//------------------------------// // A Magic Baby's Imagination // Story: A Little Monster // by Shadowmane PX-41 //------------------------------// When Sunset made it to the throne room, her eyes immediately shot open with how drastically Twilight's magic had changed it. The walls around her were now simulating a sunny day in a grassy field with clouds, animals, and even the sun itself bearing a smile at her. The floor was just as bouncy and unstable as the one in the library and was coloured with each colour on the rainbow, with a few extra ones splattered in for more vibrancy. The thrones in the room still stood, but they were inflatable as well, made entirely out of shaped balloons of all sizes and colours. Twilight was seen climbing the wobbly stairs up towards the throne, babbling and mumbling in baby talk as she tried to take a seat on one of the transformed chairs. Whenever she lost her balance and tumbled back down, her horn disappeared as she rolled towards the bottom, her back colliding with the floor once again. "Twilight? Please, just listen to me for once." Sunset walked across the floor, keeping her balance on the wobbly surfaces as she picked Twilight up and held her close. "This castle must be thousands of years old. It's not right just to turn it into a magical world for babies like you." As she rubbed the foal's belly, she looked around and grimaced at the walls and ground. "If Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were here, they'd be very disappointed with you. Now let's get you to sleep so that we can change all this back and find a way back home." Twilight fussed and shook around in Sunset's grip, a frown starting to appear on her face as she unfurled her wings, slapping Sunset in the face with them as she broke free from her sister's grasp. Giggling at her freedom, she fluttered off towards yet another room, curious to know what else her magic had done to transform the other rooms of the castle. "Twilight! No! Bad girl! Come back here!" Sunset chased after Twilight, galloping into the next room after the raven-feathered foal. "Come back to Mama and have a nap!" As Sunset ran through the next corridor, she had to manoeuvre around scatterings of building blocks, balls, open books, and other toys that littered the passage. Where there would usually be torches to illuminate the deeper parts of the castle, there were now bright and colourful rainbow-coloured orbs that shone radiantly and lit up the walls, floor, and even her own skin as she pushed onward. "If this is what Twilight can do as a baby, I don't think I even want to know that she could do as a teenager..." Sunset said to herself as sweat poured down her forehead. As she let the thoughts of Twilight grow up all over again run through her mind, she pushed through a pair of pink foam strips that acted as doors and came into another room. What should have been a tower concealing a spiral staircase was now a cylindrical mess of bright lights and baby-appealing shapes and colours were seen all over the walls as the staircase had been turned into a large slide. Sunset was about to grab Twilight, but because she had been galloping, she crashed into the large purple rubber wall and bounced around like a pinball before sliding down the slide, pulling Twilight along with her as they both shot down the ride, twisting and turning to the left as they picked up speed. "Whoa!" Sunset exclaimed as she got faster and faster before coming to the end of the slide, shooting through another passage with bright lights and baby stuff sprinkled everywhere. She heard Twilight squeal and clap her hooves together as the two of them pushed the toys away and came to a stop outside another door with letters on it. "At least you're having fun, you little troublemaker..." She could only give Twilight a pat on the head as she jumped out of Sunset's hold, laughing like a maniac. Once Twilight calmed down, she looked up at the new door and reached up for it, putting a magical aura onto it. She pushed out to try and open it, and without any effort, the two doors opened up to reveal yet another room that was geared towards her tastes. When she saw what was on the other side of the door, she flew through, leaving Sunset to stand back up and follow her inside. The next room was just as bright and eye-straining as the rest of the castle, with even more shapes, letters, and numbers adorned all over the walls. Only this time, the room seemed to be split in half. On the right side of the room, there was nothing more than balls in an expansive ball pit, ranging from every colour in existence. As for the other side, there were building blocks covering almost all of the ground. Some huge, some small, and some the size of Sunset herself. "So, this is what a baby's imagination can do, huh?" Sunset looked around and saw Twilight chortle even more as she reached out to start playing with