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// Chapter 2: The Picnic 
// Story: My Little Portal-Break: Portal-Broken 
// by shieldgenerator7 
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	“So sorry I’m late everypony!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed as she entered the picnic blanket area. “Some extra-dimensional stuff caught me off guard.”
“Actually, you’re right on time,” mumbled Heartbreak. “Right on time to see Twilight push hay down my throat.”
“Shhh!” Twilight angrily glared at Heartbreak. “I thought we had a deal? You can come to the picnic if you eat hay, or at least stop grumbling about it.”
“Sorry, I forgot. I’m not allowed to express my opinions.”
“She apologizes for once, even if sarcastically,” whispers Spike to himself as he takes a note.
“I heard that,” grumbled Heartbreak. “Oh, I’m just so tired today…”
“What’s keeping her up so much lately?” asked Rarity, spitefully taking a sip of tea, hay included.
“Nightmares mostly,” Twilight replied.
“Anything cross-dimensional?” Pinkie asked.
“Cross-dimensional?! What, about my past? I don’t have nightmares about my past!”
“Heartbreak, she’s only asking a question—”
Pinkie cut Twilight off mid-sentence. “…Because there’s somepony here today that might be able to help.” Pinkie smiled.
“What? Help me fix nightmares? No thanks, I don’t need the help.” Heartbreak’s hat flopped down over her eyes and she lifted a hoof to put it back in place.
“Wait, who?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“A cross-dimensional somepony.”
“A cross-dim-what-now somepony?”
“Cross-dimensional.”
“What in the hay does that mean?”
“Wait, do you mean…” Twilight squinted as she thought.
“Shield? Eeyup.”
“I was going to say the doctor, but okay.”
“Wait… Shield? Shield who?” Rainbow Dash still didn’t remember.
“Oh you know… that unicorn from that portal on the edge of the Everfree? The one that stopped the cross-dimensional rift forming with that one universe with those weird shape-shifting robots?”
Rainbow Dash looked in the corner of her eye for a second, then it clicked. “Oh yeah, that one. How’s he doing?”
“You’ll soon see for yourself!”
“Just tell us already! Can’t you just tell us instead of making us guess all the time?”
“Calm down, Heartbreak,” ordered Twilight.
Before Heartbreak could respond, a shadow creeped up over the hill towards the picnic area. However, Heartbreak couldn’t make out the details of who it was or even look in its direction because of the blinding sun. When the sun finally stopped blocking their vision when it entered the shade of a nearby tree, something looked weird. It was a creature of some sort wrapped in soaking wet pink towels, taking clumsy step after clumsy step towards the picnic area. A small glow of electro-magnetic energy could be seen from under the clever cover of the towels.
Finally the pink moving thing made it to the picnic area. The pink towels fell off one by one and uncovered a damp-clothed Shield, who vaporized his hand extension “hoof shields” and stood straight up. All the ponies except Pinkie and Heartbreak gasped and instinctively moved backwards.
“What is that thing?” asked Applejack.
“What is what? I can’t see any—” Heartbreak looked up from underneath her hat and looked at Shield’s face.
“Don’t worry,” Pinkie said. “He was a unicorn before but he’s naturally a human—”
Before anypony else could respond, Heartbreak lounged out at Shield, knocking him over. 
“Why?! Why?! Why do you get to come here? To get banished here? With your form intact? With your gender intact? With your name?” With every point, Heartbreak slaps Shield on the face with one of her hooves. “Why do you get to get stuck here like me with everything you hold dear? All your memories, all your feelings, all your thoughts, all your… your you? Why?! It isn’t fair! It’s just not fair! Why do you get to keep everything while I lose everything?!”
Twilight got a hold of Heartbreak and restrained her from doing anything further to Shield. “I’m sorry, Shield… she’s just a little… unnerved right now.”
“More like jealous,” mumbled Rainbow Dash under her breath.
“Are you okay?” Fluttershy asked, examining Shield’s face.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, really, I’m fine,” Shield confirmed, standing up and brushing himself off. “I’ve got a shield on. I didn’t even feel a thing.”
Heartbreak glared even more angrily at him.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve that but I’m sure we can work out our issues somehow.”
The glare he got from Heartbreak wasn’t reassuring. It actually made Shield melt on the inside a little, knowing that someone could hate him so much. He almost let his mental state slide into his past self’s usual self-thrashings. It would have been so easy for him to backslide and insult himself and his own petty weaknesses. But not this time. He looked at Twilight.
“So, um, sorry to be a bother, but I’m here for business mostly.”
“Oh, not for the cupcakes?” moaned Pinkie.
“And that is?” Twilight asked, still restraining Heartbreak.
“Just a normal check-up. I have to check to see if the space-time rift is still sealed, and make sure no other space-time abnormalities have shown up. Then I can be ‘out of your mane’ and back in my world.”
“We’re not trying to get rid of you, sugarcube,” Applejack stated. “We’re just…”
“Going through some tough times, is all,” finished Twilight. “And unfortuneately I’ve been too busy to check the status of the space-time rift, so I don’t have a report ready.”
“Wow, Twilight forgets to do something?” Shield says reactively. “Oh, I mean, ok then, I guess we don’t have anything to talk about. I’ll have to check them by myself then.”
“Well, yes, I’m sorry. But if you come back another time I’ll have the report ready.” Twilight notices that Heartbreak has stopped struggling and lets her go.
