“The trial will now come to order. Plymouth A. Valiant, you stand accused of kingdom kidnap, having coerced and held Prince Shining Armor against his will. How do you plead?”
I looked around the courtroom. I had to admit, this was a little more intense than I had been expecting. Usually my wacky shenanigans only resulted in a deep sigh and feeble protests from Twilight.
I had a couple options here. I could point out that I’d been acting on Twilight’s orders to win the crown. I could point out that I was acting on Cadance’s permission to change the dynamic of the relationship with her husband.
Cadance was staring at me from the front row. I could throw her under the bus, but she’d told me that in confidence, and...well, I guess I had to honor that.
There was no way Twilight was going to let me throw her under the bus. She was the judge. I guess Princesses had the authority to do that. One more reason I’d made sure the Twilight from the other universe wasn’t an alicorn.
Also, she looked ridiculous in that powdered wig.
So, after some time to debate, I said, “Not guilty by way of unenforceable punishment.”
Low murmurs went around the room.
Twilight stared at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What’s my maximum sentence?”
“Incarceration.”
“If my crime was to kidnap a prince from one castle and break into another castle with the best security in the country, just where do you think you’re going to hold me?”
More murmurs around the room. Twilight cut her eyes at them, apparently realizing that doing this trial publically to make an example of me wasn’t working out like she planned.
“There’s also the matter of certain other factors pertaining to this case.” I met her eyes, and smirked. Try me, bitch. If I go down, I’m going to land on you.
Twilight’s lips curled, but she banged her gavel and said, “You’re guilty. I sentence you to time served.”
I’d been in custody for less than twelve hours, so that worked out pretty well.
The courtroom started to empty. Twilight and I remained seated.
“So, um, do you still need me?” asked Derpy, my defense attorney.
“No, it turned out to be more open-and-shut than I expected.”
“Good, because I’ll tell you again: I’m not qualified.” She got up and put her delivery hat on. “Hey Princess Twilight, I have a package for you.”
Twilight seemed surprised, but came down from her desk and walked over. Derpy said goodbye and left.
Twilight glanced at the large package, but turned to me before opening it. “Valiant, I don’t know what you were thinking.”
“You asked me to do it.”
“I didn’t think you were stupid enough to do that!”
“I didn’t even hurt anyone. I still got into the castle and invalidated the security. What are you going to do if some villain tries it?”
“You practically are a villian, even if all you want to do is get drunk on my couch.”
“I’m still helping Equestria. Just as I said: the security sucks. Do you honestly think any of the security Shining Armor put in place would have stopped Sombra? I mean, come on, anti-pegasus fans, doubled guards, pit traps, and geese?”
There was a little fire in her eyes. “You’re on thin ice, Valiant. If you ever do something like this again-”
What? Would she do a spell on me? Send me to magic kindergarten? Force me to be friends?
“-you will regret it.”
Well, I guess could live with that.
Twilight gave me a last look and turned away. I called after her. “What about your big package?”
“I don’t have-” She came up short, glared at me, and walked back to the box Derpy had delivered.
Spike came over just then with a scroll. “This just came. Princess Celestia says she delivered a bunch of stuff from your old room. I don’t know why she didn't just send the scroll with the package.”
Twilight opened the box and started to go through it. She suddenly gasped and pulled out a book. “Oh no! Oh no!”
“What’s wrong?” said Spike. “It just looks like an old library book.”
Exactly! It belongs to the Canterlot Library! That means it’s…” Twilight gasped “-overdue!”
“Is it such a big deal?” said Spike.
“You don’t understand! I have a perfect library book return record!”
“Had a perfect record.” Spike and I looked at each other, having spoken at the same time. Twilight shot me a glare.
She went on. “I’ve never turned in a book even a minute late! And this one has been overdue since I left for Ponyville!”
“So like two or three years?” I said.
“Oh, this is bad,” Twilight continued to freak. “What if somepony sees me in there? I’m the Princess of Friendship.”
“Princess Twilight in a library?” said Spike, laughing. “Stop the presses!”
“A late book is a big deal, Spike. What if they revoke my library card? Or ban me from ever entering the building again?!”
