“Horsepower?” Moonlight made to adjust her glasses again, slowly getting used to her hooves. “Please don’t tell me Equestria runs on outdated units like gallons and feet. Or hooves, I guess,” It still felt a little bit surreal to her, but her equine form was growing on her.

“Not horsepower as in a unit of power, Moonlight,” Sunset corrected her from behind her, finding the sensation of dewy grass being trampled under her hooves a nostalgic one. “It’s literally run by horses. Or was, I guess.” Taking a deep sniff of the wet ground, she didn’t notice Moonlight stopped on the road until she ran right into the mare’s rear end.

“Ow! What the hay?!”

Twilight paused, turning around at the sudden cry, and smirked at the sight of the two unicorns tangled up, each trying to extricate their two sets of limbs, a red flush settling in on Sunset’s face as she appeared to have gotten an unwanted look at the other’s privates (Moonlight lucked out in having a far darker coat). Both Sunset and her own counterpart had annoyed Twilight earlier with their sarcasm, so she felt it only right to do the same to them. She quickly cast aside the role she had fancied herself in as a goodwill ambassador to the humans of Canterlot High. Instead, she teased the two, “My my Sunset, you moved fast. I see Moonlight is already going native?”

Two indignant ponies both suddenly found the ability to untangle themselves, and each sprung up to their hooves, even as Monarch and Fluttershy had stopped behind them, shocked at the Princess’ crude language.

“Wha?! No! That wasn’t what it was like!“ Sunset shouted, before realising she was drawing onlookers, and quickly hid under her mane, not unlike a certain Pegasus still following behind her. “Erk!”

“B-b-b-buh?” Moonlight’s response was rather less comprehensible. "Horses pulling trains over fixed rails instead of free movement?" Then it became obvious her meltdown was from something else altogether.

Twilight snickered. A short time ago, she had realised that after becoming a Princess, she had unconsciously toned down her sense of humour, sticking to only the occasional dry wit. What once could have been forgiven as an idle slip of the tongue could now be the prompt for war. The banter with the Canterlot High School students (and one dog) this morning had helped her to loosen up just enough to crack a joke in public, and a lewd one at that. She still had it in her, it seemed.

“Huh,” Sunset remarked to herself as the train began its last turn on its approach into Canterlot, the single mountainous spire reaching to touch the heavenly body of one of its rulers growing every second. It had been a long time since she had seen the palace, having left nearly a decade ago. The one time she had returned to Equestria before this morning, her means of dimensional translocation had been moved north to the Crystal Empire.

“What is it?” Twilight asked, her throat dry from pointing out all the various landmarks on the Friendship Express route between Ponyville and Canterlot (what young soul thirsty for knowledge wouldn’t want to know all the riveting details about how that specific mountain cliff if observed at just the right angle at just the right time of day cast a shadow that looked like Old Neighro’s Cutie Mark?), but still more than willing to prompt a conversation.

“That…felt a lot shorter than I was expecting,” Sunset admitted. “I felt like it was going to be an overnight trip to Canterlot. Like, you know, that old Christrot novel about the train, but with more pastries.”

“Nonsense,” Twilight waved a hoof at that. “Maybe if you were taking the old trotting trail through the north face, there’s an interesting story about that really, there was a time when Clover the Clever accidentally blew up the mountain face and buried the old old trail, it all started whe-“

“Twilight, remember, former student of Celestia,” Sunset said, “I’ve heard all the same stories from her. Besides,” She motioned her head at the other ponies and dragons in the cabin, “Not only are we finally here, I think the last thing they need is more exposition on how earth ponies had to trot over the mountain before the tunnel was excavated.”

Twilight looked a bit sheepish as she finally saw everyone else had dozed off, blissfully unaware they had arrived at their destination. Even Moonlight, whom Twilight had expected to be as interested as she herself was in the landscape, had drifted off into Luna’s realm.

“So now that we’re here,” Sunset continued, “Where’s our first stop? It’s been ages since I’ve been here. It’ll take me a few trips before I’m comfortable finding my way around again.”

