//------------------------------//
// Strike #2 
// Story: Magical Curiosity 
// by Comma Typer 
//------------------------------//

Instead of just the moon and the stars, the night sky was also joined by some kites with lights attached to them. These little makeshift aircraft flew around, the lights moving about in smooth and flowing fashion with their kites.
Starlight and Sunset were sitting on a bench in a park, seeing some people fly kites around in the evening. Amid the laughter and the small comments from the kite fliers, they did not see much. The fresh pond had a few ducks swimming around and there were other passers-by who did not mind the kites, but the two ladies kept watching.
Sunset had a smile. Starlight had a grin so wide, she was testing the limits of her face with how far she stretched her lips and dimples, her eyes glittering under the dancing colors above.
“And now you know,” Sunset remarked, giving Starlight a light punch on the elbow. “We got kites, too.”
Starlight snickered. “Not bad for a species with hands instead of hooves.”
Sunset crossed her arms and made a smug smirk. Then, she stood up, checking the phone from her jacket. “It’s almost nine forty-five. Ready to go?”
Starlight stood up, too, and checked the watch on her wrist. “Uh...yeah. Let me say goodbye—“
“You already said goodbye to everyone else,” Sunset said as they walked out of the park and crossed the street. “It’s about time you got—“
Her bag rumbled and rang.
She ran to the other side, pulled Starlight and almost making her trip onto asphalt. She then opened her bag, got out her ringing phone and answered the call. “Hello, Vice Principal Luna?...Yes?...What?! Alright, we’re on our way!”
Starlight eyed Sunset who was stuffing her phone back in her jacket. “What’s the problem now?”
“We’re getting Fluttershy!” she yelled, pulling Starlight along for a sprint through the city. “Magical emergency!”



While that was happening, Wallflower and Bon Bon were pacing around the statue under the moonlight, with the latter incessantly trying to call Lyra on the phone but to no avail. Wallflower, leaning on the base of the statue, examined each window from afar but saw nothing suspicious.
“Luna should be done any moment now,” Wallflower said without looking at her companion.
Bon Bon, however, was not levelheaded if her going back and forth between the phone and the school entrance meant anything. “What’s she gonna do? Call her parents?!”
“Isn’t that the first thing they do?” Wallflower asked nervously, tapping the statue with her fingers. “Staying home isn’t that far-fetched.”
“But her phone, Wallflower!” Bon Bon insisted, stomping up to her not in anger but in fear. “If calling her phone isn’t gonna make anything turn up, then she’s not with her parents!”
Wallflower raised a brow in confusion. “And that’s so because…?”
Bon Bon sighed and leaned beside her on the statue as a car whizzed by on the road. “Isn’t it obvious?!”
Wallflower turned her eyes to the right. “No.”
Bon Bon smacked herself on the head. “They have spare phones and—“
Felt the statue give way.
As they both screamed and fell into the statue.



