Episode 1: New Friends

This is Equestria.

A land of magic, friendship, and–in some cases–magical friendship. It owes its founding moment to this, as it was the friendship of its founders that drove away the beasts of ice that fed on discord and strife. Embellished? Perhaps, but no one can argue with the deep magic wielded by Equestria's residents.

While other parts of its world are inhabited by a variety of creatures, including griffins, minotaurs, dragons, and the shapeshifting changelings, Equestria is inhabited primarily by ponies. These ponies come in all manner of pastel colors, but their most defining traits are their Cutie Marks. A Cutie Mark is a symbol on a pony's flank, magically given to each pony that shows what their unique place is in this world. Though, it should be noted, these marks are often up to very wide and wild interpretations.

There are three main types of ponies. Unicorn ponies have a horn on their heads, allowing them to channel their inner magic into manipulating the world around them. Pegasus ponies have wings, allowing them to channel their inner magic into flight and controlling the weather. Finally, Earth ponies have neither horns nor wings, but their inner magic gives them a stronger constitution as well as the ability to care and nurture plants and others.

Equestria is an absolute monarchy ruled by two princesses: Princess Celestia who governs the day, and Princess Luna who governs the night. There is also Princess Mi Amore Cadenza ("Cadence" to her friends), who rules over the Crystal Empire, an affiliated territory to the north; and Princess Twilight Sparkle, the relatively new Princess of Friendship. All princess are alicorns, ponies with the magic and appendages of all three pony types. They are ageless beings with powerful magic strong enough to control the heavenly bodies associated with their domain. Just as the pegasi of Equestria are responsible for maintaining the weather cycle of the world, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are responsible for raising and lowering the sun and moon.

Would-be attackers would be wise to remember this fact before assuming the ponies' emphasis on friendship makes them weak.

Princess Twilight Sparkle did not fret. Fretting implied a pointless worrying over irrational fears. Over things that, when examined logically, turned out to be nothing at all. It was pointless, illogical, and absolutely not something she did.

"I should have gone with her. This is a magical problem, and she can't wield the Magic of Friendship if her friends don't remember who she is!"

It didn't count as "fretting" if your fears were entirely rational. Or at least that's what she told herself.

"What if she doesn't get to the Memory Stone in time? What if whoever has it erases her memory too? What if her friends don't understand and they attack her?"

She paced back and forth in the throne room of the Castle of Friendship. A hardback journal with a stylized red-and-yellow sun sat on the large circular table in the center, the ghostly illusionary map of the world staying in place despite it. Around the table were six thrones, each with their own icon to match their owner's Cutie Mark. One contained a six-point purple star to match Twilight's Cutie Mark.

"What if they erase so much memory she has to be sent back to kindergarten? What if they erase her memory of learning how to breathe? She'll suffocate!"

Next to Twilight's throne was a smaller chair occupied by her assistant Spike, a young dragon she had helped to hatch the same day she received her cutie mark. While he often helped categorize her research into the arcane and organize her increasingly varied schedule as Equestria's newest princess, he considered his most important duty to Twilight to be her friend. And as her friend...

"Hey, Twilight!" he yelled. "What theorem did Haycarte have about time travel?"

"Haycarte didn't have a theorem about time travel," Twilight said automatically, turning to face him. "Starswirl the Bearded was the one that wrote several theorems on the subject. I've told you this, Spike!"

Spike couldn't resist a smug look. "Breathe, Twilight."

Twilight glared at him, then closed her eyes, inhaled deeply while pulling her front hoof toward her chest, then exhaled slowly while motioning away from herself.

She paused, then repeated the breathing exercise. And repeated it again.

"How bad was it?" she asked.

Spike shrugged. "Not too bad, considering. Usually I have to ask you what Daring Do stole from the Vulpine."

Twilight's eye twitched. "Those are two completely different book series!" she shrieked, her wings flaring. "Completely different publishers! Different genres! And no, I don't care if they're both technically speculative fiction; Daring Do has more grounding in this reality than Magic Trek!"

"See?" Spike said. "I didn't even have to bring out the big guns."

Twilight sighed and trotted over to Spike. "Thanks," she said, pulling him into a hug.

"Hey, what are annoying little brothers for, anyway?" he answered.

Twilight just hugged him tighter. "I'm scared for Sunset, Spike."

"Yeah, I don't blame you," he said. "A stone that can erase people's memories? And she's got to destroy it by sundown today or her friends lose their memories of her?"

Twilight took another deep breath. "Thank you for reminding me."

Spike winced. "All I'm saying is this isn't nothing. But Sunset's smart, remember? She'll know what to do."

Twilight nodded. "You're right, Spike," she said firmly. "We have to trust her."

She looked around at her castle. "Besides," she said, "she could always stay here if she needs to..."

"No kidding," Spike said with a laugh. "Celestia knows we've got more than enough rooms."

"While I'm sure you do, young Spike," an older, more motherly voice said from the front door, "I must admit I'm at a loss as to what you would need them for."

"Princess Celestia!" Twilight yelled in a surprising mix of elation and shock. She ran up to the larger princess. "What are you doing here? Not that I'm upset to see you; I'm actually really glad to see you, but you never come visit for no reas—"

"Twilight," Celestia said with a gentle smile.

Twilight closed her eyes and breathed. "Sorry, Princess," she said. "I'm still really worried about Sunset Shimmer."

Celestia's smile fell slightly. "No word yet?"

Twilight shook her head. "She has until sundown, right?" She gasped. "Wait, if you're here, then you've already lowered the sun! She's out of time!"

"Not necessarily," Celestia said with a wave of her hoof. "I can lower the sun from here if I so choose. Luna is also capable, and on a night like tonight she might even be willing."

"Or you could just lower the sun early," Spike said.

"Spike!" Celestia gasped, holding her hoof to her chest. "You would dare to suppose that I, a Princess of Equestria, would flaunt my power and responsibility in such a vulgar fashion?"

Twilight looked at Celestia with a half-lidded stare. "You lowered the sun early, didn't you?"

Celestia adopted her most regal pose, though the slight blush on her face betrayed her. "I lowered the sun as I always do," she said. "Precisely when I mean to."

Any further musings were cut off by the journal glowing and vibrating on the table. Twilight gasped and flew over to it, opening it with her magic as she approached. As quick as she could, she turned to the last used page.

"She's safe!" Twilight yelled.

Spike let out the breath he didn't know he was holding and collapsed back in his chair. "Good job, Sunset," he said to himself. With a grunt, he lifted himself back up.

Twilight still had one hoof on the journal, Celestia looking over her shoulder. Both of them wore tired, genuine smiles. Twilight levitated a quill over to herself and held it over the journal for a moment before glancing to Celestia and motioning for her to take the quill. With a teary smile, Celestia wrote in the journal.

Friendship is Multiversal: Discovery

Episode 1: New Friends

This is Canterlot High School.

Located in the center of Canterlot City, it is, to all observers in its world, completely mundane. A standard public institution living in the academic and athletic shadow of its crosstown rival Crystal Preparatory School.

To a multiversal observer, however, it is noted for being a world with a strong resemblance to Equestria. While Canterlot City's world is only populated by humans, these humans bear skin and hair colors more reminiscent of Equestria's colorful pastel ponies.

In addition, many–though not all–ponies in Equestria have counterparts in Canterlot City. These counterparts bear the same coloration, hair color, and names. The human counterpart, despite not having a cutie mark of their own, will often have the same mark somewhere on their person via a shirt or accessory.

Canterlot High is run by Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna; Crystal Prep is run by Principal Cadence.

The next day, in a completely different world, Sunset Shimmer, a completely normal teenager, sat with her other friends at their completely normal high school.

Until a frisbee was blocked from striking one of the girls by a crystal shield appearing out of nowhere.

"Sorry!" the boy said, grabbing the frisbee and running back to his group.

Rarity dismissed her shield with a flick of her wrist. "Do try to be more careful, next time?" she said, mostly for her own benefit.

Sunset laughed to herself. Completely normal friends. With magic.

"So," Twilight Sparkle said, adjusting her glasses. "Any word from Equestria?"

"Easy, Twilight," Sunset said with a laugh. "The princess is still getting her research together. And her primary source is still on an extended tour of the world." She cocked her head. "Why so impatient?"

Twilight almost vibrated in place. "Principal Celestia said we could do an independent study!"

Sunset blinked. "We?"

"Yeah! In magic!"

Sunset paled. "That's not a good idea."

Twilight's face fell. "What do you mean? I thought you'd be excited?"

"Hang on, Twi," Applejack said in her southern accent. "What Sunny here isn't telling ya is that the last time she tried to study magic here, she hooked us up to all sorts of gizmos and whatsits and—"

"And the whole thing exploded!" Rainbow Dash finished with a yell.

"Like my eardrum just now?" Applejack muttered, rubbing the ear closest to Rainbow gingerly.

"You want to study it?" a quiet voice said outside of the group.

Sunset turned around. "Wallflower!" she greeted with an awkward smile. "How, um... how long were you standing there?"

Wallflower Blush shrugged. "Not long, this time. But why do you want to study magic? After I almost..." She trailed off and looked downcast.

"Hey, none of that!" Sunset said with a snap of her fingers. "You won't learn from mistakes if all you do is beat yourself up over them."

"And magic's already here," Twilight continued. "We need to know how it works here so someone else... doesn't..."

"Find an ancient artifact and use it to selectively erase people's memories?" Wallflower snarked.

"Or absorb a bunch of stolen magic, go insane, and try to punch a hole to the next universe over," Twilight answered.

"Or meticulously plan for years, steal a magical artifact from your homeland, bring it back to this world, get chased by said artifact's rightful owner who happens to be the counterpart to Twilight here, go through a long convoluted process to try and get the artifact that ends up causing a bad reaction with your own magic and turning you into a literal she-demon that tries to brainwash all the students at the school and literally kill the five of them?" Sunset said.

Everyone stared at her.

She shrugged. "Like I said, stop beating yourself up over it."

"But what's there to study?" Wallflower said after a moment.

"Besides us?" Twilight said, casually levitating a book with her magic.

Sunset tapped the hardback journal bearing Princess Twilight's cutie mark in her hands. "I've got a journal here that matches one that Princess Twilight has," she explained. "Anything we write in one shows up in the other, even if we're in different worlds. After she heard that the Memory Stone that you used was an artifact from Equestria, she started researching to see what other artifacts or enemies might have been here."

Wallflower withdrew a bit. "Enemies?"

"Yeah," Rainbow Dash slid into the conversation. "Remember those three girls that showed up at the school last year and convinced everyone we needed to turn the music festival into a battle of the bands?"

"Oh, them. They were from Aquatica?"

"Equestria," Sunset corrected. "And yes, they were. Over a thousand years ago they were banished here by Starswirl the Bearded, into 'a world without magic.'" It was her turn to withdraw a little. "Of course, after I brought magic here, they came after it like..."

"Flies on a honeypot?" Applejack said with a grin.

Wallflower scratched her arm. "What... what kind of magic did they have?" Twilight perked up at the question, not having been around for the incident.

Sunset rolled her eyes. "They fed off of conflict. They made people angry and irritable, which gave them more magic, which made people more angry. The really fun part was when we got angry, they were able to leech off of our magic and..." She sighed. "That wasn't a fun time."

"But it brought us closer together, Darling," Rarity said, laying a hand on Sunset's shoulder. "And, let's face it, we all needed a bit of a wake-up call then."

"Thanks," Sunset said quietly. She focused back on Wallflower. "So yeah, Princess Twilight's trying to find out what else was sent to our world." She looked back down at the journal. "Maybe we can actually prevent a problem, this time."

"Gotta say," Twilight said, reclining on her throne, "I am hoping things settle down for a little while, in our world and Sunset's."

Spike put down his comic. "You just jinxed it."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Come on, Spike, that's not—"

A knock at the castle doors echoed through the throne room. "Hello?" a slightly nasal voice said. "Is anybody here?"

Twilight held a hoof to her chest, inhaled, then exhaled slowly as she held her hoof away. "Fine," she said to Spike as she got up, "I jinxed it."

Spike put down his comic and joined her. "It could be nothing..."

"Nope!" Twilight said, not sure whether to be exasperated or thrilled. "You heard him; he said 'anybody,' not 'anypony.' He's not from around here."

She opened the castle doors to see two ponies. One was a tan earth pony about Twilight's age with an electric blue mane and tail and a bracelet with a green gem around one foreleg, the other a young orange pegasuswhite mane and tail.

"Can you help us?" the earth pony said.

"We're from another world, and we're not sure how to get home," the pegasus said.

Twilight looked at Spike.

Spike rolled his eyes and nodded.

Twilight looked back to the ponies. "If we can, we will," she said with a nod. "Come on in."

"Thanks," the pegasus said.

The tan earth pony stallion's Cutie Mark reminded Twilight of her pegasus friend Rainbow Dash's. It was a blue ball—the same electric blue as his mane and tail—with several speed lines. The ball was surrounded by a rainbow ring that looked to represent a sonic rainboom, the phenomenon that happened when Rainbow Dash reached her top speed and broke the sound barrier.

The pegasus' Cutie Mark was a little less straightforward, though Twilight was happy to see that he had one. Foals of his apparent age were always hit-or-miss (in the case of her friends' younger sisters, more 'miss' than 'hit'), but it was good to see that he had found his place in life. His was a pair of mechanical gears connected to a flying contraption. Perhaps he was skilled at building flying machines?

"Just get in before Pinkie sees you," Spike said, ushering them inside.

"Sees who?" Pinkie asked.

"Sees the two new ponies that she hasn't met and will probably want to throw a party for," Spike said without thinking. He blinked, turned slowly to his left, and saw Pinkie Pie sitting calmly next to him.

She grinned.

"Gah!" Spike jumped back, startled. "How di–never mind."

Pinkie pronked over to Twilight and the newcomers. "Hi!" she said, shaking the earth pony's hoof. "I'm Pinkie Pie! And you must be new because I've never seen you before and I know everypony in town and that means you're new in town and that means I don't know you so hi, I'm Pinkie Pie, what's your name?"

The earth pony struck what he hoped was a winning pose. "I'm Fast Hooves..." His face fell. "Fast Hooves," he repeated.

"Fast, are you okay?" the pegasus said. His face scrunched in confusion. "Why am I saying it too?"

"What's wrong?" Twilight said.

Fast turned to her, scared. "My name's not Fast Hooves. I mean, it is, but..."

Twilight put a hoof on his shoulder. "Don't hurt yourself," she said. "Breathe."

"But what's going on?" the pegasus said.

Twilight shook her head. "There's a lot of magic in Equestria, and part of it helps us decide on names."

"Oh!" Pinkie said. "Is that why Shining Armor is Captain of the Guard? And Double Diamond is really good at skiing?"

"Exactly," Twilight said. "So your Equestrian name must be Fast Hooves."

Fast Hooves scratched the back of his head. "Is it permanent?"

Twilight grimaced. "I... don't know. If it's based on Equestria's magic field then it should stop once we can get you home."

"Great! When can we do that?"

"I don't know that either..." Twilight said, looking at the floor.

"Woah, woah," Fast said, lifting her head up. "None of that. An adventure's no fun if it's too easy, right, Miles?"

"Right!" the pegasus answered. "Wait..."

The two new ponies looked at each other.

The pegasus groaned and buried his face in his hooves while Fast fell over laughing hysterically.

"Does this Equestrian magic have a sense of humor?" the pegasus muttered.

Twilight demurred with a "It's hard to say" the same time that Pinkie said "Definitely!"

The pegasus glared at Pinkie before turning to Twilight and saying, "My name is Miles Per Hour."

Fast Hooves kept laughing.

"Yes!" Sunset cheered as she and Twilight walked into the lab. "Principal Celestia kept all my equipment!"

Twilight looked over the mess of ancient computers and tangled instruments. "This is the stuff that blew up?"

Sunset scratched the back of her head and smiled awkwardly. "Yeah, it is." She brightened up. "Actually, I'm really glad you're here."

"Thanks," Twilight said with a small smile.

Sunset motioned at the equipment. "The first time I tried this, I was coming at it from an Equestrian perspective. I was too busy trying to reconcile what I knew of magic with what I was seeing. When at the same time as I was getting attacked by manifested cutie marks you were building something that could actually measure magic!"

"And stole magic," Twilight added, staring at the ground.

Sunset rolled her eyes and smiled. "Point being, you're in a much better place to study this. I couldn't find any answers on my own, but maybe, with the magic of friendship...?"

Twilight tried to smile.

Sunset grimaced. "Was that too cheesy?"

Twilight giggled. "It's fine."

"It was way too cheesy!" a muffled voice snarked from Twilight's backpack.

Twilight looked around the empty lab before setting her backpack on the ground and letting out her small dog, Spike, a purple and green terrier bearing a not-so-surprising resemblance to his draconic counterpart in Equestria.

"Sorry to keep you in there so long," Twilight said.

"Eh, it's fine," Spike said. "Your backpack's still more interesting than staying in my bed all day."

"Really?" Sunset said with a smirk. "You wouldn't rather be in the backyard chasing squirrels?"

Spike shrugged, which worked surprisingly well for a dog. "I do enjoy a good squirrel chase, but school has Fluttershy." He looked around the lab. "Speaking of...?"

Twilight shook her head. "We had study hall now, so it was easy to turn that into an independent study; but I think Fluttershy has English right now."

"Maybe we can pull her in for a day," Sunset said, giving Spike a scratch behind the ears.

"Eh, you'll do," he said as he leaned into the scratch.

The door to the lab opened, and in an instant Spike dove behind one of the tables.

"Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle?" a mint-skinned woman with golden hair said in a Trottingham accent.

"That's us," Twilight said, perhaps a little too loudly.

Sunset put on a relaxed smile. "How can we help?"

The woman smiled thinly. "I'm Ms. Gentleheart, the new guidance counselor. Principal Celestia asked me to oversee your independent study."

"It's great to meet you," Sunset said, stepping forward to shake hands and give Twilight a chance to catch her breath and not freak out about getting in trouble for bringing Spike to school. "Did Principal Celestia tell you anything about our project?"

Gentleheart shook her head. "She just said something about the 'magic of friendship.' Perhaps you can elaborate?"

"Inter-personal relationships," Sunset said.

"And their effect on the environment," Twilight added.

Gentleheart glanced from one girl to the other. "Indeed," she said. "This sounds like an ambitious study, particularly if your parameters are ill-defined." She nodded. "Perhaps we can start with that. If you could provide a summary of what you intend to research, and especially note how you intend to measure it, and have that for me next class?"

"We can do that," Twilight said, much more sure of herself now that they were discussing assignments. "How many pages should we have? Ten? Fifteen?"

Gentleheart cracked a smile. "Let's make this one a two-page summary," she said. "Double-spaced."

Twilight almost looked disappointed.

"We'll try to restrain ourselves," Sunset said with a smirk.

Gentleheart nodded. "Between this and college applications, I suspect we'll be seeing each other quite a bit these next few months. Don't hesitate to come see me if you need anything; I'm here for you, after all."

With more thanks and handshakes, Ms. Gentleheart left the lab.

Twilight turned to Sunset. "We're not putting anything in there about actual magic, right?"

"I'm sorry," Princess Twilight said. "We can travel to another world, but it's a lot like ours, except with humans instead of ponies."

"Huh," Miles said, leafing through the various notes and scrolls assembled on the map. "So can we. Human world and everything."

This caught Twilight's attention. "Does the human world have this 'chaos' you were talking about?"

Miles nodded. "It's one thing both our worlds have in common."

Twilight shook her head. "So not the same human world, either." She sighed and pushed another tome aside. "How did you end up here, anyway?"

Miles sighed. "We were trying to head back to the human world to check on things, we opened the portal, and then everything went..." He waved his hooves. "Sideways. Next thing we know we're ponies." He looked at his hoof. "And that's never happened when we hop worlds, either."

Twilight made a few more notes on a parchment. "Spike?" she called.

"Coming!" Spike's voice echoed from one of the hallways. The scurrying of his claws reverberated off the crystal walls, making it near-impossible to tell how close he actually was until he actually arrived a moment later.

"What's..." He took a few breaths. "Up?"

Twilight smiled at him. "Catch your breath, then can you send this to Celestia? I need to tell her about our new guests."

"Can do!" Spike said with a salute. He took the parchment and incinerated it in a tongue of green flame. "Where is Fast Hooves, anyway?"

"He wanted to go for a run," Miles said. "Left us 'eggheads' to do our thing."

"Heh, he even sounds like Rainbow Dash."

Twilight pondered that. "Come to think of it, he does seem a lot like Rainb–"

A dull boom shook the castle.

Twilight groaned. "Rainbow Dash." She hopped off her throne and started trotting towards the door.

Spike and Miles followed close behind her. "Who's Rainbow Dash?" Miles asked.

"Only the fastest pony alive!" Spike gushed.

"She is the only pony that can break the sound barrier," Twilight conceded.

"Was," Miles said with a smirk as they got to the door.

They opened the door to see Fast Hooves and Rainbow Dash crouched at a starting line, Pinkie Pie standing between them wearing a white-and-black striped referee outfit.

"On your mark," she yelled, "get set... GO!"

Both ponies were gone in a blur: one blue, one rainbow-colored. After a moment, the sky lit up with a Sonic Rainboom.

"There's Rainbow Dash," Twilight said.

A moment later, another boom echoed over the hills. The shockwave was more golden, but it was unmistakably a rainboom.

"And there's Fast Hooves," Miles said.

Spike just gaped. "That's it," he muttered. "I'm going to go read comics. At least they make sense!"

Sunset sat down across from Snails, both of them hooked up to a monitoring machine. "So, I'm going to explain what's going on, mostly for the camera." She motioned to the video camera Twilight was standing behind. "I'm going to use my magic on you, which is going to let me read your mind. I promise not to reveal anything about what I see to anyone else, and I promise not to tease you about it either. Twilight's going to get some readings from this, and hopefully we'll understand a little bit more. Does that make sense to you?"