the multitude of blocks. She watched her sister build a tower with her hooves while her horn began to construct a small fort made out of them. "I would be impressed if it weren't for the fact that Twilight's turned an old ruin into some weird and wacky world to satisfy her need for playtime." Twilight clapped her hooves together and smiled at her tower, taking more blocks from around her and piling them on top of one another, muttering more incomprehensible gibberish and making mouth farts as she continued her work. Then, just as she was about to place another block on the tower, she instead examined it and put it into her mouth, sucking on it as she flopped onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. "Aw, Twilight, you know I could never stay mad at you..." Sunset walked over to Twilight and squatted down towards her, giving the baby a kiss on the face. "Such a sweet little thing you are. So full of magic but with no idea on how to use it. I just wish we could've gotten to know each other better at the Friendship Games..." "Mama..." Twilight spat out the block and reached up for Sunset, flapping her wings as she lifted herself up and hugged the unicorn. She pressed her face against Sunset's body and cooed gently, rubbing her cheeks up and down against the soft fur. "There, there, Twilight. I'll always be here for you, no matter what happens." Sunset hugged Twilight back, looking her in her tiny pinprick eyes as she looked up and reached out to grab her face. As Twilight's little hooves got close, Sunset gave her a light boop on the nuzzle, hearing her laugh once again. "And for the record, I'm still trying to get you to bed, if that's all the same with you. So, do you want to follow mama back to the library so she can read you a bedtime story?" "Nuh-uh!" Twilight shook her head and looked out towards the room, reaching out for the blocks and ball pit balls again. "Pway! Wan pway wid mama!" "Play? But Twilight, the girls at Camp Everfree miss you!" Sunset rubbed Twilight on the back of the head as she tried to get her to fall asleep. "We should get you to bed, then find a way to get back home in time so that Gloriosa, Timber, Diamond, and the others don't start panicking about our disappearance." "Nuh-uh! Pway wid dem hewe!" Twilight magically conjured up her rattle and launched a magical bolt at one of the blocks. A portal opened, showing a clear way back to Camp Everfree, with the campers gathering at a dock which was beyond repair. "Pwaytime!" With another shake of her rattle, she fired another bolt of magic through the portal which was about to hit the heads of the girls. "Twilight! What are you doing?!" Sunset watched as Twilight hurled the bolt of magic and made it vanish through the portal. "No! Stop it! We don't need to abduct your aunties when we can just go to them! Now c'mon! Let's get out of here while we still can! I'm sure that your magic will vanish once you leave this world and go back home, right?" Just as Sunset was about to take a step forward towards the portal, she immediately felt a strong wind blasting out of it, flinging both her and Twilight's manes back. Even against the strong force of air, she was still holding her ground and inching closer and closer home. "C'mon! We're almost there! We'll be back in time for smores, scary stories, nature walks, everything!" Sunset gritted her teeth and began to struggle as she was now within touching distance of the portal back to the human world. With one last push, she was about to leap through when she saw what Twilight's magic was doing on the other side. At Camp Everfree, the resulting spell that Twilight had fired that caused the strong winds to blow was now trying to suck up the Rainbooms, along with Timber Spruce, Gloriosa Daisy, and Diamond Tiara. The powerful suction ripped up grass, the ruined docks, and even some plants and water around them, but still the humans managed to hold their grounds, clutching onto trees and other objects around the camp to hold them down. "What's going on?!" Rainbow Dash asked as she shouted over the noise of the roaring winds. "I didn't know that Camp Everfree was gonna be hit by a windstorm!" "Neither did I! And we practically run the place!" Gloriosa responded, her body wiggling helplessly in the air as she held onto a tree branch. "Everyone! Get out of here while you still can! Call for some help or someone to get us out of this mess!" "Girls! Look at the vortex!" Pinkie Pie looked back and saw what was happening on the other side. Sunset Shimmer was fighting against the wind as hard as she could with Twilight holding onto her fur as tightly as she could. "It's Sunset and Twilight! They're in Equestria!" "Sunset? Twilight? Whatever are they doing there?!" Rarity looked back at the portal to try and see what was going on, but in doing so, she lost her grip and started flying towards it. "Oh no! GIRLS! SAVE ME! I CAN'T