Join Velvet Step, ballerina extraordinaire as she tries to traverse dimensions with the help of a stressed-out princess and her father-in-law-sort-of. Between you and me, her chances don't look too good, but what do I know? I'm only the writer.
Velvet Step is a mostly ordinary earth pony from Canterlot. She dances in the ballet, goes to night clubs, and has the best friends that any pony could ask for.
And then, her bathroom suddenly, inexplicably and incomprehensibly becomes a gateway to another dimension (that's where the "mostly" comes in, you see).
Now, trapped in a different Equestria, her only hopes of returning home lie squarely in the capableprofessionalunlikely-to-wreck-anything hooves of a frustrated princess and a retired king with a penchant for dark magic. Will Velvet conquer the long journeys, dangerous missions, sleepovers and editing mistakes that stand in her way, or will this be her last (mis)step?
Find out by starting with the Prologue below, seriously, you'll be missing context if you don't. Special thanks to goshhhh for her incredible cover art, and for being able to interpret what I wanted even better than what I myself was capable of.
Special thanks also to Crystal Wishes for allowing me to use her OC — Velvet Step — before she really understood exactly what it was that she was agreeing to.
Velvet Step of Canterlot was an accomplished mare. She was only a young adult — pink-coated and mauve-maned with a ballet slipper emblazoned on her hindquarters — and had already conquered the worlds of both dancing and homeownership. That was using a really, really generous definition of ‘conquered,’ of course, but she had conquered them nevertheless. And also of course, in a particular moment in time, on a particular Tuesday afternoon, absolutely none of that matter. Certainly not while she was faced with a particular emergency:
“Why did I drink so much lemonade?”
Fortunately, it was a particular emergency that’s already been dealt with at this point in the story, and accordingly, there shall be no provided rundown of events, because ew. Although a rundown of events was likewise not needed, as far as Velvet Step was concerned, for after she finished drying her hooves and replaced the towel she used on the crystal towel rack, and looked at the crystal walls, and the crystal floor, and the crystal sink, and crystal toilet, and crystal magazine caddy, she began to sense that something, possibly, was amiss.
“Crystal? When and why did you remodel our bathroom in, um, crystal?” she asked.
There was no answer.
“Crystal?” Velvet asked again, turning around and opening the door.
It was perfectly understandable, really, when her eyes opened as wide as they could when it was not the hallway in her condo that greeted her, but a griffon wearing shining, silver armor with jeweled studs and a crested helmet, and ominous music.
The fact that he was there at all was bad enough, but even worse, he looked very irritated and even angry with her, as if she'd disrupted his carefully organized schedule. Still even worse, he had background music, somehow. The changelings had run all over Canterlot and nearly conquered Equestria, and they didn’t have background music! With sudden, terrified resignation, Velvet realized that she was staring down the Final Boss.
She shrank back from him as he reached out with one of his taloned feet and said, “Passport.”
Velvet blinked. “Passport?” she asked.
The griffon nodded, once. “Please,” he added.
“Well, why would I need a passport to be in my own condo?” she asked. That was actually a good point, and gave her the courage to stand up taller. “If anything, I should be asking you for your passport! Please.”
The griffon’s eyes narrowed, and Velvet shrank back again. “You must be confused, or trying to distract me,” he said. “There aren’t any condos in the Crystal Empire, and there never will be if I have my way.”
Velvet wasn’t terribly interested in whether the griffon would have his way or not. “The Crystal Empire?!”
“I can’t be in the Crystal Empire! I live in Canterlot!” Velvet protested. “Look, Mister, um —”
“Leon.”
“Leon. I was in my bathroom, right? Doing… bathroom things. And then I was drying my hooves off, and then I was here!”
Leon look at Velvet for a few moments, judging her, and then he nodded. “This doesn’t fall under immigration. Come with me and I’ll take you to the right department,” he said, turning around and walking away.
Velvet stared after him. “You actually have a department for this sort of thing?” she asked as she trotted after him. She stopped trotting almost immediately when she found herself in a large, crystalline room, filled with several crystalline ponies, a griffon (duh) and a crystalline throne with one each of a non-crystalline unicorn standing next to it, and a non-crystalline alicorn sitting on it.
Unbeknownst to Velvet — but beknownst to us — these two were the HABICs*, which does highlight a sort of disturbing trend of crystal ponies always being ruled by non-crystal ponies, but there’s no time to discuss socio-politics.
Velvet’s attention was pulled off the crystal ponies and towards the throne when she heard Leon glaring at her (editor’s note: a griffish glare sounds exactly like a griffon clearing their throat), and she hurried over to avoid incurring his wrath and restarting his background music. Once she was there, he returned his attention to the white unicorn and pink alicorn who were giving him looks that were either thoughtful, or that looked thoughtful so as not to restart his background music. Leon was a seriously scary dude, no joke.
“This mare claims she was using her washroom in Canterlot, and sometime before she finished washing up, she was here,” Leon explained. “She has no passport, so I would normally address this myself, but this seems more like a level ‘Dusk’ dimensional displacement. Enjoy.” Without saying even one more word, the griffon took to the air and flew out an opened window.
All eyes watched him for a moment, and then all eyes jumped to Velvet. Princess Mi Amore ‘Cadence’ ‘Cady’ Cadenza especially looked like she could barely contain herself.
“Oh, this is so exciting!” she exclaimed with a little hop off her throne, unable to contain herself. “We’ve never had a Dusk level event before!”
“You mean besides the time my sister almost destroyed the whole world?” asked Prince-Consort Shining ‘Shiny’ ‘Armor’ Armor before he turned to the audience they had. “Alright, court’s adjourned, wrap it up. Show’s over, ponies.”
As four score divided by four and seven grumbling crystal ponies filed out of the throne room, Velvet had Cadence’s close and undivided attention. The attention was uncomfortably close, much like Cadence was, having almost immediately invaded Velvet’s personal space to scrutinize her with narrowed eyes. “Well, you don’t look like a DB,” she decided, taking a step back. “But I guess that’s how these things usually work, so it’s not really a surprise that you wouldn’t look any different from an earth pony.”
“‘DB?’” asked a confused Velvet an instant before she realized there was a more important question. “Wait, if you can’t tell, then how come Leon could?”
