I didn't expect this shit!
The Rest of Us
(A Twilight in the Last of Us)
Chapter 1 - I didn’t expect this shit!
It looked stable. Twilight checked the portal a few more times, trying to make sure that there was no instabilities in it. Her visits to Sunset’s world had been so informative, and she had simply learned so much, that she wanted to see other worlds. The idea was simple enough, reverse engineer the crystal mirror, see how the enchantments worked, and then see about applying them to another mirror.
Of course this was just to study, to see this other world. She wasn’t ready to visit any other place, but looking into it, that should be fine. With Starlight’s help figuring out the enchantments was a breeze. She left it intact, even writing to Sunset and letting her know what she was doing, and then she cast the first set of enchantments here.
Her mirror wasn’t really a mirror. She considered using one, but Spike had once said the crystal doors in the castle were better than any mirror. So with that thought a simple cast to a broom closet, or at least she hoped it was the broom closet, let the portal begin to work. She touched the door, felt the portal, but it was weird. It was in the doorway, not the door. The door opened, and on the other side she saw this town… It looked similar to the one that Sunset was in, but the flora had overgrown reclaiming so much of it. She could see several… Sunset had called them cars, yes cars, just sitting there, not being used, with grass and weeds growing up through them.
She moved closer, determined to take another look when she sensed it. The portal began to grow unstable. It was tiny at first, just a random fluctuation, but then a ripple effect began to appear. She felt the portal doing what it shouldn’t be doing. It was pulling her toward it!
She cried out, grabbing the door, yelling for Spike, Starlight, anypony to save her before she felt her hooves slip and she went flying backwards into the portal itself.
Lincoln Massachusetts - 2036 - Ernie’s Pizza
The top of the Winnebago made the normal pops and creaks as Bill found a place to take a seat. He pulled the letter Joel had given him out of his pocket. He still had Frank’s letter, back at the Church, stuck inside of a small box he kept his important treasures in. Frank might have been an asshole, but he was his asshole. He didn’t feel guilty about how he felt, not anymore. Sure, at one time he knew his mom would have disowned him, but that was gone.
She’d claim that it was a sin, that God would be angry, but if God was there he wasn’t listening. Nope, he figured the big G had left the phone off of the hook. He reopened Joel’s letter, something that he sent, with a party that was willing to trade for antibiotics, to Bill.
Bill,
It’s been a while. To be honest I’m not sure if you’re really going to read this, or if you’re going to take a look at it and figure that I would have had better luck of fucking myself with the letter than trying to talk to you. Still, I’ve got to figure that even you need someone to talk to every once in awhile. Ellie is doing well, and she’s sorry for the stuff that went missing. I hope the stuff I sent along with the group makes up for it.
Look, getting in touch with you isn’t the only reason I’m writing. We’ve been talking, and it seems like it could be beneficial if our two towns worked together. We could send a few folks out that way, take a look at the power plant, substations, maybe get you some power on in that town, and if you wouldn’t mind, maybe let a few families set up.
It’s not something you have to agree to right away, but something to consider. Well, I’ve got to get back. I’ve been training kids on survival over here. Take it easy Bill,
Joel
He put the letter back into his pocket. The idea of families here, kids, men, women, children, it didn’t sit really well. He’d let Frank get close to him, and that didn’t turn out like he hoped. Maybe he was wrong, but he didn’t think so. He looked up for a moment and caught something twinkling. Grabbing his rifle he looked through the scope to see the twinkling getting stronger, and then something exploded.
He could have sworn that whatever it was that exploded erupted into a million colors and spread out in every direction. He slowly got up, after realizing that the explosion had put him on his back, and made his way toward the end of the Winnebago. Feeling for the ladder he climbed down, but he prepared. His rifle was back in his hands, cocked, ready to be used, ready to…
He looked at the girl lying on the street. Well, kind of a girl, she looked like something from his days of playing Dungeons and Dragons. She looked like a weird version of an Equitra. He’d never seen the infection do that, so infection was out. If she was some kind of Government experiment she was about fifteen to twenty years too late in showing up. He notice that unlike most of the Equitra from Dungeons and Dragons she was colored something along the lines that a child would love.
