An endless line of plastic toys formed a circle on the grass. In the circle's center, a young girl wore a homemade cardboard horn strapped to her head. On the tip of the horn, a magnifying glass gleamed in the sun. The girl held a popsicle up in front of her face. The horn's glass focused the sun's light upon a point where, if the popsicle were an animal, it might have its bellybutton. The popsicle dripped and sizzled.
"Oh great Equestrian magic!" the girl intoned. "Accept this offering of innocent popsicle blood, that you may be pleased and transport me to your totally amazing magical realm!"
Outside the circle, another girl held her hand half over her mouth. "Popsicle blood is NOT friendship, you know."
"Silence!" the first girl demanded. "Isn't Fluttershy friends with like a zillion animals? And aren't some of them bears, and weasels, and lions? Animals like that can't just live on hay, you know."
The second girl shrugged. "It's Equestria. Who knows how it works?"
As the popsicle's stick smoked and caught fire, the first girl insisted, "This is a genuine Rainbow Dash popsicle. It HAS to work."
"That's not a genuine anything. You got that ten for a dollar at the knockoff store. No way you can get real My Little Pony anything ten for a dollar."
"But with the magic of friendship, anything is possible! I know I can do it somehow. Even if I have to try it a million times, and sacrifice the blood of a million different popsicles and stuff--"
"What, you got a hundred thousand dollars?"
"I'll make molds from plastic wrap and modeling clay! I'll make my own MLP popsicles, and nopony can stop me! Either I get taken to Equestria, or a million popsicles will DIE!"
Out of a clear blue sky, a bolt of lightning struck the would-be necromancer right on the snoot.
When the second girl woke up, she slowly opened her eyes to behold a scene of devastation. Little plastic toys had been scorched or half-melted, and scattered all around. But some of the toys were missing, as was Morwenna.
"Huh," the girl said. "I guess it's true. Morwenna DID take her favorite toys and go home."
***
In the middle of a suburban landscape, a girl appeared on a sidewalk. A few of her favorite toys lay all around her.
"Ah HA HA HAH HAHAHA!" she said. "I did it! I, Morwenna Thunderwings, have forced the magic of Equestria to do my bidding!"
From behind her, a voice said. "What's an Equestria?"
Morwenna turned to see a boy with light blue skin. "You!" she said. "Undo your deceitful enchantment, and show me your true pony self at once!"
The boy blinked a few times. "True pony self? I'm a boy. A person, just like you. Except I'm not all weird colored like you are. I've never seen anyone who looked like you. And what's that thing on your forehead?"
Morwenna gasped. "It worked! My true unicorn magic is revealed!" She felt her shoulders and back, trying to reach that difficult spot right in the middle. "But I'm not an alicorn. Darn." She took a breath. "I'm not an alicorn YET, I mean. There must be a quest I can do. An artifact I can steal. What Daring Do can do, I can do too."
The boy said, "Daring Do isn't an alicorn, whatever that is. She's a famous archeologist. And I don't think she steals stuff."
"Yes!" Morwenna said. "You've heard of Daring Do! I must be in Equestria. And to prove it, all I have to do is find somepony who isn't using a cowardly disguise spell!"
The boy asked, "'Somepony?'"
"Or somecreature, whatever. That isn't important." Morwenna noticed an approaching bus. She stepped over to a convenient bus stop sign, and held up her hand. The bus stopped, and the door opened.
Morwenna climbed the steps into the bus. The almost humanlike bus driver looked at her expectantly.
"You got the fare?" he asked. "It's a buck for adults, thirty cents for children."
"Morwenna Thunderwings is no child!" the girl proclaimed.
"So it's a buck."
Morwenna turned her head to look at the passengers already on the bus. "Why are you ALL disguised as humans?"
"What were you expecting?" the driver asked. "Flying chipmunks?"
"No, of course not!" Morwenna said in an exasperated tone. "I expected--" She considered. "Is it Halloween here? Or April Fools? Some holiday when ponies disguise themselves as some other kind of creature, and play pranks?"
"Miss, it's All These People On The Bus Don't Want To Be Late Day. So make up your mind. Pay your fare or get off!"
***
As the bus drove away, Morwenna remembered the creatures inside. All those disgustingly HUMANLIKE LOOKING creatures. Almost like herself (which was a terrible disappointment) but so many different colors (the only thing that was as it should be.)
Morwenna gasped. She had suffered a terrible fate.
A fate almost worse than death.
She was in the spinoff series, "Equestria Girls."
Morwenna fell to her knees upon the sidewalk, and screamed. "NOOOOOO!" she shouted at the sky.
"I'm in the worst possible place of all! How could you do this to me, Equestrian magic? Just because I said I would melt a million popsicles, and sacrifice their blood! How could you do this to me? Are you playing a cruel, sick joke against me? No no no no no no no no NOO!"
A maroon-skinned, orange-haired man wearing slacks and a dress shirt said, "Ahem."
"Ahem what?" she whined pitifully. "Ahem welcome to hell? Ahem I'll be your demon today, and would you like to choose from our torture menu? Ahem WHAT?"
The man said, "I'm not a demon. And I don't THINK this is hell. Although, Monday mornings, amirite?"
"Shut up with the jokes, you old codger, and tell me what you want."
"I'd like to move my car. You're blocking my driveway, and I need to go to work."
She sighed. "Ok, fine." She stood up and went onto the lawn. "Is this better?"
"Yes, thank you. I'll be out of your hair in a minute." The man walked to his car, got behind the wheel, carefully backed the car out of his driveway, and drove away. The garage door automatically closed behind him.
Morwenna glared at the garage door as she listened to the hum-whine of the electric motor. "This world even has automatic garage door openers. Nothing special or magical about this world at all."
She noticed the little boy who had talked to her before. He was fiddling with a mobile phone. "But maybe for the first step of my quest, I don't NEED anything magical." She went over to the boy and grabbed his phone away from him. "I just need to borrow this for a minute," she said.
