“I should have known better. ‘This won’t be dangerous’, you said. ‘All you have to do is talk to the guy’, you said.”
A massive red laser shot out of the sky, parting the clouds and destroying a boulder not ten meters away from them.
“To be fair, I didn’t know he found peppermint insulting,” a ghostly filly with sunglasses said, frantically looking around for some solution to the situation. “Or how he sees us while Voided.”
“Blink!”
“Don’t get your wings in a twist, Sweetaloo, I’ve got this.”
Sweetaloo gawked at her. “Do you want a close call today?”
“...Maybe?”
“This is going in your next psych eval, I swear to the Stars.”
“You do that. I’m going to work on saving the world.”
Sweetaloo ruffled her wings in annoyance. The orbital laser struck behind her, framing her in a brilliant crimson light that drowned out the softness of her yellow coat and made her bow look like monstrous ears—or perhaps horns.
“Okay, fine, I’ll send you back,” Blink muttered, taking out the dimensional device and pressing the touch screen with her hoof. Nothing happened. “Uh…”
“Blink…”
“Connection to Swip isn’t working but… aha! Got one.” Sliding the dimensional device’s dial to the side, she pressed her hoof down again. A ring of white energy appeared in midair leading to… darkness.
“That is not an escape route,” Sweetaloo muttered.
“Working on finding something e—”
The world shook. Sweetaloo’s vision was dominated by the crimson brilliance of the orbital laser. She was vaguely aware of being tossed into the air, but the ringing in her ears drew much more attention than anything else she was aware of. Red became black as she flew through the portal, the white gateway closing behind her.
All was still.
It wasn’t as peaceful as it could have been—her ears were still ringing like a broken klaxon—but she did appreciate the lack of shockwaves or immediate danger.
The darkness was a problem. No light to speak of. Luckily, she could fix that. With some effort, she created a glow around her horn and examined her surroundings.
She was in a box. A large box, to be sure, but it was still a box. It wasn’t a coffin, seeing as it wasn’t long enough to hold her stretched out and was a bit too tall to be practical, but this didn’t stop Sweetaloo from wondering if she’d just translated to some box deep underground. The wood that made up the structure was old and decaying around the edges, but somehow firm.
Her horn went out, plunging her into darkness once more.
Stupid unreliable magic.
With some effort, she managed to turn herself over and push against the lid of the box with her hooves. Making some effort to tap into her inherent strength, she kicked.
Nothing budged.
She tried tapping into it with her telekinesis, but she could never hope to break something so sturdy with her magic, even if she hadn’t just taxed what little of it she had with that light spell.
In desperation, she tried using her wings to get a gust of wind or speed or something that could get her out. But, as usual, they were just as useless as everything else.
“Ultimate Crusader, my flank,” Sweetaloo muttered under her breath. She spent a bit more time trying to kick her way out of the box, but finding no loose boards or convenient creases, she contented herself with waiting for her horn to recharge so she could try poking around outside with her telekinesis.
It was at this point she heard a key turning in a lock.
She swore she could hear a triumphal ditty as the box’s lid slid open, revealing her savior: a Twilight Sparkle complete with wings and horn.
Twilight stared at Sweetaloo.
Sweetaloo stared back.
Twilight, clearly not believing what she was seeing, started to slowly close the lid.
“Wait! Wait!” Sweetaloo jumped out of the box—clearly some kind of treasure chest, now that she could see it better. “Don’t put me back in there, pleeeease!”
Twilight stared at her in dumbfounded shock.
Gaining control of herself, Sweetaloo fell back on her training. Slowly, so as not to alarm Twilight, she sat down on the edge of the chest and put on a comforting smile, swinging one of her hooves over the edge to make it look like she was just some casual pony engaging in conversation. “Sorry, not really a fan of being trapped in chests, y’know?”
“Link…?” Twilight called, glancing over her shoulder. “There’s a weird alicorn in this chest!”
“I doubt that’s the only weird thing about me, but that’s good, let’s start th—wait. Did you say Link?”
The pointy-eared human that walked into the dungeon room—it was clearly a stone dungeon, no other way to categorize it - was muscular, blond, and more than a little dirty. However, he was not wearing the green pointed-hat outfit Sweetaloo had been expecting, but rather a blue tunic with simple white markings on it.
His response to Sweetaloo was much more favorable, if insulting.
“Huh.”
Sweetaloo kept herself from twitching in annoyance. “Hi. I’m Sweetaloo, thanks for getting me out of that box.”
“What were you doing in that box?” Twilight asked. “How did you get here? Why are you an alicorn? Do you know how to get home!?”
“Fleeing from an orbital laser strike, dimensional portal, teleportation accident, maybe.”
“Dimensional portal? Teleportation accident!? MAYBE!?”
