The Faithful Student Exchange Program

The first thing Twilight noted about the portal was its gaseous smell.

Though not harmful in any way—she'd checked—it still permeated the atmosphere with pervasive ease. The very air rippled in front of the gateway's swirling silver pool of light, producing much of the same phenomena that was present during the heat of the day.

The librarian adjusted her work goggles as she penned the sensation on her much-loved notepad. It was quickly running out of room, due in no small part to her most recent, most ambitious scientific endeavors.

As an extra precaution, she activated the industrial-sized fan in the corner of the basement, frowning as the humming breeze ruffled her sheaves of notes. A small circular window rested on the opposite wall, laid open.

After weighing her hard-won works down with a red apple—she'd visited Applejack's market stall earlier that day—Twilight circled the large mirror centered in the middle of the room. It was her third so far: despite the inherent magical stability of mirrors, something about spatial magic made physical objects unreliable as mediums. It had taken most of the young student's ingenuity and a series of tightly interwoven spells to ensure that her little pet project would be able to continue.

Creating it had been the hard part, as several weeks of trial and error had proven; now that she had managed the thing, she could finally, finally move on to testing.

Twilight suppressed an enthusiastic shudder.

Even as she finished her rounds, a brisk creak! sounded at the top of the staircase, followed by the hurried patter of small rubber-soled feet on stone.

"Here's lunch," Spike breathed, setting down a tray of sandwiches and a carton of apple juice on the corner of Twilight's desk. The green-haired youth wore a purple shirt and green shorts, though little of either could be seen past that ridiculous pink-frilled apron that he insisted on wearing whenever he cooked.

"Thanks," Twilight said, smiling slightly as she glanced at her assistant from the corner of her eye and wondered just which one of these days his balls would drop.

"How's it going?"

"Well enough, I suppose," Twilight answered tiredly. Shrugging, she added, "The composition of the portal has finally stabilized, so all that remains is testing."

"Why a mirror?" Spike asked, fidgeting as he adjusted his apron. "Can't you just make a portal out of thin air?"

The librarian sighed, rubbing her temples at the question. "Theoretically, yes, it's possible. But you wouldn't hold a kiddie pool over your head and try to swim in it, would you?" Twilight bunched her shoulders as she crossed her arms and huffed. "Portals aren't the same as your everyday teleporting."

"It can't be that different," Spike scoffed. "You're just moving from one place to another."

It was a mark of Twilight's fatigue that she didn't immediately go into full lecture mode then and there. "They're similar in concept, but they're opposites in practice. Teleporting moves us through space. A portal is like a magical wormhole: it pinches two places together and lets you move between them."

The green haired boy creased his forehead in confusion. "How hard could it be? It's just magic."

Slowly, ever so slowly, Twilight turned her head to peer at Spike, eyes half lidded and unknowable. She held his gaze for several silent moments before replying. "Just magic," she repeated, and it was at that precise moment that Spike recalled that Twilight was touchy about her studies even when she hadn't been up for several days with minimal resting periods.

Before he could rectify his statement, the Princess of Magic cracked her neck, straightened the folds of her wrinkled lab coat, and turned to face Spike fully.

"Let's stop for a moment, and consider what I'm doing."

The hairs on the back of Spike's neck stood painfully erect as Twilight's voice reached an otherworldly level of calm. "Several layers of reinforcement spells, so that the glass doesn't shatter and the metal doesn't burn through the basement floor. Two hours of saturating the glass with energy at a constant rate, and four days for allowing it to reach dynamic equilibrium while the glass converts into magical soup. A month for researching the nature of interdimensional magic, principles of molecular interposition, and physically-realized temporal stasis, the last of which, you may find quite interesting, is thoroughly unexplored.

"One hundred and forty-seven minutes of scrying hundreds of ley lines so I don't accidentally send myself into the vastness of space in a long dead galaxy. And last, but irrefutably not least, bastardizing the space-time relation in order to create a localized point of entry in what may very well be a parallel universe." She blinked for the first time since she had started speaking. "But no, it's just...magic," she said, waving a hand as if entertaining a far-off audience.

Spike blanched, uncomprehending of most of what had just been said but fully aware of the import of Twilight's words. Gulping, he asked, "So it's hard?"

"Why yes, Spike," Twilight stated loudly, as if to a deaf person, "it's quite hard."

"Then why even bother?" he asked, squinting at her, hands on his small hips. "We practically trip over a new portal every couple weeks anyhow. They're not exactly needles in a haystack, Twilight."