“I’ve already got the whole itinerary planned out!” Twilight hopped up, more excited as she got into her Element of Planning, her horn alight as a scroll unfurled to reveal a sheet of paper several hooves long. “I figured quality is more important than quantity, so I kept it down to the Museum of Pre-Discordian History, the Museum of Star Swirl the Bearded’s Collected Artifacts, the Museum of Equestrian-Seyrie Lione Relations, Princess Celestia’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Muse-“

“Twilight,” Sunset interrupted her, “Is there a single thing on there that’s not a museum?”

The Princess hmphed, puffing her cheeks up. “Just because I like knowledge doesn’t mean you should pigeonhole me like that! I have the statues of the Founders of Equestria on the list, as well as the Canterlot Royal Library.” Sunset just looked at her, keeping an idle gaze, and Twilight let out an ‘erk’. “Too much, maybe?”

“Twilight, you have to remember they’re teenagers,” Sunset reminded her. “Even I’m technically a teenager as a human and I’m ten years older than them, thanks to however the portal works. I don’t know what you were like when you were younger, but most of them won’t be interested in coming here just to see museums.”

Twilight sagged, her head slumped back down on her seat. “What do you suggest, then?”

Sunset hummed softly, the noise drowned out by the brakes of the train getting louder as they closed in on the train station, then said, “The groups I’m bringing are small enough to tailor it to each person. A couple of museums still works with Moonlight here, although I have no idea what Klaus might like. For Monarch, if I recall correctly, now is the perfect time of year to visit the Lunar Observatory, is it not? Hey, don’t feel too bad, Princess,” Sunset grabbed Twilight’s shoulder, curling her lower limb around in the best attempt at replicating a squeeze without a hand. “I get you wanted to show us all your favorite spots, and I appreciate you helping me out for the first little while, but not everybody shares your interest.”

“Thanks Sunny,” Twilight murmured in appreciation.

At long last, the train finally came to a complete stop. Sunset had to admit, while Equestria was technologically behind the human world, magic had many things beat. For example, there was no squeal of tires on the tracks as the brakes were applied, thanks to selective soundproofing magic on the cabins that filtered out noises like that. That all her other companions continued dozing through was a testament to magic’s efficacy here.

“Knowing that, what’s first on the list then, if you don’t take longer to revise the list than the amount of time we actually have available?” Sunset teased the Princess, knowing how obsessed she was when it came to things like that. Her and Moonlight, it appeared, were the same in that regard.

Twilight cleared her throat, “Actually, I was thinking about going to see my parents,” She admitted.

“Night Light and Twilight Velvet, right?” Moonlight asked, startling the Princess and the mare who leaped through a mirror both as she groaned, stirring from her sitting position. Although there were a few ponies whom sat on their plots in imitation of the bipedal minotaurs, Sunset suspected it was going to be a common thing with humans coming through the portal.

“Yes,” Twilight confirmed, “I suppose it makes sense that counterparts would have the same parents. You have an older brother named Shining Armor, too?”

Moonlight affirmed a yes to the latter question with a nod, before she spoke up again, “My father lost most of the use of his voice a couple of years ago. He can’t strain his throat too much, so he mainly whispers in conversation.” The midnight-blue unicorn sighed wistfully, “It was one of the reasons I was actually overjoyed when I found out magic was real and had my Icarus moment. I was hoping it might be able to help cure him,” She admitted.

Sunset found herself slack-jawed for a few moments at the frank admittance of a close family member’s illness, but picked herself up. Empathy was a muscle that she had exercised heartily over the last year, and it had metamorphosed from a skeletal muscle to a smooth one, instinctively beating in her every moment of every day. “Magic is capable of healing most illnesses over here,” Sunset said, “Although there are illnesses that are magical in nature. Those ones are a lot more difficult to cure, but we figured out magical inoculation after some time.”

“What about old age, then?” Moonlight questioned, pointedly not even attempting subtlety.

“There have been more than a few attempts, but most of them get shot down due to bioethics. The few that do make it further usually have never had pleasant or even neutral results,” Twilight grimaced. “There’s always somepony wanting power for its own sake, and longevity is usually a means to an end.”

