Simple. Unremarkable. Baked Bean.
For most of his life, the three had been synonomous…sinomomous…very nearly the same. He had been born and raised in a small and unremarkable town, he had very normal interests and hobbies, and he had never thought that he would amount to anything more than what he already was. He had always considered himself to be of average intelligence, average strength, and average looks, but he was slightly taller than most other ponies that he knew. He even considered the tone of his voice to be average -somewhere in the mid tenor range, perhaps- and when he added himself up, the total always seemed to equal nothing more and nothing less than common.
But as he limped his way through the grand entrance and spacious foyer of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s new castle, he was once again reminded that his life had been given a rather violent shove out of the common, and he had been sent crashing, nose first, into the wonderful and fantastically frightening world of the Royal. Being forced to marry Princess Celestia over a long-forgotten law had proved to be only the tip of the sensational iceberg, and he wondered for a moment how long it would take before defeating impossibility itself became mundane and routine.
“Princess Celestia, Princess Luna!” Twilight called out, and she offered a broad smile while she and the Element Bearers bowed before them.
“Please rise, my friends,” Celestia replied with a return smile. “I wish we could have made this visit under better circumstances, but time is of the essence. We must find a way to reach Sunset Shimmer as soon as possible.”
Twilight lifted a wing and took a quick glance at her flank. “I agree, but there’s something else that we need to show you first.”
Bean lagged behind the group, hissing in a breath with each step of his injured rear leg, and it only took a few moments for him to get seperated from the crowd in the cavernous hallway. While he loved his Celly more than anything else in Equestria - his own life included - he was now forced to pay a rather painful price for that love, and he simply couldn’t move as quickly as he wanted to anymore. Tirek’s theft of all Equestrian magic had enticed him into a rather disastrous stand against the tyrant in Ponyville, and the Everfree Forest had not been very forgiving when the Prince of the Sun had been sent hurtling into the middle of it.
Bean let out a small yelp when a golden aura wrapped around him and gently lifted him into the air, but he smiled when Celestia levitated him back to the rest of the group. There was a look of deep concern among all who were assembled, but none were as deep as the radiant and resplendent Princess of the Sun.
“Sorry,” Bean offered. “I’m afraid my leg is having an argument with the rest of me. You should all just go on. I’ll catch up eventually.”
“Absolutely not,” Celestia proclaimed. “You did not cheat death twice just to be left behind in a hallway. We have enough time to make accommodations for you.”
Bean didn’t argue the point, but he also felt like dead weight. Princess Celestia had explained about the group of sirens that Starswirl the Bearded had banished, and he had no problems in believing that Sunset Shimmer would need a Princess-sized assist to deal with them. However, this meant that Baked Bean, being the crippled, common earth pony that he was, could offer absolutely no assistance to the current issue. In his own mind, his wife should have just left him back in Canterlot, where he wouldn’t be in the way and he wouldn’t make another foolhardy decision that would endanger the whole of Equestria.
Doing so once in a lifetime was far over any pony’s allotment, and yet he had two instances on his permanent record already.
The third time was not going to be the charm.
* * ✹ * *
Baked Bean tried to contain himself when the large double doors to the new crystalline throne were opened. He really did.
But the gap between his entrance and his own giddy giggling could not even be described as a pregnant pause.
The little author in his brain struggled to come up with the appropriate adjectives, adverbs, and whatever other ads existed to properly describe the room before him. To say that the six thrones were hewn from the very essence of harmony itself only captured a small fraction of the true majesty, and calling the carved diamonds that dangled from the broad tree branches as exquisite was like saying the stars shone at night. All of his literary practice and all of Celestia’s attempts to broaden his language skills had not prepared him for this task, and that deficit was now frustrating him to no end. Even the engraved cutie marks on each of the thrones seemed to be just the perfect final touch, and Bean wished once more that he had a way to describe what he was seeing.
The most remarkable and curious part of the decor, however, was a large round table that occupied the space in front of the thrones, and as Bean was levitated closer, he found that a complete and detailed map of Equestria was somehow being projected onto the surface of it. He quickly identified Canterlot, Manehattan, and the other major cities of Equestria, and it only took a moment for him to find a smattering of houses that represented his own humble hometown of Salt Lick.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Luna remarked, while Bean was gently placed on the ground.
