Twiastasia

After the initial shock had worn off of the ponies, they were frantic. Desperate for information. Where had Twilight been? Was she okay? Who were the strangers she was traveling with? Anon, Gile, and Fizzy were thankful that the questions weren’t directed at any one of them for once, needless to say. The five ponies sat on one couch together, while Twilight and her three friends sat side by side on the other, including the baby dragon. He clung to Twilight’s side feverishly, as if, should he let go, she might vanish again. Twilight did not object. Currently, it was the orange pony’s turn to barrage Twilight with questions.

“How come it took ya so long to come back here to Ponyville? I never heard of this ‘Echidna’ place, but surely it couldn’t of been seven-months-away far.”

Twilight shrank a bit back in her seat. She wasn’t expecting her reuniting with her old friends to be such an interrogation. Sure, she had expected questions, but… she didn’t even know these pony’s names yet.

“W-well, after… whatever happened to me, I had lost my memories. But Echidna is wayyy farther than you might-”

“H-hold on now, ya’ll lost your memories!? L-like, all of ‘em?”

“... What do you mean by that.”

The stetson pony fumbled for words, her cute accent really showing off.

“L-like, of us! Of Ponyville! Of your past!”

“... Well, yeah. I still remembered my name, and how to talk and walk and stuff, but… not much else… H-honestly, I don’t even know your name… I’m sorry.”

The white unicorn looked about ready to faint again, as did the rest of the room. The little dragon looked up, newfound tears ready to burst yet again.

“I-I’m Spike! Y-your number one assistant! Y-y-you raised me since birth when you were really young, you don’t remember that??”

Thin tears streamed down Twilight’s face as well now, and Anon gently petted her back.

“I-I’m sorry little guy, I don’t. Not yet, anyway. It’s why my friends here are bringing me to Canterlot, to see if the sun princess can fix my memories.”

All ears perked up at Twilight calling the strangers ‘friends.’ The rainbow-maned pegasus noticed this especially, as well as Anon’s hand.

“A-and who are these three!? Did they tell you about the bounty Princess Celestia put on your safe return home?? Are they only interested in helping you for the bits!?”

Twilight raised her voice before Anon or the other two could take offense.

“Y-YES!! Yes they did tell me! They’ve been on my side helping me get home since I first met them, and we’ve gone through Tartarus together all the way here! Them especially! And maybe you all were my friends before, but you certainly aren’t being kind to me or my new friends now! I mean, fuck, you haven’t even told me your names yet!”

Twilight bore bloodshot eyes into each of her old friends. Judging from the looks on their faces, they were not expecting such an outburst… May have been the first time they ever heard Twilight curse too. Regardless of her feelings on the matter, and how she figured them personally justified, a sense of remorse slowly crept into her, seeing the mixture of guilt and hurt on each of the pony’s faces. The yellow one looked about ready to run from the room sobbing, with how she shook.

“... Twi… I’m… mighty sorry. I’m Applejack. We were just… When you disappeared in the Badlands, we were worried sick. We’ve been worried sick fer months now. We thought… W-we thought…”

“W-we thought… you weren’t ever gonna come back Twilight. I’m Rainbowdash, a-and I’m sorry for coming off as aggressive. I just… Ooh, this is so hard…”

“I’m Rarity. What Rainbow is trying to say dear, is that we wanted to make sure you weren’t being used. W-we have never met these ponies- er, creatures before. After you’d been gone so long, seeing you just suddenly appear out of the blue like this with these strangers is, well, i-it’s scary. I’m terribly relieved, but… we’ve all been blindsided, please understand, and forgive us for being so forward.”

“I’m Pinkimena Diane Pie, but I just go by Pinkie Pie really. I-I was… so excited, when I saw you coming into Ponyville. I don’t even know HOW I knew, but I did. Something just gripped me and told me to run out of Sugarcube Corner to the edge of town, a-and I’m so glad I did. I’m so glad I got to see your face again, and I hope… I hope I never have to worry like that ever again. I hope none of us ever have to again.”

“I-I’m Spike. I know I, uh, already told you that, but… you hatched me from my egg using your magic. I guess you… you wouldn’t remember, but, you’re a magical prodigy. Making me hatch was your entrance exam for Celestia’s school, and you didn’t have to take me in, but you did. Y-you and our- your family raised me as if I was a little brother. I came along with you when you moved to Ponyville, and the rest is history. S-since you’ve been gone, I’ve been staying with Rarity at the Carousel Boutique, but… I made sure to clean up the library extra nice before I left, for when you came back.”

“U-umm… I-i-it was, um, very scary, seeing you again. I felt a lot of emotions all at once, and I wasn’t sure what to do with all of them. For those first couple of months, I-I was sure you had to be somewhere out in the Everfree forest. I-I searched every inch of that spooky place, a-and when I didn’t find you, I-I just… j-just…”

The yellow pony hid her face in her hooves, letting a fresh torrent of tears out. Twilight gave her a few moments to collect herself before she gently spoke.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name.”