“Somebody,” Moonlight idly corrected, having yet to fall in with the social paradigm of the wide, wide world of Equestria she had fallen down the rabbit hole into.

“Somepony,” Twilight snarked back with amusement, “Somebody, yes. There are immortals in this world, but they are usually the physical embodiment of some force of nature.”

“Sunset mentioned that,” Moonlight said thoughtfully, “I honestly can’t believe somebody raises the Sun and the Moon manually. How does the planet not burn out from the sudden acceleration of bodies orbiting it, or the tidal waves not destroy all coast-faring civilisation? For that matter, how does the sun, a distinctly heavier body, orbit the Earth? What happens to all the space rocks orbiting the Earth in the Lagrangian points? If the Earth itself doesn’t rotate, then the liquid-solid magma core won’t generate a magnetic field sufficient enough to deflect solar winds, so how are you not all dead from the lack of atmosphere or solar radiation yet?”

The Princess just sat there, eyes glazed over as the questions went through one ear and out the other.

“I advise you just not to think about it,” Sunset told Moonlight. “When I initially came to Earth, I had the granny of all culture shocks. As I studied physics and astrodynamics, I realised it all fit together, but here? Different dimension, different rules, even if there seems to be a weird symmetry of counterparts.”

“Wait, what?” Twilight asked, breaking out of her daze. “What do you mean, weird symmetry?”

“Well…” Sunset trailed off, tapping her chin with her hoof. Idly, she realised she truly had gone native in the human world, trying to do human gestures here and going with the next best option. “For example, the famous poet Amaredeus was a German composer named Mozart, and the writer Sheep-spear was a famous playwright known as Shakespeare, commonly referred to as the Bard.”

“Really?” Moonlight asked, surprised.

“Yes, really,” Sunset replied.

What she didn’t expect was for Moonlight to curl up, hiding her head in between her front hooves, “But if that’s the case, is there really anything such as free will,” She murmured to herself, “Or is everything truly predetermined as per Laplace’s old thought experiment, with different universes merely acting out slightly different variations of how reality might exist and act, and old Laplace’s demon is sitting above there and chuckling at all of us mortals?” As she continued talking to herself, her mane began to lose its straightness, several hairs snapping out of place to stick skywards in defiance of gravity, and her eyes widened in size even as her pupils narrowed. Gnawing on a hoof, she giggled. “Well, I suppose they can’t be truly correlated. Sure, my mom and dad got together here too, but at least Shining Armor and Cadence didn’t get together here, right? Right?!”

Fluttershy squeaked, and Sunset was suddenly aware that everyone in the cabin was now awake. The silence was the worst part, especially as Twilight did nothing to head off Moonlight’s madness, like say, lie her flanks off.

Even if this wasn’t the same Twilight Sparkle that he usually dealt with, Spike leaped into action. Utilising the full extent of his training from Princess Celestia, he turned to his new friend slash counterpart, the somewhat larger Klaus, and asked, “So why do dogs sniff other dog’s butts?” He made a note to himself to get the other dog-dragon some training in case his master went off the deep end again.

“Spike!” Both Twilight and Moonlight shouted, their scarily synchronised cries serving to snap the latter out of her funk.

“So Shiny’s wedding here was interrupted by an invasion, of all things?” Moonlight asked as they walked the paved streets, noting how she could feel the difference in the surface as she trotted along. Of all the grounds she had felt thus far with hooves, healthy green grass was simply the most divine.

“Yes, but it was repelled,” Twilight answered, wisely choosing not to mention the fact the invaders were all insectoid in appearance and that they were defeated by love. She didn’t want to set Moonlight off again. Moving over slightly, she whispered to Fluttershy, “Was that really what I look like when I’m in one of my episodes?”

“Um, well, your hair doesn’t look quite nearly as bad,” Fluttershy said, trying to put a positive spin on the question.

“Great, just great,” Twilight remarked sarcastically, rolling her eyes, before noticing Fluttershy fidgeting a bit. “Sorry Fluttershy, I didn’t mean to bite at you.”

