You Won't BELIEVE What Happens Next!
Vignette Valencia snarled at the Rainbooms from her halted parade float, visions of likes and rechirps without number dancing before her eyes. "This is your chance to be everything you've always wanted, Rarity!"
"No! It's a chance to look like everything I've always wanted! What I really want has been right in front of me the whole time! My friends!" Eyes met. Nods were exchanged. Hands joined. The girls rose into the air, seven wills united as one. The bonds between them and the power of their geodes came together in the focal point at the center of their formation.
"No amount of online success is worth it without my real-life friends to share it," said Rarity. She smiled as she turned to the girl in whom the power gathered. "Which is why I'm sharing my success now."
Applejack nodded at her, then looked down upon Vignette Valencia and cracked her knuckles, feeling the magic within her surging to levels unlike anything she'd ever experienced. She didn't need much time to consider her options. Twilight would probably disassemble the enchanted phone. Sunset would hammer the lessons she'd learned about the value of others directly into that thick skull until it took. Rarity? Applejack wasn't sure what she'd do, but it'd sure as heck be elegant.
Elegance was not one of Applejack's strengths.
Strength was one of her strengths.
And so, just as Vignette was bringing her camera to bear, Applejack came surging down and punched the woman so hard, she broke through space and time.
Applejack shook out her hand as she smirked at the rippling distortion hanging in the air in front of her. "That'll learn ya."
The crowd was silent. Rainbow Dash landed next to Applejack on the float and voiced the thought running through most of the minds in the area. "Holy crap, AJ, did you just kill her?"
"What?" Applejack flinched back as though she'd been punched herself. "O' course not! I just sent her somewhere she can learn to appreciate how there's a world outside 'er phone."
By this point, the other Rainbooms had climbed or flown onto the float. "Hang on," said Sunset, "are you saying you banished Vignette Valencia to Equestria?"
Applejack nodded. "Way I figure it, after all the evil creatures and crazy magic we've had to deal with, it's about time we threw somethin' back at 'em. Uh, no o—."
A diamond-hard stare born of uncounted attempts at ring toss stopped her cold. "Don't you even start."
Rarity sidled up to Applejack, lashes aflutter. "Applejack, darling, I can't say I completely disagree with your reasoning, but you do realize there will be consequences to Vignette simply disappearing, yes? Especially in front of this many witnesses?" She swept a hand over the crowd, who cheered as though they were just happy to be acknowledged.
"I don't believe they understand what's going on," said Twilight.
"The tyrant is gone!" cried an Equestria Land employee. "The age of the stress salad is no more! Huzzah!"
"Huzzah!" chorused his fellow wage slaves.
Twilight blinked. "Or they don't care. That's also a possibility."
Applejack smirked at Rarity. "See? Ain't like anybody's gonna miss her."
"Three million followers on Snapgab."
"And when the next big thing comes 'round, ain't none of 'em gonna care about Vignette." Applejack beamed and slapped Rarity on the back. "Shoot, you might be that next big thing!"
Rarity shook her head as she got back to her feet. "That's a very... Oof... A very nice thought, darling, but this isn't Haylander. Defeating Vignette doesn't mean we claim her Internet fanbase for our own."
"Yowza!" They turned to Pinkie Pie, her thumbs flying over her phone. "Rarity, you're trending just about everywhere!"
Rarity stared into the distance for a moment. "Why does this world mock me so?"
"I know," said Sunset. "Usually it's me."
Once Rarity shook off the existential haze, she said, "What do you mean 'trending everywhere,' Pinkie?"
"Take a look!" Pinkie shoved her phone into Rarity's face, immediately overwhelming her with light and motion, a bunch of digital sound and fury signifying nothing she could comprehend.
"Gah!"
"Oops! Sorry." Sanity returned to the world as Pinkie withdrew her device, grinning sheepishly. "Custom content aggregator app Twilight and I made."
"Is that what we did?" Twilight adjusted her glasses with a distant look, her eyes flitting back and forth as she dug through her memory. "That whole weekend's just a blur of cupcake icing and curly braces."
Rarity cleared her throat. "I believe we're getting off topic. We really should let Princess Twilight know about this."
"Um..." All eyes turned to Fluttershy. "I mean, it'd be a shame to cancel the parade when our instruments are all here."
"You sure?" said Rainbow Dash. "Not too nervous?"
Fluttershy shook her head. "I mean, if you're all okay with it. And if Applejack didn't damage the float too much."
Applejack waved it off. "Nah, I just dented the bumper a touch. Whaddaya say, Rarity? A little more time won't hurt."
"You just broke a million followers on TackNotice!" Pinkie cried.
