PonyFall: The Dawning of Twilight

by MrBackpack

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, Human, Princess Luna, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Adventure, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 42904

Twilight Sparkle was more than confident that Discord was going to reset into his stone prison

Matt "MrBackpack" Mxxxxx has finally gotten his life on track; he's got a job that he loves, a good enough home, a beautiful fiance, and a dog. Little does he know that all of that hard work is about to be threatened by the presence of a very confused and very naked young woman appearing in his fudge-smelling Texas backyard.

Part of the PonyFall Collaboration series

Published 2012-08-19 14:34:02 UTC
Last updated 2014-06-01 01:53:14 UTC

Prologue

Prologue

Canterlot Castle, Guard Training Grounds

Shining Armor looked down at the letter that had just been delivered to him by Spike, who was now standing in front of him with a sheepish grin on his face. Like his sister, Shining was a prodigious reader; you had to be very well balanced to become the Captain of the Royal Guard.

The letter detailed a project that Twilight had been working on for the past couple of months on improving the effectiveness of the unicorns enlisted in the Royal Guard. His sister had taken the time to extensively cite her sources for her research in the note, herself and others, ending her message with a simple:

“I can’t wait to see you again.
Your L.S.B.F.F.
Twilight

P.S. I sent Spike to deliver this to you personally to get him out of my mane for a couple of days.It’s molting season and he needs an outlet for all those hormones. If you don’t mind letting him burn off some of that excess testosterone, put him through some basic training. It’ll do him some good to get some exercise.”

A mischievous grin stretched its way across Shining Armor’s face as he gave the baby dragon another look over.

“Private!” the captain called out suddenly, startling both Spike and the guard to his immediate right.

“Sir, yes sir!” shouted the private coming to immediate attention under his commanding officer’s scrutiny.

“Take this...” Shining Armor trailed off flicking a few strands of his mane out of his eyes with a causal toss of his head and looked impishly over at Spike, whose eyes had gone very wide and was shaking under Shining’s stern gaze. “...recruit to the barracks. Get him suited up for training.”

The private saluted again, grabbed the purple dragon by the tail, then proceeded to drag the kicking and screaming reptile away.

Ponyville, Local Public Library/home of Twilight Sparkle

Twilight sighed as she closed the book she had been reading and, encased in a soft purple glow, placed it off to one side. The book, Fantastic Spells and How to Use Them, had been entertaining, but not very useful. Most of the spells contained between the covers were so basic that Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns didn’t even cover them, much less consider them ‘fantastic.’

Even when she had the whole weekend to herself, to literally do anything she wanted, she was bored out of her mind. The project for her brother had left her drained. Surprisingly unwilling to dive right back into another long project, even though she had several of which to choose from.

Yes, Twilight’s insatiable thirst for knowledge and understanding of all things had be satisfied, leaving nothing but idle thoughts and memories floating through the mare’s head.

She remembered the first time that she and her friends had faced the evils of Nightmare Moon. With the assistance of the Elements of Harmony, they overcame and destroyed the alternate personality that Luna had built around her hurt and jealousy. She also remembered the comforting warmth of Celestia’s sun as it returned to the sky, the smiles that Luna had sent her and her friends, and finally feeling as though she belonged somewhere.

She remembered chaos.

The draconequus Discord, a being of such a random assortment of parts that he could have only sprung from a diseased mind. Pain and suffering were never a part of Discord’s plan once he conquered Equestria, only chaos. He, like Nightmare Moon, was soundly defeated by her and her five friends using the Elements of Harmony.

The Elements of Harmony: the only subject in all of Equestria that eluded Twilight's understanding. Princess Celestia had never once forbade her from her research into the depths of lore surrounding the Elements, but had been very firm in her instructions that Twilight was not to perform experiments on the Elements themselves.

She shook herself from her thoughts and turned her gaze to her library.

As usual, it was in total disarray; bits of scrolls scattered all over the floor and tables, the few books that remained on the shelves were out of order, not to mention the stacks of books strewn about in various piles in random places.

Twilight wished that she had somepony to blame for the mess, but in her hurry to finish her report for her brother, she had gotten a little careless as to where her books ended up. With a small sigh, a soft glow engulfed several stacks and piles of notes; stacking and filing as she organized the books by hoof, perfectly capable of performing both tasks at the same time. Twilight finished with one shelf, the books organized and arranged just so, and turned to start in on a new one when there was the slightest hint of a tremor. The tremor was so light that there would be greater seismic activity from a bird, hypothetically, crashing into one of the library’s many windows. That being said, no matter how light the tremor may have been, all the books that Twilight had just finished organizing ended up back on the floor in a heap.

Twilight carefully placed a book on her current shelf and turned to the newest pile, with a frown on her face. In the hundreds of times that Rainbow Dash, or any other pegasus for that matter, had crashed into the library, they had never knocked down the contents of a single bookshelf. Usually, it was a side of the library that needed reorganizing, not to mention a glass or mug that would need to be replaced.

Her frown deepened as yet another series of books propelled themselves off of a shelf with no apparent cause, followed by the rest of her books throughout the library, even the ones in her room.

“What’s going-” Twilight started in shock.

The next tremor was much more noticeable, sending Twilight, her books, and everything else jumping and flying around the room as though a giant hand where shaking the entire tree right out of the ground. Gasping and panting for breath, she carefully extracted herself from yet another pile of books and other debris, taking care to not damage her books any more than they had already been.

“There haven’t been earthquakes in Ponyville for nearly a hundred years!” Twilight muttered to herself, wincing as a book slipped off the top of her pile and landed on a bruised rib.

Once again, Twilight lit the room with her horn; all of the books and her pages of notes were quickly encased in her violet magic, stacked in as orderly piles as she could manage, and shoved off to one side of her library. She didn’t bother with the rest of the debris littering the floor. It could and would be dealt with later.

Whipping around, Twilight flung herself at her front door as fast as she could, her magic working the handle, only to find herself slamming into it at full gallop.

“Ow,” Twilight moaned as she rubbed her head with a hoof. The door hadn’t budged an inch, but it had gained a gouge where her horn had dug into the hardwood.

Various scenarios ran through her mind with frightening clarity. If the earthquake was powerful enough to sink the library to the point that her door was jammed, she could only imagine the amount of damage that Ponyville proper had suffered.

With a growl, Twilight lit her horn and dug her hooves into the worn wooden floor of the library; she needed to help her friends and the other residents of Ponyville and no simple door was going to stop her. The librarian let loose an awe-inspiring array of spells and blasts of magic, ranging from the simplest of unlocking spells to a spell powerful enough to have lifted the entire town hall right off its foundations and send it careening off into the distance.

When the smoke and magical nimbi had cleared, there her door stood, unmoved and none the worse for wear. With another growl of frustration, Twilight spun on her rear hooves and stormed up the stairs leading to her study and balcony.

“The balcony!” cried Twilight in relief, pausing mid-step on the stairs. She hadn’t considered the balcony. It was just high enough to provide a beautiful view of Ponyville during the day, but not so high that a pony in reasonable condition could not make the jump and worry about serious injury.

Giving herself plenty of time and space to stop, Twilight rushed this door flinging it wide with her magic. Thankfully, the door flew open without the least hint of resistance and Twilight rushed over to the wedge, looking for the softest place to land or somepony around to catch her.

Twilight’s scream echoed for miles.

Blue sky, no clouds, just pure blue sky. That is all that was underneath her library. The largest tree in Ponyville, having stood where it had sprouted since well before the founding of the surrounding town, was now flying well above its normal resting place.

Twilight threw a shield around the tree, snapping it into place with a audible pop, her eyes darting this way and that, trying to gauge where she needed to put the most of her considerable magical power to keep her inevitable landing from being sticky. Only to find the ground, along with the rest of Ponyville, a few metres above her head.

“Oh,” sighed Twilight in relief, letting her shield dissipate and sitting back on her haunches. “I’m just upside down.”

Twilight rubbed an eye with her hoof, a headache beginning to pound at the base of her horn. She sat there for a few moments longer, ignoring everything around her.

“Upsi-” was all that Twilight was able to get out before the balcony threw her, face first, onto the ground.

Scrambling, Twilight managed to un-plant her face from the dirt in time to see the great tree moan, creak, and snap as its limbs and trunk warped and folded in on itself, becoming smaller and smaller. Twilight could hear the faint sounds of glass shattering from within the tree as her worldly possessions were crushed.

And before Twilight’s eyes, her home slowly folded and twisted itself into-

“A bowl of petunias,” the purple unicorn said numbly as the bowl dropped to the cobblestone street with a soft clink.

She rubbed both of her eyes, not entirely convinced that her home, the library, had become a small bowl of potted flowers.

All around her, Ponyville warped and twisted like the library had, houses flipped upside down, some turned inside out, others had levels switch places, and, while she watched, one house took off like it had been shot out of Pinkie’s party cannon, streamers and confetti included. The fields of various flowers and trees snapped and crackled with a bizarre energy as they became large lollipops and other sugary treats.

A loud pop derailed Twilight’s train of thought as Rainbow Dash’s cloud home came flying past the ponyville skyline like a punctured balloon, with its owner hot on its tail, swerving this way and that, looping around the town hall and off into the distance; in its wake, a pink jetstream that slowly bled into and filled the brilliant blue Equestrian sky.

‘No,’ Twilight denied vehemently, her calm demeanour and well-structured mind rebelled against the insanity surrounding her. ‘This can’t be happening. This is impossible...’

Her eyes wandered over to the bowl of petunias that had once been her home and stared, there was a small yellow note stuck to the bowl.

With a tremble in her step, Twilight walked over the bowl, pulled the note off, and read.

The note was an interesting construction, in both content and material. The ink changed font and color with every word.

“Oh no, this isn’t impossible, or very improbable. It’s chaotic in every sense of the word.”

With a snort, Twilight dropped the note and ground her teeth, steam slowly beginning to rise from her mane as two words lazily dripped off of the note and floated into the air:

“Wonderfully.

Chaotic.”

Discord.

.oOo.

Gathering the other bearers of the Elements of Harmony did not take Twilight long, Applejack had come galloping into Ponyville hollering about the apples in the orchard screaming and talking to her, pleading for their lives, “Ah can’t get any work done!” Fluttershy had to be carried by Rainbow Dash, her cottage had turned into an exceedingly fat dragon. The Carousel Boutique, like the library, had shrunk in on itself and become Equestria’s tackiest saddle. Sugar Cube Corner had eaten itself, leaving a depressed Pinkie poking at frosted crumbs.

Twilight lead her friends off in the direction that she could feel the presence of Princess Celestia.

‘The Princess will know what’s going on,’ she thought, comforted by the familiar magic that she could feel radiating from her mentor.

The scene that met their eyes was not something that Twilight, nor her friends, ever thought they would see in their lives. They had expected to find Discord cowering before the combined might of the two princesses, the Elements of Harmony swirling around the royal sisters once again confining the draconequus in his stone prison. Instead, Discord held a struggling Luna by the neck in one taloned claw, his thumb lazily wandering over the hollow of the lunar princess’s throat.

“Oh, now isn’t this so very delightful,” Discord crooned, his smile widening as he turned his attention from Celestia to Twilight and her friends. “I do hope you didn’t really think that brute force could overcome my stunning wit and charm.”

Twilight found herself grinding her teeth again, her horn blazing with barely restrained magic. She could feel her friends tense, ready for anything that he could throw at them.

“Do my words not impress you?” Discord cried, throwing his free arm out wide, pouting dramatically as the six ponies and princess continued to glare. “What about my latest interpretation of Ponyville, hm? Does it not scream chaos?” His pout was replaced by pure boredom. “Very well then. I suppose I’ll just have to make things more interesting for you all.”

His outstretched paw flared with the pink flame of chaotic magic and he quickly thrust the magic into Luna’s face. Twilight saw Pinkie flinch out of the corner of her eye as Rainbow Dash launched herself at Discord and Luna. She was unprepared for the wave of magical energy that exploded out from Luna as Discord’s spell made contact with her muzzle. Twilight gasped as Luna, before her eyes, regressed into a filly and vanished from Discord’s claw.

“Oh for the love of-” screamed Discord as he too, was engulfed in the pink shock wave and vanished.

“Sister!” screamed Celestia as both her sister and Discord vanished into the pink magic.

Twilight’s mind was racing so fast that her body did not react and could do nothing as Rainbow Dash flew straight into the blast, her forward momentum carrying her over the threshold and out of sight.

“Run, my little ponies,” cried Princess Celestia.

Twilight’s horn flared as she tried to cast the strongest shield spell that she could muster around her and her friends.

“You heard the princess,” shouted Rarity into Twilight’s ear. “Let’s get out of here.”

With powerful snap, Twilight’s shield tried to wrap itself around the five of them, but it was too late. The pink shockwave slammed into Twilight’s spell with enough force to force her to her knees.

“I can’t hold it!” shrieked Twilight, sweat pouring down her face, her horn nearly blinding in the magical intensity.

The wave burst through the shield, sending a magical backlash straight into Twilight’s brain. She was unconscious before she ever hit the ground.

Chapter 1: In Which Life Becomes Complicated

Chapter One: In Which Life Gets Complicated.

“Sonnofa-” I swore, rubbing at my jaw and picking myself off of the floor. It was with a certain sense of satisfaction that I watched two of the ER’s security guards tackle the patient back onto his gurney and attempt to fasten the restraints. The patient, an average looking man of middle age, had been brought into the ER unconscious after being involved in a DUI. He had regained consciousness as I was collecting a blood sample for the police report and getting his vitals for his chart when he decked me.

It was just another normal day working the ER.

Ahead of me, my car sat under the concrete awning of the hospital staff parking, the silver paint dulled by several months worth of dirt, road grime, and bird crap. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the other cars parked to the right of my own, the Texas sun beating down on them mercilessly. With a practiced throw, I sent my empty Diet Coke can sailing towards the trashcan, missing by a mile. With a muttered curse, I jogged over to the can, picked it up, and dropped it into the trashcan before finishing my journey to the car.

I impatiently jabbed the unlock button on my car keys several times, then yanked the door open and tossed my bag into the passenger seat.

“I swear,” I muttered to myself, as I slammed my car door shut. “These shifts keep getting longer and longer.”

Working as a Licensed Vocational Nurse is grueling work, and the twelve hour shifts don’t do much to alleviate the pressure from an already stressful environment. There are some days, like today, that just made me wonder what possessed me to take the classes in the first place.

The engine started on the first turn of the key, my Princess Luna keychain clinking softly against the numerous other keys. It took a few seconds, but my CD player eventually blared to life and blasted several ear-shattering notes into my throbbing brain before I could turn the volume down to a more reasonable level. The familiar tune of Smile Smile Smile is so infectious and upbeat that I couldn’t resist giving into Pinkie’s demand and smiling, despite the ache in my back and the pounding behind my eyes.

There was already someone waiting to take my parking spot as I threw the car into reverse and backed out.

The asshole nearly took my tail off as he zipped into the spot and parked.

The one good thing about the long shifts that I work is that I leave at random times; usually there’s no traffic. But today, my shift ended just in time for every other person in the city to get off from work and park their cars between me and my home. I wasn’t even out of the parking lot when my phone beeped. It was a new text message from Michelle, my fiance: Dont 4get ur mowin 2day.

It was adorable, and incredibly annoying, how my fiance could butcher the English language. I even bought her a smartphone so that she would actually spell out her texts to me, I’m more than reasonably certain that she writes that way to annoy the hell out of me.

Getting out of the parking lot and onto the highway was entirely too easy, and I foolishly let myself think that maybe there would be no traffic today and everyone took the day off. I should have known that it was as likely as the sky turning pink and fluffy. Not even a mile down the highway, I found myself sitting in another parking lot.

I hate traffic.

The people in Austin are dumber than rocks when it comes to driving, and not just cars either. I don’t know what is so hard about changing lanes before your exit is twenty feet in front of your car, and if it is only twenty feet from your car, just keep going, get off at the next exit and turn around. Don’t slam on your brakes and swerve across four lanes of traffic, nearly killing everyone in your way, and then exit, still going over ninety miles an hour. Of course, today was just like any other rush hour, move ten feet, stop, rinse and repeat; not forgetting the crazy swerving sportscar and lunatic biker.

Today was not my day to be dealing with this.

In a display that would have put a blush on the face of a sailor, I let loose a string of curses and epitaphs that called into question the integrity of everyone’s mothers, fathers, sexual preferences, probable connections to a communist conspiracy, and everything else that could be conceived in-between. Unfortunately, the strength of my outburst was no match for the tyrannical tedium of automotive travel, and the cars that boxed me in remained stubbornly unmoved. With a groan, my head fell forward onto my steering wheel, the unwelcome blast from the horn sending waves of pain through my already-aching head.

Sometimes I wonder how much of my life I’ve lost to sitting in traffic, but I really don’t want to know the answer to that; I’d lose my mind. Pinkie’s song had long since ended, and the CD player filled the car with guitar riffs and angry vocals.

.oOo.

It had taken me well over an hour to get home. Usually it takes only twenty minutes; ten minutes if I decide that the speed limit is merely a suggestion. Home was a welcome sight, more so than usual. It might have been the fact that I wasn’t sitting in the Hellish parking lot, also known as a highway, while frying to a nasty, sweaty mess. Maybe it was the mere welcome sight of my home, free of the trappings and confines of work. Or maybe it was that my headache had finally ceased its pounding behind my eyes.

Grabbing my bag out of the passenger seat, I hauled myself out of the car, slamming the door behind me with my foot. It would lock itself in a few minutes.

My keys scraped the worn deadbolt of the small house that I bought the moment I was able to get out of my rundown, inner-city apartment. It was the perfect size for myself, my dog, and my fiance to live in comfortably. We technically had three bedrooms, but one had been converted into my computer room/library. There is a spacious living area that served to hold my TV, gaming consoles, sound system and dining room.There’s a kitchen attached to the living area, separated by a low wall that half-served as a bar.

And of course, my corgi, Emma, welcomed me with her amazingly loud barks. One would think that they’d come from a much larger dog. I don’t know about other dogs, but Emma is all kinds of special; short bus special. Seriously, if anyone else came to the door, she wouldn’t make a peep. But when I get home, the entire neighborhood knows.

“Hi Matt,” greeted my fiance from her spot on the couch. She had her laptop opened and was probably reading some random Harry Potter fanfiction. “Did you have a good day at work?”

I grunted in reply, kicked my shoes off next to the door, and dropped by bag onto them. There really is no such thing as a good day at work; people are never in hospitals for good reasons, staff included.

There’s just enough room on the couch to flop down with my legs hanging over one of the ams and put my head into her lap, blocking her computer from use. It’s a win-win in my book. I get her attention, and she stops reading those mind-numbingly bad homoerotic fanfictions on the internet. Right as I was about to get really comfortable, the laptop’s keyboard making all kinds of interesting impressions on my face, when just she had to bring up my promise to mow the damn lawn.

“Do I have to?” I whined, pawing at her arm.

“Yes,” she said, trying her hardest to not giggle. “Get.”

With a shove that took me completely off guard, I was rolled off the couch and right onto the dog.

.oOo.

It was early evening by the time I got changed from my scrubs into clothes that I didn’t mind getting grassy. The sun was still high enough in the sky to ensure that I actually got the lawn mowed, but not high enough to fry me out of my skin.

I hate being bored while mowing the lawn; the drone of the machine is mind-numbing, and all but deafening. Add in the welcome invention of sound isolation earbuds and the entire chore becomes much more tolerable; that, and Metallica makes everything better. The monotonous task blanked everything from my peripheral, my world shrunk down to the mower and the few feet of grass that was immediately in front of me. Despite the cooler weather that we’d been having, I was still sweating like a pig. As usual, I had to kill the mower in order to rub the stinging liquid from my eyes. I learned the hard way to never do that with the mower still running.

The mower sputtered and shrieked to a stop as a double-dosage of sweat ran down my brow and into both of my eyes at the same time. I stood there for a couple of seconds, rubbing my eyes, then took a look at my progress thus far. I was almost done. A couple more passes, and I could go inside and enjoy my time off from work.

With a roll of my neck, popping the upper vertebra to ease the tension that had accumulated from pushing the heavy machine all over my lawn, I gazed to the heavens and tried to gauge the amount of sunlight that I had left for the day.

Pink.

“Beautiful sunset,” I sighed to myself, grabbing the pull-cord.

Pink.

“Nothing’s gonna get done by itself,” I muttered as I yanked on the cord. The mower finally started after three pulls.

Pink.

I looked to the sky again. It was a peculiar shade of pink, not unlike pepto bismol.

“I really should go in tomorrow and get checked for a concussion,” I murmured as I rubbed the bridge of my nose with a free hand and pushed the mower with the other. “That bastard must’ve clocked me harder than I thought.”

It took another five minutes to finish. Not nearly enough time for Master of Puppets to end, but long enough for my hallucination to fade. The sky was back to its normal oranges, purples, and darkening blues of an average Texan sunset.

I was sorely tempted to just leave the mower where it stood and let it rust into pieces. It would deserve as much for all the trouble it had put me through. I trudged my way over to the shed and shoved the offending contraption into the overstuffed building.

My AC unit welcomed me back into the house with open, if metaphorical, arms.

With a sigh of total relief, I made my way over to the bathroom, shedding articles of clothing as I walked and not caring where they landed. I yanked the bathroom door open with a grunt and turned the water on, before turning around to grab some clothes from my room, which allowed the water to get warm before I actually got in. The shower was a welcome relief. The mowing, combined with the stress from the day and getting punched in the face, really made for quite a bad day. Luckily for me, I had the next three days off. Yet another perk of being a nurse.

I would have stood under the warm spray of water for a couple of hours if it had not been for my fiance banging on the bathroom door.

“Hey!” she shouted above the running water. “Dinner’ll be ready in five! Get out if you want it hot!”

I’ve never missed a hot meal, especially when I didn’t have to make it myself. My fiance is a great cook, when she does decide to cook, and she can make a killer stir-fry and usually whatever else she tries her hand at. My shower ended up being much shorter that I had planned.

I was still dripping water from my hair as I sat down at the already-set table; my fiance had started eating without me. She had made a delicious-looking spicy Italian-esque dish. I loaded up my plate with as much as I could, and was just about to take a bite when she asked:

“Did you smell anything weird earlier?”

“Like what?” I replied around a mouth of pasta and sausage. The spice cleared my sinuses from the accumulated allergens.

“I don’t know,” she said, putting her fork down on her plate. She had always had better table manners than I ever claimed to have. “I would have sworn that you stopped to buy fudge on your way home.”

“I couldn’t smell anything over the gas I put in the mower,” I replied absentmindedly, continuing my assault on the pasta.

She sighed and went back to her own food.

“I’ll get you some tomorrow,” I said reassuringly. I am nothing if not a good fiance.

Just then, Emma started barking wildly at the back door; scratching at the glass and doing everything in her meager power to tunnel through the barrier.

“Damn dog,” I growled under my breath. “What’s gotten into her now?”

My chair creaked as I heaved myself up and pushed it aside with my ankle, stuffing one last bit of food into my mouth.

Emma was really freaking out. She was jumping, scratching, and whining at the door with a vigor and intensity that I had never seen in her before.

“What’s up with Emma?” my fiance asked, getting up from her seat as well.

“I have no idea,” I said, grasping the handle on the door, sliding it open. Emma tore across the lawn, barking the entire way and beelining towards a strange, lumpy form on the ground that was obscured by the shadows of a garden gnome and my neighbor’s oak tree.

“What is that?” Michelle she asked, finally joining me at the back door.

“I don’t know,” I replied, stepping back into the house. “But I’m gonna grab my gun and a flashlight. Get ready to dial 9-1-1.”

My glock sat in its usual place in the drawer of my nightstand, laying on top of a couple of old issues of “American Rifleman,” and next to a couple of loaded magazines. I snatched it up and slid the slide back to check the chamber before loading a fresh magazine and chambering a round.

Michelle met me at the door with the kitchen flashlight in her hand. Emma was still barking and pawing at the mysterious shadow.

“Do be careful,” she whispered, her face white as a sheet.