“Ugh…not again….”
Lyra’s eyes slowly opened, seeing the glare of white lights and the green ceiling—also, that intense smell of medicine and sanitizer above the slow beeping of medical equipment.
She breathed a sigh of relief, feeling well-rested. “Phew! It’s just a horrible nightmare!” Then, she looked down on her medical clothes, though her vision was still blurry. “I’m sure Bon Bon got me straight to the hospital—how does she do it?”
“Uh, no, she didn’t,” came Twilight’s voice as her head poked in.
Lyra looked surprised, seeing a purple blob in her vision. “Twilight Sparkle? I thought you were in...ow!...were in that...baseball game….”
“Baseball?” Twilight asked, voice rising as she was puzzled. “I may be a princess, but I’m not up to bat on—“
“Princess?!”
Lyra shook her head, cleared her vision, and saw Twilight’s face.
Twilight’s pony face, to be exact, complete with snout, horn, and mane.
“Wuh-agh!” and Lyra pressed her head to the back of the bed. “Don’t tell me I’m still a pony!”
Twilight shook her head. “No. You still are.”
“Aah!”
“Would you stop screaming?” Twilight pleaded, pressing her ear with a hoof.
Lyra breathed in and out, heaving and recovering from her screaming fit. “I’m...I’m sorry, Tw-Twilight, but...I miss my friends, I miss my old self, I miss my world!”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” another voice came up.
She raised her brow and saw Trixie to her left raising a brow at her look.
“Agh!” Lyra shouted, flailing her hooves about. “Don’t attack me! I didn’t mean to ruin your show and—“
“Hi!” came the voice of a Pinkie Pie jumping into view.
“Agh! Not again!” Lyra kept screaming, holding the sheets to her mouth, though struggling to do so without fingers, seeing those ponies that looked and sounded like her friends. “Girls!—or mares!—I just wanna go home! I was planning to have a night out with Bon Bon, Wallflower, and the rest of the gardening club. I didn’t want to wind up here!”
Twilight nodded, her face becoming pensive. “I know. However, we need to get you fixed up before we can send you off. Fainting and hitting your head like that made you tough to wake up.”
Lyra shuddered, biting her lips. “I don’t know how long I can stand being here! I can take my Twilight and pals ponying up and using magic once in a while, but...here, everything’s magic and I...and I—“
A tear went down her cheek.
Twilight made a sympathetic smile, wiped that tear away. “You’re not stuck here, Lyra. All we gotta do is send you back through the portal and—“
“It’s not working!” she yelled before breaking down into sobs, covering her crying face with her hooves as the tears streamed.
Trixie opened her mouth to say something snarky, but a glare from Twilight cut that one short.
“Aww!” Pinkie blurted out as she zipped over and gave Lyra a box of tissues and a kiwi cake topped with candles. She patted the crying mare on the head as she lay on the bed. “Don’t you worry! On the bright side, you can have an impromptu ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party!”
Lyra sniffed as she opened her eyes again and saw the cake, colored just like her coat. “I...I….”
Twilight gave Pinkie a strange look. “I don’t know, Pinkie, but isn’t this the worst time to throw a party like this?”
Pinkie scratched her own chin. “Didn’t Lyra say the portal’s broken? Might as well make the best of her time here!”
Twilight rolled her eyes, trying to keep up a smile for the party planner. Then, whispering to Pinkie: “I think she’s exaggerating. Maybe the journal fell off its place; that’s all.”
The both of them looked at Lyra who was opening her mouth and stretching her head to eat the cake. She took a bite off the cake—no utensils, not even holding a hoof to hold the chunk in; just her mouth and the cake which now dirtied her mouth in frosting and crumbs.
Pinkie smiled. “You know you can use your horn, right?”
Lyra chuckled, then turned back to a sour frown. “How am I supposed to know? I don’t even know what magic is!”
Trixie stepped in. “Ah! The Great and Powerful Trixie shall—“
“I think she’s been overwhelmed enough times tonight,” Twilight said, holding a hoof at Trixie the would-be teacher.
Trixie rolled her eyes and trotted her way out of the room through the door, glowing the doorknob with a raised head. “If you need Trixie, she is waiting outside!”
And she slammed the door shut.
Lyra moaned as she faced Pinkie and Twilight. “So, the other ponies don’t wanna beat me to death?”
Pinkie snorted a giggle. “Silly you! Why would we beat you to death?”
Lyra gulped. “Because...there’s two of the s-same person—uh, I mean, pony!—and...wh-what if...they c-call me an imposter and try to dr-drag me away?”
Twilight cocked her head to the side. “You weren’t listening to Sunset a lot about this, were you?”
“Cut her some slack,” Pinkie interrupted. “I mean, we were the ponies who shut Zecora out before we came along, and also threatened to tear down Flim and Flam, and were unwilling to accept Princess Luna for a while ‘cause she was too scary, and did not trust Discord when he was probably trying to be good, and also did not like Thorax because he was a changeling, and kicked out Trixie not once but twice and would’ve done it a third time—“
“Trixie heard that!” the mentioned magician shouted through the walls.
And a bit of silence as they turned their heads around.
Twilight sighed, turned to face a Lyra who was trembling even more at Trixie’s words. “What Pinkie is trying to say is that we ponies have had our share of incidents like this, so this isn’t new to us. Besides, we’ve learned from our mistakes and we’re all willing to help you get back to your world.”
Lyra smiled, then tears came down her face again. “Yes, please! I want to be back!”
Twilight nodded, then turned to Pinkie. “You go and get Doctor Horse. Tell him that she needs to be out straight away.”
“Okie-dokie-lokie!” Pinkie yelled before zooming out of the room.



