//------------------------------// // Enter // Story: Dimension G4.5 // by _Undefined_ //------------------------------// As Princess Twilight Sparkle’s chariot landed, she contemplated – not for the first time – what kind of effort it would take to move the royal castle from Canterlot to Ponyville. But she quickly reached the same conclusion that she always came to: She loved Ponyville too much to subject it to the likes of Canterlot. She loved Ponyville for numerous reasons. The first and foremost, of course, was that it was where all of her best friends lived. The second was that even though she had spent a considerably greater quantity of her life living in Canterlot, Ponyville always felt more like home whenever she returned to it. She had to be careful never to voice that sentiment out loud, lest the press make the claim that Equestria’s sole ruler was bad-mouthing Canterlot, which would give the city’s residents reason to feign offense. The first time it had happened was enough. Another thing she loved about visiting Ponyville was the lack of pomp. She was seated in the Royal Guard’s least ornate chariot, being pulled by only two lightly armored pegasi. No other members of the guard accompanied her and there was no trumpet fanfare to indicate her arrival. The chariot had landed in the open area next to the Castle of Friendship. Because her visit hadn’t been publicly announced, there were no ponies eagerly waiting to cheer her mere presence or prostrate themselves in front of her. And because the castle was on the edge of town, there weren’t that many ponies around in general. Shoeshine happened to be nearby when the chariot landed, so she gave Twilight a friendly wave hello as the princess disembarked. Twilight waved back, and Shoeshine continued on her way. Twilight Sparkle took a moment to stop ranking in her head the many reasons she loved Ponyville and vowed that from that point forward, she would never again treat Celestia with subservient reverence. Unless she wanted to get under the former leader’s skin. She addressed the pegasi attached to her chariot who were now standing at attention. “Thank you. I won’t be needing your assistance for this visit – you’re free to explore the rest of the town and enjoy yourselves. Please return by one o’clock. Dismissed.” She still had to consciously refrain from helping them get unharnessed from the chariot – she hated the conflicted emotions that inevitably appeared on her guards’ faces as they internally battled between telling their princess that she shouldn’t concern herself with aiding them and the realization that by saying so, they would be directly contradicting their princess’s wishes. She did, however, insist that they leave their armor behind and visit the town as ordinary ponies. They voiced their objections in a militarily acceptable way by asking what would happen if someone came along and stole their unattended armor. She assured them that she would place a spell on it to prevent it from happening. In reality, she simply set the armor in the chariot with no additional precautions. This was Ponyville. Either nothing would happen to it or, at worst, a foal or two would get into it, find themselves in a series of wacky misunderstandings in which they were expected to perform the Royal Guard’s duties, and ultimately learn a valuable lesson about goofing around with things that didn’t belong to them. Twilight approached the front door of the castle. She never knew whether she should knock. After all, she had moved out nearly a year ago. As she stood in one place at the top of the stairs, weighing the pros and cons of knocking versus not knocking, the door opened to reveal Starlight Glimmer. “Twilight!” she warmly greeted her former teacher and current sovereign. They exchanged a hug. “You’ve grown a couple inches, right?” “It hasn’t been that long since we last saw each other,” Twilight said as she stepped inside. She paused to do the calculations in her head. “Okay, maybe it has been. How’d you know I was here? My response said I wouldn’t arrive for another hour.” Starlight closed the door. “I told you I made an interdimensional breakthrough,” she said. “Which meant you wouldn’t be able to sleep and then you’d race through your morning duties. All while claiming that it was because you wanted to be sure you weren’t late. By the way, Sunburst says that’s the most rapidly he’s ever seen the sun rise.” “It’s a very sensitive mechanism!” Twilight protested. “And that doesn’t explain why you didn’t open the door until this very moment.” “I saw your chariot through the study’s window.” “But the study isn’t on that side of the castle.” “It is now. I’ve been moving rooms around to justify the presence of a huge incongruous castle next to Ponyville now that a princess doesn’t live here. Welcome to the