GO TO A HORSE-FILLED WORLD! THEY'LL THINK I'M NAKED!" "Rarity!" Rainbow Dash reached out for her, but as she did, the force of the vortex got stronger and stronger. With the amplified suction, it ripped all eight of the humans from where they were clutching and yanked them into the air and straight into Twilight's new castle. Screams rang out from all of them as they vanished through the portal and disappeared from the face of the human world. Once they left, the gateway died down and the wind instantly reverted back to a cool summer's breeze. "We're almost there, Twilight!" Sunset was about to put her hoof through the portal back to Camp Everfree, but she was suddenly knocked away when Rarity came hurtling out of the other side, transforming into a unicorn with three diamonds for a Cutie Mark as she face-planted into the bright floor. "No!" Sunset slammed against one of the large blocks and rubbed her head as the pain caught up with her. When she came back to her senses, she saw Rarity sprawled against the floor as a pony instead of a human teenager. "Wha? Rarity? What are you doing here?" "Sunset? Is that really you, darling?" Rarity tried to stand up on two legs, but then ended up wobbling as she tried to maintain her balance. "Ooh! What the? Have I put on weight? What's going on here?" Before anyone else could say anything, the rest of the Rainbooms flew through the portal and landed in a heap on top of each other as ponies instead of humans. The pile that they had started was then swiftly brought to an end when Gloriosa, Timber, and Diamond Tiara bumped into them, spreading them out across the floor. "Oh no, oh no, no, no, no, no!" Sunset's eyes shot open as she watched the others all land and readjust themselves to the new world that they had landed in. "No, this isn't right! We're all not supposed to be here! Why are we all together in this castle?" "Pwaytime! Pwaytime! Fun!" Twilight broke out of Sunset's hold and toddled over towards the new group of ponies, lifting them all up with her magic. She sat them all down and let them look around as she closed the portal with her magic. "Twilight! Twilight! Stop it!" Sunset got up and picked Twilight up, scooping her up at light speed as she watched the baby let go of the ponified humans, causing them all to fall to the ground like ragdolls. "I know that you're a baby and you can't control your magic yet, but stealing our friends from the human world is NOT OK! If you weren't so cute, I would be spanking those butt cheeks of yours right now, little missy!" "Stealing? Sunset, I don't really get what you're—" Rainbow Dash stopped when she felt her new wings poking out of her back. She stood up, gave them a little poke, and tried to flap them. "Whoa. This. Is. AWESOME! I CAN FLY AGAIN! WOOHOO!" And with that, she shot into the air and performed a number of loop-de-loops and spins above everyone else's heads. "Fly? What does that mean?" Gloriosa got onto her feet and noticed that she wasn't a human being anymore. Instead of arms and legs, she now had four giant hooves poking out of her new body with a Cutie Mark depicting a large flower on her haunches. "Wh-what?! I'm a horse?! THIS CAN'T BE!" "We're all horses!" Pinkie Pie looked at her new body while everyone else had a look at their own. Everyone that had come through the portal had lost any sense of their humanity and now stood as an equine version of themselves, winged, horned, or neither for Timber, Gloriosa, Diamond, Pinkie, and Applejack. "But I gotta say, we do look pretty good like this." "Good?! I'm some kind of kid horse compared to you!" Diamond Tiara's cheeks burned red as she looked at herself in comparison to the rest of the Rainbooms. "I'm roughly your age, maybe even exactly your age. So why does this world decide that I should be in elementary school again?" "I think the better question would be to decide what you are all doing here." Sunset felt a shiver down her spine as she turned towards the door. She took a heavy gulp and looked up at a pony she knew all too well. There, standing before her and her friends from the human world, was Princess Celestia. Her mane flowed elegantly as she walked up to her and Twilight, before gazing out at the other ponies again. Accompanying her were Equestria's Twilight Sparkle and her five friends, who all looked took one glance at the Rainbooms and immediately took up battle positions. "Changelings. Stay behind us, Princess Celestia. We've got this." Pony Twilight's horn flared up as she charged in front of Celestia and threw her hooves out in front of her. "Oh, Pony Twilight, hi! I... wasn't really expecting to see you so soon. Here. In this nursery castle. Alone. With some friends that baby you pulled here." Sunset let out a meek chuckle and began to sweat, knowing that deep down inside, things had gone from worse, to absolutely chaotic in an instant. Oh, goddess, what do I do?!