The land of Equestria has had its share of heroes and champions, from those brave and selfless warriors whose legendary feats inspire colts and the occasional filly to beat imagined monsters and each other with sticks to the sages and gray-bearded scholars whose life time of notes serve as the foundation of which all of modern magic was built upon. And then there were the healers who set those warriors’ broken bones back in place and carefully applied salve to scraped knees, and the scholars who organized those findings into something comprehensible and ensured the survival of information for future generations, and bards who spun acts into inspiring tales of heroism and spread them to the farthest farmlands where ponies toiled away to ensure a bountiful harvest. Yes, from the Pillars of Old Equestria, to the more recent bearers of the Elements of Harmony, to all members of the local law enforcement and fire prevention department, to every little foals’ parents, there was no shortage of heroes in Equestria, even if not every endeavor was remembered as a campfire story.
The members of the post office were such unsung and forgotten heroes. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of eternal night stays these admirable and hard-working mares and stallions from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. Through the post, all things big and small, toys to tools, books to bookshelves, pipe organs to transplant organs, get to their destination. So maybe some things get lost on the way, and maybe some things get sent to the wrong place and at the wrong time, and maybe there were a few bumps along the way and it’s not our fault the fragile tag we were supposed to put on the package fell off. Mistakes happen to everypony and if you really think about it we’ve saved more Hearth’s Warmings than we’ve ruined.
Excuses like that were probably why there doesn’t exist a ‘National Post Pony Appreciation Day.’ That and situations like the one Princess Twilight Sparkle found herself in as she fished out both her dragon assistant and the parcels the local post mare had dropped into the stream right in front of her school when she had crashed.
“Are you alright?” Twilight asked the post mare. It was the usual one, the gray pegasus with the messy blond mane and bubbles on her flanks. Her eyes had become crossed, but it was a feature Twilight had long since grown accustomed to.
“Oh, I’m fine.” The mare let out a soft giggle as she shook her head. Her eyes were now in agreement, pointing in the same direction. “Um, nopony else got hurt, right?”
Twilight’s number one assistant sighed as he tried to dry himself off. “You know what, I think I’ve finally gotten used to ponies crashing into me,” Spike grumbled, giving his wings a quick flap to shake off the water.
“Oh, that’s, good?” the post mare said as Twilight stifled a chuckle.
“It’s really not.” He held out a package, water still dripping off the cardboard, to the post mare. “Here. Managed to grab this while I was drowning.”
“Oh, thanks!” She took hold of the package, her eyes becoming uneven once more as she stared intently at it, her mouth scrunching. “Um, I know I came here for a reason, but...”
“Was it to give us our mail?”
The post mare’s features lit up at Twilight’s prompt. “Right! That was it!”’ She set the box down and began rummaging through her stuffed saddlebags. She resurfaced with her hooves full of envelopes which she quickly shoved into Twilight’s front before turning back to the package. “And this is for you,” she said cheerfully, returning it to Spike.
“For me?” Spike’s claws were hesitant. “Are these, the deluxe set of special edition Ogres and Oubliettes figurines I ordered? Are they, after all these moons of waiting, finally here?”
“Spike, you’re crying.”
“It’s the rain.”
Twilight rolled her eyes toward the clear, sunny skies above. “Rain. Right.” She turned back to the post mare. “Well, thanks. Hopefully the rest of your route will be safer.”
The mare raised her hoof to her forehead in salute and took off, crashing into a nearby tree as Twilight and Spike made their way into the school toward the headmare’s office.
“Now, let’s see you, my preciouses,” Spike whispered, almost hissed, as he started tearing through the box while Twilight spread the envelopes she had received over her desk. Nothing of particular interest, the alicorn quickly realized, just some advertisements for horn extensions, feather wax, gym memberships, and a letter from a supposed relative and apparent prince of the zebra homelands in dire need of funds (the lack of rhymes was a dead giveaway). She swept them all into the waste bin before turning to Spike.
