> Close Encounters of the Sixty-Third Kind
>  by Yoshirocks341
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: How It All Began...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	It all started on a perfectly ordinary day for Dusk Shine, Prince Solaris’ faithful student. In fact, the day was so ordinary that it caused one of the most common feelings that every being that has ever existed has felt at one point, utter boredom. To make sure this case of boredom wouldn’t come back again, Dusk formulated a plan.

“Spines!” Dusk shouted across the Golden Oaks Library, the place which he calls his home and his workplace, “Can you write a message for me?”

“To Prince Solaris?” A young girl’s voice yelled back.

The owner of this voice turned around to face Dusk. She was a young dragoness, whose age was in the single digits. She had green scales, which stood on top of her head like a scared mare. On the sides on her face, little light green fin-like objects sprouted out. Each contained three “hearts”, giving the edges a wavy look. Her eyes were a deep green that accented the color of the scales on top. The rest of her body was covered in purple, except her belly; this contained a white tint. There was a pointed tail sticking out of her, finishing the dragon look.

“Actually, this message will just be delivered around town,” Dusk answered.

Dusk himself continued the purple color theme to his skin. However, the color was just a tint lighter of Spines, but you could only tell that if you creepingly stared at them. His hair fell down his neck, but dared to go no further. It was also on the bandwagon of purple, but it decided to take the darker route. Plus, it secretly cheated with the pink bandwagon for a stripe down the middle. These colors continued into a tail that started from his purple butt. This contained a star that wanted to be different and became a tone that was the mixture of the hair colors. 

His chin came up to the very top of Spines scales (he sometimes told her that he could squish her underneath his foot, but Spines knew he never would ever try and couldn’t do it). His overall body was not very muscular, since reading books and studying don’t take a lot of muscle power. His body was tipped off with eyes the same color as his skin and a horn which didn’t want to be left out on this purple parade.

“I want to invite the guys over tomorrow to have a mysterious spell party.” Dusk explained to Spines while walking over to her, “I need some excitement after today’s lack of.”

“Ya…I have to agree with you there. Today was especially dull,” Spines replied, nodding her head.

So, Dusk told the message he wanted to send to his friends to her. When the messages were completed, Spines ran outside to deliver the messages by hand, instead of the usual “air travel”. She was lucky enough to run into the mailcolt right outside the library. He insisted that he deliver the letters, since it was his job after all. So, Spines left the messages with the double lazy-eyed colt and head back inside.

The next morning, Dusk woke up and made some preparations for the arrival of his friends. First to the library was the one who always wanted to be first, Rainbow Blitz. Rainbow Blitz was a colt always in the skies, and his own body reflected that. His skin was a light blue color, which matched the sky perfectly. His head shot rainbow colored stripes of hair from the back of his neck over the top of his head. His long tail matched the same color scheme, but looked like it never met a curve in its life. Between this tail and his two powerful, well worked wings, were a cloud and a rainbow. His brown eyes were partnered with lightning bolt eyebrows.

“Well, it looks like I win again!” the athlete shouted joyfully with a smirky smile.

Dusk chuckled to himself, knowing his friend Rainbow Blitz’s over-the-top competitiveness was taken to everything. “When will he realize everything is not a race…” Dusk whispered to himself.

Not too long after this line had been spoken, the next pony came tumbling in. The colt donned a giant smile and bounce in his step, which was completely standard for him and never seemed to change. He was covered with pink from head to toe, with his hair taking a little red into their color. This hair bounced on his head like he did to the ground, almost giving it a look that seemed to be a mix of cotton candy and ice cream. His tail poofed the same color hair from his rear. This bum contained a cartoon picture of balloons. His body size was overall normal, which seemed to be the only thing normal about him. His wide open eyes seemed to scream the only thought on his mind, “PARTY TIME!”

“PARTY TIME!” the newcomer screamed from the top of his lungs.

“Hold on now Bubble Berry,” Dusk said to try to calm him down, “We can’t do anything until everyone is here. Rainbow, can you try to keep Bubble from exploding before we start?”

“That’s way easier said than done,” Rainbow muttered in response, but none the less went over to try to talk to Bubble.

With the three occupied on the party animal, the next guest was totally not noticed. He quietly slipped in, and was going to say something, but decided not to. His skin and wings were a light cream yellow. His hair fell around his ears and down the back of his head. The hair was pink, but was lighter than any color on the pervious guest. His tail continued this color and stuck out in a way that almost stuck out like the tip of a cartoon mop. On his upper thigh, which was definitely on the small side like the rest of his body (he was easily the smallest of his group of friends) three pink butterflies were printed there. His teal eyes were big, almost scared at the sight in front of him.

“Umm…hello?” He spoke meekly, finally getting enough courage to say something.

