Portals

by The Derpy Doctor

Butterflies, Gems and Rainbows

Running out of food due to the amazing amount of colorful ponies, Kevin went shopping. Twilight stayed home with the new ponies. Kevin went to work as usual. Today became unexpected.

Fluttershy went to the window, curious to see the world below. The cars moved in a pattern. It seemed each car was in order: silver car, black car, red car, silver car, black car red car, and it kept going like that. Everything lined up. Fluttershy watched silently. She saw everything.
After gazing upon the world for several minutes, Fluttershy noticed a flaw. There was a cat across the street without a home. How cruel is his world? Why is it so dark as compared to hers? Just being here for a day, she had to dodge all sorts of people, she had to avoid helping animals for the sake of her own safety. Fluttershy hadn’t seen a world this mean since she was in flight school.

Fluttershy wasn’t very confident in a lot of things. This world could only depress her. For one thing, Twilight and her “person” hadn’t even asked if there were others that went with them. This likely meant that they didn’t care that much about their awkward commute in this terrible city. Fluttershy wondered on what happened to the others now that they had separated from them and not found the way over here yet. Saddened, Fluttershy lay on the couch, depressed. Would she ever see them again?

Rainbow Dash brought her head up from the ground on the alley way. She had slept in the alleyway. That was not something that Rainbow did. She turned to her left. Rarity and Pinkie both slept like rocks. With Rarity, that was probably expected due to her close relationship with stones, but with Pinkie that was much unexpected given her hyperactive nature.

“Get up,” Rainbow declared in a hopeful lead-the-way speech. Pinkie sprang to her hooves. Rarity stumbled and fell as she made her attempt to come to life.

Rainbow dash continued, ignorant of their reaction. “If we are going to help Twilight, then we need to help her before something terrible gets her. Whatever got her last time will likely strike again, and that won’t happen if I have anything to say about it.” Rainbow dash hated the idea that one of her friends was in trouble and that she will have no part in being able to save her. If she would later find Twilight dead, then it would be likely that she would be the next to go. She would die defending her best friend.

Rainbow led her friends to the edge of the alleyway before checking if the cost was clear.

“Rarity, is that spell of any use here?” Rainbow dash tried to examine.

“I would, if Twilight is out of trouble, it will most certainly work.”

“Great,” Rainbow said. There will be no barriers now. Rainbow dash could get her friends back and save all of Equestria.

“So how did you find us?” Twilight questioned.

“It was easy,” Applejack started, “me and Fluttershy thought about you very hard upon entering the portal, and we were spanned almost immediately upon entering this world. We saw Rainbow dash and the others moments before we were moved several miles away at a very fast pace. Some invisible force just brought us all the way over here to the outside of this here apartment.”

“That’s funny, the same thing happened to me,” Twilight said, thinking about the experience she had coming back to this world.

“Did you say the others?” Twilight questioned realizing that there might be a good chance that the other three were here looking for her.

“Yeah, well…” Applejack began before she was interrupted by the door opening and shutting; Kevin stalked in.

“Oh,” he barely managed a form of declaring the amount of adorable in the room. He walked over to the table on the other side of the room where Fluttershy sat.

Twilight and Applejack stared at him. They had not noticed that Fluttershy was acting a little bit more depressed than usual. She was too far away from them for anyone to notice whether she was depressed or just shy as usual.

Fluttershy lifted her head. She had only known Kevin for a half a day now, but he hugged her and held her as if he had known her for many years: as a good friend.

“What’s the matter?” Kevin asked sitting at the corresponding seat.

Fluttershy sighed. She turned realizing that he was even taller now than she had ever guessed a human would. She knew by the look of understanding in his eyes that she could trust him.

“I don’t fit in here,” she said, “I always feel misplaced here and that I might never get back to my home. There are things and people that might try to hurt me and I don’t want anything to happen to me. To any of us.”

Kevin understood every word regardless of the lack of absolute accent. She was too shy to speak very clearly, but despite that, he heard every word.

“I understand that,” Kevin brought forth, “I understand that you might be hurt. I understand that you and all of your friends are at great risk. I know that there are issues regarding one of you. Your home was attacked. Regardless: You have a home here. It is always open. It is always safe. I will protect you. There is no chance that they will get to you without me to stop them. I will die before you do, fluttershy. They will not kill you before they first kill me.”

Kevin couldn’t ensure himself that that was true. It was as true as he could have thought it to be in theory. He couldn’t know for sure if any haters would first kill him and then try to seek revenge on whatever it was that ponies ever did to them. He wasn’t even sure if there were other variables that might lead to her demise before his own. He knew one thing for sure, though, one thing. He knew that he would guard this pony with his life. There are few things that could ever get rid of that thought.

Kevin leaned in for a hug. Fluttershy wasn’t accustomed to the very air this guy breathed yet. She wasn’t sure if she could trust him. She knew that he had tried his best to comfort her… and it worked. She felt better and she did want a hug, especially after she had been through this ordeal. She accepted the hug as she wrapped her hooves around his sides.

Kevin couldn’t help but notice that her hooves only reached a small portion of the way around him. Her small arms could barely extend past his sides. This thought process was disrupted in a split second as he heard a familiar and quite threatening voice.

“Get off her!”

The voice, very easily that of Rainbow dash came from the window to the apartment.

Kevin dare not look: it could provoke her to come at him faster and harder.