He held the gun, ready to defend himself, and moved toward her. Every cell in his body was screaming that this was a bad idea. He should leave it there, let the infect deal with it, and that would be it. Instead there was a small part of him that wanted to see this thing. Moving toward her he touched her large lavender wing. It moved, slightly, revealing a similar colored back. If he’d been a furry, or straight, he might have been a bit more interested in seeing what all he could get to move, but he wasn’t really either. What he was instead was interested. He tapped her again, and she groaned before she raised up.
Gay or not he could appreciate the female form as a thing of beauty. Her face was a little off, her nose being wider, more equine shaped, her mouth also wider, her eyes, which blinked open, were a similar color of lavender, slightly darker, and if he was to guess he’d guess that she had the body of an academic and not an athlete.
Then again, it wasn’t like he was exactly built to run any races either.
“Ugh… What happened…”
He cocked the rifle, getting her attention, and instantly he wished that he hadn’t. Her eyes focused on him, then the rifle, and he watched as it glowed an off purple, lifted out of his hands, and the barrel bent in a ninety degree angle. His best hunting rifle, and she went and ruined it!
She stood, her nude form pronounced, and his eyes simply stared into her own.
“What in the hell is wrong with you?!”
She recoiled a bit at his outburst.
“Do you know how difficult it was to find that gun? To fix it, clean it, take care of it?!”
“Stop shouting.”
He was seething, but he tried to calm down. Whatever she was she had ripped the rifle from his hands, took it into the air, and bent it with nothing more than what he supposed was the power of her mind. The idea that she might actually be a government experiment came to him again. He dismissed it after a bit though. It just wasn’t that likely. Even if the Government had been working on something like her there would have been some evidence of her existence long before now.
He had to believe that she would have surfaced when the world started going dark, when there was simply no more power, that whatever had been containing her would have opened, or she would have escaped. The more he considered it the more likely it seemed that she simply didn’t belong here.
“Where, where am I?”
He looked at her, his hand staying right above his revolver, “My town, Lincoln Massachusetts, now I’ve got a question for you. Who are you, what are you, and what are you doing here?!”
Her ears flattened against her head, he could see her eyes closing shut, and she groaned. He knew the signs of what it was. A massive headache, most likely a migraine. He watched as she nearly fell to her knees, and forgoing the revolver he caught her, pulled her up to his shoulder, and looked toward the distance. It was a ways to the safe house, but it would be worth it.
Walking with her, keeping her upright, keeping her from falling over, and keeping from bitching at her for ruining his rifle was turning out to be a bit more than he bargained for. Each step they took she nearly fell over, and by the time they made it to the gate going into the courtyard of the old church he was about to give out himself. Still, he managed to get them through, get the gate opened, get her inside, close and lock it, and then get them up the steps, into the basement of the church, and over toward where his cots were.
At first he considered only grabbing two of the cots. After all there had just been Frank and him, but Frank had made the point that they could use the extra cots. Right now it seemed like a good idea having it. He stretched her nude form out on a cot, brought over a blanket, and then grabbed a bottle of water.
She was sleeping, but when she woke up he knew that she’d want something to drink. Walking over toward his pile he began digging through it until he came to the species book for Dungeons and Dragons. It wasn’t possible, he knew that, but it was the only thing that even came close to matching her. With that, he opened the book, found the section for the Beast Folk, and began reading on the Equitra.
The book described them as being a society of warriors, poets, farmers, and every other kind of existence that life had. Looking through the tribes he began to notice that mystics tended to be more mythological, unicorns, or they were more science geared and were alchemists. Warriors tended to be normal Equitra, but there were a few winged ones, Pegasi, for lack of a better term, but there was nothing exactly like her.
It wasn’t until he got further into reading setting up a character that he learned that a player could have a mixed blood Equitra that was born of a Pegasus and an Unicorn. That mixed blood would have advantages of both tribes, and weaknesses of both as well. He sat the book down and looked at her.
“So, was Gary Gygax some kind of prophet?”
