Elsewhere, past strange twists and skeins of space-time, a blue-green planet orbited a young star. Magic only had a tenuous hold here, in this gnarled patch of the universe, and so this planet's inhabitants had had to like or lump the laws of physics for the most part. Giant lizards had walked there once. Mammals had followed in their wake. One particular group of social ape-descendants had hacked into the strange alchemy of possessing both a developed cortex and opposable thumbs, and were serving their stint as fleeting Lords of All Creation.
Down a quiet street in a quiet city, under a sheet of light drizzle, one such ape-descendant trod a familiar path back to his flat.
He walked steadily, casually, absently toying with keys in his pocket as he walked and bobbing his head to music emanating from little earpieces.
He was alone under the glow of streetlamps. He felt secure. He knew this part of the city, these streets, this nice pocket of a mostly safe area in a city that didn't deserve its grim reputation, by and large.
He was safe. So very, very safe.
Back in Equestria, Tirek sat upon his throne. His forelimbs dangled over its front, his hands rested upon its arms, his horns scraped the ceiling of what had once been Celestia's throne room. Was now his throne room.
Great marble plinths rose from the floor, two rows of three each leading down towards the room's great door. Columns of fire flared up from them like arterial spray from a wound, painting the vastness of the throne room with a flickering carmine light. The stained glass windows seemed to jerk and dance past them, their former pictures replaced with pictures of Tirek arising triumphant from Tartarus, Tirek casting the Pretender Princesses into Tartarus, Tirek assuming rightful possession of the world's magic, Tirek crushing all who stood before him, et cetera.
All those who had complained about the pains and responsibilities that came with rulership, Tirek felt, had clearly not been doing it right.
A faint knocking came from the far door. Tirek glanced down at his newest steward. “Go and let them in.”
The little dragon, his eyes red from weeping and lack of sleep, his purple scales lustreless, glanced blankly up at Tirek. “Wh – what was that?”
“I said, suffer.”
Tirek reflected, as the casual outpour of magic on his part made the dragon whelp convulse and retch on the floor, that operant conditioning had yet to fail him as a process for ultimately producing obedient minions. Spur or whatever his name was would learn.
It would, of course, be trivially easy to open the door himself. But one hardly became a king to do every job for all of one's subjects. Besides, one should never pass up a valuable teaching experience.
Once the whelp had stopped shuddering on the floor, Tirek leaned down. “Attend more closely in future. Obey immediately. Shake that fatigue out of your brain.” Knocking came from the door again. “Go and let them in.”
The dragon slowly rose and staggered down the room's length, finally reaching the door. After a few moments of jumping up and scrabbling desperately at the handle, he finally found a grip and managed to heave the door back a scant few inches with all his might.
An alicorn, or the grey shell of what used to be an alicorn, stepped through once the door was wide enough. Twilight Sparkle kept her gaze downcast. Her steps were slow and plodding, her wings were held tightly at her sides, which trembled with exertion. The washed-out, grey colours of her coat soaked up the room's red light. The dragon's eyes followed her with mute pleading.
“How is the Crystal Empire, princess?” purred Tirek. “Do riots run through the streets? Do armies march south with my death on their lips? Or is all quiet?”
“All is quiet,” murmured Twilight, her voice scraping past the very edge of audibility, her gaze still directed at the floor. “No riots. No armies. Peace. Ponies getting by as best they can.”
“Good,” said Tirek, drawing out the word. “A peaceful nation is a good nation. A good nation where ponies know their place, live their little lives, and can leave greater affairs to greater beings. Wouldn't you agree, Twilight Sparkle?”
Twilight looked straight at the floor.
“Say, 'Yes, King Tirek.'”
“Yes, King Tirek,” whispered Twilight Sparkle.
Discord's curious mind-warping magic was wonderful for pacifying ponies of the proper temperament, Tirek felt. He gestured at a plinth. “Very good. Back to your cell, then. You've had a hard journey.”