“So, was it worth the wait?”
Spike looked up, his expression unreadable. He reached into the box and slowly pulled out what appeared to be a metallic tube. “I don’t think this is the right package.”
“What is it?” Twilight took hold of the object with her magic and brought it to her for a closer inspection. There was a faint green glow at the tip that was visible even through the purple aura of her magical grasp.
“It’s not a figurine, that’s for sure,” muttered Spike as he looked over the box the object had been in. “Oh, look.” The dragon held up the box and pointed at the crude hourglass drawn on the side. “It must be for, uh, that one guy. You know, the one with the...” Spike gesture again at the hourglass. “...on his flank.”
“Oh! Right, um.” Twilight rubbed her forehead. “Him, the stallion who, he, oh what was his name? I think he’s a doctor of something. Doctor, something.”
“Doctor who?”
“No, that’s not it.” Twilight groaned. “I can’t remember what his name is, but I know he lives on the edge of town. The mail mare probably just switch your package with his. We can straighten this out later, maybe after lunch. Right now we’ve got work to take care of.”
Spike followed Twilight’s gesture toward the stack of papers on her desk. His entire body began to swag. “Can’t we deal with this package thing first?”
“They’re figurines, Spike, not chocolates that’ll melt if left out in the sun,” Twilight said, pointing with the glowing rod. “They can wait. Work first, then, after we grab something to eat, we’ll head down to the doctor’s and—“
The rod began to buzz. Twilight let it fall to the ground, and the two watched as it rattled against the floor, vibrating violently on its own accord. Under their stares the metal stick shook and jumped until seconds later it came to a stop and turned silent. Twilight picked up the object, magically holding it up by just the tip, and dropped it into the box. She sealed the box, and without a word, she left the office, doing her best to hide her blush from the dragon who had followed her out.
The trip through Ponyville had been thankfully uneventful, with few ponies on the streets to greet and maintain straight faces for, and it didn’t take long before the ugly, poorly constructed, brown house at the end of the street came into view, the gaudy string of timepieces an obvious identifier.
“So, um,” began Spike as they approached the front door, “why would a doctor need a—“
“What ponies do in the privacy of their own homes is none of our business.” Twilight placed the box on the doorstep, shuddering as it came to life once more. “Alright, there. Come on, Spike, time to—“
The whole world seemed to shake as a deafening gong rang through the block. The building before them seemed to sway dangerously from the sheer force of the sound. Once her ears stopped ringing, Twilight turned and glared at her assistant whose claw was pressed against the doorbell’s button.
“What?” Spike frowned as the alicorn brought her hoof to her face. “Wait, were we just going to leave the package there? Without mine?”
“Let’s just get this awkwardness over with,” Twilight muttered with a sigh before turning back to the door and forcing a smile. Moments passed, but the door stayed shut. Twilight stopped Spike as he reached for the doorbell for a second ring. “Just, knock this time.”
Spike followed the request enthusiastically, pounding his fist against the wood as hard as he could. Again, there was no answer. “Oh come on,” Spike growled, grabbing at the door handle, but before Twilight could rebuke him, he fell forward with a yelp as the door swung inward. “It’s, ah, open,” the princess of friendship heard him say from the across the doorway.
With a resigned sigh, Twilight picked up the box and stepped inside. “Hello?” she called out. “Anypony home? Sorry for the intrusion. We got your, Spike! What are you doing?”
“Just looking for my package,” Spike shouted from further inside. “Wow, this place is messy.”
Twilight let out a groan and hurried deeper into the house toward Spike’s voice. The ticking of the clocks around her seemed to grow louder with each step she took. “Come on, Spike. You can’t just run into somepony’s house like this. You know better.”
“Yeah, but nopony’s home. And besides, we break into ponies’ places all time,” she heard Spike scoff. “Rainbow Dash breaks into hospitals, we’ve broken into the Canterlot archives, I heard you broke into Flim and Flam’s friendship university office when that was still a thing.”