Castle of Friendship slash School of Friendship teachers’ quarters.” “You know, I’m pretty sure this is technically still my castle.” “And we have a royal suite sealed off and ready for you anytime you want to stop by. I’ll give you the full tour later, but I’m guessing that right now, you want to see my interdimensional breakthrough.” She gave her a sly grin. With a smile on her face, Twilight rolled her eyes. “You’re right, naturally,” she said. “Lead the way.” “Great! It’s just down this hall, past the Friendship Cells.” “The what?” “I already told you, the full tour will be later. Come on!” “I’ve been studying the addirectional planar properties of the mirror that leads to the human world,” Starlight said as the two entered a small, nearly empty room. “And it turns out those properties can be duplicated in a spell that can be cast on any mirror.” “Ooh,” said Twilight in an unprincesslike manner, her curiosity clearly piqued. “Does that mean that no matter where I go in Equestria, I could create a portal that would give me convenient access to my human friends?” “You can,” Starlight said, “although I haven’t figured out yet how to determine where the portal will come out. The first time I tried it, I found myself tumbling through a whiteboard into a meeting about ‘keeping the media from finding out.’ One of the humans chased me back through and turned into an out-of-control pegasus. I had to cast a memory-wiping spell on him and apologize to Rarity for the damage to her ponyquins.” “You used one of the mirrors at Carousel Boutique?” “It was convenient! Anyway, after that, I moved my experiments into here. And this is the part I wanted to show you: By making slight modifications to the exotic matter concordance matrix, I can create portals…” She paused for dramatic effect. Twilight could tell it was for dramatic effect by the spells Starlight was casting to darken the rest of the room, leaving her in a spotlight. “…to new, unexplored universes!” “Impressive,” Twilight said as the lighting returned to normal. “And it explains why you have that mirror.” She pointed to the tall object positioned against the wall. “It was the only one I could easily get.” “You couldn’t get a hoofheld mirror from somewhere?” “I wouldn’t be able to walk through that.” “There’s a mirror over the sink in any of the bathrooms. Or over your dresser in your bedroom.” “Sure, but who wants to climb over a dresser or a sink all the time?” “But you had easy access to a fun house mirror.” Starlight nodded. “How?” “So,” Starlight continued, “I applied the spell to this mirror and created a portal to yet another dimension that has alternate versions of all of our friends.” “Another dimension?” Twilight said. She stepped over to the mirror and placed one of her front hooves against it – the magical energy felt similar to that of the portal to the human world. It was also a testament to how much Twilight trusted her former student that she hadn’t hesitated to touch an experimental surface. She put her hoof back on the ground and turned to Starlight. “Have you been through?” “I have,” Starlight said, more tentatively than Twilight expected. “So? What’s it like?” “It was… weird. The human world is easy to understand – it’s like Equestria, but everybody’s a tailless monkey. But this world… it was Equestria, and it had you and all our friends, and they were all ponies, but it was… different. Kind of. It’s hard to explain. You should see for yourself.” “That doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement.” “Maybe you’ll understand it better than I did. Don’t worry – it’s safe. I wouldn’t have told you about it if I didn’t think it was safe for you to go through.” “You would have kept a revolutionary new spell secret from me?” “Because we both know you wouldn’t be able to resist trying it yourself. And you’re kind of irreplaceable, you know.” “Irreplaceable? You said there’s another pony me on the other side of this portal.” “I do not want that Twilight running Equestria.” “Again, not a ringing endorsement.” “Just go see it already.” Twilight turned toward the mirror. Her curiosity won out over any other emotions her body was trying to experience and she stepped through. It was different. When she would step through the portal to the human world, her body felt like it was being stretched, but not painfully… which was disconcerting in its own way. In contrast, the journey through this portal felt more like she was being compressed. As she emerged, she quickly realized that her hooves were no longer touching the ground. She plunged forward onto her face with an undignified “Aagh!” Twilight Sparkle got back up on her hooves and steadied herself so she could take in her surroundings. The first thing she saw was a blue pegasus flying directly at her with a baseball bat. “An evil clone!”