The Adventures of Dewey Decimal and Steven
By The Pirate Prince
It was nearing two o'clock in the morning and the head librarian of the Canterlot library was sitting at his desk. He was partaking in time consuming and extensive research into the properties of an ancient tome. Mainly he was seeing how comfortable it was when being used as a pillow. Snoring quietly, Dewey Decimal sat in his dimly lit office, the embers in the fireplace casting an orange glow into the room. Outside, the assistant librarian was whistling a Hearth's Warming Eve carol out of season while returning books to their shelves.
A green light filled the office and a rolled up scroll appeared above the desk. It fell, collided with the librarian's head and rolled into the middle of the room. Dewy Decimal's head jerked up, a small line of drool connecting his mouth to the priceless antique. Wiping the cover, he looked around his office for the cause of his awakening. He heard the whistling and eyed the door before noticing the true cause of his unwelcome return to consciousness. He levitated the scroll towards him, unfurled and read it.
He then re-read it because the light was rather poor.
He then re-re-read it because the light was rather poor and he had just woken up.
"STEVEN!" Dewey yelled. He heard the sound of books falling to the ground and it reassured him that Steven had indeed heard him. A moment later and the spiky maned pegasus stood in the open doorway.
"What's your problem? You scared me half to death! I'm the one who'll have to pick them all up again!"
"It's your own fault. You know you shouldn't carry so many books at once." Dewey motioned with his eyes at the painting of a grumpy looking pony on the wall. Long ago some stuffy head librarian decided that it was unsafe for ponies to carry a stack of more than five books at a time and so had made it the number one rule of the library. This rule had proudly been ignored by everypony who had ever worked there since but nopony had ever bothered to change it. It was satisfying calling ponies out when they dropped a big pile of books.
"Have a look at this." Dewey gave him the letter and began putting logs onto the dying fire. He stopped mid levitation “Wait a minute, isn't tonight your evening off?”
“Well, I didn't really have anything better to do," he answered without looking up. Dewey decided not press any further.
To the Head Librarian of the Canterlot Library
I am currently interested in ancient theories into the application of permanent teleportaion spells and request your assistance. I believe I have discovered a way to correct the problems that occurred when attempting the spell in the past and require access to your books for further research. Please find attached the list of books I wish to study. I am arriving at Canterlot tomorrow morning, please have them ready for me.
Yours faithfully,
Twilight Sparkle
P.S.
Really sorry. Twilight told me to send it this afternoon but I forgot. Was at a "going away for a little while party." Sorry.
Spike
Steven turned the letter over.
"It'll take us hours to get all these together," Steven complained. "I was just about ready to go home." While he had been reading Dewey had left the office and had started picking up the books off the floor.
"Don't you know who Twilight Sparkle is? She's Princess Celestia's personal protégé. If she wants something, she gets it." As far as he was concerned, she was someone with power, and that was trouble. The previous head librarian had often talked about Twilight Sparkle's study sessions.
'That Miss Sparkle, she'd read books faster than you can put them of the shelves. Before she moved to the country, she practically lived here.'
He placed the stack of books on a nearby desk and looked around the library. Similar piles of books littered the room rather than being placed neatly on shelves and the pair's impressive collection of board games was spread out over the central table. He wiped the table with his hoof; dust clung to every surface in the room. Since becoming head librarian 8 months ago, the main library rarely had any visitors; if anyone wanted a book, they'd just ask one of them to find it. "You get the books together, I'll tidy up. If she isn't happy, we could be out of a job."
"You don't really think that, do you?"
"Please, this was pretty much her home. If she thinks we're not good enough, the princess thinks we're not good enough.” He started sorting the nearby piles by subject. “You said it yourself, it's not like you've got anything better to do."
It took nearly four hours before Dewey was satisfied with the library; exhausted, they returned to the office. Dewey sat at his desk, his head on his hooves; Steven slept on his back, laying on the carpet by the fireplace. The letter was in the corner of the office, screwed up in to a ball. Dewey had thrown it at Steve when he tried checking the list for the third time.
"Hello? Anypony home?" The prodigy's call echoed from through the open door of the office. Dewey shook himself awake and checked the clock on the wall, 9:20. He woke Steven with a light kick before rushing to greet the unwanted visitor on the lower floor.
