Secrets
Monsters of the Everfree
At the Federal Department For Tampering With Things Man Was Not Meant To Know Or Do, a head guard crossed her arms and tapped one foot. She sighed.
"Let's look at you. You're wearing ridiculous goggles on your face."
"Those are my bug eyes!"
"And a set of...are those supposed to be wings?"
"Bug wings! The costume shop said they were fairy wings, but I can tell a fairy from a bug. They lied! Bug bug bug!"
"And what is that over your face? Covering your whole head?"
"I went bear hunting, and I knocked it over with a tennis ball! So I took its head as a trophy."
Another sigh. "It doesn't look like a REAL bear."
"Real bear, teddy bear...if you hit either one hard enough, at the county fair's Tennis Throw of Illusions, they let you keep it, fair and square." The prisoner grinned with mad pride. "Ordinary mortals could never do it, but with my Enhanced Bug Vision and Proportional Bug Strength, it was easy."
"And what were you thinking, when you decided to duct tape a hypodermic needle to your backside?"
"LOTS of bugs have deadly stingers. It's my constitutional right." The right to arm bears, shall not be infringed!" He pointed at the giant teddy bear mask on his head. "See? I'm part bear."
The guard rubbed her own face with one hand. "I am so tired. The LAST thing I want to do is more paperwork." She took a deep breath, and gestured at two of her helpers. "Moe? Joe?"
"Whaddayawant, boss?"
"Take this guy and throw him into the dimensional rift. Then we can forget we ever caught him."
"Ok, boss." Two guards grabbed the prisoner, each holding one arm. They dragged him to the glowing, pulsating rift in space, and pushed him in.
***
On the edge of the Everfree Forest, Rainbow Dash screamed with frustration. "Another crazy monster! Part bear, part bug...what even IS this thing?"
Fluttershy looked up at the flying creature. Using her superior understanding of animal psychology, she dodged its stinger as easily as if she knew the monster's own thoughts.
That aggressive but heavy and small-winged creature retreated, to slowly regain altitude and prepare for another attack run. The gentle pegasus said, "We COULD call it...a bugbear?"
"Sure," Twilight said half-sarcastically. "The ponies who discover a new species get first crack at naming it. So why not? Bugbear it is." Her horn glowed as she prepared a shield spell.
Rainbow shot upward, circling the 'bugbear.' "Why here? Why Ponyville? Why does OUR neighborhood get more attacks from weird new monsters than anyplace else in Equestria?"
Twilight shrugged. "We get to make so many new scientific discoveries! So many new species! And we get to name them ALL, and get ourselves ANOTHER listing in the textbooks!"
Twilight grinned up at the beast. "Just lucky, I guess!"
Pyramid Scheme
Proudly ignoring the armed guard two steps behind her, a woman in a fairly nice suit walked past the "Things, Etc. (Full Department Name Is Classified)" sign. She smiled cutely at the receptionist. "I want to talk to whoever's in charge. I am on a VERY important mission."
"What's your...name?"
"I can only reveal that to your superior. To your superior's superior. Assuming she's superior ENOUGH."
The guard said, "I already searched her briefcase, and her purse. Her docs say her name is Para Sprite."
"Hmm," the receptionist replied.
"She was carrying a whole sales presentation for something called 'All-Business Dream Creators.'"
"Oh, yes," the receptionist said. "ABDreC."
The prisoner complained, "I have my rights! I'm a free and sovereign citizen! I'm here on a very important investigative mission, to find out just HOW MUCH money all of you could make, if you signed up to be Dream Creators."
The receptionist slammed the counter. "My sister signed up with ABDreC. She thought she'd become rich, and she worked so hard...but initiation fees and licensing fees and small print in the contracts took all she had! Her bank account, her car, her house...ABDreC ate up everything!"
"But...she must not have worked hard enough!"
"Enough!" the receptionist shouted. She smiled vindictively. "Joe, put this one in the...special room. Maybe she'll try to escape."
Joe nodded. "Let's go this way, Ma'am. You can talk to me some more about financial freedom and independence while we walk."
Crystal, In the Office Next Door
Two people wearing lab coats walked along a hallway. A tall, gawky woman said, "I'm worried about the rift. It's especially unstable this week. My latest readings say it might be vibrating back and forth not only in space, but also in time."
The man beside her asked, "What does that even mean?"
"It MEANS, normal cause and effect might be...disturbed, this week. Potentially, we could throw something into the rift today, and the thing might appear on the other side not today, but thousands of years away from our own time, in the distant future or past."
"Huh." The man ducked into an office marked "Human Resources." He came out carrying a houseplant in a pot.
"Isn't that Starry Light's? Star LOVES her plants."
"Yeah. That annoying hippie thinks we should fill the whole office with some silly jungle. And look at all the crystals she's stuffed into this one's dirt. It's a wonder if it can even grow, with all that New Age nonsense crowding it." The man hurried down the hallway. "I'm hoping to get rid of this thing before she comes back from lunch, and never tell her where it went."
"But...isn't that her favorite plant? I'm pretty sure she said Harmony, or Phyllis...or was it Crystal? Whichever this one is, it might be her favorite."
"Might as well just call them all Useless Weed."
"What you're doing isn't nice!"
"I hate those plants so much. Have you ever considered that one of the plants might be hiding an enemy spy's surveillance device? Well, have you?"
The man walked up to a new extension of the rift, which had appeared in the hallway the day before. He tossed the houseplant through. "Goodbye, Phyllis Harmony Treebutt, or whatever your stupid name is!" He waved at the rift.
Long, long ago, in the magical land of Equestria, a knee-high plant appeared. She was a fusion of a philodendron and some hippie crystals, embedded in the ground at the bottom of a cliff, near the center of a wild, tangled forest.
Some people say if you talk to plants, they'll grow bigger and healthier. This plant remembered what that annoying man had said to her before he tossed her away. Harmony Tree (that was her real, official name, on the other side and here too) resolved to use her new magic crystal fusion powers to grow into a full-size tree, and become a pillar of society. Once the tree had gathered enough power and responsibility, she would tell wizards to throw every possible kind of magical toxic waste and dangerously insane criminal into that annoying bureaucrat's home world, to punish the people who had cast her out.