Reduplicate

by TheNitroPony

Rating: teen
Tags: Tragedy, Alternate Universe, Human
Length: 23743

Waking up in Equestria as one of the background characters from Friendship is Magic may seem like a wonderful opportunity. And I would agree with you, if I weren't slowly losing myself to the pony whose body I'm in.

At first, it looked like the biggest challenge to waking up in Equestria in the body of one of the many background characters would be convincing Twilight Sparkle that we were actually humans. It seemed that if we could stick together through this, nothing would go wrong.

The next morning, two of them acted like they had never been human.

I'm scared.

–

New cover art credit to John Joseco.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2015-06-20 20:13:21 UTC

What the Deuce

If I don't have something or someone waking me up, then I have problems with finding the willpower to crawl out of bed. It's a rare occasion where I can manage to do so without falling on the floor.

So I was surprised when I woke up on my own time from a dreamless sleep, feeling refreshed and invigorated. I caught a glimpse of the mussed mane frizzled out beside my head, reminding me of the past day, but after a moment I decided to ignore it for the time being.

I was in a bedroom, with walls of wood and bookshelves. Ledges stocked with covers flashed unfamiliar titles. The ceiling cut off harshly with a level of raw wood, marked with darker rings of age. Staring at the trunk above me, I perceived the image of a rainbow, colored brown, stretching across the wooden sky.

I fumbled around the covers—it looked as though I'd tossed and turned a bit—and set myself down on the floor. Gasping from the cold, I shuffled my hooves to warm them up and looked up to see a number of makeshift beds rolled out on the floor. Another twin-sized bed held the sleeping form of Lyra, and the others were strewn about in sleeping bags or floor mattresses. Cricking my neck, I walked over to Lyra and gently nudged her.

Lyra groaned and worked herself deeper into the bedsheets. Further efforts to get the stubborn unicorn up did nothing, so I placed a hoof gently around her shoulders and shook her.

I was just about to put my other hoof around her when I snapped my head back. A few panics and fears melted through my mind, but chief among them was what would possess me to get so… close?

I backed away from Lyra, accidentally tripping over something and falling backwards. The object groaned and mumbled a few words that sounded suspiciously like "what the f– gah." Berry Punch batted at the air with one of her forelegs and smushed her face deeper into her pillow. "Leave me alone."

I righted myself and pushed myself off the ground, numbly watching as Berry squirmed. I wasn't really thinking, or trying to think. I was trying to drown my experience with Lyra beneath a sea of suppression, taking deep breaths and emptying my mind. I rubbed the last traces of sleep from my eyes, and the world became sharper, clearer, and more real.

My strange meditation wavered from the sound of a pony rousing herself, and I caught a blue-and-white mane peeking out from the cover sheet of one of the floor mattresses. Turning my head, I examined Minuette as she rose. Her mane was disheveled, a mess instigated by negligence and compounded by bedhead. A faint, unfamiliar scent wafted over to me as she stretched her legs and yawned. Smacking her lips, she saw me looking at her, and reciprocated interest. "Good morn… ing?" Minuette did a double take, scanning the ponies sleeping, then removed herself from her own setup, backing away cautiously.

"Minuette?" I asked, having no idea of what she would be reacting to.

"Where am I?"

"Um, Twilight's house?" I phrased it as more of a question than a statement.

Minuette blinked at me. "Why?"

The cold air clutched at my body, and I didn't move a hair. I gulped. "What?"

"Why are we in Twilight's house? I don't remember getting here."

I stood there, sucking in icy breaths. Minuette's eyes widened, and her eyes started darting around the unfamiliar room. "Why are we in Twilight's house?"

"B-Because we're humans!" In my rising hysteria, I began stuttering my words.

"We're what?" Minuette looked at me uncomprehendingly.

"Oh no, oh no no no no no," I babbled, before hustling back over to the other unicorn in the room. "Lyra," I whispered loudly, shaking her. "Lyra, Lyra!"

"Unf, come on, give me five minutes," came the reply, as Lyra wiggled away from my touch.

Losing my patience, I grabbed Lyra and dragged her back with me onto the floor. "Ow, hey, what's the big idea?!"

"Something's wrong with Minuette," I squeaked, gesturing at the unicorn standing against the wall, looking at us with a blank expression shaded by bewilderment. "She can't remember anything that happened yesterday."

"Ugh, why do we have to deal with it?"

"Because!" I yelled, clasping Lyra. "This is a problem!"

"Aah! Okay, okay!" Lyra shouted, wrestling free from my grip. "Why is this a problem?"

"Because- well, you should know!"

"Know what? You're just yelling at me that Minuette has memory problems! How am I supposed to go off of that?! And where are we, anyway?" Lyra began looking around the room.

I shrieked and backpedaled, tripping over Berry Punch a second time.

"Ow, would you please stop doing that!" Berry thrust her covers back, glaring at me with drowsy eyes. "Seriously, is it too much to ask for you to stop screaming and falling on me?!"

"B… Berry?" I whispered. "Do you… remember yesterday?"

The earth pony snorted. "Not likely I'll forget it. Now shut up."

"No! There's something wrong with Lyra and Minuette," I said before she could slink back beneath the sheets. "They have no idea how they got here, and Minuette's not telling me every sentence her name is Colgate."

Berry Punch groaned, and pulled herself to a sitting position. "What?"

I seized Berry's shoulders, staring into her eyes. "Lyra and Minuette don't remember they were human."

"Oh, sh–… That better not happen to me," Berry rasped, pushing herself off of the floor onto all fours.

Lyra forced herself between Berry Punch and I, shooting each of us an intense, questioning glance. "Okay, I don't know what's going on, but can somepony please tell me what all the fuss is about?" Berry Punch recoiled away, and Lyra turned to face me head-on. "Sweetie, what the hay is this?"

I swallowed down a lump of fear. "Um, okay, Lyra, I don't know how much you remember, but yesterday you, and I, and Minuette and Berry Punch, and those two I guess"—I waved a hoof towards the two bunches of blankets still covering ponies—"all woke up here, in bodies that weren't ours. We found each other here, in the library. We were all humans."

Lyra cocked an eyebrow. "Really? Um, I mean, I thought that wasn't your thing."

"What's all the talk about humans?" Minuette asked, joining our unofficial huddle. "That's just a story, right?"

"As far as I know," Lyra said. "I mean, yeah, it's awesome, but as much as I hate to admit it, it's all just hearsay."

I withdrew from the two unicorns as they talked, and went over to where Berry Punch was watching with a flicker of horror. "See Berry? They're acting like they were never human!"

"Well, um, maybe the real ones got back in their bodies somehow?" Berry alternated between a perturbed look at the unicorns and a hopeful look at me.

I thought of Lyra and how I'd almost hugged her for no reason. "I think… we might be changing into the ponies."

Knowing how Berry Punch reacted to not remembering her own name, I probably shouldn't have said that.

Berry Punch's voice cracked as she squawked in panic, and the earth pony threw her forelegs around me in a bear hug before hopping over to the door. "WE'VE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE!" Berry's eyes were wide, looking from me to the unicorns to the door as I struggled in her tight grip, wrestling against the crazy pony's hooves and my own rising feelings of alarm.

Berry stepped on one of my back legs and tripped, bringing us into a knot as she fell on top of me. She hugged me, whimpering into my back, as I fought against her squeezing.

"What's going on?!" The cry issued from the other end of the room, and Thunderlane shimmied off his blankets to see me and Berry Punch awkwardly hugging and the unicorns' stunned observance. Thunderlane paused, and I took the opportunity to break free of Berry's chokehold. The earth pony scooted away, slamming into the wall before curling up in a defensive position.

"Thunderlane? Do you remember yesterday?" I fought to keep my voice from trembling, but I knew it was clear that I was afraid.

Thunderlane considered my words for a moment. "Yeah, why?"

"Because these two don't," I answered, gesturing to the two unicorns.

"I don't understand. What's so special about yesterday again?" Minuette responded. "If you could start making sense of-"

"Hold on," Thunderlane interrupted. "You're telling me that these two have no recollection of anything whatsoever of yesterday?"

"And their human lives," I shakily added. I could see in my mind Lyra and Minuette's stares focused on the back of my head.

Thunderlane broke our gaze to inspect the two unicorns. "In that case, we may have a problem."

"You think?!" Berry exclaimed, shoving me aside. "We could just forget who we are! We could… could… die!"

Thunderlane shrank back, jerking away from Berry's anger. "Okay, plan time. What do we do?"

"We find out what's going on, right now!" Lyra answered. "I don't know what all this is about us being humans, but this prank or whatever it is has gone too far!"

"But it's not a prank!" I cried back, having returned to the conversation after Berry had knocked me away. "This is serious business, Lyra, as trite as it sounds."

Lyra didn't answer. Indecision and suspicion dwelt in her expression.

"Please, Lyra," I implored. "I need you to go with me on this. Please, just once."

The sound of Lyra exhaling pierced the disconcerting quiet. Lyra opened her mouth. "I… think you and I are going to need to talk about this." She turned away from me and walked to the only door in the room. "I'll be outside." Lyra's horn glowed, and the doorknob twisted in a green aura before the door pushed open. The unicorn stepped outside, leaving the door ajar.

Giving one glance at the ponies around me, I followed Lyra outside the door to a corridor without a wall, wrapping around the inner trunk before descending down to the library proper, rooted into the side of the tree. Lyra sat in front of me, remaining motionless but for the pricking of her ears at my arrival. I remained standing, and the open room bore down with its cozy atmosphere until Lyra spoke.

"Sweetie…" Lyra paused, then continued with a quavering voice: "You've always said that you thought that the whole 'hu-mare' thing was entertaining, after a fashion, but not your thing, and I've always respected that decision. I know you aren't too impressed with the whole deal, and I can always feel your mild disapproval, even if you never talk about it. But you've always said that I can do what I want and as long as I'm happy, you are, and that means a lot to me. Sure, you poke fun at me for it, but I always know that it's just that, poking fun." Lyra turned her head to look at me, her eyes burning with doubt. "But when you're doing something like this, it's not funny. It's mocking me, in a very personal way. If this really is just a joke, stop it, please. It's hurting me."

I choked down the uneasiness of seeing Lyra so distrustful—so accusatory—and sat down in front of her, pulling her shoulder so that her body faced me. "Lyra, I'm not lying to you about this. It's too important. I need you to trust me when I say that it's true that yesterday, you were just a very confused person trapped in a body that wasn't yours. I need you to trust me when I say that I don't want to see that confused person get lost in some limbo somewhere, alone in the dark. I just… need you to trust me."

Lyra blinked, holding my stare. "Okay. If you're really telling the truth, then I believe you."

I smiled, and we hugged. A part of me flashbacked to when I had almost embraced Lyra trying to get her out of bed, but the majority of my mindset considered the gesture too important, and the situation too serious. I could spare a hug.

After an eternal moment, we stood up together and returned to the guest bedroom. Lyra opened the door for me, and I thanked her before walking in to find Thunderlane, Berry Punch, and Minuette waiting for me.

"So, what happened?" I asked.

"She's on board," Thunderlane replied. "I explained to her the situation, and she's okay with it."

"This is crazy," Minuette added, "but hey, it's crazy in a good way. I like it."

"Okay, cool," I said, not really knowing what else I could say. Something felt off, and as we stood there in indecision I glanced over to the only bedspread not flattened out on a mattress or tossed aside in a heap. "How did Cloudchaser manage to sleep through all our yelling?"

"I don't know, but I guess we should tell her about all this," Thunderlane said quietly, walking over to the bundle.

I turned around to talk to the others for a moment when a yell snapped my attention back to Thunderlane. He was recoiling away from the bundle of blankets.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"She's not in there," Thunderlane said, backing into the wall behind him. "She's gone."

Minuette and Lyra gasped, and Berry Punch sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Where could she have gone?" Minuette asked, trotting over and looking through the covers herself.

"If we knew that, she wouldn't be lost," Berry snapped. "Seriously, think!"

"Hey!" Minuette shouted. "That's not nice!"

"Never mind!" Thunderlane said over both of them. "Minuette, head downstairs and check around the library. I'll go outside and see if I can find her anywhere nearby. The rest of you, stay here and don't fight!"

There was something in Thunderlane's tone when he spoke that I would call "the leader voice." Whenever he barked out orders, the image of a military general would pop into my head. Perhaps because of this, even Berry shut up, and Minuette and Thunderlane both left through the bedroom door.

I sat down on the wood floor, thinking. Lyra began looking around the room, it probably being new to her.

An uncomfortable silence blanketed the room, and the only actions were sighs, sounds of shifting bodies, and the occasional cough. Lyra opened her mouth a few times to say something, or raised a hoof to make a point, but she always stopped herself and continued wandering about.

We stayed there for several minutes before a light tapping came from the window. At first, all of us ignored it, but it became more insistent, until finally Lyra groaned and opened the window with a green flare of magic. Cloudchaser flew in, alighting on the windowsill.

"Cloudchaser? Where have you been?" I asked, walking up to her.

"Oh, this morning seemed so bright and warm that I just had to go on an early fly!" Cloudchaser answered, hopping down and stretching her wings up as she arched her back. "It was great! Sorry I didn't tell anypony, I just couldn't wait to get out there and exercise a bit."

"Well, Thunderlane left to go find you, and now he's probably searching around looking for you somewhere," I said.

"Good, he's not bossing me around," Berry commented. "I don't like his attitude."

"Well, we'd better tell Minuette, at any rate," Lyra interrupted. "Let's go downstairs and meet her."

I began walking towards the door, but was pulled back by my tail. "Ouch!"

"Sorry," Lyra said, levitating over a brush, "but your hair is a mess."

"Wait-ow!"

After Lyra brushed my horribly unkempt mane into something presentable, and chased around Berry Punch trying to fix hers up too until Berry kicked her, we all filed out of the bedroom, descending a level to the main library area. Muted colors of the books' bindings greeted my eyes, and I found myself inhaling the smell of dusty pages. It's really quite refreshing, if you ever get the opportunity to enjoy it.

"Minuette? Twilight Sparkle?" Lyra said, peeking through a door. "Anypony?"

"What's going on, exactly?" I turned to see Cloudchaser looking at me.

"Well, Minuette and Lyra woke up this morning without remembering that they were ever human," I said, feeling a chill run down my spine as I talked about it. The door slammed as Lyra disappeared behind it. "We were hoping that we could ask Twilight about it and maybe stop this mind takeover or whatever it is."

"Sounds bad," Cloudchaser mumbled, licking her lips. "I hope Twilight can fix it; she's awfully smart."

