Beyond the Bounds of Universes

by CTVulpin

Scene 5 - Twilight's Castle

Starlight huffed as she straightened up from crawling around under the Map. “Still nothing,” she said. “Spike, we’ve been searching this room for the past fifteen minutes. There aren’t that many places a stack of papers could be hiding. Are you sure Twilight’s notes can’t be anywhere else?”

On the far side of the room, Spike shrugged. “Twilight was in here working on them when I went to bed last night,” he said. “It’s the most likely place for the notes to be other than the library and Twi’s study, and we’ve already turned both of them upside down – almost literally.”

“I’d say we’ve accomplished that here too,” Starlight said. She sighed and sat down, resting her chin on the table near the models of Appleoosa and Dodge Junction. “What is this Map’s deal anyway?” she grumbled after a minute. “Since its creation, there’s been one certain fact: it only ever calls on the Elements of Harmony to go fix big friendship problems across Equestria. Other ponies inevitably get involved in fixing the problems, but only Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Rarity get summoned. Suddenly, that rule’s out the window and so far over the horizon that the Map can call on ponies from other realities.”

“Well,” Spike said, coming over and hopping up on a chair, “technically it’s calling for Twilight twice.”

Starlight glowered. “That’s not the point,” she said. “Who is this other Twilight, to the Map? What has she ever done to be connected to it like this? You and I are more qualified to be called on, Spike. I’ve interacted with the Map directly in two different ways, and the magic that built this whole castle gave you a chair right next to Twilight’s, there. Where’s your call to go solve friendship problems?”

“Uh, Starlight,” Spike said, raising an eye-ridge, “you’re starting to get a… nasty gleam in your eye there.”

Starlight straightened up. “What, I’m not allowed to get worked up about stuff anymore?” she snapped. She turned and marched away toward the door. “I’m just going to go wait for Twilight to come back,” she announced.

“Hey, hold on!” Spike exclaimed, jogging after her, afraid to leave her unsupervised in her present mood.

Starlight ignored Spike’s efforts to get her attention as they moved down the hall. As they neared the Mirror Room, however, the dragon’s persistence started to grate, and she whirled to give him a piece of her mind. Before she got the words out, however, the sounds of multiple bodies screaming while falling to the floor and onto each other came from the Mirror Room, and after a second a persistent beeping joined the cacophony. As Starlight and Spike nudged the door open, the babble of voices gained coherency.

“Again, Twi?”

“It’s not my fault; it reacts to Equestrian magic, and, well…”

“Can you turn it off, please?”

“I’ll try, but I don’t have hands any- whoops!”

Starlight stepped into the room just as a round purple, beeping device on a string necklace slid across the floor to come to rest at her hooves. She and Spike looked up from the device to see two instances of Twilight Sparkle and one yellow unicorn with a bright red and yellow mane in front of the Mirror. One of the Twilights was the alicorn Spike and Starlight were familiar with, while the other was a unicorn wearing black glasses, a small purple charm on a necklace, and her mane tied back in a ponytail.

Spike bent down and picked up the magic detector. “So, how do you make this stop?” he asked.

“Uh, just switch it off,” Sci-Twi answered. “On the back.” Spike found the little switch and clicked it, silencing the detector, and then walked over and handed it to Sci-Twi, who clumsily managed to get it hanging around her neck. “Thanks, uh… Spike?” Sci-Twi said.

“That’s me,” Spike said, giving her a thumbs-up.

“You’re a… dragon?”

“All my life,” Spike said proudly. “Eeexcept for a couple weeks here and there, traveling to your world. Oh,” he turned to Princess Twilight, “how are we going to keep names straight?”

As Princess Twilight answered the question, Sunset slipped away from the group and approached Starlight. “Hey there, I’m Sunset Shimmer,” she said, offering a hoof.

“Starlight Glimmer,” Starlight answered, accepting the hoof-shake. “I’m the Princess’s student in Friendship.”

Sunset’s eyebrows went up. “How’d you get that position?” she asked.

Starlight averted her gaze and kicked at the floor in embarrassment. “Well, it started with her and her friends stopping me from holding a town’s worth of cutie marks hostage, and then I tried to get revenge but she managed to talk me down… eventually.”

“So,” Sunset said, “you used to be evil and she turned you into a friend.” Starlight nodded, and Sunset smirked. “Welcome to the club,” she said.

“Eh?” Starlight said.

“My story’s a lot like yours,” Sunset said. “Sci-Twi’s too, except I was the one doing the friendshipping in her case.” She put a hoof on Starlight’s shoulder. “Good to see the Princess of Friendship is still collecting folks like us, eh?”

“It’s also nice to see that two of those ‘folks’ are already bonding,” Princess Twilight said at Sunset’s shoulder, startling both her and Starlight. “You two go right on ahead,” the Princess continued, “Sci-Twi and I are heading to the Map and see if we can figure out what it wants.” She left the room with Sci-Twi following close behind, the bespectacled unicorn looking to be somewhere between amazed and overwhelmed by her surroundings.

Sunset and Starlight exchanged a look. “Map?” Sunset asked.

“I’ll explain on the way,” Starlight said.

Comments

[BenRG]

I suspect, Starlight, that the reason is that Sci-Twi is also the Bearer of the Element of Magic. Because her magic is a mirror of Princess Twilight's own, I suspect that the map's arcane intelligence (AI) cannot differentiate between them.

[ConsciousHaze196]

Before she got the words out, however, the sounds of multiple bodies screaming while falling to the floor and onto each other came from the Mirror Room

They might already have tested that with Pinkie (from Friendship Games Bloopers), but if not, they shouldn't have assumed that the particular portal would work right for the other world's residents. It's not certain that whoever designed it, had Canterlot High's people travelling to Equestria in mind.