“Those were completely justifi—“
There was a crash, a loud one that spurred Twilight into a sprint forward. She stopped at the edge of the room where the noise came from, and with her jaw dropped and her eyes wide she stared at the chaos before her. Odd gadgets with blinking buttons and exposed sparking wires lined the walls and the floor. Several strange metal helmets with cords and probes sticking out of them were scattered on the ground. Tables and stools were on their sides. Sheets and strips of shiny tinfoil fluttered in the air, blown about by the spinning propeller of some wrecked wooden contraption that lain in pieces before her.
In the center of it all was her guilty assistant, standing in front of what must have been the most unusual and most blue outhouse Twilight had ever seen. It was also the only thing in the room that was still intact.
“It was like this when I got here, I swear!” Spike immediately exclaimed. “All I did was pick this up.” He held out the box that was in his claws toward Twilight. “That’s all I did, and then that thing fell from the ceiling,” he said, pointing at the wooden wreckage.
Twilight slapped her forehead and threw her head back and sighed. “Well, somepony, no, some dragon is going to have to clean this all up. You’re going to get this room back to how you found it, then you’re going to apologize to the doctor, then you’re going to ask him what his name is so I don’t have to keep calling him ‘the doctor,’ and then when you’ve—“
She stopped. Her ears stood straight and at attention.
“Um, Twilight, are you—“
“Shh.”
Spike became quiet. It took him a little more time before he also heard the creaking of the floorboards above that soon became the telltale clopping sounds of hooves hurrying down stairs. Suddenly, Spike found himself flying back, right into the blue outhouse.
“Huh, it’s bigger on the inside,” the dragon observed right before Twilight squeezed in beside him, shoving him against a bright, blinking wall. “But not by much.” He spat out a mouthful of purple feathers and tried to push Twilight’s wing down. “What are you doing?”
“Shh!” Twilight slid the entrance shut and tried to shift into a more comfortable position, but within their cramped confines, her efforts just made Spike’s claws dig deeper into her back. “We’re hiding.”
“Oh. Why?”
“What,” whispered the alicorn, “do you think would happen if I, a princess of Equestria, the princess of friendship no less, was discovered in a room that was trashed in a house I wasn’t invited to owned by a pony whose name I don’t even know despite having lived in the same small town where everypony knows everypony for the last few years? My reputation as a princess and as an expert in friendship would be ruined!”
“Because of the mess, the breaking in, or the not knowing the guy’s name?”
“Quiet!” Twilight leaned an ear against the door, toward the light taps of hoofsteps just outside.
“Odd,” she heard somepony, a stallion by the muffled sound of it, perhaps the mysterious doctor himself, say. “I could have sworn I heard the doorbell. Ah well. Hm, I should really get to cleaning this place.”
“See, I told you it was like that when I got here.”
“Shh!” Twilight hissed back as she returned her focus to the speaker.
“Oh? What’s this?” There was the tearing sound of cardboard being ripped apart, then a chuckle. “Here you are! Ah, I knew you’d find your way back to me somehow.” A buzz and a moan ignited a fire in Twilight’s checks, turning them red. “How I’ve missed that feeling. Come now, we’ve got work to do.”
The steps were growing louder, getting closer to their hiding spot Twilight realized. She paled and in desperation looked around frantically for a way to further conceal herself, a blanket or clothing to cover herself or something to duck behind. She’d even settle for an eyepatch, but her surroundings were bare, just the sliding door, three walls adorn with flashing lights and blinking buttons and nobs, and Spike. There wasn’t even an opening in the floor for excrement, adding to this outhouse’s strangeness.
“It’s all over,” Twilight wailed, throwing herself onto the floor and covering her face with her forelegs. Spike grunted as he was pressed further against the wall. “Everything I’ve ever worked for, ruined, all because of some stupid dolls.”
