“Dear Celestia, what have I done…”

As she speaks, the creature stops what it is doing and freezes, standing up straight again and turning towards her. More accurately, its head turns towards her, followed by the rest of its body in a separate and disturbingly fluid motion.

“An excellent question!” He said brightly, a finger raised in the air before he brings the arm lofting it swinging down in front of him across his chest. “What did you do because ha-cha-cha, I feel fucking ama-hay-zing. The creature said with a flourish as it looked down at Twilight and Spike.

“Well whatever it is, at least it seems friendly…” Spike said warily as he inspected the odd being, one brow raised as a claw felt at the leg of his pants curiously.

“Who-ho! Hey there, easy with the claws now, Puff,” he said, pulling away, causing Spike to fall facefirst onto the floor as the creature lifted a leg slightly. “I don’t know where I got these choice duds, but I’d like to keep them tidy for a bit.”

Spike picked himself up off the floor, shooting the entity a dirty look and looking over at twilight with a shrug. “Well...kinda friendly, I guess. Twi, you have any idea what we’re lookin at here?”

“Now Spike, that’s very rude. This is a sentient being, they are a who, not a what.” She said as she trotted a bit closer to the creature. “My name is Princess Twilight Sparkle. On behalf of the Celestial Diarchy, I would like to formally welcome you to the nation of Equestria.” Twilight said while giving her best work-in-progress public relations smile. “I apologize if being summoned has caused you any inconvenience, I simply wished to conjure a creature from a parallel universe to study. I can send you back to wherever you came from after we are finished…hopefully." She said under her breath as she looked them up and down.

The creature shrugged, throwing his hands up and giving her what seemed to be a vexed expression. “Eh, I mean, it’s really no skin off of my back. To be fair, I have no idea what the fuck is going on. I ain’t even got a name as far as I know.” they said as they reached deeeeeeeep into their pocket and rummaged around, a loud clanking and rattling and a muffled meow sounded from within the pocket before he pulled out a wallet, flipping it open, only for a poof of dust and a few moths to erupt from the empty container.

“Huh...no ID. No dosh either…” he said with a small sigh, shrugging as he stretched his pocket unreasonably wide and dropped the wallet back in before letting the opening snap closed back into shape.

Twilight was watching all of this with mild discomfort, her eye twitching slightly as she processed what she was seeing. She had to remind herself, deep, easy breaths, just like the therapist told her. “Well, we can figure that out a bit later, for now, I suppose if you do not have a name, we should figure out what to call you.”

“Honestly, I sort of like that one.” He said with a small grin as he leaned forward a bit to look down at her

“What?” Spike said confused, tilting his head slightly and scratching his chin, giving the creature a puzzled look.

“Yeah, that one! How about, ‘Mister What’” he said, snapping his fingers with a smile. As he snapped, in a puff of blue smoke, what seemed to be an identification card with his face on it appeared in his hand.

“Ah, friggin sweet!” he said with a smile, his wallet seeming to leap from his pocket again to snap the card up in its leathery little mouth “Ah shit!” he cried softly as he watched it dive back down into his pocket and growl softly before wiggling down into the hole and disappearing.

“....Well, that settles that, I suppose. SPIKE! A moment please, in private?” She asked him as without asking, she lifted the baby dragon in her magical grasp and proceeded to pull him towards the basement “We will be right back, Mister What. Please wait here.”

The creature smiled and waved at them cheerfully and took a seat in midair as the two of them closed the door to the basement stairwell and walked down to the bottom, Twilight’s horn glowing to illuminate Spike and herself.

“So uh...he sure is a weird one huh?” Spike said, breaking the silence first as he looked back up at the door at the top of the stairs, shivering slightly.

“He’s more than weird, he seems to have some sort of reality-warping ability, at least a B class phenomenon, Like Pinkie Pie.” She said as she gave a worried look towards the door along with her assistant. I hope it’s only like Pinkie Pie…” She said, her eyes falling back on her head slightly.

“Well, at least he’s really handsome, huh?” Mister What said as he leaned down to have his head between the two of them, an arm around either one of them at the neck, hand on each a shoulder. So, what were we talking about?”

The two of them screamed and jumped back a bit, Twilight’s eye twitching a bit harder as she stumbled back from the creature “Mister What, I asked you to stay up there!”

“What are you talking about, I’m still up there, watch!” He said with a smirk as he raised a hand to his mouth and called out “YO! WHAT, you still up there?”

The door to the stairwell opened and a second Mister What appeared in the doorway and called back “Yeah, just raiding the fridge, all this broad has is vegetables. Fuckin weaksauce.”

The Mister What in the basement smiled in a content, smug manner and crossed his arms. “See! I’m a good boy who didn’t do nothin.”

Spike raised a brow, crossing his own arms as he gave them a doubtful look. “What did uh...you just say about raiding our fridge?”

Mister What gave a small pout at this. “Hey! Just because we are literally the same person occupying two spaces at the same time, that doesn’t make me responsible for his actions!”

“Yeah!” The other Mister What upstairs echoed indignantly through a mouthful of carrot.

Twilight for her part was agog. Even Pinkie couldn’t be in two places at once. Not without….

She shuddered as she tied to repress her memories of the mirror pool incident. Whatever this creature was, it had reality-warping abilities and was possibly approximately as magically potent as an alicorn. It certainly was worth studying! But how was she going to get it to cooperate. She could always try asking.

“Er….that’s fine Mister What, I can always get more food.” She said as she trotted back closer to him “Though if you would be willing to repay me for the snack by allowing me to study you a bit, I would very much appreciate it. I mean, that is why I summoned you in the first place after all.”

He seems to think about it a bit, scratching his chin before nodding with a slightly unsure expression “alright, But I don’t do needles, and probing costs extra.”

“Hey, I found Ice Cream!” The one upstairs declared happily “What the fuck kind of flavor is….’Ruby Chunk Delight’.”

CRUNCH

CRUNCH

“Hey, not bad!”

“NOOOO-smack-OOOOOOO!” Spike cried out, scrambling up the stairs and faceplanting halfway up before continuing as if nothing had happened as he tried his best to make it up to the kitchen before this strange creature could devour his secret stash, slamming the door behind him.

As the sounds of muffled argument come from the kitchen, Mister What shrugged and looked back down at the little purple pony “So yeah uh...if you let me stay at your place till we get all of this figured out, I’ll let you run your tests, sound fair, Issac Neighton?”

“Twilight actually,” she said, mildly annoyed as she reluctantly nodded. “I suppose that is only fair, you have a deal, Mister What.”

The door slammed open again, and Spike came sailing down the stairs, an empty circular ice cream container lodged overtop his head as he lands on the basement floor, balanced upside down on the bottom of it and giving a small groan as he says “Heh...I showed him, got my ice cream back…”

Twilight groaned softly as Mister What gave her a nonplussed look and shrugged again, rolling her eyes. She could already tell this was going to be a very long study.

Author's Note

And there is another one! I have to say writing this sort of thing is quite a refreshing departure from my usual more structured affair.