“And that’s not even the half of it!” Rainbow Dash announced, and she pointed to a hovering set of cutie marks, each seemingly from one of the Element Bearers. “Check it out! It’s like the map wants to send us somewhere totally awesome!”
Bean squinted at the nondescript hills underneath the floating cutie marks, and his hoof rubbed his chin. “That looks familiar. I almost want to say that…”
“That what?” Twilight pressed.
“What was her name?” Bean racked his mind, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of it. He had no trouble recalling her demeanor; she had been so unsettlingly odd that it would be impossible to forget. With just a hint of...hint? Hint. That was familiar, and he began to build on it. Hint ...Glint? Flint? Definitely not. If Bean ever forgot that little maniac’s name, he’d need to be committed somewhere. Glinty … Glim … Glimmer? Yes! Glimmer!
“Starlight Glimmer,” he said softly. “That’s where that perpetually smiling unicorn wanted to build her screwball commune. Just to the northwest of Manehattan, well off the beaten path and away from any regular supply lines.”
“But why would the Tree of Harmony want us to go to her village?” Twilight asked.
“I’m not sure, but I could take a few guesses,” Bean replied. “We all got a creepy vibe from her. I thought Discord was going to keep an eye on her for me, though.”
“Did I say that?” Discord replied, and Fluttershy let out a small cheer when he slithered over the top of her chair and settled into her seat.
“You did,” Bean replied while the draconequus shared a hug with Fluttershy and a glare with Rainbow Dash.
“I remember you saying you would, Discord,” Fluttershy added in a firm tone. “Be honest.”
Discord then shrank down small enough to hide behind one of Fluttershy’s wings and he tilted a Stetson hat down over his eyes. “Well, ah do declare. If’n ah must tell the truth, ah haven’t checked in on her in the last few … um, let’s see. When did I last drop in on her?”
“I’m glad I didn’t give up any of my borns with this deal,” Bean remarked dryly while Celestia’s wings wrapped a bit tighter around her sides.
“Okay, so I admit that I haven’t followed through on my end of the bargain. But! I am here now to help make amends, mon capitaine. Just give the word, and I’ll bring down my full chaotic wrath on whomever needs to be smoted! Smitten! Or is is smited? Smitten sounds better.”
“But what if this is a call for help?” Fluttershy added. “Maybe Starlight needs us to fix something. What if there’s been an outbreak of parasprites, or there’s a group of bufogen that got lost in their city?”
“If it was them little parasprite varmints, they’re probably needin’ some vittles to replace what they lost.” Applejack pointed to the area around Our Town. “And seein’ how it’s a new settlement, they probably haven’t been able to get a harvest in yet.”
“There’s a lot of different things it could be,” Twilight finished. “But since the map wants us to go there, how am I supposed to help Starlight and my friends at Canterlot High?”
“Well, you can’t help them anyway,” Rainbow Dash remarked. “The portal’s gonna stay closed for, like, a super long time.”
“I believe it may be possible to open the portal,” Celestia said. “Since the magic that connects the two journals provides a connection between dimensions, we should be able to amplify and expand it.”
Twilight’s eyes darted back and forth for a moment, but then a grin of delight appeared. “That’s it! I think I know how to amplify the magic! I’ll just need a few things …”
“But we still have the problem of Twilight needing to be in two places at the same time,” Rarity pointed out while Twilight trotted away. “It could take quite some time to subdue those dreadful sirens.”
“I will go,” Celestia said with the blaze of resolve shining in her eyes. “Sunset may have rejected me, but I have never rejected her. I will go and offer my assistance.”
“I do not believe that would be wise, sister,” Luna cut in. “You are with foal, and there is no way of knowing if the transformative magic would be detrimental to Epiphany’s development.”
“I have to agree with Princess Luna, Your Highness,” Rarity said. “We certainly don’t want anything to happen to you or to your daughter, and I am sure sirens are no trifling matter.”