The sophomore stared for a moment before nodding slowly.

Susnset repressed a groan. "Snails, do I have permission to read your mind?"

Snails hesitated. "Promise you won't tell anyone?"

"I promise."

She held out her hand, and Snails timidly took it.

Instantly Sunset's eyes glowed a pure white. The instrumentation went wild as the magical energy around Sunset spiked. Twilight furiously jotted down notes, reluctantly trusting the camera and instrument logs to catch the finer details.

After about ten seconds, the glow stopped. Sunset took hold of Snails' hand and pulled him into an awkward—but heartfelt—hug. She whispered a few words in his ear, and he slowly hugged her back. They held it for a moment before Sunset patted Snails on the back twice and they broke apart.

As soon as the instrumentation leads were disconnected from the two of them, Twilight shoved a printout from the machine into Sunset's hands. "Look at this!"

Sunset guided Snails towards the door. "Better get back to class, Snails," she said absently, taking the paper from Twilight. Her smile grew. "This is real?"

"Actual documented electromagnetic interference along the same wavelengths as before?"

Sunset looked back at Twilight and her eyes widened. "So how much was from my gemstone, and how much was from..." She pointed at Twilight's head.

"What?" Twilight felt for her ears, which had migrated to the top of her head and become significantly more equine.

"Hey, you Ponied Up!" Spike said as he hopped onto a desk.

"Why, though?" Twilight said, taking the data back from Sunset and pouring over it.

"I never really got a good answer for that," Sunset said. "But my best guess is your magic reacts to... discoveries?"

"That..." Twilight adjusted her glasses. "That doesn't sound scientific."

"Well, this is what we're here to find out, right?"

"I don't know, Sunset Shimmer" a voice cut in from the open door, "because it's certainly not what you wrote in your research summary."

Twilight, Spike, and Sunset all turned to see Ms. Gentleheart closing the door, the aforementioned research summary in her hand.

"It's not what it looks like!" Twilight blurted.

"It's exactly what it looks like," Spike deadpanned.

Sunset smiled weakly. "What does it look like?"

Gentleheart looked at Sunset, Twilight and Spike in turn. "Between the conversation, the... pony? ears, and the talking dog," she said, "I'd have to say 'magic.'"

"You, uh..." Twilight blushed. "Figured that out?"

"Yes," Gentleheart said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Principal Celestia neglected to tell me that the 'magic of friendship' was not metaphorical."

"It's really not," Sunset said. "I can get you a writeup."

Gentleheart handed her the research summary. "Along with a less euphemistic research summary, perhaps?"

Sunset scratched the back of her head. "Yeah..."

Gentleheart nodded. "I meant what I said earlier," she said as she opened the door. "I am here for you, and I do look forward to what you discover with this study."

She backed out of the lab and shut the door as gently as she could. She took one breath to collect herself, then walked purposefully back to her office, shut the door, turned off the light, and collapsed into her chair.

"You should pet me."

She jumped. She did not shriek. But she came very close to it.

Spike winced, but hopped up onto her desk. "Sorry," he said. "I thought you knew I was there."

Gentleheart held a hand to her chest and brought her breathing under control. "You did give me quite a fright, there," she said, "though I admit to not being most perceptive right now." She sat up. "Now, can you tell me why you thought it necessary to follow me?"

Spike sat. "You seemed sad. And I'm a licensed therapy dog, so it's scientifically proven that petting me makes people feel better."

Gentleheart sighed, but she allowed herself a smile. Slowly, she stroked the side of Spike's head. Spike leaned into the pet, trying not to ruin the moment.

"Twilight's very lucky," Gentleheart finally whispered, "to have such a loyal friend with her."

"She's pretty awesome," Spike said.

"And what was your name?"

Spike sat taller. "I'm Spike, Twilight's Number One Assistant."

Gentleheart nodded, then got up and opened the door. "Well, I'm sure she will be needing her assistant right now."

"Okay," Spike said as he hopped down. "But if you ever need me..."

Gentleheart smiled. "I know exactly where to find you."

Spike nodded and left.

Gentleheart closed the door and collapsed back in her chair. She sat there for a few moments, eyes closed, a few tears running down her face.

Princess Celestia was tired. The past few days had been an emotional whirlwind. Between seeing Sunset Shimmer in person for the first time since her initial escape, showing her and Twilight the restricted section, and now staying up late to see if she was successful in destroying the Memory Stone, Celestia was emotionally and physically exhausted.

But Twilight’s letter couldn’t be ignored. She didn’t have a problem with otherworldly visitors, provided they arrived intentionally and with peaceful intent. Fast Hooves and Miles Per Hour certainly seemed like peaceful colts, but she owed it to her little ponies to see that they got home safely.

Which brought her, in the gentle light of her sister’s moon, to Ponyville. And the home of—unironically—her favorite mailmare.

She made sure to only knock three times. Ditzy Do’s guest was very insistent on that.

The grey pegasus in question answered almost immediately. “Princess Celestia!” she said. “Come in, come in!”

“Thank you, Ditzy Do,” Celestia said, ducking her head and walking into the house. “Is your guest around?”

“He’s in the basement,” she answered with a bow.

“Thank you,” Celestia said, making her way down the stairs.

A brown earth pony with an hourglass cutie mark hunched over a workbench muttering to himself in some variation of a Trottingham accent. “No, no; the Harkness coil needs to connect to the negative end so it can—“ He froze, then turned around, a broad smile on his face. “Princess Celestia!” he said with no small amount of enthusiasm. “What brings you here?”

“Hello, Doctor,” Celestia said with a gentle smile. “I’m afraid I need your help with something.”

Episode 2: Space-Time Turbulence

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The Doctor motioned around the cluttered workshop. “I’d offer you a seat, but...”

Celestia dismissed the idea with a wave of her hoof and sat down in what looked like an open area. She shuffled her wings slightly, knocking a small object onto the floor.

“Oh, sorry!” she said with a blush.

“Oh, that’s where I put that satsuma!” the Doctor said, picking up the small orange. “Now,” he said, placing it onto his workbench, “what brings the sun princess here?”

Celestia smiled gently. “I have a small favor to ask, Doctor.”

The Doctor’s face fell slightly. “Oh, Princess,” he said with a hint of a whine, “if you have to call it ‘small,’ it usually isn’t.”

Celestia winced. “I hope that it truly is small, Doctor,” she said. “Are you familiar with Ponyville’s new arrivals?”

“Can’t say I am.” The Doctor picked up a doohickey on his workbench and fiddled with it. “Been down here for the past few days, mostly.”

Celestia looked around the workshop. “I’d tell you it shows, Doctor,” she said with a smile, “but we both know you know.” She took a breath. “A pair of ponies from another world made themselves known to Twilight Sparkle a few days ago.”

“Did they now?”

Celestia nodded. “They seem to be friendly, and they’ve taken to life in Ponyville pretty well so far. I hear one of them has an ongoing challenge with Rainbow Dash, in fact.”

The Doctor paused. “That might explain the multiple explosions.”

“Undoubtedly.” She sighed. “They’re lost, Doctor.”

The Doctor closed his eyes and sighed.

“I’m not asking you to—“

“Yes, you are,” the Doctor snapped. “I suppose you thought I could just scan them, find out where they’re from. And from there it turns into ‘oh, it’s just one universe over, just give them a lift in the TARDIS!’ And then I get caught up in whatever thing is happening with them, and then...”

Celestia glared at the Doctor. “I promised you sanctuary, Doctor,” she said evenly, “and I do not take that lightly. Our arrangement has not changed.” She stood up. “I am simply calling your attention to some ponies you can help. The decision is yours.”

The Doctor focused intently on the device in his hooves as Celestia made her way back to the stairs.

“Do you know why you are always welcome here, Doctor?” Celestia said, her front hoof on the bottom step. “You never fail to help those that need it. No matter how much you may want to do otherwise.” She continued up the stairs and out of sight.

“And that attitude,” the Doctor muttered to himself, “is going to kill me.”

Friendship is Multiversal: Discovery

Episode 2: Space-Time Turbulence

Back in Canterlot High, Twilight sat down in Ms Gentleheart’s office. “Thanks for talking with me,” Twilight said.

“Of course,” Gentleheart said with a smile. “I’m always happy to help students further their education.” She pulled out a notebook and wrote Twilight’s name at the top. “What schools were you thinking of applying to?”

Twilight pulled a think binder out of her bag. “I’ve categorized them by type and sorted them by strength of curriculum. I’ve been getting literature on them for a few years now.” She blushed slightly. “Comes from a high PSAT score.”

Gentleheart looked at the binder. “You hardly need me in all this.”

Twilight paled. “But what if I make the wrong choice?”

“About univ—sorry, college?”

Twilight nodded. “Eighty-three percent of someone’s success in life is determined by the college they attend. What if I choose the wrong school? What if I should have gone to Manehatten instead of Canterlot? What—“

Gentleheart held up her hand. “It’s okay, Twilight,” she reassured. “First off, that statistic is ignoring a lot of things, especially the kind of home life and support system that a person has. Yes, this is going to determine a lot of the opportunities that you’ll have, but everycollege is going to have opportunities.” She leaned in and held Twilight’s hand. “This is not going to determine the rest of your life. We’re just setting up the next part, is all.”

Twilight took a deep breath. “Right,” she said to herself as much as the counselor.

“So,” Gentleheart continued, “what are your top schools, and have you had any contact with their admissions departments since the school year started?”

Twilight’s face fell a bit, “I actually haven’t heard from them yet,” she said.

“No matter,” Gentleheart said quickly. “We can work on getting in touch with them. Why don’t we start with building out your resumé?”

A scream outside followed by a building-shaking crash put any conversation on hold.

“What’s going on?” Twilight said, running to the window.

The door to Ms. Gentleheart’s office slammed open, Rainbow Dash in the doorway. “Sorry, Ms. G; monster attack, we gotta go!” She grabbed Twilight by the arm and sped out in a rainbow-colored blur.

Gentleheart stared at her open office door. “Principal Celestia?” she called after a moment.

Celestia walked up to the office.

“Does this happen often?”

Celestia just met her stare and sighed.

Twilight led Fast Hooves and Miles Per Hour through the lower levels of her castle. “And down here are the laboratories,” she said. “The Doctor said he’d be set up in Lab Three.”

“Doctor... who, exactly?” Miles said.

“Princess Celestia didn’t say,” Twilight said with a frown. “Just that he is one of her foremost experts in inter-world travel. If anyone knows how to get you and Fast home, it’s him.”

“That’s great news, Twi,” Fast said with a smile. “No offense, of course.”

“Yeah,” Miles added. “Thanks for letting us stay here for the past week.”

“It’s nothing,” Twilight blushed. “Makes it easier to justify how many rooms we have here.”

“And how many do you have?” Fast said with a glance above them.

“Honestly?” Twilight said as they arrived at Lab Three, “I’ve lost count.”

Inside the lab, several stands had been set up around a clearly marked “X” on the ground. The stands were covered in everything from exposed wires, light bulbs, cotton candy, an old horseshoe, and a bell.

“Hi there!” The Doctor said, adjusting one more antenna into place. “Just step here, one at a time. Little one first.”

Miles hovered over and landed on top of the “X”. “What’s all this do?” he asked.

“Oh, this?” The Doctor said, rushing around. “Nothing really, built it from parts. Mostly just for show. Might pick up some huon particles, possibly some void stuff, and then...”

A beat of silence.

The Doctor cleared his throat. “Sorry, thought it would have finished by now. It’s supposed to go—“

The machine finished with a loud ding of the bell.

“Ha! There we are!” the Doctor shouted. “Next up, please.”

Miles and Fast traded places.

“Shouldn’t take as lon—“

The machine dinged again.

“Right! That. Now, let’s just see what...” the Doctor trailed off staring at a computer monitor. He looked at Fast and Miles, then back at his monitor. Without a word, he quickly pulled a pair of reading glasses out of one of his pockets and a small tool with a blue light out of the other.

He flipped the glasses on and pointed the tool at Fast. “Hold still,” he said, missing his earlier enthusiasm. The tool made a high pitched whine as he waved it toward Fast for a couple of seconds before stopping and looking at it.

Another beat of silence. The Doctor just stared at his tool, though his flattened ears betrayed some sort of harsh emotion.

“Doctor?” Twilight said.

With a blink, the Doctor’s smile was back. “Sorry,” he said, “got some strange readings. Couldn’t seem to find anything solid.” He picked up a few items from the stands around the room and shoved them into his pockets. “I’ll need to take this back to my workshop, see,” he said. “Run some numbers, crunch some analysis.”

“When do you think you’ll know?”

“Eh...” the Doctor said, his voice somehow climbing in pitch. “Give me like... two, three days?”

Twilight nodded and smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “We’ll await your results.”

“Right!” the Doctor said, making his way (rather quickly) towards the door. “I’ll just... go back to my... workshop.” And without waiting for another response, he flung open the door and was gone.

Miles and Twilight stared after him.

“Is he usually that... weird?” Miles said.

“Maybe?” Twilight answered. “Though, if he’s an academic, he wouldn’t be the weirdest.”

“Tell me about it!” Miles said with a laugh. “Fast and I know this professor that...” He looked around at the empty lab. “Wait, where’s Fast?”

“What did you say this thing was?” Rarity screeched as she re-formed her magic crystal wall.

“A manticore!” Sunset yelled back as she guided more students to safety.

Applejack grunted as she hefted some steel cable. “And how do y’all normally deal with them?”

“Stay out of the Everfree Forest?” Sunset said with a shrug. She turned to Fluttershy. “Can you understand anything he’s saying?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “No. I think he might be upset or scared, but—“

An explosive cupcake from Pinkie drowned out all sound in the area.

“...but he’s too angry to talk right now,” Fluttershy said with a halfhearted glare at Pinkie.

Just then Rainbow arrived with Twilight in tow. “Any luck?” Rainbow said.

The manticore flung itself against Rarity’s crystal wall. “Define ‘luck’” she snarked.

Twilight lifted her hands, palms forward, and grabbed the manticore’s two front paws in her magic. Applejack ran forward and tied them together with her cable. They moved on to the hind paws, but it twisted around and brought its stinger right towards Applejack–

Only to be blocked by Rainbow Dash who grabbed the stinger from behind and held it in place as she hovered. “Hurry up!” she yelled, “don’t think I can hold on forever.”

“Just a second!” Twilight answered as she and Applejack tied its back paws together, then brought all four paws and the stinger together in one final bind.

“Whoo-eee,” Applejack drawled. “That’s the roughest hogtie I’ve ever done.”

“Is everyone okay?” Sunset said, looking around the track field.

“I think so,” Twilight said. “Do we know how it got here?”

A chorus of “no”s and shaken heads responded.

“You destroyed your magic thingie, right?” Rainbow said.

“What?” Sunset said.

Rainbow motioned to Twilight. “Your magic thing that you made that ate magic and went all Midnight Sparkle; you destroyed it, right?”

“Of course I did,” Twilight said, shrinking into herself.

Applejack lightly swatted Rainbow. “And you’re bringing this up now because...?”

Rainbow’s face fell as she suddenly saw how her question was interpreted. “Oh, no! No, I don’t think you did this, Twilight! Sorry!”

Twilight took a steadying breath and nodded.

“No, sheesh, sorry...” Rainbow fumbled for a moment. “But the last time we had random Equestrian monsters show up was when that thing was on the fritz. You destroyed yours...”

“But someone else might have built one,” Sunset finished. “Good thinking, Rainbow Dash.”

“Thank you, I know.”

“You’re still a jerk, though.” Sunset motioned towards Twilight.

Rainbow nodded. “Hey, Twilight, I’m sorry.”

Twilight nodded, a little more sure of herself this time. “It’s okay, Rainbow. This is a lot like last time.”

As if in response, a deep pulsing sound filled the air as the manticore slowly disappeared in a blur of color, leaving behind the steel cable.

“Well, that’s convenient,” Rainbow muttered.

Sunset turned to Applejack. “Where did you even get the cable?”

Applejack shrugged. “It was right over there with the shop class supplies.”

Sunset blinked. “I still don’t understand this school.

The Doctor stormed into the basement and threw the lab items in the workbench’s general direction. “It can’t be,” he muttered to himself, pacing through the room. “It’s a mis-reading. Just some echos of other travelers.”

He blanched. “That happen to look exactly how I’d expect them to look if they ended up here.”

He glanced toward a nondescript corner of the basement.

“No!” he shouted. “They got here somehow, they can leave the same way.”

“Yeah,” a voice replied from the bottom of the stairs, “that ain’t gonna happen.”

The Doctor spun to see Fast Hooves casually leaning against the wall.

“You!” the Doctor yelled.

“Me!” Fast answered with a manic grin that quickly morphed into a frown. “You looked like you were running.”

“You would know.”

“I would.”

They stared each other down for a moment.

“Considering we came here by accident,” Fast said, “I don’t see how we can leave the same way we came.”

The Doctor sighed and rubbed his forehead with a hoof. “How do you normally travel between worlds?”

Fast shrugged. “Portal powered by chaos energy. But this time it just kinda went sideways.”

“Never happened before?”

“Never.”

“Could you build another portal?”

“With what?” He looked around the basement sarcastically. “And even if Miles could, the last one took him years. And you know I don’t have that kind of time.”

The Doctor paced towards Fast Hooves. “What did you just say?”

“You know who I am.”

“And why should I care?” the Doctor spat. “Let me tell you who I am. I’m the Doctor. I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I’m The Oncoming Storm. The Bringer of Darkness. Defender of the earth.”

Fast blinked. “So you’re a hero.”

“What’s your point?”

Fast swallowed and glanced away. “All my friends are back home. Miles and I only meant to be gone for a couple of days; a week at most. Any longer than that, and...”

The Doctor’s face softened. “Your friends aren’t the only ones you left at home.” He sat down. “Why did you decide to hop worlds?”

Fast sighed. “Egghead’s been laying pretty low. More so than usual. Things felt a little too quiet, so Miles and I thought we’d check out some of his bases in the human world, see if we can find any clues for his next moves.”

The Doctor nodded. “So while you’re here, your friends are all on your home world with your greatest enemy.”

Fast nodded. “So, Doctor,” he said. “You know who I am; can you get me and Miles home?”

The Doctor grinned back. “Sonic the Hedgehog, I will get you and Tails home.”

Sunset was the last of the Rainbooms to arrive to the lab. She dropped her backpack onto the ground and looked at the case wall Twilight had set up. “What do we know?”

Twilight connected one last piece of thread between a picture of the manticore and a crude drawing of her old pendant. “Well,” she said, turning to the other girls. “we’ve had three confirmed sightings. The manticore on the soccer fields that we took care of, Fluttershy says some of the animals saw a jackelope over by the faculty lot, and Wallflower said the giant plant thing took over the garden club for about two minutes.”

“Is she all right?” Rainbow asked.

Twilight nodded. “Flash Sentry and Ditzy Do are helping her clean up right now.”

“And I’m headed there after this,” Applejack continued.

“So what does it mean?” Rarity said.

Twilight sighed and looked back to the board. “The monsters, the breaks in reality...” She sighed and hugged herself. “Rainbow was right; it’s my amulet.”

“But you destroyed it!” Rainbow nearly shouted. “So it’s not yours.”

“Gasp!” Pinkie gasped. “What if it’s an old professor of Twilight’s who found the old plans for her amulet and built their own because they’re secretly the leader of a cult that wants to finish what Midnight Sparkle started a—“

“That’s quite enough, darling,” Rarity said, encasing Pinkie in crystals.

The door to the lab opened and Ms Gentleheart stepped quietly in. “Mind if I join you?”

“Oh, you can,” Rainbow said, glancing around and generally being very awkward. “I mean, it’s just stupid teenager stuff, so you probably wouldn’t care that mu—“

“She knows,” Twilight and Sunset said together.

Rainbow closed her mouth and blushed.

“Pinkie has a point, though,” Sunset said. “What if someone built another amulet? Or some rogue magic is having the same effect?”

“How would we stop it, then?” Rainbow Dash said. “Magic Rainbow Laser?”

“That depends,” Twilight said, twisting a finger nervously. “If it’s rogue magic, then our Friendship Magic should balance it out. But if it’s an amulet, it could end up absorbing the magic instead.”

“So what, we break it?”

“No!” Twilight yelled. “That could cause an explosion, the magic could run wild, who knows? No, we would need to disconnect the gem from the power source.”

“Like disarming a bomb,” Fluttershy said.

Everyone turned to look at her.

She blushed and shrank in on herself. “I read things...” she muttered.

“So,” Gentleheart said. “If it’s a device, we disable it. If it’s...” She cocked her head. “What does rogue magic look like?”

The girls all looked among each other. With a shrug, Sunset said, “Something that’s not a device?”

The previous lab in Twilight’s castle was once again the Doctor’s domain. Wires were strewn everywhere. Several half-salvaged components were in various positions of prominence. Sparks flew on more than one occasion. And in the middle of it all sat a young pegasus, an enigmatic earth pony, and a particular purple princess.

"Okay," Miles--now Tails--said, "we need to connect the blue wire to the fifth contact on this one."

"Blue to five, got it," Twilight said, soldering the pieces into position with her magic.

"Doctor," Tails continued, "we need a capacitor rated for one- to two-thousand hertz."

"Hold on," the Doctor said, poking both forehooves and his head--significantly more than should be physically possible--into the saddlebag on the floor.

Across the room, Fast Hooves--now Sonic--sat with Spike and Ditzy Do.

"That bag thing still freaks me out," Sonic said. "I know, I know: magic and friendship and three of the biggest eggheads in multiple universes, and that'swhat I choose to get freaked out about."