"You think I don't know that?" she snapped, mirroring the boy's pose. "I've been able to help change the world on account of my magic, Spike, but I'm just as much a scholar as I am a magician. If I can't affect change on an academic level, then what does that say about me as a leader?" Grumbling, she crossed her arms and spared her project a glance. "Besides, it's not as though you have people coming out of the woodwork to build one of these from the ground up. Even Princess Celestia had Starswirl to fall back on when she built hers."

Sighing, Spike conceded the point. "Alright then, sure. What's next?" he asked, rubbing his hands on his apron.

Twilight stared at him, cracking her knuckles absently, before turning on her heel, picking up the red apple from her desk, and hurling it into the portal as hard as she could.

The fruit disappeared instantly into the swirling silver vortex, causing no end of ripples against the fabric-like liquid. Despite the impact, its passage hadn't made a sound.

Spike barely had time to react to Twilight's unusually rash actions. The portal's ripples had started anew, racing outwards from the middle, until the thick silver soup of magic spat an apple out, which collided harshly with the young assistant's head.

"Ow!" Spike cried, falling to the ground and rubbing the pained area. "Geez, that smarts!" He winced, sucking his teeth. "The heck, Twilight?"

"Karma," Twilight muttered, before turning to her creation and frowning heavily. It rejected the apple? She sighed, pinching her nose as she leaned down to pick the dented fruit off of the ground. Maybe...maybe it doesn't react well to organic compounds. I'll try something without carbon as the principal—

Twilight halted, staring down at the apple in her palm. "It's green."

Spike groaned, getting up from his place on the floor. "Come again?" he asked as he glared at his employer.

The librarian turned to him, body shaking even to the extremities, though whether it was from excitement or trepidation wasn't clear. "The apple. I threw a red one. This one is green."

The young boy rolled his eyes, brushing off his hands on his apron. "So what? It changed color, what does it matter?"

Twilight shook her head. "Not necessarily. This looks like a different species of apple." She pointed to the area near the stem, willing her trembling to stop. "See here? The freckles are brown instead of greenish-yellow, and the skin is smooth and blurred, rather than...," she exhaled shakily, "than reflective."

"And that means what, exactly?" The green-haired boy settled down onto a nearby stool and helped himself to a sandwich, seeing as how his partner was switching to lecture mode.

Indeed, Twilight had already begun pacing. "Hypothesis: instead of cross-dimensional transportation, the portal alters DNA, resulting in a different product when rejected." She frowned, hands clenching in thought. "However, that begs the question of why the product wasn't changed more fundamentally."

"Maybe something's makeup matters more about what it's made of, instead of what something looks or tastes like?" Spike suggested, mouth half-full. "Maybe it's easier for the portal to change a red apple to a green one instead of to an orange."

"That's very possible," Twilight noted, pacing still. "Of course, that's assuming that the apple was rejected at all."

The assistant snorted. "So you're thinking that there's someone on the other side throwing apples at us?"

Twilight turned slowly to face Spike, blinking slowly.

"You have got to be kidding me," Spike replied, staring incredulously. "What reason would there be for them to do that?"

Holding the foreign green apple in her hand, Twilight took a scalpel from her desk and carved a large symbol into the fruit's husk—a semblance of her signature starburst, and the current time, which happened to be noon. Satisfied with her results, she wiped the sphere clean with the hem of her lab coat.

"For testing," she finally answered, turning on her leg and hurling the fruit back where it came.

The portal quickly began to thrum with vibrations, albeit with significantly more force than before. Prepared, Twilight raised a glowing hand to the swirling silver threshold, manifesting her magic in order to—

"Gotcha!" she yelled, snaring the speeding object in a veil of magic as it raced out of the portal. The scientist exhaled excited, shaky breaths, anxious yet hesitant to see what messages the object held, if indeed it held any.

"I'm surprised you didn't let it bash me in the head again," Spike dryly added.

"Didn't want any potential messages to be ruined," Twilight breathed.

She turned it over, examining the red fruit to see what bearings it brought. Yes, it was the same one she sent earlier, of that she was reasonably sure...

Twilight paused.

Pale fingers wandered across indentations made in the bright red skin of the apple. Indentations that hadn't been there before.

The pad of her thumb wandered across a series of figures, noting the starburst. In bold, minimalist strokes, 12 pm followed.

"Spike," she said hoarsely, bending over and grasping the table's edges, "take a letter."

