Unlinked Worlds

by Doggyshakespeare

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Starlight Glimmer, Original Character, Mystery, Spike, Comedy, Slice of Life, Human, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 5631

After a magical accident, a human baby ends up in Equestria. Research begins.

After a magical accident, a human baby ends up in Equestria. When they figure out that the mysterious creature is from another technologically advanced world, research and experiments begin on the subject. Where is it from? What lies beyond Equestria, beyond Equus? What other worlds are out there? What kind of physics is there left to learn? Can they ever return it to its home world? Follow the baby's life as it grows up and what the Equestrians learn from it.

Warning: lots of math and science! :twilightsmile:

Cover art by me.

Hiatus note (edit 2019.09.25): Who knows when it'll be back?

Published 2016-11-29 23:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-12-21 14:57:34 UTC

1: This Is Why Long Distance Teleportation Is A Bad Idea

Ever since the restoration of the Castle of the Two Sisters, Twilight goes there to check up on its condition every moon. Today is one of those days.

"Okay, just one room left," said Twilight to herself. "Walls are clean, check. Ceiling... check. Furniture, a bit of dust..." She dusted the marble statue in the corner and the shelves that lined the walls. "There, the last room done, and the sun hasn't gone down yet!"

She exited the castle, stowing her tools into her saddlebags, when an idea popped into her head. What if, she wondered, what if I were to teleport back to the castle? If I could do that, that would cut my castle inspection time by half an hour, or an hour round trip. Oh, I could finish reading all the unread reports today!

Excited by the prospect of getting her work done, she readied herself for the teleport. Her castle was four kilometers away from where she now stood. Having never teleported such a large distance, she calculated the amount of magical power to put into the teleport, just to be safe. "The optimal teleportation time is the square root of displacement over the optimized pony teleportation coefficient. 4000 meters divided by 56.5 is 70.8, and its square root is... 8.41. The velocity is displacement over time, which is 4000 over 8.41, or around 476 meters per second. The optimal energy is the optimized pony teleportation coefficient times mass times displacement. 56.5 times 47.2, plus saddlebags, so 50, times 4000, for a total of 11.3 megajoules of energy. Add another 1.2% to account for the transformation of energy into heat: 11.44 megajoules. Wow, this is going to be hectic," Twilight said to herself. "Good I brought some energy crystals with me, or else I might not be able to... Oh wait, that's only 9 megajoules; I need 2.44 megajoules more energy. Hmm, I'll just have to use my body's own energy then."

She charged up her horn, preparing for her teleport. It occurred to her that this would be the most energy-intensive spell she has ever cast, except for maybe some of the high-energy photon beams she fired when fighting Tirek which, really, weren't all just her magic. She extracted the energy from her energy crystals, building up energy in her horn. It was all released at once, half of the energy used to raise all the magicons in her body to a much, much higher energy level, while the other half accelerating her to 476 meters per second. Then, in a fraction of a second, everything went black.

Spike was sweeping the floors of the Friendship Castle. He's already finished sweeping most of it, which took up most of his day. Ever since they moved to the Friendship Castle, he has had to sweep a much larger floor than in the library. He disliked it, but fortunately, Twilight said they only had to clean the most frequently used rooms; the unused rooms don't really get dirty. Why does the castle have that many rooms anyway? It's mostly just for the bearers of the elements, and the occasional celebration or two.

Suddenly, a bright lavender-colored flash of light could be seen, followed closely by an intense BANG! that made the walls and the windows of the castle vibrate.

"What was that?" asked Spike to nopony in particular; not like he was expecting an answer. "Hey, I might as well check it out, since Twilight is busy at the castle in the Everfree Forest. Speaking of which, she should be about back in maybe half an hour or so." He exited the front castle gates and saw a lump on the ground beside the road leading into Ponyville, some distance away. It was getting dark, and with that distance, he could barely make out any details. The young dragon decided to investigate. When he got closer, he realized what the lump was.

The lump was Twilight Sparkle.