I grunted in reply, flicking the flashlight on and stepping out into my backyard. I always forget that the kitchen flashlight is next to worthless when it comes to anything beyond three or so feet. I kept my gun and flashlight trained on the shadow in the freshly cut grass with my finger on the trigger guard.

The light pierced the deep shadows, slowly pooling around the bare back of a person. From the shape of the shoulders, hips, and legs, it was clearly a young woman.

“Michelle,” I shouted back at the house, jamming the gun into my waistband and dashing forward. “Grab the first aid kit and better flashlight!”

I didn’t bother checking to see if she was doing what I asked. My main concern was making sure that I didn’t have a dead girl on my lawn. As I dropped into a crouch next to her, I gently rolled her onto her back and grabbed a wrist to feel for the radial artery. There was a fine, strong pulse accompanied by regular, unobstructed breaths.

“Oh my gosh,” gasped my fiance as she ran outside. The larger flashlight better illuminated the young woman. “Is she okay?”

“I think so,” was my distracted reply as I opened the first aid kit and grabbed my pen light. I paused before handing Michelle my gun. “Take this and grab a shirt or something to cover her up.”

As she ran back into the house, my attention returned to the young woman. I mentally noted physical details and any distinguishing birthmarks and tattoos. She was, for all appearances’ sake, a perfectly healthy young woman in her late teens or early twenties. Her hair was dyed a dark shade of purple with a streak of bright pink, bordered by lighter purple that ran down the middle of her bangs and behind her ear. Her complexion looked good. It might have been a little pale, but it was nothing really out of the realm of normality. I used the pen light to check her inner-elbow, her thigh, and between her fingers and toes. From the limited light that I had, I couldn’t see any telltale injection scars that could have pointed to substance abuse.

Michelle came running back out of the house with a large shirt and her cell phone in hand.

“Should I call 9-1-1?” she asked, her thumb on the green ‘call’ button and the number already dialed. I should have let her call and gone back to my normal life.

“No,” I whispered, unconsciously lowering my voice. “Her vitals are perfectly fine, she’s not one of the usual druggies I see at the ER. There’s no sign of trauma. Let’s get her inside and see what she has to say for herself when she comes to.”

Michelle just leveled one of her famous looks at me before canceling the dialed number and dropping her phone into her pocket. Together, we threaded the woman’s arms through the short sleeves of the long shirt, pulling it over her head and down over the rest of her body. I was able to note the presence of a tattoo below her hip, but not quite on her thigh or buttocks. I’d have Michelle get a description of the image later.

I slid one arm under her shoulder and my other under her knees and lifted her off the ground. She was very light; probably under 130 pounds. Emma jumped up at her from underneath my feet with a loud bark, reminding me that she’d been out there the entire time.

“Emma...” I sighed, adjusting my grip on the woman in my arms. Emma followed the three of us, doing her best to herd us into the house with little nips to the back of our heels.

It was going to be a very long night.

Chapter 2: And a Pound of Bacon Later

Chapter 2: And a Pound of Bacon Later

The night was ridiculously long. Hell, the day had been stupidly long, what with getting punched in the face and all the other stresses of working the ER shift.

I had told Michelle that we would take the watch in shifts to make everything easier on us, but I neglected to tell her that I had no intentions of waking her up. I had plenty of books downloaded to my iPad that I needed (and wanted) to read, and more than enough coffee in the house to run a small shop out of my garage.

The coffee was a welcome complement to the half-pound of bacon that I fried around four in the morning, about half-way through Fallout: Equestria.

My gun and phone were within my reach everywhere I went.

I contemplated cleaning some my dirtier guns, the ones that I took hunting or to the range more often than the others, but decided that if the girl was harmless, the pile of guns might frighten her unnecessarily. That would be the last thing that I needed.

The girl in question was tucked into the spare bedroom with the door wide open so that I could hear and see into the room with as little obstruction as possible. She had been sound asleep since we found her in the back yard, and hadn’t made a peep. She probably hadn’t moved since Michelle tucked her under the covers.

I began frying the rest of the bacon and a couple of eggs for breakfast when I heard Michelle stumble into the shower. The pot of coffee was on its third refill of the morning when I heard the shower water shut off, and I wondered if she would remember the whole ‘taking shifts thing’ that she had suggested.

She stomped into the kitchen and glared at me. She remembered.

With a guilty smile, poured her a cup of coffee, complete with ungodly amounts of cream and sugar, and set a plate of food in her place at the table. With a grunt, I set myself down next to her, my eye still on the hallway, and drained another cup of coffee.

“Long night,” I commented into my empty coffee mug.

“Hmmf,” she grunted through a mouthful of eggs. My fiance is definitely not a morning person by any means.

“Not a peep out of our guest either,” I continued, trying to decide if I wanted yet another cup or if I should risk trying to steal a piece of bacon off of her plate. I had already been assaulted once in the past twenty-four hours; I wasn’t about to risk more bodily harm. I went with the refill.

I paused at the microwave, staring at the clock. It was a little after nine in the morning. I hadn’t pulled an all-nighter since school, and I wasn’t looking forward to trying to repair my sleep schedule. I poured myself more coffee and grabbed a couple strips of bacon out of the frying pan with my fingers.

“You’re gonna burn yourself one of these days,” sighed Michelle from the table. I still haven’t figured out how she can see the stove from the table; there is a wall in the way.

“Nah,” I commented flippantly as I bit into the crunchy slice. “Too much skill to get burned.”

She couldn’t help but giggle. “Don’t come complaining to me once you’ve turned your fingers into bacon.”

I shrugged, shoved the last piece into my mouth, and stood, grabbing my iPad from the table. “Going to check in on her, see if I can’t get her to wake.”

Her brow furrowed, “You sure?”

I smiled and kissed her temple, saying “Not at all, but I’m not going to tiptoe around the house all day because some random chick decided to use my backyard for a nap.” Before she could respond, I grabbed my bag from where I had dropped it the moment I got home and dug a couple of instruments out. My grey stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, pen light, and note pad were all in the main pouch; my thermometer would be in the bathroom. The hospital provided those for the nurses and nurse aides to use.

I took a deep breath, walked over to the spare room, and stood in the doorway for a few seconds. It wasn’t the biggest room, but it was more than enough for a guest room. Plenty of space for a queen-sized bed, a small dresser, and a closet, including ample walking space to access everything. Light poured from the window at the head of the bed, pooling over the covers and giving everything a warm glow.

The young woman was still laying on her back, her arm thrown over her face and her purple hair pulled over one shoulder, I could see that the pink and lighter purple streaks actually ran the entire length. I won’t be the only one to tell you this, but she was incredibly cute, not exactly in the sexual sense of the word, but more so that she was pleasant to look at and behold.

I knocked as I entered the room hoping to rouse her at least a little bit. She grumbled something incoherent and rolled away from the door. I chuckled. This wasn’t the first time a patient or resident had rolled away from my intrusion into their precious sleep, nor would it be the last.

“Miss,” I said softly as I crossed the room and stood next to the bed. Her face was scrunched up in a grimace. I put my hand on her shoulder and gave her a little shake. “Miss? It’s time to wake up.”

She groaned and rolled her torso towards me, her eyes still clenched shut and moaned, “G’way.”

The girl was lucky that I am much more professional than I seem. I really wanted to grab a glass of water and pour it over her face. It would serve her right for dropping herself right into my perfectly normal life.

“Miss,” I said a little louder and more forcefully, taking a firm hold of her shoulder and giving her a strong shake.

Her eyes shot open and, with a gasp, she tried to sit up. I was lucky that I kept my hand on her shoulder, otherwise I would have sported a good sized lump on my noggin. She ignored my presence, her eyes darting all around the room in terror and confusion.

“Woah,” I said, pushing her back down onto the bed as gently as I could. “Easy.”

Her eyes focused on me and went as wide as dinner plates, her mouth working furiously at soundless words. Her skin went pale and she began to hyperventilate.

“Easy,” I repeated in the calmest voice that I could muster. “Easy, you’re okay.” Despite dealing with this kind of reaction from some patients on nearly a daily basis, it was still one of my weaker aspects of my nurse-patient interactions. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

She relaxed back into the bed, her oddly violet eyes locked onto my face as I leaned back away from her. She was breathing hard, panicked, and she seemed to be biting her tongue.

“Well,” I said a little awkwardly, trying to find some kind of thread to start a conversation with. I made a few noncommittal noises as I took a long look at her in good light. Her hair was a vibrant shade of purple that could not have been cheap to dye, not to mention the pink streak was obviously the work of a very talented hair stylist. She was slightly pale, not unhealthily pale mind you, with the slightest hint of blush gracing her cheeks.

“W-Where am I?” she asked, her voice trembling ever-so-slightly before I could say anything. Something about her voice sparked across my brain, I had heard this young woman before.

“You’re in my guest room,” I replied calmly, pulling out an alcohol swab and cleaning my stethoscope’s earpieces, diaphragm, and bell; it gave my hands something to do. “Which, unless they’ve finished redistricting the neighborhood again, is still in the city of Austin, Texas.”

“Where?” She asked again, her voice now much stronger than before and mixed disbelief and confusion.

“Wow,” I said with a small chuckle that I couldn’t stop from bubbling forth. “I guess you hit your head pretty hard, didn’t you?”

I would never get an award for my bedside manner. She humphed in response and crossed her arms over her chest, scowling at me.

I smiled at her.

“Look,” I said, taking her right wrist with my hand and pulling it towards me, using one hand to feel for the radial artery. “Sorry about that, but I’ll bet its been a weird couple of days for the both of us, hasn’t it.”

She didn’t reply. She turned her head and opened her mouth to say something, but stopped short, staring in open wonder and amazement. I looked down at her arm and my own, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about either of our arms, unless you counted my tattoo.

Thinking that she was staring my tattoo, I extended my own arm towards her, forearm turned so that she could see the image proudly inked into my skin. It was a trick that I had used many times with scared children: Let them have a look at my tattoo, touch and poke at it, and they wouldn’t notice what I was doing. I have always been a fan of the Legend of Zelda series of videogames, and the moment that I turned eighteen years old, I immediately went out and had the Hylian Crest tattooed in dark red ink into my arm. Still don’t regret it, and I have more planned for after the wedding.

She reached out with the hand that I wasn’t holding onto and brushed her knuckles over one of the red wings before running her lightly balled fist down my forearms and, still using her knuckles, pawed at my hand for a few seconds.

“My name’s Matt,” I said after I found her pulse. It was as steady and strong as it had been when I found it the night previous; a little elevated, but still strong. I was about to ask her for her name, but Michelle shouted from the kitchen.

“Matt, ask her what she wants for breakfast!”

I chuckled and turned my eyes to meet hers, an easy smile on my face, before asking, “Well? Ya’ hungry?”

The flush that lit her cheeks as her stomach rumbled was answer enough for me.

She needed a lot of help getting out of bed and out into the kitchen. Emma dashing in and out from between our feet did nothing to help. The young woman grimaced and tried to hide her frustration as her legs refused to support her weight. She wasn’t heavy by any definition of the word, but her growing irritation at her own legs did make ambulation slightly difficult. She had one arm thrown around my neck and I had one arm around her waist. It wasn’t the best situation in terms of safety; I didn’t have a safety belt on her and she didn’t have any kind of assistance or support other than myself. I did my very best to make sure that her shirt stayed in place.

With a grunt, I set her down into one of the kitchen chairs and righted myself, rubbing my neck as it cracked in protest. She sat at the table and looked around, her hands on her lap as Emma put her front paws on the edge of her seat, begging already.

“Good morning little miss sleepyhead,” greeted Michelle, poking her head around the kitchen partition. “I’ll have your eggs off the fryer in a sec.”

“Oh,” she gasped, startled at my fiance’s sudden appearance. “Uh, t-thank you.”

“Its no problem at all,” Michelle laughed, ducking back over to the stove, I could hear the spatula moving against the metal of the skillet.

“What else can I get you to eat?” I asked the young woman as she scratched Emma behind her ears. “We’ve got fruit, toast, bacon, ham, and I’m sure that there’s more in the fridge somewhere.” I walked over to the fridge, yanked the door open, and started to dig around in the depths of the most-used kitchen appliance.

I didn’t notice her lack of a reply, as my head was buried in various tupperware containers of random leftovers.

“Never mind on the fruit there miss,” I called out of the fridge, tossing an empty bag out of the crisper drawer. “We’re out. Same with the bacon.”

“You did eat a whole pound of it..” Michelle snarked as I passed her, dropping a couple of pieces of bread into our toaster.

“Hush you,” I snapped playfully, scowling. It had been good bacon, too; thick cut, hickory smoked, and cover in black pepper.

I returned to the table to find a slightly green young woman still petting Emma and looking everywhere but up at me.

“Hey,” I said gently, dropping into the ‘caring health care professional’ persona that I had been perfecting. “What’s wrong?”

I reached out to touch her on her shoulder and she flinched away from me.

“Woah,” I said, yanking my hand back from her as though I had been literally burned.

“You-” she gasped. It seemed as though she was fighting back revulsion and tears at the same time. “You eat meat!”

That was unexpected.

“Well...” I floundered. “Yeah.”

The look of revulsion grew on her face, the green gradually making way for the flush of anger in her cheeks.

“Why?” She asked, her voice just above a whisper.

I wanted to be snarky and mean, and say something about how delicious it is, but something in the back of my mind told me that that would not have been the best course of action; my fiance’s hand on my shoulder certainly didn’t help the evil side of me, either.

“Uh,” I sighed, feeling Michelle’s hand tense on my shoulder as she leaned over to put a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and a small salad in front of our guest. “I guess the easiest answer would be that there are certain proteins in meat that are just easier to obtain from meat than from other sources. Not impossible, but certainly easier.”

She looked up and met my eyes again. I was struck by how deep a purple they were. Whoever had made those contacts was going to be a very rich person once the process caught on with other cosmetic optics circles.

The three of us sat in a tense silence as she stared into my eyes, then she let out a long sigh and turned away from the two of us.

“I shouldn’t fault other ponies and their choices,” she apologized. I didn’t even notice the usage of the word ‘ponies’ instead of ‘people.’

“What kind of jam do you like?” Michelle asked, her bubbly personality breaking the tension nicely. “We’ve got grape, strawberry, apricot, and blackberry.”

“Oh, um,” mumbled the young woman for a moment. “Blackberry please.”

“Coming right up.”

With it being Michelle’s turn to dig around in the fridge, and Emma still begging at my guest’s feet, I figured that it would be a good time to get some more information out of her. I opened my mouth to ask for her name, at least, but I stopped short and watched her.

She was trying to pick up her fork with both fists, her tongue stuck cutely out of one side of her mouth. Only when she had finally managed to lift the utensil off the table and stick it into her eggs did she realize that there was going to be no way to get the fork into her mouth like that.

I felt bad for laughing at her, and her scowling at me did nothing to quell the waves of laughter.

“Try it like this,” I said taking the fork from her and showing her how to use it.

“Oh,” she gasped in surprise, flexing her fingers in front of her eyes in wonder before whispering, “How interesting.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying my hardest to not laugh as she fumbled with the fork. Only once she had gotten a few mouthfuls of the eggs did I press the conversation forward.

“So,” I said, both as a segue and as a way to let her know to stop eating for a second. “What is your name?”

She swallowed, smiled and said,

“My name is Twilight Sparkle.”

Chapter 3: Through the Looking Glass

Chapter 3: Through the Looking Glass

My name is Twilight Sparkle.

Silence.

It was as if the world had cut itself off from my senses. I couldn’t breathe, see, or feel anything. Images of a pretty particular purple unicorn pranced proudly around my mind. Her voice, almost as familiar as my fiance’s, echoed in my mind as she crafted one of her famous letters to her powerful mentor:

Dear Princess...

The actual words of each letter faded in and out of obscurity with only her closing lines, normally dictated to her assistant, able to be fully understood.

Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle

As the world slowly returned, I could feel Michelle’s hand, tight and white-knuckled, still gripping my shoulder and faintly shaking. I didn’t have to see her face to tell that she had seen something similar to what I had.

Twilight seemed to have missed our entire ordeal and had returned to eggs.

We sat in silence, my mind trying to rationalize the hallucination...

“Man,” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “It is way too early.”

The young woman, I refused to call her Twilight, looked up from her plate.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Look,” I said, dropping my hand from my face and looking her in the eyes. “I don’t know who hired you or put you up to this, but it’s far too early to be saying things like that and have any chance of me taking you seriously.” I paused for a moment before continuing with a chuckle. “Especially after last night.”

“Last... night?” she queried with a cock of her head. “What happened last night?”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose with a weary sigh and shrugged my fiance’s hand off of my shoulders.

“Last night...” I fired back with all the bitter sarcasm I could muster. “You know, where you were passed out in my backyard naked as a jaybird. I don’t know how you got there, nor do I really want to know why, but you were there nonetheless.”

There was a pregnant pause, broken only by Emma licking at the young woman’s toes.

“So,” I continued before she could get in a word edgewise. “All I want right now is for you to tell me where I can drop you off so that I can go back to enjoying the rest of my day off.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, perking right up in a manner that was more than slightly disturbing. “I’m really sorry, but if you could direct me back to Ponyville-”

“Just stop,” I interrupted her, holding my hand up and rubbing the bridge of my nose with the other. “Look, I get it. You’re supposed to make me believe that, not only are you supposed to be a pony, but that YOU’RE Twilight Sparkle.”

The silence fell back over the kitchen. I don’t think that she expected me to doubt her identity.

“Just let me know where I can drop you off. I’ll even take care of whatever fees.”

“I don’t think that you’ll have to worry about any fees,” replied the young woman with an awkward smile. “I’m sure that the princess will be able to take care of anything that needs to be paid for.”

“Will you just drop it!” I snapped.” I don’t know who hired you or for what, but this really takes the cake. I get enough shit from the others at work for ponies, let alone the crap that my friends give me. I certainly don’t need anymore from some girl I found in my backyard.”

I glared at her, angry and more tired than I thought that I was. It had been a long week: The combination of long hours at the hospital and the constant ribbing from the other nurses for being a brony had finally gotten the better of me. I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I shouldn’t be taking it out on her, but I had reached my breaking point.

“You,” I continued, pointing my finger at her and furrowing my eyebrows, “are not Twilight Sparkle. I don’t know who you are or where you’re from or how you know that I am a brony, and frankly, I don’t give a damn. All I want is for you to finish your breakfast, tell me where I can drop you off and for you to get on your way out of my life.”

My voice had begun to raise through that last tirade and by the time I was finished speaking, I was shouting at the purple haired young woman.

She had shrunk back into her chair, staring at me with her large violet doe-like eyes, her bottom lip quivering in the slightest. I felt shame beginning to creep into the edge of my mind as I continued to glare at her, and I knew that Michelle would make me pay for the horrible treatment of the young woman later.

The silence that fell between the three of us was heavy. The young woman was looking down at her hands and I could see that there were tears welling up in her eyes. It pulled at my heartstrings.

I rubbed my temples in an attempt to rein in my temper. I had no right to take it out on this young woman, no matter what the circumstances were. It wasn’t that she was a young woman - dad had always taught me that a Southern Gentleman should never vent his ire on to one of the fairer sex - but it was the she was my guest.

My guest.

The weight of those words pressed down in my like the entirety of the Encyclopedia Britannica that Michelle and I had received as an early wedding gift.

I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but the words died in my throat and I vapor locked. There was nothing that I could say that could make this situation any better, I had really let it hit the fan, and now I was covered from head to toe.

Taking a deep breath, I started again, the words finding their way out of my mouth:

“Look,” I said, my voice still carrying a bit of the charge that had filled it just moment ago. She shrunk back into her chair, trying to get as far away from me as possible. “I’m sorry miss, that was wrong of me to say-”

Michelle snorted and cut me off, walking over to the girl and helping her to her feet. “Let’s get you cleaned up and into some real clothes.” She glared at me as she walked the violet-haired girl out of the kitchen.

Without a word of complaint in my mind, I gathered up the various dishes, utensils, and the pan from the stove and began to wash.

It was nearly an hour later before Michelle and our guest appeared out of our room, the latter now dressed in some of Michelle’s clothes that seemed to fit her rather well. The two of them walked over and sat on the couch in front of the TV with plenty of room between the two of them. I didn’t know what went on between the two of them, all I know was that Michelle was sporting a rather impressive blush and the young woman looked rather nonplussed.

After a second to collect my thoughts, I joined them, choosing to stand in front of the couch rather than to sit on the ground or try to sit between them.

“So...” I started before trailing off. I didn’t know what to say that would make up for just yelling at her out of the blue. There was no possible excuse that I could give to her or my fiance that would make this situation any better than the fiasco that I had already stirred up. I sighed. “There’s really nothing that I can say to you, Miss, that could explain my conduct from just a little while ago.”

She was regarding me with her inquisitive purple eyes that I, despite telling myself that it was my own mind playing tricks on me, found familiar. Her gaze was intense and studious, as though she really hadn’t seen anything like me before.

This young woman was one hell of an actress.

“Be that as it may,” I continued, trying to ignore her unwavering stare, “I want to apologize for how I treated you. It was unbecoming of a brony and a gentleman, and inexcusable to the guest of my house.”

Still, she didn’t respond, but I did detect a slight softening of her gaze.

“Do you think that we could start over?”

She smiled and said, “Sure.”

For the next couple of hours, our conversation was nice enough. It still felt wrong to call my guest Twilight Sparkle, regardless of how much she looked like her equine counterpart from the show. The three of us slowly got to know each other somewhat. Michelle and I already knew most of what the young woman could tell us about Twilight Sparkle. There were enough differences in her story as compared to the show that I knew I was right in thinking that she had been exceptionally well coached to deal with me.

Of course, with my detail-oriented mind, it didn’t take very long for the discussion to turn heated once Michelle and I started to really ply her with questions regarding her background, and comparing her answers to what we knew from the show. She had everything that I could remember down pat, little details that my fiance knew better than I did, and some stuff that we had seen in our peripheral vision but hadn’t really paid attention.

What really threw us for a loop where the minor details that she added every now and then that, at first, seemed like minor aspects that we could have missed. But as the conversation wore on, they became more and more detailed and elaborate, describing events that were certainly outside the aspect of the show. She described a game of ‘hoofball’ that she had attended due to Applejack’s insistence. Big Mac was a very popular player in the Ponyville minor circuit. The game seemed to be rather similar to rugby in its nature and level of violence.

I had reached the point where I had had enough with the charade. It had been interesting enough to hear her inventions and creative mind on how the ‘real’ Twilight Sparkle would actually live and how Equestria was really like, but enough was enough.

“Fine,” I interrupted one of her more long-winded explanations on something or other. I had stopped paying attention. “Prove it.”

“Prove what?” she replied, her head cocking to one side like it usually did when she was confused.

“I want you,” I said evenly, jabbing a finger at her, “to prove to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are Twilight Sparkle.”

“Okay,” she replied just as evenly, her eyes locking with mine. “I thought that was what we were doing.”

“No. Stories and lectures are something that anyone could make up and make sound believable, not counting that your history doesn’t match with the show. No, I want you to perform a spell.”

“A spell,” she deadpanned, her eyes half-lidded in apparent boredom. “Which one?”

“You decide,” I shot back, hiding my shock at her easy acceptance of the challenge. “You won’t be able to do it.”

She glared at me, a fire behind her eyes.

“Fine,” was her only reply before she shut her eyes in apparent concentration. I gave her some credit for making the act as believable as she could.

Michelle sighed and crossed her arms over her chest and Emma jumped up into her lap. The three of us sat in an uncomfortable silence as the young woman scrunched up her face in intense concentration, her hair lightly moving in the air current of our constantly-on AC unit

“Yeah,” I snarked, a sneer on my face showing that I’d finally gotten fed up with her just sitting there.. “You’re Twilight Sparkle alright. Whatever. Can’t even perform one lousy spell. At least you had the decency not to bring Spike with you.”

I could see the anguish in her eyes as she opened them to look at me.

“But,” she stammered, tears beginning to form at the base of her violet eyes. “I don’t understand. Levitating you out of your chair should’ve been one of the easiest things that I could do.”

I wanted to say something. Something comforting, something other than to voice the anger and annoyance that was already finding its way out of my mouth.