"Yes, hello ma'am. I'm Dewey Decimal, head librarian. The books you requested are upstairs," Dewey recited with forced enthusiasm.
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Twilight Sparkle and this is Spike." She motioned her head to the baby dragon on her back. "It's been a long time since we've been here. Back before Mister Hardback retired."
"Yes, father was very proud when I was chosen to replace him." Dewey could still remember the look on his father's face when he learned he'd inherited the family librarian cutie mark. He'd been so proud, so happy his son was destined to follow in his hoofsteps.
As they made their way up the stairs to the second floor, Steven walked to the center of the room "This is Steven, my assistant. Steve, this is Twilight Sparkle." The pony stifled a yawn and bowed.
"What an.. unusual name." Twilght commented.
"My parents were ambassadors to the Griffons. They named me after one of their friends," Steven explained without really thinking, ponies always commented on his name when they first met him. Dewey noticed Twilight glance at Steven's cutie mark, or rather, his lack of cutie mark.
"Steven's been my best friend since school," he blurted out, trying to keep focus away from his friends flank. "Anyway, the books you wanted are here on the desk." Spike was savvy enough to leap from Twilight's back before she galloped to the desk. "You can go bed now if you want, Steve. I think can deal with this for now." He sidled up to the academic pony, "Do you need anything else?"
"No, I'm fine, thanks." She replied, her eyes not leaving the pages of the first book. She grabbed some of her notes and began comparing them to the books. Spike moved forward and relived Twilight of her saddlebag. He had already moved it to the side of the room and was busy unpacking when the head librarian stealthily walked up behind him.
"So you're the one that caused me and Steve to stay up half the night, huh?" Spike dropped a couple rolls of parchment and tried stammering out an apology. Dewey watched him stone faced for a few moments before breaking into a smile. "Relax, it's fine, I'm over it.” He bent down and lowered his voice “So, what's your job while she's busy with her muzzle in a book?" nodding to Twilight. Spike chuckled nervously.
"Not much, really. Not until we're ready to start experimenting, then I'll be there to write it all down." He showed him the notebook that he'd be writing in. It was covered in tables and figures with a little doodle of a pony with a curly mane in the margin.
"Huh." Dewey looked up at the stack of books. "That might take a while.” The two of them watched the unicorn reading for a few seconds. “You like board games?"
Dewey and Spike stayed in the office playing board games for a few hours while Twilight sat and studied. Eventually Dewey got tired of losing to an amateur and started making conversation. "So what's this all about then?" Dewey asked while moving his black checkers piece.
"Twilight thinks she can make some ancient, long distance teleport spell. It's gonna be like, a big ball that when you touch it, it teleports you really far.” Spike moved his white piece to take two of Dewey's and reached the other end of the board. “You'll be able to get from Canterlot all the way to Manehatten instantly. Only, every time anypony tried to do it, the other end would never end up right." Spike shuddered at the thought of ponies teleporting into the floor. "Twilight thinks she'd figured out a way to do it properly, she's checking to see anypony tried it before."
Dewey Decimal had stopped listening to the baby dragon. After all, in the next room, history was being made. How often did librarians take part in history? Librarians weren't the kind of ponies that made history. They weren't even the ponies who recorded history. They maintained it so other ponies could read it and make more history. Dewey was so distracted by his thoughts he hardly noticed that he won the next three games.
By the time Dewey had left and returned from getting lunch, Steven was back and was listening to Twilight's explanation on the modified spell.
"-guaranteed to be a safe exit. Unfortunately, the concentration needed to do that will cause the accuracy of the spell to be reduced. Once a safe, permanent link is established, I try to modify the position of the exit portal from the other side. Now I just have to find the information I need.." Steven nodded in less the complete comprehension and backed away to his friend.
"You were wrong, she doesn't think we're doing a bad job at all, she's actually really nice."
"Yeah, well why don't just go ask her out already?" Dewey enjoyed his expected flustered reaction, Steven was easy to mess with when it came to mares. Unexpectedly, Steven stole the bag of sandwiches in retaliation. Their short scuffle was ended prematurely when Twilight shushed them without looking up from her research. They returned to the office; Steven was blushing and Dewey was failing to suppress his giggles at them being told off. There they found Spike lying on the floor playing with the chess set.
"Your majesty, the knights are dead and the castles are overrun! What will we do? Get the footmen and tell them to protect the two pointy ones."