"Yeah," I muttered. "I hope so." Berry didn't say anything, but I could tell from her furrowed brow that she wasn't disagreeing with me.

We stood there for a few moments until we heard voices coming from behind one of the red doors. The door opened, and Twilight and Lyra walked through, talking to each other.

"Oh, look, Cloudchaser's back!" Lyra said.

"Good morning, Cloudchaser," Twilight greeted. "Good morning, Sweetie Drops."

"Who?" I asked, looking around.

"You, silly!" Twilight cocked her head. "Who do you think I was talking to?"

"Wait wait wait," I said, feeling the now-familiar panic rising in my chest. "No, my name's Bon Bon, remember? Right, Lyra?" I looked over at her, desperate for support.

Lyra was looking at me and slightly shaking her head. "No, you're Sweetie Drops."

"No, no, no no NO!" I threw myself at Twilight, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her. "I'm not Sweetie Drops, I'm Bon Bon! I can't be Sweetie Drops! I'm not… I'm not–!"

Twilight's horn glowed, and I was thrust off of her. "Sweetie Drops, I let you off the hook yesterday, but I want to know why you're acting so strange!"

"It's because I don't belong here!" I screamed, locking my front hooves over my hind legs and curling into a ball. "I'm not supposed to be in Equestria, I'm supposed to be on Earth! I'm not supposed to be a pony, but I'm afraid that I'm going to think I'm one! I don't even know my name, and now you're telling me I'm somepony I don't even know! I'm… I'm scared!" I sniffed, and felt my eyes growing wet. "Stupid tears…"

A hoof touched my shoulder. I looked up to see Lyra, smiling encouragingly against the light streaming through the windows. "Hey, don't worry. I'm going to try my hardest to help you get home, okay? I don't want you to lose yourself, either."

Lyra offered me a hoof, and I took it, getting back on four hooves. Lyra drew me closer into a hug, and I returned the gesture, closing my eyes and letting my heart rate return to normal.

We finally broke the hug, and I took one last deep breath before turning to Twilight. "Okay Twilight, we need you to look into finding some way to stop this before things get too far out of hoof." I started, before correcting myself: "Hand. Out of hand."

Twilight either didn't notice my slipup or ignored it. "Okay, let me go look up a few titles that I'm sure will help. Before that, though, I'm sure you're all hungry."

We agreed, and Twilight toasted some bread and served us toast and butter with orange juice for breakfast before leaving us to search the bookshelves. Twilight's little kitchen table was soon filled with smacking and crunching as we all chowed down. A few minutes after everyone finished, I snuck outside the makeshift eating room to see if I could find Twilight. I spotted her at her writing desk, poring over a tome.

"Hey, Twilight," I said, causing the unicorn to jerk her head up, "how are things going?"

"Well, I'm just looking for any possible causes of interspatial or interdimensional travel right now," Twilight replied, pulling another book over with her magic and flipping it open. "There's nothing much when it comes to recorded phenomena, but if I could find everything that's possible, then it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a number of reasons." Twilight looked up from her collection of books. "Do you want to help?"

"Um, sure, let me get the rest of the ponies."

So we began a long, tedious period of research. Berry Punch didn't help much at all, instead choosing to look through books she found funny. Whenever we found something, Twilight would take our books and double-check us before writing it down on a sheet of paper she had. After a few hours, Thunderlane returned to the library and joined us.

At noon, we took a break for lunch. Twilight slapped together some daisy sandwiches, and it tasted just about like what I'd expected two pieces of bread with a daisy in between would taste like. After scarfing it down, we continued looking for material for a couple more hours.

"All right everypony," Twilight said, placing her quill down. "I think we've just about exhausted the possibilities for this."

We all dropped the books we were looking through and gathered around as Twilight began going down the line. "First off, any possible contact between our universes' respective strings. We should probably stick this as a last resort, since it's so unlikely, and doesn't explain why you're ponies."

Everyone nodded.

"Next, magic on the level of one of the Princesses." Twilight's horn glowed briefly, and the unicorn shook her head. "I'm detecting some sort of magical residue on you, but it's faint, and nothing like what I've felt from any alicorn magic." Twilight's face screwed up in confusion. "In fact, I'm not quite sure where it's from; it doesn't feel like any magic I've felt before."

"Then get rid of it," Berry Punch said. "I mean, if it's what's keeping us here, then just trashing the stupid magic'll send us back, right?"

"I'm not sure what'll happen if I do, if I can even figure out how to do it." Twilight put an X next to the second line. "Sure, it might send you back, but it also might accelerate the process that's consuming your minds, or even kill you."

"Okay, never mind," Berry said quickly.

"Possibility three," Twilight continued. "Some higher power deemed it logical to place six humans in pony bodies." The unicorn glanced over at Berry. "We have Berry Punch over here to thank for that suggestion."

"What? It's possible!" Berry crossed her forelegs and grunted. "Sometimes it's just logical to say 'God did it.'"

"Sure it is," Twilight said sarcastically, putting an X next to that choice as well. "Our next option is… that some sort of mental connection bridged the gap between ponies and humans in some way and from this connection switched consciousnesses." Twilight tapped her quill against her head. "This one explains why it's pony-to-human, and I guess vice-versa, but something would have had to have caused it somehow for it to be plausible. Why else would you six be the first for it to happen to, ever?"

"Maybe we're not the first," I pointed out. "Maybe there were others before, but they forgot that they were human too quick to tell anyone, or nopony believed them?"

Twilight's eyes widened. "In that case, we might have a real possibility here." Twilight marked the line with an O, scratching her chin with the tip of the feather. "Our last bit doesn't explain why you woke up as ponies, but it does make sense. It makes the stipulation that during sleep, a sort of 'snap-back' occurs, which does explain the varying levels of change within each of you. The unicorns felt the effect the most, being closely tied to magic." Twilight hummed. "In that case…" Twilight drew a line between both of the O's on the paper. "We might be able to say that the change occurred during sleep, and while you are unconscious there is some sort of transfer between the two hosts."

"Wait, so does that mean I'm sharing my brain with a pony?" Berry Punch asked. "I don't want a pony using my body! It's bad enough that I'm a pony right now!"

"Calm down!" Twilight said. "If this hypothesis is right, then you might not have to worry; this problem could just correct itself."

"So we just wait?" I asked, suspicious yet hopeful that it could be that easy.

"It looks like it," Twilight mused. "In any case, it doesn't look like anything I could just wave my horn at."

"Well, in that case I guess I'm going home," Cloudchaser said.

"Me too," Thunderlane added. "I can go with you."

"Same here," Minuette chipped in.

"Sweetie, if you want to go home too, you can go with me," Lyra offered, looking at me.

"I suppose," I said. "Not like there's any point in just standing around."

"Hey, what about me?!" Berry Punch demanded. "I don't even know where I live in this stupid world!"

"Woah there, bucko," Thunderlane said. "You don't have to leave the library."

"And get stuck with this pony?" Berry gestured at Twilight. "Not likely."

"You can come with us," I said. I noticed Lyra raising an eyebrow at me out of the corner of my eye, but I ignored it.

Berry snorted. "Yeah, sure, whatever. At least you're sane, for the most part."

"…Says the pony who freaked out over something that wound up just being something that'll go away after a while," Lyra finished, rolling her eyes.

"Hey, you know what?" Berry yelled, leaping over to Lyra and shoving a hoof in her face. "You can just shut the f–…" Berry gritted her teeth. "You can just shut up. I don't care about you, okay? So you can just shut up!"

Lyra walked away, a disdainful look on her face. "I'll be glad when the real Berry Punch is back; she's a lot nicer than you." Lyra exited the library, leaving the door to swing shut.

I opened my mouth to say something, but shut it after a moment. Nothing that I could say would really help the situation.

"Well, I guess we'll be leaving," Thunderlane said, putting a hoof on Cloudchaser's shoulder. "See ya, Twilight."

"Bye," Twilight responded as the two flew out an open window.

"I guess we'd better get going too," I said, looking at the doorway.

I left Golden Oaks Library and caught up to Lyra walking back towards our house. After a few blocks, I saw Berry Punch following us out of the corner of my eye, but didn't mention it to Lyra.

We were heading down a relatively quiet street when a call of "Oh Lyra! Sweetie Drops!" brought our attention to Rarity, waving at us down a ways. We walked over to her, and greeted her.

"Oh, Lyra, how is that dress I made for you last week?" Rarity asked.

"Oh, it's just wonderful Rarity!" Lyra exclaimed. "You always make the best dresses; I'd say you're the best in all of Equestria!"

"Well, I don't know about that," Rarity said, looking off to the side with a reserved toss of her mane, "but I do put my best effort into every dress I make, especially so for friends!"

Tuning out the fashion talk, I looked back at Berry Punch, hiding in an alleyway perpendicular to the street and peeking out at us.

"Hey, Berry!" I shouted, getting the attention to the two unicorns next to me. "Come out and get over here!"

Berry glowered at me, before slowly walking over to our little group. "What'd you have to do that for?"

"Oh Berry, how are you?" Rarity said, in full girl-mode. "I haven't seen you for a while. How's business?"

"How's what?"

Rarity blinked. "The business, you know?"

"No idea what you're talking about, lady," Berry said, examining the tip of her hoof as if it were her nails.

"Berry!" Lyra hissed. Awkwardly laughing, she turned back to Rarity. "You'll have to excuse her, I think she had a funny turn today."

"Funny turn?!" Berry Punch cried out, ignoring Lyra's desperate hoof gestures. "If you'll excuse me, I was a human two days ago, for crying out loud!"

Rarity stared at us. Berry stared at Rarity. Lyra stared at Berry. I stared at my hoof, as it was now resting firmly on my nose.

"…I don't quite know what to think of that," Rarity finally said.

"Well, we'll just be on our way, then," Lyra said, shoving me along the street. "Thanks for chatting with us, Rarity."

"Uh, sure thing, my pleasure," Rarity replied. "We'll talk later!"

"See ya!" Lyra pushed me harder.

"Ouch! Okay, I can walk myself, thank you!" I jumped away from the unicorn's prodding.

"I just want to get away from that Berry!" Lyra whispered. "She's acting terribly!"

"Well, maybe if you were in the same situation, you wouldn't be the model of manners, either!" I retorted.

"That still doesn't excuse all of her flippant comments! I'm tired of it!"

"And I'm tired of you not considering the fact that-"

"What facts?! She was being extremely disrespectful, how's that for a fact!"

"Lyra, do not shout at me-"

"Hey, hey, hey, whoa, no need to argue!" Berry Punch shouted, jumping in between us. "We can all be turds!"

Lyra's face turned red, and a hoof smacked Berry across the face. The earth pony spun around, dropping to the ground.

Lyra's jaw worked for a few moments, before she finally spoke. "Look, I'm not getting into a fight with you, but you seriously need to be taken down a few pegs. And I'm not letting you in my house, ever again." Lyra turned and began marching off towards home. "Come on, Sweetie."

I shot Berry an apologetic look before hurrying after Lyra.

We walked in silence until we reached our house. It was a small confections store, specializing in hard candies and certain baker's goods on-demand. These thoughts came to me from out of the blue as I opened the door, and I felt myself shudder.

Another chill passed through my body as I realized that I had opened the door with my mouth and didn't think twice about it.

Biting my lip, I breezed through the kitchen into the living room, where I sat down on the couch and tried to relax for a bit.

I must have dozed off for a while, because the next thing I remember is Lyra shaking me and telling me it's time for dinner.

We ate a supper of spaghetti with macaroni and cheese on the side; a little strange, but typical fare coming from Lyra.

I sighed as yet another fact about Sweetie Drops' life popped into my head. I wasn't sure if this was going to happen all the time, but remembering things that I know I didn't experience wasn't calming me down.

Lyra cleared her throat after swallowing a mouthful of lettuce. "Sweetie, I want to ask you something."

I paused in the middle of reaching for my glass of water. "Yeah?"

Lyra wiped her mouth off with a napkin. "What's it like? Being a human, I mean."

I took a moment to think. "Well, what do you want to know?"

"I'm not sure. Something about, just, your regular schedule, I guess."

So I talked to Lyra about having to drag myself to school early in the morning, and staying up until midnight surfing the Internet until I forced myself to do my homework. I told her about my family, how I loved them very much and missed them greatly. I went on about my friends, how some of them I kept near because they enjoyed my presence and laughed with me, and others because we could share silence in each others' company. I discussed chores I did for an allowance, and jobs that I did because my parents simply asked me to.

In return, Lyra told me about her interest in humans. The whole thing had started with an elaborate hoax that a construction worker and accomplice set up, and from there exploded into a full-blown following. I guess I could compare it to crop circles, or something similar; Lyra talked about various possible influences ancient humans might have had on modern pony culture, and the funny thing is that most of it didn't seem too far off. I laughed when she said that humans might have looked like swollen horses with slender limbs and gigantic heads, a quadruped version of a Roswell alien; she laughed when I recounted the entirety of yesterday and came to the part when I cheered up Pinkie Pie by falling down all over.

We continued talking until Lyra looked up at a clock on the wall. "Sheesh, is it already that late?" The hour hand was sitting over the ten. "We'd better get to sleep. We can talk more tomorrow, okay?"

I nodded, and the two of us began prepping ourselves for bed. Lyra had to remind me of my supposed "routine," but a couple times when I wasn't paying attention I moved on to what I was supposed to do next without Lyra's prompting, or did something that I shouldn't have known to do. My flares of fear had subsided into uncomfortable twinges every time it happened, as I slowly accepted the fact that Sweetie Drops's life was mine, at least for the time being.

Lyra yawned as she threw back the blankets on her bed. "Alright, I guess I'm going to sleep. You gonna stay up?"

"I don't think so," I answered, snuggling under my own covers. "I'm pretty tired."

"Okay then, goodnight Sweetie."

Lyra clicked off the bedside lamp, and darkness consumed the room. I stared up at the ceiling, wide-awake but feeling like I just wanted to sleep.

When I had first woken up in Equestria, I felt that it was a little scary, not to mention rough, but a beautiful opportunity. Now, I viewed it as a curse, slowly ripping my mind away from me and devouring it. My mouth went dry as I thought of the day before; Minuette was so agreeable now, so passive. After all of our arguments, her disappearance just left a hole. I hoped that empty feeling wouldn't grow, but a small part of me whispered evil possibilities into my head that I would only be able to watch as the rest of the ponies I knew as humans slowly faded, leaving me to struggle alone. My darkest thoughts murmured that I'd have to watch myself begin to doubt my human identity, and inevitably let it float away, into a limbo of outcast souls.