“It’s okay dear,” Michelle said, thankfully cutting me off before I could stick my foot in my own mouth yet again. But there was nothing that Michelle could come up with to comfort our guest.

This time there was no stopping the tears that flowed down her face, nor the anger in her eyes as she stared me down.

“What did you do to me?” she gasped through her tears.

“Me?” I fired back. Out of all the ways that I thought that this conversation was going to go, this was not one of the possible paths that I had predicted. “What do you mean me? You’re the one that ended up in my backyard, not vice versa.”

“And you’re the one that turned me into...” she snapped, her anger overcoming her sense of despair, “this... this thing!”

That made me pause.

The shock on my face must have been evident, because she paused as Michelle and I shared a look of incredulity. Was this young woman mentally ill? Was there something bigger going on here? Something so big that there was no way that I would be able to grasp the scope without sending myself into the bliss of madness?

Was this young woman really Twilight Sparkle?

I shook myself; that was not the line of thinking that I need to be continuing right now.

“Thing?” I asked, grasping at the first topic that came to mind.

“Yes, thing,” she said. The anger mixed with confusion on her face and she gestured wildly with her arm. “In fact, let’s start with that: What are you? I’ve never seen anything like you in any of my books.”

“Ooookay,” I drawled awkwardly, scratching the back of my head with the hand that I had been pointing at her with. “We things are called humans and we certainly didn’t do anything to you. Other than clothing you, putting you in our spare bed, and feeding you.” I chuckled in spite of the situation. “I believe that you put it best when you said “Always expect the best from your friends and never assume the worst,” in one of your letters to the Princess. You could at least extend the same courtesy to us. We haven’t done anything to you for you to label us as anything other than friends.”

She froze.

“How could you know that?” she asked, her face pale. “Only the princess could know what I put in that letter. I didn’t even dictate that to Spike.” At the mention of her assistant, she glared at me. “And what’s wrong with him, anyways?”

I ignored her scathing look and instead grabbed the universal remote from the table, using it to power on my media system. I set down the remote and picked up my mouse, navigating to iTunes, where I had every current episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic downloaded in glorious full-HD. I found the episode that I was looking for, Boast Busters, and clicked play.

“What’s this?” Not-Twilight asked as the screen lit up and began to load the episode. “And what’s ‘My Little Pony’?”

“This is how I know,” I replied, sitting down next to Michelle and Emma. I wrapped an arm around my fiance and scratched behind the ears of my dog. “Just watch.”

The three of us sat in total silence as the episode played. My mind reeled as I watched the emotions play across the young woman’s face.

At the point where Ursa Minor stomped into Ponyville, she had hidden her face behind her fist and shook violently. I immediately shut off the show and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, she was hyperventilating.

“Woah,” I said, trying to calm her down and looking to Michelle for help. She just gestured to the girl with the look on her face that told me to deal with my own mess. I didn’t bother trying to say anything more and simply sat with the girl and rocked her silently until her trembles wore off and she seemed to be okay.

“... Sorry,” she said, rubbing at one eye with a knuckle. “It’s been years since that night and I still have nightmares.”

I looked at her, not fully comprehending her fear. “I don’t understand, everything seemed to have worked out for you in the end.”

“I don’t know what that was,” she said, not looking at either of us. Her eyes were unfocused and distant. “But that wasn’t the whole story.”

I didn’t need to prompt her to continue.

“What you don’t know is that the Ursa Minor spent the better part of the night rampaging through Ponyville destroying several homes and nearly crushing several ponies.” She looked up at me, my arm still around her shoulder, and I could see the real pain that these memories were causing her. “When she roared, everypony could smell the stench. It was oppressive. It spoke of eons of eating ponies...”

She continued to detail the horrors of that night and the days following: The rebuilding of Ponyville, the removal of the Ursa from its cave by a team of specialists, the increase in guard presence, and the increased unsease of the close proximity of the Everfree Forest.

My mind, however, was stuck on one thing:

This really was, no doubts whatsoever, Twilight Sparkle.

Author's Note

Also, give me y'all's thought's on 'The Hobbit.'

Both the movie and the book.

Chapter 4: Paging Dr. Strongarm

CHAPTER 4: PAGING DOCTOR STRONGARM

I didn’t know that looking after another adult, even one that had been transformed into a human from another species, would be all that hard. Twilight was proving to me that I had had no idea what I was getting myself into when I promised her that I would help her get back to Equestria.

Michelle, thankfully, had taken Twilight to get her some clothes of her own yesterday, leaving me alone with an aching headache the entire day after we realized who she really was.

I glanced at the clock; it was after noon on the sixteenth. Michelle was in the bedroom taking a nap and Twilight was reading and reorganizing all of the books that we had amassed in the study. I had refused to show her how to work the computers fearing the vast unknown that is the internet and the trouble that she would get into.

Michelle and I were up to date on the majority of our wedding planning and I had my homework done. I sighed and settled back into the couch, perfectly content to sleep and nap for the rest of the day.

From right next to my head, the Imperial March began to play. I looked up and around, confused for the briefest of moments. Reality caught up to my confused brain just seconds later and I grabbed my iPhone off of the side table. It was work calling me. On my day off.

“Sonofa-” I muttered under my breath as I slid the answer bar and held the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“Matt?” asked a female voice that I vaguely recognized. “This is Susan from the H.R. office-”

“Hi Susan,” I cut her off, wincing at my own behavior. “What can I do for you?”

“Uh...” she stumbled over her words, clearly not expecting to have been cut off so rudely. “Yes. Well Mr. Mxxxxxxx, we need you to come down to the office today and help us fill out all the proper paperwork for the incident that allegedly happened on the 13th of April.”

“Incident?” I asked, confused. “Allegedly? Oh, you mean where that guy decked me.”

There was another pregnant pause before Susan continued. “Yes, that incident. We need you to file your eyewitness report, your version of the events, and to make sure that we have your statement for the police report and the insurance claim.”

“Can’t this wait until later in the week when I’m actually scheduled to be there?”

“No, it cannot.”

“Fine.” I sighed cracking my neck. “I’ll be there in about an hour.”

“We’ll see you then,” she replied in an annoyingly chipper voice before hanging up.

Getting to my feet, I rolled my neck and winced as it cracked loudly. Rubbing my now aching neck, I padded to my room, passing Twilight still organizing my books.

“Matt?” Twilight called as I passed the room, and I had to fight my reflex and ignore her to just get changed into something presentable.

“Yes, Twilight?” I said, poking my head into the study. She was sitting on the floor in front of one of the five bookshelves, books of all kinds piled around her with one open on her lap. There was a yellow legal pad to her right with notes or something of the sort scribbled on the top pages. “What’s up?”

“I was just wondering what that song was just now,” she said, one finger of her hand holding her spot on the page.

“Song?” I asked, confused. “Oh, you mean my ringtone?”

“I guess.”

I paused, a little lost on how to explain ringtones to a being that probably had no concept of a cell phone let alone a ringtone. “Well, a ringtone, like the song that you just heard, is a little song that lets me know when someone is calling me on my phone. If you have a special phone, like mine, you can customize the rings so that certain people have their own special song. You following me?”

She nodded, scribbling on her notepad. “Oh yes, I read all about phones and your technology in one of these books.”

“Wait, since when do you know how to read?”

“Your language is remarkably similar to one of the descendants of a proto-Equestian and proto-Griffon mixed language,” she said looking up from her notepad. There was an odd gleam in her strikingly violet eyes. “Once I figured that out, it was only a matter of time until I was able to cross-reference modern-Equestrian and create a solution algorithm, and was then able to translate the majority of your language into something that I could read and understand.”

I wanted to sit down; she had translated and essentially become fluent in written English in under a day.

“But I thought that humans didn’t have magic.”

“We don’t,” I replied, shocked out of my reverie at the non-sequitor, and arched an eyebrow at her.

Twilight grabbed an old and worn book with a Picasso lithograph of two people, one on a horse and one on a donkey. “Then why do the giants in this book turn into windmills after this gentleman attacks them?”

I hadn’t laughed that hard in a very long time.

.oOo.

Twilight sat in the front passenger seat of my car as we sped along the traffic-less highway to my job; she was still miffed at me for laughing at her for so long. I left a note for Michelle letting her know where we were, and to call me when she woke up.

I hummed as the lack of traffic puzzled me.

“What?” asked Twilight as she turned from looking out the window.

“Nothing,” I replied, flicking the turn signal to get off of the highway, probably one of the only people in the entire city to actually understand how that signal works. “Its just odd that there’s not a single other car on the busiest road in the city.”

“Maybe they took the day off?”

I shook my head. “Earth isn’t like Equestria, Twi,” I said, pulling into the hospital parking lot - a personal record of less than twenty minutes to get to work from the house. “People cannot just randomly take the day off, not to mention that this many people off would probably bring the city to a grinding halt.”

She scowled at me. “I never said that we could just take the day off, I meant that maybe it was a holiday or something.”

“I don’t think so,” I said thoughtfully as I led Twilight into hospital proper. “The H.R. department wouldn’t be here if it was that important of a holiday, the lord only knows how much they like to take their holidays off.”

She opened her mouth to say something but was cut off by a shout as we entered the lobby of my area of work.

“Hey, its pony-boy! Where’s your sparkly pretty pink steed?”

I could not hide my wince.

“Hello to you too, Mary,” I said, turning to the source of the voice. Mary was one of the other LVNs on the emergency room staff. She and the rest of the various nurses on my level took great pleasure in tormenting me daily for being a brony. Mary was a short, thin woman of Hindu origin who clashed with me on every level that I ever considered to be possible.

I did my best to ignore Mary and the other relatively tame jabs that flew my way as Twilight and I walked through the lobby and into the office. Had the lobby been empty, I’m sure that Twilight would have learned a little more about human psychology than she should have to know.

“Hello Matt,” said my immediate superior, a kind redheaded woman of middle age named Mrs. Johnson. “Thank you for coming in so soon.”

“Its no problem ma’am,” I replied smiling at my boss. “Is Susan still here?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Johnson said, pulling a stack of papers out of her desk and handing them to me. “She left the moment that she got off of the phone with you.” My boss paused for a moment. “Who’s your friend?”

“Michelle’s half-sister, Twilight, from her dad’s first marriage.” I lied with an ease that surprised even me. I could tell that Twi was fighting her natural urge to let people know who she really was. Thankfully, she kept her mouth shut and her nose buried in a book. “Mom was a hippy.”

“Ah.”

“She’s staying with us for a few days until her travel arrangements come together.”

“Oh?” Now that I had her attention, I hoped that I could pull this off. “Where’s she off to?”

“Her mother ran off to some island in the pacific with someone and Twi’s trying to find her. Gonna start in New Zealand and move on from there.”

“Oh my,” gasped Mrs. Johnson, holding her hand over her mouth. “The poor dear.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, taking a seat in front of her desk and grabbing a pen from the cup full. There were a ton of forms to fill out and sign. “Its going to be interesting for her.” I paused in the middle of signing the first page and looked up at my boss. “Do we have a spare non-Mary nurse on the clock right now? Twi needs a physical and her inoculations before her trip.”

“Of course dear,” Mrs. Johnson smiled at me before standing. “Ms. Twilight, if you would just follow me we’ll get you all set up for the trip.” She paused a second before turning to me. “Do you have her medical records?”

“Her mom was one of those naturalist hippy types. She never believed that a doctor could do better than Mother Earth,” I replied, not looking up from the statement that I begun to write. “This is probably the first time that she’s ever even been in a hospital.”

“Well then,” Mrs. Johnson ground out through her clenched teeth. “We’ll get that all taken care of then.”

By the time I was finished, Mrs. Johnson had returned to the office and was sitting at her desk working on other pieces of managerial work.

“That should do it,” I said, stacking the papers neatly together and handing them to Mrs. Johnson. “Everything okay?”

“With Ms. Twilight?” she responded, taking the stack from my hands and filing it into a large envelope. “Considering her background, she’s remarkably healthy.”

I didn’t press the issue further. Twilight was assumed to be of legal age, and as such her health status beyond the most basic of generalities could not be disclosed. I stood and stretched; I had been sitting in the office for a little over a hour.

“Wait just a moment Mr. Mxxxxxxx,” she said, looking at me seriously. I froze, arm still stretched high above my head. She only used our last names when we were in some very big trouble. “In light of the incident, you’re going have your rotation be a little early and a little longer than usual.”

I relaxed my shoulders immediately. I thought, for a second, that I was going to be in some kind of trouble for that patient punching me in the face.

“You have tomorrow off,” she continued, choosing to ignore my body language. “Report to the Children’s Level on the eighteenth.”

“Yes ma’am,” I fired back, shooting her a mock salute before turning on one heel and marching out of the office to find Twilight.

The moment that I returned to the main waiting lobby, more anti-pony barbs were thrown my way. Unusual, considering that there were patients sitting in the lobby. I ignored them, spotting Twilight sitting a chair off to one corner of the room, her nose buried in the book that she had brought with her in the car. I could see neon-purple band aids poking out from underneath her shirt sleeves on her upper deltoids. She was sucking gently on a lollipop, the white stick jutting out from the corner of her mouth. She smiled at me as I approached.

“Hey Twi,” I greeted with a smile of my own. “Ready to go home?”

She nodded, stood, and followed me as I turned from the lobby and began to walk out the way that we came.

We didn’t make it ten feet out of the double door leading to the ER lobby before the the intercom buzzed to life:

“Doctor Strongarm to the emergency room. Emergency room, Doctor Strongarm.”

I swore under my breath and dashed back into the ER lobby, Twi right on my heels. For the briefest of moments the lobby sat in a tense silence, each and every one of us hoped and prayed that it was false alarm.

The double doors leading into the ER proper flew open with a bang as two men tumbled onto the ground, struggling and fighting with each other. I could see the glint of a scalpel through the mass of limbs and blood, both men had several lacerations and puncture wounds all over their arms.

I couldn’t make out what they were shouting at each other, it was a mix of Spanish and grunts of pain and stress. Everyone in the room, Twilight and myself included, were rooted to the ground, staring at the two men.

One of the men got a grasp of the scalpel and tore it out of his opponent’s hands and, right as three APD officers slammed through the double doors, dug the blade deep into the base of the neck of the man beneath him.

The officers gave the stabber no chance to do anything else as they swarmed him, tearing him off of his victim and tackling him to the ground.

I heard Twi’s shriek of terror as I dashed forward. The scalpel had been ripped out of the man’s neck and blood was spurting out of it in an arch. My mind was racing as fast as it could; I had to get pressure on the wound soon. I had no way of knowing what had been punctured or lacerated in that stab - that wasn’t what I did in the ER. What I did know was that that kind of blood spurt was indicative of a major, possibly fatal, injury.

I snatched the scalpel off of the floor, fumbling with the bloody and slippery handle of the blade, and used the sharp edge to cut away the man’s shirt. He groaned as I shifted his body, taking the garment off. I balled the cheap t-shirt as tightly as I could and pressed it firmly to the wound in the man’s neck.

It saturated with blood immediately.

I looked around for help desperately, but everyone in the lobby was fixated on the APD officers and the stabber, the latter of which was still struggling and fighting with the officers.

Turning over and looking over my shoulder, I saw Twilight standing close by. She was white as a sheet and clutched her book her her chest.

“Twi,” I said, my voice forceful and strong. She jumped, broken from her reverie, and dropped her book to the ground with a clatter. Keeping one hand on the man’s neck, I pulled her down next to me, my bloody hand leaving a scarlet print on her wrist. “Press as hard as you can right where my hands are.”

She stared at me, eyes wide with fear. “But-”

“No buts!” I barked, cutting her off. I took her other hand and pressed both into the bloody bandage as hard as I could. “Hold right here, I’m going to get help.”

I didn’t give her time to respond. I jumped to my feet and sprinted down the hall. It took me a scant few moments to find the bandage cart, grab the thickest pressure bandage that I could lay my hands on, and sprint back down the hall.

By the time that I got back into the lobby, APD was bodily hauling the stabber out of the ER in handcuffs and there was a group of two nurses and a doctor over the victim. Twilight sat a few steps away from them, staring at her blood soak hands.

The doctor looked up as I approached with the bandage and snatched it out of my hands without a word of thanks. I stared at the three of them on the floor, tying the bandage arounds the barely-conscious man’s neck and screaming for a stretcher. The world moved in a haze.

A soft sob off to my right tore me from my staring. My gazed turned to Twilight, tears welling up in her beautiful violet eyes, the softest of sobs shaking her shoulders and arms. Her hands were soaked slick with blood up to her mid-forearm, small rivulets slowly ran down to her elbow before dripping onto her jeans.

“C’mon Twi,” I whispered, gasping her elbow and ignoring wet blood. “Let’s get you cleaned up and go home.”

She sucked in her lower lip and nodded, leaning against me as I walked her back into the ER nurse prep room.

The sinks weren’t the greatest things in the world, but they were what we had. I took both of her hands in mine and I quickly wet and lathered them under the warm water. The powerful soap cut right through the blood, leaving no trace of the fluid behind.

“Twilight,” I said in a comforting tone nudging her to look at me. “You may have just saved that man’s life today.”

Chapter 5: Broken

Chapter 5: Broken

The trip home was a trial in of itself. Twilight sat in the co-pilot seat, staring at her newly cleaned hands with a look that could only be described as disbelief.

Neither of us said a word the entire trip home.

For my part, this was not the first time that I had seen a stabbing, nor the first time that I had been a first responder to the scene of the stabbing. Honestly, I was surprised by how little that the incident in the emergency room had affected me.

At some point during the drive, Twilight fell asleep; the stress and excitement of the day had been too much for her. I pulled the car into the drive as quietly and gently as I could and got out of the car.

“Hey,” called Michelle from the kitchen, the scent of szechuan chilis and oils blasting me full in the face. “Everything go okay?”

I didn’t bother answering and just walked over to the kitchen, needing to see her. She was standing over the stove expertly flipping the red mixture, the burner under the wok set as high as it would go.

She looked over at me, the smile sliding off of her face as she took in my appearance, the ladle clattering out of her hand into the wok.

“Oh my,” she gasped, shutting the gas off and rushing over to me, one hand cupping my cheek and the other pulling at my shirt. “What happened to you? Where’s Twilight?”

“She’s still in the car,” I replied, answering her second question first. “She fell asleep on the way home.” I followed her gaze down to my clothes. There were more than just a few streaks of blood that smeared the lower portion of my shirt and larger splashes of crimson that stained my jeans. They were ruined.

I returned my gaze to my fiance’s face, her eyes were filled with worry.

“It’s been a hell of a day,” I sighed, gently pulling out of her grasp. “Can you turn down Twi’s bed so that I can get her out of the car?”

With a quick nod, Michelle took off down the hall as I returned to the car. Twilight was still fast asleep, her head lolling off to one side. As quietly as was possible, I eased the car door open and knelt down to unbuckle her from the seat. Twi groaned and fussed at me cutely, still asleep, as I pulled the belt over her shoulders and pulled her into my arms. With a grunt, I stood and walked back into the house proper to find Michelle holding Emma on the couch. I could tell that she wanted to say something, anything, but I waylaid her with a look.

Twilight’s room was dark, the blinds and curtains drawn and the light from the hallway and windows in the living room streaming in just enough sunlight to see. As gently as I could, I lay Twilight out on the bed, pulled off the shoes that she was borrowing from Michelle and covered her with the sheet and comforter. She immediately rolled away from me and the light behind me. I stopped myself from reaching out and brushing her purple locks out of her face, various emotions warring in my mind.

Here I was, living the brony dream: I had my very own pony. A pony turned human, but a pony nonetheless. Twilight Sparkle may not have been my best pony, but she was definitely in my top three of the mane six and here she was, asleep in my guest room.

I stood and backed away from the bed, stopping that line of thought before it could go any further. Twilight was a living being, lost and FAR away from home, and she needed my help to get back. Earth was not a forgiving place and she had just experienced that first hand. The last thing that she needed, current situation notwithstanding, was a brony freaking out over her very presence.

I left the room, shutting the door behind me and walked back over to the couch and dropped down next to my fiance with a grunt. It was barely past four in the afternoon, and I felt like I had just spent the last several days without any kind of rest. I was exhausted.

Emma took that moment to climb up onto my chest and began to lick my face.

“Emma,” I sputtered and tried to fend her off, but she was being persistent. “Damnit dog, quit it.”

“Emma,” Michelle commanded, her tone brooking no argument. To my surprise, Emma jumped off of my chest and down onto the floor and looked up at us pathetically.

“Matt.” Michelle had turned her attention to me, cupped my cheek with one of her hands, and forced me to look her in the eyes. “What happened?”

“Humanity happened,” I sighed, leaning into her touch, taking in as much comfort as I could. “You know what that part of the town can be like, the people that we get in the ER.” I heard her gasp but I cut her off before she could say anything. “We were just about to leave, on our way to the door and everything, when the emergency call came.”

“But you weren’t on duty today. You didn’t have to respond. They revoked your first responder status after that bit-”

“They paged Doctor Strongarm.”

“Oh.” The fire that had been building in my fiance’s eyes went out.

“Yeah,” I sighed, pulling away from her and staring at the opposite wall. The scene in the ER played before me on a morbid projector screen that only I could see. Without prompting, I gave Michelle the play-by-play. Every little detail that I could remember: the sights, emotions, the tension, everything.

“I had no choice,” I choked out when I told her what I did to Twilight. “The others weren’t acting fast enough and if I hadn’t done something he would have bled out right there on the floor.”

“Shh, shh, shhh,” Michelle cooed, pulling my head to her shoulder. I was honestly shocked to find myself with tears running down my cheeks and fighting to hold back sobs as best as I could. “You did the right thing,” she whispered into my ear. “You helped save that man’s life.”

We sat like that for a few moments longer before she made me lean back into the back of the couch.

“Now, you just sit right there for a few seconds and let me finish dinner,” she said through an obviously fake smile. “Sound good?”

I nodded, unable to come up with words. She kissed me lingeringly and trotted back off into the kitchen, my eyes following her every step of the way. I didn’t even notice Emma take off after her.

The food was fantastic, like always.

As per our agreement, I washed the dishes while Michelle put the leftovers in the fridge. I wrapped my arms around Michelle’s waist from behind as she was wiping down the oven, cleaning the oil that had splashed over the edge of the wok. She leaned back into me with a sigh of her own, taking her clean hand and running in through my hair.

“One of those days, huh?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I sighed in reply, burying my face into her neck and breathing deeply. I could tell that she was fighting a smile; she always loved when I did that. “One hell of a day.”

We stood like that for a few moments longer before I pulled away from her, leaving one last kiss on her neck.

“I’m going to head to bed,” I mumbled, rubbing my face with my hand. “I just want to forget this day ever happened.”

“I’ll be in a few hours,” Michelle said softly, still working on cleaning the wok. “I need to get some more work done.”

“‘Kay,” I mumbled, already halfway down the hall and not really caring; I could hear the siren song of my pillow.

I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I hadn’t bothered to change.

.oOo.

My dreams were troubled and strange. I was walking along in darkness, minding my own business and just looking around, when all of the sudden there was a cacophony of sound that deafened my ears, leaving my head aching. I spun around, desperately searching for the source of the sound when I was overtaken by a blinding light and a searing pain tore through my arm. A scream raced through my ears.

.oOo.

“Matt,” someone was calling my name, as though through a thick cloud. “Come on, hon, wake up.”

I groaned and rolled away from the voice, trying to sink back into the comfort of sleep. I could heard the distant and constant roar of running water.

“Wake,” The voice had gotten louder and had taken to shaking me violently. “UP!”

With the last shout, I was forcibly shoved out of my bed and onto the concrete floor, completely tangled in the sheets and comforter. There was a long pause as I blinked up at the ceiling, my head pounding.

“Good,” Michelle said, her face poking over from the side of the bed and looking down at me. “You’re awake.”

“I am.”

The beams of early morning streamed through the curtains, casting stark shadows along the lines of her face. She was grim and pale.

“Why am I on the floor?” I asked, trying to bring a smile to her face. Her expression unsettled me in a way that I cannot begin to fully describe.

“You wouldn’t wake up,” she fired back without missing a beat nor cracking a smile. “I’ve been trying to wake you for several minutes.”

“Why?”