“Because Leon does things,” answered Shining as he joined the conversation. “Once, a whole swarm of changelings tried to invade the Empire, but didn’t bring any documentation. They didn’t make it two steps past the city limits before Leon stopped and detained all of them repeatedly without backup from the regular Guard.”
“He’s a seriously scary dude, no joke,” Cadence said to summarize her thoughts on the matter. “He’s so good at his job that he is literally the entire Department of Immigrations and Emigrations, but he’s a seriously scary dude. Oh, but enough about him.” Once more, Cadence invaded Velvet’s space. “Let’s talk about you! We’ve never had a DB visiting before! Do you need anything? How about some tea? I’ll make you some tea!” Her horn shimmered with a blue field, and she vanished with the pop of a teleport, leaving Velvet stunned and unsure of how to react.
“Well, that should keep her busy for a few minutes, at least” Shining remarked. “Don’t hold it against her. She’s got some family issues that hurt her self-confidence, so she’s always looking for big accomplishments to make.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I get what she’s going through, sort of,” Velvet replied. She shuffled her hooves for a moment. “So, about getting me home….”
“Oh! Right.” In fact, Shiny had forgotten for a little bit. “Yeah, that’s kind of beyond both of us, but luckily we have an in-house expert on these kinds of things. He’s probably an expert, at least, but if he can figure out how to make a temporal singularity work in harmony with a bunch of disparate devices in order to prevent the destruction of the world, this should be pretty easy, right?”
“I guess so?” Velvet replied uncertainly. Getting home sounded quite dangerous, after all. “So, are we going to go see him now?”
“We’re already here.”
“What?!” Velvet exclaimed, spinning in all directions one after the other to take in her surroundings. Sure enough, the throne room was nowhere to be seen, and they were now in a crystalline corridor somewhere else in the castle. “When did we get here?! How?!”
“Editing mistake,” Shining replied as he walked down the corridor, not even slowing down.
Velvet stared after him, and then galloped after him. “What do you mean, ‘editing mistake?’”
“Yes! Yes!” Sombra shouted as electricity arced all around him.
His laboratory was dark — the lights were out, after all — save for all that glorious electricity, arcing upwards and along two tall pylons mounting to one of the workbenches, and the angry red field surrounding his horn. “Finally, one age ends and a new one begins!
His horn momentarily glowed even brighter, emitting a sudden, very intense pulse of magic. The electric arcs took on the same color as his fields, and two gigantic bolts flew down to strike the surface of the workbench. After several seconds, the bolts vanished, as did the rest of their brethren; the only light that wasn’t Sombra’s field was an even, red glow emanating from between the pylons.
“Success!” Sombra threw his hooves in the air, triumphant. The glow around Sombra’s horn died, the machinery powered down and the overhead lights came back on. With a manic grin, Sombra looked at his workbench, allowing his eyes to dance over the gleaming serrated blade of the steak knife resting between the pylons. “I’ve done it. The world’s actual sharpest knife!” His horn lit up again, and another blade zipped over from a different workbench. “You hear that, you overhyped hacksaw? ‘World’s Sharpest Knife,’ my salted licorice caboose —” The offending knife vanished in a puff of smoke — “Couldn’t even cut through that two-week old Prench bread. Oh, but that’s no longer a problem, now that I have the world’s actual sharp —” He cleared his throat — “The World’s Actual Sharpest Knife™!”
Lighting his horn once more, his magical field wrapped around the tang of the World’s Actual Sharpest Knife™ — because the handle is always added after the actual blade is made, obviously — and swept it carelessly off the workbench. The blade passed effortlessly and resistance-free through one of the steel pylons, the top half of which immediately tipped sideways and crashed to the floor.
“Wow-wie! Ha ha, that’s, huh.” The smile dropped off Sombra’s face. “That might actually be too sharp.”
With exceeding care, the blade was slowly shifted around within Sombra’s magic field until it was steady and the point was aimed very definitely towards the floor. “Yeah, definitely too sharp for this world. I’ll have to destroy it,” he said to himself, before throwing a glance and a smile towards a table at the far end of the room. “After I slice my sandwich.”
Without warning, the workshop door flew open. “Hey, Pops!” shouted Shining Armor.
“What?!” Sombra shouted in surprise. His magic field failed and the World’s Actual Sharpest Knife™ fell point-first into the blue crystal floor, and then kept falling.
And falling.
And falling, maybe forever.
“Well, that’s the last time we’ll ever see that,” Sombra grumped, glaring at Shining. “Nice work, Armor. It’s so nice to know that I can still count on you to ruin everything!”
“Wait, if you were working on something that important, why didn’t you lock the door?” Velvet asked as she stepped around Shining Armor. “Shouldn’t that have been the first thing you did?”
Sombra stared at Velvet for several uncomfortable moments. “Who asked you?” he demanded. “Also, who are you?
“I can field that one,” Shining replied before Velvet could say anything. “She’s from some other Equestria in some other dimension and she needs help getting back home.”
Sombra stared at Shining. “Um, ok?” he replied uncertainly. “And you brought her here because….”
“Because you’re the second smartest pony I know, obviously. Also, you’re available,” Shining replied casually.
Sombra regarded Shining with bemusement, and then looked to Velvet with a smile. “Would you excuse us for a moment, my dear? Armor has just said something very foolish, and I need to knock his block off.”
“Oh, well, I, um,” Velvet stammered.
“No no, I was just leaving anyway,” Shining interjected. He turned about and made his exit, and as he did, he said over his shoulder, “See you around, number two.”
“I’ll level you later, Armor!” Sombra shouted after him before he turned to Velvet, scowling.
Velvet smiled back nervously.
A second later, Sombra’s horn lit with a red magic field. “Ok, stand still and let’s see what we have to work with,” he said. Several tiny beams of light shined out from the tip of his horn and danced rapidly across Velvet’s body, starting at the top of her head and moving all the way to the tips of her hooves, giving her the distinct feeling of a ball of blunted nails rolling over her; not painful, but definitely unpleasant.
“Wow! You’re from Equestria-Sextus? I didn’t know you could even leave from there!” Sombra exclaimed once he’d finished his examination. A moment later, he raised his hoof to his chin, rubbing it in thought. “Not without a huge subspace disturbance, at least.”