Spike shrugged. "You learn to live with it. At least you weren't here when she was trying to understand Pinkie." He turned to Ditzy. "Did the Doctor ever...?

Ditzy nodded. "Oh yeah. Even had a few machines explode on him." She frowned. "Ones that weren't even that explosive, come to think of it..."

A timer next to Spike rang. "Okay," he yelled to the room. "That's break time."

"Just a second," Twilight answered, putting two more pieces into place. "And... there."

"I'll be done in a minute," Tails muttered, not shifting focus from the parts in front of him.

"Nope!" Sonic yelled, running over to him. He quickly checked to make sure his hooves and wings weren't holding anything delicate and, seeing it was clear, picked up Tails and carried him out of the room.

"You too, Doctor," Ditzy said, making her way over to the stallion. "A break'll be good for you, even with your 'superior biology.’”

“Naw, you go on ahead,” the Doctor said, examining a few more parts he pulled out of the bag.

“My lab, my rules!” Spike yelled from outside the room.

The Doctor turned to look at Ditzy. “Isn’t it...?”

Ditzy shook her head. “It’s Spike’s lab. Ever since Twilight locked herself down here for 48 hours straight on a studying spree, Spike claimed all the labs.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Well, I’m hardly going to argue with a dragon,” he muttered with a smile.

Spike had prepared a small snack for the workers: a pitcher of lemonade and a to-go box from Sugarcube Corner with two dozen chocolate chip cookies were spread out on the Cutie Map.

“I think we’ve got all the parts we need,” Tails said, spreading out a set of blueprints in front of him. “Should take me about a day to build, even with breaks,” he added, glancing at Spike.

The Doctor and Twilight walked over to look over Tails’ shoulders. “That looks...” the Doctor began before trailing off.

“That’s all there is to it?” Twilight said, tracing a hoof along the diagram. She paused at a couple of points and gasped. “Of course! If you’re not powering it by local lunar magic, you don’t need the massive bootstrapping that I had to build!” She traced some more. “But what kind of power source would you use?”

Tails shrugged. “We usually use a Chaos Emerald or two, but from what I’ve seen of what your magic can do, there should be something.”

“Just one problem,” the Doctor said, uncharacteristically dim. “This is a great mechanism for getting to an adjacent universe.” He turned to look at Sonic. “But you were thrown a lot farther than that.”

Tails slumped back in his chair, ears flat.

Twilight looked back at the blueprints. “We can still try—“

“Princess,” the Doctor interrupted, “you can build that machine here and you already know exactly where it will take you.”

“But if we had more power—“

“The power that defeated Tirek couldn’t do it, not with this equipment. The math involved is completely different, like trying to calculate quantum mechanics with addition and subtraction.”

“So we’re still stuck,” Tails muttered.

The Doctor looked at Tails, his face pained. He turned to Ditzy Do and opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Ditzy closed her eyes and nodded. “We knew this would happen, Doctor,” she said quietly.

The Doctor nodded back. “Ditzy Do,” he said with a smile, “best of mares and best of mothers.”

With a laugh, Ditzy flew over the map and tackled the Doctor. “Come back and visit?”

“As soon as I can,” the Doctor said.

“Wha—“ Sonic stammered. “What’s going on?”

The Doctor pulled himself up. “Sonic, Tails, how long until you’re ready to leave?”

“Right now” “An hour”

Sonic and Tails looked at each other.

Tails shrugged. “If you want to leave without telling Pinkie Pie goodbye, be my guest.”

Sonic blanched. “Y’know, I should probably challenge Rainbow Dash to one last race.” He turned to the Doctor. “But how are we getting home?”

The Doctor smiled. “I have a ship.”

Sunset and Twilight strolled out of the building. The sun was low in the sky, and most of the students had already gone home, even the ones with after-school activities.

"Hey," Sunset said, bumping into Twilight, "you okay?"

"Yeah," Twilight said. She adjusted her glasses. "Just thinking."

"About?"

She sighed. "I know this is a lot like when my amulet was... malfunctioning. The creatures appearing and disappearing."

"It's not your fault—"

"I know it's not my fault; I just don't know why the amulet did that."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, it was just supposed to catalog anomalies. The capturing was just kind of a side effect. But why portals?"

Sunset bit her lip. "Well, it did absorb the magic of the Equestria portal."

Twilight stopped walking. "Wait, it did!" She looked over to the statue. "It would've been the first thing it absorbed, too!"

Sunset looked over to the statue. "How much you want to bet we've got another device at the statue now?"

Twilight hefted her backpack and started running. "That's a fool's bet; come on!"

The two ran up to the Wondercolt statue—or at least the base of it. There was nothing on the top, but there was a small flash of metal hidden in the weeds next to it. Sunset knelt down and brushed off the leafs, revealing a small metal plate with a few metal coils hooked up to a red gem.

A glowing red gem.

A glowing red gem with a visible aura around it and a slight humming noise.

"That can't be good," Sunset muttered.

Sonic and Tails made their way down the steps to Ditzy Do's basement. "What kind of ship do you keep in the basement?" Sonic muttered.

"If it travels between worlds, it's definitely got multi-dimensional movement," Tails answered.

Sonic side-eyed him. "Meaning?"

Tails rolled his eyes. "It doesn't need to fly; it just... disappears."

"Not what I was asking, but okay."

"What were you asking?"

Sonic motioned with a hoof to the cramped basement. "How does it fit down here?"

A door creaked open. Sonic and Tails turned to see the Doctor walk out of a blue box in one corner of the basement with "POLICE BOX" written above the door. "Well, come on then!" he said, motioning into the box.

Sonic and Tails looked past him into the box.

Into the spacious control room inside the box.

The control room that was much bigger than the outside of the box would allow.

"Sonic?"

"Yeah, Tails?"

"I think that answers your question."

"No kidding."

"Oi, come on!" the Doctor snapped. "Yeah, bigger on the inside, now let's go."

Sonic trotted across the gangplank and immediately flopped onto one of the seats. "Are we there yet?"

"Ignore him," Tails said with a smile. "He has to say it; it's bad luck if he doesn't."

"Oh, and what happened the last time he didn't say it."

Tails fixed the Doctor with a stare. "You're looking at it."

The Doctor paused. "Right then," he muttered. "Give me a moment to punch your coordinates into the TARDIS."

"Is that what this is called?" Tails said. "The 'tar-diss'?"

"TARDIS," the Doctor said, a little frustrated. "Time and relative dimension in space. Anywhere and any when you want to go to."

"So we can go to exactly when we left? As if we'd never gone?"

"Of course! Well..." The Doctor's voice trailed off. "Let's not introduce any more variables."

"Is the ship part-organic?"

"All organic. Got a mind of her own, really, and—wait." The Doctor looked up to see Tails flying around the coral struts of the control room. "Get down from there!"

Tails floated down, his forehooves folded in front of him in a pout. "I was just looking."

"Your reputation preceeds you, Miles Prower," the Doctor said, turning back to the console. "Can't have you dismantling the TARDIS."

Tails landed on the floor next to the seat Sonic was still laying on. "I'm not that bad," he muttered.

"Not anymore," Sonic countered with a grin.

"Alright!" the Doctor yelled. "Coordinates set, passengers aboard..." He reared up, placed a hoof on a lever, and with a cry of "Allons-y!" pulled the lever.

With a groan, the central pillar started its slow oscillation. A creaking, grinding sound filled the cabin as the room shook gently.

Back in the basement, the blue box slowly faded out of existence.

Sunset and Twilight scampered into the lab. "Find a broom handle or something!" Twilight yelled as they each scoured the room.

"Got one!" Sunset answered. "Wait, is metal okay?"

Twilight thought for a second. "No, too much of a conductive risk. See if we can find a wooden one."

Ms. Gentleheart walked briskly in. "Everything all right, girls? I heard shouting."

Sunset and Twilight looked at each other. "You explain, I'll keep looking," Sunset said.

Twilight nodded and turned back to Gentleheart. "We found the device that's causing the rifts, but it's already overloaded. We need to find a way to unseat the gem without getting too close."

Gentleheart nodded. "I assume you tried magic."

"Absorbed it."

"And you don't want to be close?"

"In case there's an adverse reaction."

"Would hitting it with a blunt object work?"

"From a safe distance, yes."

Gentleheart nodded. "I'll be right back."

Twilight turned back to Sunset who was closing a closet door.

"All metal," Sunset said.

Twilight sighed. "Did any of them at least have the plastic bit on the end?"

Sunset counted the broom handles in her head. "A couple, yeah."

"It's not ideal, but it'll work if we need."

"Do you know what—" Sunset was interrupted by Ms. Gentleheart returning with a quiver of arrows and a long, intricately carved wooden bow.

She handed Twilight a pair of binoculars and strode briskly to the lab window and opened it. "What am I aiming for?"

Twilight came alongside her and looked. "You see the glowing at the base of the Wondercolt statue?"

"I see the gem and the coils."

"We want to break the circut between them. That has the best chance of letting the stored magic bleed out safely."

Gentleheart notched an arrow and pulled the string back. "It looks quite angry. You're sure we're safe here?"

Twilight looked back at the glow, now pulsing eerily.

"We should be."

Back at the Castle of Friendship, Twilight had gathered her five friends together to discuss the week's events.

"Well, I'll be," Applejack muttered. "Ol' Doc was a visitor from another world?"

"I'm hardly surprised," Rarity said with a toss of her mane. "It certainly explains his fashion sense."

"I do hope Fast and Miles get home safely," Fluttershy said. "Wait, what were their names again?"

"Fast Hooves is Sonic," Twilight explained. "He said something about a hedgehog, but I'm not quite sure I understood that. And Miles' name is actually Miles Prower, but everyone calls him Tails."

"Weird name," Rainbow Dash muttered.

"Well, hopefully the Doctor can send us a picture of how they look normally," Twilight said with a bit of a sigh. "Might make more things make sen—"

A deep rumble–almost musical–shook the castle.

The girls all glanced at each other.

"Well," Rainbow began, "that was–"

The sound pulsed again. At the same time, Pinkie shot up and shrieked, "Twitchy-tail!"

Twilight felt the color drain from her face. "The portal!" In a blink, she teleported away.

The rest of them paused for a half-second before they all scrambled towards the portal room.

Pinkie was the first through the door, the others just outside. She skidded to a stop in the center of the room just short of the dais. The sound was much louder and more consistent, like Vinyl Scratch had turned up an experimental dubstep mix a little too loud.

Twilight stopped her inspection of the portal and looked at Pinkie who was standing in place save for a few errant twitches all over her body. "What is it?" she said, straining to be heard over the sound.

"Twitchy tail, flicky ear, shoulder shake!" Pinkie yelled back.

Twilight blinked. "I'm going in!"

"No!" Pinkie yelled, diving to pin Twilight down before she could jump through the portal. "Shoulder shake!"

"What does that mean?" Twilight yelled back.

Gentleheart released the arrow. In the blink of an eye the glow stopped, and Twilight could see through the binoculars that the circut was cut cleanly in half, the gem now resting on the ground.

Twilight looked back at Ms. Gentleheart. "You're a really good shot."

She smirked. "I trust the bow."

The sound abruptly stopped.

Pinkie cringed. "This is gonna suck," she said into the silence.

Twilight immediately cast the strongest shield she knew.

With a deep bass note that would make high-end cinema sound systems jealous, the gem released its stored energy. The base of the statue collapsed in on itself and crumbled to dust, and the shockwave shook the entire school. Several windows cracked, more than one book fell off the shelves in the library, and Principal Celestia spilled her tea.

The portal exploded. The room was bathed in an eerie purple light that threw all the colors off-balance. The deafening sound pulsed louder than ever along with a strange gurgling that reverberated through the castle.

And five seconds later, it was still.

Sonic, Tails, and the Doctor were thrown to the floor of the control room as the TARDIS was sent careening.

"What just happened?" Sonic yelled, grabbing Tails and hugging him to himself.

The Doctor pulled himself onto the console. "Something blew us off course!" He galloped over to another set of controls and frantically pumped a set of levers. "If we can regulate the huon flow we might be able to—"

He was cut off by a deep bell tolling though the TARDIS. The room continued to shake.

"Doctor?" Sonic yelled.

The Doctor glanced at one of the monitors and stopped. Without taking his eyes off of it, he lowered himself where all four hooves were back on the ground.

"Doc?" Sonic asked.

"Did it hurt when you transformed into ponies?" the Doctor said quietly.

"Like nobody's business."

The Doctor nodded. "Well, this won't be as bad. The first time's always the worst."

Sonic hugged Tails a little tighter.

Spike bolted into the portal room. "Twilight!"

Rainbow was close behind him and started picking through the rubble of the portal and dais. Rarity started levitating the larger pieces, and she and Applejack did their best to lift them away from the ponies trapped beneath. Except when all the debris was turned over...

"They ain't here," Applejack said.

"Darling," Rarity said, a little more desperately than she intended, "I'm sure that–"

"They. Ain't. Here," Applejack reiterated with a stomp.

In desperation, Rainbow Dash landed on the floor. “Pinkie Pie!” she yelled. “If you’re hiding from me and don’t come out right now, I swear by Celestia’s luscious round—“

“Rainbow!” Rarity shrieked.

Rainbow glared at Rarity with a blush. “...sun, I will prank you every single day for the rest of eternity. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!”

They waited.

After five seconds, Spike collapsed on the floor in shock.

After seven, Fluttershy sat down.

After ten, Rarity joined her.

After fifteen, Applejack quietly said, “Spike, take a letter.”

Rainbow continued glaring defiantly at the rubble, but her ears and wings drooped.

“Ready,” Spike said, his voice dull.

Applejack nodded and cleared her throat. “Dear Princess Celestia,

“The mirror portal exploded. Twilight and Pinkie are missing.”

Episode 3: Enter the Multiverse

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A bright light blinded the occupants of the TARDIS as the turbulence shook the room further. Sonic held tighter to Tails, instinct driving him to protect his younger friend. He was vaguely aware as he felt his hooves give way to hands, felt the weight of his quills on his head and the bracelet on his wrist, and felt Tails' namesake appendages brush against him.

With one final jolt, the TARDIS went completely still. The motor had stopped, and even most of the lights in the control room were out.

Sonic opened his eyes and slowly sat up, Tails not far behind. They were both back in their original bodies: Sonic, an anthropomorphic hedgehog with electric blue spines, and Tails, an orange anthropomorphic fox with two tails. "What's the word, Doc?" Sonic said.

The Doctor, now a human-looking creature just shy of six feet tall, ran a hair through his mildly greasy brown hair and sighed. "Well, we've just been flung through the far reaches of the time vortex. And I didn't have a chance to bring up the transformation shielding in the TARDIS, so..." He gestured at himself. "Ta-da, not pony!"

"Yeah, how does that work?" Tails said.

The Doctor brightened up slightly. "Oh, that? Just a normal everyday side effect of multiversal travel. You go to a world, you take a form from that world. Usually. Some worlds are weird and don't. And sometimes the TARDIS can shield us from that, but you've got to be careful with that. Don't want to end up in a world where oxygen doesn't exist, now do we! Or a world saturated with radiation that the locals have all adapted to and call 'magic.'" He came back down. "So, yeah, we've definitely left pony world."

"So we're back home?"

"Nope," the Doctor said, popping the 'p.' "We're someplace impossible."

Sonic and Tails looked at each other, then back to the Doctor. "Define 'impossible,'" Tails deadpanned.

Without another word, the Doctor swung the monitor over to point at Sonic and Tails.

This is Gallifrey.

The home of the Time Lords. An ancient civilization that harnassed the power of time and space. With great cities enclosed in massive domes, fields of coral growing into full-sized TARDISes, and the beautiful red sunsets.

That was, of course, before the war.

Friendship is Multiversal: Discovery

Episode 3: Into the Multiverse

"So we're at your home?" Sonic said with a smile. "That's great!"

The Doctor shook his head. "No." He took a deep breath. "There was a war. The Great Time War. Two mighty civilizations doing everything they can to make sure the other ends. Sure, it started out innocently enough. One civilization—the Daleks—generally tries to kill anything that isn't a Dalek. And the other civilization, the Time Lords—hello—generally tries to stop them. Things are give-and-take for a while until someone on some side says, 'Wait a minute, we've got time travel!' And decides that the best thing for everyone involved is to make sure the other civilization never existed in the first place."

Tails furrowed his brow and looked off to the side, still trying to process how that would work.

Sonic had a much simpler understanding. "I take it that was a bad idea."

"Oh, ho ho ho!" the Doctor yelled, "No, it was brilliant! Because what better way to ensure the stability of the universe—of universes!—is to repeatedly cause so many paradoxes that the time vortex itself nearly collapses! Meanwhile the war is actually being fought in normal time; both civilizations pulling out their absolute worst weapons, and then making worse ones."

He pointed a finger at Sonic. "I've read about some of your adventures, you know. Chaos? The Black Arms? Dark Gaia?" He shook his head. "Nothing. Not in the face of the Nightmare Child. The Could-have-been King with his army of Never-weres. Not when every weapon in the vault was pulled out to try to end the threat."

"How did it end?" Tails asked.

The Doctor shut his eyes.

"You ended it, didn't you," Sonic said quietly.

The Doctor nodded. "The last weapon in the vault was the only thing powerful enough to separate the war. Take the two warring civilizations and throw them out of the time stream. Permanently."

He turned to the center console. "Which is why I DON'T UNDERSTAND! WHY YOU BROUGHT US HERE!" He kicked the console for good measure. "We shouldn't be here. We can't be here! So WHY! ARE! WE! HERE!" the Doctor yelled.

The door to the TARDIS opened, and an older man with very impressive eyebrows leaned in. "Sandshoes," he said with a not-so-subtle accent, "we're all waiting on you."

"And you are?" Sonic cut in.

The newcomer glared at him. "I'm the Doctor." He turned back to the Doctor. "Come on, now."

The Doctor sighed. "Stay here," he muttered to Sonic and Tails as he walked out. "Here's still safer than..." He gestured lazily. "Whatever's out there."

The door shut, and Sonic turned to Tails who just shrugged.

"Twilight?"

Twilight lay still, eyes shut, willing the ringing in her ears to go down.

"Twilight?"

Her withers ached, her wings ached, her neck ached, her hooves ached, and her horn...

"Twilight?"

"Ugh," Twilight groaned. "My horn."

"Twilight? You can let down the shield now."

Twilight blinked and looked up. Pinkie was standing at the edge of the shield and tapping on it with her hoof, making a 'plink' sound.

"Right," Twilight muttered. With a wince, she forced herself to relax and cancel the spell.

The bubble disappeared. Pinkie jumped around with her newfound freedom. "Wow," she said. "That's the bestest, strongest magic shield thingie I've ever seen!"

"Learned it from Shiny," Twilight murmured. A small part of her brain congratulated itself on moving from muttering to murmuring.

"Oohhhh," Pinkie said. She looked around at the scrub brush and dry ground, then up at the oddly pink sky. "Sooooooo," she continued, "How'd you get the shield to stay up even though you were almost-completely-but-not-quite passed out?"

"Reflex," Twilight groaned, again pleased that she was gradually approaching normal conversation. "It's part of how Shiny drilled me. If you can make the spell reflexive, then you can keep it going even if you're about to black out."

"Woah!" Pinkie said, and Twilight even believed that she was interested. She looked around one more time, then turned back to Twilight and grinned. "I think it's time for a song."

Twilight came up short. "No," she said. "I think it's time to figure out where we are. If I can find the sun..."

"But Twilight!" Pinkie whined. "I have something extra super-duper important to tell you!"

Twilight ground her teeth. "Yes, Pinkie?"

Pinkie took a deep breath. "Weeeeeeeeeeellllllll," And with a grin, she broke out into song. "When I was a little filly, and the sun was going down..."

Sonic lasted about three minutes before finally opening the TARDIS door. To his credit, it would have been about thirty seconds had Tails not been there.

They were parked in a barn-like structure, complete with something resembling straw covering the ground. There was a crowd of several—maybe a dozen—men in the middle arguing over something. Sonic looked to the left to see an entire line of blue Police Boxes like the one he was in, though with varying shades of paint. To the right were two more boxes, though the one to his immediate right had a young woman leaning against it.

She made eye contact and gasped. "Oh my god," she breathed, "are you Sonic the Hedgehog?"

Sonic immediately pulled himself the rest of the way out of the TARDIS and leaned against it. "The one and only," he said with a smooth grin. "So, what's your name?"

The woman blinked. "Uh, Clara. Clara Oswald."

"Nice to meet you, Clara," he said, holding out a fist. She promptly bumped it with her own.

"So," Sonic said, "any idea what's going on?"

Clara's face fell a bit and she turned back to the argument in the middle. "How much do you know about the Doctor?"

"Not much," Sonic said as Tails tentatively made his way out of the TARDIS. "He told us about the war... a little."

"Right," Clara said, balling her fists. "Well, the first thing is that the Doctor can regenerate. Sort of an instant-reincarnation thing; instead of dying he just kind of turns into a new Doctor."

"Wait," Tails said, connecting the dots, "those are all the Doctor?"

"That's right," she said. "All twelve of them. Which one're you here with?"

Sonic looked over the group. His first quip was "tall one with the hair," but after seeing at least two that that could apply to, he settled on "the one in the pinstripe suit and the coat."

Clara nodded. "That's number ten, then. I'm here with the hair and the chin in the tweed jacket: eleven."

"And what are they arguing about?"

The crowd shifted enough that the three of them could catch a glimpse of a box on a table, a large red button blooming out of the top.

"That," Clara said with dread. "The Moment. The last weapon in the vault."

“Just giggle at the ghostly,” Pinkie sang, “Guffaw at the grossly—Twilight, sing along!—Crack up at the creepy—“

“Pinkie.”