Spike managed to turn his head to the side. “Okay, one, they’re figurines not dolls. And not that I don’t enjoy our usual ‘Twilight overreacts to something that isn’t as bad as she thinks it is’ routine, no really, it’s part of your charm, but if it’s so bad why haven’t we teleported?”
“Because we, of course! Spike, you’re a genius!”
“Gah! Watch your wings!”
The walls began to shake. The lights flashed red, and a shrill screech filled through the outhouse. Twilight’s ears flattened against her head. “What’s going on? Spike?”
“I, uh, think I hit something.”
“Hit something?” Twilight yelled over the blares. “What did you hit?”
Spike’s reply was drowned out by the noise. The sounds of powerful wind blowing past had added to the mix, making it as if they were trapped in the eye of a hurricane. The shaking intensified, becoming wilder by the second. The ground began to quake. Twilight felt Spike grab hold of her, and her panic soared as his claws slipped away.
Twilight screamed out Spike’s name, no longer audible even to herself. Her horn lit up, to grab her assistant, to teleport, anything. As she felt her magic fail her and her horn extinguish, like embers caught in the rain, she lost sight of the lights and the flashes and the walls. The world around her faded to white. She shut her eyes.
And, as suddenly as it had all started, the world went still.
The shaking had stopped, and it had gone quiet. Slowly, carefully, cautiously, Twilight raised her ears. All she could hear was her own panicked breathing, and she quickly inhaled two hearty lungfuls of air to calm herself, the staleness and dust sending her into a fit of coughs.
“Twilight?”
Her eyes flew open at the sound of her name. “Spike? Is that you?”
“Yeah.” Twilight felt the familiar feeling of Spike’s scales against her hind leg. “What happened? Where are we?”
The alicorn looked around, trying piece together some kind of answer from the paltry clues her senses provided her. The darkness certainly didn’t help matters, and the only source of light was a dim beam peaking through a small crack in the distance. Twilight tried standing up for a better view but soon discovered how low the ceiling above was when it and her head became painfully acquainted with a loud thud and a dust shower.
Her first guess was that they were in some cavern of sort, but the ground under her hooves and against her belly didn’t fit that theory. Instead of a rough, stony surface, the floor was smooth, polished even. What’s more, Twilight could trace out uniformed lines and spaces, all set distances apart. Her mind went to tiles and floorboards, like the ones in the house they were just at. Had they even left?
Light from her horn illuminated the world around her. They were floorboards beneath her, wooden ones coated in varnish. She lifted her head slowly and looked up to find more wooden boards running horizontally along the roof. She pointed her horn toward the crack of light and discovered a pair of columns extending into the frame above.
“Are we, under a bed?”
Spike’s ridiculous proposal made too much sense to be dismissed. The floor, the ceiling, the dust, the way the opening seemed to grow and shrink with the breeze, it could all be explained away by that answer, which of course led to its own series of mysteries. How did they end up here? Had the magic she had been preparing and thought had fail brought them here or was the outhouse they had hid in actually some teleportation device, and where had it gone? What was a doctor doing with such a device in the first place? The bed, from what Twilight could tell and if it was indeed one, was rather excessive in size for a pony, so were they even still in Equestria?
And what was on the outside, beyond the crack of light?
Twilight crawled toward the opening in the distance, soon discovering it as just the space between the floor and a quilted blanket. Grunts could be heard from behind her as Spike followed suit and made his way to her side. There wasn’t much either of them could make out through that space, just a couple of shapes and incomplete parts of wholes, nothing useful. Twilight turned as much as she could toward Spike, and the two shared a look before Spike nodded. Taking in a deep breath, Twilight lifted the blanket and found herself face to face with a monster.
The face before her was squished and naked save for a hideous, unkempt ring of black hair that was wrapped over the top of the skull and around the bottom of what Twilight could only assume was a chin. Two budded flesh pods grew out just above the bottom of the hair ring, and behind them she could just make out two parallels rows of exposed bleached bones. A long, pointed, rubbery appendage with flaring orifices grew out between a pair of tiny eyes sullen eyes that stared at her with perverse fascination.