“Twilight’s locked herself in the bathroom.”

“So?”

“I heard her sobbing before there was a loud crash and the shower started running.”

Any trace of exhaustion fled and I scrambled to my feet, unwrapping myself from the bed coverings.

The door to the bathroom was locked. I couldn’t hear Twilight, or anything for that matter, behind the door. I knocked, banged, and shouted through the door as loud as I could but got no response.

“Michel-” I turned to my fiance, and was about to ask her to run and grab the key-pick thing that came with the door handle, but she simply looked up at me, holding the instrument between her thumb and forefinger. I took it from her. “Thanks, luv.”

“Twi?” I tried again, feeding the key into the hole of the door handle. “Twi, I’m coming in.”

I doubted that she could hear me over the roar of the shower. The handle turned easily with the key-pick inserted into the opening, and steam billowed into the hallway as I opened the door.

The bathroom was a mess. All of the cabinet doors and all of the drawers were pulled open, and the contents were strewn haphazardly all over the place. The mirror was splashed with water and smeared with what looked like tile cleaner. There was an empty bottle of Windex dumped over, dripping onto the tile over one side of the sink. The entire place smelled cleaner than a freshly sanitized operating room.

“Twi,” I called as I took a tentative into the bathroom sending an empty bottle of toilet cleaner skittering across the floor and into the edge of the tub. “Twilight?”

Half of the shower curtain had been pulled off of the plastic rings and was hanging off to one side. I reached out and pulled the remaining half of the curtain off to the side, away from the shower head.

Twi knelt under the intensely hot spray, fully clothed, with what looked like a grout brush and more bottles of cleaner and soap, scrubbing and brushing furiously at her forearms and hands. Her shoulders shook and I could just barely hear the sounds of her sobs over the roar of the shower.

She didn’t notice either Michelle or my own presence.

I knelt down next to the tub, shut the water off, and put my hand on her shoulder.

She jerked out of my grip and leapt back away from me, lightly spraying me with water. She stared at me, her violet eyes filled with tears. She had been biting her bottom lip hard and long enough that there was the faintest trace of blood on it.

“Twi?” I said as softly as I could, not moving from my spot at the edge of the tub.

“I-it w-w-wouldn’t come off,” she sobbed, holding her arms out to me. They were scrubbed to a raw red from the brush and cleaners. Her fingernails were ringed with red where she had all-but scrubbed out her cuticles. Her left forearm sported a rather nasty looking chemical burn that probably originated from the combination of bleaches that she had emptied out onto her skin.

As gingerly as I could, I took her hands into mine and turned them over, running my hands over the raw and sensitive skin. She had burned off the light dusting of hair in her desperation to get clean.

“There was so much b-b-blood,” Twilight had been blabbering the entire time that I had been examining her arms. I had lost track of what she had been saying until one question caught me off guard, a question that I didn’t know how to answer: “Why?”

I paused, still holding her hands in my own, and looked her in the eyes.

“Twi,” I said, faltering. I was hoping beyond hope that something, anything would come to mind. Something that I could say to her that would make everything okay. But there wasn’t anything that anyone could say, to anyone, that would make the events of yesterday ‘okay.’ “I don’t know.”

She yanked her hand back and clutched them to her chest and stared at me, wide-eyed.

“Trust me, Twilight,” I said, getting into the tub and kneeling in front of her, giving into the urge to brush her dripping bangs out of her eyes. “If I knew how to answer that question, I wouldn’t be a nurse. I wouldn’t spend nearly every day of my life up to my elbows in other people’s blood. Patching them back together after they’ve just finished tearing themselves apart.”

“How do you do it?” she asked me after a long pause, wringing her hands.

“Because,” I said with a smirk and dry chuckle. “I don’t dare think of what would happen if I didn’t.”

Her shoulders began to shake slightly as her sobs returned and tears welled in her eyes.

I reached out and pulled her into my chest and wrapped my arms around her as she began to cry in earnest.

“I w-w-wanna go home, Matt,” she sobbed into my shoulder. “I just wanna go home.”

“I know Twi,” I sighed, wrapping my arms around her and ran my hand down her wet hair. I looked up at Michelle, who had followed me into the bathroom, she had tears in her eyes as well. “I know.”

Chapter 6: Jane Doe

Chapter 6: Jane Doe

I groaned and swore under my breath as my alarm roused me from a particularly good dream. My phone’s screen told me that it was five-o’clock in the morning, far too early for the world to even exist.

My back and joints creaked and popped like a man three times my age as I heaved myself out of the bed and stumbled into the bathroom to shower. Michelle is so used to me getting up at all hours that all she did was roll away from the light of the bathroom and stayed completely asleep.

My shower finished what my alarm clock started in waking me and I was out the door in under half an hour. Twilight’s door was slightly ajar as I passed; the light was out and I could hear her snoring ever-so-lightly through the door. I am one of those people that has to be early for work, I never could stand being on time or, heaven forbid, late for work. If I wasn’t early, I was late.

I had dug out my ‘fun’ scrubs for work today: A shirt with white stars and moons all over a navy background with black pants. My turquoise scrubs are not considered proper attire for working with children; too clinical. One has to put on a certain demeanor to work with kids in a hospital.

It was a good thing that I chose to leave as early as I did. There was yet another accident on the highway that was exacerbated by the numerous eighteen-wheelers that chose that particular morning to traverse the insanity of Austin. Just another one of those mornings that I cursed my quitting smoking.

I noticed that, thankfully, the lot was rather empty as I drove through the visitor parking and over to employee parking. The ER must have had a slow night. I pulled into a spot underneath one of the awnings and got out of the car, my Luna keychain jangling noisily against my other keys.

I dropped my bag into my locker and grabbed my stethoscope, name tag, notepad, and watch. After clocking into the system I made my way up and over to the children’s portion of the hospital.

The head nurse was waiting for me at the front desk of the main lobby, a middle-aged woman with prematurely greying hair and a frown permanently etched on her face. Her fierce, ice blue eyes flashed as she caught sight of me walking up to the desk.

“Good morn-” I started before she cut me off abruptly.

“Mr. Mxxxxxxx,” she snapped, her voice as hard as granite. “It’s about time you showed up.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall behind her, it was just after six forty-five and I wasn’t scheduled until seven.

“I don’t want to hear any excuses Mr. Mxxxxxxx,” she grabbed a set of three folders off of the desk and thrust them imperiously at me. “These are your patients for the day. I don’t know how they do things down in the ER, but we do things differently in my wing. I expect you to be here on time and properly equipped.”

“Yes ma’am,” I quipped, fuming in the back of my mind. There were parents of patients and other nurses staring at the spectacle.

I took the folders from her and flipped through them without comprehending any of the information while she stood in front of me for a few moments longer before turning on her heel and marching off back into her office.

“Wow,” said Ashleigh, a permanent pediatric nurse in the wing with short dark hair, dark eyes and a pale complexion. A friend of sorts, and was the de facto head nurse. “I haven’t seen her lay into someone like that in a long time.”

“I’m early if anything,” was all I could say in reply. My hands shook with poorly restrained anger. “I’m not even supposed to be clocked in for another ten minutes.”

“I know, Matt,” she sighed, setting a couple of folders into a wall organizer marked ‘out patient.’ She turned to mark her observations on the whiteboard. “Life isn’t fair.”

“Shut up,” I fired back, a smile finding its way back on my face as I opened the the folders and really looked at them.

Three patients for the entirety of my shift. Usually we had a whole section that we shared with another one or two nurses. Being given a set number meant that I was the only one to look after the three of them.

“Hmm,” I sighed. The first of the folders had a young man, an early teenager, who was in for a very minor surgery and would be here for just a couple of days.

“Oh, you got him,” Ashleigh said from over my shoulder. “Yeah, he’s in surgery right now so you won’t have much to do with him for a while yet. Thyroidectomy.”

“Unusual,” I replied, flipping to the next folder. My heart sank as I read the name. “Oh no, not her.”

“Mmhmm,” she sighed as well, looking away from the folder with a frown.

The girl whose folder was in my hand was a frequent visitor. I saw her often enough in the ER and during my shifts out of the ER.

“Have the doctor’s found anything yet?” I asked, looking up at Ashleigh.

“They think that it might be Ewing Sarcoma,” she replied.

“Wow.” My heart sank even further. “Is Doctor Williams coming?” Dr. Williams was one of the better oncologists that the hospital employed and kept on staff. He had a very good way of explaining things to the patients and their families.

“The family will be meeting with him within the hour.”

“Good.”

I closed that folder and set in on the desk with a sigh. She was going to be a hard one to deal with. Not that she was a bad kid or anything, but she was here far too often.

The third folder made pause.

“Jane Doe?” I asked, looking up at Ashleigh with an eyebrow cocked. “We really have a Jane Doe? I thought that that only happened on those bad hospital dramas and episodes of CSI.”

“Hey, don’t ask me,” she defended with both of her hands up. “She came in the night before last after being hit by a car.”

“Hit by a car!” I all but shouted.

“Keep your voice down,” snapped Ashleigh as she grabbed my wrist and led me off into the, thankfully, empty break room. “Yeah, she was hit by a car.”

“Who could hit,” I looked down at the folder, “a six year old with a car?”

“According to the police report, the driver, a young woman, was driving near Zilker Park at around eleven-o’clock at night, on her way home from work, when the little girl came running out of the green belt, naked, onto the road. The driver swerved as best as she could, nearly running to a nearby light pole, but still struck the girl. The girl rolled a few yards from the point of impact. Suffering a broken radius and ulna, major contusions on both her hips, and lacerations all over her torso.”

“Wow.”

“There’s more. Now, I didn’t see any of this, another one of my friends was working in the ER that night, said that she had the most glorious head of dark blue hair that was all matted down with oil and blood. She,” she jerked her thumb over in the direction of the head nurse’s office, “didn’t want to let us clean it and ordered us to shave her head.”

“Bitch,” I spat with a violent shake of my head.

“Tell me about it,” replied Ashleigh as she rubbed the back of her neck.

“Anything else that you can tell me about her?”

“She doesn’t like any of the female nurses, and is apparently looking for her aunt.”

“Her aunt?”

“Well, she keeps calling out for a ‘Tia’ in her sleep and constantly asks if we’ve heard from her anytime she decides to talk to one of us.”

I heaved a massive sigh and ran a hand over my face. It was not going to be a good day.

“Have fun,” Ashleigh sing-songed as she walked out of the break room, leaving me with my ever growing headache.

“After the hell of this week,” I grumbled to the emptiness around me, “this is just what I needed.”

I took another deep breath and rolled my head on my shoulders, trying desperately to relax the ache in my neck, and walked back out into the hallway. Various hospital staff were milling about, some nurses on the computers, a couple of CNAs walking about with their carts, and the odd doctor or so walking to and from rooms.

I dropped the first chart off on the hook outside of the young man’s room. He wasn’t due out of surgery just yet and I would stop by after he had been returned to his room.

My second patient was all the way on the other side of the wing, grouped with several other patients that were either long-term or frequented our services. She was a bright girl. She always had the biggest smile every time we walked into her room and no matter what we were there for, she always thanked us as we left.

I slid ‘Jane Doe’s’ chart into the holder on the door, knocked, and announced my presence before entering her room.

Her mother, father, and Dr. Williams were on the other side of the door.

“Mr. Mart-” started Dr. Williams, giving me a look that only a doctor can give a nurse, but was cut off by the girl in the bed.

“Hiya Nurse Matt!” she called with a bright smile.

“Little miss,” I replied without thinking, my voice dropped a couple of octaves and I tipped an imaginary hat to her.

Dr. Williams gave me a thin smile.

“I’m sorry doctor Williams,” I said, quickly turning back to him. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

“Yes, well,” he replied, looking down at his own chart. “There are things I need to discuss with the parents, privately.”

“Yes sir,” I fired back, throwing him a mock salute. “Do you need me to put up the ‘D-n-D’ sign on the door?”

“That would be most appreciated.”

I nodded to the parents, tipped my hat again to the patient, grabbed the “Do-not-Disturb” sign out of the nurse’s station within the room and left. The door shut softly behind me thanks to the newly upgraded hydraulics of the automatic door opening systems. I hung the sign on the doorknob and marked on her chart the time and length of the visit.

My third patient, the Jane Doe, was just a little ways down the hall, the last one on the right, literally in front of the door that opened onto the fire-stairs.

I was about to knock on her door when a CNA came up behind me and grabbed me by the shoulder.

“Hey,” he snarled loudly. “You watch out for that little brat.”

I knocked his hand off of my shoulder and glared at him. He and I both knew that he voice had carried through the door and into the room behind me.

“Look what she did to me,” he snarled again, brandishing his hand in my face. It was wrapped tightly in a gauze bandage and there was the tell tale pattern of a bleeding bite mark that left dark red stains in the gauze. “Look what that little -”

I clamped my hand over his mouth and grabbed the wrist of his wounded hand, forcing him away from the door.

“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence Markowski,” I ground out through gritted teeth. I shoved him away from me, nearly sending him to the floor. “Go home, you’re no use to anyone in your condition.”

He looked murderously at me before turning on his heel and storming down the hall, nearly running into another aide who was ambulating a young man with a new prosthesis.

I swore under my breath again before turning back to the door and sighing.

“Miss?” I called as I opened the door after knocking. “Hi there, I’m Nurse Matt.”

None of the lights in the room were lit. The bright Texan sunshine poured through the large windows on two of the four walls and pooled on the plain, beige linoleum. Like most of the rooms in this wing of the hospital, the room was single occupancy with the bed right in the middle of the room, a nurses station right next to the door and a comfortable rocking chair to the right of the patient in the bed.

Jane Doe was sitting on the bed on top of the covers, her knees drawn up to her chest with her arms wrapped around her legs, her neon pink cast standing out vibrantly when compared to her pale skin.

I could hear the faintest sounds of sniffling and I could see her shoulders shaking very so lightly.

I cursed Markowski in the back of my mind with all that I was worth.

After quickly washing my hands, I placed my clipboard with her chart on the station and approached the bed, taking the numbers on the monitors near it with a cursory glance, and gently sat on the edge of the foot of the bed.

She retreated further away, about as far away from me as she could get without getting off of the bed.

We sat in silence for several minutes, and I took the time to study what I could see of her. She, as I had been told, had had her head shaven clean, was about the average size for a girl of her supposed age, maybe a little small. In lieu of the normal hospital gown, and considering that she would have normally been considered an outpatient, she was clad in a pair of nylon gym shorts that were several sizes too big and a large white t-shirt.

She stole a glance up at me and our eyes met. Hers were the most outstanding shade of turquoise that I had ever seen.

“Hi,” I greeted with a warm smile when she didn’t look away.

“Hi,” she said after another long silence. Her voice was muffled by the fact that she kept the majority of her face still hidden behind her knees. She had a inch long cut above her right eye that had been stitched shut.

There was no way that I was going to be able to do anything with her as balled-up into herself as she was.

“Would you like to hear a story?” I asked, leaning back and bracing myself up with one hand, and turning my torso to face her. I ignored my stethoscope as it slid off my neck and onto the bed. “I know all kinds.”

There was a long pause before she ever-so-slightly nodded, her turquoise eyes locked onto my face.

“Let’s see,” I mused, my mind cranking as it searched for the perfect story to tell. My eyes fell on the Hyrulian crest inked proudly into my forearm in crimson and smiled. “A long time ago, there was a boy who lived in a forest...”

I don’t know what really possessed me to tell a six year old the story of Ocarina of Time, but it was the only thing that came to mind. I knew that story all too well, I make sure to take the time and play through that game at least once every year, usually more than just that. I could never just start with Majora’s Mask.

And so we sat there, with her coming more and more out of her ball as the story went on, and I lost track of time as I got more and more into the telling. Eventually, I was on my feet as she watched my actions with wide, sparkling eyes and her mouth just slightly agape as I acted out Link’s powerful sword strokes and bow shots.

To her credit, she was having fun, even during the scenes that I edited for her. My heart ached for her as the thought that this might be the first time that anyone had taken the time to tell her a really good story and have fun doing it.

“With the Dark Lord vanquished, Princess Zelda took the magical flute and sent the hero back to his childhood, to live happily ever after.” I finished with a flourish and a smile.

She laughed brightly and clapped her hands.

“Liked the story?” I asked, sitting back down on the bed.

“Yeah!” she chirped, her smile getting wider as she scooted closer to me. “What happened to the hero?”

“That’s a story for another time, Jane,” I laughed.

“Who?” She cocked her head to one side.

I swore in the back of my mind. I had slipped.

“Uh,” I stammered, unsure of how to proceed. Things had been going so well too, and I had to go and screw up like that.

“My name’s not Jane,” she said after a few seconds of pondering cutely.

“Really now?” I said, grasping that line of conversation with all that I was worth. “I’m pretty sure that’s what it says on your door.”

“That’s because they didn’t like my name,” She harumphed as she crossed her arms and pouted.

“Oh?” I asked, picking up my stethoscope from the bed and cleaning the bell with an alcohol swab.

“Yeah,” she sighed as I walked over and put the automatic blood pressure cuff on her wrist. “I tried telling them my name is...”

She trailed off as the cuff tightened and beeped.

I read the numbers and marked them on the chart, hoping that she wasn’t back to giving me the silent treatment again. She was just sitting on the bed, looking depressed.

I walked over and knelt next to the bed, raising her chin to look me in the eyes.

“Hey,” I said with a kind smile. “Things aren’t all bad, you know? You’re here and you’re doing great.”

She game me a shy smile.

“Do you mind if I check your stitches?”

With a shake of her head, I gently pulled the bandage away from where her eyebrow should have been. It had to be shaved off when the surgeon stitched her up. The cut was healing nicely and I couldn’t see any sign of infection.

Right as I was about to pull away, I felt her hands wrap around my wrist and forearm. She had seen the crest.

Her fingers traced the bold lines of the red bird and three triangles.

“What’s it mean?” she asked.

“You remember that magical force I told you about in the story?”

She nodded, her eyes never leaving the tattoo.

“That would be this,” I said as I pointed at the triangles, the Triforce. I pointed at the bird and said: “The bird is me, always guarding the precious things in life.” It was a little heavy handed for a six year old, but it wasn’t as if I could really explain that it was just a game and that I was just a REALLY big fan.

She nodded imperiously, once, as though I had told her the gospel truth.

I glanced up at the clock and blanched at the time. I had been in the room for over an hour; story time had taken way too long.

“Welp,” I sighed, cracking my neck and standing. “Looks like I gotta get moving on.”

“No,” she cried, latching onto my arm with both of hers. “Don’t go.”

“Shh, shh,” I cooed as I felt her shoulder tremble. “I’m not really going anywhere. There are other little boys and girls here that need me to check up on them.”

“But I don’t want you to go,” she whimpered.

“I’ll be back soon,” I promised as I pried her surprisingly strong grip off of my arm. “I promise.”

She didn’t say anything as I left, but the look in her eyes nearly kept me there despite the vast amount of work that I had left in my shift to do.

I closed the door behind me as I left, dropping her chart into the slot next to the door. I paused for a moment outside of the door to collect myself. Working with kids is never easy.

I strode off down the hall, stopping to say hello to a couple of colleagues, but never stopping for long. The girl, her image and smile lingered in my mind.

“So...” a voice called from over my shoulder, jolting me out of my thoughts. “How’d it go?”

Ashleigh had snuck up behind me, or had just walked up and I just didn’t notice her, causing me to jump and spin around to face her. She knew that she had scared me.

“Aren’t you supposed to be going home?” I deadpanned as we continued walking down the hall. “You know, instead of annoying me?”

“Hush you,” she fired back, punching me in the shoulder. Her wedding ring set dug a bit into the flesh of my arm. “And answer my question.”

“Everything was fine,” I snarked as we went into the nurse’s station. I dropped into the chair behind the desk and began to print charts and reports. “I didn’t even get to see my first two, yet. The young man was still in surgery.”

“And you won’t be seeing him either,” she sighed, looking away. “There was a complication with his surgery. He’s been moved up to ICU.”

“On something that routine?” I asked, shocked.

Ashleigh shrugged.

“Wow,” I shook my head before continuing what I was saying. “And Dr. Williams was with the patient and her family in 1616a. I just spent the last hour with the Jane Doe at the end of the hall. Sweetest thing in the world if you ask me.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” Ashleigh replied with a shake of her head. “You always get the short end of the stick and still manage to bring some of the best results with the patients that I’ve ever seen.”

“Thanks.”

“The social worker should be by this afternoon to check up on her. She doesn’t need to be here.”

“I figured.”

We sat in relative silence, the space filled by the typing of keys on mostly functioning keyboards and the background sounds of the wing.

“Well,” I began as I stood and stretched. I hated filling out reports for patients that you couldn’t attend to. “I’m going to go visit our little mystery girl for a while, She looks like she’s having a hard time right now.”

“See if you can get a name out of her, a real one.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Ashleigh gave me a wry look. “She told us she was some princess named Luna.”

Chapter 7: On Your Marks...

Just like when Twilight has spoken her name, images and sound bites of Luna flashed through my head, leaving me cut off from the rest of the world for the briefest of moments.

I felt the blood drain from my face and into the pit that had opened up within my stomach. I never did hear the rest Ashleigh’s words; the images and scenes playing in my mind drowned everything else out.

“No,” I gasped softly, my mind reeling at the possibilities. Princess Luna was a fully grown adult alicorn and the master of the moon and the night sky of Equestria. Why was she here? Why was she a child?

I made a half-hearted excuse to leave the desk and and took off down the hall as fast as I safely could. I was so focused on the door that led to her room that I barely dodged my co-workers and patients on the way.

I didn’t bother any attempt with protocol or proper procedure, I just pushed the door open and stared at the little girl sitting on the bed.

She watched me as I let the door shut automatically behind me, her turquoise eyes searching my face as I approached the bed and knelt on the floor, putting my face on level with hers.

I could see it in my mind’s eye, the flowing blue hair that had been there the night that she had been brought to the hospital, how she must have shouted at the nurses and EMTs as they tried to treat her wounds, her voice failing to match the power of the Royal Canterlot Voice. Her tears as they cut off her hair and her crying for her sister as they prepared her for surgery.

“Luna,” I breathed softly, my heart still pounding in my ears and my brain begging for Ashliegh to have been wrong.

To my utter horror the little girl nodded, looking as shocked as I felt; her wide, expressive eyes telling the whole story.

Without any warning she threw herself into my arms, buried her face into my neck and started to cry. It took my brain a couple of seconds to catch up with the situation and wrap my own arms around her trembling frame and pull her completely into my arms.

The two of us sat in her room for a long while as she cried herself out of tears. At some point, I had lifted her into my lap and sat on the bed. She had latched onto me and was holding on as tight as her little arms could hold her.

We sat together for a long time even after she stopped crying. I told her about my fiance and our house and my dog. I told her about finding Twilight and how I knew who she was. She told me about her sister and her home. Everything matched up with Twilight’s version of Equestria. She never seemed to run out of things to discuss, and just kept talking about everything and nothing.

She had the cutest little lisp from a missing central incisor.

There was a knock at the door to the room and Ashleigh and a middle aged woman in tweeds entered the room.

If either of the two women thought that my presence in the room was unusual, neither of them mentioned it. The woman was holding a leather folio under one arm and sported a firm, unyielding expression.

“Matt,” said Ashleigh a little hesitantly “This is-”

“I am Judith Ratchet,” the woman cut in without a single emotion on her face. “I am from the Austin branch of the Child Protection Services here to oversee the transfer of a-” she opened her folio to look sheet of paper. “Jane Doe to foster care.”

“So soon?” I asked, my heart hammering behind my ears and my mind racing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, cocking her head ever so slightly to the right and appraising me with her hard flint-colored eyes. “What was your position here in the hospital again?”

“Nurse Mxxxxxxx,” interjected Ashleigh before I could say anything, “is one of the best nurses that we have here in the Children’s wing. He’s usually assigned to the hardest cases that we have and can relate to the kids and make their stay much more bearable.”

“Is that so?” the social worker said with a prim upturning of her lips.

“Yes ma’am,” I quipped, placing Luna on the bed next to me and and standing, putting myself between Luna and the social worker.

