//------------------------------// // Chapter two: missing in action // Story: Animal Friends // by Elkia Deerling //------------------------------// “What the hay! What happened?” Rainbow Dash was the first to recover her wits. She spoke before she looked, as her friends were still scattered all around the study. Residual, sizzling bolts of lightning crept up and down an enormous arc, standing right in the middle of the room. Blackened blotches of soot against the crystal walls further hinted at the strange things that had happened mere minutes ago. A collective moan indicated that nopony was yet able to talk, let alone stand on her own hooves. Everypony lay everywhere. Twilight Sparkle rested atop a desk, both pony and desk in a completely other place than they were before. Applejack sat upright already, leaning against the crystal wall and looking as if she’d bucked too many apple trees. On top of a pile of books lay Starlight Glimmer and Pinkie Pie; Starlight on top of the pile, and Pinkie on the bottom, covered by the ruined books with only her curly tail sticking out. Maybe Rarity had come off the best, as she had flown out of the study into the hallway, her fall cushioned by the thick, purple carpet. Above the curious mess, Luna’s full moon shone inside through three high windows. The whipping, stormy winds and the rolling thunder further added to the catastrophic scene. But Rainbow Dash was up in the air already. “Is everypony alright?” she called out. When another moan came, she zipped towards all of her friends in turn, checking on their health. “I’m alive, thanks,” Applejack said, scrambling to her hooves. “Still in one piece,” Starlight Glimmer said. She carefully slid off the pile of books, creating a small avalanche of paper behind her. She landed on the carpet and raised an eyebrow at the cotton-candy tail sticking out of the pile. From Pinkie came only a muffled sound, as her head was still buried deep inside the pile of books. Starlight Glimmer quickly started digging her up, but soon realized that pulling Pinkie’s tail was a much quicker way to get her out. Rainbow Dash flew over to Rarity, but Rarity’s reaction had to do with her mane, so Rainbow Dash quickly skipped her and went towards Twilight Sparkle. “W-w-what happened?” Twilight Sparkle said with rolling eyes and her tongue dangling out of her mouth. “D-d-did it work? Why is everything spinning and shaking?” Rainbow Dash saw that it was Twilight Sparkle herself who was shaking. She grabbed the alicorn’s trembling head with both her front legs. Twilight’s eyes kept rolling around for a few seconds before they aligned again. Rainbow Dash let go of Twilight, who shook her head. “Thank you.” “Don’t mention it,” Dash said. “Now can you please tell me what the hay just happened?” Twilight suddenly jumped back from Rainbow Dash as if she had threatened her. “Rainbow Dash! Why are you here?” “That’s what I wanna ask you,” Dash said, slightly annoyed, She wanted answers, as quickly as Twilight could give them. But Twilight was still figuring everything out herself. She looked around and her eyes grew in shock at the chaos in her study. “Oh my!” Suddenly she jumped, as her eyes settled on the sparking arc. “The machine! NO!” The arc stood upside-down like a horseshoe, and was attached to numerous tubes, wires, and cables. Many of them were dangling beside it, and the arc itself was cracked and blackened in places. Twilight Sparkle let out a gasp as she saw that the top of the arc, the focal point of the energy, was broken in two, and a small pink lightning bolt occasionally crackled between the two ends. “The machine…” Rainbow Dash decided to let Twilight Sparkle come to her senses, as she saw that she wasn’t able to speak in full sentences just yet. Flapping her wings, Rainbow Dash made a quick circle around the study room, and gathered all the other ponies in the center, but at a safe distance from Twilight’s ruined machine. “Is everypony ok? Nopony hurt?” Rainbow Dash said. She looked around the circle, turning her head swiftly to examine all of her friends. Some of them, the ones who had stood closest to the machine, had black marks of soot and a few light bruises here and there; nothing to severe. Pinkie Pie had a few scraps of ripped paper dangling from her mane. Applejack looked pretty battered but held her head high. Her mane a bit out of shape, Rarity looked fine. None of them had broken bones or twisted ankles, and Rainbow Dash let out a sigh. Involuntarily, as if it were a Wonderbolt-grade rescue operation, Rainbow Dash began to count heads, and soon realized that she missed a yellow head with a pink mane. “Hey, where’s Fluttershy?” Everypony looked around and behind themselves. Applejack had already done a few paces