Back to Normal

by Trick Question

Experimental Error

Princess Twilight Sparkle stood in the library of her castle, carefully attaching wires and leads between an odd-looking stone arch and a large metal cylinder. The archway was engraved in magic runes, and the cylindrical device bore a passing resemblance to a cross between an earthquake seismometer and an industrial-size blender.

As Twilight continued her work, five other ponies and a little dragon sat and watched—with varying degrees of patience.

"Twilight, while I'm sure this latest egghead science experiment will be awesome as usual," said Rainbow Dash, "the other princesses will be here in less than an hour. How much longer is this going to take?"

"Rainbow's got a point, sugarcube," said Applejack. "We should prob'ly be gettin' gussied up right about now. It may be just a ribbon-cuttin' for the new castle, but I reckon all of Ponyville is already waitin' at the gate."

"Thank you, Applejack," said Rarity, standing by a freestanding rack of formal dresses. "These should only take a few minutes to get into, but it's always better when a lady doesn't need to rush things. Oh, and Spike: could you be a dear and watch the entrance for us?" she asked, making a 'shoo' motion with her hoof.

The little dragon sighed. "You guys do know you don't normally wear clothes, right? It's not like I'm going to see anything new."

Rarity rolled her eyes. "Clothing is not meant to hide things, darling. It is meant to accentuate. And when one is in the process of putting it on, well... Let's just say it can accentuate the wrong things," she said, then reached down to pet Spike on the head. "And let's face it, sweetie: you like some of the mystery, don't you?" Rarity asked, batting her eyes.

Spike's purple cheeks blushed a deep shade of red. "I'll... just stand out there," he said. He quickly ran outside the library entrance and shut the door behind him. Pinkie Pie giggled.

"We could start dressing while Twilight works," said Fluttershy. "Um, if that's okay with you, Twilight..."

"Look, everypony, this will only take another minute," said Twilight Sparkle. "I know I haven't told you what this is yet, but I'm so excited I would just pop if I didn't have a chance to try it out right now!"

"Tell us tell us tell us!" gasped Pinkie Pie, jumping up and grabbing Twilight by the shoulders. Fluttershy gently tugged on Pinkie's tail, and Pinkie took the hint and stepped back.

Twilight grinned. "Okay. It's a world-crossing device, just like the enchanted mirror in the Crystal Kingdom!" she revealed. "I recently discovered some of Star Swirl the Bearded's notes on interdimensional travel. For some odd reason there aren't any copies in the Royal Canterlot Archives, but there were two copies in his desk in the underground labyrinth..."

"Um, Twilight?" interrupted Pinkie Pie, her muzzle scrunched up in thought. "Didn't Princess Celestia warn you about the enter-dumpling-channel thingies after our trip to that other Equestria almost destroyed both of our universes? Because that might be a bad thing."

"Yeah, what Pinkie said," said Applejack. "Are you sure this is safe, Twi? Princess Celestia was pretty specific about limiting the universe-gallivantin' to emergencies-only."

"Don't worry! It's one-hundred-percent safe," said Twilight. "We're not even going to travel anywhere. We're just going to peek into a new universe by using this gate as a viewing port. Besides, it took Celestia more than a millenium of dimension-hopping to cross-link our universe with the alternate Equestria." Twilight Sparkle tapped a button on the seismometer device and it hummed to life. The runes on the arch began to glow.

"Oh, I get it. You want to do this before Princess Celestia and Luna get here because you want to show it off," said Rainbow Dash, wearing a devious grin.

"Bingo!" said Twilight Sparkle. She began adjusting a strange sliding control on the side of the device.

Pinkie Pie ran up to the archway and immediately craned her neck through it. "Don't leave us in suspense, Twilight! Which universe does it go to?" she asked. "Can we finally see our doubles from the Equestria High universe? I'm pretty sure I already know what I look like, but it would still be neat."

Twilight Sparkle smiled, turned to her friends, and straightened her posture before speaking. "The main problem with interdimensional travel is you have to invent a spell or create an artifact to connect to a particular universe, and that process is extremely complicated. This is why we've only been able to visit a handful of other worlds," she explained, using her best lecture voice. "However, if this works like I'm hoping, we should be able to connect to any universe, all from a single device! Each universe has its own unique set of dimensional coordinates which are calculated relative to our Equestria. Once we figure out where a given set of coordinates go, we'll be able to travel to that universe reliably."

Rarity's eyes brightened. "Might I be so bold as to presume there are other worlds out there just brimming with, oh, let's say: gold, gems, and fine silk...?" she asked.

Twilight nodded and said, "That's a safe assumption, yes! But there's a catch. I don't have a formula to determine where a set of coordinates go until we test them, and some universes might be very dangerous. That's why I have the device set up as a one-way viewer, so we can see what a world is like before we decide to travel there."