“Whoop it up with the weepy—Can’t hear you!—Chortle at the spooky—“

“Pinkie!”

“Snortle at the spooky, and tell that big—“

“PINKAMENA DIANE PIE!”

Pinkie froze mid-pronk. In mid-air. “Yeah, Twilight?” She said with a smile, looking down at the alicorn.

Said alicorn had several hairs out of place. Steam was already rising from her head, her wings were disheveled and twitching, and her front hoof was pawing the ground dangerously.

“Why,” she ground out, “in the name of Celestia, Luna, and all that is good and right in the world, are you so insistent on singing? Right? Now?”

Pinkie landed gently in front of Twilight. “I’m so glad you asked!” she said. “You see...”

She began pronking again and started singing. “When I was a little filly, and the sun was going dow—“

Twilight screamed as a full half of her mane twitched out of place.

“What’s wrong, Twilight?” Pinkie said.

Twilight glared. “What did I do to deserve you as a friend,” she muttered.

Pinkie blinked, and for an instant Twilight thought she saw real hurt on her face. But she must have been seeing things, because Pinkie immediately answered as cheerfully as ever, “Nothing, silly! Don’t you know that’s what makes people friends?”

Twilight groaned and followed the pronking, singing pony, too frustrated to care about anything else.

It wasn’t until Pinkie finished that full rendition of “Giggle At the Ghostly” followed by two rounds of “You Got To Share, You Got To Care” that she stopped at a vista, swept out her hoof, and said, “Here we are!”

“And just where are we supp...” Twilight trailed off as she looked out. Below them was an amalgamation of buildings surrounded by a patchy wooden fence that went off into the distance, surrounding what looked like a lighthouse. It looked like the outskirts of a ramshackle town, cobbled together from whatever building materials happened to be around.

“How did you know this was here?” Twilight said quietly.

Pinkie shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

“Just a—“ Twilight paused, then fixed Pinkie with a calculated look.

“Pinkie?” she said.

“Yeah, Twilight?”

“Why were you singing so much?”

Pinkie answered with a horseapple-eating grin of her own. “Because we had just been thrown by a malfunctioning portal off into some unknown corner of time and space and the first thing we had to do was find shelter and I had a hunch that if we followed the light we’d find it but we’d never be able to do that if you were too scared and I knew that if you started thinking too much you’d start asking questions like ‘Where are we?’ and ‘How did we get here?’ and ‘How can we get home?’ and ‘Are we ever going to get home?’ and ‘Will I ever know true happiness?’ and ‘But what does a kumquat really taste like?’ and you’re really good at asking questions but when you’re scared you’re not very good at answering them and so I had to keep you from getting scared long enough for things not to be so scary and I know that singing helps me not be scared but usually singing just annoys you especially when you’re trying to think about other things like all the questions you don’t need to be asking right now but I thought that if you were really really annoyed with me you’d be so busy being annoyed that you wouldn’t be scared.”

Twilight gave herself a few minutes to catch up.

“Pinkie?” she said.

“Yeah, Twilight?”

“What did I do to deserve you as a friend?” Twilight said with a smile.

“Nothing, silly!” Pinkie answered with her own smile and a gentle shove. “Don’t you know that’s what makes people friends?”

Sonic sat with his back to the TARDIS and sighed dramatically. "I'm bored," he groaned.

Tails made a noncommittal grunt.

"Heard you the first fifty times," Clara muttered.

Sonic gave her a side-eye. "I thought you said there was a lot of running with the Doctor?"

"Oh, there is, normally," Clara said with an eyeroll. "But sometimes there's a lot of talking first."

"Of course," Sonic muttered. He turned to face Clara fully. "So how long have you been traveling with him?"

Clara counted on her fingers for a bit. "About eight months, now."

Sonic nodded. "And you know which Doctor is which?"

"Oh, that," Clara said with a blush. "I... might have fractured myself across his entire timeline in order to save him from someone else who fractured themselves across his timeline to kill him." She blinked. "It's all very strange."

Sonic looked at her and blinked slowly. "Time travel's involved," he muttered. "It's going to be strange." He looked out at the group of Doctors, finally having gone from all talking at once to apparently talking in a more orderly fashion. "So how long until they're done talking, do you think?"

Clara frowned. "A while, probably," she said quietly. "This is the biggest decision of his life. All his lives."

"So do it and don't look back," Sonic spat.

Clara gave him a sharp look. "You'd die to save the universe, right?"

"In a heartbeat."

Clara ignored the brief flash of pain on Tails' face and pressed on. "How about kill?"

Sonic opened his mouth, said nothing, then finally slumped back and crossed his arms, fuming.

"Thing is," Clara said, looking back at the Doctors, "I don't think he can do it, either."

Suddenly, the Doctor with a shaved head and leather jacket ran over to the door of the barn and opened it just enough to stick his head out. Whatever he saw must have been good because he turned back to the rest of the group, smiling broadly, and yelled, "Well, what are we waiting for?"

There was a beat of silence, then all twelve Doctors ran for their TARDISes.

Twilight and Pinkie gently trotted down the meandering path between the different buildings. The only common theme to the architecture was the lack of a theme. One building could be a collection of scaffolding with heavy iron plates leaning against it, while the next could be an immaculate craftsman home with an adorable little veranda. And the next would be a tribute to gothic architecture in structure as well as a tribute to gothic art in color scheme.

Twilight kept her eyes peeled for any signs of life. While many of the houses seemed to be occupied, they hadn't actually made contact with anyone as of yet. And now that she thought about it, this didn't look like anywhere around Equestria that she knew of. There was a good chance that–

"Hey, Twilight," Pinkie said suddenly, "when we meet someone here, do you think they'll be ponies? Or maybe it'll be like Kludgetown? Or–" She gasped. "What if it's like the other side of the mirror and they're humans?"

Twilight smiled in spite of herself. "Then at least we'll know how to talk to them, right?"

"You got that right!" Pinkie reared up on her hind legs, held a forehoof out invitingly, and cocked a wry grin. "How do you do, little lady," she said in a voice like someone with an accent trying very hard not to have an accent. "I have a savings account. Want to take a ride in my automobile?"

Twilight laughed out loud this time; Pinkie fell back on all fours and smiled broadly as they continued to walk.

"Wait," Twilight said after a moment. "Pinkie, how many times have you been to the human world?"

"Ehheh," she said sheepishly, "just a few..."

"A few?"

"...dozen."

Twilight sighed. "Just as long as I don't have to deal with an interdimensional diplomatic incident," she said with a smile.

They turned a corner and saw a small house with two humans–a man and a woman–fencing in the front yard. A third human, easily twice as big as either of the others, sat on the front steps. He made eye contact with Twilight and Pinkie and raised his hand in greeting. "Hello!" he called in his deep voice.

The swordfighting man turned to see, and as he did the woman tapped his arm with her sword. "Hit," she called.

The man rolled his eyes. "That cannot count," he said with a Spanish accent.

"Really? Because I recall you saying 'Always be aware of your surroundings,'" the woman retorted with an upper-class accent.

The man turned to the large one.

He shrugged. "She has you there, Inigo."

Inigo rolled his eyes and turned to the ponies. "And how are you on this fine day." He glanced back at the woman. "It is day, no?"

She nodded. "Lighthouse is blue, so it's day."

Inigo leaned forward against the fence. "I do not believe we have been acquainted yet."

Twilight held out a hoof. "I'm Twilight Sparkle, and this–"

Pinkie bounced into the yard. "Hi, I'm Pinkie Pie! That swordfighting was cool, can you teach me? But I'd have to have a special sword because I have hooves and not hands and..." She trailed off and came to a slow stop in front of the sitting human.

"Woah," she breathed, "you're big."

The giant furrowed his brow and looked down, seeming to mutter the word "big" to himself.

Twilight opened her mouth to apologize, afraid that Pinkie had accidentally insulted him somehow, but Inigo held his finger to his lip and smiled.

"It makes it hard," the giant finally said, grinning at Pinkie, "to dance a... jig."

Pinkie gasped. "But do you at least get to eat cake?"

"If not, I'll go swim," he said, "in the lake!"

Pinkie cheered. "What's your name, mister?"

"My name is Fezzik, and I'm no sister."

Inigo sighed. "Great, now he will never stop."

"Hey, now," Fezzik called. "What are you, a cop?"

Twilight cocked her head. "Do you always talk in rhyme?"

"If I do, is that a crime?"

Twilight facehooved.

"So what brings you out here?" the woman asked. "I'm Buttercup, by the way."

"Nice to meet you all," Twilight said with a smile, which quickly fell. "We... got lost."

“Lost exploring?” Inigo said. “Or did you simply find yourself here?”

Twilight’s ears fell back, her earlier panic attempting to reassert itself. Forcing herself to be calm, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “There was a magical explosion. It involved a portal to another world." She looked around. "This doesn't look like Equestria. Or the other world." Another deep breath, holding her hoof to her chest, then a slow exhale. "Do you know where we are?"

Inigo smiled sadly. "Where we are is the place between all places. You are from 'Equestria'?" Twilight nodded. "Do not fear," he continued. "If there is a road to your home, it will pass through here."

"You're not the first traveller to end up here by mistake," Buttercup continued. "And I'm sure you won't be the last." She sheathed her sword and walked out into the street. "C'mon," she motioned gently. "The Caretaker lives at the lighthouse; he'll know where your world is and how to get you home."

"What's going on?" Tails said as they joined their Doctor back in the TARDIS they arrived in.

The Doctor grinned like a madman. "We're going to evacuate the planet." He started the TARDIS engines and frantically manned the controls. "Two-point-four-seven billion children. And who knows how many others."

"And they'll all fit in here?" Sonic said.

"Oi," the Doctor snapped. "There's more rooms in here than just this one. Plus there's the other me's with their TARDISes."

"So what can we do?"

"You two? Nothing." The Doctor grabbed his coat that was draped over one of the railings and inspected his pockets.

"Yeah, pull the other one," Sonic said with a glare. "There's people in trouble out there; we can help."

The Doctor just looked at Sonic. "I don't think so," he said, with a quiet menace. "War is hell, and outside that door is the tenth circle of hell. I told you I would get you home safely, and that means you stay here."

The Doctor and Sonic stared each other down until Sonic nodded slightly.

"Right," the Doctor said, pulling his coat on. "There's going to be a lot of scared children coming in here," he said, turning to grab one last piece of equipment. "You can really do a lot by–and he's gone."

Sure enough, in the time the Doctor took to turn around, Sonic had run out the door. Tails was visibly torn between heeding the Doctor's warnings and wanting to stay with his friend.

"Can you catch up to him?" the Doctor asked?

Before Tails could answer, Sonic ran back into the TARDIS. "What was that? Stay here? Sounds great," he said in a single breath, his eyes darting around and his hands shaking.

"I don't have time for this," the Doctor said, striding towards the door. "Tails, keep him here. And don't fly off!" He stopped in front of the doors. "Well then," he said to himself, "allons-y." And he pushed the doors open and strode onto the battlefield.

Tails flicked Sonic's ear. "What the heck was that?" he yelled.

Sonic shuffled. "You know me," he said, trying to crack a grin. "Gotta be where the action is!"

Tails kept his glare up for a moment before softening. "So what did you see that scared you back here?"

Sonic shook his head. "Nothing bad," he said. "Just... a sign."

Tails raised an eyebrow. "A sign."

The door opened and the first wave of Gallifreyans began to rush in.

"I'll tell you later," Sonic muttered.

The lighthouse stood alone in what passed for a town square. Buttercup led Pinkie and Twilight through the jumble of people–not a dense crowd, but comparable, Twilight thought, to the Ponyville market mid-morning. The lighthouse itself was a rich navy blue with white stripes and a bright white light that pulsed gently. And not much bigger than a normal lighthouse.

"Usually there's a house attached," Twilight said. "You said the caretaker lives here?"

"Well," Buttercup said with a smile, "here's your first lesson about this place." She opened the door and gestured them inside. Pinkie pronked in, and Twilight followed at a steady, though skeptical, pace.

The inside of the lighthouse was an open atrium complete with atmospheric lighting, various tables and desks and counters, what looked like a fully-stocked bar at one end, and all very much bigger than anything that would normally fit inside a lighthouse. It wasn't crowded, but it was definitely busy: an assortment of humans, creatures, and everything in between congregating and shuffling through.

"Woah!" Pinkie said. "It's smaller on the outside!"

"Not everything is as it seems," Buttercup finished. "Space fits together in weird ways here."

With a shout of "Holy crap, ponies!" a human in his early twenties with brown hair and a fairly pale complexion came rushing up to the group. He stopped short and held out his hand to Buttercup. "Princess, good to see you," he said.

"Ronyo," she said, shaking his hand. "Enthusiastic as always, I see."

"You know it." He stood back and motioned at the group. "What brings all of you here today?"

Buttercup motioned to the ponies. "This is Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie." She looked Ronyo in the eyes. "They're lost."

Ronyo nodded. "Do you want me to take them down to the database?"

"If you can tell me where Wesley is."

Ronyo jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "Saw him trading stories with some other pirates."

Buttercup rolled her eyes. "Thank you." She said goodbye to the ponies and strode off.

Ronyo turned to Twilight and Pinkie. "So!" He clapped his hands together. "We've got a solid database of universes out there along with where the stable portals are. And I'm like... eighty percent sure Equestria's on that list." He turned and motioned for them to follow.

Pinkie immediately pronked after him. Twilight followed a second later, eyes narrowed.

Ronyo led them off to the side and up a few flights of steps. "The map room is up here," he said. "Extra-dimensional physics don't always map well to three dimensions, but the Caretaker makes it work." He turned over his shoulder and grinned. "Not dissimmilar to a magic map of the world, now that I think about it."

They exited the stairwell and entered a room dominated by a large table showing a holographic display of the lighthouse and the surrounding buildings. A set of other screens around the room each displayed their own sets of data or video feeds. Above them, a skylight pulsed in time with the lighthouse.

"Caretaker!" Ronyo yelled.

An older gentleman in a plain grey suit looked up from a computer console at the other end of the room. "Ronyo!" he called with a smile. He walked to the opposite side of the map table. "What brings you up here?"

Ronyo motioned at Twilight and Pinkie. "Got a couple of lost travelers. Please tell me we have Equestria on the map."

“Obviously, you’ve been there before,” Twilight said.

Ronyo froze. The Caretaker faced down and tried to hide his grin.

“What do you mean?” Ronyo said, convincing absolutely no one.

Pinkie backed away slowly.

Twilight glared at Ronyo. “Besides the fact you mentioned the map? We never actually told you we were from Equestria.”

Ronyo winced. The Caretaker schooled his features and motioned at Ronyo who trudged around the table to him.

The Caretaker slapped Ronyo on the back of the head. “They’re real people,” he said.

“Right,” Ronyo said, much more subdued. He walked back to Twilight and Pinkie. He opened his mouth—

And was immediately interrupted by a chime from one of the screens. The Caretaker tapped a button on the table, and the main screen switched to show an old man with slicked-back hair in a stark white room. “Calling master control in The Reef, this is the Doctor.”

The Caretaker nodded. “Well met, Doctor. How goes the day?”

The Doctor smiled thinly. “A day I expect I shall not remember for some time, unfortunately. A few of my... selves have gathered together, and we have some people that will need a place.”

“We have a place. How many TARDIS-fulls can we expect?”

“Twelve.”

The Caretaker blinked. “That’s a relief,” he said. “I was afraid you were going to bring all thirteen of you.”

The Doctor scowled. “Twelve is all I get, it seems,” he clipped. “If you can take the evacuees?”

“Well, we do our best not to turn anyone away that needs a place” the Caretaker said, smiling as broadly as he could. “We’ll be happy to take them.”

“Thank you, Caretaker,” the Doctor said, smiling as genuinely as he could. “We’ll be materializing shortly.” The call ended.

The Caretaker swore. “That’s a lot of people,” he muttered.

Twilight glanced at Pinkie. Pinkie nodded back.

“How can we help?” Twilight said.

The Caretaker opened his mouth to deny, but the words never came out. “Any way you can,” he said finally.

Twilight nodded. “Right.” She snapped to attention, her head held high and her wings folded smartly to her sides. “Do we have others we can mobilize?”

“We migh—“

“Yes,” Ronyo interjected. To the Caretaker, he added, “Anyone that can help will, all you gotta do is ask.”

The Caretaker smiled. “Yes,” he said to Twilight, “we have people.”

“Great. Ronyo, can you bring that map back? And Caretaker, start getting a list of places people can go.” She turned to Pinkie. “Got any party cannons?”

Pinkie stuck a hoof in her mane and rummaged around. “Two cannons fully loaded, Sarge!”

“Fire at will. These are evacuees, so read the room.”

“They’ll be coming out of a war,” the Caretaker added. “If today is what I think it is, at least.”

Pinkie saluted, then in a puff of pink dust she was gone.”

Twilight turned back to Ronyo. "We're not done here, by the way."

Ronyo shook his head. "Princess Twilight Sparkle, I swear I am a friend, not a foe; and I will explain everything I can once things calm down." He thought for a second, then motioned to himself. "Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake–"

Pinkie materialized, shoved a cupcake into his hand, and gave an "I'm watching you" gesture before disappearing.

Ronyo looked at the cupcake and its healthy dollop of blue frosting. "...stick a cupcake in my eye." Before he could question himself he smashed the cupcake into his face.

Twilight stared for a moment before nodded. "Understood." She turned back to the map. "Do we know where they'll be coming in?"

The TARDIS landed with a thud and a shake. "I thought the number of passengers didn't matter?" Tails said as he picked himself up.

"Oh, all the time," the Doctor answered.

"Except?"

The Doctor sighed. "Except when it's funny."

Sonic snorted. Several of the younger passengers giggled.

The Doctor winked at Tails. "Alright," he called. "Line up, orderly fashion. We've got a couple thousand people to cram through a small door." He turned to Sonic and Tails. "Mind checking outside to see what's up?"

Sonic opened up the door and stopped short, causing Tails to bump into him. "Twilight Sparkle?" he said.

Twilight held up a hoof and stared at her clipboard. "Just a second. Is that everyone from TARDIS nine?"

The exceptionally large human next to her nodded. "All out and in line."

"Great." She turned back to Sonic. "Is this TARDIS ten?"

"It sure is," Sonic said with a grin. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"Yeah," she said with a grimace, "today's just full of–wait, Sonic?"

Tails pushed his way out. "Hey, Twilight! Long time no see!"

Twilight visibly relaxed. "Tell your Doctor to unload in five minutes; give the last group some time to get through."

Tails ducked back inside while Sonic walked over to Twilight. "So, what're you doing here?"

"Mirror portal exploded and sent Pinkie and I here. You?"

"TARDIS got blown off course and we got caught up in whatever this is."

Twilight frowned. "Coincidence?"

They looked at each other for a moment before shaking their heads in unison.

Tails hopped out of the TARDIS and shut the door behind him. "Okay, Sonic," he said. "What did you see?"

Sonic glanced around. "Me."

Tails' face brightened. "You from the future?" Sonic nodded. "So you'll be out there later?"

"Much later," Sonic muttered. He looked Tails in the eyes. "It was Super Sonic." He shook his head. "It'd have to be time travel shenanigans. Apart from the mess with the Time Eater, I haven't been Super Sonic since..." He fidgeted with his green-jewled bracelet.

Tails leaned over to Twilight. "He uses these artifacts to achieve a super-powered state, but the last time it happened he left them with their guardian who went to sleep for a thousand years."

"So yeah," Sonic said, pulling himself out of his funk. "I'm pretty sure it's the future, because I made eye contact with myself and told me to stay back. Maybe I find some other way to go Super Sonic?"

"Well," Twilight said with a slight stomp of her hoof, "I can tell you, from personal experience, that the future will happen, and there's no point in driving yourself crazy."

Tails and Sonic both looked at her.

She blushed. "I might have gone back in time to tell myself to stop worrying, which of course made me worry."

Sonic chuckled.

Tails suddenly perked up. "Hey, did you see me?"

Sonic grinned. "Would you feel better if I said I did?"

"Of course I would!"

Sonic put a hand on Tails' shoulder. "Then I'll say I did."

Tails smiled, then processed what exactly Sonic had said. With a glare, he whispered, "You sick son of a bitch."

Episode 4: PARTY WITHOUT LIMITS

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There was an art form to parties. Pinkie knew not everypony understood it. It usually started with a question like, "Oh, you're a party pony for a living?" And Pinkie would explain, and they would start the smile-and-nod-while-not-quite-looking-at-her.

Those explanations tended to be about fifty percent truth anyway. Pinkie giggled; if they're not listening, why not be silly?

But back to the party! There was an art form to parties. Drinks had to be monitored. Atmosphere had to be cultivated. Extroverts and introverts had to be kept just the right distance from each other. Snacks had to be rotated for freshness and the proper balance of sweet and savory.

Which is exactly what Pinkie was doing. She popped up in the kitchen of the dining hall. "How're the cookies?"

"Gah!" the chef yelled, dropping the spatula onto the baking sheet. She took a breath, and let it out slowly. "Pink," she said evenly, "what's the first rule of my kitchen?"

"Always stay on the other side of–oopsie!" Pinkie disappeared and reappeared on the other side of the kitchen window. "Sorry, Chef!"

The chef took another deep breath. "What was your question?"

"How're the cookies?"

"Two minutes on the cookies."

"Okie-doki-loki!" She pivoted on her right hind hoof and emerged next to the drink station. Without stopping her momentum, she loaded a tray down with several different drinks, tossed it onto her back, and ducked into the shadow beside the ice machine.

She ducked out from underneath a table full of children and held the tray up, facing away from the table. "Ta-da!"