towards a flipped table, and Pinkie yelled, “FLUTTERSHY!” in her high-pitched voice. But Pinkie’s call echoed through the study and out the door. There was no sign of her. Starlight Glimmer raised a hoof to her chin. “The last time I saw Fluttershy, she was standing behind everypony else. I believe she was standing next to Rarity.” “Indeed,” Rarity said, “she couldn’t stand that awful noise from the machine any more than I could.” Had Twilight been standing together with the rest, she would certainly have made an objection. She would probably have told Rarity that it was all in the name of science, but she herself was standing behind a control panel, pushing buttons and pulling switches while gazing at a display with sweat beading off her forehead. A couple of minutes later, Twilight pulled a particularly big lever, and the soft rumble of the machine came to a stop as its power was cut off. The pink tongues of lightning retracted, and then disappeared with a flash of magic. “Do you need any help, Twilight?” Starlight Glimmer said. But Twilight moved away from the control panel and walked towards the rest. “No thanks, Starlight. I shut it off. It’s safe now.” Then she glanced at the ring of ponies. “Hey, where’s Fluttershy?” Rainbow Dash let out a sigh of annoyance. “That’s what we’re figuring out too. She’s gone.” “Gone?” “Well, at least she ain’t here,” Applejack added. “But we gotta do a little search for her. I reckon she probably couldn’t stand the noise or the flashes and ran off like a stampeding cow.” Twilight frowned in thought. “Plausible.” Her frown deepened, until it drew deep grooves in her forehead. Twilight blinked her eyes rapidly, concentrated as she was. Then she returned to the present, and looked at all her friends in turn. “A search it is, then.” She straightened her back, immediately taking control of the situation, and perhaps feeling a bit guilty for scaring Fluttershy. “Rarity, you go to the library.” Rarity nodded and cantered out of the study. “Rainbow Dash,” Twilight continued, “I want you to search all of the hallways. You’re the fastest of us.” “Roger,” Dash said, and was gone in the blink of an eye. Pinkie Pie jumped up and down in delight. “Oh! Pick me, pick me, pick me! I love a good game of hide-and-seek! I reckon Fluttershy will be even better than Princess Celestia, because, you know… she’s Fluttershy!” “Alright, Pinkie, you can go to the throne hall.” To that, Pinkie’s ears drooped down. “What? Just one spot? But you don’t know how good I am at hide-and-seek. I could search the whole castle in the—“ “Alright, then,” Twilight said, interrupting Pinkie to preserve some valuable time. “Search the kitchen and the bedroom and… and… any other room which hasn’t been searched.” That seemed to satisfy Pinkie, and with a quick, “Oki doki loki,” she was off. Next, Twilight turned to Applejack. “Applejack, can you go to the laboratory and the observatory?” “You got it,” Applejack said. When everypony was out of the throne room, Twilight let out a heavy sigh and closed her eyes. Then there was silence. A long and thoughtful silence. Leaving enough time for Twilight Sparkle to gather some mental strength. Peace, silence, and alone-time. Those were the tools Twilight used to calm herself down and regain her wits. But she wasn’t alone, as there was still one pony left: Starlight Glimmer. Starlight saw that Twilight was gathering her thoughts, so she remained silent. But when Twilight opened her eyes again after a few minutes, she walked closer to her. “You haven’t given me a task, Twilight. Would you like to search the study together?” Twilight Sparkle looked her apprentice in the eyes. “No, Starlight,” she said. “Fluttershy isn’t here.” Starlight tilted her head. “Are you sure?” “Yes.” “But how do you know for sure? The others are searching for her, right?” Twilight lowered her head. “I have my suspicions…” Another silence followed. Although Starlight Glimmer had a dozen more questions to ask Twilight, she saw that her master wouldn’t say anything more. Twilight hated drawing conclusions on suspicions. Instead, she asked, “Then what would you like me to do?” Twilight looked again at Starlight, showing a smile with visible effort. “I want you to help me think. We designed the device together, didn’t we?” “Of course we did,” Starlight said, thinking back to the hours of programming, welding, collecting,  hauling, channeling, and magically amplifying the machine which now lay in ruin. “It was our project.” “Yes,” Twilight said, turning her head towards what remained of the machine. “It was.” Through a window high above, the moonlight, which had so faithfully lit the study after the accident, now became covered by a drifting cloud. For a moment, Twilight and Starlight stood in