Chapter 3
Chapter 3-
“Ooohh!” Twilight groaned. She ran through the library, haphazardly pulling books off shelves, scanning the covers, tossing those she didn’t want over her shoulder and flipping through others before tossing them too or depositing them on an ever-growing stack near the pedestal where both the spell book she’d gotten the animation spell from, along with Daring Do and the Search for the Alicorn Stone now sat together.
“This isn’t good. This is not good!”
Spike dodged another flying book projectile, which hit the wall of the tree library with a “thump”, then slid to the floor.
“Twilight,” the dragon said. “Calm down. We’ll figure out a way to reverse this.”
Twilight skidded to a halt and gave her assistant a wide-eyed, horrified look.
“Calm down?” she demanded. “Calm down? Spike, how could you say something like that?”
“Uh…” was the dragon’s answer. Twilight galloped to the podium with her spell book and the Daring Do book and grabbed the latter with her magic, opening it and hanging it before Spike’s face.
“Look!” she said, shaking the book. Spike reached up and grabbed it from her.
“I would if you’d stop shaking it,” he complained. Once the Daring Do book was in his claws, he glanced down at the pages. “What about it?”
“Don’t you see?” the unicorn demanded, indicating part of the page with a hoof. Spike’s eyes widened a little. Among the narration of the daring pegasus adventurer, Daring Do, were scattered the mentions of Rainbow Dash.
Spike blinked, realization dawning.
“She’s in the book?” he asked, as Twilight snatched it back from him and flipped nervously through the pages. “How’d that happen? I thought she’d just become part of the picture on the cover.”
“No!” Twilight told him. “The spell somehow reversed itself. It can cause fictional things to come to life, so when it came in contact with a very real Rainbow Dash, it caused her to become fiction! Now she’s trapped in the book!”
Spike rubbed his chin, considering.
“But, didn’t you say the spell was only temporary?” he asked. “You said that it would only last a few minutes.”
Twilight lowered the book slightly and her eyes widened with hope. She turned to Spike.
“Ha!” she cried, running forward and hugging him. “Of course I did! Spike, you’re a genius!”
“Thanks…” the dragon replied, though he could have gotten on quite well without the lung-collapsing hug that Twilight was treating him with now. He carefully extricated himself from her hooves, then grabbed the book from her magical field again.
“Okay,” he said, placing it on the round table that was now surrounded by a sea of books. “No emergency. We’ll just wait.”
Twilight nodded, and let out a long breath.
“Right,” she said, sitting down and staring at the book. “We just wait.”
And so they did.
Spike sat beside Twilight, watching the book intently. He wasn’t sure what was coming, but he tensed himself for a blast of magic that would deliver Rainbow Dash back to them.
They waited.
And waited.
And….waited.
And just for good measure, they waited a little longer.
No Rainbow Dash. Spike slowly looked up at Twilight to see that she was sweating. Her eye twitched involuntarily as she stared nervously at the book.
“How long has it been?” she asked, tentatively. Spike checked the clock on the wall.
“Ten minutes,” he answered.
“We’ll just…wait a little longer.”
Spike nodded and returned his attention to the book.
By the time twenty minutes had passed, Twilight couldn’t take it anymore. She leaped up and ran to the book.
“Why hasn’t she come back yet?” she asked, looking down at the cover that still showed the picture of Daring Do with Rainbow Dash. “Where is she?”
“I thought you said it was temporary!” Spike said, starting to get concerned. Twilight turned around and looked fearfully at him.
“It’s supposed to!” she gasped. “But….she hasn’t come back yet!”
Dragon and unicorn stared at each other for a long, tension-filled moment.
Then there was a knock at the door. Twilight slowly turned to look at it.
“Maybe that’s her?” Spike asked nervously. He watched as Twilight pulled herself away from her vigil over the Daring Do novel and stepped towards the door. Her horn glowed as she used her magic to slowly turn the knob. Spike held his breath.
“Hey, Twilight,” came a familiar twanging voice. Applejack. “You seen Rainbow Dash? She was supposed to help me with picking apples today.”
“I haven’t seen her!” Twilight said, maybe a bit too quickly, with an expression that was a little too frantic. Spike covered his face with his hand.
Applejack narrowed her eyes and gave Twilight an odd look.
“You okay, Twilight?” she asked. She tried to look around the unicorn, but Twilight moved to block her view.
“Yes! We’re fine! Thanks for asking!” Twilight said, her voice high-pitched and fast. “Everything’s fine! And Rainbow Dash is too! Not that I’ve seen her or anything! Haha!” She gave a nervous laugh.
“You sure?” Applejack asked again. She fixed Twilight with a gaze that the unicorn couldn’t look away from. Finally, she sagged.
“Oh, Applejack,” she said, standing aside and letting her see the destruction inside the depths of the library. “Something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do.”
“What happened?” Applejack asked as she followed Twilight inside the library, which was strewn with discarded books, plus the shattered glass that still lay on the ground from where Rainbow Dash had made her crash entrance. “Good heavens, it looks like a tornado’s gone through here.”
She examined the glass from the broken window and looked up, eyebrow raised.
“Let me guess, Rainbow Dash crashed again, didn’t she? She should really practice outside of Ponyville.”
Twilight sighed.