Twilight plodded over to the plinth, where iron bars glistened into existence across its marble surface. They parted for her, letting her step through into the cell underneath the plinth before melting shut once more. The marble flowed back over the bars, affording one last glimpse of the alicorn sitting down and staring at one corner of her cell before the bars were covered entirely, as if they had never existed at all.
Tirek drummed his fingers on one arm of his throne before glancing at two other plinths on the other side of the room. Marble peeled back from iron bars, and two pegasi stepped out. Rainbow Dash's vivid mane and coat had turned all the colours of dishwater, and there was almost no colour to Fluttershy at all.
“Princess Twilight's done her duty. Time for you two to do another ranging while she rests,” said Tirek. “Rainbow Dash, fly south. Criss-cross Neighvada and the Appaloosa territories. I trust you won't have any problems cracking down on any Equestrians who may be contemplating dissent?”
Rainbow Dash laughed, a brief and bitter laugh. “No.”
“Fluttershy. Dearest Fluttershy, rather. I won't subject you to the same physical demands as Rainbow Dash, so you'll just fly around Ponyville and the Everfree border. I do expect you to be … creative with any dissidents. Should you find any.”
Fluttershy's lips peeled back from her teeth, and her mouth twitched upwards at the edges. “Oh, I can be very creative.”
Bless Discord's magic, bless it muchly. Tirek smirked. “On you both go, then.”
He had no need of scouts either. Where he wished to look in Equestria, he saw. And he saw no significant dissent anywhere of importance. But if you had servants at hand, it was only right to use them.
The two pegasi took flight out of the throne room. Tirek leaned back into the shadows of his throne and glanced down at the little dragon. “You'll open the door for them once they return, of course. But you may rest in the meantime.” Let no one say he couldn't be magnanimous.
The little dragon vaguely nodded, his weary expression falling into something rawer as the words sunk in. He trudged over to the plinth holding Twilight and tried to nestle himself up against the wall as best he could. Tirek heard faint noises that were half-begs and half-sobs as he subsided into sleep. As if the occupant would be able to hear him.
Tirek sat on his throne, and considered the world to have been put to rights again. Equestrians everywhere had lost their destiny. He would let them share in his.
“This is insane.”
“And the crowd jeers as Apple Bloom the total cynic does her best impression of a broken record,” muttered Scootaloo. She was limbering up, trotting in a circle and rotating and flexing her small wings.
“You can't just fly to somewhere we don't even know exists in a few minutes like Firefly did. You don't know where you're going. You're not going to just bump into a magical portal amongst the clouds. You can't fly high enough to reach the clouds even if there was!”
“And the crowd goes wild!” said Scootaloo, turning to face the expanse of the wide-open field next to the clubhouse. “Wild as Scootaloo takes the field, prepares to be awesome, and proves Apple Bloom the total cynic wrong.”
“Let her try, Apple Bloom,” ventured Sweetie Belle. “I think it could work. We've done slightly stupider things before, haven't we?”
“How in the blazes are you even going to bring a human back here if you find one?” Apple Bloom's torrent of reasonable objections had become a kind of modulated screech.
“Hey, in the story, Firefly could just carry it on her back with no problem. I'm guessing it'll be no bigger than a Breezy, tops.” Scootaloo eyed the field's far edge. “Don't be blinded if I shed too much awesome doing this.”
“When you come back down in a few minutes dog-tired and damp, I ain't going to be even slightly sympathetic!”
“I'll be sympathetic,” offered up Sweetie Belle, eternal mediator. “But you're going to come back with one, I know it!”
“'Course I will! Wish me luck, though I won't need it.” Scootaloo scuffed the ground with a forehoof, angled herself along the ground like a long-distance galloper, and then lunged forwards into a run.
Long sessions with the enthusiastic coaching of Rainbow Dash had put the lie to the notion that Scootaloo was incapable of flight at all. She could become airborne, with a great deal of effort and a few conditions.