“Huh? Oh, hi Butterscotch!” Dusk said turning around after hearing the new voice, “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“Oh that’s ok,” Butterscotch said in return, “I just got here, and I see that Bubble got here just before me.”

A quick chuckle passed Dusk’s lips. “Yep, that’s Bubble for you; practically crazy in every way.”

This statement got a tiny laugh from the small colt. The next guest suddenly stepped in from behind Butterscotch. The well-toned colt was covered from head to toe in a pure white. His hair was stylized, falling across his forehead and down his neck, taking a rich mix of the color purple and navy blue with it. His tail captured this color and flowed in such a way with its curves that it looked like someone took hours to get it to look as such. His derrière showed three blue diamonds in a triangular pattern. His rich blue eyes shined from his face, with his eyebrows accenting them perfectly (someone had once spread the rumor once that he plucked them). When looking at him, there was no doubt in anyone’s head to say that he was good looking.  

“I have arrived, my friends!” he shouted, striking a pose.

“Ya…ya... ‘Lucy. Whatever,” Rainbow turned and mocked. He rolled his eyes but kept a smile on, because he knew what was coming next.

You could see the rage building in the newcomer. “MY NAME'S...NOT...'LUCY! My name is Elusive!” he said the last word like it should be put on a pedestal and worshiped, 	“My name is not a girl’s name Rainbow Blitz, and you know that!”

“Whatever.” Rainbow repeated and then brought his attention back to Bubble.

Elusive finally gathered himself and brought himself inside. The final guest was right behind him, and was a tad out of breath. He looked like he had been doing some hard work, and was not new to it. His body was covered with big, strong muscles. His orange skin that covered him stopped right before reaching his white toes. Over his pale blonde hair, he had donned a cowboy style hat. His hair was in the style of a pony tail, which went down his back. His tail was also in the style of a pony tail, which makes a lot of since if you think about it. Three red apples sat upon the thing he worked off every day. Sweat covered his face and dark green eyes. The last thing worth mentioning were white freckles that lived under his eyes.

“Howdy yall, sorry Ah’m late. Ah was doing some late second work at Sweet Apple Arcs before headin’ over here,” The worker said with a thick southern accent.

“That’s perfectly fine Applejack,” Dusk told him. “Everyone has just arrived. We haven’t been waiting longer than…”he looked over at the clock, “thirteen seconds for your arrival.”

“Woo, that’s good to hear,” AJ said, “Ah would hate to make yall wait.”

With everyone together, Dusk decided that it was time to explain why he had brought them here (he didn’t in the letter; he feared that it would scare them off). He saw that everyone was staring at him, so he started his speech.

“Well men, I have a mission for you guys, if you choose to accept it. I won’t lie to you, this could be very dangerous. I have some spells that I have found while searching around this library. Some could cause body changes, some could cause random teleportation, and some could even cause the most deadly diseases. This is why I need brave volunteers to put themselves on the line; in the name of magic. There might be some challenges along the way, but together, I know, nothing is impossible. Now, who’s with me men?!”

No one was paying attention. They were all looking past Dusk at something strange behind him. Even Spines, who had woken up due to the loud ruckus, was transfixed by it. What was behind Dusk was like nothing anyone had seen before. Rainbow was the first one to speak up.

“Dusk? What’s that?”

Dusk turned around and saw something even the library hadn’t seen before. It looked like a blue and black circle on the floor. It was sucking in air, taking anything that happened to be light enough with it. It was taking books, loose pages, and even one of the book shelves was slowly rocking towards it. Weirdest thing of all, it was getting bigger.

“I….I really don’t know.” Dusk replied puzzled.

Curiosity got the best of everyone present as they gathered around the mysterious object. Each person gave their own ideas on what this…thing could be.

“Is it alive?” Spines asked.

“It’s nothing I've ever seen in nature.” Butterscotch answered.

“Maybe the blueness of it is a clue. Could it live in water?” Elusive questioned.

“Well, there is really none here.” Rainbow commented.

“Ah don’t think it’s real guys, Ah think it’s a weird vacuum of some sort.” Applejack put out his two cents.

“Where are all the books going to?” Spines, a part owner of the books questioned.

“Hope we can get them back, that’s a lot of knowledge down the drain!” The other part owner was worried.

While they were all talking amongst each other, the mysterious object grew and grew and grew. It got so huge, that whole bookcases were being sucked into it. Suddenly, they noticed that the wind from it was getting so bad that they were getting pulled it.

“Make a break for it!” Rainbow yelled.

However, it was too late. Their ignorance of the speed it grew at was going to be their downfall. Their running was like watching a man work out on a treadmill. Spines was the first one be pulled in. 

“Eeeeek!” Spines screeched as she slowly disappeared into the mysterious oval.

“Spines!” Dusk shouted over his shoulder.