Applejack whistled. "Mighty impressive, Twilight. I reckon magic can power any complicated doodad you like, long as you got the parts and the know-how," she said.

"Well, it's not quite that simple," said Twilight. "Searching across the infinite expanse of universes requires an overwhelming amount of magic energy. Fortunately, I thought of the perfect source: the space between the universes! It's made of pure magic, and I can freely use it to power any spell that connects two universes together. Pretty brilliant, if I do say so myself," she added smugly.

"Oh, I don't know about this, Twilight," said Fluttershy, cowering back against the hanging dresses. "Harnessing all that magic energy sounds awfully dangerous..."

"Eh, don't be a spoilsport, Fluttershy," said Rainbow Dash. "Twilight's got a good track record. This should be fun. Hay, there's a universe out there where I'm a Wonderbolt already, right?"

"An infinite number of them! But again, we'll just have to try some coordinates at random until we find a world that looks interesting," said Twilight. "If I can spot a pattern, I'm hopeful I can learn to predict some of the characteristics of a universe based solely on the chosen coordinates."

Pinkie clapped her front hooves together. "Ooh! Twilight! Try Ess-Five-Point-Arr-Six-Three-Slash-Em-Six!" she shouted.

Twilight chuckled. "Pinkie, that's not even the right format for..." she said, then played a little with the dials on the device. "Well, I'll be feathered. Somehow, that actually goes somewhere. That shouldn't even be possible! How...?"

"Just a hunch," Pinkie said nonchalantly.

"Okay, now even I'm concerned. Not scared, of course, just concerned," said Rainbow Dash. Rarity and Applejack exchanged smirks.

"Here we go!" said Twilight. Applejack pulled Pinkie Pie away from the archway, and Twilight strapped a pair of goggles over her eyes. Grinning and posing like a mad scientist, Twilight reached out and yanked a large metal lever. A humming noise emanated from the machine, and it began to grow louder and louder. A deep green light started to illuminate the archway, then the device itself, and finally the entire library. After a few seconds, the light was so bright that everypony except Pinkie Pie shut their eyes.

"It's too bright! Shut it off, Twilight!" shouted Applejack over the loud din of the humming device.

---

The noise and sound disappeared with such unnatural abruptness that not even an echo remained. Everypony in the room blinked and looked around. A few ponies coughed just to make sure they could still hear.

"Great, now everything looks like Pinkie Pie's mane," Rainbow Dash moaned. Now that the green light had disappeared, everything looked blurry and pink: a bunch of pink pony-shaped blobs stood on a background of mauve.

"That's because of the color of the light. Green and magenta are opposites, and the light was bright enough to overload our green retinal cones," explained Twilight. She sounded awfully strange for some reason, like she had a frog stuck in her throat. "For a couple of minutes things might look pink and blurry. I'm sorry everypony, I have no idea where the point of failure could have been. I must have underestimated how much energy I was tapping into, but to break the rectifier's magilectric mana buffer, it must have been an impossibly large amount..."

"Well obviously," grumbled a sarcastic Rainbow Dash, only to be hushed by the pony next to her.

Twilight felt her way over to the gate and inspected it. It was still hard to see clearly, but it was obvious that no doorway had opened.

"Um, Twilight?" said a very soft, but completely unfamiliar voice. "Your voice sounds a just a little bit strange. Wait... oh, my!"

"Is that you Fluttershy?" said Rainbow Dash, whose voice was almost normal, but not quite. "My wings don't feel quite right."

"I can't really tell over here. Everything feels pretty much the same," said an unfamiliar voice whose prosody and accent matched Applejack's to a tee. "I feel a little different in the, er, underbelly location, but that could just be nerves. At least my hat seems alright."

"Oh no. It's happened to me too," said a voice much like Rarity's, rich and sonorous, except an octave deeper. "There's something resting on the top of my muzzle, I think, like a mask?" she gasped.

"Woo! This is so cool!" said a bubbly voice that could only have been Pinkie Pie's, from a bouncing shape that could only have been Pinkie Pie. Except it wasn't Pinkie's voice: it was much deeper.

"Everypony, please calm down and have a seat until we can see clearly," Twilight's blobby shape said. "I'm sure I can fix whatever this is. It has to be a simple magical backfire or something. Just try to relax." Twilight walked over to the herd and sat on the carpeting with four of her friends. Pinkie Pie, however, began pronking around the library.

"This feels so weird!" Pinkie bubbled, in that strange voice that definitely wasn't hers. "Everything's a little heavier, too. Oh, wow! Maybe Twilight turned up gravity all over Equestria?" she asked.

"No, because then we'd all notice it," said Twilight Sparkle. "Besides, not even I can do something that catastrophic, thank Sun. I mean, the death toll would be in the millions. No, wait... it would be much worse. It'd probably kill off everything except for certain species of plants and insects..."

