//------------------------------//
// Twilight's fancy portal 
// Story: An annoying fact about Equestria 
// by The PatioHeater 
//------------------------------//

Twilight had called her friends to her Library; she had something important to tell them.
She paced around aimlessly, trying to calm herself so she could keep a level head for when she told them her news.
But all of these calming techniques were for nothing as Applejack and Fluttershy walked through the door.
“Heyya Twilight!” Applejack called out as she walked in.
Fluttershy’s greeting was inaudible in comparison.
“Oh thank goodness you’re here!” Twilight sighed with relief.
“What’s this all about, Twi? You seemed awful nervous when you told us all to meet here.”
“Yeah, Twilight. I hope everything is okay.” Fluttershy whispered.
“Don’t worry girls. I will explain everything when the others get here.”
And right on cue, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Pinkie Pie walked through the open door.
“Good morning Twilight,” said Rarity in a very flustered voice. She was still brushing her mane as she walked. “Now do you mind telling us why we’re here? I had to interrupt my usual morning routine to get here on time.”
“Yeah! I was in the middle of avoiding work by napping! And you know how I hate having my naps interrupted…” Rainbow Dash spoke maliciously.
“Whereas I wasn’t doing anything, so don’t worry Twi, you didn’t interrupt me!” Pinkie beamed arrogantly.
“Yes, I'm sorry for interrupting your daily rituals, but this far more important!”
“What is it?” the other five said with anxious intrigue.
“Well, I have been doing some research an-.”
Her friends groaned exhaustedly in unison, disappointment levels reaching maximum at the very instance of the word “research”.
“What?” Twilight asked angrily.
“Not more research,” the others droned together. “We thought this was going to be interesting or important.” They looked at each other. “How did we just say that at the same time? This is weird…”
“Yes, yes, blah blah blah. Now let me finish, will you?” Twilight glared at her friends.
“Fine. We’ll hear you out.” The novelty of them talking together had already worn off.
“Right, I’ve been doing some research an-.”
“Good heavens Twilight,” Rarity spoke with a shocked tone. “What’s happened to you coiffeur?”
“Huh?”
“Your mane, darling,” Rarity changed her tone to one of condescension at her friend’s inability to understand basic French.
“Oh, right.” Twilight giggled nervously. “Well, you know me. I was researching, wasn’t I? And I never shower or anything when I get my research on,” she said with a little swagger in her hips.
“Is that what that smell is?!” Rarity was horrified. “That’s it; YOU are going for a shower, right now.”
“But… what about my announcement?”
“That will wait! You need a shower Miss Sparkle.” Rarity lifted Twilight into the air by her tail.
“NO!” Twilight screamed. She grabbed hold of a table with all her strength, wrapping her forelegs around the table leg tightly as she was suspended a foot above the floor.
Rarity pulled back as hard as she could. “You. Need. A SHOWER!” Rarity screamed through gritted teeth.
“NO!”
“YES!”
“NO!”
Rainbow could tell this was going to go on for a long time as Twilight and Rarity continued their back and forth conversation. She looked at Pinkie and gave her a knowing nod. Pinkie smiled, she knew what Rainbow was planning. Mischievous grins crept to their faces.
The Pegasus and the Earth Pony walked slowly over to the purple Unicorn, and got into position. Rainbow Dash laid under her, looking up at her stomach. Pinkie was stood by her side, bouncing with excitement.
They nodded to each other again, and then gently placed their hooves on Twilight’s soft, purple coat, and began rubbing her all over.
Twilight’s eyes shot wide open. A pleasant sensation travelled across her. Her face screwed as she tried to hold it in and keep her strength in her grasp, but she failed. Twilight’s mouth erupted open and out came a huge laugh as her friends’ hooves tickled her with expert ease.
“Stop it!” she laughed. “Stop it! I'm ticklish!” She could barely speak through the laughter.
“And why do you think we’re doing it?” Rainbow teased as she moved her hooves up Twilight’s body started tickling her… legpits? The underside of her shoulders.
Twilight erupted into much more hysterical fits of laughter, tears flowing from her eyes as she was tickled in her most ticklish place. She could barely breath now, and yet her grip remained strong.
Pinkie felt rather redundant. When compared to her underside, Twilight’s back wasn’t at all ticklish, so she had to resort to drastic measures.
Pinkie moved her hooves down to twilight’s sides, placing them delicately on her hips, and began tickling her there instead. She didn’t like touching other mares there, it felt a little weird, but needs must. She started tickling her hips with great skill, clearly she’s had a lot of practice, but still Twilight remained firmly attached to the table.
Twilight was laughing so hard she struggled for each breath, but she loved this feeling. She didn’t want it to end.