I eventually managed to drop off, but not without at least an hour of tossing and pulling up the sheets, and several long looks at my hooves that were quickly becoming familiar to me.

A Strange Tertian Harmony

I stirred myself awake, groggy with morning's lethargy. Falling off the bed to my hooves, I smacked my lips as I went downstairs, yawning and blinking the whole way. Setting some water in the coffee pot, I inserted the ground beans and took a position in front of the machine, waiting for it to finish.

"Hey, Sweetie." The voice broke through my nap, snapping me into consciousness. I glanced over to see Lyra standing next to me, looking drowsy but rested. "I guess you fell asleep making the coffee, huh?"

I looked back over to the coffee pot, now full. "Uh, yeah, I guess I did."

Lyra chuckled. "Well, let's make some food, shall we?"

We assembled a breakfast of cinnamon toast and strawberries, and I poured us both some coffee so that we could begin waking up.

It took me a couple of sips before I realized that I was drinking coffee, a liquid that I never took as a stimulant before in my life. The fears of yesterday returned, and my simple morning with Lyra transformed into another consequence of Sweetie's meshing with my own self.

"Are you okay, Sweetie? You've been staring at that coffee mug for like, a whole minute."

I pulled myself out of my thoughts to see Lyra with a playful smile. "Oh, yeah, I'm just fine. Just, um, thinking."

"Well, what'cha thinkin' about?" Lyra rested her elbows on the table, drawing her face into an open smile.

I sighed, slipping into my own seat. "Lyra, how long have we known each other?"

Lyra paused, putting a hoof to her chin. "Um, let's see, I moved here… about three years ago, I'd say… and filed as a tenant about a half-month after that. So, I'd say yeah, three years. Why?"

I shivered despite the hot coffee burning in my stomach. "Because it's starting to feel that way, like you're a friend that I've forgotten now but once knew, and one detail would bring it all into light. But I'm afraid to remember. You're in the back of a lion's throat, and I'm terrified that it'll bite off my head.

"I..." I choked up, trying to keep bitter coughs from squeezing through my knotted vocal chords. "I can't remember my mom's name. My human mom. I remember her face, I remember her crying with joy when I got first place in the regional spelling bee, but I can't even remember her first name. And I can't remember what my dad looked like. My pony dad has a blue mane and a yellow coat but I don't remember if my human dad had black or brown or blonde hair. Maybe he was bald. I don't even remember some things about what I used to look like.

"Lyra... I'm scared."

Lyra bit her lip, looking down at the table and scratching a pristine section of it in an idle, deliberate fashion. "I'm so sorry, Sweetie..." She then draped a hoof around my shoulders, pulling me in for a hug. I clasped onto her and let one or two tears leak out onto her chest, but broke the embrace after a few moments so we could eat our breakfast.

An uncomfortable silence followed. Lyra munched quietly on a slice of toast.

I gazed into the brown detritus at the bottom of my coffee cup, hoping that I could find some sort of strange tealeaf message to reassure me. All I saw was an upside-down rainbow, made up of the last solids of the drink spread out on the lower half of the bottom. I swirled the cup's contents around, mixing in the sediment with the last remaining liquid, before downing the rest of it in a gulp.

"Sweetie Drops," Lyra said, "do you want to go do something today? I mean, we can go to the park, or just walk around Ponyville, or…"

Lyra stopped as if she expected an answer from me, but I didn't interrupt her. I clenched the mug in my hooves, a part of me wanting to punch it through the wall for some reason.

"I think I'm just going to lay in bed for a while," I finally said. "Try to clear my head. Maybe I'll feel up to it later."

We finished up our glum breakfast. Lyra said she was going to the park with her lyre, and I grunted in response, already heading to the bedroom. Flopping onto my bedsheets, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, hoping that the smells and sounds of early Ponyville coming from the window would keep my nerves from fraying entirely.

After lying there for a while, listening to the steady tick of the clock on the nightstand and not thinking about much in particular, I focused my attention on the writing desk tucked in the corner. I got up from bed and walked over, pulled out a piece of paper, and began writing a letter out with my mouth, panic over the ease of doing so now just a dull, resigned acknowledgement.

After a few minutes of drafting, writing, crossing out, and restarting, I folded the finished note in three and slid it beneath my blanket. I'd get it later. For now, I was going to the park to pick up Lyra, then head to Twilight's to update her about things, and maybe find another pony with whom I could share last dreams and wishes with before I forgot them.

Locking the confectionery's door behind me, I began trotting towards Lyra's usual stamping grounds. Taking a deep breath, I did my best to enjoy the day, which was actually quite beautiful. The pegasi had apparently scheduled sunny skies for the prior couple of days; I counted myself fortunate that I at least could experience Equestria at its most heavenly before I lacked the capacity to know any better.

Entering the arch announcing the entryway to the Ponyville Town Park, I looked around for where Lyra might have picked a spot to play at. Spotting a slowly rocking green head over a small hill, I circled around to see her sitting on a bench in that unique way of hers, eyes closed, moving her head back and forth as she plucked the strings of her lyre held in her magic. Smiling softly, I kept a bit of distance as I enjoyed her melodies.

She played through a few tunes before noticing me, and smiled back, gesturing for me to come closer. I sat beside her on the bench, breathing deeply and letting the music wash over me.

After a few more songs, my stomach began to request food, so I nudged Lyra and whispered if she wanted lunch. She agreed, and we decided to eat at a cafe rather than return home today.

It seemed like Lyra still felt guilty about me dealing with identity loss, as she offered to pay for anything I wanted, but I insisted that unless some miracle were to occur, I was just going to accept the inevitable. Deep down I knew I didn't believe that, and I think Lyra knew I didn't believe it either, but she dropped the matter and we got our usuals.

Minuette happened by, and we waved, but didn't talk. I honestly didn't know what I'd have said to her if she had stopped to chat. I wasn't sure I knew what I'd say to much of anypony right then, except maybe one.

"We should go to the library," I said, sipping up the last of my ice water. "I want to talk with Twilight."

We paid the bill and headed to the Golden Oaks, saying hi to a few ponies along the way. Some of them I could remember, some of them I couldn't, but I tried not to let it show. Lyra knocked on the library's door, and after a few moments Spike answered it.

"What-? Oh, it's you guys. Boy, you really sent Twilight into a tizzy, she's been researching interspacing-whatever since you left yesterday morning."

"Do you mind if we talk to her?" I asked.

Spike shrugged and stepped aside to let us in, leading us down into the library's basement where Twilight was pointedly glaring back and forth at some scribbled notes, some machine readouts, and a couple of thick books. She remained engrossed in her reading and occasional note-taking until Lyra cleared her throat, startling Twilight out of her work.

"Oh, hello there Lyra, Sweetie Drops. What is it you need? Actually," Twilight interrupted herself, "Sweetie, I looked it up, and the root word for 'hand' comes from a phrase of dragon origin that also gives us the word 'hang,' to answer your question from the other day."

I stared blankly for a second. "Oh, uh, thanks Twilight, but Spike told us you were doing research on the stuff we spent yesterday going through."

"I have," Twilight said, "but you're probably not going to like the answers I have so far."

I gulped involuntarily. "What kind of answers?"

"Well," Twilight replied, turning back to the machine printouts, "I've been looking more deeply into the theory behind spacetime spells and interdimensional dilation. It's a lot of complicated magic stuff, but I wanted to have at least a rough estimate for how long it would take to develop a spell that could at least feasibly warp somepony across timelines."

"Wait, I thought you said interdimensional. So why look at time spells?" Lyra pointed out.

"It's all related," Twilight said, looking back up at Lyra. "I've experimented with time spells before, with... mixed results, and the hang-up is when one tries to remove oneself from a timeline without 'snapping back,' so called, to the main line. Likewise, dimensional travel is possible, but in this case the problem crops up when transporting the consciousness, rather than the body, across dimensions.

"The source of the problem concerns magic's tendency to naturally guide ponies towards certain predetermined actions. Cutie marks involve the same kind of magic, as well as the machinations behind why you're acclimating to the minds of those whose bodies you inhabit, so hopefully I won't have to explain everything there. With time spells, you suffer a snap-back to your original time in addition to all your actions in the different time already being factored into what will happen—a 'self-fulfilling' timeline, if you will—and so a more significant achievement would be a way to modify the past in a way that overrules magic's hold of constancy. It's likely such a breakthrough is impossible with the current understanding of magic."

"So what does this mean for the dimensional half of things?" I asked. Half of what Twilight just said made no sense to me; I just wanted a direct answer.

"As far as I can tell," Twilight said, addressing me, "while bodies can be transported across dimensional boundaries, they suffer the same snap-back repercussions that time spells have. However, there is documentation of magical portals linking dimensions, so it's not entirely theoretical."

"So all we'd need is to find a portal back to where I come from?!" I exclaimed, perking up.

"I don't even know if such a portal exists," Twilight admitted.

"Oh," I said, sagging back down.

"I mean, it could, but dimensional portals are few and far between. Theoretically there are infinite dimensions but you have to formulate a spell for each one, and the formulae are incredibly specific from elementary particle makeup to universe heat distribution. Even if I knew exactly what to look for, the spell would take at least a week."

"A week...?" I muttered.

Twilight visibly winced at my dejected response. "I'm sorry Sweetie Drops, really. I'd get you a portal opened tonight if I could, but I don't have the brain and horsepower to work that fast. This is the kind of magical work that requires high-level unicorns, and if I were to get some associates for Canterlot for help to cut down on the time, I'd waste just as much waiting for them to clear their schedules and visit Ponyville."

I nodded, unable to think of anything to say. We stood there in awkward silence for a while.

"Thanks Twilight," I said after coming to the conclusion that there was nothing to be done. "You don't have to do anything for me."

"Really, I'm-"

"I know," I interrupted. "Really, thank you for all you've done; you've been beyond generous with your time and patience considering the headaches we've given you the past few days."

"If there's anything else I can do," Twilight said, "just ask."

"Alright, Twilight. We will."

We left the library after a few short blunt goodbyes, and I trudged down the street, lost in thought. Lyra hadn't said anything in a while. I knew she wanted to comfort me in some way, but what can you say to a pony without hope?

She eventually seemed to settle with just walking next to me at my pace as we shambled back to our house. I unlocked the door gracelessly and just sat behind the counter as I had before on  many previous occasions and took the opportunity to really examine the storefront for the first time.

"You know, this place is really nice," I said. "I did a good job making it look good."

"Sweetie..." Lyra said, the undertone of trepidation in her voice not escaping me.

"It's fine, Lyra," I said quickly. "It doesn't matter whether I'll get over it or not at this point, because by the time I finally move on from the stage of denial, I won't even remember what it is I was in denial about. I'm mostly Sweetie Drops now at this point anyway, so it's not like there's going to be some big mental battle between psyches."

Lyra grimaced. "I'm still worried for you..."

"Give it another day," I slid through my teeth. "Everything will fix itself. That's what Twilight said yesterday, right?"

"I just..." Lyra sighed, sitting on one of the stools lining the other side of the counter. "Remember when you and I talked last night? About where you came from, about who you were? You had a fire in you. It was exciting. And I don't want to come off like it was a good thing—I wouldn't wish on anypony the kind of crisis you're going through—but the stress really electrified you. You acted so different from the Sweetie Drops I know, so opposite from being practical, so loose, so... inspired. Yesterday morning I was on edge about so suddenly having this massive issue to work out being thrust on our friendship, but by that night I really truly thought we could fix it and there would be a happy ending." Lyra rubbed at a spot on the counter with her hoof. "Guess I figured worlds could collide without the actual collision hurting anyone in the process, heh. Shows what I know."

"Lyra," I said, putting a hoof on her shoulder. "It's fine. Really. Sorry to, uh, disappoint you. But life doesn't really have happy endings."

Lyra stiffened, glancing up at me in alarm and no small amount of hurt.

"And it doesn't have sad endings either," I quickly continued. "It doesn't have any endings, really. Things just happen. You've got to accept fate as it comes and do your best with what you're given."

Lyra chuckled. "Now that's something Sweetie Drops would say."

"Well," I said, "that's not going to be happening any less often."

"Fair enough," Lyra said, shifting on her stool. "But it's not foolish to hope for the best, I don't think. I feel like otherwise would just be giving up."

"I'm not giving up," I murmured. "I'm just accepting the next stepping stone in whatever kind of life this is."

"It's a crazy one if nothing else," Lyra said. I hummed in agreement.

We spent a while longer talking on inconsequential topics before deciding to prepare dinner. Lyra volunteered herself again as chef for the night, but I insisted that I make something this time. She complained a bit, but eventually acquiesced, and I cooked some mushroom stroganoff I rarely made outside of special occasions. Lyra expressed great surprise when I set the sauce and noodles down on the dining table, but I figured she'd be pleasantly impressed if I prepared something a little fancier than usual.

After we finished, I invited Lyra on a postprandial stroll, and we managed to catch the sky a few minutes before Celestia set the sun, so we watched together quietly as the moon slowly rose into the sky and the stars winked into existence. Our moods brightened by the glittering moon, we walked back to the park Lyra likes so much and picked out a bench to enjoy the evening on.

We sat there for nearly an hour, occasionally saying something to each other but mostly just silently taking in the beautiful scene of Ponyville Park at twilight. Lyra eventually spoke up: "Hey Sweetie, want to head back home?"

"Why, are you tired?" I teased.

"A little bit, yes," she admitted.

"Well, I'd like to stay out a little later. If you want to go back home, I'll be back in an hour or so."

Lyra balked at just leaving me alone, but after some insistence that I'd be fine on my own, Lyra left, most likely because she understood this was likely one of the last moments I'd have to myself before it was all over. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the bench, letting out a long breath of air.

After some time of blanking my mind, I finally got up and began the journey back to the house. But halfway there, I heard a familiar voice singing terribly off-key from a house I definitely recognized.

Berryshine's place. Or as we always called her, Berry Punch.

I considered the choice briefly before knocking on her door.

The singing stopped abruptly, and there was the distinct sound of glass shattering on tile before the door opened to reveal a rather tipsy Berry.

"Oh hey it's Sweetums, 'sup?"

I froze up, not expecting this at all, and in my moment of indecision she swept me inside with a hoof. "Turns out I'm a pretty fine connoisseur if I do say so myself, got all these wines from all sorts of places." Berry plopped me down on a seat as she pushed a wine glass in my direction and filled it with liquid from a bottle that I was sure cost more than most of my candy stock. "Talked with Thunderlane today. The jerk totally flew away from me when I tried talking to him, said he had to 'look after Rumble.' What a load of crock! Completely clueless about who he was a few days ago."