She didn’t answer, and he didn’t expect her to. Setting the book down he looked at her, then at the room itself. Twenty-four years ago the idea of the infected overthrowing the world, causing everything and everyone to go into martial law, and causing so much of the world to go back into what could be considered a more natural state was completely unbelievable. But that was fact now. It was science, it could be explained. He wasn’t going to sit there and try to claim that he was some kind of genius, he wasn’t.
Hell, twenty years ago he’d barely finished his associates degree to become a Registered Nurse. Luckily it ended up being an education that had paid for itself several times over, but it didn’t change a few facts. Everything had a reason. There was a cause and effect that explained things, and right now he had no idea what was the cause that brought a living Dungeons and Dragons character into his town.
He walked toward the bookshelf holding some of his food, found a can of spaghetti. He felt glad that it was a pop top lid, and he looked at the dried blood on it. The good had come from a failed military scout mission. Like before they had tried to come into his town to find anything of use, and like before they simply didn’t realize the amount of infected that was here. The fight didn’t last long, and in the end he wound up with about four backpacks full of canned food and goods.
Of course he got a few new guns, but he wasn’t too fond of the full automatic rifles. The fastest way to take down the infected was with a headshot, and that meant taking time to aim. Of course you didn’t shoot unless you had to. That’d been a lesson he’d learned the hard way. Still, he had the automatic rifles if he ever needed them, but that was doubtful. The downside to the food was how much of it was blood covered. Normally that didn’t bother him. Canned, and plastic wrapped, food tended to be just fine despite whatever got on it. Anything fresh would have be discarded, but those soldiers were obviously part of a long term scout mission.
He glanced toward his sleeping guest and wondered what she’d eat. The Species Book stated that the Equitra were vegetarian. Some of the canned stuff he had didn’t contain meat, but he was certain all of it had been processed in places where meat was processed as well. She was going to just have to deal with it. But there was oatmeal.
He wanted to curse a little when he thought of it. Oatmeal was one of those things that had the potential of lasting forever, and he knew there was a house in town that had some in a freezer that was hooked up to some solar panels. The house had been in the same neighborhood where Frank had fled to with that Truck he was trying to get fixed and take off with. He wasn’t sure if Frank didn’t know about it, or didn’t care, but he’d found it when he went exploring.
He’d cleared the stairwell of the couches, and other furniture, that someone had used to block it and found the top of the house basically locked down. Whoever had been here hadn’t left intentionally, and from the look of it they hadn’t managed to get back to their safehouse either. One by one he checked the rooms and found a few comics, a few new fantasy novels, a television that was worthless, a CB radio that he took, and then the freezer. It surprised him since it was still operating, and when he opened it he discovered an entire freezer full of oatmeal.
He knew that doomsday preppers back in the day would say to store oatmeal in a freezer, because if someone did then it’d last forever. If needed, he could go there, get the oatmeal, and let her have that. Maybe that’d be better anyway, since she was obviously kind of a horse anyway. He wasn’t sure, but he’d always heard that horses ate oats. So, he marked it down as something to consider.
He finished his can, cleaned it out to keep it from smelling, and then put it into a bag. His memories went back to trash services, people getting their trash picked up by garbage trucks, and then that trash hauled off to wherever it was going. It seemed like a lifetime ago, and in many ways it was. What had happened had happened so long ago that it was almost not even real. That world had become one of myth.
A world where people didn’t worry about raiding parties, bandits, where roaming groups of people didn’t trap, kill, and eat other people. It was fantasy, and he knew that.
“Ummm… My head.”
He looked toward the sound of the voice, seeing movement under the blanket, and he got up. In truth he wasn’t sure if aspirin would even be a good idea. He knew that when it came to animals they could have a child’s, or half an adult’s most of the time, especially if they were well under what could be considered normal weight for a human, but as far as he knew she was a strange species that just happened to come straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. Still, it didn’t matter much anyway. Either she’d survive, or she wouldn’t. That was the normal way of things. People lived each day at a time, and no one dared to build toward a future. Building toward a future meant planning on surviving long enough to get there, and it was hard enough to just get through the day.