Moments later, Rainbow Dash heard a strange noise and felt a warm spattering against her legs. She looked down, hoping her suspicions would not be confirmed. But unfortunately, they were. She shot out from under her.
“For Celestia’s sake, Twilight! Why didn’t you tell us to stop?!”
Pinkie looked down at the floor. “EEEEW!” She quickly removed her hooves and looked at them with disgust.
“Why’d you stop?” Twilight asked as she started to calm down, although she was still laughing. “What happened?”
“You just… peed yourself!” Rainbow shouted.
Twilight looked down at the floor, indeed she had wet herself, as pointed out by the wet floor and the warm sensation still slowly trickling down her leg. She should have felt unbelievably embarrassed, and she did. She just smiled awkwardly at her closest friends, hoping they would forgive her.
Rarity quickly dropped her once she realised the mess and then looked at her horn, she felt so incredibly dirty despite the fact she hadn’t actually physically touched her.
“This is by far the weirdest thing I have ever saw.” Applejack stared in disbelief at the scene presented before her. She was not sure whether she should laugh or leave. In the end she chose neither and continued to stare.
Fluttershy seemed strangely unfazed by it all.
“That’s it Twilight Sparkle!” Rarity bellowed. “You are going for a shower RIGHT NOW!” She didn’t allow any time for argument as she picked up the Unicorn in a thick coat of magic (not wanting to risk contamination), and carried her off to the bathroom.

“That’s so rank!” Rainbow winced as she saw the small puddle.
“Oh don’t worry about it, it’s only a little wee,” Fluttershy said calmly. “Where do you think a mop is so I can clear up this mess?” Fluttershy didn’t wait for an answer and glided into the kitchen, where the mop happened to be. She filled the bucket with water and a lot of bleach and wheeled it through to the Library’s foyer, with the mop tucked under her wing.
“How can you stay so calm? It disgusting!” Rainbow was inexplicable angry at her.
“I'm used to it. I live with a lot of animals, so I quite often find a little puddle of wee-wee over here or a little bit of number twos over there, and of course I have to clean up after them, so it doesn’t really bother me anymore. Unless it’s a bear or some kind of big animal.”
Fluttershy took the mop in hoof and began scrubbing the floor vigorously. Her wings flared up with the amount of effort she put into it. She had to ensure no lasting smell would stay behind, and she achieved this with great success. That one spot was now visibly cleaner than the rest of the floor.

Rarity threw Twilight into the shower and turned it on, she didn’t even let it warm up before she forced Twilight under the torrent of water, fluctuating between boiling hot and freezing cold. She went in too as to make sure that Twilight got a good scrub down, and to allow her to clean her horn thoroughly as it felt like it burnt with uncleanliness.
“That was disgusting, Twilight Sparkle. You should have told them to stop before you wet yourself.” Rarity spoke in her stern voice, which was very authoritative.
“I'm sorry Miss,” Twilight whimpered.
“Miss?” Rarity lost her sternness and replaced it with confusion.
“What? Oh yeah, sorry. Magic Kindergarten flashback.”
“I… see…” Rarity was not quite sure what to say to this.
Rarity grabbed a sponge and doused it in shower gel before commencing a thorough clean of Twilight, making sure every single bit of her was as spotless as her own fabulous coat. She took great pleasure in cleaning to such a degree.
Twilight also took great pleasure in being so well cleaned; it was as if she was having a full body massage at the spa. Rarity put so much effort into it Twilight could feel dirt being lifted from under her fur; obviously Twilight had been showering wrong for all these years.
Once finished with Twilight, Rarity turned her attention to her own horn. She found an unopened bottle of horn polish she distinctively remembered giving Twilight for her birthday, along with other expensive, imported bath products with fancy sounding ingredients in them. She scowled at it, Twilight hadn’t appreciated her generous gift, but she decided to let it slide this time.
She took a large dollop of the white cream on her hoof and worked it into her horn. She sighed. She felt cleaner already.
They left the shower a good while later, with Rarity levitating individual towels to each of the unicorns and drying them roughly. Twilight didn’t allow her though, she preferred the much quicker and far more efficient method.
Twilight concentrated, focusing a lot of magic to her horn. Suddenly, it erupted, sending flames coursing through her mane and tail as well as passing over her body. She was dry in seconds.
Rarity gasped. She couldn’t bear to think of the repercussions that would have on a mare’s coat. She hurriedly dried herself in the conventional manner before walking off downstairs after Twilight, grabbing a mane brush as she did.