“It’s…a little more complicated than that,” she admitted. Applejack looked slightly alarmed.
“She isn’t hurt is she?” the country pony asked. Twilight shook her head quickly.
“No,” she replied. “Or, at least, I don’t think so. Uh…I hope not.”
“Twilight, for pony’s sake, spit it out!” Applejack said. Twilight scuffed a hoof against the ground.
“Uh, well, you see….”
“Twilight was working on an animation spell when Rainbow Dash crashed through the window which threw off Twilight’s concentration and she hit her with the spell. Rainbow Dash disappeared but we found her on the front of the Daring Do book that she was coming by to pick up later and we think she’s trapped in the book now,” Spike explained. Applejack looked from the dragon to the unicorn, looking slightly confused.
“Come again?”
Twilight sighed.
“I was practicing a new spell that can turn works of fiction – or pictures – into real life. But Rainbow Dash crashed through the window and I hit her with the spell instead. Now she’s trapped in that Daring Do book, and I don’t know how to get her out.”
Applejack stepped forward, careful to avoid the broken glass, and maneuvered around the stacks of books to where the Daring Do book sat on the round table. Spike moved aside so she could see it better.
“This one, huh?” she asked, looking down at the cover. It certainly did have a picture of the rainbow-colored pony on the front, running right behind the famous pony archeologist.
“Yeah,” Twilight said, stepping to stand beside the orange mare. “She’s not just on the cover, either. She’s in the book itself: an actual character.”
“Twilight’s spell was only supposed to be temporary,” Spike said. “But…Rainbow Dash hasn’t come back yet. We don’t know what’s wrong.”
Applejack considered the book, then looked at Twilight.
“Well,” she said. “Ah don’t know much ‘bout magic, but maybe we should get the others together. One of them might have a suggestion on how to put this straight.”
Twilight nodded.
“I’m worried, though,” she said. “If we can’t get her back. We’ll have lost an element of harmony. And a friend.”
Applejack touched Twilight’s shoulder with a hoof.
“We’ll get her back,” the orange mare said with an encouraging smile. “I promise.”
Twilight smiled back, feeling a little better.
“Now, come on,” Applejack said, turning back towards the door that was still open. “Let’s get the others. We’ve got a Rainbow Dash to save.”
~**~
In not much time at all, they had the others gathered in the library. Twilight and the book were in the middle, as the other girls, including Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack sat around her, along with Spike.
“So,” Rarity said. “What you’re saying is – “
“That Rainbow Dash got zapped with a bolt of magic and got thrown into a book that she was gonna pick up to read but now she gets to be a character in it and solve awesome archeological mysteries with Daring Do??” Pinkie Pie filled in, talking at about ninety miles an hour.
“Well…” Twilight said once she’d caught up with Pinkie’s words. “Yes.”
“Oh, my,” Fluttershy said. “I hope she’s okay! She must be so scared!”
“Not Rainbow,” Applejack replied. “She loves those Daring Do books. She’s probably enjoying every minute of it.”
“Still,” Rarity replied. “We must get her back to this world. It just won’t do to have her trapped in a book like that.”
“Rarity’s right,” Twilight said. “But I don’t know how to get her out yet.”
“Anypony got any ideas?” Applejack asked.
“Is there a counter spell?” Rarity asked. Twilight shook her head.
“Since I don’t know what spell I cast in the first place – the one that hit Rainbow Dash was an altered and out of control version of the spell I tried casting – I don’t know what spell to use to bring her back.”
“Can’t you try a few?” Fluttershy asked. “The right one will bring her back.”
“It’s not that simple,” Twilight replied. “Magic is sensitive. If I cast the wrong spell, it could do something worse.”
“Like…?” Applejack asked.
“Like, causing her to lose her mane and tail,” Twilight responded flatly. “Or turning her back to a baby.”
“Mmm,” Applejack replied. “No, none of those sound like good options.”
“So what do we do?” Fluttershy asked.
“Why don’t you just read the book?”
All eyes turned to Pinkie Pie, who, for once, was sitting calmly, staring at them all as if the solution was obvious.
“What?” Twilight asked.
“Well,” Pinkie said. “All books have an end, right? Well, if Rainbow Dash is stuck inside the book, then to get her out we just have to read to the end of the book. Then she’ll be free.”
Twilight felt momentarily like an idiot. How had she not thought of that?
“That…just might work,” she said carefully.
Applejack looked over at Pinkie Pie.
“How’d you think of that?” she asked. Pinkie Pie shrugged.
“I have experience,” she replied. The others stared at the pink pony, but she didn’t elaborate. Eventually, Twilight picked the Daring Do book up and cracked open the binding. She’d read this one before, but it had been a while.
“Okay,” she said. “Well…I guess we’ll get started. Should we take turns?”
“Why not?” Applejack asked. The others agreed.
“Okay,” Twilight said. “I’ll go first.”
She cleared her throat, then started to read.
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They do realized that this isn't the first time that the Mane 6 were book/comic hopping.
4765966
Once again, this story takes place between seasons 2 and 3, so nothing in season 3 or season 4 has happened yet.
4766611 How in between?
4767266
Well, it takes place after "Read It and Weep" but before "Magical Mystery Cure". Twilight is not yet a princess in this story. So it takes place somewhere between those episodes and those seasons.