"Look, Berry," I started, "I don't-"

"You don't what?" Berry said over me, easing into the seat next to mine as she took her own glass. "Don't want to enjoy our last night? Don't want to toast our final moment of clarity before nothing but ponies dance in our heads?"

"I'm not... I mean I wasn't old enough to drink alcohol," I said lamely.

"Well now you are," Berry responded, taking a draught from her glass. "Think of it as you moving on to your new life. A buildingsramen, whatever you call it."

"Bildungsroman," I corrected.

"Whatever, point is, we have an opportunity to give things a proper sendoff."

I sat there staring at the drink in front of me, unable to really think of it as more than anything other than glorified grape juice. "Berry, what do you think will happen to us?"

Berry had finished her serving and was pouring herself another. "I don't know. But we'll figure it out." She sniffed the wine elegantly before taking a deep sip. "We always do."

"We always do..." I parroted.

"That's right," Berry declared. "I don't know if I'd call it a celebration, unless you have celebrations for officially not caring, but sometimes desperately clinging to the status quo causes more problems than it solves. Not to say you should always go with the flow, but you could say we're making a statement. We're choosing to move forward with a proud step, not a terrified shuffle. We're saying, 'you threw this impossibility at us and we're going to keep on chugging no matter how much we change, because that's how life works.' It's not about how hard you're hit, it's about how proudly you hold your head up high after getting hit. That's real success."

I eyed Berry Punch curiously. "Since when does wine make you so inspired?"

"I don't know," Berry said, closing one eye and peering at me through the curvature of her wine glass. "Maybe the wine just makes me feel poignant."

My stare returned to the still untouched wine in front of me.

Berry and I leaned heavily on each other as we came to my home's door, laughing at something Berry had just said that I couldn't remember other than the fact I'd found it funny.

"Okay," I slurred, grasping the doorknob roughly in my hoof. "I need to go to bed. Hangover is future Sweetie's problem."

"Aight," Berry said, teetering slightly. "I can remember where my house is now better than when I first got here."

We shared another laugh before I said goodnight and I stumbled into the dark confectionery. Trying to make my way up the stairs quietly and only leaning into the wall a couple times, I entered the bedroom to find Lyra heavily snoring on her bed. Smiling dopily, I pulled back the sheets to my own bed before stopping and staring at the folded paper underneath my covers.

It took me a few moments before I remembered what it was, and despite the very nice bed calling sultrily for me to fall asleep I knew I had to do one last thing. I stuck the letter in a place I knew Lyra was sure to find it in the morning, and collapsed into bed, letting sleep take me away.

On All Fours

Lyra awoke smelling the pungent scent of wine, causing her to crinkle her nose instinctively, and turned over to see Sweetie Drops sprawled out on her own bed without a care in the universe. Snorting in half-derision and half-humor, Lyra edged herself off of her bedspread and tiredly walked downstairs, setting the coffee machine to brew and procuring some cereal for breakfast, humming to herself a little melody she'd been working on lately.

Not too long after the coffee brewed, Sweetie hobbled downstairs, wincing at every step she took. Lyra glanced over with no small amount of sympathy.

Sweetie Drops wordlessly took her seat at the table, clutching her head in her forelegs and letting out a long, low groan.

"How are you doing, Sweets?" Lyra asked.

"I'd be doing better if I could figure out why I have such a horrendous headache this morning," Sweetie mumbled. "Otherwise, not that great."

"Do you still remember... you know? You being human?" Lyra asked.

"What?" Sweetie glanced at Lyra with a weak glare before returning to her curled-up position leaning on the table. "Don't know what you're talking about, and to be honest I don't want to devote too much brainpower to thinking about it."

Lyra nodded, more to herself than to Sweetie's answer, and silently ate her breakfast, caught up in thought.

"Well, headache or no headache, I'm opening up the shop today," Sweetie said, her voice thin and quivering but determined. "I let it stay closed way longer than I should have for reasons I can't even remember."

"Do you-" Lyra bit her tongue and swallowed her sentence.

Sweetie Drops raised her head to stare at her. "What?" Lyra shook her head. Sweetie held her gaze for a moment longer before flicking her eyes to the cereal bowl in front of Lyra instead. "Should probably get something for myself too."

Lyra finished her morning meal before Sweetie did. "Uh, I guess I'll go do my usual morning thing at the park then."

Sweetie nodded, wincing at what no doubt was a whanging migraine.

Lyra collected her lyre case before hustling off to the park. At least she could play some music to escape her dark thoughts for a little while.

Finding her favorite bench vacant that day, Lyra sat down before opening her case and magically lifting out her lyre, causing a folded paper to flutter into the air along with it. Catching it with a hoof, Lyra opened it to reveal a letter. Setting her lyre back in its case, Lyra began to read.

Dear Lyra Heartstrings,

I'd like to start off by saying thank you. You don't remember it, and the details are getting fuzzy to me now too, but from the first moment of us getting thrown into Equestria without warning you were the most supportive and caring about me. More than anypony else these last few days, you've been the rock I needed despite not even remembering anything concerning the situation, and you trusted me on little else other than faith. That is almost certainly why I'm not a gibbering mess, or even in the hospital or worse from any number of silly things I could have done out of desperation. You worrying for me helped a lot, because I was so terrified that everyone would forget me. That I would just lose everything I had and not even know what I'd lost, and be powerless to stop it. But you cared, you were there telling me that I wasn't being ignored, that my words did mean something, and that I still meant something even as I was fading away as far as anypony else was concerned.

I'm sorry if I was ever a burden on you; I know I caused you a lot of grief agonizing over what was happening to me, and that it might have come off as selfish. But I hope that even once I'm gone, you can keep this letter as a reminder that when you were faced with a difficult situation, you buckled down and helped me out of nothing more than your altruism and a sense of duty to your and Sweetie's friendship. You could have ignored me, you could have told me to just "get over it," you could have just left me on my own every time I stewed in my thoughts, and saved yourself stress without any negative repercussions. You could have even slapped me and I never would have remembered it after a few days. But you stood by me despite my unstable behavior and mixed messages and bore it all in the name of doing the right thing.

I really can't thank you enough. For being my friend, and for being Sweetie's friend. And the thing we agree on most in this mixed-up head of mine is that we are the luckiest individual in the universe to have you as a friend.

-Bon Bon

Lyra struggled not to let her sharp breaths descend into bawling as she wiped tears from her eyes. Fighting mightily to keep her hooves from shaking, Lyra carefully replaced the lyre with the letter before snapping the case shut and cradling her instrument, rocking silently back and forth as she let the tears roll down her face.

After taking several minutes to calm herself down, Lyra sniffed loudly, wiped her face one last time, and began playing her lyre, closing her eyes and plucking out the melody she'd first had the idea for when Sweetie Drops discussed what she knew of music where she had come from.

Ending on an outro that sounded right to her, Lyra opened her eyes to see a filly and her mother staring wide-eyed at her on the bench.

"Wow, miss," the filly said in wonderment, "that's a really pretty song."

"Oh," Lyra said. "Well, thank you very much."

"What's its name?" the filly asked.

For the past few days Lyra had been stuck on a name, but this time it flowed out of her mind as easily as the melody had on the lyre strings.

Lyra smiled at the filly, and said "I call it 'Bon Bon's Song.'"

The One Day I Was Free

When you wake up in the morning, one of the first things that creates an impact on you is your environment. If you have an alarm clock set for an early time to ring, you'd expect to wake up to blaring klaxons and have a grumpy attitude. If you have the day off, you'd expect to wake up at the time of your choosing, hopefully with a well-rested body and mind. And I suppose if you have lots of cash, you'd wake up to a tableau of exquisite foreign dishes served by your butler in bed with freshly squeezed orange juice or a chanting Gregorian choir heralding your return to consciousness or an orchestra belting out the finale of the William Tell Overture or whatever rich people seem to think is worth their money.

Now me, I have to wake up at six o' clock every morning bar the weekends and holidays and trudge up to the bus stop to get to high school. It's pretty much the standard for me to cuddle up in my bed for all I'm worth unless I somehow remember I have to get up, in which case I throw myself onto the floor. Yeah, regular sleep deprivation does that. It's a bad habit.

Now, this is a routine that I've kept for roughly seven years. I spend the better part of my mornings struggling to keep my eyes open as I swallow lumps of cereal and milk. I wake up to an alarm clock with two times on it set to ring because I usually slap the thing the first time, too tired to care about the numbers glaring at me. I take showers in the morning only because if I don't, I'll likely fall back to sleep in the middle of breakfast.

For one of those days, I wake up to the sound of a female voice I don't recognize screaming next to me.

Naturally, I elected for the instinctual response and did some sort of wild body spasm that sent me rolling onto the floor with a loud thump.

"Waaah!" the voice cried again. I tried rubbing my eyes, but in doing so I caught a glimpse of my hand. Rather, I caught a glimpse of what used to be my hand. Instead of a five-digit appendage in front of me, as I had possessed for eighteen years, I saw a cream-coated hoof.

Hoof.

"Hoof!" I screamed myself, sounding like a little girl. At the same time, there was another thump somewhere in the room I was in—which was not my bedroom—and a unicorn fell onto the floor from behind a bed that was obscuring my vision.

Unicorn.

"Unicorn!" Thinking back, there was an awful lot of screaming going on then for what was to me early morning.

Said unicorn brought her face up from where it had smashed into the carpet and looked at me. We stared each other down for a while, neither of us moving except for breathing and blinking.

"Um…" we both started. I coughed. She took a breath and continued. "Are you a… pony?"

I wasn't really sure what I was expecting from Lyra Heartstrings the freaking background character from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, but that was not it. I looked back at my hoof, then mussed around the hair on top of my head until a pink lock drifted into my vision.

"Bon Bon, I…I guess," I answered, numb to the whole situation. "And you're Lyra, then?"

The mare looked at herself, and admitted that she seemed to be in the same situation I was in.

"So… what do we do now?" I'm not a roundabout person.

"Pinch ourselves," Lyra answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and after a moment of trying to somehow pinch herself with a hoof, resorted to banging on her foreleg. I winced as she let out a howl of pain. In hindsight, I'm surprised that no random ponies were barging through the door demanding if everything was okay, what with all the racket.

"Guess this isn't a dream then," Lyra mumbled, massaging her bruise.

"Okay," I said, shifting myself to a position where I could stand up. "I think the first thing we need to do is figure out how to get off the ground."

"I guess it's a start," Lyra agreed. I won't bore you with how long it took to figure out using four legs, but suffice to say there were many more loud noises in that bedroom from falling down. I was jealous of Lyra; she seemed to have less of a problem adjusting.

Eventually, we both got it down to the point where we could walk slowly without hurting ourselves, but the space was cramped enough that we couldn't really do much more than that. After taking a couple more minutes to figure out how to raise ourselves up to get onto the beds, we took positions across from each other.

Lyra was sitting in a position more typical for a pony from the show. I briefly thought of pointing out how unnatural that might be for Lyra to lighten the mood, but my mind was still frazzled from the shock of waking up in Bon Bon's body and I wasn't feeling much up to being the jokester right now. "So, Lyra… any idea what happened to us?"

The mare across from me shook her head. "You tell me and we'll both know. I wake up, I brush a hand over my face to find out it's a hoof, and I freak out. Not much of an idea to go off of, there." She shrugged, looking around the room.

I sat there thinking for a while. The evening prior had been pretty normal for me: I had stayed up past twelve, a.k.a. midnight, reading random fanfictions and doing my homework at the last second before I conked out. Nothing was unusual there, either. "I guess we'll have to find someone else who can figure this out for us, because we're sure not getting anywhere with what we know." We both sat there, not moving. "You know, like, right now."

"But what if somepony sees us?"

I mentally rolled my eyes at the vernacular, but answered her question. "So what? To them, we're just Lyra and Bon Bon. Unless we act weird or something, they're not going to say anything. Probably."

Lyra looked at me for a second with a cocked eyebrow, doubt clear on her face.

"If anything goes wrong, I'll take the fall, promise." I smiled the biggest grin I could muster for a person thrust into an earth pony's body.

Lyra's expression melted into one of surprise, until she finally acquiesced. "I guess if you're really that confident with yourself…"

We practiced a bit more with walking until it looked passably natural before deciding that we were ready to head out. We immediately agreed that Twilight was the go-to pony, but we were less united on how to go about finding the library. After a bit of argument, we eventually elected to take a detour to Sweet Apple Acres, since I remembered that it was situated on a hill, and pick out Twilight's house from a higher vantage point.

There was a small crisis with the doorknob, as neither of us was able to grasp it with our hooves and Lyra couldn't figure out how to use her magic. Eventually, I swallowed my pride and bit it, turning it and opening the door. Leaving the bedroom and spluttering out the dim taste of expertly crafted wood, I followed Lyra out into a kitchen. I wanted to stop for food, but I convinced myself that I could always eat after we talked to Twilight.

Passing the oven's chrome door, I caught a glimpse of myself through the shiny silver reflection. I looked terrible; I didn't appear all that chipper, and I was sure that my messy mane would need at least a half-hour to straighten out. Looking back at Lyra, she didn't seem much better. I hoped that it wouldn't give Twilight a reason to disregard me, although I had a niggling feeling that I'd receive some sort of penance for my mussed hair.

After having to open the front door with my teeth again—I don't know why I didn't make Lyra do it the second time—we finally stepped outside. The sun was not at its apex, but hanging high in the sky, beating down with a pleasant, comfortable warmth. We both looked around for any sight of the Sweet Apple Acres hillside but all we saw were a number of clouds drifting above us.

"Maybe it's just blocked by one of these houses," I said. "Let's get somewhere more clear of buildings."

We walked down to one end of the street, where the corner opened up into a four-way intersection. Looking down each path yielded nothing; the one we were on kept going straight forward, while the crossing street curved around away from us.

"Wait, is the town square the center of these streets?" Lyra asked, glancing down the curved way.

"Um, I think so."

"Then if we head to Ponyville Town Hall," Lyra explained, pointing down the road across from us and neatly shifting her weight to only three hooves, "We'll get out of town and probably be able to see the hill. Sweet Apple Acres is outside the town's borders, right?"

"…That's genius."

Sure enough, as we continued, the buildings clustered together until opening up into a large flat area. We walked past the many ponies talking and bustling about, and came to the river that marked Ponyville's east side. We crossed one of the bridges on top of the water, and easily spotted the Acres on the horizon. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, but it did look pretty against the backdrop of the sky. The birds weren't singing, the skies were peppered with white fluffs that occasionally blocked the sun's steadfast rays, and the weather was warm enough that a breeze would be welcome but the heat would not inspire a need for a cold drink. It was... surprisingly mundane.