Twilight and Applejack tried to calm her. “No, no, Rainbow, he’s just been…”

Then they being interrupted by Rainbow. “I know what he did. I saw you back in Equestria, I need no reminders of what pain you felt,” Then staring at Kevin with a quite hurt look: “What pain he will soon feel.”

Kevin looked quite hard out of the corner of his eye at her.

“Rainbow?” He began an attempt to calm her.

Wiping a tear from her face due to the surprised purple reminder that sat on the couch, the cyan mare responded “What?!”

“Do I get any last words?” He responded hopeful that she would let him respond.

“You better make it quick!” Rainbow dash acknowledged giving more of a chance to Kevin than the other person did to Twilight.

Kevin now stared directly at his new captor. He put his hands above his head and braced himself in case she were to charge.

“I just wanted to say: thank you,” Kevin said thinking through everything that he was going to say.

“Um. You’re welcome?” Rainbow interrogated, “For what, exactly?”

“I wanted to say thank you, Rainbow Dash, (the last two words surprising Rainbow as she didn’t realize he knew her full name) for being a friend to me in much unknown ways to you. Just by doing what you do, I have found the better side of you.”

Rainbow Dash lowered herself so that all of her hooves were planted firmly on the ground.

“Am I missing something?” Rainbow dash gestured wondering what had happened her and why this guy was speaking this way.
Each of the other started explaining to Rainbow as Rarity and Pinkie Pie started through the windows. Each of them starting in on what was happening shortly after Twilight had clued them in.

Kevin was in awe. Not only was he in the presence almost all six of his role-models: the ones that had helped him through so many hard times, but they were all starting to think him their friend. Kevin had thought of them as his friends for a long time, now, but he now had them too as good confidants. Kevin would never say it out loud, but he loved them. He loved his companions. He didn’t love them the way a man loves a woman. He meant in another way. He loves his friends like friends. He felt this very deeply for them. These friends were another thing, though. They were his very best friends. He knew them so well. He knew their characteristics and found them much more significant to him than anyone he had ever met. And now, he was at their need. He would stick up for them now that they needed him, because they had helped him over and over and over again.

Night fell. Tomorrow, Kevin would have to get probably a million sacks of apples and bring them for those that he held dear. That was given. As an extra, he still had to pay for the hotel room and for all of the utilities that they had to use. He might not be able to help each of them with no personal cost, but that’s generosity. One thing that Kevin knew, he really wanted to take after his favorite mares.
Kevin nodded off. He had six friends, now. He had six friends that he would never give up for anything in the world.

He hadn’t been to sleep before he was woken up by a hard, but not uncomfortable feeling on the roof of his forehead.
Kevin blinked his eyes open to stare into the face of a purple alicorn. He rubbed his eyes before getting to respond.

“What happened?” came the voice: very groggy.

“I’m scared,” Twilight muttered.

Kevin was very caring for her, he knew that she would take some time to be healed and that she would be very scared very often. On top of that, he was very understanding of all of her situations, he never once doubted her. She meant everything to him. He loved his friends.

“Is there something I can do?” he asked as he looked over at her bed which was absolutely covered in Technicolor ponies.

Twilight gained a curious dose of vitamin fluttershy as the owned up to her direction. “I was wondering if I could sleep in your bed tonight.”

Kevin thought over it. After caring for her for this long, especially under the care that he had given her, it only seemed logical that she would ask this at some point or another. At some point, she would turn to him to help cure her nightmares with the acclimation of beds. Kevin nodded before turning her to the part of the bed. She gathered herself under the sheets as Kevin pressed them under the sides of the mattress.

Twilight hadn’t been tucked in since her early beginnings as Celestia’s protégé at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns and that was back when she was still incapable of remembering her parents’ birthdays. She lay contented in the warm sheets.

Kevin snuck his way to the other side of the bed and gave Twilight way more than enough space. He slept at the very edge of the bed to ensure a minimum allowance of awkwardicity (SI unit for the measure of awkward present in a room at one time).
After an even longer pause than he had prior to falling asleep the first time, Kevin again was brought down to the natural resting state as he fell asleep.

Celestia woke up from her nightmares. She expected that Bellus would start tearing ponies apart today. She expected that he would run mad through the devastated streets of Ponyville searching for ponies to torture and interrogate into eventual confession. She brought her head up to look for the beast. Twilight hadn’t seen him once for the whole time she was here. She looked as hard as possible, but didn’t notice the monster before it was right below her. As she moved her head back into place, he decided to show himself, and Celestia was scared so hard that she momentarily moved from her rightful place in the sky out of the shock that she had suffered.

“I know that I am missing five ponies, Celestia. I won’t get upset, though. They will be back here in time for each of your eventual demises.”

After calming herself to a reasonable level, Celestia came to the realization that this was true and that regardless of what Twilight was doing on the other side, she would return and suffer the same fate as the rest of them.

Bellus stormed off. He had said all that he had needed to say.

Celestia had no options. Life here was only exciting, because the demon passed below them. Nopony knew what he would do if he got really upset, but they guessed it had something to do with starting his plans early. The very idea made each of the ponies shiver. The very idea that he would do that to Twilight as soon as she came back brought tears to their eyes. Twilight can’t come back. She has to live.

Hopefully she could manage to find some way to keep the species running. She has to live on. Preserve Equestria in the hearts of as many people on earth as possible. She must be the light behind everyone’s smile. The wind beneath everyone’s wings.