The growing showed no stop in slowing down. The whole library was starting to shake a little with all the suction happening. Then, each pony one by one got pulled in.

“Oh, ahhhhh!” Butterscotch yelled before disappearing into the black and blue monster.

“Waaaaa…” Dusk shouted while falling in.

“Aiiieee!” Elusive cried.

“Adventure time!” Bubble cheered, still a grin on his face.

“Yaaaa…” Applejack bellowed.

Only one colt remained. His wings pumped as hard as he flew. If he had a head start on the blue hole, maybe he could have made it to safety. He may be the “fastest” flier in all of Equestria, but he was not the best distance flier. Eventually, wear and tear over powered him, and the new blue disaster eventually won.

“Woah…” Rainbow breathed tiredly as he plummeted into the blue portal. 

And thus, their life changing, once in a life time, adventure began.
> Chapter 2: The Discovery...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	"Where am I?" 

“Am I dreaming this?”

“I feel a pleasant breeze.”

“…I hear a voice from somewhere...”

“I wonder who it is.”

“Dusk, wake up!”

Dusk opened his eyes to see a blurry picture of Spines shaking Dusk's head. He shook himself off and stood up.

“Ugh, where am I?” Dusk questioned.

“No clue. I do know though that everyone is here though,” Spines replied.

Dusk panned around him to see a mess of ponies that he called his friends. Applejack had the job of pulling his head out of the ground. Butterscotch was doing his best to help Elusive stop from panicking, due to the fact that Elusive had found the best place to land, a mud puddle. Bubble was bouncing on top of a half conscience Rainbow yelling, "Rainbow wake up, Rainbow wake up you silly sleepy head! We're going to...actually I have no clue, but wake up!"

“Is everyone alright?” Dusk asked the group.

Applejack succeeded in his previously mentioned task and turned to speak. “Ah’m fine, mah head is ju'NO I AM NOT ALRIGHT! I’m completely covered in mud!” Elusive interrupted panicking.

Rainbow Blitz, who was now awake, came over frustrated. “I would tell you to stop acting like a girl, but we all know that ain't going to happen.”

Everyone fell silent as they looked to see how Elusive would respond. “What did you just say to me?”

“I called you a girl, for the up-teenth time,” Rainbow replied matter-the-factly. “What are you going to do about it?”

Elusive was slowly raising his front hoof, when he suddenly stopped. His logic cut in just in time to stop his emotions from overcoming him. He didn’t figure out that fighting wouldn’t do anything good (because that would be a lie), but in fact he realized that Rainbow would easily win any fight. So, Elusive decided on a different approach.

“How about we make a bet?” he asked putting his hoof down.

“What sort of bet?” came the response.

“If I can go the whole day without doing anything ‘girly’, you have to work at my ‘girly’ shop for the next week.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “What happens when you don’t?”

“I’ll go around town with you tomorrow for the whole day wearing a dress. And you can call ‘Lucy the whole time.”

Rainbow was stunned. He was not expecting that much man pride to be at risk. He really didn’t want to be forced to work at that stupid place Elusive called his pride and joy. But, he did want to see Elusive humiliate himself in a dress. After some quick thinking, he made up his mind.

“Deal.” Rainbow raised his left hoof.

“Deal.” Elusive made the handshake, which really doesn't work when hooves don’t grip.

Applejack cleared his trout. “We’re done here guys?”

They both turned and gave him a nod.

“Good. Now, let’s figure out where we are.”

Everyone started to look around them for hints. Well, everyone except for Spines, who had gone paralyzed and mind numb by the thought of her crush, Elusive, in a dress. After a short period of time, Butterscotch found something useful.

“Umm, guys, I think I found something familiar.”

They all gathered around Butterscotch. In the distance was a sight they were relieved to see. It was a group of buildings, with a bunch of ponies walking around. A sign that was recently placed outside read a single word.

“Ponyville!” 

They started to walk to their wonderful hometown, when Dusk turned around and noticed that Spines wasn’t moving.

“Coming Spines?” he asked her.

“Whaaa?” Spines snapped back into reality, “Oh, ummm ya, yes I’m ready. Where are we going?” 

Dusk just laughed and put Spines on his back. He quickly ran to catch up with the others.
************************************************************************************
When they arrived in town, something was up. It wasn’t due to the fact that the town’s residents were panicking, because there was none of that. Something was just…off.

“Why can’t I recognize anyone?” Elusive asked.

“Ah can’t see any familiar faces either.” Applejack joined in.

The group continued to walk through town, still not seeing anyone they knew.

“Hey guys!” Rainbow said to get everyone’s attention. Everyone turned to look at him. “When did all these girls get here?”

“You’re on to something Rainbow,” Dusk was puzzled with that thought. “And where are all the guys?”