As we neared the hill, we again went over what to do if we were to encounter Applejack or some other pony: Pretend we're here because of a walk, find the library, and be on our way. Nothing odd about it, as long as there's nothing substantial to suspect.

We reached the gate of the property, and turned around to scan the skyline for a massive tree. We were so focused in our searching we didn't hear the sound of someone approaching until she spoke.

"Well, howdy there girls!"

Lyra shrieked, and I jumped at least a foot off the ground. We turned to find none other than Applejack standing in front of us, Stetson on her head and a smile on her face.

"O-Oh, hi!" Lyra stuttered, shooting a look at me with a fearful glance.

"What can I get for ya ladies? Didn't expect to see customers on our doorstep; the cart's surely out at the market now," the cowpony continued, tilting her head sideways in curiosity. Lyra squeaked, tapping her front hooves together in a quick, shaky rhythm, saying nothing.

I cleared my throat, running the story through my head. "Well you see miss Applejack, Lyra and I were simply out on a constitutional." I had tried to put on a fake posh accent, as I am wont to do when I'm feeling whimsical, but the way it came out actually sounded genuine. Lyra's jaw dropped, and I had to struggle to keep a grin off my face. Stifling my simper with a cough into my hoof, I continued, "We do not mean to keep you, madam."

Applejack looked at the both of us with a slight trace of skepticism in her eyes, but it cleared up and she beamed at us both. "Well then, I guess I'll let you two be. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to applebuckin'." She turned and trotted off, heading into the orchards.

Once she was out of earshot, Lyra's still-open mouth apparently started working again, as she managed to sputter out, "How did you do that?"

"Oh, what, this?" I remarked, maintaining the pompous-sounding voice.

"Yeah, stop doing that, it's kinda creepy."

"Okay, whatever," I said, breaking character. "Anyway, we'd best keep looking for the library."

We found the splash of green and brown between the thatched roofs without too much trouble, and walked back towards Ponyville. We spent the trip mostly in silence, which was really awkward, but then again we had only met each other this morning so I guess there was a good reason why we didn't really want to start chumming around. Every so often we'd cross paths with another pony, to whom I'd say hello.

We were a few blocks away, give or take, when a blue unicorn with an hourglass cutie mark came bounding up to us shouting, "Hi Bon Bon! Hi Lyra!"

"Hi Minuette," I responded, nodding my head to her.

The pony's legs locked, and I could have sworn I heard a screeching noise as she pulled herself to a halt. Jumping around to face me with an angry frown, she yelled out, "My name isn't Minuette, it's Colgate! And I'll thank you to remember that!"

"O-Oh, I'm sorry Colgate," I stammered. I was sure Minuette was the name for her in merchandise! "I don't know why I said that."

"That's right!" Minuette said. "I'm Colgate, Ponyville's resident dentist and one of the mighty Time Lords! And nopony is going to tell me otherwise! Brushy brushy brushy!" The mare tossed her front hooves out in a wild whinny and shook her rump.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah, what?!" I shouted. "Okay, that makes no sense whatsoever. First off, I'm pretty sure "brushy brushy" is a fanmade invention. Also, Time Lords are Doctor Who, not My Little Pony. And Time Turner isn't David Tennant!"

"It's Doctor Whooves! Whooves!" Minuette insisted.

The two of us shoved our foreheads together, glaring nastily at each other. Our vicious stares were only broken by Lyra interposing herself between us, separating us with a hoof. "Okay, okay, stop it. I think we can say you got here the same way we did, Colgate, so, um, you should come with us to Twilight's so we can get this stuff figured out."

"No way!" Minuette replied, bouncing up and down on her hooves in irritation. "I don't need to care how I got here! I'm in Ponyville, and that's all that matters! And I think I'm going to have fun! So there!"

"That's great for you, but what about Minuette?" I pointed out. "How do you think she'd feel if you went parading about Ponyville telling everybody your name is Colgate?"

"It's 'everypony,' Bon Bon," Minuette stated snobbishly. "You're not going to get anywhere if you use terms nopony understands."

I mightily ground my hoof down into the ground to prevent it from rising up to smack Minuette's face. "My argument still stands. How'd you like it if your body was possessed by a wacko who ran around saying it was great to be a human?"

"I don't care," Minuette scoffed. "I'm in Equestria now!"

"Urgh! Lyra, help me out here!"

Lyra looked at me with a surprised expression. "Hm, huh? Oh, yeah, I guess. Yeah."

"…You weren't listening."

"Um… no, sorry?"

"Get. This. Mare. Into. The. Library." I spat.

After a period of wrestling that left all of us with various injuries, Minuette admitted defeat and let us drag her to the library. I could only take solace in the fact that no passerby had happened by and saw our brawl.

"Ow! Could you be more gentle!?" Minuette yelled from atop my back. We'd draped her body over me, and while I didn't find it too heavy, it was quite a burden for an entirely different reason. "Seriously, you ride rough! And you're hurting me!"

Shooting a harsh look over my shoulder, I didn't answer. I didn't like this pony. Something about her frivolity just rubbed me the wrong way.

"Um, I think it's this way," Lyra muttered, suspiciously sounding like she didn't know where she was going, as we turned left down a street. A few ponies on the streets had given us weird looks, but none had stopped us. I ignored them.

"So, Lyra…" I began, hoping to break up the needless back-and-forth I was having with Minuette so far. "How much do you know about My Little Pony? Because it seems like you weren't understanding a lot of the stuff I said to Minuette here."

"Colgate!" the unicorn screeched behind me.

We both cringed, before Lyra answered: "Well, I'm not too keen on the whole Brony thing; I like the show, but I never, like, looked up anything or whatever. I mean, I kinda learned about some of the stuff, like the names for the ponies, from the Wiki or just random art and drawings that I found online."

I nodded my head. "So, you watch the show, but you're not involved in the community."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Minuette interjected from my back in a scathingly condescending tone.

I had a vicious urge to unceremoniously dump her on the ground right then—maybe it would have knocked her out, and that would have been heavenly—but with considerable effort I quelled it. "And do you watch episodes online too, or…?"

"Netflix," Lyra finished. "Hey, I think we can take this way as a shortcut," she added, motioning for us to head down a narrower path. "I started surfing the Web about it when I started getting really weirded out that I liked a show for little girls. I guess I'm not alone, though, so it's not really a problem any more."

"Okay, that makes sense. So– Wah!" I interrupted myself as I stumbled on something, sprawling onto the ground with Minuette flopping down heavily next to me with a grunt. Pulling myself up, I glanced at Minuette before checking the object I'd tripped over.

It was an earth pony, fast asleep, legs sticking out in wild angles. Her colors were a deep, pinkish-red, and her mane and tail were tangled, knotted mops of hair. Minuette groaned behind me, but I was too concentrated on what looked to be Berry Punch unconscious on the ground.

"Hey, it's, um, what's-her-name," Lyra offered, coming up next to me.

"Berry Punch," I corrected, touching her with a tentative hoof.

"I'll bet she's passed out from drinking!" Minuette pitched in, taking a position in the circle around the earth pony's prone body. Lyra blinked, and I shook my head.

"Look, Minuette–"

"Colgate!"

"Minuette, it's awfully shallow to assume Equestria is like what only you think it is. There's a difference between canon and fanon."

"Well, why else would she be passed out here?" Minuette asked, before leaning down to inspect Berry closely.

"Hey, get away from–"

"Wake up!" Minuette screamed, freaking all of us out and awakening Berry Punch with a jolt. Berry flailed around for a bit, yelling incoherently, before falling back into a supine position. We gathered around her, and Lyra said, "Hey, Berry Punch… You alright?"

To say Berry's eyes shrunk into pinpricks would be very cliché, but seeing as cartoon physics are at work I think it's justifiable. She immediately began thrashing, and Lyra and I started holding her down. The whole time she kept crying out, "What the– what the– what the– what…!?"

"Shh, calm down!" I yelled over her shouts. "Just calm down; we're here to help you."

My words had the complete opposite effect of calming her down. "Wh– what… ponies? What the–… what the f–… Gah!" The pony seemed to keep swallowing her words mid-sentence, looking at us fearfully.

"Just take a few deep breaths, and–"

"Oh h–… h–…" Berry gagged, and then shouted, "No!" Her struggling intensified, and Lyra and I struggled to stay sitting on her limbs to keep her from moving. Minuette didn't do anything to help; she was sitting back and enjoying the show.

Why yes, I was harboring a certain degree of hatred for her.

Berry wasn't really screaming by that point; it had devolved into senseless gibbering. She kept trying to throw us off, until I finally shouted into her ear, "Look, I can help you get back to Earth, but only if you stop thrashing!"

She finally, slowly stopped, leaving the narrow street quiet save for her panting. Lyra and I carefully got off of her, and I walked in front of her before sitting down so we were at the same level. "Okay, now I want you to tell me, calmly, what you can remember before you woke up this morning."

"Well, first the Earth cooled, then the dinosaurs–" Minuette cut in before Lyra silenced her with a hoof to her mouth. "Ow!"

"Um, I-I was at a party with some friends, then I came home, and fell asleep." Berry stopped for a moment, before smiling in a way that made me feel like she was about to make the situation a whole lot worse. "So that must mean this is all a dream!"

Berry shot up, a crazy grin on her face, before jaunting off, seemingly unencumbered by her new form. "I can do whatever I want here! This is awesome!"

"Wait, what?" I sputtered, rising to my hooves as I turned to pursue the earth pony.

A hind leg shot out, belting me in the ribcage. I fell to the ground coughing, feeling like I was hacking out my lungs. Berry guffawed as I curled up in pain. "Man, I can't tell you how–… how good that f–… feels." Berry Punch screwed up her face in confusion. "Why can't I f–… why can't I cuss?"

"Because, you silly filly," Minuette replied, bouncing over, "you're in Equestria!"

"No–… No duh, Sherlock," Berry retorted, slamming a hoof into the energetic blue pony as well. Minuette fell backwards onto me, clutching her chest and shrieking out a sob. "That's why this is so awesome; it's like Karma's giving me a return for all the sh–… c–… stuff Bronies have given me! It's awesome!" Berry turned back around, trotting happily down the road.

"We've… got to stop her… before she attacks someone!" I choked out, winded from Berry's powerful kick. I struggled to my hooves, wheezing from what felt like the weight of a car pressing against my chest.

Minuette, for the first time, didn't argue, and we collected ourselves around Lyra, leaning on her for support as we hobbled alongside. We stumbled to the corner where Berry Punch had disappeared, but we weren't fast enough, as we heard a scream and an "aah! Help! Somepony!"

As we turned onto the street, we found Berry Punch smacking a pegasus across the face, laughing madly as the pony cowered away from her slaps. Lyra broke apart from us and rushed to help, leaving Minuette and me to struggle keeping ourselves upright.

Letting out a battle cry, Lyra plowed into Berry Punch's side, sending them both tumbling onto the ground. Lyra picked herself up and threw herself over Berry, holding her down like before. Berry reached up to grab her, but after a few moments of no success rolled over, throwing her off to the side. By that time, Minuette and I had reached the two, and this time Minuette helped in keeping Berry restrained. From my position pinning the crazy pony's two hind legs, I looked over to the pegasus in concern. I recognized her as Raindrops or some similar name; she had a yellow coat and light green mane, anyway. She didn't look that injured, but her cheeks were bright red from where Berry had been slapping her.

"Are you okay?"

Raindrops(?) looked at me with a flicker of fear, before stuttering out, "I'm f-fine," and quickly shooting off into the sky. My heart sank; she wasn't going to forget that little incident any time soon. With any luck we could talk to Twilight before the rumors got to her.

Berry Punch was still trying to free herself from underneath us, with no success. "Come on, get off! I'm not finished yet, and this is my dream, so leave me alone!"

"Hate to break it to you buddy, but you're not in a dream, I checked," Lyra muttered, rubbing her foreleg where she'd whacked it that morning.

"Pssh, you're just a figment of my imagination. And did you know that figments of my imagination shut up?!" Berry Punch bucked hard and I bounced off of her backside. Now only held down by two unicorns, Berry managed to extricate herself and run off again.

"Stop her!" I yelled, and we chased her in hot pursuit.

Even though we had the advantage in numbers, it seemed that Berry Punch was either in better shape just really didn't want to get caught, as she kept ahead of us for several streets. She ran down an alleyway, nimbly veering into the narrow lane, and we merged into a single-file line with me at the front to follow. Shooting a laugh over her shoulder, Berry kicked a dumpster down, scattering trash all over the ground and obstructing our path. By the time we'd climbed over the spilled refuse—rather difficult when we were still a bit unused to doing things with an equine's anatomy—Berry Punch was nowhere to be found.

"Well, shoot! Now what are we going to do?" Lyra swore, looking back at Minuette and me with a wheeze of breath and shaking a banana peel off a hoof.

"Keep going," I answered, cantering to the end of the alley and looking down the street. I spotted Berry Punch talking to, of all ponies, Pinkie Pie.

"There she is!" Minuette exclaimed, jabbing a hoof at the two earth ponies.

We ran towards the two, but not before Berry reared up on her hind legs, screamed out, "Boom!" and drove her front hooves onto Pinkie's nose. I froze in shock, and Minuette and Lyra stopped beside me. We watched in a stupor as Pinkie's jaw smashed into the ground, with Berry Punch chanting "Faceplant! Faceplant!" on top of her, mashing her hooves into the top of Pinkie's head.

Minuette whimpered, a quiet sound. "You… you hurt Pinkie Pie…"

Minuette shot from my right in a blazing gallop. "You hurt Pinkie Pie!"

Berry Punch turned around, smiling amusingly when she saw us. "Oh look, it's you three again. Nice to see–"

That was all she got out before Minuette gave her a mighty uppercut with her left foreleg.

Berry fell back, covering her face as Minuette rained blow after blow onto any body part that Berry left exposed. Pinkie Pie lifted her head slightly from the ground, and Lyra and I dashed over, trying to pull Minuette off of Berry.

"Get… off of me!" A blue haze tinted my vision, before I was seized by a rough force and propelled backwards about ten feet before hitting the ground hard. The rough street scraped my back, and I painfully rolled over to my side as I skidded to a stop. I dazedly looked over at Pinkie Pie; she was watching Minuette beat Berry up with an expression of horror. Raising my head to glance back at Lyra, I saw her trying again to pull Minuette away from Berry, who was now sporting several bruises, a bloody nose, and what was doubtless going to become a black eye.