Also there was a smaller lump on the ground next to her, but he didn't really notice it.

"Oh no, Twilight, what happened?" Spike ran towards the unconscious Twilight, who was half-stuck in the dirt. Her horn was glowing red hot, with some magical residue crackling around it. "Twilight, wake up!" He shook Twilight, but she stayed limp with no signs of consciousness. "Hold on," he said. "I'll go get Starlight. I'll be right back!"

He ran as fast as he could back into the castle. "Starlight! Starlight! Oh right, she's cleaning the bathrooms today, hmm." Running into one of the many bathrooms, he realized that it wasn't even a bathroom at all. "Nope," he said, panting.

"Spike, are you looking for me?" asked Starlight, appearing from the bathroom door behind him.

"Yes... *huff*... yes... Twilight, she's... out."

"Um, right. She's in the Castle of the Two Sisters, isn't she?"

"No... I mean, she's... unconscious," Spike answered.

"Unconscious? What happened?"

"There was some magical explosion thing, and she ended up on the road outside. In the ground. Unconscious."

"Oh! Let's go see what happened." Starlight picked Spike up with her telekinesis and plopped the exhausted dragon on her back. She galloped through the hallways, down the stairs, and out of the castle through the main hall.

They slowed down as they got near the still half-buried lump. Starlight lowered Spike down on the ground. Energy continued to crackle around Twilight's horn, albeit with noticeably less intensity. She was still unconscious; a nudge confirmed it. "This looks like it could be caused by an overexertion of magic. Actually, this is way more magic than anything I've ever seen before. She must have used up her energy so fast that she blacked out," said Starlight. "Well, let's get her to the hospital."

She lifted the unconscious alicorn onto her back and kept her in place with her magic. She glanced at Spike. "Sorry Spike, you'll have to walk there by yourself."

"What is that?" asked Spike, noticing the small lump next to the Twilight-shaped depression in the dirt. "It looks like Twilight brought it here."

"I don't know," said Starlight, inspecting it. It seemed to be some sort of small creature, wrapped in cloth. It appears to be sleeping. Or unconscious; you never know.

"Well, I guess I'll carry it then. It might have also gotten hurt." Spike carried the creature in his arms. Starlight started to gallop down the path towards Ponyville, but Spike's short legs couldn't keep up. "Wait, Starlight!" Starlight picked him with her telekinesis, and they continued onwards at a faster pace.

"Good. Okay, if Twilight really overexerted her magic, that means she'll be out for at least a few hours, maybe as long as a day, but she'll be fine otherwise," said Starlight. "First, we need to cool down her horn."

"Because a hot horn releases a chemical signal that stops a part of higher function in the brain, so that the pony stops using magic as a survival mechanism," said Spike.

"How do you know that?"

"Heh, just one of those things I get for being Twilight's number one assistant."

"Well, good to know," replied Starlight. "Thought, you feel heavier than you should be, Spike."

"Maybe because I'm holding this creature?"

"No, it feels heavier than when you hold a stack of books," Starlight explained. "It's like my magic isn't grasping you fully."

"Am I? Wait, maybe it's the creature that's doing it."

"Maybe, or it could be just trying to telekinetically transport so much mass while galloping that's causing it."

The two went off the path towards the right, where the hospital could be seen behind the few houses that dotted the outskirts of Ponyville. After a few more moments of galloping, they approached from the side of the building and turned right to face the front entrance. Starlight opened the door with her telekinesis and barged in, decelerating as she entered.

It wasn't a particularly busy day at the hospital. Nurses walked around inside, carrying trays, towels, vials, and whatever doctors and patients needed. There weren't many ponies in the waiting room, which was a good thing, as they really needed to get Twilight to a doctor fast.

"How may I help you, Ms. Glimmer?" the nurse standing at the reception desk asked, confused.

"Twilight had a magical accident. We're not sure what happened. There was a loud "bang" and a flash of light, and we found her lying on the ground outside of the castle, unconscious," explained Starlight as she lowered Spike down onto the ground. He stood a bit unsteadily, recovering from the dizzying telekinetical journey to the hospital.