“It is almost like the ratios of people have been swapped!” Bubble stated.

An idea suddenly popped into Dusk’s head, but he quickly dismissed it. “Na, that couldn’t be possible…” he thought.

They had gotten into the middle of town and still hadn’t seen anyone they knew. They needed to figure out what was going on.

“Ooh, Ooh, I have an idea!” Bubble shouted.

“What is it?” Applejack asked.

“Why don’t we just go and ask someone what’s going on?”

“Bubble, that’s…actually a simple and straightforward plan!” Elusive said surprised. “When did you start making plans like that?”

Bubble just shrugged.

"Who should we ask?” Butterscotch inquired. 

“Ummm, her!” Bubble pointed to the first pony he laid his eyes on.

The unfortunate pony who Bubble Berry had pointed to was a young filly. She was orange like the fruit, but did not smell like it (Bubble checked). Her hair was purple and on the short side, barely making it down her neck. Her purple tail fell lazily. Her flank was blank, encouraging the fact that she was young. Bubble walked up to her and randomly pulled a microphone from out of nowhere.

“Hello, I’m from the news station P.O.N.Y, and I’m here to conduct a random interview with a member of this town. Are you one?” Bubble said into the microphone.

“Ummm,” Bubble had definitely caught this filly off guard, but she recovered, “Yes, yes I am.”

“Let’s first start off with some simple questions. What’s your name?”

“Scootaloo.”

Bubble pretended to write that down on an object that didn't exist. “What is your normal day like?”

“Well, I usually spend time with two other fillies my age. One is an orderly type, but a tad on the girly side. I think that’s due to the fact that her older sister owns a boutique here in town…."

Elusive raised an eyebrow. 

"….and the other is the brave, hard-working type. She might get this from her older siblings though. They work an apple farm right outside town.”

Elusive look was copied and pasted onto Applejack.

More invisible notes from Bubble. “And do you like living here?”

“Oh yes, of course!” she said excitedly. Her expression suddenly changed. “Umm, can ask you some questions?”

“Sure you can!” Bubble replied without missing a beat. “What do you want to know?”

Scootaloo grabbed the microphone.

“Well, let’s first start off with a simple question, what’s your name?”

Dusk was going to warn Bubble about giving his name is strangers, but then he realized the irony behind that statement.

“My name is Bubble Berry ,” replied the owner of that name.

“Now here’s a real question for you. If you are an interviewer, why don’t you have a camera?” The filly was getting curious.

“Budget cuts,” Bubble replied.

The raised eyebrow look now carried over to the young filly. “Then why do you have these people here?”

Bubble looked at the group of friends behind him. Butterscotch gave a shy wave back.

“They’re my posse you see. I have one because I’m famous. They get me things when I need them to and they're willingly follow my ‘suggestions’.”

Now Bubble was getting looks from both directions, and they definitely weren't happy ones.

“But…then why is the group so small?” Scootaloo asked, “I thought superstars had, like, hundreds of ponies following them.”

“Tiny size for a tiny amount of famousness.” Bubble said with a nervous chuckle.

He looked around him. He saw that this conversation was going to go nowhere. Lucky for him, Rainbow Blitz stepped in.

“Umm, not-so-famous Bubble Berry, I think it is time for this interview to end.”

Bubble nodded. “I agree. Why thank you for the interview…” His voiced trailed off.

The orange filly’s face had suddenly turned into a giant grin, so big that it actually kind of freaked out Bubble. She turned to Rainbow and asked him, “DOYOUKNOWRAINBOWDASH?!”

“No…” Rainbow was now officially freaked out. “Why do you ask?”

Scootaloo’s joy had suddenly deflated like a balloon in a cactus breeding ground. “Oh…well, you look just like her…”

That got everyone’s attention. 

“Really?” Bubble took back his microphone. “Care to explain more about this girl?”

A fangirl squeal came out of the filly. “Well, where do I start? She is the most coolest pony ever! She has saved the world; pulls the best pranks ever, OH she is also the fastest pony in Equestria! She one time did….”

Our intrepid heroes slowly walked away, letting the filly to declare Rainbow Dash’s splendor, to no one…
*************************************************************************************
“Well, that was strange.” Dusk finally said when they got out of ear shot of Scootaloo.

“That was way beyond strange!” Elusive said with a hint of panic in his voice. “You have someone running a boutique here, and I’m the only one who runs one in Ponyville.”

“There’s also another farm that sprung outta nowhere!” Applejack added.

“And that girl looked a lot like Scooteroll…” Spines pointed out, thinking about the young orange skinned, purple haired colt that they all were familiar with.

You could almost literally see light bulbs go off over some of the colts’ heads.

“It would make sense...” Butterscotch started.

“It would explain why she hangs out with someone who owns a farm…” Applejack pondered. Scooteroll hung out with Applebuck, Applejack's little brother.

