After what felt like a mushy hour of apologies and roommate banter over their personal nonsense, the clock showed that thirty minutes was left before it was time for them to leave. “You just want to just lock up the shop?” Mark asked.
“I dunno.” Derrick replied, “Given the last time we wanted to try leaving early, Luna showed up. I’d say give it a bit more time.”
As if on cue one of the doors had opened, and it was indeed Luna. However this time she was accompanied by another pony. She had the same hairstyle, but it was colored like the early morning sky and her fur color was a brilliant white. “Mark, Derrick; it is great to see you two again.”
“Well it’s… been one heck of a night on our end.” Mark stated, “Who’s your friend?”
“This is my sister, Celestia.” Luna answered, waving a wing as she introduced the other pony.
“My sister has been telling me a lot about you two.” She said with a warming tone, “However we are here to talk about the… predicament that is going on with this store.”
“Oh!” Derrick exclaimed, “That reminds me.” He reached into his pockets and pulled out a handful of bits, “I think that Twilight girl needs some kind of intervention with coffee.”
Celestia looked at the clerk, “She gets like that whenever a meeting of royals and diplomats is around the corner; I’ll make sure to talk to her about this when I get a chance.”
Luna grabbed the bits and put them in her bags, “Anyways, we might have figured out what might be causing this magic interference.”
The two boys perked up, all interest now on the two royal sisters, “Well don’t keep us in suspense, tell us.”
Luna and Celestia looked at each other and took a step back, giving enough for their magic to form a general map of Equestria and a map of the Stop-n-Snak. “As you can see; this is Equestria, our home.” Luna stated.
“And this little map is our shop right?” Mark asked, pointing at the small projection of the gas station.
“Correct.” Celestia answered, “There is a magical aura that surrounds our world, it’s what gives many creatures in our world their uniqueness. Pegasi controlling the weather, unicorns having an in-depth knowledge of all things magic, and so on.”
Luna pointed towards a small shop outside the outskirts of Canterlot city, “And here is one of the many Stop-n-Snak stores in our world.”
The two clerks were in amazement, “It is freaky how that place looks exactly like our store.” Derrick said, the map closing in onto the ponies version of the store. A few key things were different; gas pumps were water troughs, the fluorescent lights were old style lamp posts, and the road was cobblestone instead of asphalt.
“Right, which is why it took me so long to realize there was something wrong.” Luna replied, the maps began to lower as a pinkish aura began to flow over the two maps, “We’ve theorized that our worlds have their own different magical auras, but now somehow they’ve somehow become intertwined with each other. As if the frequencies of the worlds were mixed.”
“I guess if you wanted to understand it a bit more easily, try thinking of a radio station coming in between other stations, or what your world has a ‘cell phone’ losing signal.”
Mark started to grin at the realization of what was going on, he looked at his friend with the smuggest look, “Guess who was right?”
Derrick sighed, “God dammit…”
“You owe me twenty bucks.” Mark said.
“I thought it was Ten?” Derrick asked.
“Think of it as interest for everything else I was right about.” Mark replied.
“Anyways, so you think this is what’s going on?” Derrick asked the two sisters.
“It is possible, but we are still unsure about it.” Luna replied, “At the very best you two just keep doing what you’re doing.”
“This world is far different from ours, I’m surprised no one has actually noticed anything wrong.” Celestia stated. She looked at the various bags of candies and snack foods, the logos and mascots were all alien to her.
“My guess is, because everyone shows up in the middle of the night and just wants to get their stuff and go home.” Mark said, thinking of a possible reason as to why no one really questioned why there wasn’t any real questioning.
“That could be.” Celestia said, “Regardless, we need to fix this as soon as possible. Who knows what could happen if this lingers.”
“I’m surprised no one from our world managed to cross to your place.” Derrick said, “Though now thinking of it… that’d be worse than us dealing with this.”
“Regardless, you two just continue what you two have been for the past few weeks.” Luna sighed, “We might have to ask others for help in this endeavor.”
“Well whatever is going on, we’ll manage.” Derrick said, “I mean, we’ve handled it so far.”
“It’s good to see you’re taking all of this well.” Celestia said.
“In all honesty, it gets boring around here, all this insanity is a good change of pace.” Mark said, “Like some weird movie or something.”
“Good luck you two.” Luna said, Celestia and her walking out of the store.
“Keep strong princesses!” The clerks exclaimed, they knew that they were the ones needing more luck than they did.
After a while the two closed up the store and got into the car. “Didn’t think there would be a store that looks exactly like ours. It’s uncanny right?” Derrick asked.
“Yeah, but at this point anything is possible; heck I didn’t even expect magic to work like how they described it.” Mark said, looking outside of the car window.
“You’re the one that thought of it.” Derrick replied.
“Yeah, but I didn’t expect it to be it.” Mark said, “I thought it was gonna be more complicated or something.” Eventually the two pulled out of the parking lot and drove back home.