The next morning found Kyle and Twilight standing in front of her home in Ponyville. She was wearing full saddlebags, and he had a backpack that one of her friends had expertly assembled for him. A map floated in front of her, held in place by her magic. She was gesturing at the geography with a hoof, but was mostly speaking to herself. “The rift is approximately here. The most direct path would be through Froggy Bottom Bog, but only one of us can fly, and slogging through a swamp sucks rump. The only thing worse than that would be making our way through the Noncanon Desert, so that's not an option. There really isn't a good pass through the Certaindeath Mountains. Nothing for it, then.” She looked up at her human companion and spoke more audibly. “We're going to have to go through the Everfree Forest.”
“Okay.”
“That's bad.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It's dangerous.”
“How so?”
“Monsters live there.”
Kyle grinned like a shark and morphed the OmniBoom into a Drake-Vasquez LV426. The huge firearm was completely duplicated, from the multi-axis gun mount it rode on to the harness that held it by his side. “Bring 'em on!” He had fallen in love with his new toy.
“Are you sure you know how to handle that thing?”
“Of course I'm sure! I don't understand where the ammo comes from, though.” He had fired several test rounds since receiving the weapon, and they showed no sign of running out.
Twilight started lecturing as they began to walk, and Kyle soon learned to tune her out. Several minutes later, she wrapped things up. “...or to put it another way, it's essentially continued generation of semi-stable pseudo-matter.”
“Magic bullets. Got it.”
“Technically, it's --”
“Magic bullets.” Who cared how it worked? It was always loaded, no matter what it was turned into. Best of all, there was no cleaning up to do; the casings disappeared immediately after ejection, and the slugs vanished after impact. It was like being in an action movie.
As they walked to the edge of town, the unicorn alternated between studying her human companion and explaining things about her world to him. She just wasn't sure about this whole bipedal locomotion thing, no matter how well it seemed to work for him. Oh, sure, she had seen Spike walk like that ever since he was hatched, but that was different; he had a lower center of gravity. In contrast, the towering human looked like he should fall over at any moment. As far as she was concerned, four legs good, two legs bad.
Soon they were just outside the forest. “So, what kind of name is 'Everfree' anyway?”
Twilight waved a hoof at what was ahead of them. “It refers to real estate prices in and around the forest.”
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad.”
Hours later, Twilight reflected that while she was no fan of violence, she certainly had never felt safer in the Everfree Forest. Things that hadn't been killed outright were scared off by all the noise from the OmniBoom. At this time, it was in the form of a SplatterTech Compensator 9001, and Kyle was caressing the large barrel tenderly. The corpses left in their wake so far included three manticores, a cockatrice, an immature beholder, two chimerae, six heck-hounds, a goblin, and half a pixie. The experience was unsettling, but it was just as good a teacher as any anatomy text in the library.
They heard a howl at a distance, followed by one that was closer, and another closer still. The timber wolves were on the hunt. Kyle looked far too happy at the prospect of additional killing, and only hesitated a moment after he was told that the creatures in question were magically animated wood. The metaphorical light bulb lit above his head, and his weapon morphed again. Kyle charged between the trees carrying a flamethrower of the Nixon Village-Clearer variety, with Twilight following at what she hoped was a safe distance.
At nightfall, they sat around a campfire made of chunks of former timber wolves. Despite his fondness for mayhem, Twilight found herself growing attached to the otherworldly warrior. In between bouts of havoc, they had been having fascinating conversations about differences and similarities between their worlds. She was certain she would soon count him as one of her many friends.
Kyle evidently felt the same way. He tossed another piece of cellulose paw on the fire and looked over at his unicorn companion. “You know, you remind me of a girl I knew back when I was in high school.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yup. She was like you – smart, helpful, eager to learn, and sometimes wound just a little too tightly. Her name was Twyla Sparger.”
Twilight blinked several times. “What else do you remember about her?”
“She had a group of friends, and the six of them were inseparable. Let's see... there was April Jackson... and the party girl, Penny Pyle. Flora Shea and Rachel Dasch had known each other since childhood. And what was the snooty girl's name? Oh yeah, Raye Ritter.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah. I wonder what it would be like if they were to come here.”
“Really?” Twilight scrunched her face at this obvious sequel-bait. “Wow, subtle.”