Another couple more hours of boardgames and Twilight had finally found everything she needed to begin her experiments. The four of them gathered around the main room, Dewey was chewing some candy he'd saved from lunch.
"I'm going to go ahead and begin casting the spell. If everything goes right, it should make a gateway to my home in Ponyville." Spike was ready, quill and parchment in hand.
Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated on creating the portal. The first try yielded no observable results except a bead of sweat on Twilight's forehead. On the second attempt, a pinprick of light appeared in the air for a few seconds before the planes of the universe sprang back into their natural shape.
Finally on the third time, the pinprick expanded into a meter wide sphere. While the edge was an obvious orange, as Steven looked deeper into the center, the colors was harder to identify, blueish, yellowy red and greenish purple. While Dewey was fighting the urge to throw something through it, Steven crept a little closer to portal.
"Stop!" Twilight's voice froze him in his place. "Don't touch it! Even if we were sure we knew where it went, which we don't, that portal would collapses transporting that much mass." Steven eyes widened and he backed away.
"Would it collapse with me inside?" he asked, cutting off Dewey's fat joke before he began. The two of them started thinking of what it would be like trapped in the space between portals; whatever that meant. They decided with certainty that was something that they didn't want to experience.
"No, the safety rules I concentrated on when I made it should hold until you made it all the way through, but it'll cause the portal to close and it'll be long walk back," Twilight explained while searching through her saddlebag. Dewey swallowed his mouthful of sugar coated sugar.
"So how are you supposed to know it went to the right place?" the head librarian asked. "You gonna go catch a train home?" He had stopped looking for something to throw and was staring into the depths of the multicolored orb.
"No, I'll use this." She levitated a small cube of stone from her saddlebag. "Unfortunately, the safety rules I had to concentrate on meant I couldn't think too hard about the teleport's exit. It might not even be in Ponyville at all." She took a deep breath and began casting another spell, this time on the rock. When she'd finished, it floated in front of her without her horn keeping it up; she bashed it away with her hoof. Keeping at eye level, it flew across the room, then stopped in mid air and sped back the way it came, stopping in front its enchantress.
"Unfortunately, I can't send anything with a very complicated spell on it without the portal collapsing. Since I know this thing's top speed, it'll be able to tell me how far away and in what direction the exit portal is." She batted the cube about a couple more times before marching to the portal. "If it's close enough to ponyville, I'll go home and use a different spell to find it. Then I'll move the exit to where it should be manually. Ready Spike?" Spike saluted and pulled an 15 minute hourglass out of the saddle bag. She threw the rock into the glowing sphere, there was a flash of green light, and the rock was gone.
In the beginning it was fun, they chatted and played board games by portal light. Twilight explained to Dewey some of the more complicated details of the spell and he understood the theories much better than either Steven or Spike had. But eventually Twilight was far too concerned to take part in any amusing distraction. She was continually looking around, as if she could spot the tiny object on the night-time horizon. "It should have been back by now, whatever direction it's in." Eventually Dewey convinced her to go to sleep, that he, Steven and Spike would watch for the stone and keep record of hourglass' turns.
"Miss Twilight?" Steven lightly shook the pony that was sleeping in front of the unlit office fireplace. "Miss Twilight, please wake up. The cube's arrived." Her eyes sprung open.
"Thank Celestia. I was scared the spell had been stripped by the teleport." She grabbed the cube from the air and cuddled it.
"Um, there's something else." Twilight looked at the scroll he'd placed in front of her. Not only were there the expected tally marks, but somepony had made some calculations. "Dewey thought he'd try saving you the trouble. Only.." Half asleep, Twilight took a few seconds longer than she would usually have done to figure out what was wrong.
"There must be a mistake." She whispered to herself. She checked and double checked the calculations, but they were correct. The distance calculated was more that the distance from Ponyville to Canterlot. It was more than the width of Equestria. It was even further than the distance between the Griffon Peaks and the Minortaur Caverns. That little cube had travelled further in one night than any pony had ever explored. It was so far off the map it had left the cartography section and was in amongst the cookery books.
"Maybe there was a problem, like it appeared inside a house and had to wait for someone to open the door,” she muttered to herself. “Which way did it come from?" Steven pointed. "At least it came from the right direction." She stood up, the cube happy to orbit its master once again. "Well, I might as well try it again before I try creating a new portal. It's not like I'm on a time limit." She left the office, threw the stone back into the glowing sphere, turned the hourglass over and rushed out of the library.