Sunset, Starlight, and Fluttershy were running down the sidewalk, staying on one side of the road, and dashed past streetlights and partying houses to reach the school once more. Seeing some of the same windows with their lights on, they also saw the horseless statue but with no one there.
Sunset’s eyes darted frantically, trying to keep a focus on the statue. “All we have to do is wait until Twilight brings the book back to where it’s supposed to be. It’ll turn the portal back on and then we help Lyra back on her feet.”
Fluttershy and Starlight nodded, with the former raising a finger. “B-But...what exactly are we gonna do?”
“Stand guard,” Sunset said ordered. “Even if the portal’s deactivated for now, anything can happen.”
Fluttershy stood scared. “Anything? Like a big m-monster could just come out of nowhere?””
Sunset put her hands on her hips, partly looking at Fluttershy and partly looking at the statue. “Back in Equestria, there’s this thing called ‘stray magic’. Even when a magical item is not in use, the magic in there could still be active, and, if the conditions are right—or wrong—it could turn itself on without any apparent reason or rhyme.”
Starlight looked at her funny. “Are you saying that the portal could be on now?”
“Or it may not,” Sunset said.
“But only for less than a second,” Starlight added with her own raised finger, “because we’re dealing with a whole other level of magic here. The connections between the two dimensions would require a huge level of stray magic to turn on for even a fraction of a millisecond!”
Fluttershy rubbed her head. “I’m still somewhat new to all of this, so I-I’m sorry if I’m not c-contributing anything...or understanding a-anything….”
Sunset smiled and rubbed her on the shoulder. “You’re doing more than enough by being here, Flutter—“
The entrance doors opened, revealing Vice Principal Luna once again, this time with a laptop bag slung around her. “Wallflower and Bon—huh?”
Sunset gulped, catching those names. “You know we’re not Wallflower and Bon Bon, right?”
Luna nodded, looking over the different set of students before her. “Yes, but they were here only five minutes ago, hanging around...” pointed at the statue, “there.” And it clicked in her head as she pulled her phone out from the bag. “I’m notifying Celestia about three students in Equestria!”
“Wait, what?!”
Fluttershy, realizing that she was leaning on the statue, screamed and ran away to Starlight’s side who received the hug on her arm with a shrug of her shoulders.
Luna nodded again, this time firmer. “Yes, Sunset. I’ve done the same process that I performed for Trixie last night, and I have gotten the same results. With the timing of Lyra’s last appearance and the next time Bon Bon called her, she would not have sufficient time to get out of range.”
Sunset placed a worried hand on her cheek. “And that’s when Lyra got through the portal!”
“And Bon Bon and Wallflower as well,” Luna added, walking past Sunset as she stood a good distance away from the statue. “They traveled here to follow up on Lyra’s absence from their hang-out, but it appears that they may have fallen into the portal, too.”
“Let me check,” Sunset blurted out as she took out her phone once again, dialed Bon Bon’s number, and waited.
First and second rings, no answer as she tapped her foot impatiently.



For Lyra, the trip from the hospital to the castle was a dark and quiet one as she was accompanied by Princess Twilight and Pinkie Pie who was bouncing around throughout the entire excursion. The ponies who were still outside had gone back to Trixie’s show as she continued her first card trick with another volunteer.
As they neared the sparkly crystal castle, Lyra could see and hear again the school’s waterfalls along with the incessant snoring from inside.
“Oh, that’s one of our students!” Twilight said, cheerfully. “I’m not a master at identifying snores, but, oh well!...”
Lyra’s neutral face gave way to another frown, her lips still shuddering as she walked on her four hooves.
Twilight noticed, looking her way as Pinkie kept bouncing. “Anything wrong?”
Lyra sighed. “I...m-maybe it’s just nothing.” She looked at Twilight. “You look—“
“Familiar?” the princess asked. She smiled. “I know. I’m Twilight Sparkle, but not the same Twilight Sparkle—but technically the first Twilight Sparkle you met back with the Fall Formal and the Battle of the Bands. That’s how you’re seeing it, aren’t you?”
Lyra nodded. “Y-Yeah. I guess you handle things like this all the time, you being a princess and all.”
“It’s not that bad,” she replied, glowing the doors open as they entered into the foyer of crystal walls and green stained glass windows.
Lyra looked terrified. “But...there were sirens, enchanted stones and phones and mirrors...I don’t wanna know what you do here!“
“Magic monsters and friendship problems are what we deal with almost every week!” Pinkie chimed in, her cheery voice echoing through the hallways.
Twilight chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what we deal with.” Then, turning serious: “Right, I almost forgot: We need to get you home soon. Don’t want to see your friends getting too worried about you!”