“And why she hangs out with a relative of a shop owner…” Elusive added. Scooteroll also hung out with Sweepy Bell, Elusive's little brother.

“AND why she knows so much about a girl that looks like me!” Rainbow finished. Scooteroll was a huge fanboy of Rainbow Blitz.

“Hold up here,” Dusk butted in, “let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet!” 

Spines looked at him. “I really don’t think we've taken any jumps, more like little steps down the path of logic.”

Dusk sighed. “Fine. I have a theory about what is going on here though. I just need a little more proof.” He turned to Bubble. “Ready for more shenanigans?”

Bubble smiled. “When am I not?”
*************************************************************************************
Dusk and Bubble separated themselves from the group. The plan was for the rest of the group to stay in earshot, but not get too close. They didn’t want suspicion to arise again.  Dusk and Bubble peaked out from a nearby building.

“Him.” Dusk pointed to a colt. “If my theory is correct, he should be important to us.”

The mystery colt was very muscular, roughly the same size as Applejack, maybe even a little bit bigger. He had a deep coat of red that covered everything, except his toes that rebelled with a light yellow color. His light brown hair fell down his neck, stopping at a weird brown collar (a yoke). At the other end, a picture of half of a light green apple was over his red skin. A short brown tail was its nearest neighbor. He was topped off with green eyes and white freckles.

“Congratulations, sir!” Bubble sprung onto the scene. “You are the winner of the random pony lottery!”

The red colt blinked once before answering. “Ah didn’t enter no lottery.” His southern voice was slow and deliberate.

“Yes, but that’s the reason why it is so random!” Bubble's voice seemed faster now in comparison. “You don’t even need to sign up!”

The muscular colt just gave a quick shrug. “What do Ah win?”

Dusk pretended to start getting something out of a bag Bubble had given him. 

“Hold up!” Bubble told him. He turned back to the colt stranger. “We need your name and place of work, for legal purposes. You understand right?”

“Eeyup,” was the reply. 

Mini awkward silence followed. “So… what’s your name and place of business?” Dusk asked.

“Mah name is Big MacIntosh and Ah work at the apple farm named Sweet Apple Acres with mah family,” the red colt gave his answer.

Dusk wrote this down on a piece of paper that did exist. “Ok. That’s all we need. Here you go!”

Dusk pulled the prize out of the bag and put it into the hoof Big MacIntosh stuck out. The “big lottery winnings” turned out to be three bits, roughly the same value as a bag of apples. Big Mac just shrugged, thinking that something is better than nothing. Dusk and Bubble were about to leave when they heard the slow southern voice speak. “May Ah ask the purple one a question?”

Dusk turned around, tad nervous that something was going to go horribly wrong. “Umm, sure.”

“Do you happen to work in a library?”

Dusk was definitely surprised. “Yes…how did you know that?”

“Well, a purple pony works in our library here, and she looks mighty like you.” Big Mac spoke deliberately. “Ah figured you were related and probably had the same job.”

Dusk wanted to get out of there as fast as he could now. However, Bubble had some other plans. “What’s her name?” Bubble asked him as Dusk started to walk away.

Big Mac thought a moment. “Twilight Sparkle.”

“Thank you!” Bubble said before being pulled away by the male purple librarian.
************************************************************************************
“Well, my theory is correct!” Dusk said. 

“Is it that we somehow got transported to a dimension where everyone has their gender swapped?” Spines asked. 

Dusk was surprised again. “How did you figure that out?”

“It was pretty obvious,” Spines answered.

“Ah’m pretty sure everyone was able to figure that out,” Applejack stated.

“Including them!” Bubble pointed forwards.

Rainbow Blitz’s eyes followed the direction of the pointing. “Who?”

Bubble sighed. “No one...”

Dusk cleared his trout. “Ok, we need to make a plan and I have some ideas. Plan A: Explore the town, looking for the reason of why that blue portal thing brought here. Plan B: Disguise ourselves and find our counterparts and see if they know anything. Plan B: Panic and cause massive mayhem.” 

The last line caused some confused looks. “Dusk…why did you say “B” twice? Elusive asked.

Dusk raised an eyebrow. “What are you questioning?”

“I’m questioning your amount of B’s. There should only be one plan B.”

Spines grinned when she figured out where Dusk was going with this. “Two B or not two B, that is the question.”

Dusk turned and returned Spines' smile. The almost brother and sister made a jumping high-five. Everyone else just high-fived their face.

Dusk chuckled. “Sorry guys, I thought of that and just had to use it.” 

He cleared his trout again. “What do you think we should do everyone?”

“Umm…why don’t we explore town disguised, looking for a way back home and the reason why we are here?” Butterscotch pitched.

The suggestion spread nodding and murmurs of agreement throughout the group.