"Log date: June twenty-second."

Some hours later, the raven-haired scientist sat on the edge of her worktable, dictating her notes to her ever-present assistant. Twilight bit her lower lip, crossing and uncrossing her legs as she pondered the magical device in front of her.

"Portal remains stable. In accordance with my...predisposition towards field tests, studies have shown that organic matter will be received with relative ease. This having been discovered due to one of my more," Twilight chuckled to herself, "heuristic approaches."

Spike rolled his eyes as he jotted down his caretaker's reflections. "I work for a geek," he muttered.

"I heard that, pintsize!" the geek returned.

Clearing her throat, the librarian resumed her dictation. "In contrast to initial tests, however, inorganic material has proven unsuitable for—what I assume to be—dimensional transposition." She glanced at the broken pile of metal and plastic that used to be a video camera, the first of many attempts to breach the portal with man-made objects, only to end up breaking like glass against a stone wall. Similarly, any attempt at sending notes or photos had been met with failure as well.

"Results have shown to be volatile; in light of this revelation, all artificial elements will subsequently be dropped from field testing. Regretfully," she said, chewing her cheek in squinty-faced displeasure, "this will have include clothing, should we advance to live testing. The lab will have to be prepped if the following theories are correct."

Twilight rubbed her shoulder, gathering her words as she prepared to give voice to her following ideas. "Due to the nature of the tests and their respective results, several possibilities emerge. One: the portal is—somewhat ironically—functioning as an imperfect mirror, rejecting deposited objects after an undetermined period of time. The magical nature of the portal may account for some of the variations, though I believe this to not be the case. If indeed the portal alters the makeup of an organic object's DNA, it isn't random, but instead produces a fixed alternative to said object's composition."

Spike looked up at Twilight spitefully. "Are you trying to give me carpal tunnel?"

The librarian shook her head in the negative. "Of course not. That would be counterproductive."

The young man grumbled to himself as he worked his wrists to get them to feel less strained. "I swear, you get super passive-aggressive sometimes, Twilight."

She flicked him on the nose. "The correct phrase is 'objectively-driven', Spike." Clasping her arms behind her back, she cleared her throat to let him know that they were continuing. "However, as previously stated, this alternative seems unlikely." Twilight shifted her attention once again to the marked apple. "Transmogrification is a very specific process, one that has no correlation whatsoever to spatial magic. And as good as I am, I doubt I could achieve it on accident."

Twilight prepared herself for her next statement, breathing excitedly as the realization of her efforts came ever so closer. "Possibility two: the portal is fully operational."

Spike slowed his writing, looking up to Twilight with a skeptical face.

"Given the nature of this experiment, as well as the information 'exchanged', there is a strong likelihood that this portal leads to," Twilight had to pause to roll her eyes, "a mirror world."

She turned to the apple resting on her table and turned it over in her palms. The flesh had begun to oxidize, turning brown and mushy. "Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't arrive at this conclusion so early in testing, but the signature implemented for identification purposes is one unique to me. Assuming the apple's travel speed was relative to what was perceived, we have no reason to believe that the signature was merely replicated. From this assumption, we can further determine the following."

"'m running away," Spike muttered under his breath as he continued to write.

Twilight turned back to the portal, sighing. "Somewhere, there's another Twilight running the exact same tests that I am, hence the 'mirror world' hypothesis." She rubbed her thumbs together. "There isn't much evidence to support this theory concretely, but given how these sorts of things happen around me, I'm inclined to be open to the possibility."

"Well, you're right about that," Spike agreed, finally having caught up with his partner's dictation. "After that whole thing with Sunset's portal, I wouldn't be surprised if there were even more purple geeks doing what you're doing now."

"I don't usually trust gut feelings," Twilight agreed, "but by this point, there's an established baseline for destiny where my magic is concerned."

She rose to her feet and dusted off her lab coat. "And if there's one thing I've learned about magic...it's that there's no such thing as a coincidence."

They had started with ants.

Twilight had initially been hesitant to pursue live-testing, but she knew that she would have to risk it if their experiment was to be successful. Ever cautionary, she had started small.

Getting them to act accordingly had been easy enough; a spell of mental suggestion gave the insects an intense urge to journey beyond the portal, and their minds were simple enough that they didn't question all the ways they might die.

