"Hello, Youtube. It’s me, the sexiest quantum physicist around. Boy, do I have a treat for you. Oh, and also, girl, do I have a treat for you. But no girl, except for me, has joined my channel. I know because I checked the statistics. Why you no like physics, girlfriends? Well, until I get more female competition in my field, I get to stay the sexiest physicist around.
“Now to the pressing subject: clothes. Turns out there’s a fine line between showing and being exposed. Since I don’t want to get banned from Youtube again I’m wearing pantyhose on top of my undies. I hope you’re finally happy, Youtube purists!
“I’m sorry, y’all. I’m on my period and I’m a bit on the edge. Well, more than usual.
“But I digress.” I turned to the sheet that was covering my newest invention. “I need to show you this.”
The sheet flew off and I squeeed upon seeing my pride and joy. “I know it looks like a heap of garbage, but I assure you, it’s not. It’s only made out of garbage. And that is its most special feature: you can build it yourself from the things you probably have at home.”
“You will, however, have to throw everything and a kitchen sink at it to work. And yes kitchen sink as well. It will act as a barrier marker for enacting the boundaries of the quantum transfer slice of space. You know, so that some appendages don’t stay behind. We wouldn’t wanna have that. Online inquisitors call me ‘not safe for work’ but as you can see, I’m the very definition of safety. I could have just shown you how to build this device without a kitchen sink, but I care, to an extent, for your safety and your limbs.
“What does it do? Well, it’s like a teleporter. I say ‘like’ because it isn’t. It only connects to the teleportation field that I’ve already established with a machine that I’ve been working on all my life.”
“And before you ask, yes, I know about the recent robberies of quantum technology centers around my home and how dare you suggest I had anything to do with them! I wouldn’t tell you even if I had something to do with that and I’m not telling you anything. Besides, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. The laboratories were all publicly founded and will get compensated for their losses. Technically, the taxpayers will pay for it, but since it’s for science, it makes it okay. It does! Sometimes progress requires some sacrifices.
“It sure is a coincidence that the permanent quantum tunnel formed right after all that equipment was stolen from the laboratories, isn’t it? But let’s not ruminate on happy coincidences I surely had absolutely nothing to do with.
“Back to my puppy, which is not a piece of junk! I called it a teleporter before, but it’s really not. It’s more of a disintegration oven. It just kills you. Like, really kills you on an atomic level. Though that’s not entirely accurate, either. This is just a beacon, it’s my machine in the basement that locates you and kills you. The point is, all that’s left of the user are the primordial energies which are instantly located with my actual teleporter which entangles them to the other side.
“For that, it needs to borrow energy, and that dept is instantly repaid with your remains on this side of the field. Due to quantum entanglement, the conditions for matter formation are established on the other side. That matter that happens to pop up in existence just happens to be the very user who got disintegrated.
“When I say the other side, I have a specific set of quantum coordinates in mind, and if I told you how I managed to obtain them without measuring them on the physical spot, you wouldn’t believe me.
“This will be my first time going there. I won’t tell you where, but I can say with confidence that there are sunshine and rainbows there.
“To get back, you simply build another device. Or you can be as smart as me and just take a smaller, less junky, version of it with you.” I showed the quantum beacon to the camera. “It looks like a car key, and it only has one button, but trust me, it’s one of the most advanced pieces of engineering on this planet.
“Technically, you don’t need this device, but then you’d be stuck there until you find yourself a kitchen sink with the rest of the stuff needed. Then again if you decide to stay there, you don’t need it period. Note, however, that I’m the only one pervy to this portable device. I meant to say privy!
“This stream is already getting too long, so just check the description if you want to build this device yourself. With that, I’m off to committing suicide. It won’t even be my machine that kills me, it’s the virtual borrowed particles that do all the disintegration into nothingness. But who cares because an exact copy of me will be created. It’s just like teleportation, just with more death.”
I stepped into the kitchen sink and all I saw next was a flash of light.
Instantly, the world around me changed into a new one. The atmospheric pressure was different, air composition, smell…
There was smoke and devastation all around me. “For the love of Einstein, what in singularity happened here?”
The rumbling noises subsided and I heard moaning all around me.
A flap of wings in the air and a wish of a tail in a corner of my vision distracted me from the mayhem. For a moment, a silhouette blocked the few rays of the new sun that managed to perturb through the thick smog. “You!” Something landed hard behind me. “You did this!”
As I turned around, all I saw was a hoof in my face then the world went black.
Ringing in my head. Darkness. Pain.
In the distance, there were voices...
“Twilight, is it safe to talk here? After what it did to Ponyville, I would have preferred if it was kept in Canterlot’s dungeons. Or even lower than that; in the ground.”