“Careful, not real sure, since I still don’t know what the fuck you are, but I figure you’ve got a migraine. Most likely caused from exhaustion. I’ve got some aspirin, and I’ll give you some, but you’re going start talking about who you are, where you come from, and how in the hell you broke my rifle.”
She looked at him, and then she looked down at herself. He expected a few things. He expected her to possibly ask questions, to wonder where clothes might be, to even ask for something to put on, but her to start hyperventilating and look like she was having a massive panic attack wasn’t what he expected.
“I.. what… This isn’t RIGHT!” she shouted as she darted out of the cot, “No, no, no, no no, no, NO! Human! I’m supposed to look human! That’s what happens when you crossover! Go through the portal, look human!”
At least that answered the question of if she knew what he was. He watched as she looked at her hands, her rump, felt her wings, and then she looked at him, “A mirror! Do you have one?!”
He pointed toward the corner and she practically ran toward it. He noticed her strange hooved feet. They were certainly made like feet, having a heel, an ankle, basically foot shaped, but at the end was a hoof. It almost appeared like a massive toe, singular, with a hoof grown over it. He watched as she touched her nose, her horn, her ears, and then she hugged herself.
“This is wrong, this is so wrong, what kind of world is this? I… I thought it was like Sunset Shimmer’s world, humans, just humans, what am I?!”
He grabbed his Dungeons and Dragons’ species book, opening to the place with the Equitra and handed it to her. She opened it, looked at it confused, and then flipped the pages for a moment. After a second her horn lit up to a purple color again and he watched as it covered his book. He almost started to ask what she was doing and then she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Good, I can understand it now… Equitra, member of the beast folk… Warriors, poets, mages… This looks like a species book for Spike’s Ogres & Oubliettes game,” she said as she studied it, “is there any more of these… Equitra here?”
He shook his head, “Nope, you’re the first one that I’ve ever seen, and to be honest that is a game manual. It’s just the only thing that even remotely has what you are in it.”
She looked at him, his clothes, and feeling a little vulnerable she covered herself.
“Don’t, okay, just don’t. I’m not saying that you aren’t pretty, I’m sure you are, but I don’t swing that way,” he said as he walked over toward a box and dug through it. Finding a sweatshirt, and sweatpants, both rescued from one of the houses, he tossed them to her, “There’s something to make you feel better. Now, I want some answers.”
She caught the clothes, ignored him for a moment, and pulled the sweatpants on. She soon realized that the shirt was a bit too conflicting with her wings, and she looked at him.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he grumbled as he walked over, grabbed his machete, and proceeded to cut a hole in the back of it.
He hated doing things like that, ruining a perfectly good shirt. Now she’d be the only one that could wear it. He watched as she got her wings through it, the shirt on and then she looked at him.
“Ummm… Do you have anything to drink? Maybe something to eat?”
“Son of a bitch…” he grabbed the bottle of water he sat down for her and handed it to her. He then walked toward the bookshelf with food on it and grabbed a can of beans along with a can opener, “There’s not a lot of choices, so it’s this, or you can starve.”
She looked at him in surprise. She’d never heard anypony talk like that to her before. Looking down at the can of beans she realized that he was sharing food with her, and while he wasn’t the nicest pony, or rather person, she’d ever met at least he was being fairly civil. However, having grown up in Canterlot, always presented with choices, and always given options she found herself making a sound that she seldom made, but one that she knew expressed her displeasure.
“What’s the sigh for?” he asked as he studied her, “It’s food, and water, and trust me princess both of those things are hard enough to come by. If you don’t want it then fine.”
“No… I’m sorry, I really am, this is just new to me.”
She took the can opener, something she’d seen once in Sunset’s world. Applejack had one on her farm. She used it to open a can of apple slices in syrup, and Twilight tried to remember how it worked. After a moment she felt the tip pierce the can, and she began working the straight handled device until the can was mostly open. When it was she smelled the beans. There was a hint of maple syrup, some brown sugar, and something else that she couldn’t quite identify.