“Wait!” Heartbreak rushes up to Shield and hugs his legs. “What other world?”
“My world…”
“What’s your world like?”
“It’s…” Shield searches for a relevant adjective. “…Good…”
“Is everypony human?”
Shield glances at Twilight for approval. “I’m not sure if I should be telling you about my world. Princess Celestia signed an agreed with the Multiverse Council that there would be no long-lasting interstellar connections… so I’m not really allowed to tell you…”
“It’s alright. You can tell me,” Heartbreak pleaded.
Twilight nods.
“Well, my little pony,” Shield sits down and Heartbreak stares intently into his eyes while he speaks. “Yes, my world is full of humans like me. It’s a very dangerous place for ponies, though. Because in my world ponies aren’t sentient beings like they are here. They’re treated as cattle, pets, and even food sometimes. It’s not a place you want to go to.”
“But you don’t understand,” pleaded Heartbreak. “I’ve been to that world. I’m from that world!”
“Huh?” Shield looked confused. Then he looked at Twilight. She nodded. “So you’re from my world?”
“Yes!”
“Well then how did you get here? And why are you a pony?” Shield’s mind went racing. “Crash! Did you get here from the ancient Equestrian portal? I shouldn’t have forgotten to close it…”
“No! I don’t even know what that is!”
“So, how did you get here?”
“Long story short, I was sent here by the Fae, perhaps you’ve heard of them?”
“Um… no, actually. Actually not.”
Now it was Heartbreak’s turn to be confused. “Then how did you get here?”
“By portal. It’s a bridge between two locations, or in this case, two alternate universes.”
“Alternate universes?” Heartbreak immediately perked up. “So, you can travel between alternate universes?”
“Yes, yes I can.”
“Can you travel to any alternate universe?”
“Theoretically, yes.”
“Can you take me to my alternate universe?”
“That depends. I can’t just figure out which one is yours. There has to be an already established connection, or a random one will be generated. Unless you have a connection, there is no way to guarantee it’ll be your alternate universe.”
“Great!” Heartbreak jumped up with joy. “Twilight! Thank you so much for being my teacher! I’m going to miss you! Spike! Thanks for being there when I needed you! Fluttershy, you’re so adorable I’m just glad I can squeeze you.” Heartbreak gives her a big hug. “Rarity, even though you’re a marshmallow, you’re still pretty cool and I admire your work ethic. Applejack—”
“Hold on here, Heartbreak,” Twilight says. “There’s no guarantee Shield can send you back. You heard what Celestia said. There’s no way back.”
“But don’t you see? He’s got different magic. Magic that can transcend space-time! Just what I need to get out of here! To get out of this form!”
“Whoa, hold on a second,” Shield protested. “I didn’t make any promises. If I don’t have a pre-established connection—”
“You can’t make the portal,” interjected Heartbreak. “But we do have a connection!”
“We do?” asked Twilight, thinking.
“Yes!” Heartbreak then mumbled under her breath, “If it’s still there, that is. With my luck it might not be.”
“So, is it ok that I just whisk this pony away from this world without Celestia’s knowing?” Shield grimaced uncomfortably at the thought.
“Yes! Of course it is! It’s free will, right? This is me, freely willing to be whisked away. No need to bother Celestia—I mean Princess Celestia.”
“Alright then, where to?” Shield asked.
“To the Cloudsdale weather factory!”
“But I already checked there, there’s no magic there that I could trace!” Twilight argued.
“Well, it’s worth a shot,” Shield shrugged. “Plus, it’ll give me a chance to check for space-time rifts up there. If she claims there’s a connection there, there might also be a rift forming. Who knows?”
Twilight didn’t believe it for a second, but before she could take action, Shield had opened the portal to a room outside the factory.
Stepping onto the clouds, Shield made an electro-magnetic platform to stand on. Rainbow Dash flew out and stood by the door. 
“It looks like I’ll have to let us in, huh?”
“If you don’t mind,” Twilight replied. “I’ll perform the walk-on-clouds spell on everypony.
Rainbow Dash swiped herself and the “guests” into the facility and they walked in. “Actually, Twilight. We should probably only go in ourselves. I mean I can’t let everypony in.”
“That’s fine. I don’t want to be up in there anyway,” promptly replied Rarity through the portal.
“Oh, and Shield…” Twilight grimaced.
“Yes?”
“I’m not sure if they’ll let you in… as you are…”
“Mm-hmm…” Shield bit his lip and nodded. “So what do you suggest?” 
“Temporary metamorphosis,” replied Twilight matter-of-factly.
“Um, I don’t know… isn’t that hard to do?”
“It’s easier than explaining to the weather guard why he should let in a foreign alien into the secure weather factory.”
“Hmmm, you have a point. But I’m really not comfortable with changing shape…”
“See? I’m not the only one! Being turned into a pony is harsh!”
“Heartbreak!” yelled Twilight.
“So, here’s what I’ll do,” stated Shield, moving right along. “I’ll make a portal stone to the park. When you get inside where the connection might be, activate it and a portal will open. Afterwards I can close the portal and no harm done.” Shield generated an electro-magnetic stone and programmed its activation procedure. “Here you go.”
“Okay, here goes nothing.”
Shield waited outside in the park, enjoying the other ponies’ company. “Sandwiches? Yummy!” He grabbed one and took a bite. His eyes went wide and he spit it out. “Bleh! What is this stuff?”
“Hay,” stated Applejack.
“My reaction exactly,” said Heartbreak.