complete darkness, covering everything with its blackened blanket. But a second later, two magical lights sprang to life; a blue one from Starlight’s horn, and a purple one from Twilight’s. “Well, it seems I have a task for you after all, Starlight. Let’s get some candles.” When a few cheerful, flickering orange lights illuminated the study, Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer found themselves standing in front of the debris of the machine. Both ponies had a serious gaze, studying the wreckage intently. “It’s an overload, no doubt about it,” Starlight Glimmer said. Twilight nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. Such a shame… Months of work gone with a single, pink flash.” “What do you think it was?” “I don’t know,” Twilight answered. “The reports show a sudden spike in the energy levels. There was too much energy for the machine to handle.” “Was it… our fault?” Starlight said carefully. Twilight shook her head. “It wasn’t, and certainly not your fault. I’m pretty sure of that, unless you decided to play a strange joke.” Starlight Glimmer shook her head, even though she knew Twilight was just kidding. But the thought of a joke did spark an idea in her mind. “Could it be Discord? He’s always in for some mayhem, right?” “I don’t think so.” Twilight said. “If it really was him, he would probably be here laughing at us.” “Of course,” Starlight Glimmer said, “and he’s reformed as well. I should have thought about that.” “Don’t worry, Starlight, even we sometimes forget that. Discord’s intentions are as vague as Pinkie’s mind.” To that, both ponies chuckled, breaking the serious atmosphere if only for a moment. “I have to think this over,” Twilight said as the echoes of laughter retreated to the hallway. “Maybe we can clear out some debris in the meantime. It might deliver a clue to the source of the overload.” “Yeah, let’s do that,” Starlight said, and with a flash of her horn, a chunk of severed steel was already floating to a more appropriate place.                                                                                               * *                                                                                        Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer spent a good while clearing out and sorting the debris. Following a particular system—one which Twilight had thought of in a potential crisis-report—the remains of the machine were laid down on the ground and sorted. Pieces of metal, stained glass, cables, wires, nuts, bolts—all bent, broken or battered—scattered and stained the crystal floor. The two unicorns used levitation spells to lift the biggest pieces, and often combined their powerful magic to amplify the levitation spell. When the rubble was cleared and sorted, Twilight—with pain in her heart—decided to break a few dangling cables and sharp pieces of metal off the machine, to prevent them from snapping off and to create any further injury. Starlight helped, feeling a hint of disappointment sting her as well. Only when that was done did the two unicorns proceed to cleaning up the study. Flipped tables were put with their four legs on the floor again, books were sorted and stacked, and shelves were turned upright and shoved against the crystal walls. Some books were shredded, and some were even burned. One book, called: The Chronicles of Starswirl the Bearded Volume One, made Twilight Sparkle shed a few tears, as it was one of her most beloved books, and it was scorched beyond repair. Suddenly, the sound of many hooves came rolling towards Twilight and Starlight, carried by the echo of the empty hallways. They dropped the tapestries they were hanging back and turned around. Almost everypony had returned. “And?” Twilight and Starlight said simultaneously, but they didn’t even need to ask; disappointment was etched on everypony’s faces. “I’m terribly sorry, twilight,” Rarity said, taking the word, “but neither of us has been able to find the poor darling.” “I looked everywhere. We all did,” Applejack said, lowering her gaze to the ground as if she’d just told a lie. Starlight Glimmer looked surprised, much more surprised than Twilight, although the alicorn did her best to hide her lack of it. “I understand,” she said. But then she raised her eyebrow, as she saw that there were now two ponies missing. “Hasn’t Pinkie Pie returned yet?” “Nope,” Applejack said. “Last time I saw her, she was going to check on Fluttershy’s cabin.” Twilight tilted her head. “Fluttershy’s cabin? Wow. I didn’t realize Pinkie would be that thorough. But it’s plausible that Fluttershy will be there, of course. It would only mean that we’ll probably have to wait a little longer before—“ But even before Twilight had finished her sentence, a pink cloud of