Purple flashes of light washes over the many items in the library. Occasional tired grunts accompany the magical hissing noise emanating from the large, shining and levitating gemstone.
A purple unicorn grinds her teeth and clench her eyes shut in concentration, her horn releasing powerful waves of mana towards the floating gem in front of her as sweat streams down her face.
“...Guh...!” Twilight squints an eye open, staring at the bright gem. “A-almost...got it...!”
“My...” a voice breaks through the noise. “I’ve seen the many other gems getting the same shiny treatment, Twilight, but seeing it again with this last one still amazes me like the first!”
“...Th-thanks...I guess...?” the unicorn replies.
A white swan chuckles. “You’re welcome,” she replies with a smile. She turns around and waddles toward the kitchen. “I should go and check the soup. Don’t want your ‘other half’ to get angry for being tired and hungry and have nothing to eat. Especially hungry and have nothing to eat.”
“...Nnnggghhh...!” Twilight’s ears twitch as flashes of memories from her other self’s outburst floods her mind. Her ears droop. “...D-don’t remind me...”
“It’s a good thing you two share one tired body,” Seri said from the kitchen. “Or else she could have magicked me to death.” She chuckles merrily, contrasting the unicorn’s grimace. “I actually thought she was going to turn into a predator with that look she gave me!”
“...Wouldn’t surprise me if that were to happen...” Twilight mutters before she returns her full concentration on her task, the gem’s glow intensifying in the process.
In a forest veiled by the night, four dainty hooves walk towards a running stream. Stopping by the edge, brown pointy ears turn left and right, picking up the many sounds of the forest. Squinting emerald eyes scan the surroundings.
A bush shakes.
Sienna tenses up, ready to flee.
Two squirrels emerge from under the bush. One of them is holding a nut and is running away from the other one.
Sienna stares at them until the two are out of sight. Her eyes close as a sigh escapes her lips. She reopens her eyes and leans her head down towards the watery surface of the stream, drinking.
Her ears twitch to the sound of a shaking branch above her, rustling its many leaves.
Sienna immediately looks up.
A large bat flies away from the branch and towards the large gaps of leaves.
Sienna blinks, staring at the twinkling sky. She is yet to find a safe spot to sleep. Frowning, she looks back down at the stream and resume drinking.
Meters away, hidden in the shadows, a pair of orange eyes is watching her.
Purple light slowly fade, returning the library’s true colors. The light and hum from the floating gemstone are quieting down as it gently falls down towards the wooden floor.
With a tired grunt, Twilight stops the flow of mana on her horn.
The gemstone lands gently on the floor with a soft thud.
Twilight, however, drops her tired and sweaty self on the floor, panting for breath. “Phew...” As she tries to collect some of her strength, her eyes are on the last gem, staring at the little magical light in the very middle of the translucent mineral. Seconds pass before she tears her gaze from it and settles on the pile of other gemstones a few paces away.
A small smile manages to crack on her lips. After days and nights of magic casting, she’s finally done ‘recharging’ the gems. Two items already in her possession, she now only needs the other four Sienna and Jay are gathering.
She hopes they’ll be back soon.
Brown ears twitch in the darkness, trying to catch any noise from the crickets’ choir. Green eyes squinting, Sienna slowly walks through the dark forest, careful not to step or bump on anything.
She still hasn’t found a safe spot to sleep. The small number of hollows that she found were either too small for her or were already occupied. She stops, sighs and settle down on the ground, as she tried doing a few minutes ago, but a strange sense is—again—telling her to keep moving, bothering her to no end.
Something shifts out of the corner of her eye. She lifts and turns her head to look, but all she sees is darkness. She squints her eyes even harder, trying to see if anything’s there.
A rustling noise behind her.
Standing and turning around quickly, her glaring eyes land on a shaking bush. An owl suddenly burst through the shrub, flying towards her.
She ducks just before impact. Rolling her eyes, she turns around and decides to continue walking—
Thud!
A bloody owl falls a few meters in front of her, with a few feathers gently raining down towards the dead bird. The smell of blood suddenly fills the cold night air.
Holding her breath, Sienna slowly looks up...