She let out an amused hum through her pursed lips and walked around me to get a better look at Luna, who just looked back at her.

“Well,” Ms. Ratchet said, not bothering to actually say anything to Luna, “she seems well enough to be removed from this environment.”

Neither Ashleigh nor I responded.

“I will return tomorrow to retrieve Ms. Doe-”

“Luna.” I cut in, interrupting her.

“Hmm?” Ms. Ratchet was writing on the paperwork in her folio with a pen that she had snatched out of Ashleigh’s scrubs pocket. She didn’t look up.

“She said that her name is Luna,” I said as I crossed my arms over my chest, the beginnings of a migraine pounding behind my eyes and a scowl darkening my face.

“Her name is listed as Jane Doe,” was the only reply that I received as she slapped her folio shut. “Nurse Ashleigh... Mr. Mxxxxxxx. I will return here tomorrow.” Without another word, Judith Ratchet walked out of the room, leaving the three of us standing in a stunned silence.

“Did that really just happen?” asked Ashleigh, her voice showing her barely contained anger. “Did she really just steal my pen?”

“I- I don’t know, I’m as confused as you are,” I said, dropping onto the bed, my hand running through my hair.

“How can she be a social worker?” Ashleigh rounded on me, her face alight with fury. “Does she even know how to work with children?”

“I doubt it,” I muttered darkly.

Ashleigh heaved a sigh of her own and sat down on the bed, on the other side of Luna, and put an arm around the little girl.

“We’re so sorry about her, Little One,” she said in the most soothing tone that she could muster considering the circumstances. “But at least you’ll be out of here and somewhere where you can get all the attention that you deserve.”

My brain, dismissing the social worker as yet another workplace annoyance, finally caught up to the what the miserable woman had said.

Luna was to be transferred to a foster home.

Tomorrow.

.oOo.

“And I’m telling you that there’s no way that we can do this and make it out okay,” Michelle said, pacing the living room as Twilight and I sat at the dining room table. “They’ll know it was you within a few minutes.”

“Don’t you think that I know that?” I shot back, rubbing the back of my neck and glancing over at Twilight. “But we cannot let Luna be lost to the foster care system. She doesn’t belong here.”

“That goes without saying,” sighed Michelle, taking a seat of her own. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re going to be able to do it and succeed. Even if we were able to... procure Luna from the hospital or the CPS, we wouldn’t be able to do or go anywhere.”

“But why can’t we explain the situation to this CPS?” Twilight asked. “Surely they’ll give Luna to us.”

“Things don’t work like that Twi,” I said, putting a hand on hers. “You remember how I reacted to your story?”

She nodded.

“The main reason that you even got a chance to explain yourself was because I am a brony. These people would not only kick us out of their office, they would probably start an investigation into my past and I could lose my job. Not to mention that they’d take Luna even sooner and we would never see her again.”

“But why would they do that?” Twilight asked, growing frustrated.

“Because, Twi,” said Michelle, taking over for me. “These people will only believe what they think is right and won’t be persuaded. Luna is, according to the law, a parentless orphan and ward of the state. As such, they can do whatever they want with her, within reason of course.”

There was an uncomfortable silence before I said, “Michelle, take Twi over to Walmart or something and get Luna some clothes.”

“What? Why?”

“Someway, somehow, we’re going to be getting Luna out of that hospital and there’s no way that we’re going to be okay afterwards. Are the extended bug out bags ready?”

The two women looked at me. Their fear was palpable.

“Look,” I sighed, “There’s something bigger than us going on. We have a duty to help them, the Equestrians, get home.”

Michelle sucked in a ragged breath, stood, and gave me a firm nod. She grabbed her purse and, with Twilight following her, left the house.

I pulled my iPhone from my pocket and activated my contacts list, allowing my thumb to hang over the name of an old friend. I roomed with the same guy in college for all four years. We had been the best of friends but had gone our separate ways when I went into nursing and he went to work at the Department of Defense.

I called the number.

It rang once and someone on the other end said: “I thought that I told-”

I cut him off, knowing full well that I sounded like a fool, but he would know what I was doing. “I fall to my knees, holding my hands to the air and shout ‘Who will help this fatherless son?’”

There was long pause before he gave the response. “And I take you by the hands and say, ‘I have you my brother.’”

I smiled in relief and felt some of the stress bleed out of my shoulders.

“What are you doing?” hissed the voice over the phone. “You know what could happen if someone catches us on this line.”

“I know, I know,” I responded talking as fast as I could. “But I have no one else to turn to.”

He didn’t respond and I could tell that he didn’t want to hear what I had to say.

“I’m calling in everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“What are you talking about?”

I explained everything. From meeting Twilight in my yard, the mental phenomenon that Michelle and I experienced when she had said her name, finding Luna in the hospital, and the eventual placement of Luna into the care of the state. I told him what I was planning on doing and what I needed him to do.

“Shit.”

I winced at his choice of words. I could hear his fingers flying over his keyboard. Doing what, I had no idea - this conversation could go down one of two very different ways.

“That’s one hell of a favor that you’re asking,” he said with a sigh. I could hear him lean back in his chair.

“Can you do it?”

“Of course I can do it,” he snapped. “Its not a question if I can do it, its a question of ‘Are you willing to sacrifice everything for this?’”

I took a deep breath and said, “I am.”

“You’re stupid, you know that?”

“So you’ve said. On numerous occasions.”

“You have pictures of everyone?”

“I can have them in the usual place within the next few minutes.”

There was another long pause and I could hear more keystrokes and his dark mutterings.

“Be ready to go, the package will arrive tomorrow morning.”

“That fast?”

“If you’d like to wait...”

“No, no! Fast is good,” I rubbed the back of my neck as the conversation went on.

“You’ll have to leave everything behind, you know that right? Even the dog.”

“I know, I’ll leave Emma with my parents.”

There was another long pause, the two of us hadn’t spoken in over two years and it had been mostly my fault.

“Its been a long time,” I said awkwardly.

“It has.”

“Is there anything that you’d like me to leave you?”

“You know that you can’t do that.”

“I know, but I was trying to repair our friendship.”

“I know,” he sighed, I could hear the old familiar smile creeping into his voice. “You won’t be able to come home after this. We won’t be able to talk anymore or see each other after this.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

I heard a couple more keystrokes before he said, “Done. I can get you on that plane, I can get where you’re going, and I can even save your money. But the moment that you step out of that airport I cannot help you anymore.

“Thanks.”

He hung up without saying another word and I sat in silence for a couple of minutes, thinking about our friendship and everything that I was about to sacrifice, everything that my fiance was about to sacrifice as well.

I heaved a sigh and lurched to my feet, leaving my phone sitting on the table, and went about gathering all of the electronics in the house and all of my guns.

It was time for one last cleaning.

Author's Note

Oh my god, its about time I had a new chapter up.

The next chapter is almost ready to be sent to the editor, so no super long wait this time.

Be on the lookout for my two new stories that I have in the works and tell me what you think of them.

Chapter 8: Real Subtle

Chapter 8: Real Subtle

Several hours had passed by the time that Michelle and Twilight returned home. I had my entire collection of firearms on the kitchen table in various stages of disassembly; the scent of Hoppes #9 hung thickly in the air. I was rubbing the slide of my dad’s Sig Sauer with an oily rag as Michelle kicked open the door from the garage and stumbled through with Twilight right behind her. Both were weighed down by several bags apiece.

“Hey,” my fiance started, setting down her bags and wiping her brow with the back of her hand. “What’s up?”

“I made a couple of calls,” I said, looking back to the slide in my hand. “And took care of everything. Did you get it all?”

“Yeah,” she replied, pressing her lips together into a thin line. “I think that I did.”

“Good,” I nodded and looked back up at her, my eye meeting hers. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“That soon?” she gasped, her shoulders slumping.

“Luna’s being picked up from the hospital tomorrow, so we have to move fast,” I said as I stood and moved to her, putting my hands on her shoulders. I paused for a moment, my eyes searching her face before saying: “You don’t have to come with me you know? You could-”

“Stop,” she commanded, putting her hand over my mouth. “I knew what I was getting into when I walked out that door with Twilight this afternoon. I have no intention of leaving now.”

I smiled and pulled her into my arms, relief flooding through me.

“So,” she said, pulling away from my embrace. “What are you up to in here?”

“You and I both know that they are going to come and bust down the door here in the hopes of finding us, right?” At her nod, I continued. “Well, the last thing that they’re going to want them to discover is a bunch of guns in my safe in the office. I’m gonna leave them out for them to find safely. Slides and bolts back and empty. All my ammo will be in nice containers and counted and everything.

Michelle walked over to the table, I could tell that she was looking everything over.

“But, not everything’s here,” she said, turning to look at me. “You’re not bringing any with us, are you?”

“We’re already breaking enough laws as it is,” I said with a sake of my head. “The last thing that we need is more attention. No. I took grandad’s M1 and 1911 to mom’s place. Emma too.”

“Ah”

I could see the pain that the loss of Emma brought to her, the same little hollow that had been left in my heart as well.

She shook herself, muttered under her breath for a moment before marching over to the bags and beginning to pull stuff out.

“I think that I have everything that we’ll need,” she said as she pulled a good sized backpack out of a Walmart bag. “Went to the surplus store to get some durable bags for Twi and Luna. Got some clothes for the both of them at Macy’s, they had a sale. And I couldn’t resist... This!”

With a flourish , she shoved a large grey and brown furred-thing into my face.

“I saw him at the Build-a-Bear in the mall and couldn’t resist,” she squealed happily, still forcing the thing into my face. “His name is Noodle!”

I coughed and took the thing from her before I inhaled it.

“Is it,” I paused, taking a good look at the stuffed animal, “an anteater? Really?”

“I thought that it was a good idea,” said Twilight, coming in from her room. “After Michelle suggested a bear, I suggested something else that was not related to a star beast of legend.”

“That makes sense,” I mused, still looking at the stuffed anteater. It was by no means anatomically accurate from the little that that I knew of anteaters, more cartoony and friendly and very soft. I couldn’t help but smile at the thing.

“I’m sure that Luna will love it,” I said, handing the toy back to Michelle with a smile. “There are a ton of things that we’re going to need to buy once we get wherever we’re going.”

“Why can’t we get that here?” asked Twilight, who had dropped herself onto the couch and was helping Michelle pack Luna’s bag. “Can’t we just take everything with us?”

“Normally,” said Michelle before I could respond. “We would take everything with us, try to save our money for emergencies and that kind of thing. But considering what we’re about to do, we can’t afford to wait for luggage claim and check baggage. We need to get out of the airport as fast as possible.”

“Its easier to show you once we get there,” I cut in, seeing Twilight about to ask the obvious question. “Let’s just say that bags over a certain size had to be stored underneath the plane instead of with the passengers and the unloading time for that would be unnecessary time spent near law enforcement.”

“Ah,” replied Twilight with a nod. “But that wasn’t my question.”

“Oh,” I said, turning my whole attention to her. “Sorry ‘bout that, what’cha need?”

“I was going to ask: What’s a plane?”

.oOo.

It was the early morning when I was awoken from a fitful dozing by a series of thumps coming from down the hall.

With a quiet groan, I extracted myself from the blanket nest that Michelle built in her sleep and padded out of our room and down the hall. The door to the office was slightly ajar and I could hear the sound of books being tossed around randomly and the slightest sounds of sniffling.

“Twi,” I said softly, pushing the door open and stepping into the warm light of my office. “Is everything okay?”

For a long moment, Twi stood with her back to me, facing the thoroughly rearranged bookshelf.

“I don’t know anymore,” she sighed, turning to face me, her eyes were slightly red. “There are so many things wrong here that I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Okay,” I replied, holding my hands up in a placating gesture and trying to remain as calm as possible. “That’s why I’m here, you know that you can ask me anything that you want,”

“Why are you doing this!?” she all-but exploded at me, her voice loud for the small room. “Why are you throwing everything away for ponies that you think are fictional? You had a life here, a career, everything that a stallion could ask for and you’re about to give all of that up for Luna and me!”

I sighed, a little surprised that this hadn’t come up before then.

“Because,” I said, stalling. I wasn’t completely sure of my reasons myself at that point. “It really is the right thing to do. Before he died, my dad would always tell me that there would come a moment in my life, a choice that I would have to make, that would change everything that I knew about myself and my world forever.

“For a while, I thought that that choice had come and gone when I asked Michelle to marry me. I was convinced that learning to be a good husband and, eventually, a good father would be that change that my dad was talking about.”

I looked her in the eyes before continuing: “But when I look at you and Luna, when I see the you sitting here before me, I can see you as you are now and I can see the you that was on the cartoon. I know that this is the moment where I make the real choice that I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. I have to believe that this is bigger than anyone would ever dream. That if you and Luna are here, then so are your friends and Princess Celestia.”

Twilight nodded, following my reasoning.

“I cannot leave the eight of you to the flow of the human world, you are not compatible with our nature. You still see the good in everyone when, more often than not, there isn’t enough good to salvage. Without your magic, this realm or whatever would chew you and your friends up and spit you out like gum that has lost its flavor.”

I looked over at the clock, it was well after three in the morning.

“You’d better get some sleep Twi,” I sighed, rubbing my face with one hand. “Its going to be a very long day tomorrow.”

“But I have more questions,” she protested, nearly letting the book in her arms drop to the floor.

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t,” I chuckled. She gave me a small smile in return. “But if we’re not on our best tomorrow, we’re going to have even more problems than we’re already going to have.”

With a small sigh she nodded and set her book on the shelf.

“I know,” she said in a small voice, staring at my feet. “I’m just scared.”

“Me too Twi,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulder and walking her out and over to her room. “Me too.”

.oOo.

True to his word, the package was on my doorstep by the time I went to fetch the morning paper. Inside of the plain yellow envelope were four Canadian passports and a set of business-class tickets from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to the Sydney Airport. Boarding time was scheduled for just after noon. Also inside of the envelope was a set of two MasterCards in the names on the passports.

Things we going to be messy.

Twilight and Michelle both walked into the living room at the same time. Twilight’s hair was damp from having just gotten out of the shower. Both of them had their backpacks slung over one shoulder and Michelle had Luna’s in one hand.

“Where are we going?” asked Michelle as she dropped her and Luna’s bags on the couch.

“Australia,” I replied, looking at the note that had been included. “Interesting.”

“What?” Twilight asked, looking up from her bag. I assume that she was rechecking that she had everything.

“Hopefully, the way that we’re going to get through the airport,” I replied, sliding Michelle’s passport to her and tossing Twilight hers. “The two of you are sisters: Michelle and Twilight Bell. Twi, you have a daughter from your late boyfriend, that would be Luna.”

Michelle and Twilight both giggled.

“I never said that my friend was creative, just go with it,” I snarked through a grin of my own. “Luna has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and the two of you hired me, Nathan Juarez, a nurse with an independent medical company to make sure that she gets to Australia with as few problems as possible.”

I help up the boarding passes, my new ID badge, the tags and notices for the items in the first aid kit that I had planned on bringing, and a new hospital bracelet for Luna.

I looked up at the two of them, catching their eyes, and nodded.

“Let’s load up.”

The three of us grabbed the five bags that we would be taking and tossed them into the back seat of Michelle’s four-door sedan, then we took off.

I somehow knew, right then, that I would never see my house again.

The drive to the hospital was uneventful, but nerve wracking. Even Twilight seemed nervous in the way that she watched Austin go by through the car window. I reached over from the back seat and gave her shoulder a slight squeeze, she placed her hand over mine and gave me a small smile in return.

“Everything’s going to be okay Twi,” I said in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Neither of the two women in the front responded.

It was just after seven in the morning by the time that we pulled into the parking lot. Traffic hadn’t fully set in yet, and wouldn’t for a little while. At least, not on the highway toward the airport. With luck, I would be able to get into Luna’s room before anyone I knew noticed me. It shouldn’t have been too hard, with the nurses switching shifts at that point in time and the chaos that always ensued.

I walked up a side staircase that would put me in front of the entrance to the Children’s Ward and made my way past the entrance desk while a large family group signed in at the desk. My goal was to not be seen by the staff, but I knew that there was no way that the electronic security system would miss me.

Luna was sitting on the bed with her face buried into her knees, just like the first time that I met her. There was a coloring book in front of her and an unopened box of crayons.

“Princess,” I whispered, shutting the door very softly behind me. Her head snapped up and the biggest smile erupted across her face.

“You came back!” she cried, jumping off the bed and running over to me.

“I told you that I would didn’t I?” I whispered again, putting a finger over her mouth as I picked her up and sat her on my hip. Seeming to get the hint, she nodded and buried her face in my shoulder. “You ready to get out of here? My fiance and Twilight are waiting out in the car for you. We’re going to help you find your sister.”

“Find Tia? Really?”

“Yup.”

If possible, her smile got even wider; so big and happy that it lit up the room. I pulled her a little closer into my arms and quietly opened the door out of the room, staring at the fire exit in front of her door. The red light on the bar indicated that it was active and that the alarm would sound if I opened the door.

I stepped out into the hall to see the most unwelcome sight that I could have imagined. The social worker, Judith Ratchet, was standing at the front desk, talking amicably with the head nurse. As if alerted by my eyesight on her, she turned and our eyes met. I could see the confusion and shock there, but I didn’t stick around to see anything else.

With a quickness that surprised even me, I kicked the emergency door open and started sprinting down the stairs, taking as many as I could at a time, the sirens shrieking behind me.

Michelle pulled her car around the moment that she saw me fly out of a different door and I hurled the two of us in shouting: “Go! Go!”

Luna and I lay gasping in the backseat for several long moments as Michelle flew down the highway as fast as she dared. It wouldn’t be long before they came looking for the her car, and eventually for the two of us.

“Crazy social worker,” I groaned as I sat up and buckled Luna into the middle seat. “Coming to pick up a kid at seven in the morning.”

“Were you seen?” asked Michelle as she exited onto the toll road.

“Yeah,” I sighed, running my hand over my face. “But with the fire alarm and everything we should still be good.”

I turned to look at Luna. She had taken my arm in her tight little grasp as I smiled at her.

While nerve racking, the rest of the drive to the airport was uneventful. We left the car in the airport paid parking and checked into the flight.

Due to Luna’s ‘medical condition’ and my status as her nurse, our bags were given a manual prod through by the TSA and we got by with an unenthusiastic wand check. Twilight and Michelle had to go through the full security check while the two of us waited on them; Luna clutched Noodle to her chest like her life depended on it. In all of the excitement at the hospital, Michelle had forgotten to give the plush to the little girl and the TSA agent had, unwittingly, spoiled the surprise.

We were right on time.

Twilight didn’t have time to be fascinated by the plane’s construction before we were told to buckle-up and prepare for takeoff.

The business section was, thankfully, mostly empty, and the four of us were surrounded by a bubble of empty rows. I don’t think that there were many people on the flight in total, even in coach.

Luna was happily scribbling away in a new coloring book, hastily purchased by Michelle in the airport after learning how long the flight was, Twilight had her nose buried in another book, and Michelle was sitting with Luna, one arm around the girl’s shoulder while ‘helping’ her color.

With all three of my girls safe and sound, I took a long drag of the earl grey that the attendant brought me and opened my throwaway copy of Don Quixote, identifying more with the main character than I ever had before.

Chapter 9: A New Sunset

April 21st

The arrival in Sydney could not have come soon enough. Twilight, having finished all three of the books that she had packed into her bag, was now going through the Skymall catalogue and was asking questions. Questions that I honestly did not know how to answer.

I was certain that the news of our crimes would have reached the international level by the time that we had landed and that there would be a team of Interpol agents waiting for us as we departed the plane and headed into the airport.

But there wasn’t a single person to greet us as we entered the terminal.

As the four of us made our way towards the immigration clearance desks, I was relieved that we were able to move so quickly. Being in business class gave us the benefit of having next to no one in line in front of us. I had a momentary flash of panic when the agent, a polite middle-aged woman named Judy, had to run our visas twice.

“Sorry about that Mr. Juarez,” Judy said, she pronounced the name with a strong ‘J,’ as she handed our passports and other documents back to me. “We’ve been having issue with our computers all day.”

“It’s no problem,” I replied, trying very hard to sound as calm as possible. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luna’s grip on Michelle’s hand tighten. “Is there anything else?”

“Oh no,” the agent said with a big smile, ignoring the growing line behind us. “Welcome to Australia.”

“Thank you,” replied Michelle for all of us.

The four of us made our way out of the terminal. I shot Twilight a look as she hurried to place Michelle and I between her and Luna. Michelle was still holding Luna’s hand to my right, with Twilight now on my left, effectively separating the former ponies. I decided now wasn’t the time to question her actions and kept moving.

Thankfully there was a huge line of taxis waiting in front of the terminal for tourists and we piled ourselves into the first one. Twilight sat in the far seat, Michelle in the middle with Luna on her lap, and I sat on the other side of my fiance.

The cabbie took off the moment that I had the door shut behind me.

“Where to, Bud?” our driver asked as he caught my eye in the rear-view mirror. He was a young, dark-skinned man with a shaved head and a huge smile.

“You tell us,” I replied, throwing my arm around Michelle’s shoulders and leaning back into my seat. “We’re here to have a couple of weeks away from everything.”

“How ‘away’ are we talking?” he replied as he glanced over his shoulder at me.

“Away,” I replied.

“And you didn’t bring anything with you?”

“The whole point was to bring as little as possible and figure out everything once we got here.” I paused for a second before saying, “Hell, we didn’t even know where we were heading until we got to airport back home.”

“That’s crazy,” he said as he shook his head in utter disbelief.

“Its what we wanted,” I shot back.

“You got any idea where you wanted to go?”

“We were hoping that you could help us out with that,” Michelle piped in. “Not to mention we need to buy all the things that we need.”

“Eh,” he grumbled for a second. “You guys like the beach?”

“I-I’m not a fan,” whispered Twilight shyly.

“You got it missy,” our driver said, giving her a kind grin before turning back to the road. “You guys ever heard of the Blue Mountains?”

“No,” I answered, sharing a look with Michelle. “Is that a pretty nice place? Can you take us there?”

His smile was so big that it reflected off of the windshield.

.oOo.

Our driver was sitting outside eating a burger and fries that we bought him while the four of us walked through an outdoors store called ‘Rebel Sports’ in Bankstown. It took me several minutes to get used to the prices in Australia as compared to what I knew from home; everything was so expensive.

“What else do we need?” I asked Michelle and Twilight as I looked over our cart. “We have a tent, sleeping bags and mats, fire starters, canteens, batteries for flashlights, a pan and pot, utensils, cups -”

“Matt,” said Michelle, cutting me off before I could go on and grabbing Luna before she could get too far away from us. “I think we’re good.”

“No,” said Twilight, looking up from a book that she had grabbed off of a shelf near the entrance. “We still need a hatchet and saw.”

Both Michelle and I stared at her, I arched an eyebrow.

“What?” she replied as she looked up from her book, her finger holding her place. “It says right here that we need something to cut firewood.”

Michelle just laughed as she lifted Luna to her hip. I walked off to find a hatchet.

.oOo.

We ended up having to go to a place called Bunnings Warehouse in order for me to run in and buy a camping hatchet before we could really move on with the long drive.

Our driver was extremely nice about taking us everywhere and telling us all about the places that we were passing and just generally talking about anything that came to either of our minds.

Twilight, in the meantime, continued to avoid interacting with the Lunar princess.

“Well,” said our driver, pulling into the parking lot of a small convenience store. “This here’s Linden, ‘bout the last bit of civilization you’re going to find for a while.”

“Thanks,” replied Twilight before she opened the door and clambered out.

Michelle and Luna crawled out next and the driver opened the trunk. I climbed out on my side of the car and walked up to the driver-side window, pulling out my wallet.

“I can’t thank you enough for everything,” I said as I paid the exorbitant fare with as little a wince as possible.

“No problem mate,” he replied, counting the cash I handed him and smiling at me. “Take care.”

I was certain that we would have been the center of attention in this stupidly small town, but my fears proved to be unfounded. We pulled everything out of the trunk as fast as possible, I took the tent and my bag while the girls shared the food and other supplies along with their personal bags; Luna had her backpack and Noodle.

No one questioned us or anything as we simply walked out of the town and into the woods.

.oOo.

