Spike had always considered himself to be more Twilight Sparkle’s janitor than her number one assistant. This was because his role in her research generally involved far more cleaning up her mistakes than actually doing any assisting. Since Twilight’s move to Ponyville, his job had only gotten larger, as, in any of the large number of catastrophes the town regularly encountered, from Parasprite infestations to “Want It Need It” spells, Spike was always there, cleaning up the mess in the background.
“Augh! Spike! I need you!” he heard an enraged Twilight scream from a noticeably on fire Crystal Palace.
He calmly watched the current disaster unfold from outside the Carousel Boutique, but chose not to intervene just yet, as he had somehow been roped into taking care of the Cutie Mark Crusaders for the day. And besides, he was still recovering from their attempt at getting cutie marks in Hydra wrestling.
“Uh, Spike? Do you think we should help out or something?” asked Sweetie Bell as she dried swamp water from the Hydra incident out of her mane. “I don’t think so,” replied Spike, “She’s not quite angry enough that I actually have to do anything.”
Suddenly the Castle doors emitted a large cloud of smoke and a hysterical feminine shriek, “Spike! If you don’t come and help me right now, I am going to shred all your comics and give them to Opal as kitty litter!
“Okay, she’s angry enough now,” said the dragon without missing a beat. “Come on and we’ll see if you can get your cutie marks in castle repair.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________
As Spike entered the castle with the Crusaders in tow, he noticed that as bad as the outside of the building had been, the interior was even worse. The furniture was smashed, scorch marks lined the wall in random intervals, and the palace still smelled like smoke even though Twilight had finally managed to deal with the fire. As he walked into the main room, the he saw a large, circular mirror in the center of the chamber that gave off the occasional crackle of lightning, and was likely the cause of Twilight’s distress. The mirror’s surface for some reason, probably magic, didn’t show a reflection of the room, but rather an image of Canterlot, though somewhat different than the Canterlot that they remembered.
Spike quickly assessed the situation, and decided to find Twilight before she did something unfortunate to his comics. “Twilight, I’m here like you asked,” he yelled. “Just calm down and tell me what’s going on.”
He was answered when Twilight suddenly teleported one foot in front of him in a state that Spike usually associated with an impending disaster, complete with, disheveled hair, bloodshot eyes, and deranged grin. “Spike, you finally got here,” she said, her whole body twitching all the while, “Now help me get rid of the evidence before the Princess finds out.”
“Uh, Twilight,” Spike responded, “How about instead of that, you calm down, and tell us happened. And please don’t make me sedate you again.”
“You’ve sedated her before?” asked Scootaloo, who Spike noticed had been unusually quiet until now.
“I’ll tell you about it later.” the dragon replied. He then turned Twilight, and saw she had calmed down enough for him to try talking to her. “So, what’s the deal with this electric mirror thing?” he said as he gestured towards the mirror, which was still emitting the occasional spark.
“I was trying to build a teleportation mirror that I could link to another one I was going to build in Canterlot so I could see princess Celestia more often, but there were, complications. . . “
“Wait,” Sweetie Bell interrupted, “Why would you build a teleporter when you can already teleport on your own?”
“Because, I can’t teleport myself all the way to the capital, and also if I could build a teleporter network, it would revolutionize transportation!” Twilight replied, regaining a bit of her insane expression.
“Yeah, if you do manage that, let me be the first to know so I can sell my railroad stocks,” Spike said, “But getting back on track, how did you mess it up this time?”
Twilight lost her crazy expression and glared at Spike. “Well, though I did manage to make a connection to Canterlot, I think I accidentally linked the mirror to some alternate version of the city, but fortunately since it doesn’t seem to have another portal in it, the teleporter hasn’t created a connection yet.”
Spike responded, "Ignoring the fact that other dimensions actually exist, are you saying that you just managed to make a gateway to one while you were playing around with a big piece of glass? Since when is that even possible?"
"Since three hours ago apparently. Regardless, try not to touch it or anything."
“Yeah, it might be awkward to be stuck in another dimension,” said Spike as he noticed the mirror’s surface start to warp and crackle with electricity, “But I think you should turn that thing off before it explodes again.”
Twilight nodded towards the dragon and sent a stream of magic towards the portal, though instead of shrinking the portal, it actually seemed to increase its size.
“Princess, something’s happening!” yelled Apple Bloom, as she and the other Crusaders started to slide towards the portal. Spike tried to grab her, but the fillies were moving too fast and were sucked into the mirror.
“Twilight Sparkle, get them back now!” screamed Spike as he ran towards the mirror. She immediately sent another stream of magic into the portal and grunted with effort. “I got a hold on something, I’ll try pulling them back!” After a minute of effort, she used her magic to drag three foal sized bundles through the portal just as the connection collapsed and the mirror disintegrated.
Spike moved to inspect the unconscious forms, and quickly discovered that something was wrong. While the objects were foals, and looked remarkably similar to the Crusaders, on closer observation they were all remarkably, and in some ways, freakishly, different. The first, and the only normal looking pony was a yellow earth-pony colt with a black mane and a bloodied syringe for a cutie mark. Besides some strange blue markings around the hooves, and his wearing a lab coat, he seemed the same as any other colt.
The second foal, a white colored unicorn, was like nothing the dragon had ever seen, having strips of metal attached to various parts of his body, and a completely robotic looking eye. These features matched his grim looking cutie mark, a leering skull with jagged pieces of steel sticking out of it.
The final colt, though having no cutie mark, was even stranger than the second, so much so that Spike hesitated to think of him as a pony at all. He was a pegasus with an orange coat and a purple mane, but after that his biology took a sharp turn for the strange. Where a normal pony would have hooves, this colt seemed to have razor sharp claws, as well as serrated teeth replacing the usual front molars.
Knowing that Twilight would probably explode if she noticed their peculiarities, Spike ran towards a loose floorboard, under which Spike had hidden a syringe of Alicorn, and as he had recently learned, hydra, strength sedative.
“Twilight, look behind you!” he yelled at the Princess. Twilight, on the verge of a mental breakdown from recent events, turned around, thus giving Spike an opening to run behind her and shove the syringe in her flank, knocking her out almost instantly.
With the castle momentarily peaceful, Spike assessed the situation: unconscious Princess, unconscious foals, ruined castle, and the fillies trapped in another dimension with their only way home destroyed. All in all, it looked pretty bad. So, with all other options exhausted, the dragon went to go do the only productive thing he could think of, make himself some coffee.
He had a feeling he was going to need it.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile in another universe. . .
Archmagi Dark Star and Timothy Lulamoon stared in silent horror at the three unconscious fillies in front of their destroyed dimensional portal. After they managed to overcome to overcome their shock, the two friends turned to each other and voiced what they had both been thinking for the last twenty minutes, “Poison Pie is going to kill us.”