...and sees a pair of orange eyes staring back at her.
“Wakey wakey, sleeping beauty.”
“Mrrr...”
A swan’s head nudges the purple pony’s cheek. “Wakey wakey. Hoping to not wake miss angry.”
Twilight stirs in her sleep, mouth opening and closing. “Mmmm... F-five more minutes, momma...”
Seri blinks. Seri smiles. “Aww...” She snatches the unicorn’s head and hugs it tightly, her tiny white head nuzzling the waking mare's back. “I never realized how cute and wonderful it is to be called ‘momma.’”
Twilight awkwardly sits herself up. “S-Seri?” she manages to say, her muzzle being buried in the sea of feathers. “I’m up, I’m up!”
The swan giggles as she lets her go. “Sorry to wake you, my little duckling.”
Twilight blinks at that.
Seri turns around and waddles back to the kitchen. “Food’s almost ready. Hope your sleepy stomach is also a hungry one.” She chuckles.
Twilight smiles and shakes her head. Seri can be weird at times.
Knock knock knock!
Twilight blinks. Looking over her shoulder, she lights up her horn to check who knocked on her door. The glow on her horn fades, as well as any traces of sleep from her as she recognizes who are outside. Well, she doesn’t recognize the other two, but it doesn’t matter.
Walking up to the door, Twilight lights up her horn once again, pulling it open, the light form inside the library illuminating the creatures outside her home. Her smile widens upon seeing the brown, smiling stallion.
“Jay! You’re back!” Twilight greets him. She then notice how haggard he and his companions all look. She blinks, her smile fading. “...uh...”
Jay barely holds back a chuckle. “Hey Twilight. S-so, heeheehee, a mighty-kicking kangaroo, a pegasus-turned rat, an awesome panther cub and a human-turned earth pony walks inside the library...”
Twilight blinks a slow and confused blink, staring at the stallion’s bleeding hind leg. “Uuuhhh...”
Jay giggles once again for some odd reason. “...They walk up to the librarian and then—”
“Aaahhh!” a squeaky yell erupts from the kangaroo’s head, making Twilight jump. “It’s the mad mare!”
Jay turns to the yelping kangaroo and looks up, smiling at the panicking white rat who’s running over, under and around the kangaroo’s head. “Aw...! You—heeheehee—you ruined the joke!” The brown stallion falls on the ground in a heap of laughs and giggles.
Stepping back and throwing curses out of her mouth, the kangaroo tries but fails to stop the rat from running around her shaking head.
Twilight throws a confused look at the cub.
Reykan, who’s been staring at the stallion, closes his sapphire eyes and lets out a tired sigh. He reopens them and looks at Twilight, his black ears twitching. “Jay got bitten by a Leg Crawler.”
Twilight blinks at him, and then at Jay. “Ahh. Well, that explains it.”
Reykan blinks, tilting his head. “Explains what?”
“Get off of me, darn it!” the kangaroo yells. She finally catches the panicking rat and throws him away with a growl. “That worm-a-thing gave me enough scratches, thank ya very much!”
“You’ll never take me alive!” the white rat yells as he scampers to the woods, making Jay laugh even more.
A hoot breaks through the nightly orchestra.
A white streak suddenly zooms to the kangaroo. The rat clings to her mighty leg, his body shaking all over. “W-what have I put myself into?!”
“Calm down, darn rat, or I’ll send ya flying far, far up that the bats and owls will race towards ya!” She turns to Twilight and offers her an apologetic smile. “Apologies, miss, for barging into your home like this.”
“Whoa!” Jay, his back lying down on the ground, suddenly gasps, staring at the kangaroo with widening eyes. He then points a hoof at her. “Xana has manners!”
The kangaroo raises an eyebrow at him.
The stallion returns to his laughing fit.
“Er...” Twilight’s ears droop as she flashes the kangaroo an awkward smile. “It’s fine. Come on in.” Her gaze then falls on Jay, who is now wheezing for breath. “We should fix him up before the poison...” She bites her lip. “...before he gets worse.”
The kangaroo's raised eyebrow arches even more. “...There’s a worse version of this laughing idiot?”
“Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that,” Twilight replies. She gestures for them to enter the library. “Come inside.”
“No!” the white rat squeaks from inside the kangaroo’s pouch. “We’re gonna die! She’s gonna kill us.”
“Nah,” Reykan offers. “But she shoots magic beams that will hurt you, if what Jay said is true.”
“Pew pew pew!” Jay adds.
Twilight winces.
“You really wanna see a race between a bat and an owl, huh?” the kangaroo grumbles.
The white rat squeaks and sinks down.
“Didn’t think so,” the kangaroo smirks. “’Sides, this here place is surprisingly warmer than outside,” she says as she enters the tree home, ignoring the hyperventilating rat in her pouch.
“Squeee...!” Jay squeees as Reykan drags him inside by his tail. “I’m gonna die because a worm bit me.” He chuckles. “Write that on my tombstone, ya hear? I wanna give my mom and bro a giggle when they read it every time they visit my six feet under the ground self.” He laughs. “Oh! Oh! Reykan!”
“Mrrrf?” the cub replies through a mouthful of pony tail.
“This reminds me of the night you were dragging me from Canterlot Mountain because you thought I was dead! HAH! Remember that?”
Reykan rolls his sapphire blue eyes, spits the tail hairs out of his jaw, and ignores the tempting smell of blood from the giggling pony’s hind leg as he walks away from him.
Seeing everyone already inside, Twilight magics the door close, eliciting a squeak from the kangaroo's pouch. “I’ll take it from here,” she says as she levitates Jay and sits him down on a stool.
“Twilight,” Seri calls, who has been quietly observing the goings on from the kitchen.
“Hm?” she responds as she magically pulls bandages from the kitchen, flying over the swan’s head.
“Whoa!” the kangaroo suddenly gasps, staring at Seri.
“What?!” a white rat's head pokes out of her pouch. “What?! Is she gonna kill us?!”
“A swan!”
The rat blinks.
“A swan!” Jay parrots merrily.
The kangaroo’s smile vanishes as she looks at the stallion. She scratches her head. “Poor idiot, already losing his mind.” She then throws a glare at the rat. “And calm down, ya jumpy rat. Noroo's getting killed.”
Seri blinks at the creatures inside the library’s main room. She frowns. “Aw... Does this mean I don’t get to eat so many leftover soup?”
The kangaroo blinks at her. “Soup?”
The white rat suddenly sniffs the air, and sniffs some more. “Say...” the rat begins, momentarily forgetting his fear of a certain purple unicorn. “...what’s that smell?”
Curiously, the kangaroo sniffs the air as well. Despite her tired body, she manages to crack a wide, wide smile. “Stars above, that smells heavenly!”
“It’s plant-eater soup,” Reykan answers as he sits under the stairs. He starts licking a paw, rubs said paw on his head, and repeats the process.
“Soup...” the kangaroo makes a face, trying to understand what the word mean.
Jay giggles. “No, no! It’s a stomach pain for Reykan!”
The cub pauses his grooming to roll his eyes.
“Seri,” Twilight calls, ushering Jay to stop moving too much. “Get the jar of antidote for leg crawler poison bites.” She can simply use her magic to get it, but she forgot where she placed it.
The swan blinks blankly at her.
Twilight looks at her, blinks, and rolls her eyes. “...The green, foul-smelling juice thing.”
“Oh! The stinkiest one!” Seri slips back into the kitchen. “Coming right up!”
“I prefer this good-smelling one,” the rat comments.
“They’re not for you,” Twilight smiles at him, mentally storing the question of how a rat can talk for later use. “They're for Jay here, to remove the poison inside his body.”
The said stallion giggles. “H-hey, Twilight,” he calls, catching the mare’s attention. “Is it weird that the leg the worm bit is the same leg that you shot me with your hyper beam?”
Both rat and kangaroo blink at that.
Twilight’s ears droop.
Jay giggles again. “Oh, and Twilight... D-did you know that I’m actually a human?”
“No Jay,” Twilight shakes her head as Seri approaches her, a jar with a sloshing green liquid inside. “I don’t. You can tell me all about it later once you’re okay.”