“May Ah add somethin’?” Everyone turned to look at Applejack. “Should we try to avoid ourselves? That would easily cause panic.”  

“That’s the reason for the disguises…” Rainbow replied.

“No, no, I see what he’s talking about,” Dusk stepped in. “Even with disguises, ourselves should still recognize our personality somewhat. We should try to not stay around them for too long, even if we do run into any of them. Now, what to do about the need for disguises?”

“I have just the spell!” Elusive exclaimed. His horn then started to glow very bright.

Everyone slowly backed away has the light grew and grew, finally enveloping them all. When they could see again, they realized that they all looked really different.

“What the heck!” Not-so-rainbow Rainbow Blitz said. “What did you go Elusive?”

“Why, I have used the palette swap spell on all of us,” Elusive started to explain. “It’s better if I wrote this out.”

He grabbed the piece of paper that Dusk had been writing on and scribbled something down. Everyone gathered around to see this.

   Dusk Shine--->Applejack---> Rainbow Blitz---> Bubble Berry--->Elusive --->Spines--->Butterscotch 
Was: Purple/Pink  Orange/Yellow  Blue/Rainbow         Pink        White/Purple   Purple/Green  Yellow/Pink 
Now: Yellow/Pink Purple/Pink     Orange/Yellow      Blue/Yellow        Pink       White/Purple  Purple/Green   


“I see, very clever I must say,” the now yellow Dusk said, “but why isn’t Bubble’s hair rainbow colored?”

“Well, I thought that someone with rainbow colored anything would stand out!” the pink pony replied. “So, I used a common color for hair, yellow, instead.”

Everyone then started to observe their new color changes. After a few minutes of doing this, their curiosity ran out and they went back to focusing on the other part of the plan.

“So…umm, how are we going to figure out how to get back home?” The purple Butterscotch asked.

“I say we go separately around town and look for clues.” A white Spines stated.

“Sounds like a good idea. Let's split up, gang!! We should try to meet back here in about an hour.” Dusk said.

Everyone started to head in different directions around town. However, if they knew what dangers were in store for them, they might have chosen to stay together… 
> Chapter 3: The Apprentice...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Even in a different dimension, Ponyville still has its charm.”

Elusive was looking around at all the sights in front of him. The quaint architecture of the town was still the same as always. Ponies were bustling around, going in from building to building, doing whatever that needed to get done. Some were doing some spring cleaning, some were shopping for the latest products, and some were just hanging out, gossiping their hearts out. However, instead of the normal colts Elusive was used to seeing, mares roamed the streets.

“The increase of mares isn’t such a bad thing,” Elusive thought to himself, “I would definitely have to increase the amount of dresses I sell though. There really isn’t much a need for them normally, because…AARGH! Why am I thinking about work in a completely different dimension! I need to focus on getting back home!”

Elusive had been walking around for quite some time now, roughly twenty minutes, but he wasn’t really keeping track. He was lost deep in his thoughts.

“I wonder if Rainbow Blitz is spying on me, I wouldn’t put it past him.” Elusive’s thoughts continued to keep on flowing. “He definitely wants to see me in a dress. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time I said that. I think he has less at stake than I do. Working at my store won’t be awful. I doubt he has really worked a day in his life, being the freeloader bachelor he is. Why, I bet that this will be…" *WUMP*

It seemed that Elusive’s lack of paying attention had caused the number one result of walking and deep thinking, collisions. Elusive looked down to see that the victim was not a something, but sadly someone. The receiving end of the collusion looked a bit dazed, as he tried to get up. Elusive got a good look at him when the stranger finally gathered himself. He was a young purple dragon, with green scales mountaining out of the top of his head and down the back of it. The greenness was also in his…actually Elusive really didn’t know what they were. They seemed to be a mix of fins, wings, and ears. The shape of fins and wings were roughly the same shape of the objects, and the objects’ location was roughly where ears would be. His eyes were also naturally green with envy.

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” Elusive said. “Are you alright?”

“Ya…I’m fine,” the stranger replied, “the impact only hurt a bit.”

“You sure you’ll be fine?” Elusive’s gentlemen mannerisms were kicking in.

The dragon laughed. “Yep! I’ve had way worse...”

The gears in Elusive’s head had been turning since the collision with the stranger and a product was finally made. He realized that the dragon in front of him was none other than the counterpart to Spines. The similarity in the looks were uncanny, however the nail in the coffin was the way he acted. He took a pretty bad hit, pretending it was nothing, and tried to hide anything that showed differently. Elusive could see now that he was trying to hide a bruise from his fall.