"Twilight! Please stop saying things like that," ordered the pony that had to be Rarity, "or you're going to scare our dear, um, Flitter...? Or is it Flutter-something? My word, for the life of me I cannot think straight at the moment! And to top it off, I'm starting to get a terrible migraine."

A soft squeak sound came from the cowering pony.

"Yeah, I'm getting a killer headache too," said Rainbow Dash in her slightly-off voice. "Maybe Flitter—ugh, you know who I mean—was right about this being a bad idea. Hay, wait a minute. Can't you see, Nightfall Twinkle? I mean, you had those goggles on."

"They aren't that kind of goggles," said Nightfall Twinkle. "Wait, what did you just call me...?" Everypony's vision began to clear, and the pink shapes slowly grew more distinct.

"Did I say something weird? I'm having a hard time concentrating at the moment," said Rainbow Dash.

"Um... W-why is everypony, well, bigger?" asked Fluttershy, squinting. Everypony did, in fact, look a little larger. Their manecuts were markedly different, as well: most were quite short, except Rarity's which was the same length, and Rainbow Dash's which was longer than normal. And their muzzles were much larger. The implication was unmistakable, even if nopony wanted to believe it.

"What's going on?" asked Rarity, the nervousness apparent in her now-deeper voice. "Why do you all look different?"

"This... this isn't possible," said Nightfall Twinkle. "Magic can't cause this particular kind of change! Even the Alicorn Amulet didn't give Trixie the power to do it, and I've done an extensive body of research on the subject. Granted, we still don't have a theory on why it won't work, but the failure to find a magical solution is what's driven so much research in the medical field..."

"Pfft! Applejune, you look just like a dude!" Rainbow Dash said, then started laughing.

"Y'know, funny you should mention that, sugarcube: despite havin' a big fat muzzle yourself, that long mane makes you look a bit more like a girl," grinned Applejune. "Then again, that ain't exactly a tall order."

"WHAT?!" exclaimed Rainbow Dash. "Somepony hoof me some scissors, now."

"Rainbow Rush, no! Anything we do to our new bodies might make it harder to change back!" Nightfall warned.

"This is so super-duper cool!!!" raved Pinkie Pie, finally returning to the herd. She thrust her head between her forelegs, looking back across her underbelly.

Rarity looked around her. "Our new bodies? You're all... stallions. Why are you all stallions?" she asked, eyeing everypony as colors began returning to normal in her vision. Her eyes suddenly widened in horror. "Oh no. No no no no no," she gasped, looking around at her own body, then gingerly reached beneath her barrel with a hoof.

Rarity shrieked and fainted. Pinkie Pie looked up momentarily, then tucked her head right back between her legs.

The door to the library opened, and Spike ran inside.

"Oh no. Spike, this isn't what it looks like," Nightfall said.

"What are you talking about Nightfall? It's exactly what it looks like!" said Pinkie Pie, without even bothering to lift her head.

"Bubble Pop, get your dang muzzle out of there!" admonished Applejune, poking Bubble Pop in the ribs.

"Aww! But then whose legs am I supposed to poke it between?" said a pouting Bubble Pop as he reluctantly returned to an upright posture.

"Curio!" cried Spike, as he reached down and cradled the unicorn's head in his arms. But Spike looked very different himself. He was a little thinner, his frills were larger, his spines were softer and smaller...

"Dang. I guess it happened to Spike too," said Applejune. "Except like, gone the other way."

Spike looked up to Nightfall Twinkle with a pout on his face. "Nightfall, from now on I'm staying if you do an experiment with Curio around. I don't care if you guys are getting dressed."

"Okay, now this is completely impossible! The device couldn't possibly have affected Spike," said Nightfall. "There would be obvious structural damage if the mana surge had penetrated the walls of the library, unless..." Nightfall trotted to a nearby table and picked up his journal. The cover read: "The Journal of the Two Brothers".

"Spike, do you feel... different?" whispered Fluttershy to the little dragon.

"Um... Flittercoy, are you talking to me?" the dragon asked. "My name is Frill, remember? Is this some kind of a weird game? You stallions need to be ready for the princes soon! And what on Equestria did you do to poor Curio?"

"You know," Rainbow Rush said to Applejune, "that whole crush thing is suddenly a whole lot creepier when Spike's a filly and Curio’s a stallion. Just sayin'."

"Curio..." said Applejune. "No wait, that ain't right. His name, I mean, her name is Rarity. Why are we remembering these other names better'n our own? Nightfall, what in the hay is happening to us?"

Nightfall Twinkle winced. "Oh, horseapples. We did open a path into another dimension!" he realized. "But instead of it being confined to the gateway, it transported our minds into the bodies of these other ponies. We probably have some of their immediate memories mixed up with our own, but that should be temporary, I think..."