She looked around, and saw that the back of the can opener had a small opening. She messed with it until something slid out. It was small, metallic, but it was a spoon. A sigh of relief covered her and she dipped the spoon into the beans. The first bite told her what she had expected. There was maple syrup, sugar, and something else, but she didn’t care. All that mattered to her was that this was food. She opened the bottle, took a drink, and then went back to shoveling the beans into her mouth.
He watched her as she ate, and after a few moments he walked over toward his collection of books and magazines. Digging through it he found an old fantasy novel that he had been planning to start for some time. He could remember that the series that the book belonged to had become a television series, and people had gotten upset that the author hadn’t released the next book in the series yet.
A small part of him wondered if author survived, and if he did, did he ever finish the next book. Once he read through the series, since he’d basically found the five of them around through town, he might consider going on a journey to see, but mostly he doubted it. He opened the book, turned up the lantern a little higher, and looked at the first paragraph.
Prologue
“We should start back,” Gared urged as woods began to grow dark around them, “The Wildings are dead.”
“Do the dead frighten you?” Ser Waymar Royce asked with just a hint of a smile.Hearing steps he lowered the book, his free hand resting on top of his revolver, and he looked at his guest. She was finishing the can of beans, sipping her water, and she was moving toward the pile of books and magazines. He cleared his throat getting her attention.
“That’s my stuff.”
She looked at him a little confused.
“Everything there, everything in this whole building, is stuff that I’ve found, rescued, and brought back here. I’ve managed to keep from being killed or infected, so everything in that pile, or my place, is worth my life. Don’t touch anything unless you ask first, and then you wait for me to give you the say so, got it?!”
Her ears pinned against her head and she nodded, “Fine, you looking for something to read?”
She nervously shuffled a foot/hoof, “Yes, but I wanted to see if you had anything that might deal with how I might get back home. Even fiction might help.”
He looked at the pile. In truth he wasn’t so sure that there really was that much that would do any kind of helping at all. He had a comic once, but it was more about space than anything else. Finally his eyes came across a kid’s novel. It was the second in the series, Chamber of Secrets, but he could recall that there had been some kind of teleporting, or something, in it. He pulled it loose, handed it to her, and looked her in the eyes, “You can borrow it, borrow, not keep, but borrow. When you’re done put it back on the pile.”
She took the book, but not with either hand. He watched as it floated, the same purplish, or lavender actually, glow covering it. She glanced at him, a half smile formed on her lips, and she moved away from the pile and toward the cot that she had been sleeping on. He watched her, not exactly why he felt guilty about getting onto her, but deciding that the least he could do would be to make up for it.
He cleared his throat getting her attention, “Up this way.”
She followed him up the stairs until they came to a large room. Her eyes drifted toward the stain glass windows, and it reminded her so much of Celestia’s and Luna’s castle in Canterlot. There was dim light here as well, but she noticed that he was lighting another lantern and sitting it toward the center of the room.
“This place, my place, is safe, mostly, and you should be fine up here. During the day the room gets pretty bright, here at night you can use the lantern. Be careful to not turn it up too bright. Like everything else the Kerosine that these lanterns use comes from my scavenging outside, and that means risking my life to get them.”
She listened, but part of her wondered exactly what it was like out there. If it was dangerous, then she needed to know the dangers. She watched as he began to go and she cleared her throat.
“What?”
“What’s outside?”
He looked at her like she had grown another head and shook his own after he realized that she wasn’t kidding. He cursed and then tried to think about how to explain it.
“Look princess,” he began before she interrupted him.
“Twilight, my name is Twilight, please call me Twilight.”
“Fine, Twilight, what’s out there is the stuff nightmares are made of. We, people, humans, whatever, call them the infected. There ain’t a real way of explaining them without showing you them, and tomorrow, that’s what I’ll do,” he looked at her and then toward the outside, “Should be one or two in the traps out there. Jesus Christ, Bill, what the fuck is wrong with you? Gonna show a character from Dungeons and Dragons all over your damned town.”
She saw him talking to himself, and she stopped him again, “You don’t have to do that you know.”
He looked at her, “Do what?”
“Talk to yourself. I’m here, I don’t mind to talk.”