dust and cupcakes stormed into the room. It screeched to a halt just before Twilight Sparkle, taking its place in the now completed circle of ponies. It was—of course—Pinkie Pie. Fluttershy was not with her, but still everypony looked at Pinkie Pie with a hopeful shine in their eyes. Noticing their stares, Pinkie shrugged. “What? I was hungry.” She grabbed a few cupcakes from an enormous pile she carried and tossed them in her mouth. “You guys want any?” “Did you find Fluttershy?” Starlight Glimmer asked. “Eh… no,” Pinkie said carefully. “But I brought cupcakes. Nothing can cheer a pony up better than some treats from Sugarcube Corner, right?” The circle of ponies let out a collective sigh, only Twilight seemed to be able to keep her calm. A worrisome, nervous smile traced her lips. “Twilight? Are you alright?” Applejack said, noticing the alicorn’s strange reaction. “Yes,” Twilight said. She blinked her eyes and looked from pony to pony. Every one of them fell silent at Twilight’s gaze. After a minute, Twilight spoke in a slow, stuttering voice. “I think I know what happened, everypony. Fluttershy, she… I… I think… well—” “I suggest we all go to the throne hall,” Starlight Glimmer said, finishing Twilight’s sentence. “I’m sure Twilight will need to sit down and tell us all she knows.” Twilight threw Starlight a thankful glance, and together with their friends, who were throwing each other questioning glares and whispered amongst one another, they walked out of the study towards the throne room.                                                                                               * *                                                                                        By the time they reached the nucleus of Twilight’s Castle of Friendship, everypony was silent again. The only sound came from a soft drizzle against the crystal windows opposite of the thrones and the enormous, golden table. It seemed that the stormy weather had subsided and shrunk into a gentle shower of rain. Everypony walked to her own crystal throne and sat down, tails curling behind backs. On the big table in front of them, the cutie map became visible, sensing the presence of the Elements of Harmony, but Twilight dispelled it with a flash of magic; it wasn’t needed. When at last everypony was seated, Twilight let her eyes meet everypony else’s; anticipating eyes stared back at her. Twilight Sparkle cast one straying glance outside the window, let out a heavy sigh, and then started her tale. “First things first, everypony. I will first tell you what the machine is and what it does… or did. What has happened with it is still unclear to me, but… I think I know where Fluttershy is. As much as I hate to admit it, I think the accident and Fluttershy’s disappearance are connected.” A few glances changed from anticipating to questioning or confused. Twilight continued. “As you all know, the machine Starlight and I built is a very important, high-classified operation; a task given to me by the princesses themselves. They’ve also overseen some of the preparations, and lent me a small sliver of their magic in order to make the device function.” Still nopony spoke; they were giving Twilight all the space she needed. “It was a secret, yes,” Twilight continued. “And that’s why I’ve been trying to keep it covert, even for all of you. But the time for secrets is over. You all probably have no clue what Starlight and I have created, if Rainbow Dash hasn’t given anything away.” Rainbow Dash looked at Twilight and shook her head, receiving many odd stared from everypony. Then, Rarity wanted to take the word. “Yes, Twilight,” she said. “You haven’t told us anything about your newest invention you were about to show us. I thought it would be a cheerful surprise. You really didn’t want to let anything loose about that peculiar device. What, may I ask, did it do?” Twilight shifted in her seat. “It is a teleportation device. It is built from the concept of the spell I used to teleport myself into one of Moondancer’s book to be able to get her attention, but in this case, the power is much greater, and it works two ways. The machine is powered both by physical energy and magically-amplified gems, both providing enough power to teleport something—or someone—across the interdimensional threshold into alternative universes.” Twilight paused. “Both real and fictional.” A collective gasp of surprise went through the ponies. Some of them were looking at Rainbow Dash, wondering how exactly the rainbow-maned pegasus had possibly been able to keep something that grand a secret from the rest of them. Pinkie’s eyes tripled in size, and she munched away another cupcake without taking her eyes off Twilight Sparkle, captivated by the tale. Twilight Sparkle