Twilight screamed and scrabbled back to the safety beneath the bed, letting the quilt fall back down and act as a barrier between her and the monstrosity outside. Spike’s screams soon joined hers.
“What? What is it?”
“You didn’t see?”
“No. What was it?”
Twilight shook her head. “I have no idea. It looked like a shaved minotaur that got bucked in the face by Big McIntosh, and it stuck like that. And then its ears got cut off. And horns fell off. And then Applejack bucked its face in too.” She shuddered. “We need to get out of here. Spike, move back, we’ll try—“
Something brushed by Twilight’s side, and once again the alicorn let out a sound that was quite undignified for a mare of her stature. This time, however, she was the only one to scream.
“Whoa. Twilight, calm down. It’s just a ball. No, wait, what the? Is that a...” Twilight felt Spike shift against her as he drew close. “It’s an apple! Look!”
Twilight looked down into Spike’s claws, and there, nested in them, was a small, round fruit with a stem peeking out of its top. She couldn’t make out the color of its skin, not with what little light was was available, but she’d been an honorary member of Applejack’s clan long enough to recognize the fruit as some type of apple.
“Where did that come from?” she wondered aloud. Spike barely begun shrugging before a second apple rolled past the blanket’s edge and stopped at Twilight’s hoof. She flinched at the sudden touch.
“Ewgonaheetht?”
“What?”
Spike swallowed and wiped his lips with the back of his wrist. “You gonna eat that?” he asked again, gesturing toward the new apple. The old one was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Twilight discovered some seeds and tiny chunks of fruit and skin attached to the thin stem.
“Spike, you didn’t.”
“I’m hungry. It’s lunchtime.”
“That doesn’t mean you should just pick up any random food you find off the floor! Especially not while we’re stuck in some strange alien world. That monster outside, it could’ve done something to that apple.”
“I mean, I don’t feel any different,” Spike assured, smacking his lips. “It tasted like a regular old apple. Besides, why would they do something like that?”
“I don’t know. Why would it throw fruit at us in the first place? Spike!”
“What?” Spike said, his mouth full from a bite of the second apple. “You know I can’t think on an empty stomach. Hey, I know. Maybe they’re just giving us food because they’re friendly.”
“Or maybe it’s trying to bait us into a trap,” Twilight presented. She tried to ignore both the grumbling of her own stomach and the smug look on her assistant’s face in response to the sound. Moments later, a third apple rolled by.
“They can’t be that bad if they have apples,” Spike reasoned, and before Twilight could stop him, the dragon had crawled past her and the blanket, out into the brave new world outside.
“Spike! Spike, come back here this instant!” Fear for her friend proved greater than her fear of the monster and the unknown world, and Twilight hurried after him. Light filled her vision, blinding her for a short moment before her eyes finally took in the world beyond the bed.
It was largely underwhelming, just some enlarged pieces of furniture she easily recognized as nightstands and dressers. A bright lamp was the source of the room’s light, and though there was a faint buzz from the bulb, she couldn’t make out any fireflies. The walls of the room were adorn with painted lilies over white papering, and on one wall, opposite to the closed window, was a large flag with white and red stripes running across its length and a large blue square with white stars in a corner. A black suit jacket and giant top hat were on a coat rack next to a closed door.
And there, sitting in a chair, towering over her, was the monster giving Spike another apple. “See?” Spike said, holding up the gifted fruit. “They’re friendly.”
“Hm, sure.” Twilight said, the skepticism in her tone unmistakable, as she tilted her head and looked upward. The light hadn’t improved the creature’s facial features, but it did give Twilight a better view of the being’s full body. Her initial description of the monster as a minotaur had been apt, it clearly being bipedal and with upper appendages independent of its legs. What was unexpected, however, was the amount of clothing it was wearing. A clean white dress shirt covered its front, shoulders, and most of its arms, and its legs were concealed with pants of all things up to what Twilight perceived as its waist. In its arms was a brown paper bag and a glass bottle. Several more bottles were on the table next to the creature.
