My Littlest Pet Shop: Escape from Equestria

by Drizzle Quill

Chapter Twenty-One: Breaking Blythe, Broken Biskits

When Zoe didn’t come home that night, Blythe knew the ponies were hiding secrets from her.

Zoe wasn’t home the night before; Rarity had blamed that on a sleepover in the clouds with Pepper but had refused to elaborate on the subject. Blythe, who had been tired from wandering Ponyville, had accepted that. But she hadn’t seen the spaniel for at least two days, and she knew Zoe would come and tell her about her escapades. Sure, she had been busy. But she needed to confront Rarity now. Zoe was too important.

So when the elegant white unicorn trotted through the door, triggering the bells in the entranceway and yelling, “Bly~ythe! I’m home,” Blythe trotted down the stairs and wrinkled her muzzle.

“Alright, Rarity. I know something is going on, and I want to know what.”

Rarity’s ears flattened against her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, darling. I’m sorry. Now can you please get out of my way?”

“No.” Blythe remained firm, wings flared in what she hoped was an intimating sort of way – she didn’t know if pegasi normally used their wings for intimidation but she would, and that was that. “Where is Zoe? Where are all the pets? I haven’t seen them for a few days at least.”

“Oh. That.” Rarity’s eyes nervously flickered to the floor.

Blythe smirked. Got you.

“They’ve been having…a mass sleepover at Sugarcube Corner each night.”

“Each night? I think I would have heard about that,” Blythe snorted.

Rarity teased at the ground with one hoof, breathing heavily. The human-turned-pegasus could tell that she was lying, but decided to humor her. She wasn’t a mean person – pony – and although she was unhappy Rarity was lying to her, she knew it must be for a good reason. “Please, Rarity. I just want to know what happened to my friends.”

“I know, dearie. But at the same time…” The unicorn winced. “You don’t want to know.”

Now Blythe wasn’t sure whether to be scared or nervous. Maybe a little bit of both? “Yes, I do want to know. We’ve been through thick and thin together…”

Rarity bowed her head, clearly showing she could not fight the urge. “Oh, Twilight and Rainbow are going to kill me for this, but…you do need to know.” When she looked up again, her gaze was solemn.

“We think they’ve been captured by a zebra and a mountain goat.”

Blythe couldn’t quite process this yet. She blinked – once, and then twice – and then just sat there in a dazed stupor, not quite sure whether she should laugh or cry. Rarity visibly winced.

“I told you it was bad,” she whispered hoarsely, before adding hastily, “We’re trying to get them back, though. Don’t worry!”

“I don’t understand.” Blythe muttered, causing the unicorn to look up, shocked. “Captured? What for?”

“We think it’s a circus…but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.”

“A circus?” Red hot panic flashed through the mare, making her spread her wings in alarm. “The pets aren’t meant for a circus! They have owners! They have lives! Is it…is it because they can talk? Oh, who cares?” As fast as lightning she grabbed Rarity’s shoulder’s, muzzles less than an inch apart in pure panic. “We’re going to get them back soon, right?”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to do—”

“We? Who’s we?” Blythe nearly screamed.

Rarity opened her mouth awkwardly before closing it again and staring nonchalantly off to the side. “My friends have been helping out on this. You know, Twilight, Applejack…”

After that, the words didn’t really compute. All Blythe could hear was a soft buzzing, a buzzing of anger, a buzzing of hope and loss, a buzzing like a time bomb ready to explode. Why hadn’t they told her this before? The pets could be hurt. The pets could be in danger. And they had chosen to keep her, the one closest to them, in the dark?

“Yes, I do know your friends.” She cut Rarity off, and then continued while the unicorn sputtered in horror at being interrupted like that. “But you wanna know what I don’t get? Why did I have to be kept alone, in the dark?”

“We didn’t want you to have to face it,” the unicorn whispered.

“I know the pets better than anybody – anypony – argh, forget it!” The tears were coming now, quick and salty, running down the side of her face and falling onto the floor of Carousel Boutique.

Rarity lifted one hoof, chest heaving, looking like she was on the brink of tears as well. “Blythe, darling…”

“Don’t ‘darling’ me!”

She hadn’t meant that to come out. She really, really hadn’t. It wasn’t something Blythe would say back in Downtown City. In Downtown City she would take a deep breath, realize Rarity was trying to help her, and work out a solution. But here in Equestria she was more on edge, ready to scream if the slightest thing went wrong. After all, she was already a pony.

“Blythe…we’re just trying to help,” Rarity stuttered, clearly quite taken aback.

The pegasus forced a deep breath, and for a moment, Blythe – the real Blythe, not the pony Blythe – spoke. “I know you are, Rarity. And I’m really, really, grateful for that. TSC that you’re trying to help me…oh, yeah…I mean, That’s So Cool, but I know the pets really well, and I think that I can help.” She smiled, a little nervously. “So can I, please?”