“Right then,” Twilight started eagerly. “Now onto my announcement!”
“Finally,” Applejack said exhaustedly. She had been there for an hour and she hadn’t done a single thing, except, of course, watching Twilight be tickled into urination.
“I have been doing some research, and I discovered a way to travel… through… dimensions!”
Everypony’s mouths hit the floor, except for Pinkie.
“Is that it?” Pinkie was very disappointed.
Applejack kicked her. “Quiet Pinkie. She doesn’t know!” she whispered menacingly through gritted teeth.
“Oh right. Gotcha!” Pinkie whispered back before following suit, and letting out an exaggerated gasp and having her mouth fall open.
“I know I know, it’s pretty amazing. But please, hold your applause,” Twilight said arrogantly before letting out an ear gratingly smug laugh.
“But Twilight, how?!” Rainbow asked.
“Well, you see, I found inscriptions on a rock I found during an archaeological dig, and once I translated them it gave me a spell to break some kind of wall.”
Pinkie had to stifle her laughter so hard it almost hurt her.
“But the spell was too hard, there was no way I could perform it using just myself as a vessel. So I built a machine.”
“A machine?”
“A machine. A portal, or ‘Stargate’, as I prefer to call it. Follow me and I’ll show you.”
Twilight trotted out of the door excitedly, her friends followed in the same fashion, except for Pinkie, who had no interest as she could already do it.

Twilight led them out of the door.
“Ta-Da!” she shouted as she span, a hoof flinging to the side and pointing to the device.
Applejack looked up at the huge ring before her, towering as high as the Library. She was in so much awe she had to take her hat off.
“Whoa nelly.”
Rarity gawked at it; her brush fell to the floor as she lost concentration.
“That. Is. AWESOME!” Rainbow squealed as she looked at it, she even started bouncing on her hooves in a very Pinkie style way.
“How didn’t we notice this when we came here?!” Pinkie shouted.
“I know, pretty neat, huh?”
Everypony nodded their heads in agreement with Twilight.
“Fire it up Twilight!” Pinkie begged.
“I'm afraid I can’t do that yet.”
“Oh…” Pinkie frowned.
“I need to translate the last symbol, but I have no idea what one it could be!”
Pinkie looked at the markings around the edge of the ring. “It’s this one!” she shouted gleefully.
“What?! how can you possibly know?!”
“Because, you silly Unicorn, it’s a 4!”
Twilight was about to question her logic, but Pinkie’s logic made no sense and therefore was almost always right.
“Alright, I’ll try that sequence then.” Twilight hopped onto the platform by the side of the Stargate and placed the helmet over her horn. She then concentrated on her knew completed spell, and the portal fired up without a hitch.
A huge blue wall appeared within the ring, swirling like a vortex but much, much slower.
Applejack put her hat on again just so she could remove it once more with awe.
“Alright! In we go!” Twilight shouted as she ran down to her friends and led them through the portal.
“Err… Twilight?”
“Yeah, Applejack?”
“Where will this thing take us?”
“If my calculations are correct, we should end up in the exact same spot but in a different dimension.”
“Ah… see…” Applejack didn’t understand the principles of dimension jumping, even after all the fun she had with Pinkie trying doing it.
They ventured through the thick wall of blue goo.

The six of them reappeared a few feet of the ground, and promptly fell and hit the ground due to gravity.
Once recalibrated, Twilight stood up and looked around. As far as she could tell, they were in a desert.
Twilight contemplated the area she was in, and summed it up in three words.
“Well this sucks…”

The others came to seconds later, and all agreed on Twilight’s summary.
“Where d’ya think we are?” Applejack asked.
“I have no idea. But where ever we are, it’s really dull.”
“Ye-huh,” Pinkie interjected.
Twilight walked over to Rainbow Dash. “Hey, Dashie.”
“Yeah?”
“Can you fly up really high and get a look around?”
“No sweat!” Rainbow said cockily as she unfolded her mighty wings and jumped in the air, pausing to give a quick salute before spinning off higher, leaving a trail of rainbow in her wake.
Twilight watched her in fascination until she couldn’t see her anymore. She loved watching her Rainbow fly, it was always a spectacular display. She even crashed with style.

