• Published 30th Sep 2014
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Alicorn in Wonderland - The Hand of Pony



How far does the rabbit hole go? Even Twilight has to admit this one goes further than most.

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Down the rabbit hole

Twilight was wandering around Ponyville looking for her stuff. When Tirek had blown up the library a lot of her personal items had been strewn about the area. Normally she could have accepted this fact of life and explosions with grace but the other ponies around town were finding her stuff and she really wished they wouldn't.

The problem had come to a head when Colgate had returned her mint condition, limited edition Daring Do collector’s model in the middle of town in full public view, delivering it to her with a bow and a speech, like she was returning a sacred relic of the princess. It was the worst kind of embarrassment and since then she had spent days scouring the town in the hopes of finding her stuff before the towns-ponies created even more humiliating ways of returning her effects.

That was what she was doing right now, although she wasn't trying too hard since it was stupidly hot today. Clearly Celestia was trying to prove something, probably in response to rumours that Princess Luna was in fact, best princess.

She was taking a break in the shade of a tree when she saw Angel Bunny running past. There was nothing particularly unusual about this, even the fact that he was wearing a bright red waistcoat and carrying a golden pocket watch wasn't too strange, not even scoring a one on the Ponyville scale of weirdness.

What was strange though was that as he ran past he spoke. "Those damn fool ponies have gone and made me late!" He sounded reminiscent of what had come to be known as 'Flutterguy'.

On the Ponyville scale of weirdness talking animals scored at least a four and was therefore worthy of investigation. She got up and started chasing after the loquacious lepidorae.

She chased him up a nearby hill, where she watched run into a hole under the tree located at the hills brow. "Angel Bunny, you stop right there! You know Fluttershy doesn't like you going into strange rabbits' homes!" She stuck her head into the hole and was about to shout again when she noticed the strange blue glow the warren possessed.

“Well that’s not normal…” She started to crawl in a bit, hoping to investigate. The hole seemed a good bit larger than a typical burrow giving her plenty of room to wriggle through. Clearly the unusual heat was damaging Twilight's ability to think because it never occurred to her to light up her horn so she could see properly. As such she was unaware of the hole in front of her and had no way of stopping herself before she fell.

Thinking back on it Twilight wished she could say she fell with the grace and dignity that a princess should possess. But that'd be a lie. Instead she flailed all her limbs as she screamed a scream of the 'Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!' variety. She had tried to fly but either she was too panicked to get it right or her wings just weren't working.

This went on for about ten minutes until she started to calm herself enough to open her eyes. She looked down, thinking it shouldn't be possible to fall this far without hitting anything. The hole went on, the bottom obscured by both distance and the darkness. She looked back up, noticing that the walls didn't look right.

They were covered in cupboards and shelves, the gaps between them filled with pictures and maps hanging off pegs. Using her magic she grabbed something off one of the shelves. It was a jar labelled 'Orange Marmalade,' but it was empty. Rather than just dropping it she placed it back on a passing shelf, reasoning that her landing was going to bad enough without adding broken glass to the mix.

"Well," she thought to herself. "This is another fine mess I've gotten into. I've fought evil beings any number of times and the thing that finally kills me is my own curiosity." She was sure somewhere Discord was laughing at that fact.

"Is this fall ever going to end? The less time I have to consider how dumb I was to come in here, the better." She thought for a bit. She had been falling for about fifteen minutes now, so at terminal velocity of one hundred and ninety five kilometres per hour she should have fallen almost fifty miles by now.

"Should make quite the crater when I finally hit the bottom, wherever that is." In a more ignorant age she might have worried about falling out the bottom of the world, but when two alicorns of godlike power, controlling the sun and moon, say the world is not flat, most ponies tend to believe them. Especially when one of those alicorns confirmed it after spending a thousand years on the moon looking at said world.

"Is it possible there are tunnels running right through the world? Does this go right through to Zebrica? Do I get to spend the rest of eternity in the centre of the planet being crushed by gravity because that does not sound like a good time."

The falling continued and Twilight was actually getting kind of bored. She thought that waiting to meet your doom one way or another would be a bit more panic inducing, but apparently not.

She started to think what would happen to Spike without her. "I bet he moves in with Rarity. He'd be all hurt and looking for comfort, and she'd be far too generous to say no." She grinned, unbeknownst to almost everypony, Spike and Rarity's budding relationship was a source of great amusement to her.