“Ok Elusive, remain calm!” Elusive thoughts were in a rush. “He hopefully won’t recognize me, due the disguise. Besides, he wouldn’t even think anything of it! Who would think the opposite gender version of a friend would even exist? *a short laugh* I’ll be fine…”

Elusive’s mannerisms kicked in again. “Oh, I’m sorry, I should probably introduce myself! My name is Elusive. What is yours?”

“Mine’s Spike!” the green dragon replied. “I work at the local library. Right now, I’m doing some errands for Twilight Sparkle, another librarian there.”

“I see. I work at a boutique that I own myself.” He quickly added, “…in a far away town.”

“I was wondering why I hadn’t seen you before...” Spike commented. “Would you like a tour around town? I only have one more errand to do.”

Elusive thought about this. “Well, it would help me figure out some facts about the other versions of us if I stay with him. There seems to be no risk, with the pallet swap spell working perfectly. I am such a genius sometimes!”

Elusive took Spike up on his offer. “Hey, thanks! A tour would surely help me figure out what is what around here.”

And the two of them were off.
*****************************************************************************************
Elusive easily recognized the first building Spike’s tour went to. The very top of the building looked like a giant cupcake, topped with pink frosting and purple candles. The roof resembled a ginger bread house, with it being a deep brown and white trimming on the edges. The windows and doors were covered in pink paint. The walls were white and brown, almost resembling a house from the Middle Ages.  

It seemed really busy for some reason. Some ponies were bringing in party supplies, ranging from a box of party blowers to a herd of balloon animals. Other ponies had gathered outside. One was a blue haired pony, with purple glasses and a music note on her end. She was shouting orders at some workers bringing in music equipment.  Another pony seemed way older and had light blue skin. He had wild white hair that was very thin. He was talking to a younger colt, who had light green skin and wore a plain red vest (“That’s the worst fashion sense I’ve ever seen!” Elusive muttered). They seemed confused and a little disappointed.

“The Sugarcube Corner seems really packed!” Spike pointed out the obvious.

“Yes it does,” Elusive was just making small talk. “Did you have to do an errand here?”

“Ya…but I’ll tell Twilight that Pinkie Pie is pulling some sort of party…again.”

“Does this ‘Pinkie Pie’ throw a lot of parties?”

Spike laughed. “That’s an understatement. She will throw a party any chance she can! It’s not bad though, the parties are usually really fun. I wonder if I will get invited…”

Elusive could easily figure out who this “Pinkie Pie” was. “That’s definitely a good description of Bubble Berry party addiction,” Elusive thought to himself.

“Should we try to help them move in the stuff?” Elusive asked.

“Na, we would probably just get in their way.” Spike replied.

“What about doing your errand then?” 

Spike shrugged. “Twilight will understand why I decided not to do this errand around Pinkie Pie when she is in party mode.” Spike answered as he led Elusive away from the bustling building. 
*****************************************************************************************
After leading Elusive through a couple of other buildings, a thought was turning inside Spike.

“This Elusive seems like an alright fellow. He’s very kind, but is a tad over-the-top on the importance of manners…” Spike had been yelled at by Elusive when he didn’t hold the door open for a filly at a flower stand, one of the shops Spike had showed Elusive. 

“He also has an obsession with fashion…” Spike remembered Elusive mentioning the place he worked at was his own boutique. Spike had also overheard Elusive muttering to himself about random ponies’ fashion styles/statements. 

Spike laughed to himself. “He sounds a lot like…” Something clicked in this head.

“He would be perfect for Rarity!” Spike thoughts were frantic. “If he would end of meeting her, they would fall in love at first sight! I can’t let that happen. I better make sure that…”

Let me just jump in here and example something. Rarity is a white, purple haired mare that is the fashion head of the town. She even has her own boutique. Plus, she is one of the six mares who saved the world in this dimension. Spike has had a crush on this mare ever since he first laid his eyes on her. He definitely doesn’t want anyone to prevent him from ever dating Rarity. So, Spike, deranged by thoughts of trying to protect his crush from being taken, put two and two together and sadly made five. 

“I bet he has already met her!” Spike’s corrupted ideas kept on coming, “I bet he met her, and they had a wonderful romantic date and now…he has come to see what his competition is! Oooo, I’m going to make him pay!” 

Spike changed his planned route and made a path straight for revenge.
*****************************************************************************************
With the recent finical success of Rarity’s boutique (saving the world is always a good promoter); a competing clothes store, named Foal's, had gone out of business. It was part of a widely spread chain of stores. There weren’t many big chain stores in the town of Ponyville, and the residents liked it that way. If anything, the locals were happy that this store closed down. Now, if you’re wondering why this clothes store is relevant to this story, here it is. It was going to be demolished that day.

Elusive recognized the good-sized brown building. It had a bunch of windows in front, to show off its latest products. The windows showed nothing now. He had bought some supplies from the store before it finally went under. It did seem a tad strange to him however, on why he was bring led here of all places. Who wants to see a closed building? 