Twilight Sparkle’s Karmageddon Lens fired, hurling a pitch black orb up and up and up into the sky where it exploded — or maybe imploded; it was really hard to tell — and left a sphere of pure negative energy hanging over the Crystal Empire that threatened to destroy the world bigger than anyone ever thought possible.
“Exactly like that one,” Sombra concluded, dropping his hoof back to the floor. “Really, I should’ve seen this coming. It’s actually kind of surprising you didn’t pop up sooner, all things considered.”
“So, you know how I got here? And that means you can help me?” Velvet asked, hopeful.
“Pfft! No. I don’t do dimensional stuff. Anymore. This is definitely dimensional stuff that I don’t do anymore,” was exactly not the response that she wanted to hear from Sombra. But it was still the one that she got.
“Oh.” Velvet wilted, casting her dejected gaze towards the floor.
“But I know somepony who can,” Sombra added. He raised a hoof and rubbed his chin again. “She’s all the way over in Ponyville, though, so I guess that’s kind of a complication.”
“Oh,” Velvet said again, perking up a little. Really, it was only that kind-of-a-complication that was holding her back. “So, what do we do, then?”
The front doors of the Crystal Castle opened in a hurry. It was a good thing too, because not a second later a two-wheel mechanical monstrosity — with an attached sidecar! — went careening out of them and onto the street outside. Several ponies who were walking likewise went careening. Out of the way, that is, since the driver, one Sombra Crepúsculo, did not feel inclined to give them much room or even warning aside from shouting, “Out of my way, road hogs!”
Velvet, in the sidecar, was proud of herself, or would have been had she not been terrified. She’d managed to resist asking exactly how they’d moved from Sombra’s lab to the front doors in what felt no longer than a shoddy scene transition (another ‘editing mistake?’). She’d managed to resist asking exactly how and when both she and Sombra had donned brown leather (ew!) jackets, white scarves, hard black skull caps and goggles (still another one?). She’d even managed to resist screaming her lungs out as they went zipping down the paved thoroughfare and then out onto the unpaved highway in what she assumed must have been record time (probably not an editing mistake, but still terrifying). But as they hit the highway, there was one thing she couldn’t resist.
“What is this thing?” she demanded, hooves somehow maintaining a death grip on her seat despite not having fingers.
“It’s a magicycle!” Sombra replied happily, maintaining an unreasonable speed as they went barreling down the road and grinning like a madpony all the while. “It’s like a bicycle, but it’s powered by magic and genius.”
“What’s a bicycle?” Velvet asked.
“It’s like a unicycle, but with two wheels,” Sombra said. “But don’t worry about that! It’s not that far to Ponyville, and then we’ll get you back home.”
“If I live that long,” Velvet whined, sinking down into the sidecar.
“Oh, don’t be such a baby! This is perfect — lean left!”
Without even thinking, Velvet did so, and Sombra jerked his own body hard to the left, tilting the magicycle almost onto the rims of its wheels and lifting the sidecar into the air just in time to avoid being pulverized on a large rock. An instant later, the sidecar crashed back onto the road with a jolt that Velvet felt in her teeth.
“Perfectly safe! Besides, how many other times have you been riding through the Equestrian countryside on a magicycle in another dimension?”
Velvet pondered that for only a moment before her face lit up. “Hey, you’re right!” she exclaimed, throwing her hooves over her head as they zoomed south.
It was a quiet night in Ponyville before a most irritating roar woke everyone up long enough for them to roll over and grumble about those lousy ‘magicycle gangs’ before drifting back to sleep. The fact that none of them had ever heard of a magicycle was — either oddly or predictably — of no impediment to this.
Sombra was providing commentary about Ponyville as he and Velvet rolled along towards the end of their magicycle journey. That’s probably what he was doing, at least, but Velvet wasn’t hearing any of it. Her attention was focused squarely on the giant tree made of crystal with windows and doors down the road in front of them. It looked like something that belonged in the Crystal Empire, and looked out of place among the wood and thatch buildings around it, that was true. But darn if it didn’t sparkle under the starlight, moonlight and the few street lamps that were glowing.
She hoped they weren’t going to meet a princess. As we all know, she had a tendency to freeze up around princesses. And if you didn’t know that, you have a lot of reading to catch up on (editor’s note: because of this extra reading, this is the last cameo show we’re doing) (chief editor’s note: unless cash is involved).
The magicycle rolled to a stop and fell silent just in front of the entryway. Velvet and Sombra removed their helmets and goggles — although they kept their very stylish leather jackets and scarves on — looked at each other, and immediately broke into giggling fits, their manes wild messes of helmet hair that were restored to a roughly normal — if still windswept — state after a few moments of fussing. Climbing off the cycle and out of the sidecar, a single red spark escaped from Sombra’s horn and vanished into the air, and the cycle’s horn beeped twice in response. Wasting no moments more, both of them approached the front doors, and with another flash from Sombra’s horn, they opened, revealing a foyer and main hall made from just as much crystal as the exterior. Everything shone with magical light, and Velvet couldn’t stop herself from staring in wonderment at the sparkling floors and walls and the plush carpets. She was sure that even the inside of the castle in Canterlot-Sextus didn’t look this incredible.
“Welcome to the Friendship Rainbow Kingdom Castle!” Sombra said, sweeping his hoof across the room dramatically.
“The what?” Velvet asked, her plans to continue admiring the crystalline view completely derailed like a train that had also completely derailed, probably due to an obstruction on the tracks.
“Yeah. For fairly obvious reasons, chiefly that the name is too long and too stupid, nopony around here actually calls it that. It was on the deed that came with it, though, so legally, it’s the Friendship Rainbow Kingdom Castle on all documents, maps, and tourist brochures. Especially that last one.” Exposition provided, Sombra stepped past the threshold and made his way inside, Velvet hot on his heels.
“So, what do you call it, then?” she asked, setting aside another moment to admire the construction as he trotted alongside Sombra. While he was only walking. Why were his strides so long?
“Most of us just call it ‘Twilight’s Crib,’ although I’m partial to ‘the Retinizer’ myself. Sounds more exciting. Also describes the effect it has on your eyes.”
