Following Pinkie's return, there was discussion.

Nines had done his best to fill in what was necessary, but with Pinkie, he hadn't had to say too much.

The summary had been simple: he was from another when of a different where, and through the effort of his friends- had systematically (through multiple visits) tracked down, hunted and found the missing Elements of this world.

Pinkie, to some degree, had somehow managed to figure this out.

Nines knowing Pinkie (at least not this particular Pinkie), had not bothered asking 'how' as one should learn when dealing with the party planner the answers to those hows would never come clearly. The discussion had shifted at some point to locating the others and figuring out where they were. Pinkie suggested Spike, as apparently he had been the only one unaffected- because Discord hadn't bothered to Invert "the help". (A statement that now that she was no longer wallowing in self-pity infuriated her greatly).

The next problem was figuring out where he'd went. Searching Equestria in its current state would prove both dangerous and impossible, Nines had advised against it, so a few minites were spent figuring out where the drake could have went.

Pinkie had been the first to pitch a suggestion not long after: checking the library.

Nines, blinked, then asked the obvious question after a brief pause, "why?"

The simple answer: "It was the last place I saw him heading with Twilight."

"And how long ago was that?"

She had opened her mouth to respond...then the curls had drooped just a little as the party planner realized she didn't know.

And so to the library they'd went. Hoping for the best. Upon arriving towards the memorized destination they had found to no one's surprise...nothing. Which was worse than finding a vacated out Treebrary. There was just nothing. No tree, no treehouse, no sign of any building having been there except for the indentation that it had been there and simply wasn't there anymore.

Confused, worried, Nines had looked to Pinkie for answers. She had responded with a reflection of his look.

Unwanted questions began popping into the mind: how long had Discord been in charge here? (It was something they had overlooked). Had Twilight dragged Spike to Canterlot? Where would they be in this mad world if they had actually left?

The internal questioning would have continued till Pinkie gasped and physically turned Nines head in one direction.

The same direction (what was guessed to be) tracks of some kind followed leading away from the indentation where the building had once been. Something with many legs that led away from where the library was and seemed to head upwards, north, somewhere towards the distant outline of lollipop trees. The two had shared a glance (arguably Pinkie had glanced and simply looked back at her reflection on Nines visor) and then without speaking had decided to follow.

And so the next supposed hour (since the concept of time didn't really matter or make sense anymore if Time Turner somehow managed to find it) was spent searching for something that logically should've been where you last expected it to be. During that trip there had been some close calls with a assembly of balle dancing minotaurs, a group of hip hop dancing squirrels, and finally a friendly chatting pair of giraffes who once locked into a conversation --truthfully they forced you into a one-sided one-- would follow you till you managed to cross or reach someplace they simply couldn't see (or reach) before calling quits-- if you were lucky enough to not magically come across them a third time in this cubix mix and mash world.

An hour or so later and they finally made it. Several gallops away up an incline and there it was. The Oak Library. Resting at the end of a upwards hill, a good distance away from candy corn houses where grey hued ponies trotted by the by.

Nines had approached with caution the entire way towards it, Pinkie not so much, but it could be noted from her ears that she was on the alert, ready to jump into action where needed.

Apparently, so had the tree.

The ground shook, dirt erupted, and a squeal of fright found one pony in his arms.

Stunned, confused, waiting for what was certain to be a fight, the Oak Library did something unexpected.

It got up, somehow seemed to possess the ability to squint without having facial features of any sort as it leaned unnaturaly over its two approaching guests, in doing so a unicorn and dragon looked through the window to stare back at a frozen Nines and Pinkie. There had been a single second of shared silence as everyone stared at each other-- then Twilight turned her greying hued back on the outside guests and as if answering that reaction, the tree pulled all of its major roots from the ground and took off, running. Running like the wind. Scurrying on roots the size of one pony, as if something rather foul was coming after it.

There was a moment of silence, except for the pounding of frightened roots as they carried everything from Tree to Library to what had certainly been a Unicorn and a baby Dragon in the top window, fleeing with all of this and more and leaving one bipedal and one party planner to stare in the dissipating dust.

Nines and Pinkie shared one glance, then took off to catch their runaway treebrary.

Branches whistled in the wind and the heavy sound of roots pounding against the ground at a uneven pace was the only warning a buffalo or pony could have as they ducked out of the way of a runaway tree library.