She heard the giggling behind her. "Wait," she said, "where did everypony go?"

When the children answered with a chaotic yell of their own, she turned around and gave an exaggerated smile. "There you are!" She walked around the table passing out the drinks. "One boysenberry soda, one fruit punch, one grape soda, one Coca-Cola with Cane Sugar, one Coca-Cola with Corn Sugar, and one ginger ale with no ice." She barely stayed still long enough for the kids to say "thank you" before hopping over a nearby table.

She landed in a quiet corner of some out-of-the-way building. She let the serving tray fall to the ground and collapsed down, sucking wind. She leaned on her right forehoof and held up her left. It was trembling.

With an angry snort she shoved both forehooves to the ground. "You can do this, Pinkie," she said to herself. "This is the biggest party you've ever seen, and everycreature here needs you." She sat for a moment longer, doing her best to catch her breath.

Her ear twitched. "Cookies are done," she muttered. With one last determined breath, she stood back up, steadied herself, and fell to the side.

She stood up on the correct side of the kitchen window in time to hear "Cookies up!" from the chef.

"Thanks, Chef!" she yelled before disappearing again.

Friendship is Multiversal: Discovery

Episode 4: Party Without Limits

"My office is down here," Ronyo said, leading Twilight and Sonic down a stairwell. "Really, it could have been anywhere I wanted, but I've always had a thing for basements." He pushed through a door labeled "Department of Insufficiently Advanced Technology" and showed them to a set of small couches before walking off into the space.

Twilight took a look around the space. It was a pretty open space with a lot of shelving. Boxes and various devices littered the shelves, some of which looked vaguely familiar from her time in Sunset Shimmer's world.

"Tails would love this," Sonic said absently.

"If I knew what half this stuff was, I would too," Twilight answered.

Ronyo returned holding two tablet computers. He pulled a chair closer to the couches and sat down heavily.

"Okay," he said after a moment. "There's a few principles that govern this multiverse. One of them you know: when you enter a world, you take a form from that world. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, but it's a pretty good guideline."

He sighed. "The principle I need to talk to you about is this: history in one world becomes fiction in another."

He looked up at them. "Somehow, real events that happen in one world can make their way though the multiverse. Not though gossip or reporting, though that does happen. I mean though dreams, ideas, inspiration..." He picked up the tablets, but hesitated. "But because it's so far removed," he said, "we've found a lot of the details can get lost or changed. Have y'all heard the phrase, 'based on a true story'?" Sonic and Twilight nodded. "It's the same principle here."

Ronyo took a breath and let it out slowly. He met Twilight and Sonic's gaze. "Where I come from," he said, "Princess Twilight Sparkle and Sonic the Hedgehog are fictional characters." He smiled. "In fact, they're two of my heroes. But they're not you; you're real. And as much as I adore those stories, I'm much more interested in being friends with you."

He held up the tablets. "That being said, these are the stories that are in my world. If you want to, I'd love to compare notes. If you don't want to, that's fine."

Sonic immediately held his hand out. "Hit me, whatcha got?"

Ronyo handed him a tablet. "Sonic the Hedgehog, lead of one of the most well-loved and long-lived video game franchises ever." He motioned over his shoulder. "Think I've got some of the originals in here somewhere."

"Way past cool," Sonic muttered as he dove into the tablet's library.

Ronyo turned to Twilight who was shuffling her hooves nervously.

"Twilight, I'm sorry," Ronyo said after a moment. "I... I have a bad habit of making assumptions about people I meet, especially if I've heard of them."

"It's okay," Twilight said quickly. "That's not..." She looked at the tablet with trepidation. "What am I going to see in there?"

"Stories," Ronyo answered. "Stories that may or may not be true."

"What if they are, though?" She blinked, almost surprised at the words coming out of her own mouth. "What if everything in there is exactly how my life has been?"

"That's fair," Ronyo said. "I can only imagine what that would feel like. But I can promise you this: your life is your own. If what's in there is surprisingly accurate, it just means that your story was stronger somehow." He leaned forward. "Like I said: history becomes fiction. Not the other way around."

Twilight nodded. She held her hoof to her chest, then let out a breath as she pushed it away. Visibly brighter, she said, "So, what do you have for me?"

Ronyo smiled and handed her the tablet along with a stylus. "Princess Twilight Sparkle," he said, "main character of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the fourth iteration of the My Little Pony franchise. Mostly a cartoon, but I've got some of the toys."

Drinks distributed. Desserts deployed. Entrées en route. Seating settled. Pinkie placed herself in another nondescript corner to catch her breath. She knew she was running herself ragged, but she couldn't stop. Not yet.

A man stumbled into the room. He loosely managed to string himself up into a standing position and brushed his dreadlocks back behind his head. "Sorry," he slurred, "thought this was the loo."

Pinkie's hind leg twitched. "Hall to your right, second door on the left," she said flatly.

"Cheers," the man said. He turned towards the hall but kept turning until he was facing Pinkie. "Don't think I've seen you here before."

"Haven't been here before," Pinkie said, still emotionless.

"But you know where..." He motioned vaguely towards the bathroom.

"I know the bathroom is down that hall, second door on the left," Pinkie said. "I know that most of the people are taken care of, but there's still plenty for me to do. I know I've got another thirty-three seconds before the next pan of spaghetti comes out of the oven. Once I deliver that, I need to check on TARDIS nine." She finally looked up at the man. "I know what I need to know to throw a good party."

The man crouched down. "How good of a party, love?"

Pinkie smirked. "For you, Captain Jack?" she said, her voice returning. "I'd take you around the world in eighty rums."

Captain Jack blinked. "Well, that's interesting," he said. "When do we start?"

Pinkie's ear twitched. "After TARDIS nine." With a salute, she fell back into the shadow and reappeared at the kitchen window.

"Noodles up!" the chef yelled.

"Thanks, Chef!" Pinkie responded, grabbing the pan of pasta and pronking out the door, magically ending up next to the buffet table that had just run out of spaghetti. With a flourish, she swapped pans out and ducked beneath the table. She made a quick stop at the bussing station to drop off the empty pan then turned the corner to find herself just beside one of the tables for TARDIS nine.

He wasn't hard to spot, with his shaved head, leather jacket, and empty stare. There was an untouched glass of water in front of him.

"Is he what I'm looking for?" Pinkie wondered out loud.

Every part of Pinkie's body, from her nose to her tail, twitched violently.

"Right, a doozy," she said to herself as she walked up to him.

The man shook his head as she trotted up. "Nope," he said. "Nothing for me."

"Nothing at all?" Pinkie said. "A perfectly seared venison steak? Meatloaf with a side of macaroni and cheese?" She shrugged. "Half a gallon of rocky road ice cream?"

The man just glared at her.

Pinkie turned around and flopped her head backwards onto the table.

"What are you doing?" the man ground out.

"Turning your frown upside down!" Pinkie said brightly.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the man said. "Forgive me for not reveling in the destruction of two entire civilizations. Just not in the mood to celebrate an uncountable number of lives lost." He snarled. "Just make sure the one that caused all of this gets his feast afterwards."

Pinkie just stared at him. Then she picked herself up, turned back to face him, and held out a hoof. "I'm Pinkie Pie; what's your name?"

The man kept his arms folded. "I'm the Doctor. The Oncoming Storm. The Destroyer of Gallifrey." He leaned forward. "And I'm the reason all these people are here instead of at home. I'm the one that destroyed everything. And I'd really prefer not to destroy anything else today!"

Pinkie kept standing there.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes. "Run."

Pinkie pulled her hoof back into a salute then disappeared in a comical cloud of dust.

Sonic hopped onto the couch next to Twilight. "How's it going, Princess?"

Twilight set down the tablet and notepad. "It's... surreal. You?"

Sonic shrugged. "Eh, no big deal," he said.

Twilight looked at him. "Really."

Sonic smiled weakly. "Well, it helps that there's a mode that lets you play as Tails. So there's a bit of disconnect between those life-and-death fights that I still sometimes have nightmares about and what I'm actually doing in the game." He shuddered. "Means I can't play more of the recent games."

Twilight smiled sympathetically. "They're that accurate?"

"They don't have to be. They get enough of the broad strokes right that I can fill in the other gaps." He shook it off and smiled back at Twilight. "Anyway, how's the cartoon?"

"Not bad," Twilight said. "Fairly accurate overall." She held up the notepad. "I've got a long list of nitpicks, but most of it can be explained by this being a foal's cartoon."

"Like?"

Twilight huffed. "Where do I start? First off, the timeline is all over the place. The cartoon doesn't have me making up with Moondancer until well after I'm a princess, but that happened after I..." She trailed off and mumbled a few things.

Sonic smelled blood in the water. "What was that?" he asked with a broad grin.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "After I freaked out about not sending a friendship report and decided to create a problem by casting a nuromantic spell that—" She shook her head and cut herself off. "I snapped, broke a couple of laws, and had to go through therapy back in Canterlot. That was why I was even in Canterlot to have the chance to make up with Moondancer."

Sonic nodded.

Twilight looked at him. "Too much?"

"Who's Moondancer?"

Twilight smiled slightly. "One of my... well, we were classmates. We worked together pretty often. But I didn't really... have friends until I moved to Ponyville. Turns out, she really wanted to be my friend, and I just kinda... ignored her."

"But you're friends now?"

"We're friends now. She helps me with a lot of research stuff; I've actually got her looking up any other magical items that might have made their way to the other world."

"That's great," Sonic said with an easy smile. "Gotta admit, I'm a little jealous of the cartoon."

"Really?" Twilight looked back over at the TV. "I thought you'd love being a video game."

"I mean, I do," he said. "But the message gets lost. I mean, there's a game back there from where... uh..." He flicked his arms a few times. "The world kinda broke apart? So I had to run around the world and set everything back—Anyway! The game only has a few characters besides me and completely ignores all the help I was getting. I mean, they left out Knuckles!"

He leaned back. "Point being, with your cartoon, it's right there in the title. 'Friendship is magic.' For me, it's like they started cutting out characters right around the time I started making a bunch of friends. Friends that keep me going."

"Friends that make you who you are," Twilight added.

The companionable silence lasted another beat before Sonic leaned forward. "So, timeline issues; anything else?"

Twilight shrunk in on herself. "You mentioned life-and-death situations? That your friends aren't there for?" She shifted her wings self-consciously. "I'm not sure whether to be relieved or offended that they glossed over the story of how I got these."

Sonic shifted slightly. "We don't have to—"

"I died."

Sonic blinked.

Twilight rushed forward. "It was just one episode of the show. Not even a two-parter! Just 'ha-ha look at Twilight she swapped all her friends' cutie marks what's she going to do now?' I sing a couple of songs and..." She sighed deeply. "They made it seem like it was completing the spell that did it, but..."

She looked Sonic in the eye. "I messed up their destinies. That deep magic that gave you a different name? That gives us our cutie marks? That's what I messed with, that's what I screwed up, that's what I had to fix. And it took everything." She looked back at the tablet. "Sure, I finished Star Swirl's last spell. That, combined with the Elements of Harmony, was the only thing that could get back to that deep magic and let me fix things."

She blinked away a couple of tears. "This is a state secret, by the way," she deadpanned. "If it got out what it actually takes to ascend..."

"You died."

Twilight nodded. "Channeling that much magic, correcting destiny like that, it has a cost. But in that moment, all I could think was, 'I have to help my friends. I have to put things back the way they should be so my friends can live their lives.' And I didn't care about the cost.

"When everything stopped, I was alone in... a limbo space? It's like, there's nothing there, but I'm still standing. Princess Celestia met me there and told me..." She blinked more tears away. "Told me that only a special few make it here. And she could take me back, or let me go on."

"Hey," Sonic said, placing his hand on her shoulder. "You're here."

"Should I be?"

"Hell, yeah!" Sonic said. "I don't know much about what happened, but it certainly sounds like if you weren't supposed to come back, you wouldn't have." He chuckled slightly. "Granted, I don't think I've actually hit the afterlife, but I've gotten close. Really close. Like..."

He got up. "Want to see me try to beat the game? They did a pretty good job with the Death Egg."

Pinkie looked down from the balcony of the lighthouse. She was collapsed in a heap, and she honestly wasn't sure if her rear calf muscle twitching was Pinkie Sense or just an old-fashioned muscle twitch. Upon further contemplation, she was too tired to care.

But the Doctor. That was a doozy if she'd ever seen one. She hadn't had someone that opposed to being happy since... ever. Cranky Doodle was just a grump; the Doctor was mad. Mad at the world, mad at everyone, mad at himself.

And the worst part was... he was right. She'd gathered bits and pieces of what had happened and pieced together a pretty nasty story: there was a war, both sides were being horrible, and the Doctor ended it by destroying both armies. Problem was, those armies were both on his home planet. So the planet had to go too.

Pinkie looked down at the party, at the hastily set up tables and seemingly random buffet lines. It was like those harvest festivals in Ponyville where everypony brought a dish and just spent the afternoon sharing recipes and swapping outlandish stories.

Pinkie blinked and focused on the people here. They were sharing plates of food, swapping stories, and she saw several groups of children starting to converge into a massive game of freeze tag (or whatever they called it on Gallifrey). She reached out with her party sense to see if there were any trouble spots brewing...

Nothing.

"They're not mad at him," she said to herself.

"They're really not," a voice said next to her.

She turned to see another man, this one with a long coat and slightly messy hair.

"Doctor?" Pinkie said.

"Hello," the Doctor said.

Pinkie's eyes widened. "Oh, because you're all the Doctor but at different times and the one down there is from TARDIS Nine because he is number nine and you're number..."

"Ten," the Doctor said simply.

Pinkie brightened up. "So you know that things are okay now—"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, Pinkie," he said. "Things are not okay. I just lost my home. But..." He sighed. "I've made peace with that. Not as much as he has, though." He pointed over Pinkie's shoulder.

Pinkie turned around to see another man, this one in a tweed jacket and a stylish pompadour. "Hello," he said. "Number eleven."

Pinkie narrowed her eyes. She looked back at Ten, felt the ear twitch, then turned back to Eleven. "It's been over a hundred years, mister," she said. "You're getting a party."

Eleven rolled his eyes. "Can't we just—"

"I don't make the rules!"

"Yes you do!"

Pinkie giggled. "Yeah, I do." She looked back down at the party.

"I think I get it now," she said. "It's like when I first get into my party cave after being outside in the bright sunlight and I can't see anything except dark and it only looks like dark and I don't know if I've gone blind or if this is normal but then my eyes adjust and I can see the string lights I left on and the glow crystals and the in-floor-LED-lights that I can't do anything with because I've never met Alexa—" She inhaled. "And then it all makes sense. And right now Doctor number nine just went into the cave and he can't see anything and he thinks he's gone blind, right?"

"That sounds right," Ten said.

Eleven just gaped. "Bloody hell, I forgot how insightful she is," he muttered.

Pinkie grinned. "Okay, I think I know what to do. Can you—"

"We'll meet you there," Eleven said.

Ten furrowed his brow. "Meet her where?"

"Oi!" Eleven snapped back. "I'm about to show you, Sandshoes."

"But—" Ten looked around the balcony. "And she's gone."

"So these games take place in your home world," Twilight said, motioning to the stack of cartridges. "But these other games are in that other world you mentioned?"

"Yeah," Sonic said, "pretty much. The first time we went to that other world was a complete accident, though. Took Angel Island with us." He shuddered. "Knuckles was not happy about that."

Twilight smiled. "But you were able to move it back before this game?"

Sonic nodded as his on-screen version sat on the end of a pier with a red flying dog. "This was actually my last adventure in the human world," he said. "They, uh..." He winced. "They didn't like me very much after this."

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "For something Robotnik did?"

"Oh, they hate him," he said with a laugh. "Like, 'show your face here and we will not hesitate to shoot you on sight.' Amazingly enough, they don't take kindly to their planet being broken apart." He chuckled. "No, it's more of a 'you're nothing but trouble' kind of attitude. So I've kinda laid low when we go back."

On the screen, the sun went down and Sonic turned into a larger, furrier version of himself.

Twilight motioned at the screen with a wing. "Did that hurt?"

Sonic shrugged. "A little," he said quietly. He suddenly put the controller down and got up. "Actually, you should watch the last cutscenes in here."

Twilight got up to follow him. "Are you okay?"

Sonic blinked and fidgeted with his bracelet. "Yeah," he whispered.

Twilight looked at the bracelet, then back to the flying dog on the screen with an identical item around its neck. "That's Chip's?"

Sonic nodded. "He was a good friend," he said. "I mean, one of the two spirits responsible for the cycle of life in that world, but..." He smiled. "He just loved living. Ice cream, chocolate, hanging on for dear life while I was speeding along. And even when he got his memory back, he still had that joy."

Twilight held a hoof out to touch him. "Did he...?"

Sonic shook his head. "He didn't die. Neither of us did, though it was touch-and-go there. He had to magic me out of the middle of the earth after the battle, though. And he stayed behind... to sleep for a thousand years."

Sonic took a deep breath and shook himself off. "And then Baldy McNosehair did that thing with the Wisps and I was off on another adventure!"

Twilight gave him a mild glare.

Sonic smiled sheepishly. "Seriously, I'm okay," he said. "It was... just a lot of memories to bring back up."

Twilight smiled back. "Memories of a good friend, though."

Pinkie was pushing herself harder than she ever had. She didn't have her usual supply of cameras hidden around for camera-related emergencies, so first she had to find some. Thankfully she found a room with a box of disposable cameras just waiting for her.

She almost stopped by to say hi to Sonic and Twilight, but Pinkie Sense said not to interfere. She grabbed several dozen cameras and stuffed them into her mane then dove into the box—

—to reappear next to the table for TARDIS one. "Hey, everycreature!" she yelled, holding up a couple of the cameras. "Who wants to take some pictures?"

Immediately several children and at least two teenagers rushed forward. Pinkie handed out a few cameras, admonished them to take turns, then pronked off towards TARDIS two.

And so on.

When she gave out the last camera at TARDIS twelve, she collapsed. Not in a dead faint, but awfully close.

"Getting on all right, then?" an older gentleman said, leaning over her.

Pinkie lazily looked up at him. "Doctor number twelve?"

"Aye," he said with a smile. He reached down and helped her to her hooves. "What you're doing..." he began.

"It's gonna work, right?" Pinkie said.

Twelve shook his head. "I'm here, aren't I?"

Pinkie smiled. "So... does that mean I can borrow your TARDIS to develop the film?"

Twelve sighed. "Leave it in Eleven's," he said. "I'll make sure it's ready by the time I'm here."

Pinkie's right hind leg twitched. "TARDIS one is done!" Without waiting for a response, she pronked over a nearby wall—

—and landed sideways in the middle of the crowd at TARDIS one. A few kids laughed, and a few more laughed when she sprung up. With a smile and a thanks, she collected the cameras and disappeared.

Collecting the remainder of the cameras didn't go quite as quickly. One Doctor, with an impressively long scarf, insisted on taking a picture with her. Another group of middle-aged Gallifreyans were still debating what kind of pictures to take—Pinkie took the camera herself and ran them though some rapid-fire poses. But eventually the cameras from all twelve groups were collected.

Pinkie parked herself outside of TARDIS eleven. Gingerly, she knocked on the door. "Excuse me, Miss TARDIS?" she said. "I know it might be impolite, but I have a lot of pictures to develop and I need a time machine for that."

The door swung open.

"Thanks!" Pinkie said as she pronked inside. Five seconds later she pronked out and into TARDIS twelve. Five seconds later she pronked out of that, her mane filled to bursting with photographs. "Thanks again!" She pronked into the shadow behind the TARDIS and came out into the out-of-the-way corner she'd been frequenting earlier.

She took three whole seconds to survey the area. Plan made, she pulled a piece of her mane out, stuck it in her mouth, chewed it for a bit, then pulled out the sticky bubble gum and used it to attach the photos to the wall.

There were a lot of photos. Enough to cover both walls of the corner, from the ground to twelve feet up.

Pinkie took a moment to survey her handiwork, and, with a nod of satisfaction, fell backwards to get the guest of honor—

—and fell on her back.

“Ow,” Pinkie muttered, her voice cracking. “That hurt.” Slowly, painfully, she pulled herself back to her hooves. She’d been able to ignore the fatigue while she had the project to focus on, but it all caught up with her suddenly.

“Why couldn’t I go?” she mused out loud. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes again and focused on her Pinkie Sense: her unique brand of magic that let her be where she needed to be, know what she needed to know, and do what she needed to do. She focused inward, trying to find what she needed.

The results were… confusing. Which, to her, was a new experience. The ninth Doctor was somewhere impossible, which she guessed meant he was in his time machine. Even with her magic, she wasn’t sure she could get there.

She looked up at the collage of photos. All the people that the Doctor had saved today. All the stories she had heard during the party.

“No,” she said, steeling herself for one last jump with her magic, “you’re going to laugh today.”

She took one last breath, and pounced.

She emerged in a circular room that had seen better days. There were several support beams exposed (not on purpose), exposed wiring everywhere, and piles of junk and broken armor everywhere. The focal point was the center console, itself charred and broken, the center column wheezing as it pumped up and down.

“How the hell did you get in here?” the Doctor yelled, frantically getting between Pinkie and the console.

“Woooooooah," she said, wide-eyed and looking around. "Is this your time machine?"

"It's my TARDIS," the Doctor huffed. "And you can't be here."

"But I am here," Pinkie said with a grin.

"Yes, you are!" the Doctor yelled. "Inside a TARDIS that is inside the time vortex! So how—"

"Wait, we're traveling through time right now?" Pinkie interrupted, still grinning. "That's so cool."

"Yes, it is, and it's also—"

"Are you running away?"

"What?"

Pinkie lost her grin. "Are. You. Running. Away."