“What was I thinking?” I muttered to myself, staring into the cooling ashes of our campfire. It was our second morning of camping. We were miles away from the town of Linden, far enough that we shouldn’t be bothered by anyone casually hiking or walking through the woods. There was a small stream that ran a few hundred yards away from the camp that provided us with a good supply of water.

“What do you mean?” asked Twilight, coming out of the tent and rubbing her eye with one hand.

“I guess I never mentioned how much I hate camping, did I?” I chuckled.

“No,” she replied with a small smile of her own. “You never did.”

I sighed and stood, stretching out my back and neck.

“Come on,” I said to Twilight as I grabbed the percolator and the canteens. “Let’s go get some water before Michelle and Luna wake up.”

Twi took the percolator from me and followed, her face as blank as possible.

It was a rather nice place to be outdoors. It wasn't too hot or humid like Austin. Nor was it too cold and dry like Yellowstone had been. I don't know what I expected when Michelle suggested camping instead of staying at a hotel. More kangaroos, maybe.

“You gonna tell me what’s up?” I asked after we were far enough from camp that we would not be overheard.

“Hmm?” she responded. “What do you mean?”

“Twilight,” I said with a sigh, stopping and turning to face my companion. She was looking everywhere but at me. “You know exactly what I mean. What’s up with you and the princess? Aren’t you two supposed to be-”

“No, we’re not.” she snapped, her face flushing and eyes fierce. “After our little outing on Nightmare Night in Ponyville, you would know about that, right?”

I nodded. “I know a version of that night but, please, continue.”

“Princess Celestia thought that it would be a good idea for Luna and I to get acquainted, become friends.”

“Things didn’t go as planned?”

“Hardly.”

We had reached the stream and I filled the canteens and percolator with water. It wasn’t big enough to have anything of use swimming around in it.

“What happened?” I asked as I cracked my neck, still kneeling at the stream’s edge.

“Can we just say that the two of us didn’t get along and leave it at that?”

“I don’t get along with tons of people, Twi,” I said as I turned to look at her. “But if I were in your position, do you think that I would let little things like a disagreement or somethi-”

“She called me blind!” snapped Twilight, probably a little louder than she meant. “She said that her sister was obsessed with a silly, blind unicorn who couldn’t see what was in front of her face, and that anypony with any kind of observational skills would have figured it out long ago.”

I sat in stunned silence for a long moment, unable to come up with any way to respond.

“And then she proceeded to kick me out of her rooms saying that she had no time for the likes of me.”

Twilight was leaning against a tree, her arms crossed and her face flushed and angry. Her shoulders trembled.

“A-and then, she has to go and get herself transformed into that little filly who can’t even remember anything. Not any of the words that she said or things that she did to me, or even her time as Nightmare Moon. Nothing.”

I put the canteens and percolator on dry ground before I approached Twilight. She was looking at the ground, her hair covering her eyes.

“A-and I feel so happy that she doesn’t remember any of it. That’s she’s just a little girl without the power to hurt me like she did all those times.” Her face shot up as I got closer, her eyes were awash in conflicting emotions. “And there’s this part of me that cannot believe that I’m deriving happiness from somepony’s misfortune, even if it is Princess Luna.”

"It's perfectly reasonable to feel that way Twi," I said trying to reassure her. I placed a hand on her shoulder.

"No it's not," she protested loudly. "It's not normal. Nopony-"

"See?" I said, cutting her off mid tirade. "That's just it isn't it?"

"What?" She asked, confused and a little flushed with still simmering anger.

"You aren't a pony."

"What do you mean? Of course I'm a pony."

"No, you're not; you're a human."

"I thought that we'd been over this," she said, fear creeping into her eyes as she took a step backwards from me. "I thought that you believed me."

"Quit being so melodramatic," I sighed pinching the bridge of my nose. "I believe you. You are Twilight Sparkle. Of that, there is no doubt."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"You were a pony. But now you are, for however long, a human."

She stared at me, trying to understand the point I was attempting to make.

"It's not that you're just a pony trapped inside of a human body Twi. You're a human, with all the inconveniences and trappings implied, with the personality and memories of a pony."

I laughed, slapping my forehead, so many pieces were falling into place.

"That's why..." I trailed off, my mind going far too fast for my mouth to keep up.

"'Thats why what?" asked Twilight.

"Look," I said, licking my dried lips. "Your entire personality, everything about who you are; your intelligence, your skills, and your passions are all based on your brain, follow me?"

At her hesitant nod I continued.

"All of that is still there, in this new body, okay? You're still Twilight Sparkle, no doubt about it. But there are certain facets of your personality that are being enhanced or diminished due to the physiology of the human brain."

I saw the comprehension dawn behind her violet eyes.

"Now, following the assumption that your friends are here as well, I would assume that they are coping with their transformation in very different ways than you are."

She nodded, thinking hard, her face screwed up in intense concentration.

"You rely on your intelligence and vast stores of information to form the majority of your personality, so much that, I would wager that you are feeling the change more acutely than any of the other girls." I rubbed my mouth with my hand, feeling the stubble that was begging to be shaved. "That's not to say that the others are stupid or anything of the sort-"

"Of course not," cut in Twilight, a steely look on her face. "But I see where you’re going with your point." She smiled. "In a way, it makes me feel better to know that I'm not entirely myself right now, that its not me that's been changed by your world."

"Good," I said as I retrieved the canteens and percolator. "Now, I don't know about you, but I could really use a cup of hot coffee right about now. What's say we head back to camp and get some breakfast started?"

.oOo.

“But I don’t wanna go to bed!” protested Luna loudly from the inside of the tent. It was after nine o’clock at night on our fourth day. Michelle was trying to tuck the diminutive princess into her sleeping bag. “I’m not sleepy.”

“Yes you are,” I heard Michelle reply. “You were the one that fell asleep during Matt’s story, weren’t you?”

The two of them would go back and forth for several more minutes; it wasn’t their first little battle over bed time.

“She’s just like Sweetie Bell and her friends,” Twilight said, jolting me out of my thoughts. Twilight was sitting in her usual spot, across the dug-out fire pit from me, a stargazing book in her lap. The flames from our small fire were still plenty big enough to light her reading. “Those three are always a handful when it comes to bed times, especially Scootaloo.”

“I’ll bet,” I chuckled, turning the hotdog I had on a roasting spit over. “Michelle’s been babysitting her little sister and her sister’s kids for years. Luna ain’t got nothing on them. Trust me.”

Twilight laughed in response.

I swore when my hotdog caught fire, right as Michelle clambered out of the tent.

“I heard that,” she said as she slapped the backside of my head. “What did I tell you about swearing?”

“Don’t?”

Michelle didn’t bother to respond and just sat down next to me and stole my not-on-fire hotdog.

I shot her a glare and grabbed another one from the cooler.

“She asleep?” I asked, holding the roasting fork over the fire once again.

“Finally,” my fiance sighed as she bit into the burnt food. “Sometimes I would swear that she’s worse than Kelly’s kids.”

“That’s impossible,” I shot back, mockingly affronted. “There’s no way.”

“You don’t know those kids like I do,” was Michelle’s only reply.

The three of us passed the next couple of hours by the fire in relative silence, a combination of not wanting to wake the sleeping princess and not having anything else to say.

Twilight was the first one to retire to the tent and Michelle was quick to follow.

I slid off my log and onto the ground and stared into the fire, my mind blank. I lost track of time as the coals cooled and died, sleep coming easily under the stars.

.oOo.

“Matt,” I heard a voice from some distance calling my name. I knew the voice, but I couldn’t be bothered to remember who it belonged to. “Goddamnit Matt, wake up!”

Something or someone attempted to shake me awake as violently as possible.

“Huh?” I groaned sleepily. “Wha-?”

“Oh thank god,” it was Michelle, her face slowly came into focus as the sleep cleared from my brain.

“Matt,” I could hear the fear in Twilight’s voice and I turned my head to look at her. “Luna’s gone!”

Author's Note

And an extra big thank you to TheSlorg for making this readable.

Chapter 10: Sleep, Forever Sleep

April 27th, 2012

“Luna’s gone!”

The words echoed in my mind for a scant few moments before my adrenals kicked into overdrive and I leapt to my feet.

“What do you mean gone!?” I all-but shouted. “How can she be gone? Her sleeping bag was on the far side of the tent! The two of you were between her and the flap!”

Twilight was just behind Michelle, looking even paler than usual in the light of the dying campfire. She was wringing her hands and looked lost.

“Are we sure that she just didn’t go off to use the bathroom?” I asked, looking at the two of them.

“I waited for several minutes before waking Michelle,” replied Twilight, not meeting my gaze.

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration, my mind racing as I tried to think.

“Don’t just stand there Matt,” shouted Twilight frantically, shouldering Michelle out of her way and grabbing my shirt with both fists. She tried to give me a shake. “The princess is gone and you’re not doing anything! Princess Celestia will never forgive me if something happened to her little sister while I was around.”

“First of all,” I said, taking her hands in mine and prying her off. “We haven’t lost anyone, not yet. Secondly, you are not exactly in charge here, are you?”

She shook her head, her eyes very wide and fearful.

“No, you’re not. I am. If anyone is going to take the blame of this, its going to be me.” I turned from Twilight to look at my fiance. “Things were just going too well for it to stay peaceful for this long.” I sighed as I walked over to her. “Go grab the flashlights and a couple of water bottles.”

Michelle nodded and crawled back into the tent. The light lit and I saw her shadow moving about the interior and digging into the backpacks.

“Flashlights, water... what do you need those for?” asked Twilight as I knelt to rummage in the first aid kit.

“If you think that I’m going out there without a light…” I snarked back at her, trailing off as I remembered who I was talking to. “Right, I don’t know this country nor our location very well

“Then what’s the water for?”

“Cleaning,” was all that I had time to say before Michelle came out of the tent with three lit flashlights in her hands.

“Got everything?” she asked, handing a light to Twilight and holding mine out for me.

“I think so,” I responded as I slung my kit over one shoulder and took the light. “You ready?”

“Won’t the moon be enough light?” asked Twilight, looking at the flashlight curiously then back up at me.

I looked up at the moon for a moment, the young crescent shown brightly in the sky despite being less than half full.

“On some days,” I said, turning half a face back to my pony-turned-human companion, “I just might agree with you. It’s a clear night and everything.” I stopped and turned all of my attention to her and said, “But right now, there’s a small child running around a forest in one of the strangest places that I have ever been to. We’re going to need all the light that we can get.”

I saw Michelle put a hand on Twilight’s shoulder, and the two of them shared a look.

“Lets go,” I said resolutely before turning and marching off away from the comfort of our dying fire.

.oOo.

The night was just as dark as I imagined that it would be, and I was very glad that I did not give into Twilight’s suggestion of leaving the flashlights behind. I focused all of my attention on my hearing, trying to catch any kind of sign of running or anything that would direct us to where Luna may have gone.

“Matt,” Twilight whispered to me after some unknown time interval.

I didn’t answer her verbally, but I did slow our already-slow pace to little more than a crawl.

“What are we going to do…” she trailed off.

“Don’t even think about that,” Michelle answered in my stead. “You can’t think like that, Twilight. We are going to find the princess. We are.”

I smiled at my fiance, she always had the right words for me when I had none.

Our lights continued to flick and probe the deepest shadows of the dark forest, the moon lost in the canopy of leaves overhead. The silence was as imposing as the darkness. It closed in around us, and not even our breathing or steps did anything to truly dispel its hold on the three of us.

My heart hammered in my chest harder and harder as the minutes ticked by uncounted. I could feel Twilight’s tension and nerves growing right alongside my own, Michelle’s close behind.

I wanted to shout, to call for the lost princess, to make any sort of sound to break silence. Anything to throw the weight of the tension off of my shoulders.

But, before I could do anything, a scream cut through the night.

Two screams.

A full and deep scream from a full grown man and the high pitched scream of a little girl.

Without thinking or warning to the others, I sprinted towards the source of the sound, the others quickly falling in behind me. We dashed through the woods as fast as our legs would carry us.

My mind was racing as fast as I was running. It came up with all kinds of terrible things that would cause a man and a little girl to scream like that.

The trees thinned slightly and we stumbled upon two people laying crumpled on the ground. One was a grown man with a compound bow far too close for comfort, and Luna was nearest the three of us to our left.

I unshouldered the kit and threw it at Twilight and Michelle, keeping my light and eyes trained on the man. Without checking on the others, I strode over to him and promptly kicked the bow out of his reach.

I waited for a few moments to see if he would react before stealing a glance over at Michelle, Twilight, and Luna. From the light of the moon, and Twilight’s flashlight, I couldn’t see anything of immediate concern.

I turned my attention to the man and knelt, putting my hand to his neck and feeling a strong and steady pulse. He was breathing deep, long pulls of air through his nose and, despite my disbelief, seemed to be out cold.

Cradling his head and neck, I rolled him on to his back to get a better look at him, checking for anything that I should be worried about.

He was a large man, around six and a half feet tall, built like a lumberjack, complete with a thick beard. I rubbed my jaw as a phantom ache echoed through the bone, and contemplated binding the man with is own belt and leaving him for the wilderness.

I looked back at the three girls, checking on them, my eyes watching Michelle’s face for anything that should worry me more than I already was. I saw only confusion on her face as she stared at the little girl on the ground in front of her.

“Asleep?” I whispered at them.

“The strangest thing…” mumbled Michelle, not looking up from the princess.

I opened my mouth to say something, but was cut off as I heard running footsteps, then saw a young woman emerge from the far edge of the forest. Her eyes surveyed the area, then widened as they fell upon the girls and I. She let out a little squeak, leapt back, and ducked behind a tree, peeking her head out as if we couldn’t see her.

I looked at my companions and saw that they had noticed the same strange display that I had.

I stood and backed away from the man and the girl behind the tree, towards my fiance and everyone else.

“Grab Luna and let’s get out of here,” I hissed at the two of them.

“What?” Twilight asked, aghast at the suggestion. “And leave that girl alone with that stallion?!”

“Yes,” I again hissed at them. Ignoring her use of Equestrian pronouns for the moment, I took my eyes off of the scene and looked her hard in the eyes.

“We don’t know what happened here, or who he is. Or who she is!” she shouted at me. Michelle nodded her agreement along with her.

“And we don’t need to know, Twilight!” I shouted back at her, finally losing my temper.

“Twilight?” The tree-hugging girl had crept out from behind her hiding spot and was kneeling next to the large man. She had looked up suddenly, as if she were seeing us clearly for the first time.

Our shouting match died immediately and, as one, we all turned to look at her.

She was fair complected with startlingly blue eyes and long, pale-pink hair that shone in the pale light of the moon as bright as it would in the sunlight.

“Is it really you, Twilight?” the girl asked quietly.

I felt a new tension fall over the three of us as we stared at her.

“Um… yes, my name is Twilight...” Twilight uttered before I could say anything. There was something else hanging in the air, like a major chord being played with only two of the three notes. “Do… do I know you?”

The girl blinked and stared at her. “Y-yes… you should know me. I think…” She seemed uncertain of herself and looked down at the man quietly. After a moment, she looked back up, this time with a look of resolve in her eyes. “Yes, Twilight Sparkle, you do, know me. I’m not so sure about what’s going on, but you’re one of my best friends, and always will be!” With that said, the girl jumped up and ran over to Twilight, engulfing her in a hug.

Twilight was caught off-guard and was knocked back a step by the young woman. Her eyes darted back and forth between Michelle and I, her confusion clearly showing, but a second later the young woman had let go and looked up at us apologetically.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said. She extended her hand towards me. “I’m Fluttershy, and I’d like to know what you did to my friend, please. If that’s okay with you?”

Like with Twilight and Luna before her; images, scenes and sounds of Fluttershy played through my mind and behind my eyes, blocking me from the world.

As the world slowly filtered its way back into my senses, feeling the cold sweat pour down the side of my temple, I watched Twilight return Fluttershy’s embrace just as fiercely as it had been given. She was mumbling and sobbing inconsolably into her friend’s shoulder.

I felt Michelle grip my hand in her own and I pulled my gaze from the two young women in front of me to look at my love. I felt the tremble in her hand and saw the look of awe on her face, the same look that I knew was on my own.

It figures that Fluttershy would be in Australia, the most dangerous place on the dry world, I thought in some corner of my mind.

“What are you doing here?” asked Twilight before I could allow my mind to wander any further. She frowned quizzically at her friend. “And for that matter, how did you get here?”

She took the words right out of my mouth.

“And who is he?” She asked, gesturing with one hand at the man on the ground.

Fluttershy took a step back and, for a moment, looked as if she were going to start asking Twilight questions in much the same way she had been asked. She stopped herself, though, and looked Twilight in the eyes.

“I’m sure we both have a lot of questions we want to ask, but right now there are two humans who look like they aren’t conscious, and one of them is my friend!” she said with an uncharacteristic amount of confidence showing. She ran back over to the man and knelt beside him again. “We need to figure out what happened and what we’re going to do to help them out.”

I took a step forward and put a hand on Twilight’s shoulder, ready to step between the two of them at a moment’s notice.

“I agree with the last part of that statement ma’am,” I said, making a point of not using the name we had been given. “I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with him, or at least not that I could tell. We’ll just take our friend and be heading back to our camp.”

I made to pick Luna up off of the ground, Michelle helping slightly.

“What do you mean ‘our camp’?” asked Twilight, a new fire behind her eyes, one that I had not seen in a few days.

“Yes,” I said resolutely. “Our camp.”

“Why would we go back to our camp? Fluttershy’s right here!” she shouted at me, pulling her friend close with one arm.

“Because all of our supplies are back there? The tent? The fire? Everything else?” I snarked back at her. “Are those enough reasons for you?”

“What if Fluttershy’s camp is closer, huh?” She fired back, not backing down.

‘Um…” Fluttershy tried to get a word in.

“Then all the better for her, that means that she won’t have that far to go!”

“And how is she supposed to carry that mountain over there all by herself?”

“Excuse me?” Fluttershy asked, waving a hand for attention.

“Drag him? I don’t know. No offence, ma’am” I shouted back, not looking at the girl in question, my eyes still locked with Twilight’s.

“Drag him?” Twilight shrieked. “Drag him? Do you think that Fluttershy would do something like that to anypony? Especially a friend?”

Fluttershy’s brow lowered in annoyance. “Well, actually… I have dragged…”

“My first priority right now is her,” I returned, doing my best to not jostle the small girl in my arms. “I don’t want to think about what her sister would do to us if she found out that we let the little one get hurt.”

That gave Twilight pause and a heavy silence fell over the six of us.

In the silence, Luna shifted her head ever-so-slightly and gave the smallest of whimpers.

All of our eyes immediately went to the small girl in Michelle’s and my arms and in the darkness, a pale blue light glittered brightly from the center of her forehead, right where her horn should be.

“What the…” I gasped. I gestured to Michelle that we should set the small girl back on the ground.

I felt Twilight’s shoulder press into mine as we all knelt to get a better look at the phenomenon.

“Magic…” Twilight said just over a whisper. “It’s actually magic.” Her eyes lit up in wonder. “This is fantastic!” At the looks she received, she hunched her shoulders and cleared her throat. “Well, the situation isn’t fantastic…”

“What does this mean, Twilight?” I asked her with a quizzical look. “I mean in terms of your magic and whatever is wrong with the princess?”

Fluttershy, having been forgotten in the fuss over Luna, leaned in close to examine the girl. “How can that be?” she asked Twilight. “My friend told us that humans can’t really use magic.”

“We can’t,” Michelle and I deadpanned in unison. It was an old argument that we’d had with Twilight.

“It’s strange I know,” sighed Twilight, shaking her head in disbelief. “They can do the most amazing and terrible things without the slightest hint of magic.”

“So um… if she’s not human, then who is she?” Fluttershy asked.

“Fluttershy,” said Twilight solemnly, putting a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “That’s Princess Luna.”

Fluttershy inhaled sharply and looked at Luna with wide eyes. “Oh, she’s so cute!” she gushed. She looked as if she were going to sweep the princess up in a big hug, but a second later she shook her head slightly and became serious again. “Okay… so this is Princess Luna, and my friend and her are both asleep, but she’s somehow casting a spell…” She looked up at us. “Any ideas, Twilight?”

“Several.” she replied with only a moment’s hesitation and a frown. “But there’s very little that I can do without my own magic.”

As the two former ponies continued talking, Luna’s face scrunched and her brow furrowed as though in deep pain. The light coming from her forehead was brighter and more steady.

“Hey,” I said a little louder than I initially intended. “Magical theory later, more solving now.”

“There’s always time for theory,” Twilight snapped back at me. “And that’s what I’m trying to do! Besides, you never, EVER, interrupt a pony whilst they’re mid-cast. There’s no telling what would happen. To either of you.”

“Then what would you suggest we do?” I said through gritted teeth, barely keeping myself from snarling.

“I don’t know what actually happened here,” Twilight started, looking at our immediate surroundings. “But I would suggest that Luna probably cast a defensive spell when Fluttershy’s friend came out of the woods and scared her.” Twilight pointed at an arrow that I hadn’t seen before. It was embedded into the tree just off to one side. “Judging by their current status, it backfired.” She paused and looked at Michelle and in turn, “Keep in mind, if we don’t wake them up, the two of them will never wake up.”

I reeled, as though the world had been yanked out from underneath my feet. Twilight reached out a gripped my forearm with a reassuring squeeze and turned her attention away from the two of us.

She looked back down at the sleeping princess, and I could see her putting all of her considerable mental power behind the look. She stood suddenly and walked over to look at the man for a few moments and returned.

“I would guess,” she said slowly, taking Luna’s small hand her own. “Only guess, mind you, that this is one of those spells that is affected by the caster’s stress level.” Her face brightened. “Yes, I believe that is the case. If we can calm her, we should be able to break the spell. On both of them.”

Fluttershy looked at Michelle, then to me, and finally at Twilight. “Well, all we need is a little kindness,” she said firmly. She indicated Luna. “The poor thing is terrified! We might not know what she’s dreaming of, but we can try to help soothe her.”

Michelle immediately made to take the small girl up into her arms but was held up short by Twilight.

“Don’t move her,” was all that the former unicorn said in response to the scathing look that Michelle sent her.

With a sigh, Michelle stretched out beside Luna and began to caress and wipe away the tears and grime that caked the small girl’s face all the while whispering small encouragements and calming things into her ears.

Instead of the calming effect that we all expected, Luna continued her downward trend and seemed to sink deeper into her nightmare.

Fluttershy put a hand on Michelle’s shoulder and gave her an apologetic look. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just… well, you’re just not being gentle enough.” Her cheeks grew red, but she kept her resolve. “May I?”

When Michelle made no move to allow Fluttershy room, I put my hand on her arm and gently pulled her out of the way. Fluttershy knelt down beside Luna, but looked up before she got started.

“Could one of you please check on Doug for me?” she asked. “He’s the big guy over there.” She then bent down and began to whisper something into Luna’s ears.

Without a vocal response, I took the kit from the ground near us and walked over to the prone man, keeping an ear trained on the four girls. I knelt next to him and proceeded to give him a more thorough look over.

His face was showing similar distress and fear that was on Luna’s.

“Can I move or touch him?” I called over to Twilight, my hand hesitating over Doug’s face.

Twilight turned with a finger over her lips and shushed me before nodding.

I shrugged as she turned back to watching Luna and Fluttershy, and I proceeded to poke and prod at the man’s neck and arms. His pulse was slightly elevated, but otherwise seemed fine. Ignoring every single bit of my learning and experience, I have his neck a small pivot and sighed with relief as I felt nothing irregular.

Through my examination, I heard the sweet sounds of Fluttershy singing to the little girl, just loud enough for me to strain to understand the words.

“Lay your head down and sleep on my shoulder,

A sad dream is ending, a new one begins.

As winter draws near and our hearts all grow colder,

The memory shall cradle you and tuck you in.

Sleep, forever sleep in this dream with no end,

Our love is your blanket to keep out the cold,

Rest with the knowledge that this dream shall mend,

All sorrow unspoken, all heartache untold.”

I noted that she had a beautiful singing voice and an excellent sense of rhythm.

“That was beautiful,” gasped Michelle softly, looking at Fluttershy as though seeing her for the first time.