“My Crystal castle is no substitute for a dungeon, though it does feel like one with my friends gone… But don’t worry, Celestia. She’s firmly secured. My laboratory held far worse threats to Equestria than her.”
“Twilight, can it hear us?”
“I very much doubt it, Celestia. Her alien ears are so small that they’re probably just evolutionary vestiges. Same for her eyes.”
“How do you know her sex, Twilight?”
“I’ve checked her thoroughly. All the physiological signs point to her being female. She has reproductive organs and everything.”
“It will not create more of itself, will it?”
“No, she hasn’t been impregnated yet. In fact, she hasn’t even been penetrated yet. She’s a virgin.”
That made me grind my teeth and tense all my muscles. My hands hurt almost as much as my head. I couldn’t move them.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. The light from the windows increased my headache even more.
“Why are you even keeping it alive, Twilight? Why have you not disposed of the threat yet? After losing your friends, I would think you would be the first in line for justice. You are taking it very well considering what she did to the rest of the Elements of Harmony.”
“I’m really not. But I do know where the priorities lie. I’m going to need some time off after this.”
“You can take as much time as you want Twilight, after. Right now the safety of Equestria is at stake. For as long as it is alive, we can not go back to how things were.”
“I’ll do it before nightfall. In the meantime, I’ll extract from her as much as I can.”
“And I shall deal with the angry populace gathering outside. They will want to know if we are being invaded.”
“No, she’s not an invader. Just a scout. I suspect that explosive teleportation is their maneuver tactic. to counter any ambushes. She used a spell similar to teleportation, but I think I can erect a field that will prevent them from coming to this world anymore.”
“Around the whole of Equestria?”
“It’s just a disruption magic; no density needed.”
“I trust you do not need any supervision. I am needed by our ponies.”
“Have I ever failed you before, Celestia?”
“You were hesitant with changelings we captured.”
“But then I came through, didn’t I.”
“That you did. I just want to reiterate the importance of this. Ponies will demand justice. We must not let them think that we were in any kind of alliance with these creatures or it will be our heads they will be after.”
“I don’t know where the doubt is coming from. I’ll just question it. After that, they can have her head on a pike.”
“Are you sure that is not too much?”
“It’s just an expression.”
“Oh…”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this. We’ve got this together. I’ll make it right. Nopony else will get hurt, I promise.”
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I turned my head in direction of the voices and saw two horny horses half ajar door. Two pairs of eyes stared back at me.
“Twilight, it is looking at us,” the white horse said.
A smaller lavender one grinned. “Good, work calls.”
The white horse turned around but then stopped in her tracks. “Twilight, Equestria would not be a place of peace if we left bad deeds unpunished. A millennial-long peace did not just happen. I made it happen. I did not suffer the monsters to plague the land. You know what needs to be done.”
“I know what’s at stake, Celestia. I’ll do what’s necessary. We’ll have peace again.”
“I am glad we are on the same page. If you need me, I shall be outside trying to prevent a riot.”
Don’t worry, It’s harmless. I made sure of it.
The ponies left my view and I looked at my body. I was battered a bit, but nothing major. But then I noticed something. “Why am I naked?”
I looked around the room. My pantyhose was hung on the wall. Many weights weighed on them. On the wall, there were, horizontal markings with the same distance among them on the wall behind it. “What are these based experiments? Am I in Newton’s age?”
The door fully opened and through it came the smaller, lavender pony. She yelled, “Hello there!”
I was not pleased with how my hosts were treating me, so in turn, I didn’t want to waste any words on pleasantries. “Does the white one have a beef against me?”
“Oh, you heard all that despite having such small ears and not even being able to direct them. It seems I was mistaken in my assumption. I guess there’s no need for me to yell then.”
“Well?” I shook left and right, showing my disdain for chains.
“Well, I don’t know what beef is, but if Celestia had it, she probably would use it against you, monster.”
“Monster? Who are you calling a monster, filly? You invited me here and when I came you chained me up and Einstein knows what you’ve been doing to me when I was unconscious.”
“Well, if I’m the monster, what does that make you who murdered dozens of ponies in cold blood? Genocidal mass murderer? Does that work better for you?”
“What are you talking about? I came here, you hit me and now I’m here. I didn’t do nothing.”
“Aren’t we forgetting the explosion that decimated half of Ponyvile?”
“Well, don’t look at me. I used borrowed energy. The buildup should have dissipated the moment it was created. Either there would be a massive release of energy—”
“Explosion.” She interrupted me.
“Release of energy!” I emphasized. “Or I would form. Not both. Since I am here, the discharge could not have happened. It would be physically impossible.”
“Your math is off.”
“It’s physics and mine is never off!”
“I did some measurements. You have no magic and your clothes aren’t enchanted—I checked. They even exhibit a lower magical potential than the environment. Same with your second-leg-skin that you wore — I don’t even want to know whom you killed for that — and same with you.
