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Prologue ◈ Wake up.752 words
1 ◈ Take a look around.985 words
1 ◈ There's so much to see,1,120 words
1 ◈ And so much to do.1,025 words
2 ◈ There are new faces to meet,888 words
2 ◈ And old friends to greet.2,258 words
™Me-Pony1,257 words
3 ◈ But rise does the danger,1,594 words
3 ◈ And it will only get stranger.2,928 words
4 ◈ You'll never know what's in store,2,213 words
4 ◈ If you never step out the door.1,758 words
4 ◈ Break out.1,363 words
4 ◈ Explore.1,799 words
5 ◈ It may be treacherous,1,110 words
5 ◈ This uncertain future,1,070 words
5 ◈ But in the end,2,159 words
5 ◈ Things turn out okay.1,317 words

1 ◈ Take a look around.

"Spike!" Twilight gasped. Her hands shot to her head, grazing over something strapped to her face. "...Spike? Spike, are you still there?"

Wait. Wait, hold on, since when did she have hands again? Last she remembered, she hadn't touched the mirror portal in ages. And on top of that... she followed the curves of the object to a strap around the back of her head. This was a headset of some sort. The kind used for virtual reality. She'd tried it once before while visiting Sunset, but why was there one strapped to her face no--

Her thoughts screeched to a halt as she tore off the headset. This wasn't her room. This wasn't even close to her room, or really anything even remotely recognizable, for that matter. No shelves stuffed with books, no cluttered desk stacked with more reading material... just a plain room with bare walls. Her eyes turned downward. This wasn't her bed, either! She patted the worn surface of the cot. This was some sort of hospital bedding, from the looks of it.

"Spike." Twilight looked up again. "Spike, this isn't funny. I know you've had Rainbow Dash throw my bed out the window a couple of times before, but this is too far!"

"...Spike?"

Nothing. No thinly-veiled snicker, no toes poking from beneath the drapes... not that there were any drapes to begin with.

Twilight rose from the cot, only to be met with a painful yank on her side. Her hands shot toward the pain as she winced. It felt almost as if something was being torn out of her body.

Wait.

She gripped the bundle of tubes emerging from her body. She slowly opened an eye, peeking at the bundle.

Wait, what?

A stray bubble gurgled through one of them. She felt something rise in her throat.

This wasn't real. It couldn't be! After all, if she'd traveled through the mirror portal, she would've remembered, right? And besides, last night didn't exactly have much time set aside for sleeping, anyway. Maybe she'd fallen asleep midway through packing, and this was all some sort of strange dream.

Yes. That seemed a little more logical. This was just a nightmare. Now then, all she had to do was... wake up.

Twilight sucked in a breath and pinched herself. Nothing.

...Maybe she’d become stuck in a lucid dream? She racked her mind. Would Princess Luna even allow such a dream? It wasn't like her to keep a pony trapped in their own dream for any more than a few minutes at most.

She sighed, slumping back onto the cot, scratching at the tubes. They had to lead somewhere, right?

She leaned back, flinching as her head hit something metallic.

Bingo.

Twilight whirled around, one hand still gripping the tubes to avoid further irritation. Sure enough, those same tubes seemed to plug into the... thing behind her. For all intents and purposes, aside from some of the contraptions Flim and Flam had brought by from time to time, it didn't look like anything she'd ever seen. Then again, between the tubes coming from her body and the quietly whirring machine behind her, it wasn't all that hard to put two and two together.

She turned her attention to the plasticky tag strapped around her wrist.

She was on life support.

But... how? Why would she dream of being on life support in the human world? And... in the case of all this not being a dream... what the heck was it that put her on life support in the first place? She brought the tag closer to her face.

"Lisa... Garnet?" Twilight read aloud. That definitely wasn't her name. It hardly sounded like anything native to Equestria, either. Could that mean--

She patted herself down. Scenarios began to swirl in her head. Was it possible that she'd maybe been misidentified? It wasn't unheard of for patients to occasionally get mixed up. But that still led back to an earlier question: what put her here in the first place?

Twilight shook her head. What was she thinking? Dreams hardly tended to be logical, anyway. She looked around again. This room was hardly fitting for a medical facility, either. Really, it seemed to be more along the lines of some sort of cheap apartment. If this really was real, wouldn't she be surrounded by doctors and nurses the moment she woke?

So. That seemed to settle things a bit. By far, it was most plausible that all of this was just some sort of weird fever-dream, impenetrable by Luna. She reached for the headset. Maybe, if she went ahead and put it back on, she'd wake up again, but in her own room. Complete with whatever it was that she may have fallen asleep on from the pile of items on her bed.

Her fingers brushed past something on the device's side. For something that didn't bother to put her in an environment that made sense for someone on life support, this dream really was surprisingly detailed. She traced over the imprint with her fingers. This was some kind of text.

Well, at least there was something to read now. She turned the headset around, squinting at the worn letters.

"HybridEye Technologies. Property of Lisa Garnet."

Again with the whole 'Lisa Garnet' name. What a weird dream. She remounted the headset over her face. Maybe the way out of this dream was through the headset?

Nothing.

Twilight frowned, lifting the headset again. So much for that idea. She slipped the device off her head, cradling it in her lap.

What if this really was real? What if--she glanced at the wristband again--she'd been this Lisa Garnet girl this entire time? This looked like a virtual reality headset, after all, so...

Her heart dropped. What if Twilight Sparkle never existed in the first place? That would mean--her eyes went wide.

"Spike?" she whispered. "Hello?"

"...Anyone?"

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