(VERY IMPORTANT): This is the April fool's day chapter. Please, do not take this chapter seriously. It is not required to understand the plot of the story. The events inside may be considered canon if you chose, as they technically do not contradict anything that I have planned, but I strongly suggest against it. This chapter does its best not to take itself seriously. This chapter includes content from the following works:
Real life
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Working knowledge of these works is not required to understand the chapter, but may help in its enjoyment. If you harbor a dislike for any of these stories, I suggest you don't read this chapter.
Chapter 12-8 – Twilight/Hitomi
Thursday, 31 May 2018 A.D.
Twilight Sparkle shook her head, trying to chase the fuzzy lights away as they danced before her eyes. She heard some assorted gasps from around her; after a few seconds of processing, she determined that she didn't recognize any of the voices. Her vision began to sharpen slowly as she came to fully, and she cast her eyes around. She was on a strange cliff, overlooking a dilapidated castle. It was mid-morning, or else mid-afternoon. She stood up, brushed herself off, then turned to face a startled collection of...
Twilight blinked, stepped back, and nearly fell off the cliff. They were weird looking things, bipedal and sort of a strange pink-tan color. The only hair they had was on their heads, though they wore colorful pelts which seemed to not be entirely attached to their bodies. They weren't exactly ugly, but she found them incredibly strange.
“H... Hello?” she asked tentatively. The creatures turned to each other, exchanging information in a language that she didn't recognize. One of them, with long green hair and white wings, snapped its fingers, red sparks flying from them. Instinctively, Twilight knew it was magic, but not of a type she'd encountered before.
“How about now?” it said to her. “Can you understand me?”
“Yes!” Twilight said. “Thank you for that, I think.” Twilight looked around. “Where am I? And who are you people?”
“What did you do with Hitomi!” a smaller one of the things, equipped with dark black clothes and what Twilight recognized as a witches hat, yelled at her. “If you've hurt her...”
“Hitomi...” Twilight said, and then her head throbbed. “Oh – Hitomi!” Twilight said. “So this is her world.” she looked at the girl. “You must be Alice, then.”
“Yeah.” Alice said. “Wait, you know Hitomi?”
“We just escaped some crazy challenge game thing.” Twilight said. “I was made to forget by that Purity girl, and then we were supposed to go home.” she sighed. “Our destinations must have been switched on route. Well, at least Hitomi should be safe under the care of the other alicorns until I can figure out how to get us back in the right places.”
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“No, I'm not a spy.” Hitomi said to the cyan pegasus for what felt like the fiftieth time. “I'm Shizuki Hitomi. I come from the city of Mitakihara in Japan. I'm thirteen years old. My best friends are Kaname Madoka, Alice Fey, and Miki Sayaka. I have no idea why I'm here, and I didn't do anything to Twilight Sparkle. My guess is that we got mixed up when heading home.”
“I can't believe this!” the cyan pegusus said.
“Dash, calm down. You're scarring it.” A yellow pegusas said, and Dash took a step back, letting the other one in. “Hello. My name is Fluttershy. We want to help you.”
“Oh, good.” Hitomi said. “Are their any ponies with both wings and horns around here? I'm looking for one, aquamarine coat and brown eyes. Calls herself Spring?”
Fluttershy took a step back. “Why are you looking for Spring?” she asked, her tone going dark. Something must have gone wrong somewhere, but Hitomi couldn't possibly think where. She swallowed nervously.
“Uh...”
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Twilight walked with the others into the castle. They were carrying the dead body of one of their previous allies, which Twilight had found very strange. Still, despite the fact that the group was obviously not in the best of shapes, they were taking the time to hear her out, which was something at least.
“So, you were trapped with Hitomi in another dimension for about half a day, during which time you got forced to participate in a tournament, met fictional characters, fought a thirty-meter tall golden dragon, hijacked a helipad, escaped from the clutches of an advanced civilization and became friends?” Eve, the winged girl, asked.
“Yes.” Twilight said. “Though any length of time could have passed for you. Universes don't always use the same clock.”
“And you think she's on your world now. The world filled with technicolor talking ponies.” Eve said.
“Hopefully. Either that or she's been scattered randomly across the multiverse.” Twilight said.