"You– mo– ther– buck– ing– mo– ther– buck– er!" Minuette screamed, hitting Berry on every syllable. Berry Punch was screaming herself, and Lyra was having no luck in trying to separate the two, earning only welts from where Minuette had punched her away.

The blows continued for a few more pounding moments before the two fighting ponies were surrounded in a magenta aura that forced them apart. "What in Celestia's name is going on here?!" Standing in fury between the combatants was none other than Twilight Sparkle.

"Let me go! I'll kill her! I'll murder her!" Minuette shrieked, still swinging punches at Berry while suspended in midair.

Berry Punch said nothing, inhaling deeply as blood dribbled from her nostrils.

"B-Berry hit me," Pinkie whimpered, shrinking in on herself. "Then Minuette knocked her off me, and they started fighting…" Pinkie began crying, her tears crashing to the ground in streams of anguish. I noticed that we'd actually drawn a couple dozen spectators.

I watched as my hopes of returning home without conflict were snuffed out like a candlewick. With witnesses, we were probably looking at months in prison for this.

Twilight glanced between Berry and Minuette, before saying, "You two are coming with me," and trotting down the road, levitating the two behind her in a magical grip. I followed numbly, leaving Pinkie Pie behind to the crowd. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Lyra get up and follow as well.

We reached the library after a block and a half—a bit unfortunate that it couldn't have been in better circumstances—and Twilight hurled open the door with a magical swipe before marching in, leading with the two ponies that she was carrying. Turning around to find me in the doorway, Twilight told me in a matter-of-fact tone, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave. The same goes for you, Lyra. This isn't your concern."

"Actually, there's a bigger issue here," I started to explain, but Twilight cut me off.

"I can find out what it is on my own from those two, thank you. Now, please?"

Lyra sighed, looking over at me. "Come on, let's go."

I stared Twilight Sparkle in the face. Her harsh expression didn't waver. I tsked, before turning around and reluctantly agreeing.

Twilight thanked us and closed the door, leaving us alone in the streets.

Neither of us said anything for a few moments, until I spoke up. "Well, that could have gone better." I glanced over at Lyra, who was rolling her eyes, and we shared a laugh at how lame that sentence was.

We started walking back into town, traveling in silence, and returned to the scene of the fight. Most of the commotion had died down; only a few ponies had stayed behind. A couple of them were awkwardly trying to console Pinkie Pie, who hadn't moved from where she had pulled herself up after Berry Punch had hit her. Her mane was a disheveled mess, and her face was damp with tears. Lyra and I approached her, careful to make sure we didn't scare her. She looked so vulnerable, sitting there bawling her eyes out. Lyra looked crushed at the sight, and I felt like my heart was going to burst.

"Come on, let's get you home," Lyra whispered, offering a hoof to help Pinkie Pie up from her sitting position.

Pinkie Pie heaved out a raspy breath, before taking Lyra's hoof in her own and pulling herself off of the ground. However, the weight proved to be too much for Lyra, as she lost her balance and fell right on her rear end. Pinkie Pie stifled a giggle despite the tears on her face, and I went over to help Lyra up.

Getting an idea, I stuck a hoof out for Lyra, and she clasped it. I pulled hard, and wound up on the ground next to her. Pinkie Pie outright laughed at this, wiping her eyes as she watched us tumble all over each other like a circus act. All the while, I shouted out in an oafish voice, "Oh, whoops! Oh my, I can't believe I– oops! Excuse me– oh!"

By the time I'd finally stopped goofing around and pulled Lyra up off of the ground, Pinkie was rolling from side to side, her forelegs wrapped around her torso as she roared with laughter. I offered my hoof to Pinkie this time, and she wrapped her own around it, breathing airily between sniggers as she calmed down. No trace remained of her previous sadness, but knowing she was probably still thinking about it, I reassured her, "Hey, don't worry about it. I'm sure those two will be just fine."

"Okay," Pinkie said, and we all walked back to Sugarcube Corner, Pinkie Pie taking the lead.

After a few streets and hellos from a much more jubilant Pinkie Pie, we found ourselves on the doorstep of Ponyville's prime bakery. Pinkie thanked us in her special way ("Thank you so much for the superfantabulositistic walk!") and was just about to push the doors of the business open when I stopped her. "Um, Pinkie Pie?"

She pivoted on one of her rear hooves, touching down on all fours when she was facing me. "Yeah?"

"Do you mind if we come in for a little bit? I have a couple of things I want to tell you." Lyra looked at me in confusion, and I briefly glanced back at her before returning my attention to Pinkie. "In private."

"Oki Doki Loki!"

We all entered the building, and Pinkie Pie greeted Carrot Cake, who happened to be running the register, before gesturing for us to come upstairs. Pinkie quickly hopped up three steps at a time before pausing at the top of the flight.

After all of the chaos concerning Minuette and Berry Punch, I had forgotten that we'd have to climb stairs, since Pinkie's room is on the second floor.

Fudge.

Lyra and I looked at each other. Lyra shrugged. "You go first."

"Oh, yeah, easy for you to say," I grumbled, placing a hoof delicately on the first step.

Since we'd gotten quite a bit of experience with running around when we were chasing after Berry Punch, it didn't take too long for me to ascend the stairs without incident, albeit slowly. I joined Pinkie at the top, who was seemingly unfazed at the long time I'd taken, and I looked back down at Lyra, still on the first floor. "Your turn."

Lyra visibly gulped, tentatively putting a hoof down on the first step. She stuck a second front hoof on the second step before easing her back leg onto the first level. Then she apparently started getting into the rhythm, because she began moving up the stairs at a much faster pace. It wasn't quite a casual speed, but it was faster than me. When she reached where we were, I sat down on my haunches and gave her a few claps. "Good job, you have defeated stairs."

"Oh, shut up," Lyra grunted, shoving me slightly with one of her hooves.

Pinkie Pie led us into her room proper, and it looked just about what I'd imagined it to be: garish and whimsical, with entirely too many balloons. Pinkie Pie sat down on a cushion beside a table, and Lyra and I sat down around the table on two other cushions.

"Okay, so the situation is-" Lyra started.

"Ooh, ooh, I know!" Pinkie interrupted, placing a hoof to her chin as she examined us. "You're… not ponies!"

Lyra gripped the table, looking like she was ready to bolt.

"Yeah," I answered. "How'd you guess?"

"Well, you don't really act like the ponies you look like, for one. I'd have expected Lyra to be the one to start that little routine of you falling all over the place—which I loved, by the way—and even if I hadn't noticed that you took way too long trying to get up the stairs." Pinkie Pie turned to me without pausing. "Also, you actually said something funny about Lyra defeating stairs, and jokes aren't really your forte." Pinkie Pie jabbered it all in one breath, seamlessly drifting from one point to another. Lyra seemed more confused than terrified now, and while Pinkie Pie was talking my mind was repeating "something something she caught us yeah whatever something."

"So… now what?" Lyra said.

"Um, if you'll just give us a chance to explain…"

"Okay, go for it! Go go go!" Pinkie chirped, placing her cheeks in her hooves as she looked at us in wonder.

To be frank, I was a bit startled at her eagerness to learn about how we essentially stole two of her friends' bodies. "Okay, so um, basically…"

Pinkie Pie didn't interrupt us at all, giving us her rapt attention during the entire tale. There wasn't much to tell her, really; we told her we'd woken up as ponies and we trying to find Twilight when we ran into Minuette and then Berry Punch, neither of whom were ponies either. "That's why those two fought; they're not Minuette or Berry Punch, they're different people," Lyra finished, ending the story.

Pinkie Pie stared at us for several moments, and we sat there awkwardly, looking back at her as she rested her elbows on the table.

Are they elbows? I mean, they bow, and they make an L-shape…

"Okay, so if you're not ponies, who are you then?"

"Humans," Lyra replied, as if it were obvious.

Pinkie Pie looked over at Lyra. "But aren't humans just made up? I thought that was just a rumor, nothing definite."

"Okay, well, maybe for you," I responded, "but where we come from, you ponies are the ones made up. It's complicated."

"Super-complicated," Lyra offered.

"Super-ultra-mega-monster-complicated, I'd assume," Pinkie said, nodding her head. "So you were going to Twilight's to see if she or by extension Celestia could help you."

"Yup," I answered.

"Sounds right," Lyra added.

"In that case, what are you two silly fillies doing here? To Twilight's!" Pinkie took the moment to make a dramatic pose, pointing through one of the walls in what I guessed was the precise direction of Golden Oaks Library.

Lyra sighed. "Because she's talking to Berry and Colgate right now." I shot a glare at Lyra, and she cringed. "Um, Minuette," Lyra muttered, looking down to avoid my gaze.

"So," I finished, "we can't go see Twilight until she learns all about how Berry and Minuette are humans, and given the bad first impression that those two gave I wouldn't be surprised if Twilight imprisoned them or something."

"Oh no, what if she did?" Lyra said, shooting a worried glance at the wall Pinkie Pie had pointed at.

"Oh, you should give Twilight some credit! She's a very smart pony," Pinkie reassured.

"Funny how you're the one comforting us now," I pointed out.

"Yeah. Ooh, I can do the whole 'falling over myself' routine too!"

I can't really describe what happened after that. It's like Pinkie was tripping over herself, by which I mean that she literally looked like she was tripping and the object being tripped over at the same time.

"Pinkie Pie, you are so random," I remarked.

"And you are all so stubborn," Pinkie said good-humoredly, winking at me. "Now, let's go to the library, huh?"

We returned to the library; this time Pinkie rapped on the door. After a few knocks, the door flew open, revealing an irritated Twilight with a horn glowing with magic.

"Pinkie, I'm very busy-"

"I know there's stuff going on with humans but these two are humans too so you might want to add them to the deal," Pinkie blabbed in a huge burst of air.

Twilight looked briefly confused, but soon shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about, but-"

"Humans, Twilight. Humans!"

"What about humans?" Twilight asked, a look of bewilderment flashing across her face.

"Okay, I'm assuming Berry and Minuette haven't told you that they're humans, then, and woke up here without a clue how," I said.

"Berry and Minuette haven't told me anything," Twilight replied. "Berry won't say a word, and Minuette just keeps trying to hurt Berry. Now, I'm sorry, but I have to return to mediating th-"

"No time! We need to collect all the humans!" Pinkie interrupted, thrusting herself past Twilight into the library.

"Hey!" Twilight shouted, turning away to look back at Pinkie Pie's bounding form. I took the opportunity to shoot past Twilight as well, and clopping hooves right behind me told me that Lyra had followed me inside.

Berry Punch and Minuette were encased in two magic bubbles, one each. Berry Punch was huddled up in a fetal position facing away from me, and Minuette was sulking. At our entrance, Minuette looked up, then snorted and returned her dark gaze to the floor.

"Okay, I don't know why there's all this talk about humans, but I'm going to have to-"

"Oh, Twilight, this is everypony's problem!" Pinkie interrupted again, patting Twilight on the head. Twilight scowled. "See, these two are humans, and those two are humans too, and so there are a lot more humans than zero!"

"Pinkie, I don't have time for games," Twilight scolded, herding us up with one magical sweep. "Humans are just a rumor. A dam's tale. Now please, can you let me solve this?"

"Wasn't Nightmare Moon 'just an old mare's tale' too?" I retorted.

Twilight hesitated. "That may be true, but unlike Princess Luna, we have no idea if humans even existed. If we had any records whatsoever, we might be able to verify that claim, but there's no proof."

"You want proof? I'll show you proof!" I snarled, fully ready to show Twilight I was no "mare's tale." "Get me some paper!"

Twilight snorted. "Alright, but I want you to promise me that after this you won't interrupt me any more, and leave."

"Deal."

Twilight got me paper and a quill. I gave them a glare before looking up at the unicorn. "Don't you have a pencil?"

"Nope," Twilight replied.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you."

"Just a little bit," Twilight admitted, although it was clear from her expression that she was enjoying this quite a deal more than a "little bit." "Go on, prove to me you're a human."

"Okay," I said, awkwardly grabbing the quill with my mouth. I put it against the paper and the nib snapped, leaving me with a broken quill tip and an ink-stained face. Sighing, I asked, "Okay, seriously, can I have a pencil?"

Twilight wordlessly levitated a pencil over to me. I bit it, tasting the eraser in my mouth as I bent down to write.

I took a couple of minutes, and Lyra and Pinkie peered eagerly over my shoulders to see what I was doing. I paid them no heed, focusing on my creation that I was crafting from graphite and jerky head movements. It didn't help that my mane kept drifting in front of my face, distracting me with pink and blue hair that spilled all over the paper. Every so often a black spot would drip from my face onto the figure I was drawing, forcing me to write around blots of ink.

Finally, I finished and pushed the paper over to Twilight, spitting the pencil out. She took a cursory glance at it before snorting and pushing it back to me. "Looks like chicken scratch."

"It's a trigonometric theorem," I responded, shoving it back to her. "See, there's the triangle, and the side measurement I calculated."

Twilight laughed scornfully. "Math doesn't make a human! This is no proof."

"Then who invented trigonometry?"

"Ternary Sidesaddle and her assistants, during the Golden Age of Equestria before Nightmare Moon's banishment, were the first to apply trigonometry to more or less its full potential," Twilight answered without pause.

"Strangely similar to the invention of trigonometry by Muslims during the Golden Age of Islam, don't you think?"

Twilight gave me a flat stare. "What?"

"And what about physics?" I continued, pausing to pick up the pencil in my mouth and jerkily write ƩF=ma. "Who came up wiph kinematic equationph?"

"Do you know?" Twilight questioned, obviously testing me.

"And what about languages?" I continued, dropping the pencil again. "Is it English, or is it called something else?"

"Equuish is the official language of Equestria," Twilight huffed, her brow furrowed in impatience. "And languages like Pferd, Caballo, and Cheval are spoken in countries beyond Equestria's borders. Happy? Now, I think we're just about done here."

"Music! It follows the same basic rhythms." I was starting to talk off of the top of my head now. "Hi-hat on every eighth note, with bass drum on counts one and three and snare on beats two and four! Basic rock groove!"

Twilight was now shoving us all out the door with her magic. I blame my frizzy mane; it made me look more than a little crazy. The various bruises and scratches I'd accumulated over the morning probably didn't help my case either.

"Astronomy! Do you have the Pillars of Creation? Do you have the Kuiper Belt, or is it named after somebody else?"

"Some-buddy? As in somepony, but with the word 'buddy' instead? Ooh, I gotta use that one!" Pinkie exclaimed.

"Please, just go home you three, and let me take care of things. Lyra, I'd suggest you take a good, long shower, and maybe not advertise your obsession with humans so much. It's giving some ponies bad ideas."