waited for silence to fall. She knew that such a complex concept had to be difficult for anypony to swallow, let alone comprehend. Twilight rasped her throat, as she was going to tell the rest of the secret. “The test I conducted was actually the second test. The first test had been half a year ago. I had teleported Frodo Baggins, a character from the book, The Lord of the Rings, written by J.R.R. Tolkien, into Equestria using the machine. Rainbow Dash here had helped me with the experi—I mean, encounter, during that time. The machine had functioned properly then, and I had no trouble at all sending Mister Baggins back to Middle Earth, his own world, after the encounter was done.” “And it was awesome!” Rainbow Dash said, when she saw many stares coming her way once again. “Indeed it was,” Twilight said with a smile. “A lot of… unexpected things happened back then.” To that, Rainbow Dash felt her cheeks fill with warmth, and thought back about that peculiar day. Suddenly, she wished that nopony would be looking at her. Luckily for Dash, Twilight quickly continued. “So after that first successful test, I wanted to proceed to phase two. The face where I… eh…” She couldn’t finish her sentence, scared as she was for everypony’s reaction.. Starlight laid a hoof on Twilight’s. “They’re your friends,” she whispered to her. “You can tell them everything, I’m sure. Or do you want me to tell them?” Twilight shook her head. “She wanted to teleport me to Middle Earth!” Rainbow Dash blurted out, taking off in excitement and hovering over her throne. Once more, a big gasp came from everypony and echoed through the throne hall. Twilight looked at the ground with an expression as if the gasp stung her like a bee. Starlight bit her lip, feeling Twilight’s awkward shame. But whether her pony friends were really indignant, she couldn’t tell. “Is that even possible?” Applejack cried out. Pinkie stuffed three cupcakes into her mouth simultaneously. “Sounds amazing,” she said, although nopony could understand her with her overstuffed mouth. “That sounds awfully dangerous,” Rarity said. She cast a sidelong glance at Rainbow Dash. “Why in Equestria would you possibly undertake such a dangerous venture, Rainbow Dash. I didn’t think you that reckless!” Rainbow Crossed her hooves. “I did it for my own reasons, Rarity. And besides, it wasn’t dangerous. I mean, it shouldn’t have been dangerous. That machine wasn’t designed to explode, you know?” “Such a shame that the thing didn’t work,” Rarity said, crossing her hooves and turning her whole body away from Dash. “It would have been nice to get rid of you for a while.” Dash grumbled. “Same goes for me. Such a shame the explosion knocked me from the pedestal, otherwise I wouldn’t be here sitting next to you.” Dash saw that Rarity was about to throw an insult back, so she quickly looked over at Twilight Sparkle. “So why did it happen anyway? Why did the thing go boom?” Twilight Sparkle waited until Pinkie had swallowed her cupcakes, and then spoke up. “The teleportation device exploded because of an energy overload. Starlight and I are certain of that. Even the crisis reports show that it was an overload of energy that made the machine explode.” She lowered her head in her hoof. “Thank Celestia nopony got hurt,” Twilight whispered. “And do you have any idea where this overload came from?” Applejack asked. But Twilight was still gazing at the ground, hoof against her head. Instead, Starlight answered the question. “That’s just it, we don’t. The reports say that there was a giant spike of non-magical energy which found a way into the machine’s power circuits, but we have no idea where it came from. Even after careful investigation, sorting out all the parts and examining the damage, we still couldn’t pinpoint the source. The only thing we found out—and saw—was that the top of the arc melted down first. After that, the rest of the circuits burst.” All the technical talk took Applejack a bit aback, but she figured she understood most of it. “A non-magical energy source, huh?” she repeated. “What in the world of Equestria has enough energy to make a half-magical machine explode in a million tiny pieces?” Suddenly, as if somepony pulled at her tail, Rainbow’s head jerked around towards Applejack. “Not what in the world of Equestria—what in the skies of Equestria. It was lightning!” Of course Rainbow Dash was the first to figure that out. Having been in the sky for certainly half of her life, Rainbow Dash had seen her share of lightning and thunderstorms. Dash knew about the enormous destructive powers they could have. She had seen entire forests go to ashes after a dozen lightning bolts had found their way to the leaf-crowns of the trees. She had helped put out house-fires caused