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// 　　　　　　　　　　 
// Story: 　　　　　　　　　　 
// by PseudoBob Delightus 
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Darkness.

That's all she could see - at first. But then, suddenly, her muzzle! Oh, what a beautiful thing! She never knew she'd miss seeing her own muzzle between her eyes until it up and disappeared on her. And then a shock of curly hair appeared, and some furry appendages, and then wouldn't you know it, she was all there again!

Twilight's spell had worked - sort of. Pinkie Pie was visible again, and she could hear herself as she giggled at the sound of her own giggling. But nothing else was visible.

Where was she? Well, there was a floor. And as she walked around, she found that her hoofsteps - which made noise again! Clippity-clop! - appeared beneath her, in the colour and pattern of... floor. That was odd. Even odder than the invisibility, really, but maybe she had just gotten used to it.

More and more of the floor became visible, and then eventually the whole room, and Pinkie realized she was still in Twilight's library. Twilight was at first nowhere to be seen, but she faded into view a few minutes later, tucked into a corner upstairs, holding a book to her face, and-

Crying?

"Twilight," Pinkie asked, "what's wrong?"

"It failed," she said, muffled behind the book. "I failed."

Pinkie Pie looked around them. "Um, no it didnt?"

Twilight dropped the book from her face and looked - or tried to look. Her eyes had this faded quality to them that made her look blind, but slowly they gained their colour back, and she met Pinkie's gaze.

All she could say was, "huh?"

Pinkie Pie jumped for joy, and yanked her into a hug. "You fixed it, you smarty-pants! I knew you could do it!"

Twilight squirmed in her grasp. "But why is everything so dark, and... strange?"

The library was indeed dark... Darker than usual, at least. And it did also have this strange quality to it. Like when the Moon was behind clouds. 

But she could see! And that meant she could see the bright side, of course. "It's not dark and strange, Twilight, it's atmospheric!"

That made Twilight groan - which was almost as good as a laugh, in Pinkie's book. Then she seemed to have an idea, and finally wrenched herself out of the hug, before running to the door and peering out.

"This is bad," she whispered.

Pinkie hopped up next to her to see what she was looking at, only to find that she couldn't. There was nothing to look at! Just them and the library, floating in a great sea of dark, strange... atmosphere. Only the dirt at the threshold was visible beyond them, and then only just - and creeping outwards a little, slow and steady.

Before she even knew it, Twilight was poring into that book again, flipping through pages, muttering to herself, until finally she stopped and looked as if she'd seen a ghost. Hah!

"We're-" she started, but couldn't get through it for the trembling. "I think we're still invisible."

That didn't make any sense to Pinkie. So she said, "That didn't make any sense to Pinkie."

"I'm serious."

"So is-"

"I'm serious, Pinkie!" Twilight screamed, sounding as if she was about to cry. Pinkie Pie decided it was best not to interrupt this time. "I think we - I screwed up, with that spell. Both of those spells. The first one was just a misapplication, taking it to be formulaic magic rather than something more primal, which is what this has to be. So now it's spreading. That's - that's awful, of course. The second - well, I think it really did have an anti-invisibility effect in the worst way - it made it so we can't see anything that's not invisible. Not the rest of Ponyville, not the sky, not even the Sun!

"Now this is just going to spread, and cover everything, and - and I really screwed up this time, Pinkie!"

Pinkie Pie tried her best to pay attention to what Twilight was saying, and understand what she meant, and it was mostly a success. She got the beginning part, and the middle part. And most of the ending part. But the very end, she didn't quite get. "How is this a screw-up, Twilight?"

Twilight laughed, almost, but it wasn't a pleasant kind of sound. "How? Didn't I just say how? This is going to spread everywhere! All over Equestria, even! But I guess-" She managed to calm down a little. "I guess I have time to think of a fix. It wasn't spreading that fast. And I can see my books again. Just. This sucks."

"I still don't get it, Twilight. Once it spreads everywhere, won't everypony still be able to see each other, since they'll all be invisible, like us?"

"That's not-"

Twilight paused.

"But-"

She paused again. 

"Well, you should-"

"Just-"

"What about-"

After a few more stops-and-starts, Pinkie imagined smoke pouring out of the unicorn's ears, and giggled. That seemed to knock Twilight out of her loop.

"I guess you're not wrong, Pinkie."

The compliment, as much as it was one, gave her a big smile. But she wanted to impress Twilight some more, so she did some more thinking on the subject. "Although... now that I'm prognosticating on it, and such and so forth..."

"...What?"

"The sky is kinda far away, isn't it?"

Twilight had to think about that for a bit before answering. "I suppose it is."

Pinkie rubbed her forehead as she called upon more smart-pony speak. "Thus... and therefore... it would probably take a really, re-e-eally long time for the anti-invisibility-stuff to reach all that... stuff... up there."

"You mean like the Sun and Moon?"

"Yeah, those things!"

Twilight sighed, and grimaced. "If we really do go with this solution of letting it sort itself out, I guess we could get help from the Princesses."

"Woo!"

"But", Twilight warned, "first, we'd have to admit what we did, that led to this whole mess...

"And then we'd have to convince them not to banish us."