"Hey, wait, what?" Lyra shouted. "Obsession? What obsession?"

"It's a thing," I told her. I could reveal the little fact that Bronies had given her an "obsession" for humans at a later time.

"Now please, you promised to not return. Celestia knows those two are already a handful enough as is…"

Handful.

"Handful."

"What?" Twilight asked, looking back at me.

"You said handful," I continued, turning my head around to stare deep into Twilight's eyes. "Don't you mean 'hoofful'? Or is that not in your Equestrian vocabulary?"

"I meant handful," Twilight stated. "You act like hands are unheard-of, mystifying things. Spike's got hands; humans aren't–!"

"But wouldn't it sound weird if I said, 'Unhoof me Twilight'? Why is it that we say 'unhand'?"

Twilight looked down, eyes darting from place to place. "Um, well…"

"And what about the phrase, 'on the other hand'? You say that, don't you? You don't have hands, do you? I thought ponies were the dominant species on Earth, yet you say 'hand,' not 'hoof.' Why?"

"Um…" Twilight stuttered. She looked like she'd never thought about it before. "W-Well, because…"

"Because some prior language instilled that in you," I finished, grinning triumphantly. "The language of the humans: English!"

"That doesn't necessarily mean that," Twilight said quickly. "It could just as well be an inherited word from another language, like 'gusto' or 'boutique'–"

"Not likely," I interrupted. "What language could you have inherited 'hand' from? You use it in far too many words. 'Handsome.' 'Handy.' 'Handle.' I don't think you'll hear a Griffon's or Dragon's native tongue have 'hand' in it, and I don't think you'll find any one-hundred-percent pony-derived language that even has a word for a hand!"

Twilight actually looked scared now. "No, that's not right, th-that's just not right…"

I kept going. "And what's more, is that all of Equestrian culture is derived directly from the human one. The language is even pretty much the same, except for a few differences here and there.

"And what about 'gosh'? It's a euphemism for God. I'm not seeing anything but goddesses around here, if any; what about you, Lyra?"

"What? Me? What do I have to do with all of this?" Lyra asked, obviously lost.

"Whatever!" I yelled. "Just, Twilight Sparkle, you have to believe me. Please, at least let us talk with them?"

Twilight lowered her eyes to the ground, not looking at my pleading stance. "While… while I can't deny the possibility of what you're saying, at the same time the entire idea is so outlandish that I just… aargh!" Twilight clutched at her head, releasing us from her magical grip. "Fine, you get to talk with them for as long as it takes me to look through my etymology books for the reason why 'hand' is in the Equuish language."

Pinkie Pie jumped back inside, hollering "Woo!" for no reason whatsoever—why was she here again?—and Lyra and I followed suit, with an irritated Twilight Sparkle bringing up the rear. The bubbles around Minuette and Berry Punch were still in place, but with a sigh from Twilight and what I assumed was the sound of a spell lifting, the bubbles dissolved into the wooden floorboards. I put myself in-between the two ponies to make sure that they wouldn't try fighting each other, while Lyra just stood there looking confused.

"Hey, can you look after Minuette?" I asked Lyra. I knew that I didn't want to have Berry Punch trying to escape again, and Earth Pony vs. Earth Pony was a bit more favorable than Earth Pony vs. Unicorn Unable to Use Magic.

I trotted over to where Berry was curled up. Placing a hoof gently on her shoulder, I lied down next to her. "Berry–"

"No. Shut up." Berry Punch rolled over, revealing her mangled face. "Whatever it is you're going to say, I don't want to hear it."

"Berry–"

"Shut it!" Berry Punch swung a hoof, narrowly missing my jaw. "Leave me alone."

Frowning, I ignored her request. "Hurting a random pony was wrong."

"Oh, so you're preaching your 'love and tolerance' to me now?" Berry Punch mocked. "'Oh, look, you've hurt a guy.' Tough sh–… Tough." Berry Punch thumped a hoof onto the floor, and I caught her whining, "Not being able to cuss sucks."

"Well, would you do the same to a fellow human being?" I received no answer, but I expected none. "You hurt some ponies, but–" I swiveled my head around to face Minuette. "What?"

Minuette was giggling. "You said 'somepony.'"

"No I– oh, just shut it!" I explained, frustrated. I turned back to Berry. "But you hurt someone. Period. That's never okay. You out-and-out kicked Minuette and me-"

"Colgate," Minuette interrupted, struggling to keep from laughing.

"Look, I just had this conversation with Twilight, and I'm not having it again, okay?" I spat at the infuriating unicorn beside me. "Just, Berry, if you just could find another way to vent somehow, then that would be better than beating someone up. I don't know, you just went too far!"

"Okay, I'll do better next time." Berry Punch's voice lacked any kind of sincerity.

I stood up and began walking away, not wanting to deal with Berry's noncooperation any longer. Putting a hoof to my head, I inhaled deeply, trying to stave off any possible headaches…

…And smelled the most delectable odor I'd smelled since waking up in Equestria.

My growling belly told me that I hadn't eaten all day, and I realized that I was starving. The fragrance was drifting from another room a little farther back, and my intense hunger led me to practically float over to the source. As it turned out, it was a kitchen, and someone was cooking something.

And it smelled good.

Poking my head in, I saw nothing except a big pot simmering on a stove. Placing my front hooves on the stovetop so that I could see into the vat, I found that it was a form of vegetable stew with what looked like a tomato base. Licking my lips, I ate up the scent, stretching out my neck for a taste–

And then I pulled my head back, guilty that I would think of doing such a thing. Stealing from Twilight? What made me think that was okay? So, with a sobbing stomach, I dropped back down off the oven, but not without one last deep sampling of the stew's aroma.

I walked to the doorway, but stopped, taking one last, long look at the simmering pot filled with stew. A rustling sound interrupted every so often by a tearing noise came from the main room, along with a slowly rising voice, but I paid it no heed.

"…Nobody will notice if I just take a bite."

I didn't bother looking for a bowl, rationalizing that I couldn't pour a serving without spilling it all over the floor or dumping it on my head or something. I rose onto my hind legs again and stuck my nose into the pot, ignoring the warm air petering past my face as I looked at the stew. I was salivating like crazy, and I felt like something was gnawing at my innards, I was so hungry.

I splashed my face into the dish, swallowing up a mouthful. Oh my goodness, it tasted so good. I felt like I hadn't eaten anything in years, and I was offered a seven-course meal to break my fast. A loud noise issued from outside the door, but I was too occupied with food to care. I couldn't help myself from taking a second bite, and more, until I was just hugging the pot to keep from falling over, stuffing my face with as many cooked onions and tomatoes and peppers and potatoes and corn and green beans as I could–

"What the hay?!"

I jerked my head upwards out of the pot to see Twilight fuming in the doorway. I felt a piece of onion slip off of my cheek and fall onto the floor. "What are you doing?!"

Yup, I was dead.

"U-um, I was hungry."

So dead.

I apathetically tapped a hoof against the side of the magic bubble I was encased in, along with the three other… acquaintances I'd made during this little adventure. Lyra was rubbing at her eyes, Berry Punch scowled at me, showing off her now fully swollen black eye, and Minuette was standing in the middle of her bubble, looking at random things. Pinkie Pie was looking back at us forlornly from outside the bubbles. I envied her.

"I just don't understand it," Twilight ranted, pacing in front of our imprisoned group. "First Minuette and Berry Punch get into a fight in the street for what seems to be no real reason at all, then Lyra starts going crazy with her magic and tears up my books, which I will remind her cost a great deal to maintain in quality condition, and then you start eating my lunch!"

"But, I was hungry," I justified, knowing it wasn't justified at all.

"You could have at least asked for some!"

"…But… but I was hungry."

"Gah!" Twilight screeched, bringing her hooves up to her head as she began massaging her temples. As I watched her try to relieve her tension, my mind drifted to wondering why I was an earth pony, saddled with the lack of flight or magic. I had to do everything with my mouth now, which first forced me to turn a doorknob, and then work a pencil. What would I have to do next, massage a pony with my tongue?

Running the sentence back through my head, I realized how dirty it sounded, and snorted at my own sick mind. At least my less-than-pure sense of humor was still without error.

Twilight exhaled, neither opening her eyes nor removing her hooves from the sides of her head. "Okay, this is what's going to happen: First, all of you are going to explain to me why the fight broke out. Two, I want a reason—a valid reason—for why Lyra's magic is acting up like an unstable kindergartener's and how in the hoof it's okay to just eat somepony's lunch without permission."

Nobody spoke.

"Well, if I'm not going to have an answer, I can just leave you all here until you're ready to talk about it. Otherwise, let's hear it. I won't let you go until you do."

"Who are you, my mother?" Berry Punch said bitterly from her prison.

I snickered, but Twilight showed no mirth. "If that's the way you want to play, then fine. We'll play."

Twilight walked out of the library's door, leaving us alone. Pinkie Pie watched her exit, and followed after one last sad look at all of us.

"I'm sorry," Pinkie Pie squeaked before bolting, leaving us only in the company of our fellow humans-turned-pony.

"So, uh, Minuette," I said after a minute or two of quiet.

"Colgate." She didn't even bother to look at me, seeming to find the random books piled about more interesting than I was. I caught Lyra's eyes, and cocked an eyebrow before she looked away guiltily.

"Minuette, do you have any idea how we got here?"

"Nope, I just woke up on a couch," Minuette answered.

"…Cool, care to tell me what kind of couch?"

"A sofa."

"I mean what were your surroundings, darn it!"

"There was a magazine over my face."

"I need a drink," Berry Punch lamented on my left.

"So, Minuette–"

"Colgate."

"Freaking Minuette! If you came to on a couch, then was someone else there?"

"Not that I can remember," Minuette said. "Then again, I was a bit enthusiastic and I might have just not noticed anypony else. Why, did you wake up with a pony next to you?"

"Lyra and I apparently slept in the same room."

"A-ha! So that means that Lyra and Bon Bon are lovers! Score one for the fans!" Minuette cheered, drawing a confident grin.

"No, it does not!" I argued. "Ponies can sleep in the same room and still only be roommates, or friends. There doesn't have to be any sexual relation at all for two ponies to sleep in only the same room. We're not even in the same bed!"

"Honestly, if someone's sleeping in the same room as me, I have to wonder if they're a little bit gay," Berry Punch chipped in.

"See, see, see, even the jerk agrees with me!"

"Shut up," Berry Punch muttered.

"You disapprove of slumber parties, Berry Punch?" I was getting tired of dealing with Minuette, and decided to switch gears to Berry.

"Please, call it a sleepover or something, for G–…" A look of horror crossed Berry's face, before darkening into contempt. "Seriously? Seriously!?" Berry Punch held out her hooves in an entreating posture, talking to the ceiling. "I can't say 'God'? No, I can say 'God,' but I can't say 'for G–… Aagh, f–… Gah!"

Minuette was laughing her tail off inside her bubble.

I rolled my eyes at the debacle, turning away from the incensed earth pony. "So, Lyra, how did all of…" I gestured to the heaps of literature strewn about. "…This happen?" Lyra was sitting on her haunches, a frown etched on her face.

"I tried to see if I could use magic, so I started trying to lift some books. I don't know what happened, but suddenly books were flying around everywhere and hitting me and I panicked." Lyra looked down at the floor. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Berry said, shooting Lyra a glance with her swollen eye. "That 'Twilight' or whoever is a little b–… idiot. If she thinks sticking us in these barrier things will solve the problem, she needs a wake-up call." Berry Punch paused for a moment, before grinning. "Hey, Lyra, try doing whatever you did again on these"—Berry tapped the psychic walls of her prison—"and maybe you can bust us out of here!"

"I don't think that will work," I replied. "Even if Lyra could use magic perfectly well without possibly hurting herself, Twilight's magic is probably strong enough to hold it off."

"Well, I'm sure as h–…" Berry Punch muttered under her breath, then spoke up again: "I'm not going to just sit here while Twilight makes us apologize. She's named after the stupidest book series ever, so–"

"Hey! Twilight is not stupid!" Minuette interrupted. "She's adorkable!"

Everybody looked at Minuette; Berry Punch glowered at her, but received no response. "Whatever. I'm not sticking around if I can help it." Berry Punch reared back her hind legs and thrust them into the barrier behind her, making a loud wham but leaving no damage.

"Um, Bon Bon?" Lyra asked, and I turned to face her. "What was Twilight talking about when she said I have an obsession?" Wham.

I groaned. "The Bronies thought it would be funny for some reason if you loved humans, based on how you were sitting on a park bench in 'Dragonshy.'" Wham. "Some of the art and stuff they write about you talks about how you want to be a human, or have hands."

"That's… really weird," Lyra said, blinking. Wham.

"It's also really cool!" Minuette declared, stomping a leg into the floorboards. "I mean, it's something that we find funny and entertaining! We do that because we know that those characters are ours, and it makes us happy!" Wham.

"'Our' characters?" I laughed. "Um, no, I don't think so. Sorry, but Lyra's not the Bronies' character, nor are any other ponies."

"Derpy Hooves!" Minuette shouted. Wham. "She would have never been in the show if Bronies hadn't pointed out her eyes!"

"Conveniently skipping over the whole deal about 'The Last Roundup'?" I retorted. Wham. "Bronies don't own the franchise, or any part of it, and never will."

Minuette glared at me, and turned away from me to lie down, closing her eyes. "Whatever. You're just stupid."

Wham. "Ow!" Berry Punch hopped away from the barrier she had been kicking at, holding her left hind leg off of the ground. She mumbled something and tenderly lowered herself into a sitting position.

Nobody spoke for a while after that. Lyra joined Minuette in taking a load off, and I was left to my thoughts. We stayed in silence for several minutes before Lyra sighed. "I'm hungry."

"Well, so am I, but you don't see me complaining," Berry replied, leaning against the magenta wall of her bubble.

"Maybe Twilight's just going to starve us," Lyra said, obviously worried.

I grunted. "I don't think she's the type of person to do that."

"Pony," Minuette stated, surprising me; I had thought she was asleep.

"Well, she wouldn't do that. I mean, her friends wouldn't let her, for one. Pinkie Pie's probably trying to convince her otherwise right now," I reasoned.

"Yeah, by the way, you said you were going to help me get out of this sh–… stupid situation," Berry Punch said. "So, how exactly is getting trapped in these things getting home?"

"Sorry," I apologized. "I didn't know that it would wind up with us under civil arrest. Usually the stories are a bit more favorable towards–"

"Stories?!" Berry sputtered incredulously. "You're basing all this off of stories?!"