Another nurse appeared, and motioned for the two to follow. They cantered to the emergency room, where Starlight lay Twilight on a stretcher and lifted her saddlebags off her back. The nurse immediately lodged a thermometer in Twilight's mouth and another one on her horn, and the doctor arrived with a notepad, ready to take notes. "Okay, Ms. Glimmer, what happened to the princess?" asked the doctor in a somewhat monotone voice as he studied Twilight. Starlight repeated what she had said earlier.

"Okay." The doctor gently prodded at her horn with his hoof and wrote something down. Her temperature was recorded, and after a few moments of examination, he looked up. "It seems like a severe case of overexertion of magic, but she should be conscious again after a day, but let her rest for a couple more days. Keep her horn cool and don't have her use any magic. Bring her to room 8." He passed the clipboard to the nurse, who hung it on a hook on the end of the stretcher.

Starlight and Spike followed the nurse as she maneuvered the stretcher out of the room and up the stairs. The halls were quiet, with only a few soft impacts of hooves on carpet. They walked down the hall, took a left turn, and opened the door. Room 8 was no different than the other rooms, except that nopony occupied either of the two beds. The nurse moved Twilight onto the bed closer to the window, while Starlight helped using her magic, and the nurse transferred the clipboard from the stretcher to the bed. Another nurse pushed a trolley of medical supplies into the room and promptly left.

The nurse then grabbed a towel and went off to the bathroom. Sounds of splashing water could be heard as she soaked the towel with cold water.

"Hey Starlight, maybe we should take some measurements on the temperature of her horn first so we can work out the intensity of her magic," suggested Spike as he rummaged through Twilight's saddlebags for a piece of parchment, a quill, and some ink.

"Good idea." Starlight took the thermometer from the trolley and held it up to her face. "Ambient temperature is 287 Coltvin."

Spike took the thermometer and held it next to Twilight's horn. "It has been twelve minutes since the flash of light, and the horn temperature is... let's see..." He looked at the display attached to the side of the device. The needle pointed at around 330 Coltvin. "Ambient horn temperature is 287 plus 2, which is 289 Coltvin. The temperature difference is then 330 minus 289... uh..."

"41 Coltvin?"

"Thanks." Spike wrote the numbers down on the parchment. "What was her horn temperature when the nurses measured it?"

"332.5 Coltvin," said the nurse, coming out of the bathroom and wrapping the cold, wet towel around Twilight's horn, thus cooling it down much more quickly. The nurse then left the room, leaving the two to their business.

Starlight thought for a moment. "If I remember correctly, the clock in the emergency room said 17:53 when we got there, so it would be three minutes earlier."

"Yup, that's what it says on the clipboard as well," replied Spike, holding up the clipboard by the bed. On the row labeled "17:53", horn temperature was recorded as 332.5 K.

"Ah, well, that's enough data points to get a decent estimation of the original temperature." Starlight thought about it for a moment as Spike wrote the numbers down. "Do you happen to know the correlation between temperature and the energy used? If I remember correctly, it's something like 1.2*10^6*L*∆T, where L the length of the horn."

"I think the coefficient is 1.19*10^6."

"Yeah, it could as well be that. Now we just need to measure the length of Twilight's horn." Starlight approached the table where Twilight's saddlebags were currently placed. She searched through the many organized compartments and found a decently sized ruler. After feeling the towel, which was now somewhat warm, she removed it and lined the ruler up with the base of Twilight's horn. She peered closely at the graduations on the ruler near the tip. "Around 18.5 cm."

In the bathroom, Starlight squeezed the warm water out of the towel and drenched it in the cold water from the faucet. After getting rid of some excess water, she wrapped the towel back around Twilight's horn, cooling it down. It has already cooled quite a bit since they'd measured its temperature, but it was not yet completely cool.