“O-oh, sorry… I-I’m Fluttershy…”

Twilight let out a guilty sigh that had been collecting in her since her friends had begun to each speak their piece. Certainly, she had been too rough on them. Twilight was lucky, not knowing who she had been separated from. Her friends could only do so much to try and find her in Equestria, and when they couldn’t… They had to deal with their lack of any clues, lack of any closure, for months. Months of constant failures. Who knows when they might’ve given up? And even then, what would they’ve done after? Would they even have ever given up?

“I’m… I’m sorry. To all of you. I didn’t mean to come off as so rude. It wasn’t right of me to accuse you all of not being supportive. I have no idea what it must’ve been like for you”

Rarity batted a hoof, dabbing her cheeks with a handkerchief Twilight hadn’t seen before.

“O-oh darling, it’s quite alright. This is… n-new and scary for all of us. How about something lighter?” The unicorn’s eyes fell upon the rest of Twilight’s group. Anon suppressed an internal sigh. “W-who are your new handsome friends? I must say, I simply love your outfit. It suits you marvelously. I take it the tailors are quite good in Echidna, yes?”

Rarity was confused when Anon, Twilight, Gile, and Fizzy all broke out into varying degrees of laughter.

“... W-was it something I said?”

“S-sorry, haha, it’s just uh… no. The tailors are not good in Echidna, especially not to me. I’m Anonymous, by the way. You can just call me Anon.”

“Not good to you? Why? Oh! D-do you have an eye for fashion as well?”

Anon rubbed the back of his neck. “Not exactly what I meant by that… These clothes were made for me in Vanhoover, just after we made it into Equestria. Before that… well… I only had one pair of clothes for a very long time. They weren’t very presentable.”

Rarity’s eye now held much concern, her past emotions taking a backseat.

“H-how long darling?”

“... Twenty years?”

Rarity’s eye twitched.

Applejack let out a quiet ‘hoo boy’ and covered her eyes with her hat.

Thankfully, Rainbowdash changed the conversation before Rarity could drag Anon by his heels to her boutique.

“Heheh, what about you two? I used to know a griffon back in flight school. Turned out she was a jerk, b-but you seem cool!”

“I’m Gile. Been traveling around Echidna with Anon since we were both hatchlings.” The griffon looked to his friend and smiled. “I got his back, and he’s got mine. I thought he was crazy, when he told me he wanted to go off chasing the Twilight Bounty. He’d never even heard of Equestria before, and I barely knew anything about this place. I’ve walked with this alien halfway across the world already, and I’ll walk with him the rest of the way too, if needed.”

Anon and Gile shared an unspoken fist bump, much to Rainbowdash’s delight.

“D-did you say ‘alien?’ “

Anon wasn’t expecting the pony with ‘shy’ in her name to speak up. It seemed he’d never stop explaining what he was to creatures, be they Echidnan or Equestrian.

“As far as we’ve been able to tell, yes. I... vaguely remember my old home, but that was a long time ago. Never met anyone else like me.”

Fluttershy’s wings seemed to flap a bit in excitement. Maybe she thought she had found a kindred soul in the company of outcasts? She seemed to be the reserved type.

“O-oh, that’s so sad, I’m sorry… How did you come to Equestria?”

Anon was about to answer with a ‘I don’t know,’ but Fizzy coughed bluntly.

“O-oh gosh, I’m so sorry, here we are, all talking about each other, not talking to you. H-how long have you been with Anon and Gile?”

The dark yellow mare happily smiled. “Long enough to know they’re a coupl’a idiots.” Some of the ponies cringed at the perceived insult. “But they mean well. I don’t know where I’d be right now if not for them. They gave me a chance at another life here in Equestria after I… lost my past. They showed me what you can achieve when you don’t give up on your dreams, even if it seems like the whole world is against you.”

A quiet ‘amen’ and ‘das right’ could be heard from Anon and Gile.

Applejack tipped her hat upwards. “Well, any friends of Twilight’s are friends of mine. Yall are always welcome down on the farm for what you did fer us, whatcha did for Twilight. I can’t thank y'all enough.”

The ponies collectively nodded their heads, each giving their thanks and offering some sort of assistance, should the creatures ever need it. Though, Anon felt a small chill run down his back at Rarity’s insistence on making him new clothes. She had a tinge of madness in her eyes that the human didn’t know how to feel about.

With the mood of the room largely calmed now, the collective group each shared hugs, and Anon felt the time was ready to continue their journey.

“So, any of you ponies happen to know when the next train for Canterlot leaves? We’ve wasted enough time marching through Equestria, if we wanna get Twilight’s memories back, we should leave as soon as possible.”

“That’s right! Let’s get moving!”

“I- oh. You guys are gonna come with?”

Rainbowdash struck a pose, her five friends (Spike included!) doing the same.

“Uh, yeah we’re comin’ with! We gotta get our friend’s memory back like you said! Plus, we got unfinished business with the princesses!”

“O-oh. Are you guys, like, not on good terms with them or something?”

Rainbow sagged a bit in her pose, the moment now gone.

“U-uh, no, not like that. I meant, they sent us on a mission months ago! We still gotta set things right! Follow along guys, to the train station!”

With that, the five ponies barreled out of the library.

Twilight just sighed. “Would be nice to know what that mission is…”