“Once I’m okay? But I am okay!” he beams. “Never been better! Anyway, will you believe me if I tell you that I’m actually a human from another wooooooorld, turned into this brown stallion?”
Twilight shakes her head as she opens the jar with her magic. “I don’t even know what a ‘hue man’ is.” She levitates the opened jar to the stallion’s muzzle. “Now, open wide, Jay. It may taste unpleasant at first—”
The smell hits Jay’s nostrils like a ramming ram. His eyes cross, and he immediately swats the jar away, but Twilight manages to pull it out of his waving hooves before he hits it. “Bleahk!” He makes a face. “Smelled like poop. Worse even! It even looks like—!”
A blob of the liquid antidote forces its way inside his opened muzzle. Purple aura shuts the struggling stallion’s mouth shut and lifting his head up, forcing him to swallow.
Twilight smiles an apologetic smile as Jay flails his hooves wildly. “S-sorry... Had to make you drink it quickly before you, um, before the poison takes its full effect on you.” She puts the lid back on the jar and gives it to Seri. She lets him go after the stallion swallowed the cure.
Jay winces, opening and closing his muzzle. He shudders. “Ugh... That was horrible.”
And then he instantly passes out, his limp body falling off of the stool, a thread of drool already streaming down from his open muzzle.
Twilight sighs in relief.
“...Is he dead?” a squeaky voice asks.
Twilight's ears twitch to the sound of snoring. Turning, she sees Reykan fast asleep under the stairs.
The kangaroo walks toward the unconscious stallion and pokes him, and pokes him again. “...Nah. The idiot's alive.” She stands up tall and smiles at the mare. “Thank you for shutting him up.”
Twilight blinks at her. “Oh...uh...” She smiles a small and weird smile. “...you're welcome?”
“So can we eat yet?” the rat asks.
Twilight blinks at him. “In a minute.”
The rats blink back. “...what’s a minute?”
“Moment,” Twilight quickly says as Seri emerges from the kitchen, carrying bowls and spoons with her wings. “I meant to say ‘moment.’” She blinks. “...I thought you were afraid of me.”
The rat opens his mouth to reply—
“Terrified, love, is more like it,” the kangaroo says, ignoring the rat’s glare.
The rat grunts. “I’ll go ‘scared’ after I eat,” he grumbles as Seri sets the bowls on the circular table.
“Weird place ya got here, love,” the kangaroo comments, looking around.
“It’s called a library,” Twilight replies. “I’m sorry about Jay. He’s usually not so...giddy.”
The kangaroo smiles at her. “Worry none of it, love. I think that’s what happens to whoever gets bitten by this ‘Leg Crawling’ thing.”
“Leg Crawler,” the rat corrects her.
The kangaroo shrugs. “Same thing.”
“No they're not.”
The kangaroo ignores him, facing Twilight instead. “So you’re this damsel that can turn this little mouse into a pegasus, huh?” she says as Seri waddles back to the kitchen
Twilight blinks. “...huh?”
“Name’s Xana,” the kangaroo says as she grabs the rat in her pouch.
“Eep!” the rat squeaks as Xana shows him to the mare.
“And this little guy’s Moon Gaze,” the kangaroo says as Seri waddles out of the kitchen, carrying a steaming pot of soup with her gloved wings. “Says he’s a pegasus before Jay over there turned him into a mouse.”
“...Rat,” Jay mumbles in his sleep.
“Aw...” Seri chimes in as she places the pot on the middle of the table, filling the air with a delicious aroma. “He looks so cute!”
“Everything is cute for you, Seri,” Twilight mutters with a smile. She smiles a gentle smile at the terrified rat. “Hi there. I’m Twilight Sparkle.” She shifts her smile at Xana. “You can call me Twilight.”
Xana nods her head as she returns Moon Gaze inside her pouch. “Nice to meet ya. I’ll settle on calling ya ‘love’ if ya don’t mind,” she says with a smirk and a wink.
“I’ll settle on calling you ‘The Crazy Mare,’” a squeaky voice erupts from the kangaroo’s pouch.