Spike reached into the saddlebags and took out a slide rule. He did some calculations on it, scribbled something on the parchment, and then went back to calculating. After a minute or so, he announced, "The change in temperature is 52 K, and the initial energy is 1.14 times 10^7 Joules."

"Wow. That is a lot of energy."

"1.14*10^7 Joules is equivalent to 2.02*10^5 teleportation mass-distance, so you could teleport forty apples to Manehattan with that," replied Spike.

"The princess has definitely cast some spell that was too much even for an alicorn like her, and that caused her overexertion," said Starlight.

"But what kind of spell would she be casting a spell on the field outside of the castle?"

"Maybe she wanted to teleport back from inside the Everfree?" Starlight thought about it for a bit. "Actually, that seems like just about enough energy for a teleportation of this distance. Also, remember the dent on the ground? It looked like she slid towards the castle, which is the opposite direction from the forest."

"Hmm, I guess it's possible, but how does that explain this creature?" Spike pointed at the strange creature he was holding.

"I don't know. It could be a creature Twilight wanted to bring back from the forest. I think we should just wait for her to wake up before we do anything. It doesn't look hurt or anything, so let's not bother it while it sleeps."

"We don't know if it really is sleeping," stated Spike as he walked across the room to set the creature down on the other bed.

"Fine, or unconscious."

The duo stood there in the hospital room, in a moment of silence. Neither was sure what to do next. It was getting late, as well; the sky was getting dark, and the lights in the hospital have all come on to provide illumination for the ponies inside. They watched as Twilight lay there. She was breathing calmly; unconscious ponies tend to do that. After a while, the night sky had been raised, and the moon shone through the window at an angle.

"Should we send Princess Celestia a letter about Twilight being unconscious? We wouldn't want her to give Twilight some urgent mission when she is still recovering, or unconscious, even," suggested Starlight.

"Hey, that's a good idea." Spike took out another piece of parchment and wrote a letter to the princess detailing what had happened. The many years of practice from being Twilight's assistant had made writing effortless, though there was no Twilight to tell him what to write this time. Nevertheless, when he was satisfied with what he had written, he rolled it up, sealed it, and sent the letter off by dragon fire. "So, Starlight, are you going to stay here for the night as well? I mean, I plan to."

"Probably not. I should go back to the castle, in case anything happens," responded Starlight. "Actually, it's pretty late already, so I guess I'll go now. Bye, Spike!" She waved at him, and as he waved back, she walked out through the door and closed it behind her.

Spike sat on the other bed, thinking back on the events that have transpired that day. I can't believe that I was cleaning the castle just earlier today, he thought. I guess that was what had caused all of this to happen in the first place. I hope Twilight does get better tomorrow. Well, right now I should at least brush my teeth before I go to sleep.

He got up to the bathroom, and saw that there were no toothbrushes nor toothpaste. "Bummer! Hope Twilight doesn't find out that I didn't brush my teeth today. I'll just go sleep, then."

Despite not having Twilight to get him to sleep, Spike felt tired, and so he turned off the light illuminating the room, slipped into the sheets in the other bed, and voluntarily drifted from the conscious world into the depths of slumber.

2: Supposedly Intelligent Life Isn't All That Intelligent

The world was a blur. What is anything? It was uncomfortable, but what is the source of this discomfort? This struggle to comprehend the world was fruitful, to some extent. There were now things to see, but what are they? Nothing was recognizable at first. The discomfort eventually faded into a soothing clarity. Slowly, the brain booted up consciousness and there was life.

Twilight Sparkle lay on one of the two hospital beds of room 8 of Ponyville Hospital. "Ugh... Why am I in the hospital?"

She tried to recall her most recent memories. Traveling to the Castle of the Two Sisters... finding those pesky mice living in a storage room... dusting the bookshelves that lined the walls... thinking of teleporting... actually teleporting... and what? She couldn't remember anything past the teleportation. What had happened?