One of which was a decent run-up.
Several minutes later, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were still watching Scootaloo pelt down the field, her wings angry blurs at her side.
The minute after, a small orange pegasus shape began to slowly lift above the tree line, her wings sheets of pure orange indistinctness. Scootaloo turned in mid-air to deliver a last jaunty salute, and then buzzed up into the sky.
“Good luck!” yelled Sweetie Belle.
“I blame you in advance,” muttered Apple Bloom.
Magic, in a sense, is all about bidding probability to go screw itself. It is improbable that fireballs should fly forth from a unicorn's horn. It is improbable that heavier-than-air pegasi with a relatively small wingspan should achieve flight, or that an earth pony can survive blows that would shatter a respectable mountain. Magic has its thumb on the scales, and those things happen.
Magic, according to some of the more demented unicorn researchers, has a sense of humour and a flair for the dramatic. The results of this can sometimes be indistinguishable from one-in-a-million chances just happening once in a million times and sticking in ponies' memories, but the researchers seem convinced.
Even in the all-encompassing high-magic field that permeated Equestria and its local universe, it was still decidedly improbable that a small pegasus filly, all but freezing her wings off and all but rasping her breaths in and out with effort, should hit that exact confluence of matter, energy, and wild magic that pushed her out through one pocket of space-time and into another.
It was even more improbable that it would send her where she wanted to go.
But magic's regard for probability can be expressed somewhere between a shrug and putting it in a headlock. These things just happen from time to time, more than they should.
On a blue-green planet orbiting a young star, an ape-descendant pulled out his ear pieces and twisted his key in the door of his flat.
A movement at one side caught his attention, and he turned his head slightly in its direction.
A small orange pegasus that had come plunging down from the lower troposphere slammed into the side of his head, and all of his sensate world turned to ow pain darkness pain pavement pain darkness darkness sleep.
“Owwwww,” managed Scootaloo, after she'd recovered some of her senses and checked with her tongue that she still had all of her teeth. “Ow, ow, ow.” She bit down on the expressions of pain – what would Rainbow Dash think if she were watching? - and twisted her head around where she lay, taking in her blurry surroundings.
She was on a street; night's dark blanket stretched overhead past the overwhelming glare of tall street lamps. A section of the street rose on either side, out from ranks of buildings. Stationary metal machines, all different colours, rested along the edges of the lower section of the street. It was like Manehatten, expect the buildings weren't so tall and the machines were totally unfamiliar.
On the ground next to her, some strange biped was sprawled flat – about twice the height of Scootaloo at the withers while standing, if she was any judge. Its arms – ending at hands and opposable thumbs, like Spike or a minotaur or Tirek – were stretched out on either side, its legs splayed at awkward angles. Different sections of different-coloured clothing covered its body from the neck down, over its long limbs and torso. A brownish mane sprouted across the top of its head, and ran down along its chin and under its nose, framing a flat, monkey-ish face. What looked like a broken pair of spectacles lay on the ground beside it. Its eyes were closed.
“Humans!” whooped Scootaloo, struggling to her hooves. “I knew it! I knew it! Just like the story. Eat it, Apple Bloom! I told you! Hah!” She leaned down towards the human. “Hey, you hear me? I knew you guys existed!”
The human responded with a faint stirring of breath in the base of its throat that sounded distinctly wet. A thin line of blood was trickling out one side of its mouth. Its eyes remained closed.
It dawned on Scootaloo that she'd slammed into it exceedingly hard, and that she wore her helmet on her scooter in order to avoid her own head slamming into things exceedingly hard. Nothing good happened to the ponies who went through that sort of thing.
“Um,” she said. “You alright?”
“Gchk,” replied the human, which was probably just another exhalation rather than actual communication.
“Sorry about that,” she said, trying to force a laugh into her voice. “Didn't know where exactly I was going. My flight was kind of confusing for a few seconds there. Maybe you fly? You might know what it's like.”