Eve didn't say anything for a moment. Finally, she put her hands together and gave Twilight a cold look.
“What's your angle?” she asked. “I can't believe that anyone would be stupid enough to try a story like that!”
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“Exactly!” Hitomi said, exasperated. “No one would ever be stupid enough to come up with a story like that! The only reason I'd bother trying is if it actually was the truth!”
“She does make a good point.” Celestia said, before Luna hit her lightly.
“No, she does not. That is circular logic.” Luna stated.
“Come on!” Hitomi said. “Look, where is Spring? I'm sure she could send me home in a few minutes if you just let met talk to her!”
“Spring is unavailable.” Luna said flatly.
“It doesn’t strictly have to be Spring.” Hitomi said. “If you know anyone else who has a good understanding of quantum mechanics, specifically universal transfer dynamics...” she paused as she registered the blank looks on Celestia and Luna's faces. “Or not.”
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“I mean, we have world gates.” Eve said. “But I don't think that a colorful pony world is part of that network.”
“But you know other worlds exist.” Twilight said. She paused. Hitomi had seemed to know something about the multiverse. She was the only one who had managed to follow Spring's explanation, after all. Maybe these people would be familiar with the concept. What had Spring called it?
“It has something to do with... multiple worlds interpretation of... qualla mechanics?” Twilight ventured.
“Do you mean many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics?” Eve said after a short pause.
“Yes! That was it.” Twilight said. “I come from another world out there, one not connected to your, uh, world gates.”
Eve sighed. “Twilight, this is all very hard to believe.” she looked outside. “And you came at a really bad time.”
“I don't need you to do much for me.” Twilight said. “Just, if you have any way of contacting Hitomi, we might be able to form a connection between us and simply swap back.”
“I'm sorry. We didn't think we'd need something like that.” Eve said.
“I have one.” Alice said, sticking her head into the room. “Well, sort of.”
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“It's my type of magic.” Hitomi said, dispelling the emerald pentagrams from around her. “I'm a green spectral witch from Alice's spectrum. If the fact that I can do magic unseen in your world doesn’t convince you, I don't know what will.”
“It is true, this is not any magic I know of.” Luna said. “If it truly is alien, it does make sense that she might be from another universe, one with different physical laws.”
“Thank you!” Hitomi said. “Finally.” she sighed, then blushed. “Sorry, that was rude. I'm in a hurry, though. My group needs me. Their world is in danger.” she cast her eyes downwards. “And we just lost a member.”
“Yes, I do believe that you might not be lying.” Luna said. “But we still have no way of sending you back to your home, Shizuki. Something like this has never happened before.” Luna looked away from her. “And you've come a very bad time.”
Suddenly, a black cat appeared out of thin air in front of Hitomi. She gasped, then picked him up. “Jaxx!” she said.
“Some purple unicorn sent me to find you.” Jaxx said. “What is going on, master Hitomi?”
“Never mind.” Hitomi said. “Did she give you anything, or say anything important to you?”
“It told me to see if you could connect though some kind of telepathic network.” Jaxx said. “Hitomi, where are we?”
“I have no idea, Jaxx, but I'm trying to get home. Tell Alice not to worry.” Hitomi said. Jaxx looked around, then brushed against her.
“Stay safe, master.” he said, then disappeared again.
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“Hello?” Twilight was startled suddenly by Hitomi's voice in her head.
“Hitomi!” Twilight cried. “Thank goodness.”
“Do you have any ideas about how to fix this?” Hitomi asked.
“I was hoping you might.” Twilight said. “I'm going to try to do a teleport-transfer spell on us, but I don't think that will work. I can't imagine I have enough power to pull ponies through dimensions, but I'll give it a shot.”
“Universes.” Hitomi corrected her. “Dimensions are degrees of freedom, universes are-”
“Slip of the tongue!” Twilight shot at her. “I'm trying to concentrate on this.”
“Sorry.” Hitomi backed off. “I'm just anxious.”
“I know. It's alright.” Twilight's horn began to glow. “You know, if this works, we'll probably never talk to each other again.”
“Probably.” Hitomi agreed. “But we both have worlds to save. And, even if I'm not allowed to remember it, I'll still have your friendship.”