Had she gotten injured, which was why she was in the hospital? Twilight sensed her whole body, and apart from some sore limbs and a few shallow scratches on her forelimbs and belly, she was fine. She tried to remove her blankets, but as soon as she did so, there was a sharp pain on her horn, like what she felt on the day after her first encounter with Trixie when she had transported an Ursa Minor perhaps a few hundred meters using her telekinesis. It was bearable, but it still hurt.

"Ow!" She released her grip on the blanket. I must have overexerted myself with the teleport. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all. Instead of saving half an hour, I lost who knows how many hours, or even days! Speaking of which, what day is it?

After moving the blankets to the side with her slightly dirty hooves, she hopped down onto the ground and looked outside the window. The sun had risen not long ago. She walked over to the end of the bed and looked at the clipboard. The last entry was on the same day as her teleportation, meaning that it was very likely that only one night has passed. It wasn't a very severe case of overexertion, which is nice. No more time needs to be lost because of this.

She glanced up and saw that Spike was on the other bed, sleeping. There was also another creature, and she wasn't sure what it was doing here. Interesting... I've never read about nor encountered a creature like it before. Anyway, how nice for Spike to stay at the hospital to look after me.

Not wanting to bother him, she stepped slowly and carefully on the hard floor to decrease the noise created. As she was about to hop back onto her bed, she heard a burping sound, a sound that she had heard many times before. It signaled the arrival of a scroll sent using dragon fire and a grumpy baby dragon who had just been woken up. As predicted, Spike's sleep was rudely interrupted when he belched up a jet of green fire from which a scroll materialized.

Twilight was going to grasp it with her magic, but remembered that her horn still hurt, and that she should let her horn rest after a magic overexertion. Spike grabbed the scroll and opened it; it was a letter from Princess Celestia.

"Morning, Spike," said Twilight. "What does the letter say?"

"Oh, you're awake!" Spike jumped down from the bed and embraced her. "Good you're okay now."

"Apart form my horn hurting when I use it, I'm fine."

Spike broke away from the hug. "So last night I sent a letter to Princess Celestia saying that you were unconscious." Spike quickly read the letter over. "And she sent this letter back to tell me to notify her of 'any further updates' on your health. Anyway, what happened yesterday? We found you on the ground just outside of our castle, unconscious, so we brought you here."

"I was at the Castle of the Two Sisters, maintaining and cleaning, as you know, and I had the idea to teleport back to our home. I guess something must have happened that made me go unconscious, because I have just woken up in the hospital. I'm pretty sure I'm fine, though. What did the doctor say about me?"

"They said it was a severe case of magical overexertion, and you'll be fine after a few days. Also, don't use your magic."

"It hurting when I use it is a pretty good indication that not using it is a good idea. Why don't you send a letter to the princess saying I'm mostly fine now. Apart from my inability to do paperwork until my horn stops hurting, that is."

Spike started composing a letter, and when he was about done, Twilight's attention was drawn to the strange creature on Spike's bed. "What is this?" she asked, pointing at it.

"Starlight and I found it right next to where you landed outside of the Friendship Castle. Did you not bring it with you?" Spike asked, confused.

"No, I've never even seen this creature. Are you sure I really teleported it with me?"

"Both of you made a dent in the ground where you must have landed from the teleportation."

"Hmm, that's interesting. How could it have teleported with me, then? Did some of the energy I put into the teleport flow into it as well? But why was it the only other thing teleported, and why was such a creature in the Everfree forest anyway?" Twilight stood there, deep in thought. "Could this be a new organism nopony has seen before?"

"Why don't we take a look at where you landed, and see if we can find more clues there?" suggested Spike.

"That's an excellent idea! Let's go."

"Let me finish this letter first." He scribbled a few more words, rolled up the scroll, and sent it off using dragon fire.

Twilight and Spike exited the room, with Spike holding the creature in his arms. As they walked down the hall, they encountered a nurse. "Are you feeling better now, Princess Twilight?"

"Yes, I'm fine, except for the horn pain that follows magical overexertions."