Sweetaloo let out a soft laugh. “I don’t know if I can find your universe or not, but I do know I can help you. We can follow your dimensional signature…” Sweetaloo realized something annoying. “...If I had a dimensional device on me. Which I don’t. Because I’m not supposed to be adventuring.” She facehooved. “Excuse me while I contemplate the logistics behind carrying one of those things absolutely everywhere…”
“You have any idea what she’s talking about?” Link asked.
“...Sorta…?” Twilight said, cocking her head. “I think she’s a pony who travels worlds. Though she doesn’t have the magic to do so, right now.”
“So, not helpful?”
“W-well she has to have more information than what we had two minutes ago! She knows how to make portals!”
“And my team will come looking for me, eventually,” Sweetaloo added. “They should know where I am, assuming Blink doesn’t screw up royally. Which… isn’t guaranteed, but let’s assume they’ll find me.”
“I won’t,” Link said, turning to leave the treasure room.
“Wh - hey!” Twilight trotted after him. “She might be my way home!”
“And she might not. We’ll keep going through the dungeons like we have until we find an answer or her team shows up. No need to wait.”
“But-”
“She’s already following us,” Link pointed out.
Sweetaloo rolled her eyes. “You seem important. I should stick by you.”
“Uh… we tend to have exploding things follow us,” Twilight warned.
“Most heroes do.”
“I… what?”
Link stopped, looking at an absolutely massive door with a pristine golden lock in front of it.
“Ah. Boss door,” Sweetaloo observed.
“Good name,” Link commented. He pulled a large, evil-looking key out of his bag. “I think we should rest up, come back to this later.”
“And walk all the way out of the dungeon!?” Twilight blurted.
Link pointed at her horn.
Twilight flushed brightly. “Oh…”
“Do you forget that every time?” Sweetaloo asked.
“NO!”
“Yes,” Link confirmed.
“Oh, you can be quiet.”
The next moment, they were outside the doors of an ancient marble temple. Bright green deciduous trees spread out in every direction as far as the eye could see, framed by the beautiful rays of the sunset.
“We’re having pie tonight,” Link said, sitting down to start a fire. “Get comfortable.”
~~~
Sweetaloo had no idea how Link did it. He placed a giant wok on the fire, filled it with random ingredients and… somehow, a pie came out.
Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as some of the things Pinkie Pies did, but he wasn’t a Pinkie, which made it… weird.
It was delicious though. Some kind of fruit she had never tasted made up the filling, shocking her tongue with a slight zing every bite. The crust was somehow perfectly flakey.
However, as good as the meal was, Sweetaloo decided the awkward silence needed to be ended. “So, Twilight, how long have you been stuck in this world?”
“A few weeks. Wait. I didn’t tell you my name!”
“I know a lot of Twilights,” Sweetaloo smirked. “I’ll tell you about them if you want, later, right now I’m trying to figure out about this place and the story I’ve walked into.”
“Well… yeah, I’ve been here a few weeks. Link accidentally summoned me using some weird ancient magic and… I’ve been helping him on his quest to save the land in hopes we can find the magic to send me back.”
Link nodded. “A great evil, named Calamity Ganon, threatens the land…”
“Yeah, sounds normal. I can probably have my friends come in and help after they find me.” Sweetaloo held up a wing to silence Link before he started talking. “But right now… Twilight, you seem stressed.”
“Why wouldn’t I be stressed? I’m wandering around an alien countryside raiding dungeons and fighting dark magic! I’m the Princess of Friendship, not Daring Do!”
“Pony names are so weird…” Link commented, munching on the pie.
Sweetaloo fixed Twilight with a smile. “But you’ve had adventures before, right? Some with Daring Do herself?”
“How did y- nevermind, right, other Twilights.”
“Yeah. I bet you’ve faced much more dangerous things. Sombra? The Storm King? Chrysalis?”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
‘’I bet this Ganon doesn’t have anything on all the stuff you’ve faced. So this dungeon should be easy compared to all that.”
“It… it is easy but… I…” Twilight looked at the ground, despondent.
“You want to go home?”
“Yeah…”
“I’m sure your friends are still there, doing everything they can to try and find out what happened to you. Don’t worry. You can go back home. You’re still here, and it’s still there.”
Twilight looked up, recognition in her eyes. “...You can’t?”
Sweetaloo considered her response for a moment. “...No.”
“Do you mind me asking… why?”
“You’ve probably figured it out from looking at me. I’m Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo. There was a teleportation accident and, well, here I am. All of them at once. And also… none of them.” Sweetaloo looked up at the stars, wistfully. “Sometimes, ponies just can’t move past changes. They’re too painful to process.”