For the first time since Joel and that brat had been here he began to talk. It was a step, a small one, but one that he obviously needed. Taking a seat in the pew he talked to her about his life here, about Frank, who had stolen his heart, and then stole food, guns, and the parts to make a running car before he was bit. He talked about Joel and the brat, and he talked about before the infection began.
She laughed when he explained his night of celebration after graduating with his RN license, and then she saw his expression turned somber.
“It changed after that. Everything did. My Parents didn’t have to live through it, both of them passed a few years before, but my… Rosie was my little sister. I took care of her, and in a few ways I was more like her Dad then her older brother. Mom had died during childbirth with her, and Dad, Dad drank himself to death after Mom died,” he wiped his nose, “It was just Rosie and me. Just the two of us, but I made do. I worked in Ernie’s Pizza, Hudson’s Music Emporium, and at the Gnome experience. But it kept a roof over our heads, and it let me finish school,” he laughed a little, “Rosie, she was eight years old when this all went to hell. I… I took her with me, and we went to Ernie’s Pizza. She loved it there, and I got a pie for us. The news came on, and we saw everything going to hell. I took off back home, taking her with me.”
He stood and Twilight looked at him.
“What happened?”
He looked at her and shook his head, “The military came in, said that they were going to protect us. Everyone had to get into their houses at a certain time, businesses closed early, it was hell. They started rounding everyone up after a couple of weeks. The said that the place just wasn’t safe enough to defend. Rosie didn’t want to go, I didn’t either, so we hid out. When they left it was just the two of us. We were fine for a couple of years. I took care of her, made sure she was healthy, and then…” he looked into the distance, “She was never bit. I kept that from happening, but the snow, she loved the snow. It was so deep, and she laughed so hard as she played outside. That night she got so sick. I got the antibiotics she needed, I made chicken noodle soup, I did everything I could, but she wasn’t getting any better.”
He grew quiet, and Twilight hugged him. She felt him stiffen for a moment, resisting the hug, but after a few moments he gave in and hugged her back. She didn’t even begin to understand what it must have been like for him to lose his sister. She didn’t want to know what it would be like. Shining Armor was still alive, and so was Cadence. She had her family, and they were fine, they were… Realization began to seep into her mind. They were worried about her, she knew that, and she knew they were looking for her. Time seemed to move similar in this universe as it did in her own, but she wasn’t sure if that was truly the case.
She had no idea if time ran slower her, meaning that for every one or two days she spent here maybe a year or two went by there, or perhaps it moved faster here meaning she could spend a year, or five, or ten, and when she returned, if she could, less than an hour would have passed. While she was an alicorn the old foe of Unicorns snuck up on her and began to violate her in the worsts of ways. Her personal neurosis began telling the tale of how everything would be different, how she needed to fix it, and she felt something rubbing her back.
It was between her wing joints, the touch was surprisingly soft, even, and felt like when Shining Armor would rub her back when her anxiety would be getting to her.
“You’re okay.”
She looked at him, at Bill, and she could see his expression. It looked similar to Shining Armor’s when he was comforting her. They stayed like that, for a while, until she saw the bare beginnings of the sunrise. Bill took notice of her distraction and he turned to see it as well. He motioned for her to follow him, and he opened a window at the edge of the church, stepped out onto the old roof’s ledge, and stood there watching the sun rising.
It’d been years since he’d actually just watched the sun rise for the sake of watching it. Most of the time the sun rising usually meant it was time to get to work, gathering up antibiotics, pain meds, and anything else that he could use as trade. Oh, he kept a supply of medicine on hand for when he needed it, but he knew that there was always going to be those who were willing to trade for what he had.
And then there were the bandits and the raiders. Most of them that came into his town ended up being dealt with by the infected. It was one reason he had a live and let live relationship with them. He kept them blocked from the sections that he patrolled, and in return they typically took care of some of the more dangerous members of humanity.
Watching it rising, and feeling a little weariness he considered going inside and getting what little sleep he could, but he threw that idea off pretty quickly. He needed to show her the infected. He needed to let her see the dangers that awaited anyone unfortunately to stumble across them. He looked at her, and nodded, “I’m going to need to rest, but not before I show you what I was talking about.”