The Doctor matched her stare. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Why shouldn't I?" the Doctor yelled. "Why should I stay there? Among all those people who lost their homes because of me? All those children without parents?" He pointed at Pinkie. "And don't tell me everything's going to be all right. I'm the Doctor. I'm a time traveller. You think I don't know what my future selves being there means? Of course this isn't the end. I did everything I did so it wouldn't be the end! But that doesn't change what I did. That doesn't change everything that happened in this war. And I don't need anyone, especially stupid horses, telling me to be happy!"

Pinkie blinked. "Okay!"

That brought the Doctor up short. "Okay?"

Pinkie looked up at the center column. "Can you get back on your own?"

A pleasant chime sounded from the console. The Doctor turned to look at that, then glared back at Pinkie. "Don't talk to my TARDIS."

Pinkie smiled back at the Doctor. "I'm nopony's messenger pony," she said with a malevolent grin.

The Doctor tensed up.

"I'm a delivery pony."

Pinkie pounced forward, grasping the Doctor in a perfect hoofball tackle, and the two of them fell backwards—

—onto the floor of the photo room. The Doctor immediately sprang up and looked around, ready to defend himself against Pinkie, but he was alone in the room.

Not seeing anything else of interest, he walked up to the walls of photos.

"It's not everyone," the tenth Doctor said, walking into the room with Eleven and Twelve close behind. "But it's a lot."

"But..." Nine stuttered. "They lost their homes."

"They'd already lost their homes," Eleven answered. "Whether by weapons or by policy, the Gallifrey they knew was already gone."

"But I pulled the trigger!" Nine yelled.

"Yes," Twelve said, smiling sadly. "You did that. And because you did that..." He walked past and pulled a photo off the wall. "This child will grow up. They'll go on to study science and advance the understanding of the multiverse." He motioned to another. "These teenagers are going to end a refugee crisis in another world by sheer force of will."

"Stop," Nine said, defeated. "I don't... I don't care what everyone's going to do. What phoenix will rise from these ashes. Not when there should never have been a fire."

"No, Doctor," Twelve said. "There should never have been a fire. But there was one, and you put it out."

"The war is over," Eleven continued. "They have a chance to rest, now."

"And everything that happens," Ten concluded, "can only happen because you ended the war."

Nine let out something between a cough, a laugh, and a sob. And then another one. Twelve stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. Nine grasped onto Twelve's coat like a life preserver, laughing and crying all at once.

Off to the side, where Nine had originally fell into the room, a pattern of three balloons was scorched into the floor.

Twilight dropped the controller.

Sonic jumped, startled. "Everything okay?"

"No..." Twilight said, distracted. "Something..."

She shot to her hooves. "Pinkie!" she yelled. She turned to Sonic. "I need to find someone that can planeshift!"

Sonic nodded and started to move, then stopped. "What am I looking for?"

"Something's happening on another plane of existence," she said frantically. "I think Pinkie..."

Sonic nodded. "Same thing that happened to you?"

"Right," Twilight said, "but I don't know if she can get back on her own. And Princess Celestia never taught me how to planeshift, so I don't think I can get her—"

"And you need someone that can," Sonic finished. "On it." He sped out of the room in a flash.

He darted up the stairs until he got to the map room. "Caretaker, you in?" he shouted.

"Sonic!" the Caretaker said jovially, Ronyo looking up from his terminal off to the side. "What—"

"We need someone that can planeshift," Sonic said. "Twilight got a sense that Pinkie Pie might be on another plane of existence."

Ronyo brightened. "She ascended?"

Sonic glared at him. "She's dead until someone brings her back."

Ronyo clammed up.

The Caretaker nodded. "We can scan the surrounding multiverse, see if that shows anything." He pressed a few buttons on his terminal—

—and every screen in the room changed to a red background with white text reading "BAD WOLF."

"Uhhhh," Ronyo said. "Is this a good 'bad wolf' or a bad 'bad wolf'?"

"Well," the Caretaker said, leaning back. "Given that she's blocking us out, I'm inclined to say 'good'."

"So is Pinkie okay?" Sonic said, tapping his foot. "And what's 'bad wolf' got to do with this?"

Pinkie was alone. There was a vast expanse above her and below her, yet she was standing on something resembling firm ground.

"Hello?" she called. Her voice didn't echo.

"¿Hola?" she tried. "¿Dónde está la biblioteca?"

"Now, that's an interesting question," a woman's voice said behind her.

Pinkie turned around to see a woman with dirty blonde hair in a ragged white dress.

"The answer, unfortunately, is 'which one'? I know a lot of libraries." She smiled. "But that's not what you were really asking, is it."

Pinkie shook her head.

The woman knelt down to look Pinkie in the eye. "What is your question, Little Pony?"

Pinkie gulped. "Am I dead?" she whispered.

The woman cocked her head. "You could be, if you wanted to be," she said. "But if you were to go back, things would be different."

Pinkie nodded slowly. "What happened?"

The woman laughed. "Pinkie Pie, you impossible thing!" She sat down cross-legged, and Pinkie sat with her. "You were tired, and you pressed on. You were using every last scrap of magic you had and kept going. And then..." She held out a hand and gently held Pinkie's cheek. "You used your magic to jump into the TARDIS. A time machine in flight. And then back out again."

"He was sad," Pinkie said without thinking.

The woman nodded. "This is the Doctor at his lowest. All through this war, he's had to make decisions that went against everything he stood for, this last decision most of all."

A portal opened, showing the older twelfth Doctor comforting the ninth.

"And you brought him exactly where he needed to be: with the ones that understood him to remind him who he is."

Other portals opened, showing not only the party happening around the Lighthouse but moments and parties from Pinkie's past.

"You've done so much for other ponies, Pinkie Pie," the woman said. "Do you understand?"

Pinkie nodded slowly as she looked around.

"Are you ready?"

Pinkie turned back to the woman. "I'm scared," she whispered. "Everything's going to be different."

The woman nodded. "Yes, all but one thing: your friends will still be your friends."

Pinkie smiled, and that smile slowly grew brighter. "Okie-dokie-lokie!" she chirped. "Let's go!"

LAUGHTER has joined the party.

Episode 5: Aftermath

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The party was winding down. Most of the Doctors had left, and the Gallifreyans left behind were breaking apart to find places to stay. The kitchen staff was toasting with whatever was left, and the other organizers were setting down their clipboards with the satisfaction of a completed checklist.

All except Twilight Sparkle, along with Sonic, Tails, and Ronyo, who were standing in an open area of the town square.

"She's going to make it," Twilight said.

Sonic and Tails glanced at each other, neither wanting to point out that she had been saying that for the last half hour.

"There she is!" Ronyo yelled, pointing at a star that had appeared.

"Sure it's not just a star?" Tails said.

"There's no stars here," Ronyo answered.

Twilight visibly brightened. "It is, it's her!"

The star grew brighter and larger.

Sonic shifted positions. "Do we need to catch her?"

Twilight shook her head. "She'll be all right."

"Ooo," Ronyo said, feeling more giddy by the second, "think she'll do a superhero landing?"

The star—now identified as a pink glow—was falling fast.

Tails did some quick math in his head and panicked. "Everybody clear space, she's coming in hot!"

The few stragglers around the town square quickly moved toward the edges. Twilight refused to move at first, but when it was obvious her entrance was bound to be explosive, she quickly cast a bubble shield over her friends.

The pink star slammed into the ground, dirt and dust flying everywhere and piling up against Twilight's shield. As the dust settled, Pinkie Pie could be seen in the small crater, both back hooves and one front hoof on the ground...

And her new wings spread triumphantly.

"Yeah!" Ronyo yelled. "Superhero landing!"

Twilight didn't wait for anyone's antics. She dropped the shield and tackled Pinkie to the ground. "Pinkie Pie!" she shrieked in between sobs and halfhearted punches combined with holding Pinkie as close as possible. "Don't ever scare me like that again you... you... you motherbucker!"

As soon as the word was out of her mouth Twilight shrank back, sitting on her hind legs and using her fore hooves to cover her mouth.

Pinkie got up slowly, no worse for the wear. "What did you call me?" she said with a giggle.

Twilight just shook her head, not moving her hooves from her mouth.

Pinkie barked a couple of laughs before jumping forward and wrapping Twilight in her own hug.

"I'm sorry," Pinkie said in between laughs and sobs. "I'm not going anywhere."

Twilight released her fore hooves and returned the hug with equal gusto. "I didn't—I'm sorry, I—"

"It's okay! I didn't want to scare you."

"I'm so glad you're okay—and you're an alicorn!"

"And I'm an alicor—" Pinkie paused, her eyes wide. "Oh, no!"

Twilight pulled back. "What? What is it?"

Pinkie looked Twilight in the eye. "Does this mean I'm a princess now? And if so does that mean I can't be a baker at Sugarcube Corner anymore? Am I going to have to move out? Can I move in with you? At least until I get my own castle—Wait! Am I going to get my own castle? And did you have any idea that yours was going to be made out of crystal because I don't think that'd be very good when it could be made out of—Wait! Can it be made out of sugar crystal? Do I have to leave a bunch of cupcakes by the Tree of Harmony to get it to build..."

Friendship is Multiversal: Discovery

Episode 5: Aftermath

"...if the palace bakers don't like me? I mean, I know they like making cake because duh, but what if I don't like their cakes? Or what if I have to become the Princess of Cakes and Celestia challenges me for my throne? I'm good, but she can use the sun to bake her cakes. I've never done anything like that and I don't know if it would even work but if she could do it then it would probably make the cakes taste delicio—"

"Pinkie," Twilight admonished, gently.

"Right, sorry," Pinkie said, her eyes darting around the map room. "Still got a lot of energy."

"Pinkie Pie as an alicorn," the eleventh Doctor muttered. "It's a wonder the universe is still standing."

"Right, then!" the Caretaker called from his end of the room. "We've got two worlds to find, here."

"Don't need to find them," the Doctor shot back. "Equestria and Mobius are both known; I've been to both of them."

"And how's that working out for you, Doctor," the Caretaker answered. "Because last time you tried to go to Mobius—"

"A brief hiccup, some time-space turbulence; the chances of it happening again—"

"Are guaranteed." The Caretaker tapped a button and the center table showed a map with several waypoints on it. The space between the waypoints was filled with red pixelated static. "The turbulence you ran into, that sent Sonic and Tails to Equestria, that sent you back into the Time War? It completely surrounds Mobius. And it's spreading."

He added another layer to the map, with several bright lines connecting the lighthouse in the middle to many of the waypoints. "We have stable portals set up to several of the surrounding worlds, including Equestria."

"But not ours?" Sonic said, arms folded and foot tapping.

"I'm sorry," the Caretaker said with a shake of his head. "We've only mapped out a dozen so far."

"What do you mean, 'mapped out'?" Tails said.

Ronyo spoke up. "Theoretically, based on how the world we're in is set up, we can make a stable portal to any world in the area. It's finding the right spot based on the quantum geometry and..." He threw up his hands. "It's not like a TARDIS where you can just rip through the fabric of space and time. It's like the difference between building a bridge across a river or firing yourself with a cannon." He turned to the Doctor. "Not necessarily a bad thing; if I knew I'd survive I'd take the cannon every time."

The Doctor made a face but relaxed it after a gentle slap from his companion Clara.

"There's magic interference, so we can't teleport," Twilight said. "We have to walk."

Ronyo pointed at her. "That's a better metaphor, yeah."

"So me and Tails aren't getting home anytime soon," Sonic grumbled.

"I'm afraid not," the Caretaker said. "We do have a way of creating a stable portal to Mobius, but because of the interference, we need to do some extra triangulation."

"Here we go," Pinkie snarked. "Plot Coupons with Walking the Earth?"

Ronyo shrugged. "More like Catch them All, but who's counting."

Pinkie stared straight at him. "Well," she said, "it only took five chapters to get to the Adventure Hook. So I guess I'm counting."

Ronyo stared straight back.

The rest of the room looked awkwardly at each other.

Finally, Ronyo muttered, "Do you want to go back to my place?"

Pinkie muttered back, "I thought you'd never ask."

The two of them left the room to the utter bafflement of everyone else.

Sunset knelt on the ground in the post-sunset twilight, her hands pressed into the dust that was left of the Wondercolt statue. Her breathing had stabilized, and her sobbing had stopped. For the most part, at least.

“The circuit must have already been overloaded,” Twilight muttered to herself, standing awkwardly off to the side.

“It’s not your fault, Twilight,” Sunset said flatly.

“Did we aim for the right part?” Twilight continued. “Should we have just let it sit and burn itself out? Or tried to counteract it with some other kind of—“

“IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!” Sunset yelled, turning to face Twilight and looking as furious as she ever had.

Twilight shrank back and stared at the ground. “Who are you trying to convince,” she said quietly, “me or you?”

Sunset immediately looked stricken. “I’m sorry, I—“ Her breath caught.

Twilight nodded but didn’t look up.

Ms. Gentleheart walked up. “If we’re ascribing blame,” she said, “don’t ignore that it was my arrow.”

The two girls didn’t move, both looking overly weary.

Gentleheart nodded. “Sunset,” she said, “do you have another way of contacting your home?”

Sunset nodded. “The journal. It’s in my bag in the lab.”

“I can get it,” Twilight said, already moving toward the school.

Sunset opened her mouth to protest but didn’t say anything. Gentleheart knelt down next to Sunset.

“I’m sorry,” Sunset said. “I shouldn’t have yelled at her.”

“You’re upset,” Gentleheart said without malice. “You’ve lost a link to your home, to the people you care about.”

“Doesn’t excuse me yelling at someone else I care about.”

“No, but it’s room for both of you to have grace for each other.”

Sunset nodded.

"Sunset," Gentleheart said. "Look at me."

Sunset looked up at her, her eyes bloodshot.

"You are not stranded here," Gentleheart said, looking Sunset in the eye.

"How can you know that?" Sunset said.

Gentleheart sighed. She smiled slightly, as if thinking of a fond memory. "Second chances happen more often than we expect," she said finally. "And magic like this... I am sure it will find a way."

Sunset spotted Twilight walking back up with Sunset's bag. "I hope so," she said.

Twilight silently handed Sunset the bag. Sunset took it but didn't open it. "Twilight I'm sorry," she said.

Twilight shrugged. "Not like we could have known what would happen," she said.

Sunset and Gentleheart shared a look: Twilight didn't believe what she was saying.

"Really, Twilight," Sunset continued, "it wasn't yo—"

"I think I heard the book vibrate," Twilight interrupted.

Sunset looked at Twilight for another moment before opening her bag and fishing out the journal. She quickly turned to the most recent page.

Hey Sunset! It's Spike! Are you okay? Are Twilight and Pinkie with you? Our Twilight and Pinkie, that is. The mirror portal exploded over here. Good thing we were using the old journal to power it, right?

Sunset saw Gentleheart and Twilight's confusion. "The portal's only supposed to open once every thirty moons, but Princess Twilight rigged together something to use these journals to open the portal whenever we need it. When we ran out of space in the old journals, we just left it in the portal to keep it open." She looked down at Spike's message. "Looks like theirs was caught in the same explosion."

Spike, it's Sunset. We don't have any Equestrians over here. Except me, of course. There was a magic ruby over here that was draining magic from the portal. When we disconnected it, it exploded. We’re ok, but the portal’s completely gone. Twilight and Pinkie are missing?

Spike looked up from the journal. "They're not in Sunset's world," he said glumly.

"Okay, so what now?" Rainbow Dash asked as she hovered just below the ceiling, her wings flapping from agitation as much as for lift.

"Now," Rarity said, "we consider our assets. Spike, how were Fast and Miles—sorry, Sonic and Tails?—how were they getting home before the Doctor took them?"

"They were trying to build something," Spike said, "but the Doctor said it wouldn't work."

Rarity snorted to herself. "He said that when there were other options," she said. "Rainbow, I have something for you to do that is tedious, physically intensive, and could get ponies mad at you."

Rainbow landed. "I'm your mare. What's up?"

"Get Starlight Glimmer. Then, if you can, get Starswirl."

"On it!" Rainbow was out of the room in a flash.

"You want to rebuild the portal?" Applejack said.

Rarity nodded. "I know we've established that Twilight and Pinkie are not there, but Sunset is. It would not do for us to leave her there with no way back, especially after what Twilight told us she'd just been through." She sighed. "Then, if we can travel to one world, we can travel to another."

"An astute observation, Rarity," Princess Celestia said as she entered the room. As the ponies (and dragon) in the room began to bow, she quickly waved them off with her wing. "I'm here as a friend, not a princess. What do we know?"

"Sunset Shimmer said they're not with her," Spike said.

Celestia perked up. "Sunset? Is she okay?"

Spike looked back at the journal. "She's alive," he muttered. "I'll ask."

Yeah, the portal was acting really weird before, and now they're missing. Princess Celestia is here, and Rainbow Dash left to go get Starlight Glimmer and Starswirl the Bearded. I think they're going to use Tails' notes to rebuild the portal. Princess Celestia wants to know if you're okay.

Sunset teared up again. After so long separated from her homeland carrying her bitterness with her, it still shocked her—in the best way—to know her mentor still cared for her.

Tell her I'm okay, Spike. I have friends here.

Sunset looked up at Twilight and smiled. Twilight returned it with a weak smile of her own.

"Is there anything we can do?" Twilight said. "We might have some magic of our own..."

Sunset nodded and added to her previous message.

Twilight—our Twilight—says to let us know if we can help over here. We've been researching our magic, so we'll see what we can do.

"Is everything all right?" Principal Celestia said as she and Vice-Principal Luna walked up to the group.

"The danger is passed," Gentleheart said, "but, as you can see..." She motioned to the remains of the statue.

Celestia noted it with a stoic nod. "Another gas explosion?" she said with a wry smile. "Or should I blame this on the shop class this time? More to the point, are both of you young women good to get home?"

Sunset nodded, but Twilight shrunk back. "I... don't really know."

"We can give you a ride," Luna said, but Twilight shook her head.

"It's not that; my parents are out of town and..." She held herself a little tighter.

"I've got a futon," Sunset said, reaching out.

"No, Sunset, I couldn't—"

"We're friends, Twilight," Sunset said.

Twilight blinked. With a deep breath, she nodded. "Will Spike be okay too?"

Sunset laughed. "Of course!"

The journal glowed with another message. Sunset read over it, then passed the journal to Twilight.

Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle, this is Celestia. Sunset, I am glad to hear you are well and with friends. Twilight, I am glad to hear of you as well.
Twilight, though we have not met, I have a feeling you share a drive and determination to help, especially when friends are involved. This is a trait I admire greatly in the Twilight Sparkle I know. Which is why I must now ask you and Sunset for the greatest of favors:
Do nothing and rest.
With this portal, we are dealing with magic that, I am not ashamed to admit, I know very little of. But we are contacting the most brilliant unicorns in Equestria to assist us. When they get here, then we will approach the problem with fresh minds. But it will do none of us any good to burn ourselves out.
Princess Twilight is extraordinarily capable, and I have learned many times not to underestimate Pinkie Pie. I fear for them, yes; but we do them no favors by panicking.
Think of this as an order if you must, but I say this as a friend who has seen many a crisis: go home. Get some rest. Rest and know you are loved, my little pony. And my little human as well.

Celestia closed the journal gently and levitated it to a nearby shelf. She turned back to look at the remains of the portal.

“Stay safe, Twilight,” she said.

A purple flash filled the room as Starlight Glimmer teleported in. “What’s the latest?” Starlight Glimmer said.

Celestia turned back to face her. “Nothing as of yet,” she said gently. “We’ve made contact with Sunset and the Twilight Sparkle in her worl—“

“Yeah, they’re not there,” Starlight said, her left eye twitching and her breathing erratic. “What do we have here?”

Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Starlight,” she said, “are you—“

“I’m fine!” she snapped.

Celestia’s stare did not change.

Starlight wilted a little bit. “I thought it would be an all-nighter, so I drank some coffee.”

“How much?”

Starlight wilted some more. “Five…”

Celestia hummed. “Five cups is a lo—“

“Pots. Five pots.”

Celestia blinked. “Art thou mad?” she said quietly.

Spike snorted from his side of the room.

Celestia glanced at him. “Not one word, Young Spike,” she said.

Spike met her stare and mimed zipping his lips.

Celestia closed her eyes and nodded. “Tails’ plans for their world gateway are down in the laboratory,” she said. “I believe Rarity is taking a look.”

“Smart,” Startlight muttered. “Those things always involve gems of some kind. Rarity’s good at that.”

“Indeed. I was going to suggest getting a good night’s rest,” she said with a knowing smile, “but if you want to get started on that…”

Starlight nodded and headed out, Spike dashing out behind her.

“Seriously,” he said when he caught up with her in the hallway, “how are you even alive right now?”

“I’ll have you know,” Starlight said, “that this isn’t even the most coffee I’ve drunk in one sitting.”

“Maybe not,” he said with a grin, “but this was enough to make Princess Celestia revert back to Old Ponish!”

“The sun is down, Spike,” Celestia’s voice echoed into the hallway, “not my ears!”

Twilight was jolted awake by the doorbell. She frantically reached over to her bedside table for her glasses—

“Ow!” Sunset said.

—and punched Sunset Shimmer in the shoulder?

“I said don’t ring the doorbell, asshat,” Sunset muttered. Twilight could feel the weight shift as she got up from the futon-turned-bed.

Slowly, it came back to Twilight. The exploding portal, the self-doubt, Sunset offering her place. She looked around for her glasses, finding them on the table next to the futon. She put them on as Sunset sat back on the bed, a brown bag from a chain coffee-and-doughnuts shop in her hand.

"Sorry about that," she said with an eyeroll. "I wanted them to just leave it on the doorstep and text me, but..." She passed the bag to Twilight along with a not-small coffee cup. "I hate to say it," she said, "but we should at least pretend to go to school today."