"W-Well, yeah, I mean–"

"Oh my f–… Gah!" Berry Punch whirled around, placing her back firmly against her prison. "I'm done. Just, I'm done."

"Um… sorry, for whatever I did?"

Berry Punch didn't answer. Minuette snorted. "Honestly, I–"

Minuette didn't get to finish as the thunderous sound of breaking glass shattered against our magic bubbles. A pegasus tumbled in, slamming against Minuette's barrier and crumpling to the floor, groaning.

A faint call issued from outside: "Are you okay?" A second pegasus stuck her head into the window, catching stray locks of her crazy, spiky mane on broken shards; the name Cloudchaser leapt to my mind.

"Uh, maybe," The pegasus grunted, and I deduced from his low voice and dark coat that it was likely Thunderlane; I couldn't be sure because the bubble tinted everything pink. "Nothing's broken."

"Oh, good, I thought maybe you had really hurt yourself." The pony squinted, then continued: "Hang on, let me come in." Pulling her hair from where the glass had impaled it, the mare's face disappeared from view.

Thunderlane leaned on the magenta wall, breathing deeply, as the unicorn captive inside planted herself right in front of him. Thunderlane opened his eyes, and flinched when he glimpsed the overeager mare not two inches from his face. "Uh, can I help you?"

"Oh, no," Minuette responded; I couldn't see her expression from my vantage point, but I was willing to guess she had on her best "cute face." "I was just admiring one of my favorite ponies."

Thunderlane winced. "Thanks, I guess. Who are you?"

I smirked as Minuette scrunched up her face. "Duh, I'm Colgate!"

"Minuette."

Minuette wheeled around to face me, with clenched teeth and hard eyes. "Colgate."

"Minuette," I repeated in an attempt to sound like the unicorn I was mocking. It sounded almost identical.

Minuette looked about ready to blow her top. "Bon Bon, I swear to Celestia, if you don't shut up right now–"

"Or what? You'll rush me? Not happening with these in the way." I bumped a hoof against the bubble I was encased in.

The tension was put on hold as the library's front door slammed. "Finally! I was so worried I'd crash, it was hard getting down without hurting myself. Are you okay…?" Cloudchaser stopped talking, looking at each of us in turn. "Um, why are you in bubbles?"

"Time out," I deadpanned. An awkward silence persisted for a few seconds.

"Um…" Cloudchaser hesitated. "'Time out'?"

"Yeah, Twilight Sparkle caught those two in a fight"—I pointed to Minuette and Berry Punch—"and Lyra and I did some dumb stuff that got us in here too. So we're waiting for Twilight to get back from whatever it is she's doing so that she can let us go."

"Oh, okay." Cloudchaser moved over to Thunderlane as the shaky stallion rose. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just some bruises, nothing major," Thunderlane replied.

"That's good." Cloudchaser turned back to us. "So, who are you guys?"

"I'm Bon Bon," I answered, "and that's Lyra." Lyra waved. "That's Minuette." The unicorn shot me a venomous glower, but didn't say anything. "And that's Berry Punch." The earth pony in question didn't look like she was paying attention to the conversation at all. "You?"

Cloudchaser stiffened. "Um, well…" The two pegasi shared a glance. "We don't know."

"How can you not know?" Minuette blurted out. "You're Cloudchaser and Thunderlane, duh!"

"So I take it you're humans who woke up as ponies too?" I asked, ignoring Minuette's outburst.

Cloudchaser nodded. "Yes, yes, but we couldn't remember our names! It was just gone, like somebody took it!"

"Somepony," Minuette said, but I wasn't paying attention.

…we couldn't remember our names…

"U-Um, g-guys?" I stuttered. "Does anyone remember their names?"

I watched as first confusion and then panic overrode the other ponies' faces. I was drawing a blank right with them, and I felt my heart begin to pound faster. "Okay, just, calm down everyone, let's all just calm down…"

"Aaaauuugh!" Berry Punch screamed. "What the f–… gah!" Berry began smacking her hooves against the barrier, every blow eliciting a cry from the crazed earth pony. "Let me out of here!"

I struggled to overcome my own rising meltdown as I watched Lyra begin hyperventilating. "If we all just sit here and think–"

Berry Punch had reduced herself to senseless shrieks, beating on the psychic wall with pathetic swats of her hooves, and Lyra began running around the perimeter of her small bubble, fear laced in her eyes. Minuette cowered against the corner of her prison, shivering. I was starting to lose it, and I stumbled to the floor, clutching at my head. "Hold on, please, just wait, just for a second–"

"Stop!"

Thunderlane's bellow shut everyone up. The pegasus glared at us, peering at everyone with a righteous eye. "I've tried remembering my name myself, and if you don't know what it is, you're not going to suddenly know it if you think really hard. Now, if you're done, I'd like us to plan out exactly what's going to happen for us to get back to planet Earth."

Lyra bit her lip before coughing lightly. "Well, we were waiting for Twilight to come back so that she could free us from these psychic bubbles."

"Okay, okay, good," Thunderlane nodded. "What next?"

"And then, um, maybe ask her about how to get back to Earth," Lyra finished before cringing as if she'd answered wrong.

"Fair enough," Thunderlane affirmed. "And how will you get this 'Twilight' to release you?"

"It's those two's fault," I said, pointing to the earth pony and unicorn who had caused this whole mess. "They got in a fight, and so Twilight locked them up in these things as a result. Then Lyra and I got stuck in here."

Thunderlane stared at the two. "Why were you two fighting?"

"Because she beat up Pinkie Pie."

"Who's Pinkie Pie?"

I jumped in before Minuette had the chance to filibuster. "I'm assuming you've never watched the show before."

"Show?"

"My Little Pony." Thunderlane began eyeing the library, while Cloudchaser muttered an "oh," and nodded.

"Then if you two were in a fight," Thunderlane said, "you are going to apologize and explain the situation to her, very clearly. Am I understood?"

"Yes sir," we all said.

"Good." Thunderlane gave a curt nod, and then walked to the center of the square that our bubbles made. "In that case, now we wait."

The library was blissfully quiet, until Minuette started talking. "Let's play a game called 'Ssh.' I'm the world champ you know. Bet you can't beat me!" Minuette took a deep breath, and bulged out her cheeks with air. She was no Fluttershy, but it was still pretty cute.

Cloudchaser walked over to my bubble. I noticed that her legs were jerky, like she wasn't used to walking on all fours; I wondered if I had looked the same that morning. "So, um, hi."

"Hi." We looked at each other. After a period of pointless observation, I thought about how nice it would have been to have wings. Even better, a horn; maybe I could shut Minuette up with a zipper.

"Um, so do you know anything about why we're all suddenly horses?"

"Ponies," Minuette said.

"Quit eavesdropping," I said to Minuette, before returning to Cloudchaser's question. "If you have anything less than 'go to bed, wake up in a different body,' then there you go."

"But you said you were waiting for someone named Twilight?"

"Okay, so in the show the main character's name is Twilight Sparkle." I paused to see if Cloudchaser was with me. She nodded. "Twilight's the personal protégé, or understudy I guess, of Princess Celestia, who rules Equestria, which is where we are. Twilight has really powerful magic, and has a line-in directly to Celestia, who is pretty much a goddess, so she was the best pony to talk to."

"I… see."

"Of course, we couldn't get here without first getting stuck in these things." I looked up at the magenta walls. "Just shows how incompetent we are at doing things right."

"I think it's just how incompetent all of you are at doing things right," Berry Punch sneered.

"You're the root of the problem!" I countered. "Did you honestly think that you could just beat up a pony and have nothing happen to you in the way of punishment?"

"Well, you know what, I thought it was a dream. My mistake, maybe I should believe it's real next time I'm suddenly a pony surrounded by other ponies." Berry Punch's tone was gushing with insincerity. "Because that happens every day."

"That was still needless violence."

"As I said to Twi-jerk, you're not my mother." Berry folded her forelegs across her chest. "And as I said to you, it was for all the stuff I've had to deal with from Bronies. It's karma."

"'Karma' doesn't involve beating up every pony you see!"

"Both of you stop it!" Thunderlane shouted, getting our attention. "This is getting both of you nowhere, and it's doing nothing but causing anger. That's not the way to work together."

Berry scoffed. "Like I'd ever work together with this b–… jerk."

"You're going to have to if you want to get out of here." Thunderlane shut his eyes and lowered his head, taking deep breaths.

"Well, I don't want to get out of here," Minuette said. "You all can go right ahead, but I'm staying." She crossed her forelegs as if her point were final.

"I'm getting out of here the first opportunity I get," Berry said, also folding her front legs over her chest.

"Same here," Thunderlane agreed. "I don't like it here."

"Why not?" Cloudchaser asked. "I mean, it's really pretty, and everyone's so happy… mostly." The pegasus spared a glance over at us.

Thunderlane sighed. "That's exactly the problem. Everything feels so…" He circled a hoof in the air. "Artificial. Unreal. It's not that I don't like the fact that everyone's happy—nothing's wrong with happiness—but it almost seems like none of the ponies here know anything about the real world's problems and issues. No poverty to speak of, no racism to incite anger, no religion or politics worth fighting over… I guess my problem is that there's nothing that really exemplifies high points in life. There's no sadness to make the happiness feel complete. The colors are too saturated; their lives are too saturated. They're all living in a… a manufactured paradise."

Minuette didn't look happy, but the rest of us nodded. I looked around, hoping to spot a clock, but I had no luck. "So, now what?"

"As I said, we wait," Thunderlane repeated, not moving anything but his mouth.

I rested my head on my hooves and tried to let sleep while away the hours, but constant bickering between Berry and Minuette made my nap restless. I was so glad when the library door slammed, indicating Twilight had returned, that I could have kissed her hooves.

Twilight hesitated, halting beneath the archway into the room. "Why are you two here?"

"Thunderlane crashed," Minuette said, looking over at the stallion.

"And I was with him," Cloudchaser added.

Twilight blinked, then shook herself. "Well, I still need to hear an apology from Berry Punch and Minuette."

I heard the unicorn mumble something, and I sighed, knowing full well that she was whispering about her name.

"Come on, you two," Thunderlane reprimanded. "Apologize."

Berry groaned. "No."

"Dang it, apologize!" Thunderlane punctuated his martial shout with the stomp of his hoof.

We all flinched, and Twilight actually yelped. Thunderlane stared Berry Punch down, until she finally squeaked out, "Okay."

Thunderlane broke eye contact, and Berry Punch got up. Twilight walked between Berry's and Minuette's bubbles, giving a stern look to each pony. "So, what do you say?"

"We're sorry." The tone was more of irritation of having to apologize than regret for their actions.

"What's that? I don't think you're being sincere."

"Really." Berry Punch lowered her eyelids. "You're really going that far."

Twilight said nothing. Berry Punch tsked. "Fine. I'm sorry."

Twilight turned to Minuette. "And?"

"I'm sorry." Minuette stuck her tongue out at Berry Punch.

"Say it honestly."

"If I said it honestly, I wouldn't be saying sorry."

"That's it!" I shouted, pressing myself against my bubble's edge. "Face it, you hurt someone, and no matter the circumstance, violence is never the answer! Whatever happened to love and tolerance, huh? You beat Berry up!"

"But she deserved it!"

"That doesn't mean you start hurting her!" I roared. "You can say that Berry was wrong, because she was, but you cannot, I repeat, you cannot attack her like a savage and still claim that you're blameless!"

Minuette shrank back. "But–"

"No! You are wrong, Minuette! You! Are! Wrong!"We stayed in our stasis—with me squeezing against the barrier and with her meekly recoiling away, ears drooping and lip trembling—until I unclenched my teeth and swallowed shallow breaths of air to cool my boiling blood. I kept my gaze locked until she finally turned away, and with tears in her eyes hoarsely whispered out, "I'm sorry."

Twilight made no physical indication that she had heard, but with a snap of magic, Minuette and Berry Punch were freed. Twilight turned to Lyra, and began conversing in a low tone of voice, while still keeping an eye on the two liberated ponies. I curled up in a sitting position and rested my head on my hooves. They were hooves that weren't mine before I had woken up, yet already they felt cracked and broken, like I'd used them to travel along a windswept beach for a century's time. The day was catching up to me, and I felt the need to close my eyes and calm myself down.

I shook myself awake to Twilight's voice, and stumbled to my hooves as her words became clear. "…ready to tell me?"

"Wait, what?" I rubbed my eyes, hoping to chase away the remnants of sleep haunting me. "Um, yes?"

"Why did you eat my soup? That's entirely out of character for you."

"I was hungry."

"Yes, but you could have asked, at least!" Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Lyra had been freed as well. "Why did you eat my soup?"

"I hadn't eaten all day, and I was on edge." Twilight looked unimpressed. I added, "I can make it up to you, if you want me to."

"No, you don't have to make it up or anything," Twilight sighed, before admitting that I hadn't eaten much of the soup. "But at least you're willing to repent." The bubble dissolved around me, recoloring the world with blues and yellows that were previously muted by shades of magenta.

I whooped, before controlling myself and lying back down. "What time is it?"

"A couple of hours before nighttime. Spike's not back yet, so I'd guess five or six."

"Then can we eat something?" I looked up at Twilight with a pleading expression, hoping that it wasn't too much to ask.

"…What's the magic word?"

"Hey, you have the horn, not me." I giggled at my own joke, and the smallest of smiles flickered onto Twilight's face. "Please?"

"Sure."

Twilight served us some reheated soup, and everyone bar the student herself gobbled it up. I know I scarfed down about three bowls before slowing, and Berry Punch had at least five. Thunderlane and Cloudchaser joined us for the meal, although neither of them ate much. After satisfying my hunger, I lay down, basking in the warmth that my stomach was emanating. I hadn't felt so good about having eaten food since… ever.

I murmured happily, stretching out on the ground before cuddling up into a sleeping position. I was content to just conk out right there had Twilight not nudged me out of my bliss. "If you want to go to sleep, you might want to do that on a bed."

I didn't bother opening my eyes. "Too tired."

I heard Twilight huff, before a sensation of weightlessness gripped me. "If you're so tired, then I guess you can take the guest bed here tonight." I felt a breeze rush past me as I began moving through the air.

My ears picked up Minuette faintly yawning. "Hey, can I have a bed too? I don't wanna have to walk back home."

I laughed under my breath, and heard Twilight talking before the cool sheets of a mattress enveloped me. Letting out a squeal of delight, I grabbed the pillow and wrapped myself around it, wriggling deep underneath the covers. I heard irritated yelling downstairs, but my exhausted mind couldn't decipher their words. I drifted into slumber, tenderly snuggling the pillow in my embrace.