"Okay, let's get you checked up one last time before you leave the hospital." The nurse went into room 8 and returned with the clipboard. They descended the stairs and entered Doctor Horse's office. After a checkup which included temperature readings (her horn had already fully cooled) and a few questions about her health and what had happened, they were out of the hospital and were walking back to the Castle of Friendship.

"Okay, what explains this creature?" asked Twilight, examining the creature Spike was holding.

"Since you've never seen anything like it before, it's pretty likely that it's a new species of organism," replied Spike.

"True, and the Everfree is still quite a mysterious place, so it is possible nopony has discovered it yet. But that leads, again, to the question: how was it able to be teleported with me? I guess I could have just accidentally teleported it with me, but that is, I think, rather unlikely."

"Maybe it has teleportation hijacking powers," suggested Spike.

"That seems rather unlikely as well. My teleport was a very long distance teleport, and that needs a lot of energy to both raise the magicons' energy level and propel me forward, or equivalently, increase my kinetic energy. I have control over the energy flow, which has to be precise so I don't teleport other things with me. For it to evolve this kind of precise redirection of energy it would have to be in contact with ponies for a long, long time, or their species would also need to be able to teleport. It couldn't have been in contact with ponies for that long because nopony, as far as I know, knows about them, so the only logical explanation for hijacking powers is that its species can teleport, and that it can trace my teleport as well. Tracing a teleport requires a way of detecting the magical field accurately, but it doesn't have a horn, so it is very unlikely that it can do that. Additionally, if it could, it would need a lot of energy to teleport that much distance, as well as a lot of luck for it to land beside me."

"So it doesn't have teleportation hijacking powers?"

"Right, it is extremely unlikely that it does," said Twilight. The two reached the path that connects the castle to the rest of Ponyville. The crash site was just ahead of them, and they approached it. A pony-shaped dent in the ground could still clearly be seen. There was also a smaller dent where the creature had landed around 30 centimeters off to the side. As Starlight had remembered, the orientation of the impact did look like both Twilight and the creature hit the ground from the direction of the Everfree Forest. Twilight noticed this.

"So that's where the creature was found?" she asked, pointing at the smaller dent.

"Yup."

"The magnitude and the direction of the impact both match mine, which means that it almost surely also teleported with me, so we can rule out that it was just a coincidence that it was also found here," explained Twilight. "It is therefore quite likely that I accidentally teleported it with me. Perhaps we could take a photo and make detailed drawings of the crash site later, but let's go back into the castle for now."

Twilight and Spike walked the rest of the way back to the castle. They opened the door and walked inside. "Where's Starlight?"

"Oh hey, you're back!" Starlight walked down the stairs to the main hall. "Are you feeling better now?"

"For possibly the fourth time today, yes," replied Twilight, slightly frustrated.

"Nice. So what is that creature?"

"Twilight doesn't know either. Based on our observations, we think that she accidentally teleported it with her," said Spike, holding it as the three walked down the hallway towards the library.

"Oh? That's interesting. Spike, remember I said that telekinetically carrying you to the hospital felt kind of weird? I tried to recreate the effect with some books, and I couldn't do it," said Starlight.

"What did it feel like?" asked Twilight.

"It just felt like Spike was a lot heavier than he should normally be."

"Are you sure it's not just the creature that's being heavier than it looks?"

"I'm not sure, but let me try." They got to the library, and Twilight put her saddlebags down on a table. Starlight tried to lift the creature from Spike's arms with her telekinesis. The act took a lot more effort than expected, but she was able to lift it up after the initial moment of unexpectedness. She dropped her telekinesis.

Suddenly, the creature started to cry, much like a foal would, and wiggled within the towel that wrapped around it.

"Whoa, what's happening?" asked Spike. He tried to hold it still in his arms but it squirmed, trying to get out of the cloth. Spike made the decision to unwrap the towel, freeing the creature.

"How is that even possible?" she asked. "It felt like it had a weight of several ponies combined, or more. How heavy is it, Spike?"

"Just a few kilograms. Why was it so hard to use telekinesis on it?"