by lightning, and even helped to rescue a poor little filly who had been trapped on the upper floor. Sometimes she herself had even been struck by lightning, by accident, or intentionally in an attempt to harden her resistance to the flaring white bolts. She knew how to steer them, how to create them, and, of course, she knew all about their movement patterns, which were simple enough: always the highest object. And as far as Rainbow Dash could tell, Twilight’s Castle of Friendship was the highest building in Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle was no longer looking at the ground, but stared ahead in the distance, as if she saw something that nopony else could see. She sat upright, as straight as a plank, her every muscle tense. “Yes!” she said, her voice excited beyond measure. “You’re right, Rainbow Dash! There was a storm, of course. I can’t believe it! I should have known… I should have calculated the risks. How in Equestria did the weather slip my mind?!” “Don’t worry, Twilight,” Starlight said. “It slipped my mind too. We’re both to blame.” “Yes…” Once again the ponies were left alone with their own thoughts, as another silence filled the room. Twilight Sparkle was silently calculating all the risk factors, seeing the numbers slide by before her eyes, over and over and over again. Rainbow Dash was thinking about how big that lightning bolt would have had to be in order to disrupt Twilight’s machine. Rarity had involuntarily grabbed a cupcake from Pinkie’s ever-slinking pile, eating away the nervousness. Applejack’s mind was spinning with all the new and strange things she had heard this evening—or actually this morning. She looked outside, as if to give her mind some rest. The grey of dawn was slowly approaching Ponyville, but the rain hadn’t stopped—it proved to become a somber day. With a full mouth, Rarity looked at the circle of ponies. Her gaze stopped at the empty throne with the triple butterflies embroidered on the cushioning. She swallowed, wiped her mouth with a conjured napkin, and then suddenly, but also slowly, carefully, with a hushed and delicate voice, Rarity broke the silence. “Twilight, darling, now we know what that machine was and why it malfunctioned, but… you haven’t told us yet what you think about Fluttershy’s disappearance.” Only after a gentle poke from Starlight did Twilight come back to the here and now. The numbers before her eyes vanished, but she had still heard the question Rarity posed her. She realized now that it was time to share her final theory, however tricky it was. “Rarity, everypony.” She paused. “ I think… I think…” Everypony looked at Twilight intently. “I think I teleported Fluttershy to Middle Earth.” Twilight could almost feel everypony’s gaze upon her. Some were looking slack-jawed at her, some looked in pain or drowned in sorrow. Nopony was able to speak. Even Starlight had no words for such a theory. Even though she had been working together with Twilight all the time, and understood how the machine worked well enough, the thought of that had never set a tiny hoofstep into her mind. Starlight looked at her mentor, and saw her crying. Resting two hooves on the table, Twilight’s head was flopped down upon them, her eyes closed, twin trails of silver droplets trickling on the crystal floor. Sometimes her shoulder shocked, although she tried to hide her sobs from her friends. “What?! But how’s that possible? Fluttershy wasn’t anywhere near the machine, she was standing behind me,” Rarity said. But her question remained unanswered, because everypony was either thinking to themselves or didn’t know what to say. Applejack got up from her seat, and walked over to Twilight Sparkle. She took off her hat, and laid a hoof on her friend’s shoulder. “Hey, keep it together, filly,” she said, warmth and comfort radiating through her voice. Applejack thought back to times where she had comforted Apple Bloom after every failed attempt at gaining her cutie mark. She definitely knew how to comfort somepony, and she was not going to leave her friend down. “It’s not your fault, Twi. Nopony can control the weather.” But the moment she said that, she bit her lip and glanced towards Rainbow Dash. Of course somepony could control the weather. Pegasi can. Rainbow Dash could. Rainbow Dash looked back at Applejack, and wisely shut her mouth. She hadn’t thought about it either. She, being a pegasus herself, hadn’t thought about the weather. Rainbow Dash thought about what she had done. She had taken a few days off the weather squad, in order to be able to prepare and participate in Twilight’s second experiment. During those days, she hadn’t looked at the weather predictions at all, knowing that she wouldn’t be flying for a few days, and realizing that