They're just ants, Twilight thought to herself, biting her thumb in anticipation. You squash them under your foot without even noticing. She felt ridiculous for rationalizing the fate of insects, but there was something profoundly surreal about possibly being responsible for killing a thing in an exotic and painful way.

Her fears, however, were unfounded. Shortly after the line of ants had proceeded into the portal, a line had exited. Twilight frowned: they were odorous house ants, the same species that she had sent in.

I found them around the base of the castle, Twilight noted. Maybe that's why they're similar.

She grew bolder in her attempts over time; first butterflies, then rats, and next came slightly larger animals such as rabbits and birds. All came through the portal safely, though very few seemed different in appearance than their counterparts.

The fact of each animal's similarity puzzled and troubled Twilight. Is it because each animal is indigenous to this region? She dwelt on such thoughts for what seemed like days, but could find no answer that fully satisfied her.

It was two weeks after the initial testing had begun that Twilight was finally confident enough to proceed with human trials: after numerous check-ups and extensive before-and-after comparisons of each test subject, she could conclude that no malefic aftereffects had fallen upon any of them. Likewise, the similarity of each test reaffirmed Twilight's hypothesis that whoever was on the other side of the portal took every action that she herself took, with what appeared to be little to no differences in time spent.

Twilight cocked her head in wonder. She reached up and steadily removed her black-rimmed eyeglasses, folding them into the collar of her faded white lab coat. The constant murmur filled the room that she alone occupied.

She turned her head at an angle, listening for footsteps up above. Spike had been gone for nearly an hour now, off on some errand or another.

Twilight turned back to the portal, biting the inside of her cheek as she found herself with a decision to make.

Her arm rose, unbidden, facing a strange pressure as it drew closer, closer to the swirling void of silver magic. It hummed with a beat that was inaudible, that somehow thrummed throughout her being without so much as a whisper of noise.

Am I doing this? Twilight pondered, feeling at once exhilarated and terrified—perhaps both, either one the side of a coin, somehow rearing both their heads at once. She realized belatedly that she had never before allowed herself to come so close to the portal.

I...I think I'm doing this.

Twilight steadied her breathing, squaring her shoulders and rolling up the sleeves on her right arm. "Okay, Twilight," she muttered to herself. "Okay."

Without further thinking, she thrust her hand forward, burying her arm in magic up to her elbow.

"Oh wow," she groaned, feeling her muscles and bones hum and vibrate like jelly. "Oh wow, this is weird." Twilight clenched and unclenched her fist: it felt as though she were trying to wrangle a pile of spaghetti into a ball. The magic of the portal seemed to stretch and destabilize her arm. That she could still control her limbs while immersed was a good sign.

As disconcerting as the experience was, Twilight felt herself grow disappointed: whoever was on the opposite side of the portal should've stuck their arm through as well. So far, nothing had happened.

Wait, is that right? Twilight pondered. Her own fingers were still steeped in the magic of the portal; she had yet to breach the other side yet, so reason would hold that in a magical mirror such as hers—

Twilight blinked, and swung her arm upwards.

She moved as if underwater, but even with the strange, stretchy quality of the portal, she could recognize when she felt her flesh connect with another's.

She grinned as she felt fingers intertwine with hers in silent victory.

Jackpot.

Of course she wouldn't have noticed anything at first, Twilight now realized; if she reached out with her right hand, the Other Twilight would have reached out with her right as well. It was confusing to think about, but if their positions and motions were identical, their limbs should've met at the middle, occupying the same space on opposite sides. In that regard, it wasn't a true mirror; somehow, they were both still facing the same direction.

Logic followed that either limb could only go so high, hence her attempts to touch or be touched by the Other Twilight's fingers by reaching for the top, regardless of position. What she hadn't been counting on at first was the mere fact that the Other Twilight just so happened to be the taller of the two.

Exhaling heavily, Twilight withdrew her hand from the swirling mix of magic and shook it feverishly. It tingled something fierce, but otherwise she felt entirely herself.

"Well," she said to herself, feeling an exciting tingle run through every pore at the promise of adventure and mystery, "there's no time like the present."

Moving quickly now, her limbs electric and shaky with ever-increasing excitement, Twilight whipped off her clothes and stacked them in plain view of the portal; with any luck, she'd be able to wear the clothes of her absent counterpart, despite the size difference.

Twilight made her way to the front of the portal, feeling the silver glow cast her skin in a pale and wondrous light. She'd have to sidle in if she wanted to avoid getting stuck in the middle; she was significantly bigger than any of the animals, who wouldn't have had any troubles brushing their counterparts aside due to ample space.