“I will go in your stead.” Luna stated the fact with no room for negotiations on the matter. “If the portal can remain open, I will be able to return here for additional support and to consult with you, sister, on the best course of action. Should the worst come to pass, I shall send for a platoon or two of the Royal Guard.”
“I cannot ask you to do this for me, dear sister.” Celestia took a step back and allowed Twilight to pass by with several random trinkets in her magic. “Even in their weakened state, the dark magics of the sirens could be dangerous.”
“I hope you’re not suggesting that I would be susceptible because of my past,” Luna replied with a coy smirk.
“No, not at all. I am simply saying that we do not know how Equestrian magic works in a different dimension. Besides,” Celestia’s head dipped slightly, and her ears folded back. “I have asked you to solve too many of my problems as it is.”
“To be fair, you have not asked me for anything like this in over a thousand years,” Luna said with a small grin. “And you did not ask. I am volunteering to do this, of my own free will.”
Celestia smiled back to her beloved sister. “Then it is settled, I suppose. Twilight will travel to Our Town while you determine how to best assist Sunset Shimmer. Bean and I will provide whatever assistance we can from here.”
Both Royal Sisters then watched on in silent awe while Twilight finished constructing her device. The youngest Princess was both precise and efficient in her work, and it took only a few minutes for her to assemble the various wires, rollers, and conductors into an impressive contraption.
“Are you sure this is gonna work, Twilight?” Rainbow asked.
“Of course! It’s simple. The thaumological oscillations can be isolated with a simple application of the isolinear coefficients to the broadwave and bi-wave variables, and with that a simple amplification can be deduced by calculating the feed rate of the oscillations by two multiplied with the variables over the vector of z cubed divided by c, with z as the constant viscosity and c as the relative points interval, and the interval between the two points is defined as the square root of the sum of the squares of the separation between the points along three spatial dimensions!” Twilight gleefully announced.
This was met with silence and confused stares from Twilight’s friends.
“Say what now?” Spike asked.
“Duh!” Pinkie Pie replied. “She’s gonna take the magic in here,” she pointed to Celestia’s journal, “and put it in there,” she said from behind the mirror, just before she pointed to the surface and then moved around to the front. “That’ll make the portal open up so that whenever she wants to, she can go from here,” she nudged the book upright with her nose “to there,” she did a cartwheel in front of the mirror, then began popping up between the two. “There to here. Here to there. Here there! Here there! Here—”
“I think we get the idea,” Applejack cut her off.
“Now, to see if it works.” Twilight levitated Celestia’s journal to the top of her device, and almost instantly, the ingrained magic leapt from the cover to the receiver nodes on the either side. There was a round of oohs while the magic progressed through the rollers, along the wiring, and down to the portal, and a collective “ahh” came when the portal surged to life with a bright burst of light.
“What can I expect to find in this other world, Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked.
“You’ll probably want to avoid interacting with the students,” Twilight replied while tapping a hoof to her chin. “Your counterpart there is the Vice Principal, and it could get confusing for them, and for you.”
“A Principal of Vice, how peculiar this world is,” mused Luna. “Perhaps I can use this to my advantage. Not in that way, dearest sister,” she added while intentionally ignoring Celestia’s cringing expression. “However, it would be wise to make contact with Sunset Shimmer first and to perform some reconnaissance. Once I know exactly what we are up against, I will know what resources will be needed.”
“Bean and I will provide whatever you need, sister,” Celestia replied. “But I hate to have you do this. I know you have a hard time sleeping in a strange bed, so we’ll need to get your sleeping mask before you go. You should probably avoid drinking the local water, too; most public buildings lack a robust filtration system like what we have in the palace. I will send word to Cadence and ask Shining Armor to prepare for an assault, should you determine one is warranted. Twilight, you and your friends should leave as soon as possible for Our Town. I fear that something is greatly amiss, and I believe it would be unwise to allow this summons to go unanswered for any longer.”
“Looks like it’s time for a road trip, girls,” Twilight said with a determined grin.
Celestia nodded. “Bean, we should… where did he go?”
“Oh, he tootled through the mirror while you were all busy discussing what to do,” Discord casually replied.
“He WHAT?!”
* * ✹ * *