Outside the front door of the Retinizer, the entire stack of pancakes that had been on Sombra’s plate disappeared into his mouth and down his gullet in one go. After having a satisfied sigh, he threw one arm around Velvet’s withers — and she around his — and a camera popped into existence with a burst of magic, capturing a close-up of two friends about to embark on an adventure.
Sitting at a window both at the soda fountain, Velvet and Sombra happily and quickly slurped down the last of their root beer floats. Pushing their empty glasses aside, they crowded over the table as the camera swung to bear, capturing a super-close-up of two friends having a blast at the soda fountain.
And one photobombing Pinkie Pie.
Passengers on the express train to Canterlot looked out the window in confusion as Sombra raced his magicycle alongside it. At least, they did until he matched its speed and Velvet turned to face them in the sidecar, and promptly opened her jacket.
Every mare-loving colt and stallion (and more than a few mare-loving mares) whooped, cheered and hollered at her, and a few even took pictures that would go on to lead very unsafe lifestyles at numerous workplaces.
Reacting to a sudden knock at her door, Princess Celestia ducked her head into the corridor outside her study and looked about, finding no pony there to greet her. She did, however, find a flaming paper bag sitting on the floor. Narrowing her eyes at the offending object, she opened the door fully to confront it, and lifted one hoof into the air, confident that her brand new and freshly polished hoof guards would make short work of it.
Down the corridor and around the corner, Velvet and Sombra bumped hooves, and then the camera captured a close-up of two friends about to evade an angry princess.
And then, they jumped out of the window of the tower they were in and deployed their parachutes.
“And that one looks like a disgruntled pegasus!” Velvet said as she jabbed one hoof up at the clouds in the sky, sitting on a park bench with an ice cream cone gripped tightly in the other hoof.
Sombra, seated next to her with his own ice cream, squinted up at what she pointed at. “That one is a disgruntled pegasus,” he replied.
Velvet looked again. “Oh, gosh, you’re right. Hi Rossby Waves-Decimus!” she said, waving up at the aforementioned pegasus. A moment later, she recoiled in shock and surprise before lowering her hoof and narrowing her eyes. “Well, that was uncalled for.”
“That happens around here more frequently than I care to admit,” Sombra replied. In one smooth motion, he tossed his entire ice cream cone into his mouth, crunching down on it just once and swallowing it mostly whole. “But obscene gestures aside, how’re you liking the grand tour?”
“It’s pretty cool,” Velvet said thoughtfully.
Sombra waited for a moment before asking, “But?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t help but feel like I’m forgetting something….”
Twilight sat alone at her dining table in the dark, small candles providing the only illumination. She looked over to the table setting across from her, where no other pony was sitting when one was supposed to be. Finally, the candles burned out, and Twilight dropped her head into her arms, sobbing.
Velvet looked at the ground thoughtfully. “No, I would’ve remembered something like that,” she concluded. “Oh well,” she added with a shrug. “Must not’ve been very important.”
“Velvet?”
Far from empty, Velvet’s condo back in Equestria-Sextus was occupied by a unicorn, white of coat, blonde of mane, and worried of late. This, naturally, was her roommate, Crystal Wishes, mentioned back in the prologue. Because who else would it be?
“Where are you? Why didn’t you leave a note?” Crystal asked. Of course, she received no reply, because Velvet wasn’t there, but that hardly mattered.
Velvet was gone, and didn’t leave a note, and that meant that Crystal was out of luck in getting advice for a book she thought she might write.
More importantly, the still fragile barrier separating the bathroom in the condo from the ‘throne room’ in the Crystal Empire (-Decimus) was allowing mostly harmless but still slightly maddening subspatial radiation to leak into the living room(-Sextus), and that meant that Crystal was already making elaborate and out-of-character plots for revenge.