She followed him down to the gate, and he unlocked it. The two of them moved into what looked like an expansive courtyard, or she thought it was until she noticed the tombstones that had tall grass growing around them.
“Is this… This is a Cemetery?”
He nodded, “The Church up there did funerals, celebrations, and a little bit of everything. This cemetery is from a time that folks still took time to bury their dead. There’s good folks out there that still do, but most of the time whoever gets buried is lucky if they leave a couple of sticks tied together to make cross.”
That was hard for her to believe. Even in the worst war, which was well over three thousand years before she was born, Equestrians would bury their dead, and they would allow their enemies the chance, and time, to do the same. Still she followed him until he unlocked a gate and pushed it open. Looking through it she saw a creature that had weird growth’s around where its eyes should have been. It made clicking sounds, and it stumbled around like a drunken pony.
“That’s a clicker. Dangerous as all get out, and they hunt by sound, like bats. If you see one you get quiet, and you hide. You hide behind a desk, or tombstone, or something, but you hide.”
The creature let out a feral scream, turned toward them, and Bill cursed as it ran toward them. He pulled his revolver held it up, and pulled the trigger. The shot went into the creature’s head, knocking it onto the ground. She watched as it twitched a few times, and then it went still. He closed the gate, locked it, and turned toward her.
“If you ever go with me into town you’ve got to stay close, and you’ve got to be armed. I’ll teach you how to shoot, but you’ve got to promise me that you’ll do those two things.”
She nodded. Going back toward the church the two of them went back into the cellar, and Bill found a cot to stretch out on. Twilight watched as he went to sleep, and she picked up the book where he had shown her the Equitra. She looked at the page over them again, studying them, really figuring it out, and then she sat down.
This wasn’t her actual form. This world, this universe, made her take it, so that meant that there was, or had been, beings like her here before. This book had drawings that were close, and the more she thought on it, the more likely it was that a universe similar to her own existed in parallel with this one. If that was the case then their ponies most likely looked like the Equitra, and thus what she looked like. Realization dawned on her. If that was really the case then it meant that there was a chance she could find an opening to that world. If she could then she could work with their mystics to find a way home.
It was sketchy, at best, but at least it was something of a plan. Feeling tired herself she went to her own cot, stretched out, and laid down for a bit. Over the course of the next few days Twilight convinced Bill to let her read everything he had in his small library. So far only the Dungeons and Dragon book had any kind of information, but she needed more. When she wasn’t reading Bill was teaching her to use a gun.
She quickly learned that they were noisy, produced a smell she didn’t like at all, and that they could send projectiles just as fast, and with as much force, as a normal unicorn could if they focused enough. Realizing that she decided to show him, and she used her magic to fling a small stone through the target they were using.
The first few times they went into the town he showed her the places that he didn’t often patrol, and let her know that she wasn’t to go there on her own. He did, however, agree that anything that looked like it could help her she was more than welcome to have, as long as she let him know ahead of time. In a sense it gave her a small run of the town.
Since it was quiet, and since she didn’t seem to have any problem using it, Bill told her to do that instead, but to keep the gun handy for a situation where she couldn’t do that. Thinking of it like that made sense, and she agreed to do so. A week went by, and she found herself going into town, sneaking quietly through buildings, checking to see if there was anything that could be used or traded, and then she saw it. Her eyes lit up as she took in the sight for the first time. She didn’t hear Bill call her name, but instead she moved toward the building and stepped inside. She lit her horn up, looking around, and saw no sign of the infected. Breathing out a sigh of relief she found a candle, focused her magic, and lit it with a simple spark spell.
From there she began her search, using the card catalogue, and she began finding books over magic. She smiled as she brought the books she found toward a table, bringing over the candle with her, and she took a seat. It was a library, a real library, and there was hundreds, no thousands, of books here for her to research. It was quiet, which was a nice change of pace. She looked at the candle, it's flickering flame, and gently she turned the page of the book. It was a library, an entire one, something she had come to love. Finally a sound violated the quiet, and she looked up.