Curio blinked a few times in rapid succession, then looked up at Frill. "Spike, why are you a filly?" he asked. Frill appeared very confused, but helped Curio to his hooves anyway.

"Now wait just a minute," said Rainbow Rush. "Are you saying we're stuck in some universe where Equestria is run by stallions? Don't get me wrong, Twilight; I can buy the whole "infinite number of Equestrias" thing, but stallions in charge of everything? That's not even possible! They'd like, wreck everything in a matter of days!" he protested.

"I beg your pardon, Rainbow Rush," Applejune said, "but I'll have you know my brother is a stallion and he's very responsible. I'm sure a nation run by stallions could do just fine. Besides, I've heard you speak highly of your father on more'n one occasion."

"Well that's different. I mean, he's my Dad!" said Rainbow Rush.

"Oh, Rushie," giggled Bubble Pop.

"Oh dear," said Flittercoy, rising gingerly to his hooves. "Nightfall, doesn't that mean this 'Flittercoy' pony is in my body? Because then the six of them in our Equestria are having the same problem..."

"You have to solve this now, Nightfall Twinkle," said Curio, standing up straight and almost hiding the trembling in his voice. "We have no business being in these bodies, and more importantly, if a stallion is in my body, well, I shudder to think what may occur."

Frill shook her head rapidly in confusion. "Ooooookay. Sorry guys, but this is where I get off the Friendship Express. Let me know when you figure out what gender you are, and I'll come back then," she said, and headed out through the library door, shutting it behind her.

"Okay, okay, look. I'll see what I can do, but we may need to do the ceremony in this universe instead," said Nightfall Twinkle. "Don't worry about the mental mix-up, though. We know each other's names, but I can't remember Spike being called 'Frill', or anypony else from this universe. We're not turning into stallions, we're just stuck in the wrong bodies."

"Well... Doesn't anypony else think the name Frill is at least a little familiar?" asked Flittercoy. "I seem to remember it from somewhere..." he added, but his voice trailed off when he realized nopony was listening.

"Oh my gosh, guys! Guys! I can do something amazing! Guys, look!" exclaimed Bubble Pop.

"Not now, Bubble Pop," said Rainbow Rush. "Nightfall, how will doing a ceremony here help anything? We need to be there, for our ceremony," he asked. "You do remember that one right? The one happening in like, half an hour? The one where we're not a bunch of dudes?"

"Hold up now, Rush, I think I get it," said Applejune. "It's like, lookin' in a mirror. If we do it over here, that means they gotta do it over there. So if Nightfall Twinkle can't fix things in time, we just gotta bite the ol' apple and go out there and pretend the best we can."

Rainbow Rush buried his face in a hoof. "I can't believe this. Stallions in our bodies? I mean come on! Don't you realize what would happen if a stallion ended up in the body of a mare? Haven't you mares ever met a stallion?!"

"Oh, Rushie, it can't be that bad!" insisted Bubble Pop, a huge grin on his face. "But check this out, guys! Helicopter!!! Woo woo woo woo woo!" he said, bending his knees over and over again as...

Applejune's face went pale. "Okay, we may have a problem," he said.

Comments

[Leonzilla]

Must. Resist. The urge.

Donotpostafirstcommentdonotpostafirstcommentdonotpostafirstcommentdonotpostafirstcomment...

First!

Damn it!

[cheesegal]

Did you add anything new to the chapters, cause I think I've already read this story but it says these are new chapters.

[Ice Star]

"You know," Rainbow Rush said to Applejune, "that whole crush thing is suddenly a whole lot creepier when Spike's a filly and Curio’s a stallion. Just sayin'."

"Now wait just a minute," said Rainbow Rush. "Are you saying we're stuck in some universe where Equestria is run by stallions ? Don't get me wrong, Twilight; I can buy the whole "infinite number of Equestrias" thing, but stallions in charge of everything? That's not even possible! They'd like, wreck everything in a matter of days!" he protested.

Rainbow Rush buried his face in a hoof. "I can't believe this. Stallions in our bodies? I mean come on! Don't you realize what would happen if a stallion ended up in the body of a mare? Haven't you mares ever met a stallion?!"

(I do like seeing a more unique spin on the cliche choices for a male mane six, though.)

I had no idea that dimension hopping made you amazingly sexist. Wowza.

[Aether Spark]

"Now wait just a minute," said Rainbow Rush. "Are you saying we're stuck in some universe where Equestria is run by stallions? Don't get me wrong, Twilight; I can buy the whole "infinite number of Equestrias" thing, but stallions in charge of everything? That's not even possible! They'd like, wreck everything in a matter of days!" he protested.

"I beg your pardon, Rainbow Rush," Applejune said, "but I'll have you know my brother is a stallion and he's very responsible. I'm sure a nation run by stallions could do just fine. Besides, I've heard you speak highly of your father on more'n one occasion." Thanks AJ