That explained almost nothing. “Who’s Twilight?” Velvet asked, stepping up her speed briefly when she realized she was falling behind and nearly lost Sombra around a corner.
“That’d be Twilight Sparkle-Decimus, or in the case here, Princess Twilight Sparkle. Not sure what Sparkle-Sextus is up to,” Sombra replied.
That actually explained several things. “Princess? Wow, you went straight for the big guns, didn’t you?” Velvet remarked. An instant later, her ears pinned back to her head and she asked, with great trepidation, “Is… is there anything I should know about meeting the Princess? I kind of freeze up around them.”
“Yes. Don’t call her ‘Princess,’ don’t bow to her, don’t say ‘Your Majesty.’ Basically, don’t do anything except treat her like you’d treat your neighbor, or a low-rung local politician that you see at the market occasionally but don’t know that well. She gets all insistent that you treat her like anypony else off the street, and then backpedals like crazy because she thinks she’s being too forceful about it when she’s meeting you for the first time,” Sombra replied. “Super awkward.”
“O-ok. That’s… easy?” Velvet said curiously as they rounded another corner. “Anything else?”
“Yes.” Somber came to a stop just outside a set of large, suspiciously reinforced-looking double doors, the crystal surrounded with bands of steel and rivets. “Whatever you do, try not to surprise her. She reacts very poorly when taken by surprise.” Without wasting another moment, Sombra unceremoniously and without any warning kicked in the doors. “Sparkle!”
“What?!” a pearly purple alicorn shouted in surprise as a bright ball of energy went streaking away from her, ricocheting off the wall at high speed and immediately becoming a danger to life and limb.
“Watch out!” Sombra shouted, leaping out of the way as it zoomed through the space he’d been standing in only a moment before.
“Help!” Velvet shouted, weaving to the side as it ricocheted again and came back.
“Top-right corner!” Twilight added.
“There!”
“Duck!”
“Jump!”
“Sparkle, do something!”
Without warning, Twilight leapt onto one of the tables and was promptly knocked off of it and onto the floor as the ball struck her squarely in the chest with a sound more like a dull ‘thump’ rather than the cracking of bones. With the chaos dealt with, Velvet and Sombra looked at where she had been standing with expressions of concern ranging from ‘very’ to ‘blasé’. But a moment later, Twilight’s hoof crept up from below and planted itself on the tabletop just before she pulled herself up enough to rest her head on it. “That was close,” she said.
“What was that?” Velvet asked, still dazed.
“The culmination of days of research!” Twilight exclaimed, standing fully, rearing up and throwing her hooves over her head in triumph. “It’s the Holy Grail! The goose that lays the golden eggs in the pot at the end of the rainbow! Lightning in a bottle!”
“Yeah, but what is it?” Sombra asked.
“I just told you,” Twilight replied, returning all four hooves to the floor. Her horn glowed, and up from out of view came floating a jar filled with energetic electric arcs. “It’s Lightning in a Bottle™. I guess I didn’t enunciate very well.”
“Lightning?” Velvet asked, excited rather than dazed. “Real lightning? In a bottle?”
“Oh!” Twilight’s horn glowed brighter for a moment, and the bottle of lightning vanished in a puff of smoke just as she turned her full focus to Velvet. “Sorry, I didn’t see you… wait, who are you?” Her attention jumped back to Sombra. “And why are you even here?” Her eyes widened. “Wait, why did you bring a mare here?” Quickly, she backed up into the wall. “Oh my god, you’re here for a cutie call!”
“What? No I’m not! Why would you even think that?” Sombra protested.
“What the heck is a ‘cutie call?’” Velvet asked.
“Twilight! Twilight!”
The conversation stopped as all three of them turned to the library doors as a little white unicorn filly with two-toned pink and lavender mane and tail came hurrying through them, looking very distressed. “Twilight, we tried to ignore it like you said, but it’s still there!”
“Sweetie Belle, I told you, there is no boogie in the closet,” Twilight replied with a hint of irritation.
“A boogie?!”
The attention abruptly shifted to Sombra, whose expression was one of alarm, and Twilight’s own shifted from irritated to aggravated. “Seriously, Pops? You believe in that garbage?” she asked.
“Garbage? Garbage? Do you have any idea how many little colts and fillies get gobbled every year because ponies like you refuse to believe?” Sombra demanded, which did nothing to calm Sweetie Belle, who suddenly looked even more distressed.
“Oh no! Scootaloo and Apple Bloom are still in the room! They’re gonna get gobbled!” she wailed.
“Show me,” Sombra said with regal authority, even if he did not actually have any, and galloped after Sweetie as she hurried to save her friends.
Velvet Step was not far behind. “Wait for me! I wanna see this!” she exclaimed.
Twilight stared after them, and then sighed and simply teleported to the room the Cutie Mark Crusaders were using for their sleepover. The night light she’d provided them was still turned on, allowing her to see that the closet door was closed, and that Scootaloo and Apple Bloom were both still in bed, sheet pulled up over their snouts so they could quickly hide if necessary. “See, just like I thought. Everything’s fi —”
She was abruptly cutoff as Sombra kicked in the door, sending it flying open and into her side, knocking her to the ground. “My clavin!” she cried.
“There!” Sweetie Belle shouted, pointing a hoof at the closed closet door, made of blue crystal just like everything else.
Silently, Velvet wondered if this preponderance of crystal construction was a sign of inherited mental instability. So far, that seemed to be the theory with the most evidence supporting it.
Sombra’s eyes narrowed at the closet. “Get under the covers, Sweetie,” he ordered. She complied immediately, jumping onto the princess-sized bed and scrambling under the sheet to watch events unfold with them pulled up to her snout. Sombra walked into the room and towards the closet with deliberate slowness.
Velvet stepped in after him, but was careful to keep her distance, standing safely off to one side and as far from that strangely looming closet door as possible.
Twilight picked herself off the ground, groaning miserably.
“I know you’re in there, boogie,” Sombra said evenly. “I just want to talk.”
Without warning, his horn lit up brightly with red magic and loudly discharged, causing all three fillies to take cover under the covers while Twilight and Velvet shielded their eyes in the face of the sound of crystal shattering, and kept covered and shielded as Sombra’s horn discharged again and again. They did not dare look again until the noise had stopped, and all five of them observed the closet door, now dotted with eight smoking holes.
