Transferred

by Archmage Ansrit

Prologue - Return to Sender

Spike dragged his feet. He did not feel like doing much, or anything at all, but he still moved.

His path cut right through the middle of the park it all had began. He could still hear it.

"Twilight, dear!" Rarity had said. "Oh, thank you so much for keeping me company; a trip to the spa just isn't the same when I am all by myself."

Spike sighed, remembering that Fluttershy had been too busy taking care of a few sick critters to go to their weekly spa date.

"Thank you Rarity." Twilight had replied. "Spike is right, I've been too tense lately; an afternoon to relax is just what I need!"

Spike had smiled, knowing that he had successfully prevented Twilight from absorbing every tome in the huge stack until she couldn't function any more and he had to drag her flank to the couch.

That had been the last time he smiled, now that he thought about it.

"Oh, I bet you do!" Another voice then said. Even the memory still chilled him to the bone.

They would turn around and there would it be, a familiar figure made of smoke holding a curved red horn and something that looked like a metallic golf ball.

Discord.

"I tried embedding pieces of me in several places, but the Elements were too thorough." He said. "I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, so I guess I'll just see if this makes my kind of fun."

Spike remembered. He remembered too well. The horn was surrounded by a black aura, which also appeared around the sphere. Twilight then tossed him to the side and jumped in front of Rarity, who had tripped trying to turn around and run away.

"I tried to feed and enlarge the pieces, but I can't any more." Discord prepared his throw. "This thing I 'found' reacts strangely to magic, what will it do with dark magic?"

"Stay away from 'em yah filthy varmint!" Applejack yelled, then jumped as Discord lobbed the thing at Twilight.

Not that it mattered, Rarity and Twilight were swallowed within the black and orange sphere of energy just as well. Even the grass was gone, leaving behind a bare patch of dirt.

Well, not any more. It crept back even as the Canterlot scientists and wizards tried to keep the space as free of contamination as possible; the white tent did keep out the insects, though. They tried to study the half-melted piece of slag right where it had fallen, since Spike recounted everything he had seen - after he managed to calm down from his panic attack, that is. They still did not know why the ground was left behind, but the grass vanished like the sphere had cut it and... teleported it away.

Teleport, not any of those other dark, dangerous, and depression-causing words the scientists feared would be the alternatives.

He spied the tall, regal form of princess Celestia among them, as well as Shining Armor and Cadence... wait, it was like, six in the morning -or as he used to say, stupid o'clock early- did Celestia raise the sun from Ponyville again?

She was taking it hard as well.

But... Pinkie swore time and time again that they were fine, that they would see them again. It kept him going. If... if Twilight was still out there, he had to keep the library clean and properly shelved. He had to. When Twilight came back he wanted her to see their home and feel like she could just plop down on the couch and do nothing, or pick up a book and study, or just read it for fun, or fall asleep at the desk trying to complete some report or other assignment, or invite Rarity and Fluttershy over for tea that would run out so quickly in topics so enthralling for them that he would end up making three out of every five pots.

Spike wiped away his tears... where did they come from? Wasn't Twilight coming back? Wasn't she likely to return unexpectedly? Didn't she scold him thousands of times for sleeping in and delaying the schedule she so carefully constructed? He couldn't just stand there crying, he had a library to organize! He didn't want Twilight to come back to a messy home! It would ruin her return! He didn't want her to be upset with him...

He wiped away more tears. He couldn't be seen like this. Applebloom and Sweetie Belle were visiting the library more often now, just to see him, and he could tell that it comforted them a little. He was older than them, too, and in every story ever the eldest took care of the younger ones, so it was his responsibility to look out for them. He had almost smiled the last time they were together - for real, not the fake ones that don't count.

He resumed his ambling towards the tree. Fluttershy tried to insist on walking him there, but he could see quite plainly that she still needed some time for herself. In the end, he was walking alone.

Relatively speaking, of course, Peewee was perched on his largest spine.

He straightened his back; he was almost out of the park now, and that meant he was halfway to the library.