the weather would probably be completely different in Middle Earth anyway—it hadn’t mattered. But now the results of this unintended ignorance were visible, and Rainbow cursed beneath her breath. She knew Applejack wasn’t accusing her of anything, but she still felt bad. Applejack was determined to not let that little mistake stop her, and quickly changed subject. “Don’t worry, Twilight. I’m sure we can fix this. Let’s just… let’s just think in solutions, not problems. Let’s make a list of solutions. You like lists, right? Keeping things organized?” Gathering her strength, and hearing the warm voice of Applejack, Twilight slowly raised her head. Tears still dripped down from the corners of her eyes, and she spoke in a broken voice. “I-I-I’m afraid that’s not possible. It could take months, even years to fix the machine. I’ll have to start from scrap, building the arc and coding the computers. And then I’m not even talking about the magical energy I must collect. Oh my! Fluttershy, what have I done!” Feeling the burden of guilt weighing on her shoulders, Twilight’s head dropped again, and her ears lowered. Now Starlight held a hoof on Twilight’s shoulders as well, but it wasn’t helping. Twilight Sparkle was trembling from head to tail. “Let’s… Let’s leave her alone for a moment,” Starlight Glimmer said. She knew that Twilight would have a chance at regaining her wits that way. Without a word, the ponies streamed out the throne room. Starlight carefully closed the door with a flash of magic. No silence this time, but a flurry of questions, aimed directly at Starlight Glimmer. Applejack’s voice proved to be the loudest of them all. “So what exactly is this ‘Middle Earth’,” she asked. “What’s it like?” Starlight waited for the others to calm down, and then spoke in a soft, almost whispering voice. “It’s a fantasy world where many different races live. Not ponies or zebra’s or griffons, but humanoid creatures. Elves, Hobbits, men, orcs, trolls, Uruk-hai live there. Some of them are good, and some evil; Middle-Earth can be a very dangerous place.” “How dangerous?” Rarity asked. “Well, the further East you go, the more dangerous it gets,” Starlight explained. “To the far East is a land called Mordor, where Sauron lives in the Lord of the Rings books. He’s essentially like King Sombra; not actually there in a physical form, but armed with powerful dark magic capable of enslaving other races.” To that, everypony shuddered. The memories of Sombra were still fresh in their minds. King Sombra, the crystal corruptor, and how he wanted to claim the Crystal Empire for himself and force all the crystal ponies into slavery. The candles dimmed at the mention of his name, or it might also have been because of the name of Sauron, spoken aloud in a world where it didn’t belong. When the candles gave enough light for the ponies to see each other again, Applejack spoke up. “So… do you have any idea where Fluttershy has been teleported to? How far East?” Starlight Glimmer Swallowed. “I… I do. When Twilight and I were cleaning up the rubble of the machine, I studied the status reports of the translocator, that’s the part of the machine in which we program the destination. Rainbow Dash, do you remember where we wanted to send you to?” Rainbow flew up in the air. “Sure. You wanted to send me to the Grey Havens, all the way to the West of Middle Earth. I would appear on one of the elven ships which would sail out of Middle Earth at the end of the book. They would sail to the Undying Lands, where Sauron would never come.” Everypony sighed in relief. If West meant good, Fluttershy would go as far West as West went. But Starlight Glimmer’s face was etched with worry. “Well, I have some bad news. The machine had changed both the time in which Fluttershy will appear and the location.” The relief drooped down everypony’s face. They stared at Starlight with dark looks. “So where’s she now—when’s she now?” Applejack said. “According to the status reports, she’s in the Greenwood, somewhere in the middle of Middle Earth.” To that, Applejack managed a small, careful smile. “But that’s great, isn’t it? You guys know how good Fluttershy is with plants and animals. She’ll be right at home in the Greenwood, right?” But Starlight Glimmer didn’t smile. “For a time, maybe. But the thing is, the Greenwood will eventually become… eh… let’s just say evil—dark in its own way.” Starlight lowered her gaze to the ground; her eyes wavered. “I… I don’t want to tell too much about it.” Once again, Applejack was the first to comfort her. “That’s alright, Sugarcube. Let’s hear what Twilight has to say about it first then, shall we?” “Yes… Let’s… let’s do that,” Starlight said, although those words bore much less hope than the ones Applejack had said.