"Princess Celestia?"

"Yes, Twilight?"

Bruce fidgeted. "...How did you know to send those letters?"

"I believed Discord was likely to do something that made you unable to use the Elements, and you might need to be reminded of who you really were." She glanced down at his disappointed face. "Why? Was I wrong?"

"Not quite... I just hoped you had known a little more specifically. Would've made the explaining easier."

Her face grew concerned. "What did Discord do? What happened?"

Bruce took a deep breath to explain.

There was a blinding flash of light and a loud whoosh.

Bruce blinked, his eyes readjusting to normal light levels. Six bipedal figures started to resolve. Tony, as usual, was the first to recover. "You guys really need to work on your timing!"

Celestia had stood up, and her horn was glowing threateningly, but at this she glanced over. "You know them?"

"I mean, sort of?"

"Are they a threat?"

"No!" Bruce exclaimed hastily. "They're... us."

Applejack and Steve (in each other's bodies, of course) stepped forward to explain at the same moment. "Oh, go ahead," Applejack offered.

"Nah, nah, you first."

"No, really, go ahead."

"Oh my goodness, I'll just go." Tony flapped up to join the Princess. "They're from another world and our brains got swapped."

"Concise," Pinkie complimented.

"Thanks."

Princess Celestia maintained composure. Thousands of years of bizarre shenanigans will do that to you. "I know a spell that will switch you back. Stand next to the person you were switched with, everypony. Everyone, I suppose."

"Don't worry, darling, that confused all of us," Rarity said, moving to stand next to her body.

"Anybody else think it's really weird seeing your body from the outside, or is that just me?" Tony asked.

"Pretty sure that's all of us," Applejack said.

The more intensive a spell is, the brighter your horn glows when you cast it. Celestia's horn glowed with the light of the sun, and everyone had to look away. Twilight privately thought it was probable that only an alicorn could cast a spell like that. Two yellow orbs floated out of her horn, connected by a thin line. They moved to the closest pair, Steve and Applejack, one orb floating over each head, still connected to each other.

Then the spheres touched.

Bruce could feel what was happening with some magical sense of Twilight's. It was like lightning; the consciousness of each individual pulled out of their body and zapped across the line into the other head. It happened faster than blinking. Princess Celestia didn't falter, but moved immediately to the next pair. By the time she'd finished the third, she was gritting her teeth to keep going. By the fifth, she closed her eyes to keep concentration, and pain was written in every line of her face, but she didn't stop.

Finally, she finished the last pair and immediately sunk to the ground. Twilight ran over to her. "Princess Celestia! You shouldn't have pushed yourself so hard, you should've taken a break, are you okay?"

She smiled at her student. "I'm fine, Twilight. I'm just tired. I haven't pushed myself like that in a while, but the exhaustion should only last for another hour or two."

Twilight noticed that she could no longer distinctly recall everything from Bruce's past, just the things that had happened while she was there, with a vague knowledge of his general life. She also noticed that she didn't have any memories from the time when Bruce was her--she had no idea what he'd been up to in that time.

"Before you guys take the tesseract back to Earth," she suggested, "we should probably catch each other up on what happened while we were away. There's a great cafe just down the street--we could go there for an hour or two, chat, and relax."

Tony shrugged. "Sounds good to me, but won't they all freak out a little, seeing us?"

"Honestly?" Twilight laughed. "They've seen weirder."

Author's Note

And that's a wrap!
...or is it?