She had moved on to wondering whether Pinkie would throw her a 'sorry you’re missing/ dead' party when she suddenly landed on a heap of twigs and leaves with a resounding 'SMACK!'

She groaned, rolling off the pile, the fact that she wasn't dead or severely crippled not quite grabbing her attention despite how unusual it was to survive such a thing. She looked up, but saw nothing through the darkness. Ahead of her was a passage, down which Angel was scurrying. She set off after him; he had some explaining to do!

"By my fluffy white butt, I hate being late!"

Twilight was about to catch him when he turned a corner and had magically disappeared by the time she had got round it.

"I swear if Discord’s been messing with that rabbit I'm going to make him beg to be turned back to stone!" She looked around. She was now in a long yet low hall, with lamps hanging from the ceiling. All around the hall there were doors, which after checking she found were all locked.

Sighing in irritation she trotted to the middle of the hall and came across a three legged table, made of glass, that she was sure hadn't been there before. Upon the table was small golden key.

"Huh...well that's convenient." She picked the key up in her magic and tested it in the doors; but it seemed either the key was too big or too small for the doors present. "Oh for pony's sake..." She tried the doors again and as she went around she noticed a low curtain that came up to eye level. Mystified by the seemingly pointless curtain she moved it aside, revealing a small door that came up to her knee. She tried the key in the door and to her annoyance it fitted.

"Sure! Unlock the door I can't fit through..." Hunkering down she looked through the door. It went into a tiny passage that led onto a rather colourful looking garden. "Well I think the nice garden beats hanging around these halls all day." She figured she could probably just teleport through the length of the hall into the garden but as she charged the spell up her horn just fizzled out.

"Hmm, must be an anti-teleportation field here." she said after a few more tries. She tried a shrinking spell instead but again her magic fizzled out. "What the hay is going on!" she said out loud in exasperation. She tried some other spells but all met with the same result. The only thing that seemed to work was her telekinesis

"Gah!" She stomped back to the table, reasoning that just trying to buck one of the doors down was probably going to hurt her more than it would work.

On the table was a bottle with a label saying 'DRINK ME' written on it in a rather elegant cursive script.

"Oh yeah. Of course I’ll drink the bottle that mysteriously appeared when I wasn't looking."

She stared at the bottle for a short while. Last time she had drank from a bottle like this it had been one of Celestia's little pranks. She had spent two days as a purple deer before she was able to brew a cure.

She stared a bit longer. "Oh why not? Cloven hooves were kind of fun, and the tail was a lot easier to manage." She picked the bottle up and downed it. It has a rather peculiar taste of cherry tart, custard, pineapple, toffee and hot buttered toast. There was also another flavour she couldn't recognise but felt it was best to not dwell on it.

-0-0-0-

"Now this is just weird..." Instead of growing antlers and cloven hooves she was shrinking which was something she didn't expect.
She was getting small enough to fit through the door she had unlocked, which was handy. She waited a little bit to make sure she didn't shrink further.

Happy with her new size she trotted over to the tiny door and tried to open it, but found it had relocked itself.

"Oh come on!" she shouted before trotting back to the table where she had left the key. The same table that now towered above her.
She tried another teleport to get to the key but again her magic failed. She tried to fly up but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't get enough altitude to reach the table top.

"This...is stupid." she landed by one of the table legs and leaned her forehead against the cool glass, occasionally head-butting it for good measure.

She stayed there for a bit until a small glass box under the table caught her eye. Inside it was a very small cupcake with 'EAT ME' written upon it with icing.

"Honestly, what's the worst that could happen? If it makes me grow I can get the key. If it shrinks me more I can crawl under the door. If it makes me really small I could probably swim through the door at an atomic level. On the other hoof, this could be what turns me into a deer. Either way I get a two out of three chance of getting what I want and why am I still talking to myself?"

She shook her head before taking a bite of the cupcake and waiting for something to happen.

"Or this could just be a cupcake. Who knew?" Feeling disappointed she ate the rest of the cake with a pout. She was about to go back to head-butting the table leg when she started to feel a little bit strange.

Author's Note:

Time to stop sitting on my hands and post this thing.