We were now on our way into the forest, and what an experience it was! The light was incredible! OK, the horn attached to my forehead made some elements of navigation difficult, as I had to ensure I wasn't bumping into things. This was in case it somehow detached from my face, which would expose I truly was not a unicorn.

Which would be awkward.

I tried to move my wings a little, as they were starting to get a bit squished under the fabric, but they were held secure in place. I mean, it possibly wasn't such a good idea to try to move them, as it might expose the truth.

I continued to trot along, before suddenly having an idea. I had been inspired by the light falling down around me, so I grabbed for my phone, or at least where it would normally appear. And then only did I realize it was under my wing, so I couldn't get at it.

Well, that sucked. "Maybe I should take a selfie?" I said, reaching underneath the dress Izzy had fashioned.

Izzy dashed over and held my hoof in place. "I don't think you wanna do that."

I looked at her, confused. "Why not?"

Izzy shook her head, as if the answer should have been obvious. Which it should have been, all things considered. "Unicorns don't have phones. If you do that you'll expose yourself as a pegasus!"

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh. I'd forgotten that. I guess I was just so used to ponies carrying phones about I'd forgotten many groups of ponies don't have them. Then how did these guys talk? Telegram?

I then remembered Izzy was still staring at me, waiting for a reply. So I replied to her. "Ohhhhh. That makes sense."

I resumed walking as Izzy bounced over to Sunny. Normally she'd be bouncing all over the place and trying to point out all the crystals, but I can only assume she'd dropped the act given we were all humans and thus knew the plot. We continued to trot along, looking about.

Hitch then began speaking. "We're on a level page, somewhat, but there are some things that I don't recognise. Lore that has changed since we were in the human world?"

That made sense. The world we were moving through would represent Equestria in its final state, which means that things introduced after we had arrived in the pony world but had always existed in the background would always be here. Interesting. This meant we might not be able to guess all of the elements of the story.

It seems Misty overheard this, and spoke to me. "I heard somepony mention something called a Together Tree a while back. What's one of those?"

I noticed a tree had a door for some reason on my left. Why would a tree have a door? What could possibly be inside a tree that it needs a door to get into?

Meanwhile, Hitch was continuing to look around, and noticed none of the unicorns seemed to be that active. "What's got them down?" he asked. "Why aren't they using magic?"

Suddenly, one of the colts came to life and pointed at Hitch with a wild glare, his face carved into a weird expression. "You said a bad word!" he said to Hitch. "Quick, before we get jinxed!"

I had so many questions. Firstly, what precisely was bad about any of those words? It's not as if Hitch used any expletives- not that all of us are above that, as I'd heard Sunny swearing earlier.

But on top of that, I had noticed something else. This colt was curiously British. And Zipp had used a number of terms from British English when we'd been chatting, such as 'loony bin'. Did this mean, perhaps, the British had arrived in this land?

Hopefully they'd love my do then.

Anyway, the colts started doing the strange ritual before returning to doing nothing. Yeah, that was seriously weird. I can see why that merited an entry on the movie's Nightmare Fuel page on the TV Tropes entry.

Hitch looked at us, looking a bit embarrassed. "Sorry. I'd forgotten about the jinxies. Remind me what they are again?"

Izzy was about to speak, but then Misty got the words in before her. "They're forbidden words." She then noticed we were staring at her. "What? I'm just filling in Zipp's lines of dialogue!"

Izzy looked at her, a little concerned. "Perhaps break the fourth wall a little less?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Funny that, coming from you."

"Perhaps you could tell us what the jinxies are? I could use a refresher on that front." Oh. I'd forgotten Sprout was with us. He'd been so quiet the entire time, you know?

Luckily, Izzy was more than happy to explain. "Wing, feather, magic, mayonnaise."

When I'd first watched the film, I'd wondered why mayonnaise was on the list. But now I knew why. "Yeah, we know the reason why now."

"Reason for what?" Izzy asked.

I glanced at Hitch, and nodded.

He nodded back and began to speak. "Why unicorns seem to be so afraid of ma-"

No! I didn't mean for you to say the word itself, you idiot!

Luckily, Izzy got there first and slammed her hoof over his mouth. "I don't think you want to say that out loud."

Now that all that was done, we went on our way and stepped into the tearooms, which seemed a lot more inviting than the rest of the forest to an extent. When we stepped inside, the room was warmly lit. Ponies were sat around tables, and on the stage a jazz band was playing bebop at a very fast tempo. Shame it's not danceable. I can see why mom prefers swing to bebop for that reason. But that's for a reason I'll explain later.

We stopped around a table, and Izzy chatted with a unicorn who had just lost to Alphabittle. It seemed that Alphabittle was a champion of solving puzzles and stuff like that. Well, as long as he went nowhere near mom I was happy.

Sunny then set her plan into motion, and trotted over to sign a piece of paper. But as she did so, I noticed she was doing something wrong. The numbers weren't right!

I tried to call over to her, but the band drowned my voice out. Sunny had made quite a costly mistake, and it could cost us.

As per the film, Alphabittle challenged Sunny to the Ultimate Challenge, or a dancing game. Little did he know we had an ace up our sleeves.

Sunny hopped on the machine and got to busting out combos. It was poetry in motion watching her demolish her competition. You go, girl!

"Keep it up, Sunny!" Izzy called.

"That's the spirit, Sunny! Let the rhythm take you over!" I called. Sunny wasn't struggling, but I felt some encouragement would help her nonetheless. After all, every little helps!

"I'm certainly feeling it!" Sunny called back, clearly having the time of her life. The combos were flying past so quickly the gerbils operating the machine were struggling to keep up.

Alphabittle was puffing and panting as well, clearly amazed somepony was outdoing him on the dance floor. "How... is... she... doing... this?" he wheezed, as his face went increasingly red. "I've... never... seen... somepony... play... this... well?"

Moments later, it was over. The winner's flag deployed for Sunny!

She seemed to stare in disbelief at what was on the display, almost as if she was struggling to register she had won.

And then her face erupted into one of the biggest grins I have ever seen. "Yes! Only had to win one round!"

We gathered together and celebrated like friends (which we were). Stage one complete. All we need to do is go back to Izzy's house, put all three crystals together, and we have our magic back!

During our celebrations, though, something fell over and landed on the floor. I glanced down and spotted it looked like the horn Sunny had been wearing.

I then looked up, and saw Sunny's horn was gone. Something had knocked it off!

She glanced down and up, and her face switched from elated to scared. "Oh shit."

Alphabittle then lumbered over. We had numbers, but he was bigger than us and could probably beat the stuffing out of any of us. "Just as I suspected. An earth pony. Now give me back my crystal, and the other one too."

Sunny looked like she was about to pee herself in fright. "B- but I won!"

"No you didn't," Alphabittle replied. "The paperwork you signed specified any unicorn who wins. You aren't a unicorn, so cannot win by default. That and you tricked me. I know exactly what you are."

Izzy tried to calm the situation down, but Alphabittle shushed her. "You're a spy, purple mare. I always knew you were an earth pony. Your tiny brain clearly couldn't spot we sign with the day first, not the month."

Sunny gulped. "Look, maybe we can come to a deal-"

"There is no deal, spy. The only thing we do with spies is string them up- we have plenty of trees to hang your kind from. Did you really think we'd let you go and report back to your spymaster especially given Fillydelphia recently started rearming?"

Oh, now we really were up the creek. In that moment I decided to do stick up for my friend.

Author's Note

Almost there now to wrapping up this week's leg for of Pipp. =3