"You can," Twilight snarked, testing the coffee temperature. "I can go into a coma and still get my diploma in May."

"And I've got a G.E.D. in a drawer upstairs, genius." She took a sip of her own coffee, blinked, and started laughing slightly.

"Look at us," she said. "Couple of eggheads pretending to go to high school."

Twilight smiled. "Despite studies showing that high school is rated some of the worst times of people's lives."

Sunset shook her head and took another sip. "Friendship's a hell of a drug."

Twilight took a bite out of her doughnut. "Seriously, though, can we just make it an 'independent study' day?"

Sunset sighed. "Maybe. Gentleheart would probably let us if we asked, and I can't see Principal Celestia objecting. I just don't want to be flippant about it."

Twilight fixed Sunset with a deadpan stare. "Do I need to list all the reasons you deserve a day off?" She glanced at her watch. "Because if I do, we'll definitely be late."

Sunset cracked a smile. She was saved from having to respond by a buzzing from her side of the bed. She reached down and put the magic journal between them, opened to its latest page.

Hey, Sunset! Starlight here! I'm running on WAY too much caffeine right now, and I think I panicked Princess Celestia with it. HEY! So I'm sorry if this is a little loopy. But here's what I've been able to get from Tails' notes. Starswirl's going to take a look at this later once he gets here wakes up I forgot I've been up all night please help ANYWAY we've got some designs for a portal generator and I think we might be able to make it work but I need you to look at it because between the no sleep and the coffee and the existential dread I kinda don't know if I know what I'm looking a
Hi, Sunset. Spike again. Princess Luna just came in and hit Starlight with a sleeping spell. I'll start copying her notes in here, or at least the ones that look coherent.

The rest of the page was covered in diagrams and equations. It continued onto the next three pages, with Spike's transcription getting noticeably more hesitant as it continued.

"These are out of order," Twilight muttered, flipping the pages back and forth. "Do you have a—"

Sunset handed her a spiral-bound notebook of graph paper and a pencil. "Best thing for spell diagrams."

Twilight started transcribing the transcription, leaving copious room for the unknown variables and equations she could pick out. As the journal kept buzzing, Sunset flipped to the next pages, took a picture, then flipped it back before grabbing her own paper and pencil.

The transcribing continued in silence before Sunset muttered, "what's the power source?"

"Us," Twilight said without thinking, her pencil still furiously scribbling.

Sunset dropped her pencil. "In a different universe?"

"Yeah," Twilight muttered, "harmonic resonance carr..." Slowly her pencil stopped, still pressed against the page.

She dropped her pencil and stared at the journal. "Holy mother-forking shirtballs," she said in a daze.

"What," Sunset said. "You lost me. Harmonic resonance? How is that going to carry ov..." She followed Twilight's gaze to the journal.

"Piggyback on the connection," she said.

"That we're already using to build the portal," Twilight finished.

"Holy mother-forking shirtballs," Sunset caught up. She picked up her phone. "I'll call Gentleheart, see if we can get a study day."

The Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS was parked just outside the lighthouse. Inside, said Doctor was making a repair to one of the wiring panels beneath the center console. “Remind me again why you aren’t just walking back to Equestria?” he said.

“Because I’m the Party Princess!” Pinkie said with a hop. “The Party Princess poised to premiere in her partymobile!”

“What?” The Doctor pocketed his screwdriver and pulled his head out to face Pinkie directly. “This is the most advanced piece of machinery in the known multiverse! Bigger on the inside, moves through time; it’s not a—a partymobile?”

"A partymobile!" Pinkie yelled. "With lights and sounds that take you anywhere with nothing in the middle!" She gasped. "It's like a doughnut," she whispered.

The Doctor pulled himself to his feet and started adjusting one of the consoles. "Right then," he said, "anywhere you want. How about the middle of Ponyville?"

Pinkie froze.

"No?" the Doctor said. "How about Canterlot? Equestria's newest princess should make her debut in style after all."

"Oh, oh, I know!" Pinkie said, her face slightly more manic than usual. "How about Twilight's castle?"

The Doctor scoffed. "Now why would you want to go there?"

"Because because because our friends are there! And—and Spike! Spike's got to be so worried about Twilight and we've been gone for a day and a half now and I have a hunch that everyone will be there that needs to be there and—"

The Doctor turned suddenly and stared Pinkie straight in the eyes.

Pinkie stared back, blinking away a couple of tears.

The Doctor sighed. "Only for you, Pinkie," he said, resigned. "Go get Twilight; we'll leave when you're ready."

Pinkie exhaled in relief. "Thank you, Doctor," she whispered.

Starlight woke up slowly, like a diver gently coming back to the surface of the water. It started with a general awareness of the amount of light in the room. It was followed shortly by a nagging feeling that there was something she needed to do. Followed by about five minutes of her half-awake brain sorting out the remnants of her (rather bizarre) dreams and the remaining to-do list from when she had fallen asleep.

Wait, someone forced her to fall asleep. Why was—

Through sheer force of will she blinked her eyes back into focus and glared at her bedside clock until it made sense.

10:45 AM? That... wasn't as bad as she was afraid it would be. With a yawn, she rolled off her bed and stumbled her way to the door of her bedroom. She checked herself in the mirror and straightened out her hair enough that she was presentable, then walked out of her room to get back to work on the portal and give Princess Luna a piece of her mind, preferably in that order.

"Well, look who's back from the dead," Spike snarked as Starlight entered the lab.

"Funny," she snarked back. "I don't know whether to curse or thank Princess Luna. It was a good nap—"

Spike disguised a laugh. Poorly.

Starlight glared at him. "But that was three hours we're not going to get ba—"

"Twenty-seven."

Starlight blinked, a sinking suspicion collecting in her stomach. "What," she said flatly.

"It's almost eleven on Saturday."

Starlight felt the blood drain from her face. "Ehe... That's hilarious, Spike," she said weakly, a few hairs in her mane popping out of place.

Spike lost his smirk. "Uh, Starlight?"

"WHY DID YOU LET ME SLEEP THAT LONG!" she shrieked. "WE'VE GOT SO MUCH TO CATCH UP ON!" She started grabbing different pieces of equipment around the lab with her magic—

Before Spike cut her off with a backhanded slap to the tip of her horn. "Easy there, Glim-glam," he said, not quite as sarcastic as he could have. "We're done."

Starlight deflated. "What?" she whispered.

Spike smiled at her. "Yeah, I copied your notes into the journal, and Sunset and Other Twilight sorted them out and figured out how we can power it with the geodes the girls there have."

Starlight smiled weakly. "That's gre—"

"And then Starswirl and Rarity have been working on building another anchor like the mirror used to be, except more portable so we can build it on the other side before the portal collapses. Twilight had some old designs on that they're using."

Starlight's smile fell a little more. "So... we're done?"

Spike nodded. "We're firing it up at noon; Sunset's getting the girls together on her side now."

Starlight sat down in place.

Spike frowned at that, but sat down across from her. "What's wrong?"

"Heh," Starlight coughed out, "you all hardly needed me for this."

Spike sighed dramatically. "Right," he said, his sarcasm fully returned. "Because we totally would have figured out Tails' and the Doctor's notes in the space of fourteen hours without your caffeine-induced mad-science session." He booped Starlight's nose. "We're a team, Starlight. All of us. From Princess Celestia on down to..." He trailed off. "...us," he finished weakly.

Starlight smirked at him. "Didn't want to say someone?"

"Hey, I legit couldn't think of a way to say someone without making it sound bad. Painted myself into a corner; I'll do better next time."

Starlight chuckled. "Well then," she said, "is there any food left here?"

"Alright, everybody, it's time!" Twilight yelled.

"Where should I stand?" Wallflower asked quickly.

Sunset grimaced. "Probably behind us," she said. "Just in case it's explosive."

The seven girls arranged themselves in a half-circle with the magic journal at the center. The air in the garden started to feel more charged. A faint aura surrounded each girl, getting slowly brighter until with a flash all seven were Ponied Up and floating a few inches off the ground.

Sunset felt the magic from her six friends. Felt it surround her, permeate her...

With the gentlest touch she could, she felt the magical connection in the journal and pushed.

Nothing happened for a moment. And another.

And then she felt something tremendous pull on the other end.

And then reality above the journal cracked. And got a little wider.

And a purple-skinned girl in a beanie fell out. "You can stop now!" Starlight Glimmer yelled, pulling herself to her feet and her backpack off.

Sunset did her best to let everyone down gently. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, Starlight," Sunset said, walking up to her, "but did we just strand you here?"

"Nope," Starlight said with a laugh. "Though, come to think of it, would it get me out of property taxes this year?"

"They'd find some way to find you," Sunset said. "What're we doing with the tinker toys?"

Starlight finished dumping the contents of her backpack on the ground. There were several wooden poles and several more gems along with some conjured objects clearly meant to hold them together. "We're building the new portal!"

As they assembled the portal she explained more. "Since you have magic of your own now," she said, "we can have a portal that can open from either end. Just needs a little bit of power—not nearly as much as the one we just used—and it'll open for about ten seconds. And it's connected through this gem at the top, so we don't have to burn a journal."

She looked around them. "Nice garden, by the way."

"Thanks," Wallflower said, still standing a good ways away.

Starlight turned and walked over to her. "Wallflower Blush?"

Wallflower nodded and shrunk back a bit.

Starlight gave her an easy smile and held out a fist. "Welcome to the club," she said quietly.

Wallflower returned the fist bump but gave her a questioning look.

"Stole ponies' special talents and brainwashed them into a cult," she said with an eye roll. "Not my finest hour."

Wallflower laughed—a high-pitched release of tension. "Erased everyone's memories to get revenge on Sunset Shimmer?"

Starlight nodded in response. "I'm serious about the garden, you know."

Wallflower smiled. "Thanks. Uh... feel free to stop by?"

"You know, I think I might," Starlight said with a wink.

"Hey Starlight?" Rainbow Dash yelled, "How do we know if it's working?"

Just then the fully-assembled portal activated, the space between the arc filling with the familiar colorful miasma.

"I think it's working," Applejack drawled. Rainbow slapped Applejack's stetson down over her eyes.

"So yeah," Starlight said, gesturing to the portal. "Just channel a little magic into the crystal at the top, and hop through before it closes."

Right on cue, the portal shut itself off.

"Um," Fluttershy piped up, "what happens if we're halfway though when it shuts off?"

Starlight blanched. "Maybe... don't do that? Anyway!" She walked up to the portal. "I better head back. Want to come say hi to everypony, Sunset?"

Sunset started to step forward before catching herself and stepping back. "Naw, I'm good," she said with a half-smile.

"Naw, you should go," Applejack said, arms folded. The other girls nodded their assents.

Twilight walked up to her side. "I saw when you thought you were trapped here," she whispered. "Go, even if it's only to prove that you can. We'll be here when you get back."

Sunset looked around the garden, seeing only caring faces on her friends from both worlds.

She turned to Starlight. "I mean, I'm sure you have to start looking for Twilight and Pinkie," she said.

Starlight shook her head. "We already knew they weren't here," she said. "This was about you." She put a hand on the portal's top crystal and activated it then looked at Sunset expectantly.

"Maybe for a few minutes," Sunset said finally, walking forward.

The new portal had been set up in an antechamber off the throne room. Starlight had wanted it in a more securable area of the castle, and Spike had wanted it away from the books in case it exploded. Again.

"So what now?" Sunset said to the group now gathered around the map.

"I'm afraid this 'doctor' was correct," Starswirl said, a hoof on the now-completed blueprints for Tails' portal generator. "We could get the power to travel to an adjacent universe, but the requirements increase exponentially if we were to travel any farther."

"But there are other adjacent universes we could check?" Rainbow said. She hovered over the map, still too much nervous energy to sit still for long.

"Do you have a spare set of the Elements of Harmony lying around?" Starswirl responded. "Because it took a set of seven to travel to a universe where we had a known anchor."

"There's the sun," Celestia said quietly.

The room instantly fell silent.

"My dear," Starswirl said, "surely you cannot mean to—"

"We have known each other for a lifetime," Celestia interrupted, "yet you still underestimate what I will do for my little ponies."

"But how would—"

"If you had that power at your disposal, could you get to another world?"

"And do what? If they are in another world without magic we would have no way to find them!"

"Yeah, 'cause talking to ponies isn't something we can do now," Applejack said.

Starswirl turned to her. "You assume there are ponies to talk to."

“We’re losing focus,” Rarity piped in. “What next moves do we have?”

“We can use the hopper,” Starlight said before Starswirl could bring things back down. “We can do exactly what we just did, just in a different—what is that sound?”

Everyone stopped long enough to hear a creaking, like a motor slowly grinding over the same rough gears. At one end of the room a royal blue phone box slowly faded into existence.

Celestia jumped up and stood in front of the TARDIS as it materialized. “Bring me some good news, Doctor,” she whispered. With an echoing thud, the TARDIS fully anchored itself and solidified.

The room waited on a hair trigger for something to happen.

One of the doors opened inwardly and Twilight stepped out, closing it behind her. Spike yelled and rushed to her, but she held up a hoof, silently asking him to wait.

She looked Celestia in the eye and cleared her throat in a very specific way.

Celestia flicked her ears back but held her ground.

“PRESENTING,” Twilight said in the Royal Canterlot Speaking Voice, “PRINCESS PINKAMENA DIANE PIE!”

The TARDIS doors were flung open as Pinkie burst out, wings spread. The pandemonium that ensued just about did her justice.

Episode 6: Finding Sunny Skies

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Twilight walked her guest, a white pegasus with a pink mane, to her castle from the Ponyville train station. "It's so good to see you again, Sunny," she said with a smile.

Sunny Skies tossed her mane and laughed. "The life of a traveling storyteller," she said wistfully. "I'm just happy it can bring me back through Ponyville every so often."

Twilight guided them into Sugarcube Corner, the bakery's smells already hitting the streets. "Let me get you breakfast."

Sunny shook her head. "Twilight, I couldn't impose—"

"Please," Twilight said with a smirk. "I do get a stipend for my work as a Princess, and there's always more than I know what to do with. Treating a friend to breakfast is the least I can do."

"Well, if you insist," Sunny conceded, and the two approached the counter.

"Sunny Skies!" the cashier said. "So good to see you! Chocolate croissant and Earl Bay?"

"You know me well, Mrs. Cake," Sunny said with a smile.

Mrs. Cake demurred with a wave of her hoof. "I'm no Pinkie Pie, but I do know our regulars, even the out-of-town ones." She focused on Twilight. "Speaking of, how is Pinkie?"

Twilight's smile got a little more strained, though only Sunny could tell. "She's getting better," she said. "Hopefully she'll be back on her hooves soon."

"I do hope so," Mrs. Cake said. "Any disease that can knock a pony like her down has to be a doozy, and for a week!" She passed a pair of bags to Sunny and Twilight. "I put a couple of chocolate chip muffins in there for her. Do give her our best."

Twilight's castle was in sight when Sunny asked, "So what happened to Pinkie Pie?"

"Well, we had a bit of a magical mishap a couple of weeks ago," Twilight said. "We got back okay, but she wasn't feeling well. She's been staying in the castle until she feels better."

Sunny glanced around and noticed more than a couple of ponies walking by took interest in what they were discussing. "Well," Sunny said, "I'm sure Ponyville will be happy to have her back once she's feeling better."

They made their way inside the castle and up to one of the bedrooms. Twilight rapped on the door with a hoof. "Pinkie? Sunny Skies is here."

The door opened on its own. Twilight and Sunny walked into the dark room, not seeing Pinkie anywhere.

Twilight let out a brief pulse with her horn. The results came back, and she looked up into the darkest corner of the room, on top of the wardrobe to see a pair of glowing pink eyes.

Twilight sighed. "What is it now, Pinkie?" she groaned.

"I'm not Pinkie," Pinkie said in a guttural yet high-pitched voice.

Twilight side-eyed Sunny who giggled and covered her muzzle with a wing. "Who are you, then?" she said.

"I am vengeance," Pinkie said, rising to her hooves. "I am the night." She jumped down and spread her wings threateningly.

"I. Am. BATMARE!" she finished with a yell.

The three mares stood for a moment as the moment gradually grew more awkward.

"Well," Sunny said, still amused by the whole endeavor, "I may be able to teach you to actually have bat-wings—"

Pinkie dropped into an extreme bow, grabbing one of Sunny's hooves in her own. "Or can you teach me how to get rid of the wings pleeeeeeeeese?"

Sunny gently stepped out of Pinkie's grip and brought her out of the bow with a hoof. "Pinkie Pie," she said, "you've earned those wings, and they are things to be celebrated, not hidden."

Pinkie frowned. "But you got your horn to disappear," she said, tapping Sunny's bare forehead with her hoof.

Or at least she would have had her hoof not run into Sunny's invisible horn which quickly became visible.

"Ouch!" Sunny said as she recoiled back. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with her hooves, her horn sparking erratically.

Pinkie stood in shock for a moment before lighting her horn and pushing Twilight and Sunny out of the room and slamming the door.

Twilight stared at the door for a moment before turning back to Sunny. "Are you okay?"

"Quite," Sunny said in a more refined voice. "Though I see what you meant in your letter."

Twilight smiled sheepishly. "I know this is your time off, Princess" she said, "so if you want to do an—"

"Thank you, Twilight," Princess Celestia said as she lit her horn long enough to reapply her illusion, "but I'm here as a friend." She smirked. "Plus you know I'd rather do this than paperwork."

Twilight shook her head with a smile. "One of the many ways we're different."

"What can I say," Sunny said, shifting back into her more casual demeanor, "friendship sure is magic!"

Friendship is Multiversal: Discovery

Episode 6: Finding Sunny Skies

Sonic and Tails (as Fast Hooves and Miles Per Hour) trotted into Ponyville from the general direction of the White Tail Woods. "Great day, isn't it, Bro?" Sonic said with a broad smile.

"I mean, we knew it would be," Tails said, gently flapping his wings to float alongside Sonic. "What with them controlling the weather and all."

"And yet you still didn't want to come along," Sonic responded.

"I just didn't see why we needed to come here."

"Well, we've got to plant one of those beacon things, right?"

"Already..." a voice behind them said, clearly out of breath, "already planted it." A maroon unicorn with a blue mane and a pair of full saddlebags trotted a full pony length behind them and was falling further behind.

"Well," Sonic said, "we should... uh..." He glanced back at the unicorn. "C'mon, Spark Plug, you're harshing my vibe."

Spark Plug smirked. "Gotta find a better excuse," he said.

"Or just admit it," Tails said.

Sonic turned up his nose. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Then tell me where we're going," Tails smirked.

"Twilight's castle—"

"Thank you."

"Where the library is," Sonic finished. "I will admit to no more."

"Okay, okay," Tails said, hovering back to Spark Plug. "Where are you headed?"

"Funnily enough," he said between breaths, "the library. How about you?"

"I wanna build something," Tails said with a slight eye twitch. "Maybe I'll ask Ditsy if I can raid the Doctor's basement."

Spark just nodded and trotted on, still breathing heavily.

"Hey, are you okay?" Tails said, hovering a little lower to get on Spark's eye level.

"Just..." Spark took another breath. "Out of shape... and brought too much stuff." He gave a lopsided smile. “Comes with the ‘IT Guy’ territory.”

"Yeah," Sonic said, "do you need a hand with that?"

Spark hesitated for a moment. "Nah," he said eventually. "The castle's right there."

"You sure?" Sonic pressed. "I can put this 'earth pony strength' to good use."

"Yeah, how does that work, anyway?" Tails said. "Because based on the archetypes, I'd think Sonic would be a pegasus and I'd be a unicorn."

"That is an excellent question," Spark said, perking up slightly. "My guess is there's other biological or hereditary factors involved. The result is typically what you would be if you were born here, so I'd wager a studious pegasus or an earth pony that likes to go fast might be more common than we expect."

"Yeah," Sonic said with a knowing grin, "almost like we get to choose who we are."

Spark nodded. "Point taken," he said quietly.

"So remind me why you didn't choose to be a—"

"Point. Taken," Spark Plug said with a touch of venom.

A moment passed.

"Yeah," Tails said, drifting to the side, "so I'm gonna..."

"You know where to find me," Sonic said with a wave of his hoof.

They got to the foot of the castle before Spark spoke again. "Sorry I snapped," he said.

"It's okay," Sonic said with a nod. He opened his mouth to say more but shut it. "Just..." he finally said, "let's talk later."

"Thanks," Spark said, then stopped at the doors. "Do we knock?"

"Nope," Sonic said, yanking one of the doors open.

Sunny Skies stepped into the bedroom and casually flicked the light switch with a wing. "Pinkie?" she said.

"Pinkie's not here," said the lump on the bed that looked suspiciously like Pinkie hiding under the blankets.

"That's a shame," Sunny said, sitting down to the side of the bed with her forehooves resting on the mattress. "I was hoping to see her. She's such a great friend."

"She's the best," the lump said. "The bestest, super-duperiest friend anypony could have."

"Do you know where she is?"

"She died."

Sunny's ear flicked, but she schooled her response otherwise. "That's strange," she said, "I heard she came back."

"Nope," the lump said, a hint of bitterness coming through. "Just a monster that hurts her friends and makes ponies scared and tells jokes no one understands."

Sunny hummed. "That doesn't sound like a monster to me."

The lump seemed to shrink. "But I hurt you," she whispered.

"Yes, you did," Sunny said. "Did you mean to?"

"No!" Pinkie said, throwing the covers off. "No, and I'm so sorry, and I'll never ever—"

Sunny put a hoof on Pinkie's muzzle. "Did you hurt anyone else?"