"Well, we have found meteorites from outer space, and some of them are harder while others are easier to perform magic on," replied Twilight. "The difference isn't usually very drastic, but we have encountered ones that feel like they weigh more than ten times than they actually do."

"So you're saying that it's from outer space?" asked Spike.

"Not necessarily. It's rather unlikely, actually, since it came with a towel, and towels tend to burn up when they enter the atmosphere at high speeds. Plus, it would very likely have died from falling from those kinds of heights, but it is evidently still alive," said Twilight. "Still, it's a good point. Being so hard to use magic on suggests that it isn't from Equus, as all objects from the planet have pretty much the same magicon density. If it isn't from outer space, where is it from?"

The three examined the creature, now that they could see its actual body. It had four appendages: two that resembled minotaur arms, but ending with hands with five instead of four digits, one of those five being opposable. The other two are kind of similar to the legs of a dog, but the bottom of the feet are flatter. Again, the feet had five toes attached, but unlike the hands, there were no opposable digits. Its skin was a brownish color, and its whole body was smooth and furless, except for a bit of a dark mane on the body part that is, presumably, its head, as it resembled one. The creature wore a white diaper around its groin.

It was also still crying loudly.

"Why does it have a diaper on?" asked Starlight, performing Silentium, creating a silencing bubble around it to muffle its crying. The room was suddenly quiet again.

"That's a very good question. Maybe somepony put a diaper on it? If that were true, which is very likely, then somepony else must know of this creature. But then again, how did it end up in the Everfree forest? Also, continuing from our conversation earlier, how did I not notice that I had teleported it as well? Perhaps most importantly, why does it have such low magicon density? Ah, so many questions!" Twilight was prancing around the library, a bit annoyed but excited by the sheer amount of mystery surrounding this creature. "What if it came from... no, that wouldn't work. But what... oh! That somepony could have gone... hmm... Maybe it's supposed to..."

Spike examined the diaper closely, but not too close as for his head to get inside the bubble. The diaper appeared to have a shape slightly different from the average pony foal diaper; it had a bulge in the middle whereas pony diapers didn't. In addition, Spike noticed that it did not have a hole for a tail to go through. In fact, the creature did not have a tail at all. "Um, Twilight? This doesn't look like a diaper for a pony," said Spike. "Look, it doesn't have a hole for a tail."

"What?"

"Look." Spike grasped the creature so that she could see its behind.

"Wait... so its species makes diapers?" Twilight looked at the diaper closely, studying it. Instead of a hole where she had expected, diaper material covered the area seamlessly. She prodded the diaper with her forehoof. "It is different from the diapers the baby Cakes use, but at the same time this seems like it was mass produced. The only explanation I can think of is that its species makes diapers, which means that they are sapient, intelligent, and they're from an advanced society. But, wh- how? How could there be an advanced civilization in the Everfree with a proper industry that we've never seen before? That doesn't even make any sense!"

"It doesn't look very intelligent," noted Spike.

"That... That is a good point. Maybe it's just a baby, and that's why it has a diaper on."

"It's probably not from the Everfree Forest, then," said Starlight. "What if there was another world full of these creatures and you somehow teleported one of them here? Then you have all your mysteries solved."

"Okay, but where is that other world? There aren't any port-" Twilight's face grew from a thinking face into a big smile. "YES YES YES! The creature must be from the mirror portal to that alternate dimension where everypony was a creature that stood on two legs and had fingers... like that creature!"

Twilight galloped out of the library, up a few flights of stairs, and into the room where the portal was kept. It was off and the book wasn't even on the machine. For a tiny duration of time, a memory of where the book was located went through her mind: she kept it in a drawer in her work room.

Spike and Starlight entered the room. "You teleported from the Castle of the Two Sisters to here. It was nearly impossible that the creature did come through this portal," reasoned Spike.

"That means that this is a new discovery," said Twilight excitedly when the three were back down at the library. "Spike, take a letter. Dear Princess Celestia..."