“I’ll give you a minute to prepare a rebuttal,” Sombra said.
“My castle!” exclaimed a very distressed Twilight.
“That was amazing!” exclaimed a very excited Velvet.
“Yay!” cheered the three fillies before they all clambered out of bed and surrounded Sombra, clamping onto three of his four legs in very fierce and happy hugs.
“Oh, look at that!” said Velvet with a very slight squeal as she sidled over to Twilight. “He’s so good with foals.”
“That’s because he treats every foal he meets like he’s their grandfather and spoils them rotten,” Twilight replied sharply before she turned to address the other adult in the room. “Now, if you’re done making me look bad in front of the girls, didn’t you have something urgent to ask me about, Pops?”
“Oh, right!” Sombra exclaimed. A moment later, his horn lit up, and all three fillies floated into the air with a matching glow and were deftly laid back onto the bed, their pillows fluffing and the covers snaking up to their shoulders. Finally, Sombra leaned up on the bed and gave each of them a kiss on the top of the head as his magic faded out. “Good night, girls,” he said.
“Good night, Mister Crepúsculo,” replied Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle in unison.
Rolling her eyes, Twilight walked out of the room, Velvet following after her, and Sombra bringing up the rear, closing the door as he left. “Precious, aren’t they?” he said.
“Yeah. Precious. That’s the first word that everypony in town thinks of when they think of those three — so! What was so important that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow, but not so important that it could wait until after you embarrassed me?” Twilight asked, not sounding terribly pleased with the situation.
“Right.” Sombra cleared his throat before he continued. “Twilight Sparkle-Decimus, meet Velvet Step-Sextus. She’s from a different Equestria in a different dimension and needs help getting back home, so naturally, I thought of you and brought her here so you could fire up that mirror portal you have and get it done —”
“Wait, I came here through a mirror?” Velvet asked.
“Preferably tomorrow, on account of how late it is right now,” Sombra added, giving Velvet no acknowledgement at all.
Twilight stared at Sombra for several uncomfortably long seconds, and then turned around, walked down the corridor, opened a door, stepped inside the room on the other end, and then shut it behind her, allowing silence to settle on the conversation for several uncomfortably long seconds.
“The nerve!” Sombra finally exclaimed, grinding the tip of one hoof into the floor. “That’s it! I’ll settle that filly’s hash!” He began to take a step forward, but found his path blocked by Velvet.
“No, no, Sombra, don’t worry about her,” she said with a smirk. “You go to bed. I’ll handle this.” Without another word, she sauntered off down the corridor after Twilight with a slightly exaggerated sway in her hips.
Sombra stared dumbly after her as she left, and then ground his teeth as his face twisted in anger. “Well, maybe I wanted to settle her hash!” he said, throwing a hoof up in protest. “You didn’t stop to consider my feelings, did you?!”
Velvet shut the door behind her.
With a low growl, Sombra turned and stalked off towards the guest rooms not currently occupied by young fillies. “Ought to settle her hash, too….”
The sun rose idyllically over Ponyville, and Sombra Crepúsculo idyllically slept in for an additional one hour and thirty two minutes afterwards, snoring idyllically. Also, very loudly.
But finally, he did get out of bed and went stumbling out into the corridor and face-first into the wall across from the bedroom door. “Ow,” he mumbled before taking a step back, turning and setting off again right into the opposite wall. “Nnng,” he growled. Frustrated fully awake, he stepped back one more time, turned himself to face the actual correct direction, and set off once more, grumbling all the way to the point in the corridor when something tickled his nose. He stopped and sniffed at the air, and then followed his nose all the way to a set of doors that, once opened, led right into the dining room.
Everyone else that had stayed the night at Twilight’s Crib was already assembled around the large, round table that dominated the truthfully not very large room (and seriously, you’d think bonafide royalty would have a killer dining room but what do I know?). Three little fillies at one end of the table (editor’s note: it’s a table, so it has ends even though it’s round; stop interrupting), Twilight and a suspiciously buddy-buddy Velvet at another, one empty setting with a white napkin, and all of them faced with big stacks of —
“Morning, girls!” Sombra said cheerily. “Are those pancakes I smell?”
“Morning, Mister Crepúsculo!” the three fillies replied.
“Morning, Pops! I made breakfast. I hope you’re in the mood for pancakes,” said Twilight, soundly oddly cheerful. Her horn shined as three of the aforementioned pancakes took to the air and gracefully landed on the empty plate as Sombra approached.
“These look great, Sparkle! I didn’t know you could cook,” Sombra remarked as he took a seat. With a flick of his hoof, he unfurled his napkin and tied it around his neck.
“Well, not usually,” Twilight replied. “Only when, um, circumstances.…”
“Well, I hope those happen more often. You must’ve had a really good night’s… sleep….”
Sombra looked at Twilight.
Twilight grinned nervously.
Sombra looked at Velvet.
Velvet grinned smugly.
Sombra looked to the three fillies sitting at the table with them, obliviously eating their breakfast. “Girls, it’s a nice day today. Why not spend it outside? Here —” His horn flashed, and all three of them suddenly found themselves each in possession of a small sack filled with bits — “Have some money and buy yourselves some treats.”
They each stared at the sacks in front of them before snatching them up. “Thanks, Mister Crepúsculo!” they shouted before they took off for the world outdoors. With a smile, Sombra watched them for several seconds until they’d left the room, and then waited several more seconds to give them time to get some distance.
And then, he looked back to Twilight.
“So,” he began, propping his head up on one hoof — elbow on the table — and wearing a grin of his own that was entirely too snide. “Did Velvet make a convincing argument for helping her?”
Twilight blushed furiously.
Velvet grinned even more smugly. “Oh, I think two, at least,” she replied.
“H-hey, that’s right! I have a thing I need to show you! In the lab!” And with that, Twilight promptly teleported away, leaving behind a surprised Velvet Step and a chuckling Sombra Crepúsculo, who was stepping back from the table.
“So,” Sombra began again as he walked up alongside Velvet. “Did she have any counterarguments?”
“Mm, three,” Velvet replied.