Wagons were grabbed in branches, flipped onto their sides, and almost became collision points for a soldier and a pink mare.

Ponyville was an attraction center to the abnormal and unnatural, but chasing a runaway treebrary was somehow something else that deserved a rank of its own.

"Hop on!" Nines had called and no sooner had he finished was there a pink pony in his arms.

Gaining altitude Nines moved up, dodging most of the trees attempts at flinging things to knock the two down and poured on the speed as the tree scurried away.

Branches became elastic and whipped about wildly from behind, trailing like a cape of angry serpents against the trees back and over the face of its door as Nines and Pinkie mad an attempt to barge in. The same current of angry branches flapped around wildly as Nines and Pinkie aimed for a window and it was through quick reflexes they avoided being caught in them just barely.

"Nines!" Pinkie called, gave him a bit of a squeeze that got his attention as they kept the chase but maintained distance. "Throw me!"

She got the sense he was looking at her in a not so funny way and Pinkie's face gained an edge of seriousness not often seen. "Do it! I can make it! Just give me an opening and I can make it if you can manage the door. I have a feeling something will happen if one of us gets in!"

He was hesitating, and for that alone she felt a bit safer knowing he cared. "Pinkie Promise!" she cried as they dodged an array of whipping branches that cracked in the air a little too close. "Pinkie Promise, I'll be fine!"

He looked at the tree, the Oak Library that seemed both scared with how it fled and bulldozed everything and everyone aside, yet also angry with how it lashed out at them, keeping them away but not yet trying to injure or seriously maim them.

He wondered...if the library and Twilight were...

"Nineeees!"

He looked at her. The brilliant aqua blue eyes filled with a light and assurance he knew so well, and so he nodded.

Charging into the hurdle of writhing branches, Nines found his hunch correct- the branches paused, froze almost like they hadn't been expecting that- then somehow the tree started moving away even faster.

"Now!"

He grabbed her, poured on the speed for as long as a second, spun with her as she extended out to create a balance, then he let go as his spin turned into a throw. She went up in an arc, writhing branches shying away, hesitating, then snapping out at her and acting like a steep bridge under her as she flew above it all- giving her the opening she needed.

A pink hoof moved to the door , hit it with a knock, the door flew open, Pinkie went through--

And then the library began to slow down, crash and plant itself in the ground.

Nines landed, called out Pinkie twice and then was rewarded with: "I'm fine! But you may want to get in here!"

Upon climbing the stairwell and entering Oak Library, the first thing a possible customer might see was a unicorn that loved her job as a librarian. If one were paying attention, the level of detail applied to organization according to author or genre would have rivaled Pinkie's.

In the discorded library none of these things existed.

What did exist was ever organisers nightmare and that came in the form of books hopping off shelves and trading their respective positions from genre to genre. Sci-Fi went into Poetry, Classical went into the mature sections, Romantic majorities filed themselves away in Drama, Dark and Mystery.

It was enough to make Twilight build a sweat from just seeing the sheer disorder in her own dominion and the fact there was no Spike hastily making any of these corrections as entire book cases got up and swapped spots with their neighbors spoke more than enough volumes about how bad things were.

"We need to find Twilight, now" came Pinkie's serious but at the same time worried voice.

As if noticing occupants in the room for the first time, every book of every genre froze what it was doing as if put on pause. The room lurched and the stairs leading to the second floor where the residents stayed groaned a horrible groan of wood having weight on it and then all of a sudden everything in the room changed, starting with the staircase that would've led to Twilight's room.

With a poof of smoke the main entrance vanished, blinding Pinkie and Nines who tensed and waited for any sort of action. Nothing happened, except for the complete jittering dance that Pinkie tended to do when something big was about to happen.

"Pinkie?", came a growingly concerned trooper, "what's happening?!"

"I D-DO-DO-DON'T K-Kn-KN-KNOOOW!" She cried as the party planner became a vibrating mess of curling and unfurling curls, up and down rapid fire hops, an occasional kicking leg and whipping tail-- then it all stopped.

The smoke vanished, the ground stabled, and when the two looked around they found a new entrance, bereft of what a library hall would have looked like. In its place was a gaping arched entrance that showed no end and held no warmth. There was a coldness that emanated from it and as Pinkie cautiously neared with narrowed eyes her breath appeared in the cloud of condensation with every puff.