“Ever heard of consent?”
“Ever heard of not killing my friends?”
“I did no such thing!”
“When I received your quantum coordinates from all the particles you were smashing —”
“That was just basic physics at the Large Hadron Collider. I’m above that.”
“— I responded in hopes we could exchange knowledge. I didn’t think you’d actually use some spooky force at a distance.”
“It wasn’t that hard, actually. The only unknowable variable was your coordinates, and you provided those.”
“I am impressed, I won’t lie, but how did you counter the consequential magical buildup?”
“Magical buildup?”
“Wait, you didn’t take that into an account? And then you wonder what caused that massive explosion.”
“We don’t have magic in our world.”
“But you knew we have it in this world.”
“I—I did. It just didn’t occur to me that it would be connected with non-magical based dimension transcendence.”
“And now you know.”
I bowed my head. “I should never have come here…”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
“I’m so sorry, Twilight.”
“Well, you should say that to my dead friends. You know, the ones whom you killed. Ooh, you can’t, because they’re DEAD!”
“It was the magic from your world that caused the explosion. It filled the void to equate the potentials.”
“It hurts me to no end that you’ll never know the level of anguish you exposed me to. You can’t possibly comprehend it. Even I can’t…”
She stopped. The twitching of her eye was the only movement that disturbed her face. Suddenly, her eyes pierced me, teeth clenched. “I want to hurt you. I’ve only felt this way once when Tirek attacked. I had hoped I’d never have this dreadful feeling again.
“Yet I can’t...” She extended a foreleg and breathed out. “I have responsibilities.”
“You have no idea how much my friends meant to me... I just want to bury myself with them while I mourn for them. But I can’t let myself do that just yet. Preventing this from happening again takes precedence over my self-pity.”
She looked up at me. “Do you know why I won’t hurt you?”
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong?”
“You killed my friends! You did plenty wrong. I understand your point of view, but that doesn’t make me hate you any less. My friends, the citizens under my care. They’d all still be alive if it wasn’t for you coming here. No amount of ignorance on your side can make up for that.” She put a hoof on her chest and bread in. “But you’re not the only one to blame. I share the guilt with you. You got the coordinates from me, after all.”
“I can’t fix our mistake, but we can mitigate the damage. Not from this side, though. I need you to return to your world and prevent this from happening again. I have to let you go, even though it doesn’t feel right for me. You need to make sure that nobody does what you did. So, there you go. The reason why I don’t kill you right here and now is because I need you. Simple as that.”
“You actually want to kill me?”
“What? Do you think you can just go around slaughtering ponies and nothing is going to happen to you? I don’t know how things work in your world, but here you are accountable for what you do.”
“Speaking of accountability, won’t you get in trouble for letting me go?”
“I’ll just say I dissolved you for safety reasons or something to that effect. Leave it to me, you just worry about your part of the equation. Can you do it?”
“Sure I can. I’ll just remove my video. It’s not like it went viral.” My voice cracked.
She opened a drawer and picked up my transponder in her hoof. “If my assumptions are correct, you need this to return.” She stood up on hind legs on a chair before me, put one forehoof on my chest and lifted the device above my head.
I tried to reach at it with my chained palms. All I had to do was press a button.
She kept looking into my eyes. “I bet that’s what you want right now. To just go back and pretend that nothing happened. Unfortunately, here in Equestria, we have such a thing as accountability. Let’s not forget that I have coordinates to your world as well.”
“The sooner you send me back, the sooner I can start fixing this.”
“You can’t fix what you did. Nothing you do will ever make it better. All we can do now is prevent more harm. But if I find out that you’re responsible for more ponies getting hurt I won’t just end you. I’ll make you beg for release.”
“If you fail to prevent it, I will hunt you down and death will be the least of your concerns. Do I make myself clear? If another incident happens I will find you and I will hurt you—a lot.”
I sighed. “You made your point.”
“Then tell me. Is Equestria in any danger? If I give you your gadget, can something like this happen again?”
I swallowed my saliva. “No of course not. I’m the only one who wrote down your coordinates. If you let me return, I can make sure nobody ever finds out about your world. All I have to do is erase them from my machine and you become an unknowable variable again.”
“Swear to me that you’ll do that!”
“I swear.”
“Now Pinky promise as well that nocreature will ever know about your discovery.”
“I… pinkie… promise I’ll delete all information about your world… from the internet…”
She floated my transponder closer. I could already touch it with the tips of my fingers. I just had to press the button…
Explosions sounded outside in a quick cascade.
Twilight lowered the device again and looked outside. The castle on the edge of the mountain crumbled down into the abyss below.
She threw my device back on the table and screamed at me, “You lied!”