"A million..." Rarity cleared her throat. A lady did not let her jaw drop, after all. She gave a composed smile as she walked to her keytar. "Oh, very well. One or two songs. Perhaps Vignette will learn something in Equestria."
"Oof!" Vignette tumbled to a halt, then staggered onto her feet. "Ugh, Rude. That does it, I am turning that girl into the next Space Wars Kid!"
She then realized several things in quick succession:
She was on a grassy hill rather than her float in her parade.
There was no sign of her phone.
She was alone.
Aside from her headband, she was naked, so the alone thing wasn't quite so bad.
She had gotten to twice as many feet as usual, and also hooves were involved?
THERE WAS NO SIGN OF HER PHONE.
Thankfully, her window to the world sat at the foot of the hill, and the purple stuff wafting out of it didn't seem to be a sign of any actual damage... though she soon found that while her weird lump limbs could wake her phone up, they couldn't actually unlock it, and came dangerously close to scratching the screen. Worst of all, the two most dreaded words hung in the top left corner.
No Signal
"No no no no no! I already hadn't looked at my feeds for twenty whole minutes because of concert prep! How am I supposed to let everyone know how lame that girl is now?"
After a moment, Vignette added, "Also, where-slash-what tee eff am I?" She looked around the sunny, rolling hills—wasn't it just past sunset?—and saw a hint of glimmering purple crystal on the horizon. "Oh hey, that one super-gaudy gift shop I could never get them to tear down! Perfect!" She set off with the ease of motion that came from a workout routine designed to keep her in perfect sexy selfie shape. Minor things like complete bodily transformation didn't even register when there were much more pressing concerns.
The gift shop wasn't quite how Vignette remembered it. For one, there was a building next to it that looked like it belonged more in the Witchery World of Harriet Pinto than Equestria Land. For another, there was a marked lack of humans. Plenty of other... things, but no people, assuming those were all animatronics and not enough mascot costumes for a furry convention. Still, odds were someone was here and knew who she was. From there it would just be a matter of getting online and writing...
Vignette looked down at her thumbless, stubby limbs. Okay, dictating a chirp, a MyStable status update, and a couple other things. The bare essentials. Ugh, she'd need to change literally all her passwords once this got sorted out.
"Excuse me?" Vignette blinked and looked up. A vaguely familiar sounding purple thing hovered above her, looking down with concern. "Can I help you? You seem to be lost." The purple thing's horn glowed for a moment. "And also emitting polarized resons consistent with a dimensional shift."
"Yeah, whatevs, could I get your Wi-Fi password real quick?" Vignette waved her phone in her hoof. She wasn't sure how she was holding it and had already decided she didn't care. "Just need to let everyone know what's up with the double-V."
"Oh. Oh dear." The purple thing—kind of sounded like that Twinkle Sprinkle girl, actually—landed next to her, looking worried. "About that..."
"Look, you can totes change it afterwards. En bee dee, am I right?"
Purple thing gave her a blank stare for a bit before saying "I'm afraid we don't have any Internet access."
"Ugh, really?" Vignette rolled her eyes. "Fine, I guess I can borrow, like, a PC or something. Yeesh, it's like I'm in the Dark Ages or something."
Purple thing shook her head. "No, I mean we have no Internet access."
Vignette was silent for a few moments. One of her eyelids started to twitch. In the back of her mind, there was a sense of something being stretched just shy of the point of snapping. "What?"
"This universe doesn't have an Internet."
Vignette Valencia threw her head back and screamed to the heavens.
For Princess Twilight Sparkle, it was strangely nostalgic.
The next day, Sunset sat opposite Princess Twilight in Namepending Castle's kitchen, each with a cup of tea resting on the counter. "And then what happened?"
"Her phone's battery died, and she fainted. And judging by the data I've collected since, there's a correlation between the two."
"Really?"
Twilight looked away, chewing on her lower lip. "Well, I can't exactly bring her to Ponyville General without some very awkward questions, so I took the opportunity to run some tests. Not like we've had a chance to examine humans in Equestria before. Vignette..." She hummed to herself. "Are you familiar with the Homebody Phenomenon?"
Sunset shook her head,. "Can't say I am."
"It's a fascinating property of earth pony magic. As much as ponies adapt their environments to themselves, the Homebody Phenomenon also adjusts their bodies and magic during their formative years to adapt to their environment. Earth ponies in the Hayseed Swamps have vastly more efficient immune systems and little in the way of growth magic. Rock farmers have absurd strength and magic that more resembles dragons than ponies in some respects. And Pinkie..." Twilight trailed off as she sought a way to complete that sentence.
"Is Pinkie," said Sunset.
Twilight nodded. "Precisely."
"What about you?"