There were no stairs, no bookshelves, and a central hall that should have contained a small part of the History section, was gone. All that remained in front of them was a hallway and an entrance, all that remained behind them was no exit or window in sight.

"I think Twilight wants us to go through here", Pinkie said cautiously, though her ears were submissive and not high. When she turned to look at Nines her eyes were sad and almost glossy. When he didn't reply, she continued, "I know it sounds strange even if this is our only exit, but...I don't think this is Discord. I...I don't think going in there will hurt us, and I really don't think we should be standing around to wait and see what happens."

"Why is that?" He asked, then clarified. "What makes you think he isn't doing this with everything else he can do?'

Pinkie's tail dipped a bit lower and her eyes narrowed as her expression became dour, "it's...just a feeling." She looked back to the voidless entrance that waited for them on the otherside. "We should go" she said after seconds of nearly a minute in thoughtful silence, turned to move at a trot and not a hop, "before something else happens."

Looking around, saying nothing, Nines followed behind. Going into the abyss where the two disappeared.

Her Element was Magic and so it made sense and lined up perfectly with what Pinkie was feeling.

Twilight had gone into detail about what happened after Discord had won. Once victory had been secured and the Elements out of the way their abilities and magic had been returned to them as they neither posed a harm or even a threat with their connection to the Elements severed. Twilight had said it was like being having all your thoughts pointed in a specific direction and then guided that way, similar to a panic attack or having random thoughts pop into your head, only these guided action and reaction-- to which Discord had entered the rather still fragile topic of that time and then proceeded to point out where Twilight was wrong. Offering some insight in what Inversion did and didn't do. It altered the personality, so to speak in a manner, but didn't make things up out of nothing or do what Twilight seemed to be defining as mind control. Inversion, the true kind, drew on the darkest aspects of an individual and then made them reveal themselves. The sides of an individual they kept locked up and also didn't know about. The negatives of their very being brought out through chaos and given the freedom to stretch their legs.

In summary: "I never did much of anything except let your otherself out. The part of you that already exists. The aspects of yourself that were already there, just locked up, kept in check, and magnified the more the individual tried to deny it. So what you call 'mind control'", he had offered a small smile, "I call 'revelation'."

And as the bearer of Magic, Twilight still had a fine level of affect on her surroundings even if she wasn't aware of it. Combine that with the fact they were walking in what seemed like a separate dimension of darkness that somehow allowed them enough light to make out each other, and the theory that Twilight's magic was in play here might actually be possible.

Especially when the rules no longer applied anywhere.

"--do you see that?" Pinkie's question finally reaching his ears.

He looked ahead and saw....was that light?

Pinkie took off at a run calling after him to hurry, and as he gave chase the light grew brighter and brighter the closer they got till--

--they were outside in a new hall. Something several times bigger and roughly the size of a field. Something like a maze or almost similar to a labyrinth. One made up of bookcases stacked with books, with cases and shelves so great and tall that they were like entire towers made of books. Towers so massively tall that they blocked view of everything, everything except a massive tree tower in the distance where one pony and one baby dragon could just barely be made out from the window's view.

Heels ignited and defying gravity Nines made to fly overhead with Pinkie in one arm-- but then she started shaking which gave Nines pause the moment she gasped.

"Twitchy Tail!" she shouted.

The second those words left her mouth, a thud fell over and drowned out the "Pinchy knee!" a thud so loud that the draft from the fall of several thousand books landing and piling on the ground behind them that it made Nines turn in that direction to see what could have possibly made that sound and or if it was cause for concern.

They were dictonaries. A total of probably more than a hundred. Looking up he saw they fell from a broken shelf, split in between that had allowed the rows of dictionaries to come raining down.

Looking back, the dictionaries did nothing. And because he was so focused on inspecting for danger and ignoring Pinkie's pokes and prods to get his attention, the attempts at warning him when he was already wary of this reality and trying to keep an eye out for anything this Lord of Chaos might pull, he didn't notice her say "pinchy knee!" multiple times-- Till he turned around and began floating away only to pause when something growled.

"Pain!" Howled one voice from the pile. Loud and clear, deep and resonant.

"The feeling experienced from the suffering inflicted upon an individual!" the pile of books under the dusty, scratched dictionary at the top barked in reply.