“It was…” said Twilight as she gave Fluttershy a strange look. “But why THAT song?”

Fluttershy was silent as she continued to run her hand gently over the stubble on Luna’s head.

“Why?” asked Michelle warily. “What’s wrong with that song?”

“There’s nothing wrong with the song itself, Michelle,” said Twilight, still looking at Fluttershy oddly. “Its just the timing that I’m questioning. It’s an Equestrian hymn to the dead, meant to ease the passage from life into death.” She looked up. “It’s not really used anymore, though.”

I waited for my rage and anger to boil over, for any surge of emotion to flood into my veins. But I felt only the strangest sense of peace and well-being.

Fluttershy continued to stare silently ahead, and almost looked on the verge of tears. Finally, she mumbled, “It’s the gentlest song I know…”

No one said anything for a few moments, and I returned to the girls. There was nothing wrong with the man.

“She’s very peaceful,” I commented as I knelt down next to her and smiled at Fluttershy.

“But she’s not awake,” pointed out Twilight in puzzlement. “It should have worked, and she should be waking up right about now.”

The light on Luna’s forehead had gone out and she seemed to simply be sleeping.

“Why don’t we just wake her up, then?” I asked, moving as though I would wake the small princess. “The spell’s broken, right?”

Twilight grabbed my hand in a surprisingly strong grip.

“I wouldn't, not until they’re both awake.”

“What about him?” asked Michelle, indicating the man’s unconscious form and looking at Fluttershy. “What should we do about him? Should we try waking him?”

Fluttershy looked to Twilight, who nodded, then she moved beside the man and knelt down again. “Maybe… maybe I should wake him up,” she suggested. “You know… just in case.”

We were left to wonder what she meant by that, but she offered no further explanation. Instead, she bent her face down near the man and whispered loudly, “Doug? It’s time to wake up.”

“If the noise that we’ve been making so far hasn’t worked…” I snarked before both Twilight and Michelle put their elbows into my ribs.

Fluttershy sighed, and the look of resolve we had seen on her returned. She closed her eyes and shouted, “Doug!”

I jumped, her raised voice surprised me.

Tears began to flow beneath Fluttershy’s closed eyelids. “You have to wake up,” she whispered, more to herself than to anyone else. “Please… please.” She opened her eyes and squeezed her hands into fists.

“Doug!”

The man moved. It was slight, and could have easily been missed if you blinked. Beneath his eyelids, the man’s eyes flicked rapidly in REM sleep.

“Doug!” Fluttershy shouted again. “Please wake up. Please!”

I had to forcefully stop myself from going over to the man’s side and checking on him. I had Luna to worry about. If Fluttershy failed, who knew what we were going to do?

“Luna!” the man cried, sitting up suddenly. Fluttershy wiped her eyes and he was immediately caught up in her embrace.

“Oh thank goodness it worked!” she breathed as she sat back, then moved in for another hug. “Are you okay?”

At the same moment that the man - Doug - awoke, Luna jerked in our arms and gasped as her eyes flew open, only to be instantly crushed by Michelle’s squeezing arms. I considered saving the princess from the smothering for a few moments and eventually pried my fiance off of her.

“Let the poor thing breathe,” I sighed. Michelle, Twilight and I were sitting behind Luna, huge smiles on all of our faces, and the relief was palpable in the air.

I turned to thank Fluttershy when suddenly, Luna turned her head and looked squarely into the eyes of the man.

He stared back. “Luna?” he asked, confused.

Chapter 11: Lacerations and Band-Aids

Chapter 11: Lacerations and Band-Aids (A.K.A. - A Long Time Coming)

Michelle, with Luna held securely in her arms, Twilight, and I followed Fluttershy and her mountain man of a companion as we made our way back towards their camp.

“Name’s Doug,” the man said over one shoulder, holding a tree branch for us to pass by.

“Nathan,” I responded before anyone else could say anything, giving a pointed look at Michelle and Twilight. Until we knew who this ‘Doug’ was it would probably be best to keep our real identities close to our chests. “That’s Michelle, my fiancé, and you know Twilight and Luna.”

He nodded and let the branch snap back into place before turning to follow Fluttershy. His longer stride allowed him to easily catch up with the pink haired girl.

It certainly felt far too convenient to find another pony out in the middle of nowhere, Luna’s magic notwithstanding, but I wasn’t feeling up to puzzling out the mystery until I had a good bit of sleep or was back in my camp.

I have no idea how Fluttershy was able to navigate her way back to her camp without the aid of a light. It was pitch black, and I could not count the number of times that I tripped.

We walked in silence for several minutes, the moon and Fluttershy guiding us through the gloom and darkness.

It wasn’t long before we could hear the sound of voices coming from somewhere ahead.

I opened my mouth to ask Doug a question but my words died on my lips as every animal in a 3 mile radius dispersed in a wild rush.

“Hello?” Doug called to his tent after a few moments of awkward silence.

“Oh thank god,” gasped a male voice from inside of the tent, the sound of a large object hitting the ground as fingers fumbled for the zipper on the tent. “Doug, Jesus, what the hell ha-”

Out from the tent climbed a young man that had clearly seen better days. Even under the pale light of the moon I could see fresh bruises beginning to blossom on his face under and around his glasses. There was a cast on his right arm and he was definitely favoring that side, he hid a wince as he stood to a slightly slumped height.

Before anyone could make introductions, Fluttershy dashed over the young man and took the non-cast bound arm in her hands, rolling up the sleeve. “John! My goodness, you’re hurt!”

Her hand cupped the bruised side of his face, it was dark but only slightly swollen. I could see him hide a wince as the young woman’s finger brushed on sensitive skin, Fluttershy noticed as well and took a wounded step back, her head lowering.

“A-Angel just got a little u-” John started to say, either stuttering from pain, or because of his close proximity to a pretty girl. I couldn’t tell which, but before he could finish, another child threw himself out of the tent and buried his face into Fluttershy’s stomach, wrapping his arms around her midsection as tight as he could.

“Do you need medical attention?” I asked before I could think better of it, my hand pulling my kit around to my front, the buckle opening easily.

The new child looked far worse for wear, lacerations all up and down his arms, many of which were an angry red. That much I could tell even in the dim light of the moon.

“Angel!” Fluttershy cried as she wrapped her own arms around the child. “Oh, you’re hurt too! What happened?”

“The wildlife went a little crazy,” John said after a considerable pause. He avoided her gaze, his face flushing with embarrassment.

“They did what?” Fluttershy gasped in horror, one of her hands going to her mouth. “Oh no! Oh no, oh no, oh no, I didn’t want this! I just wanted you all to be safe. I thought that maybe…”

My legs tensed, just in case she was about to faint. John was in no condition to catch her safely, and neither was the little boy clamped to her waist. Fluttershy took a shuddering breath and composed herself, took the boy into her arms, and slipped into the tent. I think that she said something to John as she passed him, but it was out of my range of hearing.

As the tent flap opened, I saw another child just inside the tent, a small girl, maybe a little older than Luna, with a shock of red hair and pink bow.

“John?” The little girl asked as she climbed out of the tent cautiously. “What the hay is going on?”

“I’d like to know too,” John said, turning to Doug and the rest of us. “Doug, who are these people and why were you screaming earlier?”

“And what about the princess?” shouted a busty pink haired girl as she bounded out of the tent, seemingly oblivious to time of night and atmosphere that darkened everyone’s mood.

“It’s a long story,” said Doug as he rolled his shoulders with a sigh. “The princess is here. So is Twilight, but right now we need to get the injured taken care of.”

That was my cue.

“Shall I?” I asked Doug as a pink blur flew by me and all-but tackled Twilight. I was holding my kit up and gestured to the tent that Fluttershy and the boy had disappeared into.

“Please,” he replied after a long moment. “Pinkie is going to be a while, and I’ll introduce the two of you later.”

I did my best to not let the flash of images from Pinkie’s name show as I turned and climbed into the tent myself.

Fluttershy was on the floor of tent, kneeling over the boy that she had laid out on the floor under the electric lamp. She was humming something to him as she pulled gauze out of another first aid kit.

‘Good,’ I thought as I adjusted my own pack and pulled the flap closed after me. ‘They have their own pack, I won’t need mine.’

With a sigh, I knelt down next to the boy and cracked my neck.

“Oh!” gasped Fluttershy, jumping ever so slightly and pulled her hands back from where she had started wrapping his gauze.

“Hi,” I said, doing my best to give her a warm smile. “I’m Nathan, a nurse.”

“Fluttershy,” she replied, a touch of shyness in her voice and on her face. She didn’t want to be there with me, I could tell, but the condition of the boy kept her from leaving. “And this is Angel.”

“Your son?” I asked as I pulled my own light off of my jeans and gave Angel a once over. I knew that he wasn’t her son, but it would keep a conversation going and make it easier to help the two of them.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed, her face going beet red.

I held one of Angel’s arms closer to the light, cursing the fact that I had lost my pen light in the past few days. The mag light I had bit in my mouth was unwieldy and uncomfortable. Angel was covered in various degrees of lacerations, some very minor and a few that still dribbled blood down his unusually pale skin. His shins were in a similar condition and his feet were in a condition all their own; they would have to be dealt with later.

“Don’t worry,” I said. As I smiled at Fluttershy, she had a worried expression on her face. “He’s gonna be just fine. Would you hand me the first aid kit?”

She held it out for me and I took it from her.

It was nearly empty. There was a pair of gauze scissors, two antiseptic wipes, and some burn cream packets. Without a word, I pulled the scissors and antiseptic out of the kit and set it aside, grabbing my own, better stocked kit and pulling it out.

“Do you want to help?” I asked as I pulled another pair of scissors, some gauze, and antiseptic out and set them in easy reach.

“Of course,” replied the pink-haired girl with more resolve than I expected.

“Good,” I said, letting the years of training and trials take over. “I need to to take those bandages off.”

“Why?” she asked, taking Angel’s arm in hers, her fingers dancing over the fresh gauze. “I just put this on.”

“And you did a good job of it too,” I replied, opening one of the antiseptics and pulling out the moist towelette, a mild disgust in the back of my mind. I would need my isopropyl for the larger areas. I handed the towelette to Fluttershy and pushed the rest of them over to her. “But we need to make sure that everything’s clean before we bandage. We don’t want anything nasty getting caught up in there do we?"

‘God only knows what kind of crazy bacteria live in Australia,’ I thought to myself as I prepared a set of cotton balls with the alcohol.

Angel winced and hissed as we cleaned his arms and legs with the alcohol. I hadn’t realized that he was awake, but Fluttershy calmed him before he could jerk away from me.

I could hear discussions going on outside the tent. The voices of Michelle, Twilight, Pinkie, and Doug were clear, but my mind was fully on Angel and getting him cleaned up.

Fluttershy hummed a song as we worked. It was soothing, and soon, despite the discomfort that he were causing him, Angel was quietly started snoring.

“You’re very good with children,” I said as I dropped the last cotton ball into my trash pile and Fluttershy finished wrapping his left arm.

“Thank you,” she replied with a smile. I could tell that she was tired, exhausted even. “You are too.”

I gave her a small salute before snatching up my tweezers, and grabbing Angel’s ankle and tilting the bottom of his foot into the light. There didn’t seem to to be anything stuck into the foot despite the number of cuts and punctures to the soles; maybe others had cleaned his feet before?

I didn’t let my mind linger on that thought for too long and proceeded to look at his other foot with the same result. The number of injuries had to make walking very painful, but not impossible. It certainly explained Angel flinging himself at Fluttershy earlier, rather than running to her.

“Wait,” I said to Fluttershy, stopping her from starting to bandage Angel’s other arm. “I need to make sure that big one there stays closed.”

I crawled over to her on my knees and pulled out a few butterfly stitches, I didn’t want to risk cyanoacrylate or real sutures at the moment; they aren’t fun, for anyone.

Fluttershy held his arm up, keeping it in the best light, and held my flashlight without needing to be asked. The cut wasn’t too big, but it was deeper than the others and warranted special attention. It still dribbled a bit of blood down his arm as I pinched it closed with my left hand a butterflied it with my right.

“Okay,“ I sighed, smearing a small bit of antibacterial paste on the overlap of skin. “That should be good enough.”

I cracked my neck again and sat back onto the floor of the tent for a few minutes before joining Fluttershy at Angel’s legs and feet. Compared to his arms, Angel’s legs were okay. They didn’t have the same number of lacerations as his arms, and the wounds that he did have had already scabbed over and didn’t need any help. I did instruct Fluttershy to help me wrap his feet though, just to be safe.

“There we go,” I said, putting his foot down and stretching. We had been at it for nearly an hour by this point and the voices outside had subsided. “He’s going to be just fine.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” replied Fluttershy, running a hand through his hair and looking at me with a grateful smile. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You did just fine without my help,” I responded with a smile of my own. I placed the leftover towelettes, cotton, bandages, and scissors back into my kit. “Do you need help with anything else?”

“No,” she said, not looking up from Angel. “I don’t think so.”

I smiled again at her and made my way out of the tent as quietly as I could.

Evidently, someone had rekindled the fire, as there was a small flame in the pit a few yards away from the tent proper. Doug was staring into the fire, a lost look in his eyes.

“Doug?” I asked, approaching him from his tent. “You okay?”

He didn’t respond, as if he hadn’t heard me.

“Angel’s going to be okay,” I said, walking around the fire, putting it between us. “Nothing was too bad.”

Again, no response.

I opened my mouth to ask where Michelle, Twilight and Luna were when my eye caught a glimpse of color from the other side of the camp.

I stopped short and rubbed my eyes.

It was my tent.

My tent that we had left, fully assembled and stocked some long distance away.

“You know what?” I asked Doug, who again, did not respond. “I don’t even want to know.”

I walked over to my tent and climbed in. Michelle was in her bag on one side, Twilight on her side, Luna was missing.

“She’s in our tent,” said an entirely too chipper voice that was obviously straining to keep quiet.

It took all of my self control to not jump out of my skin.

Poking her head into the tent flap was the girl with violently pink fluffy hair. She had a wide smile on her face and was waving.

“What?” I asked in a whisper, trying to keep from waking Michelle. “Who?”

“Luna, silly-billy,” Pinkie giggled. “‘Shelly put her in our tent with the other girls. I’m Pinkie Pie, by the way. We’ll have a party in the morning. To celebrate.”

With another giggle, Pinkie vanished and I could hear her skip away.

I mouthed “Shelly” to myself as I pulled my boots off and collapsed onto my bag.

I was asleep in seconds.

Chapter 12: What's in a Name?

CHAPTER 12: What's in a Name?

I woke from a sleepless night with a jolt, and groaned as my body protested the early hour, hard ground, and the foot that Michelle had lodged into my back. I rolled away from the offending appendage and looked around the tent. Luna was sleeping cutely on top of her sleeping bag, Noodle gripped tightly in her little arms, Twilight was off on her side, and Michelle was next to me, half in her bag and half on mine.

I climbed out of the tent as quietly as I could, squinting in the new morning sun, and pulled up short. The fire pit in front of my tent wasn’t the one that I had constructed, and there was a mysterious tent across from mine.

I was dumbfounded for a few seconds before the entire previous night came flooding back in a rush.

Trying to not think too hard about more impossibilities than strictly necessary, I set about bringing the fire back from the embers that were left from the night before. Thanks to the ample supply of wood nearby, my hatchet neatly buried into a larger log, I was able to get a good cook fire going.

Coffee was a first priority now that the fire was going, and I retreated to my tent to fetch the large tin of coffee grounds from the tent. I paused after grabbing the tin and kissed Michelle on her cheek before clambering back out of the tent.

I saw Fluttershy sitting on one of the logs near the fire. She was staring into it, and didn’t notice my approach.

“Morning Fluttershy,” I said with a smile.

The pink haired girl jumped, startled, and then something I did not expect; her eyes hardened, her brows furrowed and she turned away from me.

“O-okay,” I said with an arched eyebrow and a shrug. I went about getting the coffee started.

The fire crackled and spit as I settled the percolator into the coals and sat down with a sigh; I hate sleeping on anything other than a real bed.

“How’s Angel?” I asked after several minutes of intense silence.

“Fine,” was the terse reply as she glared into the fire.

“Good,” I said with another smile, hoping to lighten the mood. “Just let me know if there’s anything else that I can do for you, Fluttershy.”

“Thank you,” she said, her eyes softening for the first time. “Matt.”

I kept the shock off of my face as I leveled a steady, neutral gaze towards my breakfast companion.

“How much did Twilight tell you?” I asked, having assumed that Twilight would tell her friends everything. She didn’t understand the gravity of the situation, not in terms of her current reality.

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. Who you are, who the other mare, er, woman with you is. How you found her, what happened at the hospital. Everything.”

“Oh,” I said, staring into the fire, my mind working furiously. “How late did you girls stay up?”

“You lied to us,” snapped Fluttershy, ignoring my question. “How could you?”

“Because I place Luna and Twilight’s safety over the trust of people that I meet in the dead of night in a country that I’ve never been to before.”

Fluttershy was noticeably mollified, but opened her mouth to continue speaking. I cut her off.

“Not to mention, the number of laws that I broke in my country alone, not counting international law and the laws of Australia, are more than enough to see Luna being taken away from all of us, and could end with Twilight, Michelle and I in prison for the rest of our lives.”

I paused, wondering where the sudden flash of anger had come from, but couldn’t stop myself from continuing.

We stared at each other for a long moment in silence, and would have continued to do so if the percolator had not percolated.

I tore my eyes away from the girl in front of me, silently fuming. Who was she to question what I did to save Luna? I did what I had to do, and I would do it again if given the choice.

I took my time in preparing the coffee, letting my hotter emotions run their course. There was no need to upset Fluttershy; it would only come back to hurt me later. First with Doug, and then with Twilight and the others if and when we ever found them. No, better to not say anything at the moment, and have a long chat with my unicorn friend later in the day about keeping other people’s secrets.

“Coffee?” I asked, turning to my companion. I hoped to rekindle the conversation, maybe even put our harsh words behind us.

The pink haired girl gave me another steady look before turning away from me without saying a word.

I shook my head and sat back down onto the log and stared into the fire, content to ignore and be ignored by one and all.

After a few moments of silence between the two of us, the lumberjack from the night before emerged from his tent.

He was even larger that I remembered, the morning sunlight seemed to magnify his already impressive height; almost a full head taller than me. He had kind brown eyes that blinked blearily over a thick brown beard.

“Morning, Nathan,” he said as he zipped his tent up behind him.

“Morning, uh…” I replied after a pause, my mind scrambling, trying to remember his name. “Doug, right?” I asked and he nodded. I gave a silent sigh of relief and took a drink of my coffee. Fluttershy had her back to us and had not greeted her companion.

“Thanks for helping Angel out last night,” he said, breaking me from my thoughts. “Him and Apple Bloom have been through a lot since they arrived on Earth.”

“No problem,” I replied after another swallow of coffee. “Do I need to take a look at Apple Bloom once she gets up?”

I passed him on a mug and he sat down after pouring his coffee. “I reckon she could do with it,” he said. “Though she won’t admit it. Apple family pride, and all that.”

I opened my mouth to reply but was interrupted by an explosion of pink emerging from their tent. Pinkie had pulled the tent flap open and hopped out mid-yawn. She was clad in her pyjamas and barefoot. She paused and stretched, her yawn growing even larger.

“Hey, Captain. Hi, Fluttershy,” she greeted with a sleepy smile before turning to me and saying: “Howdy, Matt.”

I was mid swallow and gasped as she said my name, the coffee burning my airways. I coughed, spat the last of my mouthful into the fire, and dropped the mug, staring at her in shock. I quickly glanced at Doug before returning my eyes to the smiling face of Pinkie.

“You’re so silly Matt,” Pinkie laughed as she sat next to Doug, still smiling. “Is there any Coke left?

Doug’s face was unreadable as he cocked one eyebrow at me “We should have some left in the cooler. Care to grab her one Nathan?”

I swore under my breath. The cat was out of the bag. I muttered, “Of course this is where my luck would run out.” I looked down at my coffee stained shirt and pulled the hot, soaked fabric off of my chest and looked up to the rest of the group. “Yeah, my name’s Matt,” I said with some reluctance. “You understand why I’d want to keep things low-key; its’ not like I should automatically trust somebody just because they’ve found a pony or two.”

“Mm,” he replied “We do what we have to do.”

“We most certainly do,” an unfamiliar voice spoke suddenly. From behind Doug’s tent emerged the cloaked and hooded figure of a man. He moved slowly until he was standing near the campfire. “Oh, don’t allow my arrival to disturb you.” He clasped his hands and tilted his hooded head slightly. “You were just about to do some bonding, yes? I admit it freely, you’ve been doing so well lately. Even Pinkie is happy, in her own little way.”

To say that I was confused would be putting it lightly. I felt every muscle in my body tense up, and I groped for my hatchet.

“Hey, who’s the new guy?” Pinkie asked.

I looked at Doug and asked. “Do you… know this person?”

“We’ve met,” he replied. I could see that his mind was whirling and grinding.

“We all have–” the cloaked man stated “–at one time or another.” His smile made me very uncomfortable. This man was dangerous in a way that I had never experienced before. He spread his arms wide, as in welcome, and said, “Although, you will know me better by my former name: Ashton.”

Doug’s coffee dropped from his fingers.

“Ashton!?” Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Doug said in unison.

The man, or Ashton or whoever, grimaced at the sound of the name. “Do not get into the habit of calling me that,” he demanded, his voice cold. “F.A. is my name, and has been for a very, very long time.”

Pinkie frowned and began counting on her fingers. “Your name was Ashton…” She ignored the sudden look he gave her. “But your name is now F.A. and has been for a long time.” Her eyes lit up. “Ooh, I get it! You’re Future Ashton! That’s really clever."

Doug and I groaned at Pinkie’s reasoning, and I wasn’t surprised to see F.A. practically seething in anger. “No!” he growled, his eyes murderous. “It’s not clever, it’s stupid, and is something only the buffoon that is my former self could have come up with. Even now his foolishness continues to ruin my plans, so I will not be associated with him any more than need be. F.A. will do, thank you very much.”

This man was absolutely insane, unhinged, and more than likely dangerous.

“Doug, what is all this about?” I asked as a jumped to my feet. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the way this guy talks.”

“I’m not really sure,” he admitted, not taking his eyes off of the man.

“I am here for the noblest of causes, I can assure you,” he said as he began to pace around the camp, stepping over supplies as he moved. “Everything I have done has been to ensure you succeed in returning your little Equestrian friends to their rightful home. The problem has been you lot.” He waved a hand in our direction. “You’ve failed time and time again. I’ve lost count of the number of years I have been trying to make things right, but be assured there have been many. But none of that matters now, because I have some pleasant news.”

All of us looked around at each other, then back to F.A.

“You’ve won,” F.A. said. His unsettling grin returned. “I’ve checked and re-checked the possibilities. You, as you all are now, are finally on the right path to succeed. In other words, you will all successfully complete your missions, and Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, the Cutie Mark Crusaders and the princesses, even Discord will all be returned home without harm or foul. We have all done so well that I felt compelled to pay you one last visit and offer my congratulations.”

Something was off with the way that he said his latest statement. He wasn’t being serious. Obviously Doug, Pinkie and Fluttershy knew who this man was, and maybe had some kind of inkling as to what he was talking about. I had no clue, and wanted nothing to do with him.

“This… isn’t some kind of joke?” Doug asked uncertainly.

“If I ever had a sense of humor, it faded away a long time ago,” F.A. replied curtly.
The young man from the previous night, John if I recalled correctly, emerged from Doug’s tent at that moment. “Hey guys, what’s going on?” he asked.

F.A. beckoned for him to sit down and have some breakfast. “Oh, we’re all just having a pleasant day out here. Grab a plate and join in the festivities.”

As John looked around quizzically and took a seat, Pinkie and Doug shared a look. She was holding her left hand to her head and her face was scrunched in intense pain. All of a sudden, she grabbed her right hand with her left, as though the pain had never been there, and looked up with wide, terrified eyes.