“Three? Up high!” Sombra raised his hoof in the air, and then ‘klak’d it against Velvet’s when she raised her own up. And then the air snapped, crackled, and popped, and once Velvet had blinked the spots out of her eyes, she found that she and Sombra were back in Twilight’s laboratory. So was Twilight, in fact. In all likelihood, this was the result of some spell that Sombra had cast, or at least Velvet was fairly confident it had not been another editing mistake (although Shining Armor had not done a very good job explaining exactly what those were, so she was not prepared to discount anything just yet).
Twilight was already there, of course, a giant stack of papers suspended in her magic as she shuffled through them, at least until Sombra cleared his throat. “So, there’s something you wanted to show us?” he asked.
The stack of papers promptly vanished in a purple burst, and Twilight spun to face them. “Well, getting Velvet home is tricky because of how many variables there are, never mind just getting the power needed to move between dimensions. I mean, look at this!” Twilight’s horn flashed, and a clipboard with paper barely holding onto it flew across the room until it was caught in Sombra’s magic and brought to his face to read.
“Let’s see…” Sombra muttered, looking over Twilight’s findings. Velvet snuck a peek too, but it was mostly squiggles and numbers to her. “Subspace… membranes… flux capacity…” The clipboard suddenly shot away from a wide-eyed stallion. “O-o-one-point-twenty-one gigawatts?!”
“I-is that bad?!” Velvet squeaked in alarm.
“Yes!” Sombra exclaimed. His expression shifted to contemplative and he brought a hoof to his chin. “Well, no, not really. I mean, in theory, it’s easy to produce that much power. We just have to cut down a lot of trees.”
That only left Velvet less certain, but before she could ask one of the questions coming to her mind, Twilight beat her to it. “We would have to do that, but then, as often happens, last night I felt myself about to be brilliant,” she said. “And then, I was. Brilliant, that is. We won’t even need to cut down any trees!”
“You mean you figured it out?” Velvet asked, her hopes rapidly on the rise and her past questions forgotten.
Twilight looked at her with a beaming smile. “You bet I did!” she replied. “Blah blah blah dimension blah blah portal blah blah bah!”
Twilight and Sombra both gave Velvet expectant smiles.
Velvet stared at them with glassy eyes. “I’m a dancer,” she said, wearing an expression that suggested her brain had attempted to shift gears without a clutch.
Sombra quirked his brow. “What’s that got to do with anything?” he asked.
“I think she means that she doesn’t have the necessary background to understand what we just said,” Twilight said. “Which, I guess makes sense, since this is pretty esoteric stuff, even for a lot of unicorns. I’m sorry, Velvet.” The alicorn looked at the floor, dejected. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, Twilight. It’s fine,” Velvet replied, receiving a smile in return. Then, they both jumped with a start.
“No! It’s not fine! Spike! Take a letter!” Sombra declared before clearing his throat. “Dear Princess Celestia-Sextus, I have just been informed of the disturbing state of educational curricula in your Equestria, particularly the lack of any time spent on theoretical sub-quantum physics. As you should well know, knowledge in this field of study is absolutely essential for any colt or filly to know, especially for young unicorns when they strike out to design and construct their first doomsday device. Kindly block out two hours of your schedule on the date most convenient for you so that we may have a discussion regarding strategies and methods through which this terrible oversight can be corrected. Sincerely, Sombra Crepúsculo, AKA Sombra-Decimus.”
“You do know that Spike’s on vacation, right?” Twilight asked.
Sombra stared at Twilight, and then looked at the floor to his side, as if he were expecting someone to be standing there in the empty space. “No, I did not know that,” he said, looking back to Twilight with a frigid glower. “I find myself wondering why you let me dictate to the air instead of stopping me like a responsible pony.”
“It was still a nice letter?” Velvet interjected before things got out of control.
Sombra was silent for several seconds. And then, he grinned. “It was, wasn’t it?” he said.
“Very nice!” Velvet replied, before she quickly turned to Twilight. “And speaking of nice, does all that mean you can get me back home?”
“You bet!” With a tiny bit of flair, Twilight spun back around to review her charts. “With this new method, it’ll take some time, but it’ll be a cinch. I could probably do it in my sleep.”
As Twilight finished speaking, Velvet couldn’t stop herself from noticing the grin on Sombra’s face, or that certain glint in his eye.
“So, just so we’re clear, you don’t need any help with this, right?” Sombra asked. “And it wouldn’t be a problem if, say, I gave Velvet the grand tour, even if she’s only here for a little bit longer?”
“No, I should be able to handle this fine. In fact, the grand tour sounds like a wonderful idea!” Twilight replied as she turned around. She was greeted by the door to her lab, her lab equipment, and a decided lack of any other ponies. A white napkin fell lazily to the ground.
Twilight stared dumbly at the abandoned space, and then ground her teeth as her face twisted in anger. “Well, maybe I wanted to give her the grand tour!” she said, throwing up a hoof in protest. “You didn’t stop to consider my feelings, did you?!”
Naturally, there was no response.
With a low growl, Twilight turned back to her equipment and got to work. “As soon as he’s not looking, I’ll settle that stallion’s hash….”
Outside the front door of the Retinizer, the entire stack of pancakes that had been on Sombra’s plate disappeared into his mouth and down his gullet in one go. After having a satisfied sigh, he threw one arm around Velvet’s withers — and she around his — and a camera popped into existence with a burst of magic, capturing a close-up of two friends about to embark on an adventure.
Sitting at a window both at the soda fountain, Velvet and Sombra happily and quickly slurped down the last of their root beer floats. Pushing their empty glasses aside, they crowded over the table as the camera swung to bear, capturing a super-close-up of two friends having a blast at the soda fountain.
And one photobombing Pinkie Pie.
Passengers on the express train to Canterlot looked out the window in confusion as Sombra raced his magicycle alongside it. At least, they did until he matched its speed and Velvet turned to face them in the sidecar, and promptly opened her jacket.
Every mare-loving colt and stallion (and more than a few mare-loving mares) whooped, cheered and hollered at her, and a few even took pictures that would go on to lead very unsafe lifestyles at numerous workplaces.