Twilight shrugged her wings. "Given how alicorns age, I'm pretty sure I'm still in my formative years. I haven't seen any signs of the Phenomenon one way or another, though I haven't exactly been focusing on my earth pony magic in general."
Spike stuck his head into the kitchen. "Hey Twilight! One of those tingly, spiky amethysts sprouted in the backyard!"
She smiled. "All yours, Spike!" Twilight looked back at Sunset to see her furrow her brow. "What? I'm pretty sure they're my castle's equivalent of weeds."
Sunset cleared her throat. "Yeah, probably. Getting back on track, I take it Vignette shows some new variation on the Phenomenon?"
Twilight nodded. "Her adaptations are wholly unprecedented. Take a look." Her magic laid out purple sheets of paper on the counter, lines of white standing out against a dim equine outline. She traced some of the lines with a hooftip. "See how the mana pathways in her thaumocirculatory system keep bending at hard right angles? That doesn't happen in nature outside of crystal formation."
"They look like circuit boards," said Sunset. "You're telling Vignette's adapted to the Internet?"
"It certainly seems that way. Plus, she's radiating magic to an insane degree for an earth pony. It seems to respond to high-frequency radio waves, but I don't have the equipment to process whatever information it's sending."
Sunset felt her jaw drop. "She's a wireless hotspot?"
Twilight shrugged her wings. "Um, possibly? You'd know better than I would. She's certainly giving off a lot of radiation. I had to put her on a geoæther drip."
"Wait, she went into magical exhaustion? I didn't think that was even possible for earth ponies."
"Until a few years ago, neither did anypony else."
Sunset sighed. "Applejack?"
"Applejack," Twilight said with a nod. "Though Pinkie's crashed a few times since."
"So you're saying Vignette literally can't live without the Internet."
"So it seems." Twilight sighed. "I wish I could study her for longer. We're getting a glimpse into the future evolution of equinity! But even without the awkward questions on your side of the portal, the long-term health effects of her staying in this world could be devastating for her."
"Well, the other Twilight may be able to whip up some kind of life support router or something for her, but—"
Squeaking wheels interrupted the mares. They turned to the kitchen entrance, where a sunken-cheeked Vignette leaned against the kitchen doorway, her IV stand trailing behind her. The bloodshot eyes of an addict without her fix stared into them. "I can smell the Wi-Fi. Get me home."
Twilight's jaw dropped. "Uh..."
"Hold on," Sunset said, holding up a hoof. "Do you understand why this happened?"
"Sunset, she's suffering here."
"I don't want to have to deal with the same thing in a month because someone didn't learn anything from this."
"I learned that a lack of social media presence doesn't mean someone doesn't matter." Vignette rubbed her jaw. "They definitely matter if they want to."
Sunset narrowed her gaze. "Any friendship lessons?"
"Friends? I don't have friends, I have followers." Vignette blinked and sagged. "Wow. That's actually really sad when I say it out loud."
"My friends and I can help you connect with people in real life. Provided you recognize that they are people and not just mobile scenery for you to tweak into the perfect selfie background."
"En pee there. Mobile scenery doesn't literally punch you into the Stone Age."
Twilight snorted. "We do have factories, you know."
"You don't have Blackear. Or thumbs." Vignette turned to Sunset. "That good enough for you?"
That got a wary nod. "For now. Applejack may be checking on you later."
Vignette flinched. "Okay. Point made. Now let's get out of this place." She glanced at the IV stand. "Do I need to leave the needle in? I've seen enough horror stories on Reddis to know not to just pull the needle out."
"I'll take care of that," Twilight said, getting to work as she did so. "You should be able to make it to the portal on your own. Though there is the matter of confidentiality."
"Puh-leeze, why would anyone want to know? Magique or no, I never want to see this place again."
Twilight turned to Sunset. "And please tell Applejack not to banish any more people here. Especially not with her fists."
Sunset rolled her eyes. "As long as you tell Star Swirl the same thing. I still want to give him a piece of my mind about the sirens."
"Right, no banishing from either end."
A cry came from the castle halls. "Horseland! Glorious, magical Horseland! Trixie has waited so long for this day!"
Twilight and Sunset both winced. "Escorting people back through the portal doesn't count, right?" said Sunset.
"Definitely not. You take Vignette. I have a Trixie to wrangle."
Author's Note
Why yes, it was tremendously satisfying to punch Vignette through space and time.
Also, you didn't think those purple crystals under Ponyville were occurring naturally, did you? Though I suppose these days they're competing with the Tree of Harmony's roots. And possibly the castle's as well. Good thing Spike's weeding the things.
For more on the Homebody Phenomenon, see here.
To see how and why Applejack made medical history, read Fruit of the Problem.