Pinkie's eyes welled up with tears as she nodded. "I burned Twilight with my magic when I tried to use it to make cupcakes, I hit Spike with my wings when I didn't see him next to me, I scared Fluttershy when I tried to make fireworks, and I..." She blinked. "I... I'm sure I did more but..."

"Did you mean to hurt them?" Sunny asked when it was clear Pinkie was done.

"No! No, I would never..." Pinkie deflated a bit and pondered her words. "I'm being dramatic, aren't I?" she said after a moment.

Sunny smiled. "I'm sure Rarity has a couch nearby if you need it."

Pinkie giggled. "There's one in the wardrobe. I put one in every wardrobe in the castle."

Sunny laughed. "For fainting couch emergencies, right?"

Pinkie stood up and motioned at Sunny. "See, this pony gets it!"

Sunny smiled and laughed just a little. "So," she said after a moment, "how do you feel about going to Sugarcube Corner?"

Pinkie instantly shrank back in on herself. "But..." she whispered.

Sunny's smile fell, though her face was no less gentle. She turned and sat beside Pinkie, pulling her into a hug with a wing.

"What are you afraid of?" she said, with no judgement or scorn.

Pinkie took a deep breath, held a hoof to her chest, and let it out as she motioned away with her hoof. "Everypony's going to see me," she said in a small voice. "They're going to see me with wings and with a horn and they're going to treat me like..."

"A princess?" Sunny finished.

Pinkie nodded. "It took us forever to stop calling Twilight 'Princess.'" She chuckled to herself. "Heh, 'Twilight Princess.'" She shook it off. "But we were her friends. Are her friends! And we still treated her like..." She blinked some tears away. "Like a princess."

Sunny tilted her head to the side. "You know," she said, "I remember the first time I came to Ponyville—"

"You-you, or you?" Pinkie interrupted. "I mean, as you? Or as..." She groaned in frustration and flopped down. "I can't words now."

Sunny Skies smiled sadly. "This is me, Pinkie." She blinked back a few tears. "My name is Sunny Skies, and I was fifteen when the Fires of Friendship were lit."

Pinkie just looked up at Sunny, jaw slack.

"And when a day came where the sun had to rise and no pony could do it..." She chuckled. "Well, I found a way to make Pegasus magic do the impossible.

"Much like a certain Earth Pony used her connection with the earth to jump into a mid-flight time machine?" Sunny finished with a knowing smile.

Pinkie laughed. It was a tentative laugh, a releasing of tension.

Sunny squeezed Pinkie for a second. "Ponies will treat you differently," she said, "because you are different. You have done the impossible, and it's left a permanent mark on you. Some of them will be afraid, some will be in awe, but nothing that they do will change anything about you.

"So, Pinkie, wanna go get some cake with me?"

Pinkie took another breath to steady herself before rising to her hooves. She looked Sunny in the eye...

And promptly lost her nerve. "I want to," she said quietly. "I want to. But I still see everypony being scared."

Sunny leaned into Pinkie, offering her support. "For what it's worth," she said, "there's ingredients in the kitchen."

Pinkie brightened up. "Oh, why didn't you say so, silly?" She pronked to the door and turned back around.

"What is it with you and cake, anyway?" Pinkie said with a grin.

Sunny rolled her eyes. "Listen, you," she said as they left the room, "if you had to sit through a thousand years waiting for culinary science to catch up with your taste buds..."

Twilight walked into the library. She waved a wing to Sonic who waved back from the corner lounge chair as she walked over to the desk in the reference section.

Spark Plug had effectively commandeered the area with a slew of computer equipment. He was focusing hard on a set of cables, trying—unsuccessfully—to tighten a cable tie with his magic. With a sigh, he set it down and turned to Twilight. “Hello, Princess,” he said.

“Spark Plug,” she said, surprised at the shape her mouth made. “I mean—“

He waved her off. “I have a lot of different names at this point,” he said. “What’s one more?”

Twilight nodded. “Well, just let me or Pinkie know if you do want your other name back; I’m pretty sure it takes a princess to do that.” She rolled her eyes. “Or The Doctor, I guess.”

“He’s the exception to everything,” Spark said with a shrug. He held up the cable tie. “Anyway, any chance I can get some magic lessons?"

"Well," Twilight said with a smile, "we're in the right section for it." She walked closer and examined the cable tie. "What exactly are you trying to do?"

Spark held the cable tie up to eye level. "One side fastens to the other, and you can thread it through this loop here." He motioned with his hoof at the cables. "I was trying to tie these together; keep things out of the way."

Twilight nodded. "Can you show me?"

Spark focused back on the cables. He looped the tie around them, but as he went to loop it around his magic started to flicker and the tie jerked around in the air.

Twilight glanced at Spark, then took the tie in her own magic and finished the loop. "You've got the basics, that's good," she said. "I think more control will come as you get used to all..." She trailed off and muttered, "this."

"You just gestured to all of me," Spark said without thinking. "Sorry," he said with a shake of his head, "movie quote."

"Well," Twilight said with a smile, "you do have a lot to get used to. Foals at least have their entire childhood to learn it."

"True," Spark said. With a nod, he got to his hooves and shoved the desk back against the wall. "Anyway," he said, "we're set up! As requested, one desktop computer with a web browser connected to the Lighthouse's network. Should be able to get to most of the multiverse's internets from there."

He motioned to a small box on the floor. "Wired connections only, as requested. I brought some wireless gear with me if you want to try that?"

Twilight shook her head. "It runs off of radio waves, right?" Spark nodded. "Those don't work very well with the crystal walls. My research notes are upstairs."

"Ah," Spark said. "Yeah, I just set the stuff up; I'm no expert on it. But I am proud of this part!" He tapped a gadget plugged into the box. "It's like the digital version of Sunset Shimmer's journal; except instead of sending writing, it's sending electrical signals."

Twilight brightened. "Oh, we could use that here!" she said. "CSGU and MIT have been trying to get their networks connected for years now, but they haven't been able to develop the right cables for the job."

"Yeah, that wou—wait, 'MIT'?"

"Manehatten Institute of Technology."

Spark sighed. "Of course." At Twilight's questioning look, he added, "Ours is 'Massachusetts.'" He looked back at the computer setup. "Anyway, you should be good to go. But I'd love to get in touch with your MIT, if only to give you a more pony-friendly keyboard?"

Twilight nodded. "Thanks!"

Spark nodded. "Happy to get you what you need." He started putting his tools and gadgets back in his saddlebags.

"So," Twilight said, "how are you liking Equestria so far?"

Spark stopped and blinked. "It's... good!" he said with no small hesitation.

Twilight cocked her head. "Somehow that failed to convince me," she said.

Spark sighed and fumbled around for a word before finally shrugging and saying, "I don't know what I was expecting." He blinked. "No, I do know what I was expecting, but it wasn't... yeah."

Twilight furrowed her brow in concern. "Is it the magic thing?" she said. "Because emotional state can affect magic control, especially for..."

She trailed off seeing the increasingly panicked look on Spark Plug. "You can tell?" he whispered.

Twilight looked almost embarrassed. "Between being a princess and, well, past history, I've had to get pretty good at spotting Changelings. You're not in trouble!" she quickly added.

Spark Plug sighed and hung his head. "I just wanted a cutie mark," he grumbled.

Twilight nodded in sympathy.

"Or maybe even some sign from the multiverse of who I'm supposed to be," he continued.

"You can be whoever you want to be!" Sonic yelled from across the library.

"Yeah, I wish I could believe that!" Spark yelled back, his eyes blazing. "But I go to one universe, and I'm a shapeshifter. I go to another universe, and I'm a shapeshifter. So I go to Equestria, and I really should have seen this coming, but I'm a shapeshifter that steals love, and I don't even have a cutie mark to show for it!"

He took a breath and charged on. "So yeah, maybe it's all just circumstance, but it seems like the multiverse is trying to tell me that I don't have any personality of my own, I'm only good for copying other people, nothing about me is actually mine, not even my own gender, and what the f—" He bit his lip and cut himself off.

Twilight looked on in sympathy. She moved toward him, but he backed away. "I..." He took a couple of breaths. "I need to go cool off," he said quietly. Without another word he turned and trotted purposefully out of the library.

After a few seconds Twilight went to the entrance but stopped short at Sonic's spot.

"We're going after him, right?" he said.

"Of course we are," she answered. "Give him a few minutes to calm down, though."

Sonic nodded and put a bookmark in his book. "Probably shouldn't have egged him on," he admitted.

Twilight gave him a side-eye. "No," she said, "but it sounds like this goes back a lot longer than the two weeks we've known him." She glanced down at the book. "Huh," she said.

Sonic smirked back. "What about it?"

Twilight shook her head. "You remind me of Rainbow Dash so much," she said, "but she loathes regency romance."

"Well," Sonic said, "I contain multitudes." He relaxed a little. "Plus it's nice to have something low-stakes to escape to."

Twilight almost groaned. "No kidding," she said. "The world's not in peril, just a bit of will-they-won't-they."

"It's so derivative. I'll read twenty."

They both chuckled at that.

"Let me grab a couple of things for Spark," Twilight said after a moment. "I think I know what'll help."

Sunny Skies and Pinkie moseyed into the kitchen to find Tails head-deep in a bundle of wires. Pinkie made some quick introductions then dove into the pantry.

"So, your name is... 'Tails'?" Sunny probed.

Tails nodded. "I mean, technically, it's Miles Per Hour, but I like Tails better."

Sunny looked at him, then to his backside, then back to him. "Is there a joke I'm not getting?" she said quietly.

Tails bit his lip and glanced around.

"She's okay!" Pinkie yelled from... farther in the pantry than had any right to exist.

Tails relaxed and leaned closer to Sunny. "I'm from another world," he whispered.

Sunny smiled. "Well then I'm very glad to meet you," she said. "So there are ponies in other worlds?"

"What?" Tails shook his head. "No, back home I'm a Mobian fox with two tails."

"That sounds wonderful!"

Tails rubbed his shoulder. "It is now," he said quietly.

Sunny nodded. "Then I would love to hear your story," she said. "But I'll admit, I'm curious how you got here?"

"Yeah!" Pinkie said, emerging from the pantry with her back stacked with dry ingredients. She pulled the refrigerator open and started collecting the wet ingredients in her magic. "How did you get back here?"

"Oh!" Tails perked up. "Right, so—okay." He took a breath to steady himself.

"Sorry, got excited," he said quickly. He turned to Sunny Skies. "So, normally, me and Sonic will hop universes using a Chaos Emerald—a really powerful energy source—and a portal generator. Our world, Mobius, has a parallel world called Earth. They're really similar; I have a theory that they were the same world at one point since the Chaos Emeralds seem to resona—" He cut himself off with a wave of a hoof. "Anyway, a few weeks ago we tried to go from Mobius to Earth, but something got in the way and threw us here."

"Yeah," Pinkie slid up to the table, her chef's hat askew and bits of batter clinging to her mane. "And then the Doctor tried to 'vworp-vworp' you home but then he got thrown somewhere else and me and Twilight got thrown to that lighthouse and then you showed up and I..." She froze for a moment. "But then the Doctor vworped us back here but how'd you get back here?"

"Oh!" Tails nodded. "So the world that lighthouse is in is kind of an in-between world, and they build portals out to all the worlds that they can. And they're stable, so the thing that threw us all over the multiverse can't get to us. But it means they can't move the portals; wherever they are is wherever they are."

"So we can't take the portal and put it in Twilight's basement next to the one that definitely isn't already there?"

Sunny Skies giggled.

Tails looked from her to Pinkie worriedly.

Pinkie shrugged. "She's okay."

Sunny shook her head and smiled. "Keep telling me state secrets, Pinkie," she said, "and they'll have to make me a princess."

Pinkie snorted. "Good one," she said. A piece of batter dripped off her mane. "Oh!" she said. "Do you want the cake to be vanilla, or strawberry, or that kind with the sprinkles that looks like fun and confetti that has a name I can't use for legal reasons?"

Sunny looked at Tails and motioned with a wing.

"Strawberry?" Tails said, looking for approval.

Sunny nodded. "Strawberry sounds great, Pinkie," she said.

"Okie-dokie-lo...quatious?" Pinkie said, stumbling over the last part. She bounced back to the refrigerator.

Sunny turned back to Tails. "So, I'm guessing the portal between this lighthouse and Equestria is somewhere in the Everfree forest?"

Tails' brow furrowed in thought. "We did go through a forest; don't know if it was the Everfree."

"Dark and scary with all sorts of dangerous creatures?" Sunny offered.

Tails shook his head. "It was actually pretty nice. Tall trees without a lot of underbrush."

Sunny perked up. "Oh, the White Tail Woods! That's much nicer." She sighed. "And a relief, to be honest. Usually all the interesting things like this happen in the Everfree, and there's enough interesting things there as it is."

"Oh? Like what?"

Sunny made a show of thinking. "Hmm... how about the story of When the Zebra Came To Ponyville?"

Twilight and Sonic found Spark Plug lying on the floor in one of the empty basement labs, head on his hooves.

He sighed. "Sorry I yelled at you," he said. "Both of you."

Twilight sat down a couple of books. Sonic sat down in front of Spark to look him in the eye.

"I should have been kinder," Sonic said. "I keep telling Tails 'what's the point of being right if you're being a dick', but I forgot that."

"It's okay," Spark said, pushing himself up into a sitting position. "I know you're trying to help in your own way, I just..." He sighed again. "I know I'm being stupid and dramatic and I just need to... let myself figure things out."

"Knowing what you need to do doesn't make it any easier," Twilight said gently.

Spark nodded. "It just brought back every dark thought I had growing up, every insecurity I had whenever I didn't fit in, and—" He turned to Sonic. "I know I should be grateful, but I just don't see it like that yet."

Sonic blinked. "It's hard for me to hear that," he said after a moment. "But I think I'm starting to get it. This isn't something you asked for; it's something that was thrust on you."

Spark nodded.

"But it's something I... desperately wanted," he finished.

Spark blinked and cocked his head. After a moment, the dots connected, and his jaw dropped.

"Yeah," Sonic said. "So don’t tell me that ‘the universe’ dictates who you are, ‘cause it doesn’t. If you're trying to figure out who you are, biology isn't going to give you your answer. We have the cards we’re dealt, but we choose what to do with it.” He poked Spark in the shoulder. “You didn’t get the hand you wanted, but now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?”

Spark worked his jaw for a moment before ducking his head. “I don’t know,” he said, dejected.

Sonic stood there for a moment before shrugging. “Eh, you also don’t have to decide right now.”

“If it helps,” Twilight said, walking over to them, “those feelings you mentioned? About feeling like you were just a copy?” Spark nodded, and Twilight tapped one of the books she brought. “You’re not the only one to feel that way.”

“Other Changelings feel like that?”

“Other ponies feel like that.”

Spark blinked, then let his breath out in a quiet laugh. “Of course,” he said, “I felt like that as a human so…”

Twilight nodded. “Like Sonic said, it’s not the hand you wanted. You didn’t get a Cutie Mark from the magic of Equestria, but that doesn’t mean you're not unique or that you don’t have a special talent. Now," She opened the other book. "Can I see you without the disguise?"

Spark nodded and stood up. He took a deep breath and let it out. "Sorry," he said with a sheepish grin, "it's like... unclenching your butt."

Sonic started to laugh but stopped when he saw Twilight nodding along. "What?"

"Most Changelings describe it like that," she said sagely, "though maybe with a different set of muscles." She grinned.

"Okay, okay, for real this time," Spark muttered. He took a deep breath, and relaxed, letting the green fire pass over him in a blink. His coloration as a Changeling was largely the same maroon and blue as the unicorn disguise he'd had up to this point.

Twilight looked him up and down. "And you haven't stolen any love?" She asked with a smile.

Spark shook his head.

Twilight nodded. "And yet looking very well-fed." She fixed him with a mildly stern look. "Because ponies love you."

Spark opened his mouth, thought better of it, and just nodded. "Thanks," he said quietly. "Both of you."

Pinkie and Sunny Skies walked toward the door of the castle.

"You can't stay any longer?" Pinkie said.

Sunny shook her head. "I have to go back home tonight," she said with a sad smile, "and I promised to take a flight with Rainbow Dash."

"I knoooooooow," Pinkie groaned, flopping her head to the side. "But you'll come back before you leave?"

"Of course," Sunny said, pulling Pinkie in for a wing hug. "I wouldn't dream of leaving Ponyville without saying goodbye." She pulled the door open just enough to slip out, careful not to accidentally expose Pinkie to anypony outside.

Pinkie took her time closing the door, listening to the hustle and bustle of a late-afternoon Ponyville. She heard Mrs. Cake and Sunny get into a conversation just outside the castle, and her hooves almost moved on their own to take her out there before the fear gripped her chest and stopped her.

She stared at the back of the door, her body tense, pulling her in two different directions. She blinked back a few tears, the frustration starting to boil over.

“I want the dear to get better,” she heard Mrs. Cake say. “I just…” A sigh. “Little Pipsqueak really wants a Death By Vanilla Chocolate Strawberry Cake for his birthday, and I know there’s just some part of the recipe I’m missing because it’s just not the same as when Pinkie makes it.”

Pinkie sighed and glared to the side. “You’re a jerk,” she grumbled. With a deep breath and a shake of her mane that rippled from her nose to her tail, she jumped outside.

“It’s simple syrup!” she yelled as she pronked over to Mrs. Cake. “I used simple syrup instead of raw sugar last time because I had a hunch and it turned out really well but I forgot to write it down in the recipe book because I wanted to try it one more time but it sounds like it worked so I’ll write it down but is there still time to make another cake because the only thing worse than a bad cake is no cake at all and I don’t want Pipsqueak to be sad an—“

Mrs. Cake leapt forward and hugged Pinkie tightly. “It’s so good to see you!” she said. “When they said you were sick I was worried but…” She stepped back. “You look positively radiant, dear. And those wings!”

Pinkie blinked and scuffed a hoof on the ground. “You’re… not scared?” she asked quietly.

Mrs. Cake smiled. “Well, when you came flying out of the castle like a noisy parasprite, yes, I was a little scared. But," she said as her smile broadened, "you are unmistakably you, Pinkie Pie."

"Yup, I'm me!" Pinkie said reflexively. "But we gotta make a cake! Pipsqueak's party—"

"Isn't for another week, dear," Mrs. Cake said calmly. "I just wanted to see how you were."

The commotion had started to draw a crowd. Doors opened, heads poked out of windows, pedestrians ambled closer, and more than a few pegasi hovered a little closer to the ground. Murmurs rippled through, some excited, some nervous. The crowd edged closer, but never less than a ponylength away.

But while Sunny Skies may not have had the poise or regalia of her more exalted persona, her calm, quiet presence was impossible to disguise. And Mrs. Cake was every inch a mother as she fussed over Pinkie.

So when Pinkie herself finally worked up the courage to look at the growing crowd, she saw some fear. Some ponies that weren't sure whether to bow or not.

But more than that, she saw her friends. The neighbors she knew the names of. The foals she'd thrown birthday parties for. The many, many frowns she'd turned upside down over the years.

And she knew what she had to do. The fear loosened its grip, the weight lifted. Pinkie strode calmly toward one edge of the crowd. The pony she ended up walking toward—Lyra, as it happened—started to bow, but Pinkie subtly shook her head.

"Well, Ponyville," Pinkie said at an alarmingly normal volume.

The crowd was silent.

Pinkie grinned. "Are you ready to PARTY?!" she yelled, jumping into the air and throwing confetti over half the town.

The crowd roared in response, some rushing forward to congratulate their newest princess. Vinyl Scratch somehow ended up in front of her turntables, punch and pastries somehow appeared, and the block party was on.

Spark Plug trotted back into the library and found Spike straightening one of the shelves. He trotted past, stopped, and backed up.

"Spike?" he said. "Hey... uh, what do you charge for favors?"

"Depends on the favor," Spike said with a side eye and a grin. "I'll take gems, comic books—wait, you just set up the new computer, right?"

Spark nodded.

"Tell me how to bypass parental controls?"

"Not a chance," Spark said with his own grin. "Mostly because it ties into the network management, and it'll be hard enough as it is keeping y'all on the safer side of the internet."

Spike shrugged. "Worth a shot. What's the favor?"

Spark glanced away and scratched a foreleg. "I... kinda want to send a friendship report."

"That's it?" Spike scoffed. "Just bring me a comic next time you're in town." He hopped off his stool and headed to the nearest wrtiting desk. He pulled out a sheet of parchment and turned back to Spark. "I'm guessing your magic is still..." He shook his claw a little. "'Cause of the whole 'changeling' thing and all?"

Spark Plug rolled his eyes. "Am I just that obvious?"

"Nah," Spike shook his head. "I can smell your magic. It's a little off, but definitely Changeling."

"Wait, you can smell Changeling magic?"

"Perks of being a dragon," Spike said with a puff of his chest. "Why do you think Chrysalis never tried to invade them?"

"Because bug types are weak against fire," Spark snarked. "Also, if that's the case, how did they get the drop on you before?"

Spike groaned. "Latest one was a nighttime ambush, and I didn't know what they smelled like at The Wedding." He tapped the parchment. "Anyway, your report?"

Spark nodded. "Right, let's see..."

Dear Princess Celestia,
Hi, my name's Spark Plug, or at least it is here. You know The Doctor, so maybe you know how that goes. I don't know if Twilight or Pinkie told you about me or how I first learned about you and your little ponies, but suffice to say, y'all are amazing.
Really amazing. Because today I learned that friends are patient with you. When you yell at them, they don't yell back. When your problems don't look like problems, they listen. They're there to remind you that no matter how big a problem may seem, sometimes what is there is all there is.
Twilight and Sonic gave me a lot of wisdom today, and I know some of that came from you. So thank you.
Not technically your subject (but would be happy to be one seriously I wish my rulers were half as caring as you),
Spark Plug