“Don’t you already have most of those books in your collection at home?” Spike said.
“Yes, but the ones in there have a special Canterlot Library-y smell!”
“You sniff books?” Spike and I glanced at each other again, having spoken simultaneously again.
Twilight glared at me, but then an idea suddenly came to her. “Valiant, you return this book. And don’t tell anypony who checked it out.”
“That seems kind of counter to friendship, considering you’re lying and not admitting to your mistake, but sure, I was going to Canterlot anyway.”
Twilight looked like she suddenly wanted to reverse her opinion. Spike said, “Why were you going to Canterlot?”
“I want to talk to Sunset. I have to go through the mirror portal.”
“You can’t just use the mirror,” Twilight protested. “It’s in a high security area of the castle.”
“Well, we’ve already established that there’s no one who can stop me, sooo…”
I grabbed the book and was out the door before she could say anything else.
Taking the ATHSS to Canterlot, I stopped by the library and put the book in the book drop. Twilight probably would have gone in and made a big deal out of it.
After that, I went to the castle.
The guards were not pleased to see me, but none of them had the balls to try anything. Quick learners.
I said hello to Celestia as I walked by her throne. She gave me an exasperated look, but she too didn’t try anything.
I headed through the mirror and shortly found myself in the other world. The high school world. I still didn’t get what the deal was with this place, but the important thing was that Sunset was here.
Or I thought she was. Walking into the school, I didn’t see her anywhere.
As a side note, this school had really bad security, and I don’t even mean by my standards.
“Uh, what are you doing here?” said a janitor I met in the hallway. “It’s summer break.”
“Oh. Um.” I frowned. “I did not consider that.” As bad as the school security was, I figured I could try another tactic. “You wouldn’t happen to have the home addresses of a couple of students, would you?”
He shook his head. “I just work here.”
Well shit. I headed back through the mirror.
Walking into the castle back in Ponyville, I surprised Twilight in the middle of a meeting with Discord. Ignoring them, though, I headed for my couch and my tequila.
Whatever they were doing in the other room was probably weird, but I had a better kind of weird waiting for me: Weird Al-cohol.
I really wished that wasn’t just a pun. That was exactly who I could have used just then, someone from another dimension.
I was about halfway into a bottle when I asked myself, well, what’s stopping me? I’ve done it before.
I wandered back into the other room. Discord had left and Twilight was giving me a wide berth. I got the feeling that she’d asked him to use his chaos magic to keep me under control and he’d told her that he wasn’t going anywhere near that. At any rate, that would have made me happy if that was what had happened. I was probably just drunk.
Not too drunk to do some questionably ethical things to a potentially-sapient table, though. However the magic worked, it had to have some kind of logic to send ponies where they needed to go to solve friendship problems throughout this universe. Twilight had already demonstrated that it could show other universes Therefore, if I could figure out how to modify it, I could get it to at least send signals to other universes. Maybe I could even figure out matter transference.
Twilight came in, looking concerned about the electronics that were slowly sprouting everywhere. “What are you doing?”
“Trying desperately to get off this planet.” I said it that way to maybe head off any shit she was going to give me.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” she said. “Are you just acting out because of this mixup in universes? I understand how that might be traumatic.”
I glanced at her. “What makes you think that?”
“Because the alternative is that there’s something very wrong with you.”
“Well, if this works, we never have to talk about it again.” I quickly grabbed a keypad wired into the apparatus and dialed, sending a signal out into the ether, far across the mists of the multiverse to southern Californa.
The phone actually rang, kind of surprising me. However, an automated system picked it up, playing a message with a machine voice. It seems like you're trying to reach Lauren Faust. However, inter-universe calls are blocked. You know who you are; go die in a fire.
It hung up.
I put the receiver down and let out a deep sigh.
Twilight sat down next to me. “I can tell this must be hard for you.”
In response, I slammed the rest of the bottle.
She put her hoof on my shoulder. “Valiant, you’ve done damage here, but helping ponies is what I do. Tell me what you’re going through.”
“Please, please don’t make me talk about my feelings.”