The creature turned its gaze from Spike to her, staring with those unnaturally small eyes. Twilight took an instinctive step back as the creature reached into the bag. It pulled out an apple, no different from the ones before, and tossed it over to Twilight. The sounds of Spike’s sloppy eating and the whines of her own stomach slowly chipped away at the alicorn’s resolve and caution. At last, she caved and took a small bite, then another.
She had reached the fruit’s core when the door suddenly flew open. The creature leapt to its feet to face the intruder. Much like their apple giver, the newcomer was bipedal and was clothed top to bottom, with the addition of a colorful scarf wrapped around its neck. Its face was even barer, with brownish hair covering only the top of its head, and it was quite a bit shorter than the first creature.
In its claw-like appendage, it held a familiar metal, glowing, vibrating rod.
The intruder’s eyes widened at the sight of Twilight and Spike. “Ah, there you are,” it said before turning to its fellow creature. It grabbed the other’s arm and shook it. “Thank you for taking care of them. It’s good to see you again. How’s that map treating you? I can’t recall, has that battle happened yet?”
“I’m sorry, do I—“
“Ah, don’t trouble yourself over it,” the intruder said with a chuckle and a head shake. “Well, we’d best be going.” It looked over it’s shoulder, toward the shouts and stomps quickly approaching. “I’ve already caused quite a stir.”
The newcomer took hold of Twilight and Spike and opened the window. With a wave, it jumped out into the cool evening air just as the first creature rushed to the windowsill. As it looked out in amazement at the empty city street below, the door flung open again, and in stepped blue uniformed guards with service revolvers in hand.
“Mr. President, are you alright?” exclaimed the one in front. “Get some more men and start searching the other rooms!” he barked at the others. “Could be a rebel assassin.”
“An assassin? Truly?” The man at the window smirked. “Come now, Captain, that’s rather dramatic. Is there something I should be concerned about?”
“We caught a fellow trying to sneak ‘round,” the captain at the front explained as the ones around him marched through the room, lifting furniture and checking the curtains. “Brit, by the sound of it. Got away from us. You see anything, sir?”
“There was a man with an accent here just a second ago.”
The captain’s mustache fell with the rest of his face. “Here? In this room? Well where’d he go?”
“Well, after he grabbed the dragon and the little purple unicorn with wings, he jumped through the window and disappeared.”
Every being in the room stared at the tall bearded man in silence. “The dragon and, um. Beg your pardon Mr. President?” The captain sniffed at the air and grimaced. “Have you been spending time with General Grant?”
The man sighed. “Rest assured, on my honor, I have touched not a drop of cider nor lick of whiskey since my arrival in this fine city.”
The guard captain simply raised an eyebrow as he gestured to the mess of bottles on the table.
“I, er, may have indulged in the German speciality. Just a bit.”
“How much?”
“Oh, not much. Less than, say, eight bottles.” There was a pause. “Maybe more than six. Please don’t tell Mary.””
The captain opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, one of the guards cried out, “I found something!”
All attention was turned to the young boy in blue under the bed. He emerged and as everyone watched with eagerness and anticipation he walked over to his captain and proudly deposited some several apple remains into the captain’s hands. The boy’s grin quickly withered under the officer’s glare.
“So,” he said, turning back to the tall man. “Crabapples with German liquid bread? You’re one of odd tastes, Mr. President.”
“Oh, those were from the dragon. Hungry creature, that one. The unicorn had one too, after a while. It seemed shy.”
“Ah, right.” The captain coughed. “Um, if you don’t mind me asking, do you still see the dragon and unicorn?”
“I told you, the man with the British accent and scarf ran in and grabbed them, and then vanished into the night.” He hummed. “I feel like I knew him from somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t say how.”
“I see. And this was four cores and seven beers ago?”