The stars really were beautiful, here. Everything was beautiful. This universe seemed to love its landscapes, its picturesque trees, its brilliant moonlight shining through the multilayered clouds… pleasing to almost any eye, for sure.
“Can what happened to you be… undone?”
“Yes. But then where would I be?” Sweetaloo pointed at herself with her small wing. “I am The Crusader. I am all three of them… and all three of them want to be here.” She refused to look Twilight in the eye. “If that weren’t the case, I would have split myself up long ago.”
“Oh…”
Sweetaloo laid down, back to Twilight. “Savor your home, Twilight. You can be sure you’ll be welcomed back with open hooves.”
Twilight sighed. For a moment, Sweetaloo thought she had gone to sleep.
But ten minutes later, she heard a faint, “Thanks, Sweetaloo.”
That brought a smile to the counselor’s lips.
~~~
The next morning, the three of them stood in front of the boss door. Link pulled out the key and thrust it into the lock. Comically, the massive golden chains crumbled to the ground like they were nothing more than heavy vines. The door slid into the ground, revealing a large, square, stone room. There was nothing inside.
“...There’s always some kind of big monster in the last room.” Twilight said.
“The boss,” Sweetaloo offered.
“Yeah, the ‘boss’.”
“Maybe it’s dead from being so old,” Link suggested. “It would be nice if the monsters in here aged like the rest of us, sometimes.”
“While I would be grateful if the boss was suddenly dead...” Sweetaloo sighed. “I’m pretty sure this is probably some kind of trap and we need to be wary.”
With her words, the door slid shut behind them with a thud.
A small, green drop of goo fell from the ceiling. It bounced up, revealing itself to be some kind of slime creature about half Sweetaloo’s height with two yellow, bulbous eyes.
Link frowned. “A chu-chu?”
“We’ve fought hundreds of these,” Twilight said. “Hardly a boss.”
With a flash of golden light, the chu-chu grew twenty times in size and covered the walls of the chamber with green, sticky goo.
“Oh,” Link said.
“I’m just gonna stand back…” Sweetaloo commented, realizing with fear that her hooves were glued to the ground.
Twilight spread her wings and lit her horn, blasting the monstrous slime with a laser. It bounced harmlessly off. “It’s resistant to my magic—like the Smooze!”
Link drew his sword and shield, smirking. “Then we finally get to do this the old fashioned way!” He hacked at the thing.
It ate his sword.
“Uh… bombs. Bombs, yes.” Link pulled a bomb out of his pack and threw it.
The chu-chu dropped its bulbous body on him and the bomb, encasing both of them within itself. The bomb exploded, taking out a large chunk of the chu-chu’s interior, but it didn’t seem to care.
“Link!” Twilight shouted. “Oh no oh no, he’s probably being digested!”
“He looks fine, actually,” Sweetaloo pointed out. Link currently had his arms folded and a scowl plastered on his face.
“It could be a slow digestion!”
Sweetaloo shivered. “Y-yeah…”
Twilight tried shooting some more lasers at it, but nothing happened.
“Okay, uh…” Sweetaloo bit her lip. “First of all, teleport out of the slime.”
Twilight flushed red. “Oh…” She flashed into the air, using her wings to fly.
“Now, bosses usually have some kind of weak point somewhere… should be kind of obvious.”
“The eyes!” Twilight flew higher and shot magic at the eyes. This annoyed the chu-chu, but, otherwise did nothing. “Oh no, uh…”
“The base! It’s weak at the base!” Sweetaloo shouted. “Most of its mass is held up higher, just… remove its slime foot thing!”
Twilight did. She cast an explosion spell. Magic resistant or not, the creature was not immune to a shockwave kicking its slimy base out from under it. It fell to the ground, hard, splattering itself onto the ground like a flat pancake.
Link stood up from the slime, picking up his sword and stabbing the loose eyes. “Genius! You do this often, Sweetaloo?”
“I’ve just seen a lot of boss creatures,” Sweetaloo said, sheepishly. “All I’m working off is patterns.”
“Nice!”
“We won!” Twilight shouted.
The slime coalesced back into the full chu-chu once more.
“Oh…” Twilight sighed.
A magical portal appeared inside the chu-chu, vaporizing most of its body. Blink poked her head out of the portal. “World saved, everything under control! Talked him down with a banana, believe it or not. I see you made some new friends, Sweetaloo!”
Sweetaloo glared at her. “Don’t you ever throw me into a treasure chest again!”
“...What?”
“You look exactly like Sweetie Belle,” Twilight pointed out.
“I’m getting the heart piece,” Link grumbled. “You all can sort this out while I deal with important stuff.”
“Hey, you’re a Link, right?" Blink smirked. "Need me to save your world too?”
Link ignored her.
Sweetaloo chuckled.