“It’s alright, Twilight,” the Pegasus reassured her.

“Thanks, Fluttershy. You’re a really good friend,” Twilight said. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she pointed a hoof at an indistinct building to her left, “Alright everypony, that’s the old Canterlot creamery, where Mareapolitan Ice Cream was supposedly invented.”

Monarch came up, scrunching her nose in a cute sort of way, “You mean a mixture of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream, right?”

“Yes,” Twilight affirmed. “What?” She asked at the weirded out looks on Monarch and Moonlight.

“Er, it’s nothing,” Monarch said, casting her gaze out at the sky. Pointing her hoof in a random direction, she asked, “Ooooh, what’s that?”

Twilight recognised the distracting action for what it was, but let it slide. Turning her attention, she looked out at the horizon. “That’s the Olde Canterlot Inn,” She said of the four-story building Monarch had motion at. “It’s covered in a very light pink paint over its sandstone that was supposed to be a homage to Princess Celestia, though they’ve since used darker shades. It was the site of the peace treaty negotiations between Equestria and the Griffin Empire three hundred years ago,” She added.

“It was also the site of Custard’s last stand, too,” Sunset piped up, “You can’t forget that too.”

Twilight winced, preferring to continue walking away from the inn into the residential neighborhoods. “Yes, that too.”

"Custard's last stand?” Moonlight’s ears were perked up in surprise, “You mean like General Cu-“

“Yes, exactly like him,” Sunset said, “Except Custard was one of the Royal Chefs. He threw a fit and holed up in the Inn with some of his apprentices after Celestia requested he dip some of his pastries into chocolate fondue instead of how he normally made them, drizzling custard on them.”

Moonlight and Monarch both came to a stop again.

“Yeah,” Sunset rolled her eyes. If she had been bipedal, she would have shrugged her shoulders and threw up her arms right about now. “Living in both worlds, I can tell you right now, ponies are far more likely to become hysterical and overreact to minor things, so don’t be surprised if it happens while you’re here.”

“The horror, the horror,” Twilight muttered under her breath as three mares who made their livings working with flowers came to mind.

The five ponies and two whelps passed the time with idle chit-chat, Sunset reminiscing a little and exchanging more tidbits about her culture shock, until the seven came to a stop at a household.

“I already had Spike send a scroll to my parents that I would be coming over today with visitors,” Twilight mentioned as she raised a hoof to knock on the door, “But I didn’t mention precisely who you were. That’s…not exactly something you just say in a letter.”

“I suppose,” Moonlight conceded, ears perked again as she could hear the sound of hoofsteps approaching the door, before it swung open.

It disturbed her to see what her mother would have looked like as a pony.

“Sparkle!” Twilight Velvet immediately hugged her daughter, the younger Twilight letting out an urk as her supply of air was cut off, “It’s been a while since we’ve seen you, how are you suiting up at your new castle? Oh, don’t mind me, come on in, make yourself at home, gems are in the same cupboard as always Spike,” She greeted the other six, tripping up slightly at the sight of a second dragon.

Freeing herself from her mother’s Earth pony-esque grip and taking a deep breath, Twilight Sparkle said, “The castle’s fine, mum. I was worried it’d be a little chilly in the winter, but it seems to regulate itself perfectly. Where’s dad?”

“Your father’s reading the news, this way dearie,” Velvet said, closing the door behind her as her only daughter entered the house, the two making their way into the large living area where Night Light had parked himself on a chair, horn occasionally glowing to flip a page in his newspaper. “Nightie dear, Sparkle’s here!”

Night Light looked up. As soon as he saw the prodigal daughter whom had returned home, his face lit up in a grin. “Sparkle, it’s so nice to see you again, we miss you! Even when you’re here in Canterlot, Princess duties no doubt keep you way.” Quickly skimming over the rest of the ponies and dragons there, he said, “I recognise your animal friend Fluttershy, and Spike of course. I assume that’s Spike’s cousin of sorts, but whom are the others?”