And the seventh ring for Wallflower Blush came and was followed by a kind voice telling Sunset that the person she was calling was—
But Sunset put the phone away. “Did anyone else go missing?”
Luna shook her head. “Those were the only ones I’ve seen or have heard mentioned by the statue.”
Fluttershy and Starlight looked at the statue, seeing if it would do anything strange.
Sunset then took out her journal and scribbled something, saying, “If they’re over there, there’s only one way to talk.”



Lyra sighed a breath of relief as they neared the library doors, Pinkie still bouncing her way to the room. Lyra let out, “Finally! I’m going home to—“
Crash!
And a table came flying out of the library, swinging the doors open and almost crushing Pinkie. Twilight flapped her wings in shock, and Lyra tumbled to the ground in surprise.
When the dust was settled, Twilight took a look inside the library.
Two Earth ponies, a Bon Bon-lookalike helping up a pale green mare who was wearing a striped sweater.
Twilight combed her mane with her hoof. “Oh, no...what happened this time?”
And those two visitors looked at the princess, stood as straight as they could with their hooves, and stared at royalty with a wavering salute with their right forehooves, all while putting on smiles too big to be real.
“We’re so dead, Wallflower,” this Bon Bon whispered to her sweater-wearing friend.
“Aren’t we alive?” Wallflower asked, still keeping her hoof on her forehead in that respectful salute.
Twilight tried to stifle a chuckle. “You don’t have to do that anymore, girls. Lyra’s in safe hooves.”
As if on cue, Lyra tip-hoofed into the library, grinning at her familiar friends.
Bon Bon gasped. “Lyra!”
Lyra smiled. “Bon Bon!”
Wallflower turned a hoof around and said to Twilight, “Uh, can you get us back?”
“Mm-hmm!” Twilight then nodded and looked at the portal, the mirror back to its normal reflective state. “Just as I thought! The portal must’ve been hit by something—maybe when you hit the floor, the book wobbled out!”
“What book?”
Then, she heard a faint rumbling beep. “Oh, there it is!”
Twilight trotted behind the portal then trotted back, levitating a journal with a stylized sun symbol on it.
The three visitors smiled at the sight of it, Lyra and Bon Bon leaving Pinkie who was offering them kiwi cupcakes and kiwi muffins. “So, we’re really going back?” Lyra asked with a tinge of hope in her words.
“Yup!” was Twilight’s swift reply as she floated the book to the contraption’s top right in between two coils. She raised her brow and then asked, “But, what happened, you two? We noticed a table...not fixed on the ground.”
Wallflower’s ears drooped as Bon Bon stepped in and explained, “When we realized where we were and what happened to us, we had to stop panicking and find a way to adapt immediately. Unlike Lyra here—“ giving her friend a mean glare and Lyra shied away from that “—I’d paid attention to Fluttershy’s little lecture on horses a few weeks ago while we were at her house, so we had no time in getting used to pony movement.”
Twilight smiled. “That’s really great! I like how you’re prepared for even the strangest of situations!” Then, she frowned. “That still doesn’t explain the table.”
Wallflower blushed. “I, uh, may have practiced galloping in case we needed a quick escape….”



Everyone, even Vice Principal Luna, sat on the pavement, sitting by the statue but never placing their backs on it while they endured the long night of waiting. Starlight yawned, playing around with her phone as she saw her virtual character defeat a dragon on the screen. Fluttershy and Sunset played a couple rounds of fast-paced rock-paper-scissors, with Sunset sporting her Rock-Paper-Scissors Back-to-Back Champ! badge on her jacket, and Luna herself was gazing at the stars.
Then, a bright white flash as, all at once, Wallflower and Bon Bon and Lyra stumbled onto the pavement, landing on the ground with thuds. The rest stood up and helped pulled them back on their two feet amid groans and moans.
Luna sighed, picking up Wallflower. “At least you’re all back here safe and sound.”
Wallflower scratched her arms in a little shock while Bon Bon and Lyra looked at their hands and their feet, happy that they were not magical horses.
Then, another white flash of light and out came Princess Twilight Sparkle with her bangs and her thick boots.
Everyone else looked at her and opened their mouths in shock.
“Princess Twilight?” Luna blurted out.
Twilight nodded, blushing in embarrassment as she faced Sunset. “Yeah. We’re going to have to talk.” She turned to Luna, scratching the back of her head. “Can we use one of the classrooms? I promise we won’t be long!”