Spike had woken up from the commotion, so Steven decided to try bringing him up to speed.
"Where's the other guy" the dragon asked after listening to the explanation and glancing round the library.
Steven wasn't sure where Dewey had gone. As soon as he had figured out how far away the portal was, he'd left the library, leaving Steven to figure out what the workings meant by himself. He reappeared several hours later, after Twilight and Spike had finally gotten back to sleep. He had his saddle bag on and he was levitating a number of shopping bags. He tried creeping into one of the storage rooms without being noticed. Steven walked up behind him while he was fiddling with the door.
"Where have you been? What have you got there?" he asked, careful not to wake the ponies asleep in the other room.
"Nothing!" Dewey spun round, levitating the bags into the room and shutting the door.
"Oh really?" Steven feigned for the door then reached into the saddlebag, pulling out an assortment of items. "What's all this?" Binoculars, a compass, a water canteen. It was as if..
"Get in here!" Dewey pulled open the door and pushed Steven inside, nearly making him trip over the bags.
"What are you doing!?" Steven yelled, already having a hunch on what the answer was.
"Ssshh. Not so loud!" Dewey hissed. He face looked extremely nervous and there was an obvious look of guilt in his eyes. "Look I was.. I was going to.."
"You were going to go through the teleport!" Steven grabbed him but Dewey couldn't meet his gaze. "What the hell were you thinking?!"
Steven already knew what he was thinking.
"You already know what I was thinking!" Dewey replied, knocking his friend hooves from his shoulders. They'd been friends nearly all their lives and whenever Dewey had done something "eccentric," Steven knew there was only one cause.
"Seriously?! I thought you'd gotten over this?! You're going to throw your job, your life away, just because you don't want to be a librarian?!" As much as they complimented each other with their personalities, what had originally drawn them together was cutie marks. Dewey had been the first in the class to get his, so Steven had thought of him as some kind of expert. Together, they spent their childhood searching for Steven's special talent.
"Get over it?! How am I supposed to get over it?! This thing is my life, my destiny! I'm one of the smartest ponies of my generation, I could have been a scientist or a magician or an artist, but instead I'm only ever going to librarian, someone who looks after books. Not writing them, not reading them, just looking after them for other ponies to use."
Steven sighed, he'd heard it all before. While the claim about his own intelligence did have some merit, it was hard for Steven to be sympathetic. You could only hear a pony talk about his wasted potential so many times.
Dewey motioned towards the bags on the floor. "I'd thought you'd might come with me. We might be able to-"
"NO!" Steven exclaimed in uncharacteristic anger, "I've come to terms with myself, I'm at peace. Don't think you can manipulate me like when we were kids!" The reason Dewey had kept trying to help Steven all throughout their childhood was because he'd secretly hoped that, maybe, he'd find himself a replacement talent. He'd almost become obsessed, he couldn't stand the idea it was beyond his control, that he would become something he didn't want to be.
"I- I never- Look, you're my best friend, I never.." Steven sighed, his outburst had passed and was already starting to feel guilty.
"And I'm your best friend. That's why I'm not going to let you throw your life away." Steven pushed him aside, picked up the shopping bags with his mouth and exited the closet. Before he could take two steps from the door, Twilight walked through the office door, rubbing her left eye with her hoof.
"What's going on out here? What are you doing in the closet? What's with all the bags?"
'You're so close to freedom! So close to adventure! You can't let them close the portal! You'll be trapped here forever! You'll never escape! You'll never be happy!' Dewey's mind screamed at him.
Steven was about to answer, to try to explain away the bags of survival equipment, when Dewey slammed into him. Through Steven's light pegasus frame, his unicorn levitation and sheer force of will, Dewey pushed the the two of them into the spherical teleport spell. A flash, much brighter than before, flooded the room. A high pitched note echoed through the library, the sphere turned white, and the teleport spell simultaneously exploded and shrank back into a pinprick of light.
Twilight Sparkle stared, open mouthed at the white dot before in winked out of existence. She sat down on her rear, her mind working in overdrive trying accept what her eyes had just seen. Behind her, through the open window, the stone cube flew into the library. It happily floated in front of its mistress, unaware how little she cared about it now.