The door was open, there was a man, in a mask, holding a large knife. His breathing was uneven, the way his head moved made him look worried, and despite the fact she knew she was in trouble, she stood.
"I'm here," she said.
He breathed out, pulled up the mask and walked toward her.
"What have I told you about wandering off?!"
"I know... But it's a library!"
"It's also around the corner from the infected! Jesus, Twilight, I thought we covered this!"
She sighed and slid down in her seat. Bill was... Bill was Bill, but at least he kept to his word. He let her have run of the town, use things she scavenged, letting her get chemistry sets and the like in an attempt to reopen the portal.
His rule was simple. Only go where it was reasonably safe to go, never go alone into infected areas, and always, always tell each other if you're going to going out.
"You bit?"
She shook her head.
"I've got to check, you know that right?"
She sighed, nodded, and stood up.
At least she knew that Bill wasn't bent toward mares, or girls rather. Still, she didn't like the idea of having to be checked for bites every time she wanted to get something for an experiment. She undressed, her clothes had changed from that sweat suit to overalls, and a backless t-shirt. She never would have believed it, but the overalls were ideal for an Alicorn or a Pegasus that was stuck in this form. They had openings for wings, allowed for freedom of movement, and didn’t feel constricting.
It also allowed for them to be taken off fairly quickly. She let the overalls fall to her knees, she pulled off her shirt, and she waited as Bill checked her for bites.
“Okay, good… Look, I’m sorry, I really am, but I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”
He reminded her a bit of Shining Armor, and how he always fussed over make sure that she was safe. In a way, that’s what it felt like. Like Bill was another big Brother there to help her. She showed him the books, and he agreed to let her take them along. They went back to his place, got inside, and she began to look over the books themselves.
Most of the books about magic were useless. They were over how to perform illusions, but one had potential. It was a book that talked about spell crafting, the ability to weave magics, and while the book explained that much of this came from now mostly dead practices she found some similarities between what the book described and her own magic.
There was trial and error, several times, but finally she began to figure out what had happened, and what caused the portal she created to act the way it had. She had made, for all rights and purposes, a connection to a universe, using that universe’s frequency as the trigger. What she didn’t do was use her own universe’s frequency as an anchor. If she was correct she could create a portal that would allow travel between these two universes for an indefinite amount of time. She just needed something from this world as an anchor, and she saw it when she looked at an old key.
"It's Working!"
He watched as she lifted a glowing key. Magic was bullshit as far as he was concerned. He remembered some magic acts from before everything went to shit. Guys that made a living telling people which cards they picked, escaping from straight jackets, making people disappear.
As he recalled it was all just smoke and mirrors, but this key, there was no reason it should be glowing. She slid it, a blank key, into a door to a broom closet, turned it, Which shouldn't have worked, and then opened the door.
Behind it was a swirling mess of colors, so many that he couldn't believe it, and then it began to form into a picture. he started to try to see what it was when a nude form came through the door, tackled him to the ground, and giggled.
"HI! I'm Pinkie Pie! You're new! I've got to throw you an 'I just met you so let's be friends party!' Oh Twilight! Yay! Everypony she's here!"
"Get off."
"Huh?"
"Get off now!"
"Pinkie... He's a little cranky..."
"That's funny, he doesn't look like a donkey."
“Twi?”
The orange coated, blond maned and tailed, Equitra asked as she stepped out into the room.
“Alright! Told all of you that she’d figure it out. As eggheads go Twilight’s pretty awesome.”
A white unicorn with a purple mane and tail stepped through behind the blue pegasus with a rainbow mane, and long after the pink one had jumped Bill.
“Rainbow, darling, perhaps now is not a good time to be doing an ‘I told you so’ victory,” she glance at Twilight and smiled, “It’s wonderful to see you… but goodness me, Twilight you’re practically dressed to the nines.”
She looked at Bill and then at herself again, “I’m rather undressed aren’t I?”
Bill watched as more and more of them came through, and he groaned. He got used to Twilight, but this was company on a whole new scale. Somehow, he had the feeling that he was going to be giving the don’t touch my stuff speech several times over.