Rarity also smiled, but her smile was one of pure relief. “Of course you can…darling.”

She opened her mouth, and Blythe leaned in, ready to listen…

When the door swung open, the chimes signaling a new entry ringing like mad. In darted the pink form of Pinkie Pie, blue eyes wide and shocked. “Rarity! Rarity! Blythe! Blythe! You have to come quickly! To the library!” She took a deep breath and then continued. “Mrs. Cake found more of whatever-you-were, Blythe!”

“Humans?” Blythe choked out, voice hardly more than a whisper.

“Yeah! Hoo-mans! Two of them!” Pinkie’s voice was high pitched as ever, but fear was clear and present. “So we need to go! Now!”

Blythe and Rarity needed no more convincing; one spread her wings and the other began to run, and together, the three of them raced to the library.

We didn’t expect this. We didn’t expect to be sucked up into a portal. We didn’t expect to be spat out in a world full of colorful horses. We didn’t expect to get looped into some sort of scheme involving Blythe and her pets, where we had to totally go against Daddy’s orders.

We had to leave. We agreed on it once the dog and the porcupine were caught. The perfect chance arose when Zelda had us guard the entranceway. We said we would not, and we left.

We had never thought about what would happen next.

It was just like that first day we arrived – we began to wander, looking around, wondering who would find us, where we would be taken this time. Some of the horses stared. Some of them screamed. All of them fled. We were alone.

Again.

That was when they came. Two little horses, one with a horn and the other with wings. They weren’t scared. They giggled and clung to us, and said things, garbled things, things we couldn’t quite understand. But it was nice to be accepted.

That was when their mother came, and when she saw us, she screamed, and fell to the ground, right in the middle of the dusty walkway. We weren’t quite sure what to do then, and luckily, a purple horse with a horn on her head walked out, stared at us for quite some time, and then the world went violet.

Next thing we knew, we were in a tree. And there was Blythe, as a pony, sitting in front of us, her eyes as wide as the moon. We were never the smartest, but we could tell it was her. No girl has ever had a hairstyle like Blythe, or eyes such as hers. There was no way that couldn’t be Blythe Baxter, just as a colorful equine with wings, sitting in front of us.

That was when we knew things wouldn’t turn out so well.

Blythe wasn’t sure whether to scream or continue to stare.

Maybe it was true, what Russell had suggested the very first time that they had landed in Equestria. Maybe they were in some sort of extremely complex dream.

Because there was no way the Biskit twins were standing in front of her now.

“Do you know them?” Twilight asked again as Spike poked Brittany’s arm, eyes as wide as moons, breaking Blythe out of her sudden stupor and snapping her back to reality, causing her wings to flutter nervously against her side.

“Yes.” The mare forced her face to stay straight. “Yes, I do.”

“Who are they, then?”

“We can, like, speak for ourselves,” Whitney offered, shooting Blythe a strange look out of the corner of one eye, but Blythe shook her head, gesturing not to speak.

“Some girls that I know from Downtown City…I don’t know why they’re here, though. How did they even get here?” The pegasus mare placed a hoof on Brittany’s shoulder, as if making sure she was actually there. She was.

Twilight looked curious, and more than a bit fascinated. “Is that so, huh? Then that means…” Her eyes stretched wide and her face visibly fell; with horn aglow a large red book flew to her side, enveloped in that same magenta light. “I’ll have to…”

Blythe’s eyes also went wide as she realized exactly what the unicorn was talking about. “Seriously? Well, of course, seriously…I mean, we can’t just keep them locked up in here…”

“What? What are you, like, talking about?” Whitney snapped, but was ignored as Twilight and Blythe continued to talk.

“You sure we won’t be getting home soon? If we find a way to go back to our world, then we wouldn’t have to do this.”

“Blythe, darling?” Rarity tentatively peeped up from the corner, where she had been sitting. “Remember? …the pets?”

Blythe sighed, folding her wings against her side. She hadn’t even realized they had been extended until now. Maybe pegasi did use them for different mood changes. “…alright. I don’t know how the hay they got here…”

“But we can tell you—”

“…or what we’re going to do with them…”

“We can, like, help—”

“But we can’t just leave them out somewhere to get ravaged by some sort of crazy Equestrian monster.” Blythe sighed and looked towards the ground. “Alright, Twilight, you win. Cast the spell.”

The unicorn smiled and flipped open the book to a weathered and dog-eared page. “Spike!” she called, and the dragon whipped over from staring at the twins to holding the book in place for her. Twilight’s horn began to glow with that same magenta light…

…and the Biskits yelled simultaneously.

“We know where the pets are!”