Reacting to a sudden knock at her door, Princess Celestia ducked her head into the corridor outside her study and looked about, finding no pony there to greet her. She did, however, find a flaming paper bag sitting on the floor. Narrowing her eyes at the offending object, she opened the door fully to confront it, and lifted one hoof into the air, confident that her brand new and freshly polished hoof guards would make short work of it.
Down the corridor and around the corner, Velvet and Sombra bumped hooves, and then the camera captured a close-up of two friends about to evade an angry princess.
And then, they jumped out of the window of the tower they were in and deployed their parachutes.
“And that one looks like a disgruntled pegasus!” Velvet said as she jabbed one hoof up at the clouds in the sky, sitting on a park bench with an ice cream cone gripped tightly in the other hoof.
Sombra, seated next to her with his own ice cream, squinted up at what she pointed at. “That one is a disgruntled pegasus,” he replied.
Velvet looked again. “Oh, gosh, you’re right. Hi Rossby Waves-Decimus!” she said, waving up at the aforementioned pegasus. A moment later, she recoiled in shock and surprise before lowering her hoof and narrowing her eyes. “Well, that was uncalled for.”
“That happens around here more frequently than I care to admit,” Sombra replied. In one smooth motion, he tossed his entire ice cream cone into his mouth, crunching down on it just once and swallowing it mostly whole. “But obscene gestures aside, how’re you liking the grand tour?”
“It’s pretty cool,” Velvet said thoughtfully.
Sombra waited for a moment before asking, “But?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t help but feel like I’m forgetting something….”
Twilight sat alone at her dining table in the dark, small candles providing the only illumination. She looked over to the table setting across from her, where no other pony was sitting when one was supposed to be. Finally, the candles burned out, and Twilight dropped her head into her arms, sobbing.
Velvet looked at the ground thoughtfully. “No, I would’ve remembered something like that,” she concluded. “Oh well,” she added with a shrug. “Must not’ve been very important.”
“Velvet?”
Far from empty, Velvet’s condo back in Equestria-Sextus was occupied by a unicorn, white of coat, blonde of mane, and worried of late. This, naturally, was her roommate, Crystal Wishes, mentioned back in the prologue. Because who else would it be?
“Where are you? Why didn’t you leave a note?” Crystal asked. Of course, she received no reply, because Velvet wasn’t there, but that hardly mattered.
Velvet was gone, and didn’t leave a note, and that meant that Crystal was out of luck in getting advice for a book she thought she might write.
More importantly, the still fragile barrier separating the bathroom in the condo from the ‘throne room’ in the Crystal Empire (-Decimus) was allowing mostly harmless but still slightly maddening subspatial radiation to leak into the living room(-Sextus), and that meant that Crystal was already making elaborate and out-of-character plots for revenge.
An indeterminate amount of time later, the front door of the Retinizer opened quietly and allowed Sombra and Velvet inside, the latter with a nondescript, brown paper bag gripped between her teeth. The door closed just as quietly, and they both knew they’d managed to slip in without cluing anyone in to their arrival.
“Well, well, well.”
Naturally, this didn’t apply to any individuals who were expecting them, and also naturally, they reacted with inappropriate amount of startle. Velvet dropped her paper bag and Sombra, the instant he realized that most of the attention was not on him, smoothly slid away from Velvet, leaving her to face the bus alone.
“Look who’s finally back from their grand adventure,” Twilight said, her narrowed eyes actually less worrying than the fact that she was right there, mere inches from Velvet’s face. She hadn’t been when they entered, but now she was, and this time, Velvet was dead certain that it was not any kind of editing mistake. She would have to tread very carefully.
“Before you say anything else, did you spend any time last night sitting at the table in the dark crying?” Velvet asked quickly.
“What? No! Why would you even ask something like that?” Twilight replied, recoiling slightly.
“No reason. Here.”
Twilight stared at the nondescript, brown paper bag that Velvet slid across the floor in front of her, and then slowly opened the top wth her magic and peered inside. “Oh, I get it. You’re trying to bribe me,” she said with a scowl. “Well, you can’t buy my forgiveness for anything. Not even with this —” The contents of the bag drifted up lazily in Twilight’s magical field. “Thick, succulent, juicy double western hayburger with extra onion rings. Just for that, I oughta settle your hash right now!” A full third of the burger disappeared into her mouth and was quickly chewed and swallowed, her face smeared with barbecue sauce. “I should at least give you a stern talking to about bribery.” A second third vanished. “Although I guess this is really pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.” The rest of the hayburger went down Twilight’s gullet, and a quick application of magic pulled all the sauce off of her face just before it went down after the burger. “Oh, heck, there’s no sense in holding a grudge over this. Especially not with a best friend.”
“Best friends, huh?” Velvet asked.
“No, Velvet. Best friends.” Twilight winked.
“Oh!” Velvet grinned a conspiratorial grin and winked back. “Gotcha.”
“And you accused me of being here for a cutie call,” Sombra snarked from further inside the foyer.
On the streets of Ponyville, outside of Twilight’s castle, the citizens were treated to a loud “boom!” that all of them, after a moment of contemplation, proceeded to ignore.
Inside the castle, Sombra glared at Twilight, mane blasted backwards and face darkened with soot until a vigorous shaking returned everything to normal. “Lucky shot.”
“In any case, you’re both just in time!” Twilight said, suddenly excited. Her horn began to glow.
“In time for —”
There was a flash, and all three of them were in the lab again.
“— what?” Velvet asked. Then, she looked around, and saw it.
It was like a giant metal ark, 8 cubits by 6 cubits by 3 cubits what the frell is a cubit large and boxy, with a funnel-like structure on top and a window on the side providing a clear view of a small sphere of absolutely darkness.
“Sparkle, what the heck is that thing?” Sombra demanded on behalf of all the readers.
“Well, I don’t remember how, but I got to thinking about clouds, and then the atmosphere, and then how hard it would be for anything to survive without the atmosphere, one thing led to another, and presto!” She reared up, arms spread wide at the contraption in front of her. “The Atmonihilator!”
“But that… that sounds like a doomsday device!” Velvet squeaked. “How’s that going to get me home?!”
“Right! Home!” Twilight dropped back to all fours and gave Velvet a sheepish grin. “That place we’re sending you to, ha ha… ha… give me five minutes.”
Six minutes later….
“Of course it’s different!” Twilight said in protest. “Just look at it.”