"Oh brave new world," she breathed, stretching arm, then leg, into the great argent expanse, "that has such people in it..."

Without finding time or patience to finish her sentence, she thrust herself fully into the unknown, and was gone.

To tell the truth, Spike loved when Twilight would drown in her work for weeks on end, only to resurface in the real world some weeks later. Surrounding herself with research and experiments closed her off to her usual brand of neurotic misbehavior, and not having to always be the voice of reason did wonders for Spike's blood pressure.

Even so, when her long journeys into academia eventually came to a close, as they always did, Twilight took a while to get ramped up into her usual self, and Spike would take that time to baby step himself back into the crazy. That, too, helped to keep his own sanity in check.

Years of this calm introduction and departure of peace and ensuing calamity had spoiled Spike, to a state where his senses had dulled and he couldn't see the obvious fact that a person like Twilight was bound to break her pattern sooner or later. And given her recent scientific breakthrough more or less coming to a climax, the circumstances leaned on 'sooner.'

It was because of this blindness that Spike nearly tripped and dropped his bags of groceries when an enthusiastic "Eureka!" went up from the basement.

Nor was he prepared for the sight of a scrawny, half-naked brunette man sprinting up the stairs in triumph, clad only in a lab coat that was far too small for him.

"Oh wow," the man breathed, chest heaving as he looked around the castle interior. "Oh wow. It's a whole different color." His hands roamed over the amethyst walls, marveling at the shade and texture of the precious gems of the palace. "It's supposed to be amber."

The man was close to six feet in height, nearly a head taller than Twilight. He was lanky and pale, and had a poor posture that bespoke inquisitiveness, as if he'd spent many hours hunched over a table. His short hair was mostly a dark violet, marked only by a single stripe of magenta. Spike gasped as a sense of familiarity washed over him.

"Twilight?" Spike asked, peering fearfully over the brown bags he still carried.

The voice caught the man's attention. Whipping his head around, his eyes searched the the hall before him before they fell on the young boy's form. "Spines?" he asked, cocking his head. "Looking kinda rough there, sweety. You been kissing mud again?"

Spike's jaw dropped at the comment, just as he dropped the bags he had been holding. "You from the portal?"

The man raised his eyebrows. "Oh, you're a boy." He sucked his teeth as he looked around the castle, his eyes widening at some silent revelation. "Oh, yikes. I knew something slipped the net."

"Answer me!"

"Hold that thought," he said, vanishing in a burst of purple light. A distant pop sounded somewhere above Spike's head, in the vicinity of the living room. Seconds later, the strange man reappeared, holding what seemed to be a picture frame.

He gazed solemnly at the picture, tracing the outlines of a small, curved face much like his own. His eyes roamed over five others, a smile of recognition lighting his visage.

"My name is Dusk," he said softly, never taking his eyes off of the photo. "To answer your question...yes, I came from the portal." He began walking towards the center of the castle, leaving Spike to gape at the back of the man's frame, before following in a stupor.

"I'm Spike," he said cautiously, looking up at this 'Dusk.'

The man looked down, studying the boy's face. "You called me Twilight." He pointed to the purple-haired woman in the photo. "Is that what she's called?" When Spike nodded his head, Dusk studied the picture with even greater intensity. "And the others?"

After Spike had recited each name, Dusk chuckled to himself. "Elusive, you looker."

Looking up, he found they had reached the throne room, a collection of crystal seats that was as familiar to him as it was foreign, each emblazoned with a signature symbol. Dusk grinned, and made his way across the golden dais in the middle to the throne marked with a deep purple starburst.

"Where I come from," he started, leaning now to show the photo to Spike, "everyone you see here is male." He pointed to each face in turn. "Elusive. Berry. Butterscotch. Applejack, which I'm guessing is a unisex name. And Rainbow Blitz."

Spike breathed in wonder as he imagined each of his friends as the opposite sex; when it came to Rarity, however, he decided it best to leave some mysteries unsolved. "Are you saying that everyone who's a girl here, is a guy there?"

The scientist shrugged. "I can't say for sure yet, but it seems that might be the case."

Spike winced. "So there's like eight guys for every girl? That must suck."

"Buddy, you have no idea."

"Well, what are you gonna do now that you're here?"

"That's a good question," Dusk muttered, leaning back in his seat and rubbing his chin. "I should probably find out what else is different in this world; I'm willing to bet that the gender imbalance resulted in diverging timelines."