"Agony!" the leading dictionary cried with a mouth that did not exist but growing in size and muscle as it shifted, spines growing hard; pages rising out of its back, cover becoming hard; solid wings shaping, glowing eyes of red energy forming as it became a creature with rows of paper sharp teeth that glinted from the boring white light of chandelier above like dangerous sharp metal.

"Agony!" other dictionaries repeated as they two shifted and bubbles, gaining mass and form as their leader took to the air and hovered in stasis waiting for them.

Nines did not wait to hear the rest. He took off flying.

But he still heard their shout as they all began to give chase.

"The feeling one experiences through the suffering of pain!"

"Burns!" came the cry.

"The result of flesh marred by fire!"

Balls of heat flew by and Pinkie squealed in terror as Nines performed loops and turns, trying to avoid direct confrontation.

"Death!" came the screech.

"The end of one's life!"

A piercing screech came from behind and Nines cut the gas and plummeted as a gaping hole slammed into the back of one giant bookcase from where he and Pinkie had been. Nines tossed Pinkie up, she screamed, planted her forehooves on the back of one encyclopedic monster, propelled herself off that as it flew between her and Nines in chase and then found herself in the trooper's grasp again as he soared up to catch her.

If he had that weapon this wouldn't be so difficult.

"Kill one and another just takes the lead" he grunted as he he caught and flew. "We need to get to Twilight and Spike but this doesn't look like it's going to be easy."

"Pinkie!"

"Oh, right!" she grabbed a book from the oncoming section, opened it-- and then every letter from the book vomitted out its contents with rapid fire, missing and taking down only a few of the oncoming abominations who crashed into others and took those out with them on their way down.

But with one down, two new books shifted as they flew by and joined the swarm on the chase.

"We're surrounded! There's books everywhere Nines we can't keep doing this forever!"

"I know!" He replied. "What do--"

"Twitchy Tail!"

He swerved to his left, dodged a shifting tomb that had become a massive boulder and went careening into its allies--

"What do you think we should do?!"

"The top of the book cases! If I can get up there I might be able to make it to Twilight and Spike!"

"But--"

"I'm faster on ground Nines! You know me. If I can get up there I can make it! If I can catch up to Rainbow Dash on ground, I can do this!"

He growled, threw her ahead over two of them, grabbed a book as they looked up at her and flew in to capture-- got blown to pieces by a book on the autobiography of Whiny Blows the opera singer.

Then he caught her. "Alright! How do we get you uo there?"

She thought about it as they flew and then she frowned. "No idea."

"Pinkie!"

"Okay! Um, oh!" she threw a hoof out as she was tossed and crumpled the head of one encyclopedia as it tried to circle after her, "I've got it, oof. Thank you. But no, next time you throw me don't catch me."

He looked at her and she knew that look even if she couldn't see his face because she got it often enough to recognize it. "I'm serious!" she frowned with a glare.

"Fine." And so he pitched her when another line barred their path, mouths glowing an internal fire. The moment Pinkie went sky born the mouths lost their glow and then all focused on Pinkie.

Several moved to grab her while only two refocused on Nines. The party planner struck out, manuevering in the air and landing with a single hoof to slam the torso of one creature, audily snapping multiple sentences, creating grammar errors that infected its structure. Commas became periods, incoherent words were formed, new ones with no meaning created as Pinkie kept herself in the air by landing a well placed hoof in the right spot and managing to one-shot all the creatures trying to grab her out of the air.

"AH HA!" she did a triple cannonball and dove towards her target, it looked up at her-- screamed "Rescue!" in a voice that sounded almost feminine and then found itself latched onto by a powerful Earth pony who jostled its head to the left and right, forcing wings and movement to go wherever the head went.

"I'm off! Take care of Nines for me!" she flashed a smile, then was off.

Several dictionaries turned to the makeshift ride taking away their target and immediately stated "capture" in unison.

Nines however threw a book about tquartz formations at them from the mineralogy section and watched as a hundred burning stones went into a hundred different bodies.

Nines, glancing back briefly, watched as Pinkie wrestled her ride towards the tree, then turned just in time to watch books shake themselves off their positions, fall, change, and form new bodies.

He sighed, and prepared himself for a wait.

Author's Note

I actually struggled to figure out how Discord would affect Twilight and make it a challenge.

In case you are wondering the Monstionaries are the Lord of Chaos' way of warping Twilight's love of books.

I did not plan that. It actually came to me while I was typing.