Velvet looked again. “It just looks almost exactly the same to me. I mean, I’m not really into all this science-y stuff, so maybe I’m just not seeing it?” she replied.
Twilight looked again. “Well, I guess I can see where you’re coming from, since I just reused it. But it’s different. I disconnected the suction module, and also added the needed additional hardware to the front.”
Velvet couldn’t argue with that, although she could argue about the ’needed additional hardware’ being a giant horseshoe magnet that Twilight had bolted to it. “If you say so.”
“I do, and besides, this gives me the perfect chance to try the reduced-length start-up procedure!”
“You mean the start button?” Sombra asked from where he was seated across the lab, nose buried in a technical manual. “Jeez, is this a wiring map or a photo of somepony’s noodle pot pie?”
Twilight ground her teeth just a bit. “Yes, Pops. I’m going to press the start button.” With a huff, she trotted over to the Atmoformer Atmothingie Dimensional Transmodulator’s control board, where the variety of switches, knobs, dials and levers that were typical of her contraptions — so we will have to assume, since this is only the second one we’ve seen so far — had been condensed to a streamlined format, which she promptly activated.
That is to say, she pressed the only button available to her, which was plainly labelled ‘START.’
The Transmodulator whined and hummed and groaned and then proceeded to do nothing aside from lightly buzz.
After several seconds of this, Velvet could stand no more. “Shouldn’t it be, you know, doing something?” she asked.
“It is!” Twilight replied. “See, the rift you came through is still up in the Crystal Empire, and it’d be a real pain to get back up there, so instead, the Dimensional Transmodulator will move it here while enlarging and stabilizing it, so you can easily and safely move to the other side with minimal dimensional impact. We don’t want to cause some kind of panic, after all.”
Out of the streets of Ponyville, panic was taking hold. “Look out!” one of the citizens shouted, pointing down the road. “It’s a bathroom!”
Ponies screamed and scrambled out of the way as a not-too-terribly-large rift in the dimensional fabric of the universe went careening down the street like an out-of-control magicycle. Mares wept, stallions fainted, and one Applejack watched everything unfolding from behind her stall at the market and declared for all the world to hear, “Not today,” quietly and calmly before she went back to her business.
Mere moments later, the rift phased through the walls of Twilight’s Crib and came to a rest a short distance from the Transmodulator, where it proceeded to hang in the air in a calm and slightly menacing fashion.
“My bathroom! It worked!” Velvet said with a bounce. “Weird science is amazing!”
“Frell yes it is!” Sombra said as he trotted over. “With weird science, almost anything is possible. Time travel, dimensional shifting, reanimation, deanimation, the list goes on!”
“Don’t forget air conditioning,” Twilight added.
“Oh, right, air conditioning. That’s probably the most important one of all.”
“Air conditioning, got it!” Velvet concluded. A moment later, her ears drooped. “So, this is it then, I guess.”
“Oh, it won’t be so bad.” To emphasize his point, Sombra threw an arm around Velvet’s withers. “Besides, you went riding through the Equestrian countryside on a magicycle, ate cupcakes, pranked a princess and went skydiving in another dimension! ‘Oh, so you’re still prima ballerina, Perennial? Well, guess what I did, you dockheaded harpy!’”
“Hey, that’s not so bad!” Velvet replied energetically. She shifted slightly and wrapped Sombra up in a hug. “Thanks for everything, Pops. It was great meeting you.” She pulled away and repeated with the purple pony princess. “You too, Twilight. You’re my favorite princess ever. Even more favorite than Princess Luna-Sextus.”
“We’re going to miss you around here,” Twilight replied happily. “Now get going before your roommate files a missing pony report.”
Stepping back from both of them, Velvet walked to the portal and, after looking behind her and waving goodbye one last time, stepped through into her bathroom on the other side.
Twilight delayed further action for several seconds, just in case Velvet came running back through, and then switched the Transmodulator off, watching the space the portal once occupied with a smile.
Sombra narrowed his eyes at the space the portal once occupied with a frown, and then his horn lit up as he fired off his Omniscan spell. “You do realize you didn’t close that subspatial rift all the way, don’t you?” he asked.
“Sure do,” Twilight replied, turning around and trotting out of her lab. “After all, you never know when you’ll hear the call, and I want to make sure I can answer it. Cutie all day every day!”
Sombra watched her leave with a smile. “I’m so proud of her,” he said to nobody. He frowned for a moment as he considered something, and then his eyes widened with a realization.
Velvet stepped out her bathroom and back into her living room, her relief at being safely back home interrupted by a loud and rhythmic thumping. “Crystal?” she called out, quirking her brow.
“I’m in the kitchen,” Crystal replied. “Chopping vegetables and being really mad because I didn’t know where you were and you didn’t leave a note.”
Velvet stepped into the kitchen where, sure enough, Crystal was very forcefully chopping up a zucchini, utilizing a large cleaver that was very obviously too much knife for the job in front of her.
“Well, I don’t usually leave one,” Velvet replied with less sass than she normally would, suddenly nervous about that cleaver. “I mean, there’s not really a reason to be mad about it, I do this almost literally all the time.”
“Oh, I have every right to be mad, and I probably still shouldn’t chopping vegetables because of that. You know if you’d left a note, I probably wouldn’t be so mad,” Crystal said.
“Well, you could always sto —” was as far as Velvet got before a lighter chop of the cleaver took Crystal’s hoof right off of its limb, spraying blood onto the wall and floor.
“Your hoof!” Velvet screamed hysterically.
“Oh no, my hoof!” Crystal screamed sedately, waving her stump around. Even more blood sprayed onto the walls and floor.
“Your hoof! Your hoof!” Velvet screamed even more hysterically, backing into the opposite wall in terror.
“Oh, if only somepony had left a note, this horrible tragedy could have been averted!” Crystal wailed with all the conviction of a pony with absolutely no acting skills.
“Your hoof, it came off like papier… mâché….”
Velvet looked at the hoof on the ground — which looked suspiciously like a poorly made facsimile — to the blood that had spattered onto the walls and floor — which looked and smelled suspiciously like raspberry pie filling — to Crystal Wishes herself, who was pointing at her with the hoof she had very obviously not just separated from her body.