Spike rolled his eyes at the nerd-speak. "Sure, why not."

"Let's see," the older man said, drumming his fingers on the armrests. He turned to look at his young companion. "Is Alderfly still in power in this world?"

The green-haired youth blinked and stared in confusion. "Alder-who?"

"King Alderfly, the changeling leader. Tried to take over Canterlot at the wedding?"

"Oh," Spike said, face clearing in recognition. "We call her Chrysalis here. Yeah, she's still skulking around somewhere, but she comes out every so often to cause trouble."

"I see," Dusk said, face clouding. "So there are gender-related divergences." He sat up, pulling himself to his feet and dusting off his still-wrinkled labcoat. "In my world, Bolero—the Prince of the Crystal Empire, that is—was furious at Alderfly when we took back Canterlot after the wedding. He and the changeling pride—"

"Pride?"

"What? Yeah," Dusk said, slightly miffed at being interrupted. "He's the only male, and the rest of the group is female, so we call them a pride. Like lions."

"Oh, well, we just call them a hive, since she's the only woman," Spike said. "But yours are still...bug people, right? Black chitin and creepy blue eyes?"

"Black chitin and creepy blue eyes," Dusk confirmed. "Anyway, Bolero found out that the king had slept with his wife—my sister—while he had been impersonating him, so sooner or later he set a bounty on his head. Half a million for his live arrest."

"Wow," Spike said, surprised. "That's a lot of money."

"Yeah, well, pussy does that," Dusk muttered to himself.

Meandering towards the staircase which would lead to the upper chambers, Dusk continued his tale. "So, long story short, someone brings in Alderfly, he gets dungeon'd for life, and poof. No more changeling menace."

"They just up and disappeared?" Spike asked, following him on the stairs.

"Most of them, yeah. They can't really reproduce without their king, so they either moved overseas to find new prides, or assimilated into our society to make their own."

"That sounds positive," Spike said, chuckling hopefully.

"Well, they revolutionized the brothel scene, so yeah, you could say that," Dusk said, arriving at Twilight's door. He pushed it open and looked around; to his surprise, it was more or less the same as his own room. Trusting Spike to avert his eyes, the scientist lowered his lab coat to his waist and rifled through his counterpart's vast closet for clothes.

"Now," he called out to Spike, "if my theory is correct, then the actions that Twilight and I take are mostly similar. The only diversions in our choices should occur when they're related to traits that are unique to one or the other." He grunted as something went over his head, and he shuffled fully out of his coat. "Broadly speaking, anything that a guy would do that a woman wouldn't, is an action that only I'll end up performing, while Twilight should do something else entirely."

"Meaning?" Spike asked, arms crossed as he sat on the edge of Twilight's bed and swung his legs.

"In layman's terms," Dusk said, still dressing, "I just have to do something really stupid, and logic says that Twilight won't."

Spike rubbed his chin in confusion. "I can't say I don't approve..."

"I'm counting on the fact that for the sake of the study, she'll stick to her role," Dusk added, flicking off the light and exiting the vast closet. "Since we can assume that she's thinking the same thing I am, and the parameters of the experiment are based on the one thing we don't share, well..." he chuckled. "My money's on this little idea of ours working."

"My head hurts, so that must mean that you're right," Spike concluded, looking up at the taller man. He wore a simple lavender sweater jacket and white dress shirt, along with black slacks and dress shoes. When he wasn't half-naked, Spike surmised, Dusk was a rather smart dresser. "So, what's the play?"

Dusk smiled, brushing his hair back as he went to Twilight's vanity. "Well, I have to do something stupid, don't I? And speaking of money..." He pulled out a seemingly random drawer, opened an unmarked yellow envelope, and withdrew several rolls of golden coins. He tossed them at Spike, who caught them with a confused look on his face.

"What am I supposed to do with all this?" he asked, glancing down at the rolls of money.

"That's about two-hundred bits worth of savings," Dusk said, smoothing down the front of his shirt. "I'm skipping town for the weekend, so do your best to make sure it lasts until Sunday, or whatever."

"What?" Spike's jaw dropped. "But you just got here! Just like that, you're already leaving? That's it?"

"That's it," Dusk confirmed with a troublemaker's grin. He rubbed the young boy's hair affectionately, leaving it a tangled mess of green. "Try to stay alive out there."

And with a familiar burst of reddish-purple magic, the man from the mirror disappeared.