Source
The Past
There was a weasel in the Hooves Household.
Not a weasel in the sense of the slang (‘a sneaky, untrustworthy, or insincere creature’), but an actual, literal weasel, family Mustelidae. Specifically a least weasel—American English often lumps any members of the genus (including polecats, stoats, ferrets, and minks) into that one word. Some people also call ferrets ‘stretch rats,’ but that’s neither here nor there.
Also since the weasel was sneaking around in the Hooves household, I suppose I can rescind that first statement, too.
Anyway, he was sneaking around not looking for food but instead looking for something to steal. Since he was very smol, he could fit into a foal-proofed room in the Hooves Household, where he found a thing that smelled like marzipan and also vaguely like potato for reasons which will become apparent but did not smell like a chocolate cake for reasons which will also become apparent.
Just as Americans and also ponies aren’t very specific when it comes to identifying weasels, so too are weasels not very specific at identifying guns. A gun was a gun, they smelled like gun oil and gun powder and while he did have cute little paws (they’re related to otters, yo) the recoil from any firearm larger than a derringer would send him flying backwards if he tried to use it.
However, tucked in a corner of the room was a genuine imitation portal gun—crafted by Pinkie Pie from the finest of marzipan and imbued with Pinkie’s chaos-adjacent deus et machina earth pony magic.
That was something a weasel could use. It only had two buttons, blue and orange, and while it wouldn’t fit through the mouse-hole where he’d entered, it could make a portal. Obviously.
He pushed the button, a portal opened, and the weasel escaped with his ill-gotten goods.
O
There was more to using portal guns than just pushing buttons. Especially this portal gun. He’d expected it to be a convenient way to portal himself into mouse nests or rabbit dens or chicken coops—he’d seen it used in the past—but in fact it portaled him straight to the Enrichment Center, where he was promptly accosted by a tall biped who some[who?] might consider a Lara Croft ripoff, at least in terms of design.
That wasn’t what he was interested in at all, so he portaled right back out of there, reappearing outside Ponyville in what was prime gem-hunting territory.
Unbeknownst to him, Chell grabbed up a companion cube and portaled herself right behind him—she recognized that Equestrian-made portal gun, and if it was back in play again, the ponies must be in trouble!
O
Torch Song is a single mare living in Ponyville. She has a red and purple mane, a beige-ish coat, and a hat for a cutie mark. If cutie marks run in the family (they might, who knows?), she could be related to Coco Pommel.
She’s an earth pony, and besides singing, her hobbies include long walks on the lakeshore, drinking Piña Coladas and getting caught in the rain and finding beautiful fragrant flowers and pressing them flat.
She’s an earth pony but she hates flowers and her walls are covered with the pressed, framed flowers, gruesome mementos of the flowers she’s killed and a warning to those she’s going to kill in the future—
—is what Lily would say if you asked her about Torch Song’s pressed flower collection. If you reminded Lily that she put a flower behind her ear every single day and then at the end of the day tossed it onto to compost heap she’d narrow her eyes and tell you that’s not the same and then she wouldn’t talk to you again which is for the best because that pony has I S S U E S.
So while it wasn’t that aforementioned beautiful sunny spring day, it was a pretty enough day, and feral flowers don’t follow pony schedules.
(Lily also took issue with feral flowers*)
She didn’t find a feral flower that was to her liking, but her nose sniffed marzipan which she also loved, and so she tiptoed through the tulips—currently unbloomed—when she came upon a hastily-abandoned portal gun, with least weasel pawprints leading off in one direction and Chell-sized bootprints leading off in another. Not that she recognized either of those; she wasn’t a tracker.
She didn’t recognize the portal gun, either, but she picked it up anyway because it was clearly a well-crafted object that likely belonged to somepony.
A smart pony wouldn’t have pushed any buttons on it.
She did.
At least she was smart enough to have pointed it away from herself when she did the button-pushing.
💥
You’d’ve expected that in a town like Ponyville, an unknown bipedal creature coming out of the Everfree with a portal gun on one hand and a Companion CubeTM under her other arm would cause a panic, especially since at time of posting, it’s Tuesday. However, while the Companion Cube$58.12 on esty was a new thing, Chell wasn’t; most of the ponies had seen her before, and nothing bad had happened then.
Even Torch Song had seen her before. Briefly, off in the distance, leaving town, being carried by Derpy, but the point stands.
In fact, it was a reunion of sorts, even though in fact only Derpy, Dinky, and Amethyst Star had actually ever talked to her. Well, a number of other people had, too, but they’d all been unalived some time in the past, and we’ve moved beyond that now.
[We haven’t, because here we are again.]
Point is, while Humans were banned from Equestria, Chell was cool and not considered a human. An honorary horse, perhaps.
So the quartet made their way to Sugarcube Corner because it was either that or the bar, and Amethyst—A.K.A. Amey the Hoof—was banned from the bar after The Incident. The barkeep wasn’t a monster, so she was allowed to stand outside, maybe lean her hooves up on the windowsill and converse with her party inside, but she couldn’t order drinks.
Before anybody says that’s unfair, all the members of the Moofa were banned, even the ones who hadn’t been there when The Incident happened, and the ban would last until the scorch marks were finally scrubbed off the ceiling.
And the wall.
Sugarcube Corner had more Pinkie Pie related incidents, anyway; so incidents caused by other ponies really didn’t show up on the radar, if you know what I mean. It was the perfect place for a quick reunion, prior to her necessary return to the Enrichment Center.
🎂
Somewhere outside Ponyville is a place where the feral flowers grow, where the gems can be found, and where there was a portal gun.
Where there was a Companion Cube.
He didn’t know what it was, he’d never seen one before. He only caught a glimpse of it as Chell popped through the portal, closed it behind her, and set it down.
She retied her orange jumpsuit around her waist, and then picked it up again and headed off to Ponyville.
He wanted it. He needed it. And he would do whatever it took to get it.