Chapter 1
Well, that would be another of Twi's fancy contraptions, Applejack thought as smoke rose from the basement windows of the treehouse library that was her friend's home. Ah guess ah'd better go help 'er out. She began to walk towards the house when Spike burst out. "Help! Help! Someone heeelp! One of Twilight's inventions blew up...again!"
"Now calm down, I'm sure she's fine," said Applejack. "Somethin' like this happens, what, once a week? Has it ever ended with anypony gettin' hurt?"
"Well, there was that one--"
"Of course not. Now, let's go help Twi out of the rubble. Again."
Applejack and Spike made their way downstairs, coughing as the noxious fumes invaded their lungs and throats and made them burn. "Dang," coughed Applejack, "That explosion musta been something real fierce!"
"Yeah, -cough cough- it's even -cough- making it hard for me to breath!" said Spike with difficulty.
The door to the basement was either blown off it's hinges or totally incinerated, it was impossible to tell with visibility so low. In either case, they walked through the doorway and entered into an enormous pool of silky gray smoke. It was like fog, the kind of fog so thick that even grown ponies are afraid to go out, for fear of getting lost. You couldn't see a hoof in front of your face if you put it there.
Applejack cautiously entered the room, thinking that she wished there was some way to clear out the smoke. "Ah wish there was some way to clear out all this smoke..." she said aloud.
"Hello," said a voice from behind them in the murky smoke. "Looking for me?" Applejack and Spike yelped and ran right into each other. "Relax, guys," said Rainbow Dash. "It's just me, here to save your flanks...again." She flew into the room and created a tornado of rainbow that sucked all the smoke in the room toward it. The tornado funneled the smoke toward the lone open window, and it all exited the room.
"Thanks, Rainbow Dash!" said Spike.
"You're welcome," she said, clearly proud of herself. "I'd like to thank all the little pon--"
"No time fer heroic speeches, Rainbow," said Applejack. "We gotta find Twilight!"
"Oh...yeah. Right!" she said, and began to zip around the room in search of the purple-maned pony.
After searching for awhile, Spike shouted, "I found her, I found her!". Rainbow and Applejack quickly came to his side. Sure enough, a purple hoof was sticking out of the rubble that covered the floor, mostly composed of ruined books and machine parts. Applejack and Rainbow pulled her out and brought her upstairs, laying her on her bed.
"Whadda we do now?" asked Applejack. "I bet 'er lungs are full of that smoke that was down there."
"Maybe you have to give her mouth-to-mouth resusc...rescust...oh, whatever it's called."
Rainbow Dash leaned away from him. "No way! That's gross! She probably has all kinds of dust and..." Rainbow watched as Applejack blew air into Twilight's lungs, then pressed down on her stomach. Sure enough, the air that came out was filled with grey smoke of exactly the same kind that was downstairs. Applejack repeated this several times.
Twilight began to cough, and Applejack pulled away as more smoke came from her mouth. "Twilight! You're okay!" shouted Spike as he hugged her, getting a bunch of smoke to the face. "Eww, your breath smells terrible!"
"Ah can't imagine why that would be," said the orchard pony, rolling her eyes.
Twilight coughed and hacked some more until it seemed that most of the smoke was out of her lungs. "What...what happened? Did my machine work?"
Applejack looked at her with sympathy. "Eh, no, not exactly. It kinda blew up."
"And then we saved you!" Rainbow Dash interjected. "Well, it was mostly me. Applejack and Spike, they were all like, 'What will we do, we can't get anything done in all this smoke', and then I was like, 'Have no fear, Rainbow Dash is--'"
"But I know I saw something else down there! There was something in that room after the explosion!" blurted Twilight.
"Well, yeah, there were a heckuva a lot of books and fancy mechanical doohickeys, if that's what you mean." said Applejack helpfully.
"No, I mean...well, let's go down there and look."
"Whatever you say, Twi." said the orange-coated mare.
"Well, I'm done here. I'm not gonna waste time looking through some boring, book-filled basement! See ya!" A rainbow blur exited the room.
"Well, that's Dash for ya. One minute she's bein' helpful, next minute she's bailin' out on the job!" muttered Applejack.
"Come on guys, hurry up!" shouted Twilight from the main floor.
"Coming, Twilight!" responded Spike.
Pony and dragon raced down the stairs to catch up with the impatient unicorn. When they got to the basement, Twilight was already limping through the wreckage, books and parts flying all over the place, propelled by her powerful magic. "It was right over here! It might be some sort of proof that my invention worked!" she tossed aside a large switchboard and a dictionary. "It's got to be here some--" Twilight ceased moving abruptly. "What in the name of Celestia...?" she murmured.
For there, even though she didn't know it, lay a creature that had just been teleported over a formerly insurmountable distance by her machine. There lay a creature from another world, another universe, even. There lay a creature that was part of a species that had not known any other form of reasoning, intelligent life besides itself for eons.
There lay Brandon.