“Er…” Twilight trailed off, suddenly feeling apprehensive. Deciding to leave the worst for last, she started off with Spike’s ‘cousin’, “This is Klaus, then this here is Monarch. Um, this is Sunset Shimmer.” She carefully analysed her parents’ faces for any hint that they somehow knew of Sunset Shimmer prior to this instant, and found herself wanting. Princess Celestia really had put a kibosh on the existence of Sunset, not that the unicorn had wandered much from the palace from what Twilight had been told. Finally, she motioned to Moonlight to come out into the open. “And, well, this pony here is, erm, how to put it-“

“Stop.” Twilight Velvet and Night Light said unison.

“I-what?” Twilight Sparkle asked, confused.

“Mirror Pool?” That was Twilight Velvet.

“Time-travelling future self who found a way to stay longer than ten seconds this time?” And that was Night Light.

“Discord in disguise and up to his old tricks?”

“Princess Luna going ‘The fun hath been doubled!’ again, except this time with more disturbing bioethical implications?”

“The time-travelling future daughter of Shining Armor and Princess Luna, proving my colt really does get all the mares?”

“An extraequestrial who’s secretly in diplomatic talks with us whom you’re showing around?”

“Your new student who you didn’t tell us about until now in revenge for the wedding?”

“Your new student who also doubles as next year’s villain of the year?”

“Creature from the Everfree Forest?”

“Your new Changeling marefriend?”

“Your alternate self from another dimension?”

Sunset had a small pile of treasured memories, most of them dealing either with her parents or sister, Princess Celestia, or her friends at Canterlot High. Seeing Princess Twilight go “No, No, No, No” like a broken record, while both her and Moonlight started reddening in response to Twilight Velvet’s and Night Light’s suggestions, especially the marefriend comment, quickly made that shortlist.

“No, she’s not my student, besides I blame Shining Armor for that, no, she’s not going to be next year’s villain, she kind of might have already been one anyways, no, she’s not from the Everfree Forest, no she’s not a Changeling, DON’T THINK I DIDN’T SEE YOU CHUCKLING THERE DAD, JUST BECAUSE I ANSWERED THAT FIRST DOESN’T MEAN SHE’S MY MAREFRIEND, no-actually yes, that’s right.”

Twilight Velvet and Night Light exchanged looks, before Night Light shoved his newspaper. “Time to pay up, honey!” He announced in a singing voice, and Velvet just rolled her eyes.

“D-did you make a bet on who I’d bring over for a v-visitor?” Twilight Sparkle stuttered, her face slowly darkening. When her parents nodded, Night Light with a goofy smirk on his face, she blew up, “MOM! DAD!”

Author's Note

For some reason, I really can't get this story to feel organic at times. Probably because there are simply too many characters all at once, and partly because in-character Twilight just feels so detestably boring to write.

The comment about ‘Christrot’ is of course a reference to Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, but also a dig at MMMystery on the Friendship Express where Ponyville, despite basically being made out to be something akin to a suburb of Canterlot in terms of distance, magically takes an entire night to get from Ponyville to Canterlot by train because plot.

I know I stole the Seyrie Leone name from another FIMfic, don't know which one it came from. Mozart's middle name was Amadeus. Custard was originally going to be Coltsard before I decided that sounded terrible and yes, he's named after General Custer. Electro-thaumato-magnetic is basically like electromagnetic radiation, except with magic thrown into the mix.

Edits Made

Thanks to the new category tags, I changed Humans out for Equestria Girls. I'll have to wait until the character tags are updated to put in the Shadow Five and Humane Five.

Edits Made to Part 1

I cleaned up the writing a little bit and pushed the section to where the humans get their alternate names up to earlier in the chapter, so I wouldn't have to differentiate between them so much in a painful way, and made a call-back to the 'Midnight Sparkle' name that Hasbro uses for SciTwi's demon form. There is a little extra bit in there about Princess Twilight and her guilt over Moondancer, too. I also changed human Fluttershy's alternate name because Butterfly sounded stupid, sounded too close to 'Fluttershy', and of course Fluttershy's cutie mark is literally that of three butterflies.