“...mmm...and I’ll...settle...on calling you...Miss Roo...zzz...” the brown, unconscious stallion mutters, unable to notice Xana’s angry frown.
“Well,” Twilight smiles at the kangaroo. “Food’s ready. Why don’t you join us for dinner? We can talk about Moon Gaze's...transformation while we eat.”
“Care to tell us what dinner means, love?”
Twilight’s smile falters.
“It’s eating time at night!” Seri chirps, already seated by the table.
“Heh...” Xana smirks as she follows Twilight towards the table. “Smells really heavenly, love. No wonder the idiot madly wanted to return to ya.”
Twilight blinks at that. Lighting up her horn, she magically checks the contents inside Jay’s saddlebag. Happy that he collected the items and curious that there’s still one gem inside his saddlebag, Twilight leads Xana to her seat before she sits on her place as she wonders where Sienna has gone to.
Curious, Xana leans forward, staring at the foreign liquid goop inside the pot. Curious as well, Moon Gaze climbs up to the kangaroo’s head to have a look.
“Can’t deny the heavenly smell,” Xana says, leaning back. “But what in tail hairs is that thing?”
“Soup!” Seri hungrily answers as Twilight magically fills their bowls with soup.
Moon Gaze climbs down and lands on the table to investigate Xana’s soup bowl.
“Don’t eat it yet,” Twilight says as she magically pushes another bowl of soup to Moon Gaze. “Let me cool it down first.” Using her magic, she summons a blue aura, cooling the soup in the bowls and in the pot. “There we go—”
Seri dives her head towards her bowl, slaughtering the soup with her hungry beak and making a mess. “Om nom nom nom—!” She lifts her soup-smeared head back moments later, bowl empty, and blinking at the others who are staring at her. “...Is there something on my face?”
Twilight rolls her eyes before smiling an apologetic smile at the other two as she refills Seri's bowl. “She's Seri, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you two!” the swan says before diving her head back into her soup bowl.
Xana and Moon Gaze blinks at her. The duo looks at each other and shrugs. Xana grabs her bowl with her hands and digs in while Moon Gaze climbs on his bowl, standing on the edge as he eats.
“Mmm...” Moon Gaze mmm’s. Seconds later, he slips, falling to the soupy pool. His head breaks through the soup, looking around. “...Aw to heck with it.” And he slurps the soup as he sits inside his soup bowl.
Twilight chuckles at the sight as she magically refills Seri’s and Xana’s bowls. Now that she have all the items she needs, she’ll be able to look back into the past to see what happened to Equestria.
But she’ll do it later. For now, she needs to regain her strength if she wants to take a peek into the past without any interruptions.
Twilight blinks, recalling how Xana introduced Moon Gaze to her. “So...” she begins, staring at the rat. “You used to be a pegasus?”
“Mm-hmm,” Moon Gaze replies, kicking aside the thought that he's actually talking to the mad mare. He frowns a soupy frown. “Your mate turned me into a rat.”
Twilight blinks. “My mate?” She blinks again. Then it clicks, her eyes widening. “Oh no, no, no! Jay and I are not mates! We're just—”
“Friends?” Xana blurts out, smirking. “That's how it starts, love,” she says with a wink.
Twilight looks away, feeling her cheeks burning, probably because of the soup's temperature, she mentally tells herself. “A-anyway...how did it happen?”
“You wanna hear what happened, huh?” Moon Gaze asks. Upon receiving the mare's affirmative nod, he blinks. “Huh... No mare has ever been interested in listening to me or my stories,” he mutters under his breath as he climbs out of his bowl.
“Probably because the things you tell them were boring,” Xana teases.
Moon Gaze throws a glare at her.
Xana counters it with a smirk. “But a pegasus turning a rat might be an interesting tale to hear.”
“I'm excited to hear it while eating!” Seri chimes in.
Moon Gaze gives up his glare and sighs before facing the mare again. “Well, promise not to kill me while I tell you the story?”
Twilight blinks. “...Uh, I promise?”
“Thanks,” the rat smiles a wide smile at her before he retells the story of how he met Jay and Sienna, his journey to the Storm Forest, and the morning he found himself as a rat.