Rainbow stopped about a mile off the ground, turning her wings so she could hover. She panned around the scene, and absolutely nothing amazing caught her eye. A few mountains in the distance and gently undulating ground, nothing special. She sighed before flying back down again, landing in front of Twilight with a graceful collapse into a heap. Gravity seemed stronger here than in Equestria.
“Anything to report, Rainbow?” Twilight asked hopefully.
“Nope. Just some boringness all over the place. It’s so totally un-rainbow.”
“Oh…”
“Oh but we are in a crater. Centre is about four miles that way.” She pointed unenthusiastically behind her.
Twilight perked up. “Why didn’t you say so? Let’s go!” She set her legs a running and her friends followed closely.

They reached the centre much later than Twilight would have liked, but Pinkie Pie insisted on looking at interestingly shaped rocks and then laughed at them.
Twilight looked around, there appeared to be nothing there.
“How can this be?! Why is there nothing here?!” she screamed into the sky.
“Please calm down Twilight,” Fluttershy whimpered.
Twilight couldn’t refuse such a sweet voice and so, with the aid of a few deep breaths, she regained her temper.
“I'm sorry but… why is there nothing here?!” she shouted again, only his time in a much calmer manner. “We’re in a crater, so in theory whatever made it should still be here!”
“It’s no biggy, Twilight. This dusty desert probably doesn’t have anything in it anyway. We would probably have to jump from somewhere else.”
Twilight couldn’t help but think that Rainbow Dash put forward a good argument, which was unlike either of them. “I suppose you’re right Rainbow,” she sighed.
Rainbow celebrated quietly to herself.
Twilight looked again at the ground and got angry at its emptiness. She fumed slightly and kicked as hard as she could. Her hoof hit something and she fell back, clutching her hoof in her other three to try and massage the pain out of it. But what her mind was focused on was the strange, metallic noise the piece of ground made.
She stood up and limped over to where she had kicked. She stooped down and blew off the reddish-brown dusty sand from on top of it, revealing some words etched into a largish metal device.
“BEAGLE II?” Twilight said to herself. “Whatever could that mean?”
The device the words were engraved on look battered, as if it had crash landed at phenomenal speeds, far greater than what any Equestrian could achieve.
“How did this even get here?” she asked herself again as she looked into the hazy, dust filled sky.

Twilight suddenly felt all tingly, and so did her friends.
“Twilight? What’s happening? Why are we glowing?” Rarity asked in a panic-stricken voice.
Twilight looked at herself. “Oh yeah. I almost forgot about that. It’s just the return spell I cast, it’s supposed to ping us back after an hour so I guess our time’s running out.”

Twilight continued to investigate the machine. It sat upon eight wheels and consisted of several large discs, each a few feet in diameter, and all attached to one central disc. Four of them were covered in a dark, shiny surface covered in little strands of wire set into it; whereas the others were far less interesting.
Twilight also noted a stalk above it, although it looked very damaged and on the brink of snapping, with a few cameras attached. She took a mental picture of it so she could draw a diagram of it later back in her Library.

Seconds later, the six of them glowed bright and they exploded from existence in the form of lightning and were flung through the Stargate, landing heavily outside the Library.
“Well that was more pointless than I imagined,” Twilight muttered disappointingly.
Her friends all said their goodbyes as they had plans. Except for Rainbow Dash, she just made a lousy excuse to go napping.

Meanwhile, back in the dimension they had just left, a man was running down a corridor, holding a thin file under his arm and wearing an excited expression.
He ran into an office where an important looking man sat behind a desk. This second man looked up angrily.
“Yes, Jackson?!” his voice was malicious.
“Mr Connors, I have some groundbreaking news.”
“What?” Mr Connors had become intrigued now.
Jackson pushed his glassed back up his nose and approached the desk. “Well, you know the Beagle II probe we sent to Mars?”
“Yes. It was a failure. Crashed and everything. What about it?”
“It started working sir, and it sent us some pictures.” Jackson threw the file onto the table, causing several photos to fall out.
Mr Connors took one and looked at it. His face showed a mixture of confusion and joy.
“Is this… is this a Unicorn?”
“Yes sir, we believe it is.”
“Strange…”
“That’s what we thought, but then we realised that this… this proves the existence of life on MARS!”







That’s right. In our dimension, Equestria is where Mars is…