“Yeah.” Twilight felt her power reaching a peak, and Eve turned away from the brilliant purple glow. “We'll have that, at least. Well, here goes!”
Twilight released her spell in a flash of violent violet power. She felt herself being pulled in a direction she didn't understand, existence failing around her suddenly. She was tossed into the void, torn apart by phantom forces, turned into a quantum probability and reintegrated by the boundary of reality. She gasped as soon as she had lungs again.
“I guess it didn't work, then.” Eve said flatly.
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“That was... certainly something.” the white unicorn, Rarity if she had the name right, told Hitomi as she gasped for breath on the floor, barely able to keep herself from puking. “Though it didn't work, it seems.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” Hitomi said. “That was horrible. I can't feel my arms anymore.”
“I guess you'll have to come up with something else.” she said. “I'm sure Twilight will figure something out.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Hitomi said dryly.
“Oh, I didn't mean any disrespect.” Rarity said. “But, well, if you really met Twilight, you would know how very intelligent she is.”
“She's not nearly as smart as Spring.” Hitomi said. “And I have a better grasp on the nature of our problem than she does.” she sighed. “But, if one of the two of us will be able to solve this, it would be her. I've only had magic for a week and a half, and she's a goddess. Not much of a contest.”
“Are you okay?” Twilight pinged.
“Yeah, I'm okay.” Hitomi said. “That was terrible, though.”
“You're telling me.” Twilight sent back. “We were close, too, I could feel it. If only I had slightly more power...”
“Do you think we could get Spring to help us?” Hitomi asked.
“Not a chance.” Twilight said. “We were on a little truce back there to take care of a mutual problem. Spring and the rest of the world don't get along normally. She's what I'm saving the world from.”
“Oh.” Hitomi paused. Well, there went that plan. She looked up at the ceiling of the strange, pony-made building she was in. There had to be something she could do. Something.
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Twilight sighed, looking up from a pile of scratch-paper she had gathered to make calculations with. “It's useless.” she declared, dropping her feather-pen and crinkling the page into a ball with her magic. “It would take me months to figure out this abstract, crazy math, if I could manage to do it at all. This isn't working.”
“Look, Twilight, if we could do anything for you, we would.” Eve said. “We want Hitomi back as much as you want to go home. But we have no idea how to approach this problem either.”
“I do!” a boy said, stepping off of a white unicorn with a flowing red and black mane. Twilight's eyes bugged.
“You're that boy from before.” she said.
“Yep.” he said. “This time, I've brought my most powerful character in to deus ex machina the hell out of this, because obviously my second most powerful character didn't do it right.”
“Heh.” the pony turned to Twilight with a smirk. “He thinks he's in charge.”
“I am in charge.” the boy said.
“Oh, Kar-vitsatal, Kar-vitsatal, I've written myself into a corner and don't want to take the time to write myself out of it!” the pony said mockingly. “Give me a break.”
“It's not my fault!” the boy said.
“You're the one who waited until noon on March 31 to start writing your April fools chapter!” Kar-vitsatal returned.
“I wrote a huge one for a Different Kind of Spark.” he said defensively. “Over 20,000 words.”
“You still ran out of time there too, just less quickly.” Kar-vitsatal said.
“Whatever. I have a teaching project due on April second, and I'm writing Population Dynamics too now, and...” he trailed off as Kar-vitsatal gave him a long look.
“Fine.” he said. “You win. Please fix everything, oh great Kar-vitastal.”
“You could have just asked.” she said. “What level of fix are we talking?”
“Full ret-con.” he said. “I don't want any of this to have actually happened.”
“Wait.” Twilight said. “Hold on, do I get a say-”
But by then Kar-Vitsatal had already reset the multiverse with the power and ease that only a poorly planed OC can, and all was right again.
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Spring blinked herself awake, looking up at the rising sun. Her head was unnaturally muddled. She had gotten very hurt in that battle, she knew, but this was something more...
Oh, right. That damn April fools chapter. It was still there, trapped inside by her perfect memory.
“Oh, great.” she said. “Why dost I hast to remember this fowl plot still?”
If you want to read the much, much longer first part to this story, you can find it at https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11134823/8/A-Different-Kind-of-Spark