“Gchk.”
Its chest was rising and falling, albeit gently. It was still breathing. That was a good sign. Scootaloo rallied.
“I'm from Equestria, and on solemn behalf of the ponies there, we need your help as we did very long ago. As Firefly came for Megan in the days of old – say, are you Megan herself?”
“Gchk.” On consideration, this human didn't much look like the yellow-maned one in the story's illustrations. Maybe it was a descendant. Or a friend. Or something. There probably weren't that many humans, they might all know each other.
“Well – whatever your name is, Equestria is in mortal peril from the tyrant Tirek. I ask, nay, verily I plead, that one of your mighty kin stand alongside us once more as we throw him down and restore harmony and freedom to Equestria! What say you, bold human, bold ally and friend?”
Scootaloo was exceedingly proud of aping the language of a typical school play. The human, however, seemed supremely unappreciative. One hand feebly twitched. “Gchk.”
This was not going on Scootaloo's list of Most Promising Negotiations. She sighed and said, “Look, we're kind of in the thick of it back home, and you're not … um, all there at the moment. Would you mind if I just took you back somewhere where you can recover and get your mind back together? I can explain everything to you along with my friends. Play your cards right, you might even go home with a prince or something. I forget exactly how it all worked out in the story.”
“Gchk.”
“...Taken as a yes. Come on, then.” It was at that point that Apple Bloom's last objection came back to haunt her.
There was, luckily enough, a strip of brown material like the dried hide of a cow around its waist. Scootaloo chuckled at the grim unlikelihood of the idea, and then unbuckled it with some difficulty and some judicious kicking and rolling-over of the human. She could secure it around … where? Its neck? A hand?
A foot. That seemed easiest and least likely to damage the human.
Scootaloo, through some adroit twists and knots, managed to tie the belt around the human's foot and secure it around her own midriff.
This alien street, empty as it currently was, was a excellent run-up zone.
It is supremely improbable that a small pegasus filly struggling to bear an unconscious ape-descendant several times her own mass should be able to …
You know how this goes.
“No,” said Apple Bloom, simply and starkly as the shape of the encumbered pegasus grew in the sky. “No.”
“She's back!” squealed Sweetie Belle with pure delight. “And she's got a human!”
“I refuse to believe this is happening before my own two eyes. No. This has no right to have happened. This has no right to have worked.”
“Can't you be happy? We're doing like the story says. We're going to take down Tirek and save our sisters and get our cutie marks if we keep doing it properly!” Sweetie Belle was all but dancing on the spot. “I could burst!”
“I live in a sensible universe and this ain't happening. I live in a sensible universe and this ain't happening.” Apple Bloom seemed to be progressively shrinking in on herself. “I live in a sensible universe -”
“H – hey, gals,” wheezed Scootaloo, her sides a solid lather of sweat, her eyes unfocused as she swept down through the air towards them. “Look ... look what I b-brought back.”
She descended, somehow managing to keep the movement controlled and bouncing the trailing human's head off the ground only twice or thrice. She alighted on the grass before the clubhouse, wheezing in breath after breath, her legs trembling. The human sprackled face-down and insensate behind her. One complicated shrug on Scootaloo's part undid the belt connecting her to the human, and she staggered a few steps forwards.
“You did it!” said Sweetie Belle, rushing forwards and wrapping Scootaloo in a hug. “You brought one back! Is it Megan? Her mane seems different than what the story says.”
“Think it's some ... someone different. Made you -” Scootaloo's gaze drifted until it fell in Applebloom's general direction. “Eat … words. Hah.”
Then she collapsed unconscious.
“We should probably get her some water,” said Sweetie Belle after a few hesitant moments.
“And get her into the clubhouse,” said Apple Bloom, gesturing at the human. “We don't know who might be watchin'. There's surely some attention going to be comin' our way, sooner rather than later.”