“Yes, may as well wake everyone,” F.A. raved, growing more and more extravagant in his praise as he continued. “We’ve finally succeeded after many long, hard years. It is most certainly a time for celebration.” He stopped and tilted his head a moment. “Oh, but wait. Do you hear that? Who might that be?”

I heard the unmistakable sound of voice approaching from the forest behind F.A. and Doug’s tent.

A lean, Middle Eastern man that would not stand out in a crowd emerged from the treeline, followed by a good-looking woman with long brown hair and grey eyes at his elbow.

“Victoria,” I heard Doug whisper at the very edge of my hearing.

The man and woman both stopped and looked up as if they hadn’t expected to find a campsite in this location. Almost immediately, the Middle Eastern man grinned and said, “Ah, you see, my friend? I told you we were headed in the right direction, did I not?” His eyes lit up at the sight of Fluttershy and Pinkie, but his smile faded a bit after a moment, and he swallowed and fell silent.

“Who are these people?” I demanded. Pinkie, Fluttershy, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and the two humans I could deal with. They could possibly understand what I did and not turn Michelle and I into the police. The addition of these three new people added far too many complications to an already complicated situation. F.A. was dangerous and I really didn’t want to know any more people at the moment.

F.A.’s grin widened. “Ah, it all works out in the end,” he hissed, his voice silky. “Everything turns out just fine. In fact, I’m no longer needed here.” He turned abruptly and started to walk away. My heart felt lighter, and a feeling of relief crept up my spine. “I’ll leave you all now to savor this fine moment,” he called over his shoulder. He had just reached the two newcomers, who looked at him questioningly, when he stopped and turned slowly back around.

“Only… it isn’t all fine,” he said, all pleasantries gone from his voice. The grin vanished. “There is just one small problem that remains.”

“Doug,” Pinkie whispered. I hadn’t noticed her moving closer to him. “Doug, we need to leave. Right now.”

I was about to agree with her. To stand up, gather everyone and get as far away from the strange man as possible. As I moved to stand I found that I was frozen in place and not matter how much I strained and willed my legs to move; I could not. My eyes quickly scanned the others, they were frozen in the same way as I.

Everyone but F.A.

“Ah, it really isn’t fair,” he said, venom creeping into his voice. “You see, we finally have a happy ending for everyone.” His lips suddenly curled downward in a sneer. “Everyone but me. What a great, cosmic joke it is that I should find out that the only way to save you all is if I allow myself to never come into existence.” Suddenly, he was right in front of Doug and Pinkie, his face inches away from Pinkie’s. “I spent centuries trying to work out what, exactly, it was that I had to do to keep you from throwing yourself into the ocean to drown!” he spat at her. Within a heartbeat, he was in Fluttershy’s face.

“And you! All you ever did over and over again was run away like a pathetic cur!” His hand shot out and grabbed her by the jaw forcing her to look into his eyes. “Trying to guide you to become brave for once in your life cost me decades of work, and even now I’m not entirely sure how I managed to succeed with you!”

Not only was this ‘F.A.’ dangerous, but he was very much insane. He had no concept of reality in any way, shape, or form.

“Countless years I dedicated my life to preventing a future I was almost certain was unavoidable! And now I find that I must throw what’s left of my life away in order to succeed?” He was shouting and gesticulating randomly as he paced around the camp, he was wild and unpredictable. “Way back in the beginning, when I tricked Discord into granting me some of his power, I knew I had made an error. Perhaps not consciously, but deep down inside I knew something had gone wrong, and I was determined to fix it!” He turned and looked Doug in the eyes. “We weren’t meant to fail in the way that we did. Nobody was supposed to die!”

F.A. reached into a hidden pocket in his cloak and drew a long, gleaming dagger from within. My entire field of concentration centered on that knife and the way that he was waving it about. If things hadn’t been bad before, they had now gotten much worse.

"Ah, but it doesn’t really matter,” he said, stopping in front of the man with the woman. “All I need to do is kill off one of the main players and both time and this reality get reset.” The way that he emphasized ‘main’ did not bode well and I began to strain even harder against whatever bounds held us. “Don’t worry, you won’t remember a thing. This version of you will simply cease to exist. Observe!” The dagger twirled between his fingers before he suddenly gripped the hilt and plunged the blade deep into the man’s stomach. He let the blade remain in the man’s abdomen for a long few seconds, seemingly savoring the pain that I could see in his eyes, before thrusting the blade over and over again. I wanted to shout, to cry, to do anything but sit there and watch this man be murdered. With one last thrust and twist, F.A. yanked the blade out and the man dropped to the ground; if he was not dead before hitting the ground, he would be dead within moments.

“Oh, I forgot,” F.A. hissed as he watched the blood drip along the blade. “He isn’t a major player at all.” He turned back around and stalked back over to us and observed our faces. “Come off it,” he growled, his anger still boiling. “He’ll be alive again the moment I reset you, so don’t give me those looks. It’s all in good fun, really. I haven’t had a chance to enjoy myself in a long time.” His demented grin returned. “In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever had a reason to try resetting–” he turned his head slowly towards the woman“–her before.”

The robed bastard took slow, calculated steps toward the woman, the bloody dagger at the ready. I could feel my muscles strain harder and harder, my heart rate going through the roof.

He whispered something and then said, in a louder voice. “Are you a major player?” He made to raise the weapon, but a sudden, massive concussive force blasted him backwards, slamming his head against a tree, where he crumpled unceremoniously into a heap at its base.

From behind the tree emerged a tall, thin.. creature. He was part man and part other things. He seemed to grow taller and taller with every step that he took. His hair was wild and blew in an unseen wind and his eyes blazed with unbridled fury as he glared at the fallen man.

“Death is the very opposite of chaos, it’s stagnation!” the man-thing hissed. “You have made a very grave error.”

Author's Note

Sorry for everyone who just got two messages, in the initial upload, all of my formatting derped and had to fixed.

Chapter 13: The Last Twilight

I was on my feet the moment that F.A. hit the tree.

“Grab Luna," I shouted, my hand snatching up the hatchet without me fully realizing it. “We’re leaving!” I caught Doug’s eye for the briefest of seconds before whirling around to watch Michelle vanish into the tent.

I could hear another male voice shouting something behind me as I dove through the open flap.

“Forget it,” I shouted at Michelle as she tried to stuff several things into her bag. “We have to get out of here.” I snatched Noodle off of the ground and pulled Michelle out after me.

As we emerged from the tent we saw Luna start to run towards the other tent, the tall man had vanished and Fluttershy was over near where the man had collapsed after being stabbed, it looked as though she was trying to comfort the woman next to him.

Michelle beat me to Luna and swooped her kicking and screaming form up off the ground and turned back to me. We locked eyes for the briefest of seconds before I turned about and took one step-

-and found myself sitting in another tent, chained up and immobile, along with everyone else, and had been rendered mute.

“It is a bit cramped in here, isn’t it?” said the thin man with an evil grin on his face. “Very well. Let’s take it outside, then.” He snapped his fingers and we all found ourselves outside, around the firepit.

“Well now, isn’t this quaint?” he asked. “The gang’s nearly all here!” He prowled around us, my eyes followed him, trying to figure someway out of this mess. “But what’s this?” he gasped dramatically, pausing behind Fluttershy and putting both hands on his cheeks. “We seem to be missing a few! Now, how could you possibly turn me back into stone without gathering all of your friends and using that pretty pony princess,” he grimaced and deflated for a moment, “Celestia, to put me in my place.”

He stopped pacing and glared at us, the moment, all hints of joviality gone from his entire demeanor.

“That is your plan, is it not,” he mocked. “To use the ‘magic of friendship’ to defeat villainous old me, and send my fellow Equestrians back home.”

He turned his back on all of us and stalked over to the man that he had blasted into the tree and was snarling with rage. I took the opportunity to squirm and wriggle with all of my might, trying desperately to get myself free but to no avail.

“Oh yes,” the man all but squealed, again switching moods instantly. “But I am getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Let’s see now, who are we missing?” He paused for a few moments, putting a finger to his lips. “Oh, yes. How could we forget about-” he snapped his fingers and a teenaged young man and rainbow-haired girl appeared “-Rainbow Dash!”

I did my best to fight my way through the sudden blast of images and sounds that all but blocked off the world around me. By the time that my mind was able to return to the world the man had locked the two newcomers up like the rest of us and was summoning the next on his sadistic list.

After Rainbow Dash came Applejack who was followed by Rarity, each of them accompanied by their own slideshow of images and sounds.

“Now the gang’s all here,” the man gushed with glee. “We have Twilight and Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Applejack, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and even Princess Luna.” He rolled his oddly colored eyes and indicated Angel. “Oh, and Angel Bunny’s here, too. Every Equestrian on this planet you call Earth is right here in this very spot.” He looked around at each of us. “Ah, but of course! You all have questions. Very well, very well. Let’s just remove that little silencing spell and–” the moment he released the spell, everyone began shouting at him, I swore with all of my anger at him “–oh dear. This won’t do at all.” We were immediately silenced again. “Let’s play a game! You each get one question that I must answer. Let’s start with… you!” He pointed at Rainbow Dash.

“Why don’t you go shove a horn up your–”

“Tsk tsk!” he admonished, snapping his fingers. Rainbow was immediately silenced. “There are children present. You forfeit. Next!” He pointed at Rarity.

After a moment’s hesitation, she asked, “How did you find me? How did you find any of us?”

The man sighed. “Now you see, you’re breaking the rules. That was two questions. But!” He raised a finger. “The answer is the same for both, so consider this a freebie to make up for Dashie over there. I found you because I can sense magic. Oh yes, you might think your magic disappeared, but a tiny little sliver remained. Not much, but, when you place something that is barely magical in a land with no magic at all, well…” He held forth his hand, which was sporting a red thumb. “You get the idea.”

He pointed to Applejack. “Next!”

Applejack narrowed her eyes. “Y’all said that every Equestrian on Earth is right in this here camp.” She looked around. “But Princess Celestia ain’t here!”

The look he gave her was one of utter disappointment. “Applejack, Applejack. We both know that wasn’t even a question.” He snapped his fingers to prevent a retort. “Next time, don’t try to be so… fancy with your words.”

Discord’s eyes rested on Twilight Sparkle. “You’re up.”

“Where is Princess Celestia?” Twilight demanded.

“I dealt with her already,” he responded with a shrug. “But if you really must know, she’s in Equestria. You see, I couldn’t have you turning me into stone again, so naturally I had to eliminate the strongest of the lot.” He feigned a look of despair. “Imagine my surprise when she told me she’d leave willingly. Then again, I guess Equestria is doomed with nopony to raise the sun or moon. Not to mention the little chaos fissure that was left behind when we came here. From the look of it, it has swallowed half of Equestria! I suppose she felt it her duty to step in and save the day.”

A bored look came upon his face, watching his face was a study in non-Euclidean geometry, it was human one moment and something very different and otherworldly the next. He pointed to Fluttershy. “You’re next.”

Fluttershy looked down at the ground in silence. The thin man grinned, and looked as if he were going to skip her, when she suddenly said, “Why?”

“Beg your pardon?” he asked, putting one hand to his chest.

“Why are you here, doing this?” she clarified. “If Princess Celestia is back in Equestria, then you know we can’t defeat you. Yet here you are, and you’ve even chained us up. Your actions aren’t adding up, Discord.”

Everything clicked the moment that she said his name. Of course this was Discord, everything fit into some demented puzzle and I was just now seeing the bigger picture.

“Do they ever?” he replied with a giggle. “Oh, but you do have a point. Why should I waste my time coming here and talking to you?” He walked back over to where F.A. lay and jabbed a finger at him. “This is the reason. Sure, playing the reset game can be fun at times, but only when I’m the one pulling the reset switch.” His face grew dark. “I don’t find it amusing when lesser beings think they can manipulate me. What’s worse, he resorted to killing. There’s no chaos in that; it’s order of the highest kind!” Discord blinked, returning to his train of thought. “But yes. I have no intention of being reset by this thing,” he said, pointing at F.A. “The problem is, all he has to do is kill one of you here, and we’re all going to reset.” He glanced over to the body of the dead man. “Well… most of you.”

Discord hovered over to address Doug, I could see some hint of emotion in his face. “Friend or foe, if I had foreseen such a thing, I would not have allowed it.”

“So then,” Discord said quickly as he whipped around. “I find myself in the most unfortunate situation of having to protect my newest friends from harm.” A small flag appeared in his hand, though he waved it without enthusiasm. “Yay me.” He pointed at Pinkie. “Your turn.”

Much like Fluttershy, Pinkie sat in silence for a while. Though Discord made a show of yawning, she was unperturbed. Finally she looked up, strong emotion was on her face and in her tear-filled eyes..

“This is our loss,” she said quietly.

Discord frowned. “You know the rules about statements, Pink–”

“No,” she said as she looked at Doug. “This is our loss. The sacrifice we have to make to save two worlds. Earth and Equestria.” She turned to Discord. “You’re going to separate us all, aren’t you?” Her voice broke. “Permanently.”

For the briefest moment, a look of pity flashed across Discord’s face.

“Congratulations, Pinkamena Diane Pie,” he said softly. He snapped his fingers, and the spell holding all of us was released. “You’ve won the game.”

Everything was silent for several moments. Soon enough, voices arose from all around.

Voices broke all around us but I immediately went to Michelle and helped her to her feet, my eyes scanning her for any injuries that she could have possibly sustained. I could see Luna out of the corner of my eye, the diminutive princess was watching Discord like a hawk.

“Are you alright?” I asked her as she leaned into my embrace.

“No…” she sobbed into my chest. I could feel her fear as her hands tightened their grip on my shirt. I wanted more than anything to say something, to say anything to make everything better, but the words died on my lips every time that I opened my mouth.

I pulled her closer into me with my arms as I looked around us just in time to see F.A. plunge his dagger into Discord’s chest from behind, the blade jutting out from the front of shirt, blood staining the white shirt red.

“You expected me to attack one of the others and try for a reset,” he told Discord with a sneer. “You of all people should know that you can’t predict chaos!”

“Leave him alone!” shouted a Luna from just near Michelle’s leg. The next second, Michelle was thrown into me and I had to fight to keep my feet as a huge torrent of dark blue energy blasted F.A.’s chest as Discord’s body melted into a pool to evade the princess’s attack.

Luna stood with her hands extended out in front of her, a faint shimmering blue outline of blue formed the image of a horn on her forehead and wings on her back.

“Oh but I was expecting that” Discord mumbled through a mouthful of blood as he rematerialized. He looked up at Luna, his face serious, “We must hurry. He’ll be back very soon. Luna, we must work together to open the portals. There’s no time to pick and choose locations, just open them all at random.”

“Wait, you mean this is it?” the teen who had arrived with Rainbow Dash asked. His question drowned out by the magics that Luna and Discord summoned. Chaos and harmony combined; the only magic that could open portals between worlds.

“It is done,” Discord announced with uncharacteristic seriousness. A large, dark purple blob of energy shimmered in midair. “You,” Discord said, pointing to the man who had arrived with Applejack. “Grab a pony and go.”

“How about you make me?” the man asked with a familiar Southern drawl, I didn’t like him. “I’ve done what I promised to do, and now me an Applejack here are gonna’ kick the living shi–”

“We don’t have time for this!” Discord bellowed. He raised his hands and a massive gust of wind blew the man, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash, who’d just happened to get caught in the blast, through the portal.

“Applejack!” Apple Bloom cried. She rounded on Discord. “Ya didn’t even let us say goodbye!”

“Goodbye, Apple Bloom,” F.A. said, rising from directly behind her.

“No!” Twilight screamed and, with a flash of purple energy, she teleported to Apple Bloom and F.A.’s dagger plunged into her shoulder before she teleported away again.

“Run!” I shouted at everyone as I grabbed Michelle’s hand and, together, we sprinted for Luna.

Pandemonium erupted all around us as we ran.

“Come on,” I cried as we got closer to our royal charge. “We have to get you out of here!”

“Not yet!” she shrieked, the outline around her was growing stronger by the second. “I have to hold the spell, if I don’t he will win.”

I clenched my fists, my teeth grinding in my mouth, and looked back at the battle behind us.

F.A. was bashing Doug’s head into the ground while Discord had changed into a football helmet around the older man’s cranium. There was blood pouring down Doug’s face and bruises were beginning to blossom along one side.

Rarity, Sweetie Belle, and some kid jumped through one of the purple portals together; Apple Bloom and Scootaloo tried to follow to find the portal closing behind the other three.

Twilight and Discord had gone on the offensive and were chasing F.A. through the forest, taking it in turns to blast him with various energies. Trees fell and explosions boomed as the others did their best to gather into groups and get through a portal before they closed.

I made towards Doug, to apply some kind of first aide, but Michelle held me back with all of her strength; a wild fear in her eyes. I was forced to watch the battered Apple Bloom all but drag Doug’s much larger frame to his feet and through a portal all by herself.

With the last of them through the portals, Luna collapsed to her knees only to be swept up into Michelle's waiting arms.

I wanted to be angry with my fiance, there were people and ponies right in front me that needed my help and he had kept me from doing my duty. But looking at her cradle Luna to her bosom, crushing the small girl to her with a fierce strength that I hadn’t ever seen in her before, my anger bled out of me.

After a few moment of silence there was a flash of light and Twilight was unceremoniously dumped at my feet by a very perturbed looking Discord.

“We lost him,” he grunted as he brushed twigs and leaves out of hair. “Miss super magic had to go and pass out on me.”

I was already inspecting the large wound that the dagger had inflicted on my companion, it was deep and blood continued to pour from the gash, but she had gotten very lucky, that dagger had been long enough to go straight through her shoulder and then some.

I cleaned the puncture as best as I could and butterflied it together and wrapped it in gauze.

“Here,” said Discord as he threw his stained shirt over my head and pulled another one out of nowhere. “You can use that, it’s ruined anyways.”

Twilight began to come around as I finished tearing the shirt and tying a haphazard sling around her wounded arm.

I helped her to sit up and, after much coaxing, to her feet. She was as wobbly as the day she first arrived but was able to stand.

“What now?” I heard Michelle ask Discord as I surveyed the wreckage of the campsite and surrounding forest. There was no way that this kind of destruction would go unnoticed for very long. In all probability, some kind of armed response was already scrambling and on their way.

“It is obvious isn’t it?” groaned Discord in exasperation. “We can’t simply leave the six of us all together.”

“Six?” I asked as I counted only five of beings of various degrees of wear and tear.

“Six,” came the tired voice of Pinkie Pie from behind us. I whirled around, half expecting to find F.A. behind her or her dying somehow. But it was just Pinkie, battered and bruised, but still very much Pinkie.

“Pinkie,” cried Twilight breaking away from the group to throw her arms around her other friend. Pinkie took Twilight into her arms and the two of them held each other for a long moment.

“No,” said Discord before I could say anything. “You cannot.”

“How do you know what I was going to ask?” I fired back at him.

“You?” he sneered at me. “You’re easier to read the Twilight Sparkle, you’re a pop-up book compared to her.”

My mouth snapped shut with an audible click and I glared at him.

He waved me off with one hand and addressed everyone. “We cannot put this off any longer. With every passing second we give him a chance to come back and try to reset everyone again.”

I looked at Michelle and Luna before turning to Twilight and Pinkie. Their embrace had ended and they were arguing about something.

“We don’t have time for this,” Discord snarled when it became apparent that neither of the two mares were going to calm down. “Lets go!”

It was another long moment before either Twilight broke away from her friend and lead her back the the group; both had been crying very hard. I stepped away from Discord to embrace Twilight but Discord held me back by the scruff of my shirt.

“You and your sentimentalities,” he drawled looking at all of us. “Have wasted too much time as it is.”

Twilight gave a determined nod and, taking Pinkie by the elbow, made to stand with Michelle and Luna.

“Ah…” sighed Discord, dropping his hold on my shirt. “This isn’t going to work like that, you aren’t going to be going anywhere together.”

Shock and panic gripped my heart and I could see the fear blossoming on everyone else’s faces.

“Again with the melodrama,” groaned the draconequus, throwing a forearm over his face dramatically. “I swear there is not a funny bone in any of your bodies.”

I ignored him and went over to Michelle and took her into my arms as Luna took ahold of my pant leg.

“And you’re being cruel,” snapped Twilight with a growl. “Hasn’t there been enough chaos for one afternoon?”

“Enough chaos?” he gasped, putting a hand over his heart, before grinning evilly. “Never.”

“What more do you want from us?” Twilight fired back as she stalked towards the thin man. “You’ve won and you know it. What more could you wring from us? What? Huh? What?” With every step she jabbed him in the chest with her finger, forcing him back until he found his back to a large tree.

“My dear Twilight,” Discord cooed, taking her hand in his and walking her back to the rest of us. “I don’t want anything from you. That’s why this is happening! I want nothing from you ponies ever again! With all of you out of the way, I can live chaos to its fullest right here and there’s nopony on this planet that will be able to do anything to stop me.”

With a twirl of his arm, he sent Twilight spinning into Pinkie and he pirouetted over to stand in front of us all.

“That’s also the reason that I can’t let all of you go together,” his voice had lost the whimsy. “You’re too smart for your own good Twilight Sparkle. Now, pick.”

We all knew what he meant.

Twilight met all of our gazes in turn before taking Pinkie’s hand and walked toward Discord. Pinkie resisted for the briefest of moments before surrendering.

“Twi,” I said breaking away from Michelle, “Wait.”

“What now?” asked Discord in frustration. I ignored him.

“Take this,” I said as I held out the first aid kit. “You’ll need this more than I will.”

She looked at the kit before throwing her arms around me and kissing my cheek. “You’ve been a good friend Matt.”

“You too,” I said with as much of a smile as I could muster. “We’ll see you again.”

She nodded and, after letting me go, returned to Pinkie’s side and said: “We’re ready.”

The magic was slower in coming but the portal opened in front of the two other ponies, and with one last tear filled look at the rest of us, Twilight and Pinkie vanished into the swirling purple blob, leaving Michelle and I alone with two of the three of powerful Equestrians.

“Now, where to send you three,” asked Discord gleefully as he rubbed his hands together. “How about-”

“I want to go home!” Shouted Luna, cutting the draconequus off.

“Ugh,” groaned Discord, deflating. “That’s so bo-o-oring! Why not somewhere exciting! Like a universe of-”

“Home. Now.” growling the tiny princess in a deeper and darker voice than I would have ever given her credit.

“Tch,” the thin man sighed. “Fine.”

“And you’re coming too.” I interjected.

“What?” gasped Michelle and Discord at the same time. “I/He most certainly am/is not!”

“Yes you are,” I continued, ignoring the look on my fiance’s face as I got into Discord’s. “If we leave you here, you’ll still be a target for F.A. won’t you? What happens if and when he does get to you? Won’t we all be reset again. Won’t this all be for nothing?”

A heavy, uncomfortable silence fell over us as the two of us glared at each other.

“You…” he snarled, raising his hand to strike out at me. “You make a point that I did not see before.” He sighed and the angry look melted off of his face. “Ugh, now Celestia and Luna are actually make me do work. It’ll be all order and no chaos, how drull.”

Yet, despite his complaints, there was a surge of magic and one last portal formed, the swirling purple fluid-like cloud was mesmerizing.

“Hurry!” shouted Luna breaking me from my trance as she took my hand and Michelle’s in hers and all but dragged us to the portal. “We can’t hold it open for long.”

I turned my head and Discord was, in fact right behind us, I could see his human form beginning to melt away into the form that I had known him to assume on the show

I paused on the cusp of the portal and looked through the purple clouds to the other world that I was about to be thrown into.

Equestria, or what I assumed was Equestria, was a beautiful and terrible sight to behold.

“What happened?” I heard Luna gasp.

“We happened my dear little princess,” cooed Discord, still behind us. “Now, I believe that you have some catching up with you sister to do au revoir! Arrivederci!”

“Wha-”

The three of us were thrown bodily through the portal and onto the grass of Equestria. I was on my feet fast enough to see the portal slam shut, Discord laughing at his trick.

The bastard.

Author's Note

Here it is. The final chapter in Twilight's story under my guidance.

If you're wondering, it is unedited but TheSlorg and I decided to release it anyways to keep the ball rolling. We'll get to editing it ASAP.

Thanks for reading and keeping up with the journey.

We'll see you in part 2!