A few minutes later, just as he was about to open the door, he heard something and froze. It was the sound of a unicorn's teleport, followed by that sound. It was nowhere near as loud, nor as twisted, but he could still make out the sound that sent the three ponies away.

"Ballpark my tail." He heard a voice, and now his heart leapt inside his chest.

He slammed the door open, and saw a purple pony, wearing something white and red, sprawled on the wooden floor.

"Twilight!" He yelled, and at the top of his lungs, too. He was next to her in a flash, but he was too surprised -and just a little scared- to touch her. She was breathing deeply, as if she was exhausted. Peewee took off and perched next to Owlowiscious, watching the library intently.

"Spike..." Twilight said, barely audible and smiling weakly. "I missed you."

"I- me too!" He blinked, trying to get rid of the moisture clouding his vision. He felt the corners of his mouth turning up. "Y-you've been gone for two weeks and I-"

"Two weeks?" That voice... Rarity?! "Goodness, I kept hearing 'Absolute' this and that, but to think..."

She trailed off. Spike glanced around, finding the fabulous white unicorn also resting on the floor; she wore something similar to Twilight and with a strange device on her back. The baby dragon noticed just now a large, spiked green orb haphazardly covered in metal.

"Even my hoof is alright..." Twilight said, snapping him out of his trance and making him turn around to see her. She was inspecting her hoof, and Spike gently took it in his claws, but no matter how he turned it he couldn't find anything wrong with it.

"It was just a scratch, Spike." She said, looking at him with droopy eyes as if she were about to fall asleep. "I was clumsy and nicked my hoof on a pipe. Hehe. Figures I'd trip two minutes before coming back."

Twilight also had a strange thing on her back, kind of wing-like in appearance.

By now, he began to hear a murmur coming from outside. He was so relieved, that he somehow missed the fact that a crowd was gathering outside the library.

"Make way!" Somepony outside said, and the crowd parted to reveal Shining Armor, Cadence and Celestia closing the formation.

"Twilight..." Shining Armor breathed the word, stopping as soon as his eyes met hers, as if he were afraid that disturbing the scene would cause her to vanish like a figure of smoke.

"Hey everypony." Twilight said from her position on the floor.

"Ahg, mah head." Applejack drawled from somewhere else. "Not ta be rude or nuthin', but we gotta collect sum' crystals."

"You're right." Twilight tried pushing herself up, but with the way her legs were shaking, the trio by the door wasted no time in surrounding her.

"Please, Twilight, you need rest." Celestia said, a thousand questions forming in the back of her head, but she managed to push them back as she took her student's head and rested it against her body.

Cadence, too, wanted nothing more than to know. What happened to her? Why was she so tired? Why were all of them so tired? What was that about crystals? Where had they been? Were they going to be fine? What was that thing? What was inside their saddlebags? Why was she wearing fake wings?

"Bu-but we need to move." Twilight tried to stand, but couldn't even fight back her own wish to sink deeper in the warmth of the princess's embrace, in the safety of her library. "Dextera doesn't know the way."

"Who?"

"Explanations later." Rarity said, still struggling to stand up. "We need to collect her crystal as soon as possible."

"What are you talking about?" Shining Armor asked, the amount of unknowns starting to grate on his nerves. "What crystal? Whose?"

Twilight looked at him and gave him a small groan of exasperation.

"The essence, the core of Nightmare Moon."

Author's Note:

This has been inspired by a multitude of Fanfics, where one of the mane cast -usually Twilight- is flung out of their corner of reality and lands... elsewhere.

I decided to go for one of the less known games... well, not that I own, since I have quite a few obscure games in my collection... but it's still not very known.

Baroque is a dark game that starts entirely In Media Res, and you have to piece the plot together. I took some liberties with the gameplay elements to make it easier to understand to non-players, and hopefully I won't mess it up too badly.

I decided to use three ponies because the protagonist is mute (even that has a lengthy explanation behind it) and sending AJ completely alone as was my original intention would have been way too hard for me to make it work.