Elusive looked around. He saw that on one side of the building there was a set of tools that belonged to a local demolition crew. It included the normal; a few jackhammers, a wrecking ball crane, a few sledgehammers, and a couple of tool boxes, full of random objects that might come in handy when the time comes. The crew was either preparing for the demolition or on a lunch break, because they were nowhere to be found. 

Looking inside the store, he could barely see anything. It was dark in there, since the bill for lights had stopped being paid. The windows were bordered up, to enforce the fact that it was going to be destroyed. The only light that was illuminating the place was from the open door he was standing in front of.

“Take a nice look around,” Spike said with a suspicious grin, “it won’t be here for long.”

When Elusive started to walk inside the empty building, Spike scrabbled off giggling. He headed over to the side of the building which contained the equipment that was going to be used later today. He climbed into the crane holding the wrecking ball (which had been left unlocked due to a lazy worker) and looked at the controls.

“How do you work this thing?” Spike muttered to himself.

After pressing a bunch of random buttons, he got the machine to roar into life. He then jerked random leavers to see if he could get the wrecking ball to move. The wrecking ball swung back and forth uncontrollably for a good period of time, but Spike succeeded in the end. He wound the ball back, and thrust it forward at the building. *Wham* Direct hit! A bunch of cracks started to appear on the walls of the buildings. *Wham* The wrecking ball crashed into the store again.

“One more time should do it…” Spike said rubbing with hands maliciously.

He reached for the controls and pulled hard on the leavers as the ball flew through the air with the greatest of ease. 

*WHAM* *BASH* *CRASH* *BOOM* *CRACK* THUD* *DING*	

The building was no more. In its place now where a bunch of huge chucks of brick and stones that were lying all over the place. Pieces of glass were scattered all over the place. Spike victoriously stepped out the operator’s cab and shouted at the debris, “Take that you crush stealer!”

He turned to walk off only to run into the pink face of Elusive staring at him.

The only response Spike could mutter was, “What?”

It turns out that Elusive was smart enough not to go into a building that was sent for destruction. He was debating on if he wanted to go inside or not. Then he heard Spike giggle as he ran away. Elusive watched him and then he saw where Spike was headed. As a result, Elusive skedaddled far away from Foal’s.

“What was that!?” Elusive asked enraged and confused.

As Spike was looking for some words to say, they saw a dark, shadowy of figure sprint down an alley way that was between the buildings that were right next to them. Immediately after, a light blue female pegasus with rainbow hair quickly landed and looked around.

“What’s up Rainbow Dash?” Spike asked the newcomer, seeing this as an opportunity to avoid Elusive’s question.

“Did you see anyone run away from here?” Her voice was quick and frantic. 

“Umm yes, someone went down that way.” Spike pointed to where the shadowy figure had gone.

The blue pegasus shouted “Thanks!” and flew off after it.

“I wonder what that was about...” Spike muttered to himself.

“Screw that! Why did you just bring that building down! You could have killed me!” Elusive screamed.

“Oh...that?” Spike nervously laughed. “That was…umm…my other errand I had to do!”

Elusive raised one of his eyebrows. “Your other errand?”

“Ya! I had to…destroy the building to… save time for the public workers!”

Elusive didn’t believe a word he said, but went along with it. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t I tell you?” Spike momentarily turned into a parrot. “Didn’t tell you, didn’t tell you…Oh! I didn’t tell you because I thought you wouldn’t approve of me using unauthorized equipment.”

“You could have at least given me a heads up or something!”

“I didn’t want you to get into any trouble!”

Elusive sighed. “Fine.” Elusive said still upset.

Spike cleared his throat. “Well… should we finish up our tour now?”

Spike headed off in a direction, and Elusive reluctantly followed.
**************************************************************************************
The last building Spike’s tour came to was less of a building, but more of a tree. It was literally a tall tree, with windows sticking out from every which direction. The leaves accented the windows and were trimmed in such a way that no windows were covered. The telescope at the very top was a great place for star gazing at night. The front door was a crimson red and had bushes and shrubbery for company. These were weirdly torn up at the moment. A light red sign next to the door showed a book, telling Elusive that this was the Golden Oaks Library.

“Well, this is the end of our tour!” Spike said with a relief, “I hope you enjoyed your time with me as your guide.”

Elusive scowled. When Spike tried to hurry off Elusive stopped him. “Can you show a certain store you didn’t give me a tour of quickly?”

“But I’ve showed you every important building though,” Spike replied.

“Well, I heard there was a great boutique here in Ponyville, and since I have one at home I thought I might want to see how it compares to mine!” Elusive commented.

“Even though Dusk told everyone not to try to find themselves, what could possibly go wrong with me just looking at the other version of my store?” Elusive thought.

Spike panicked. Even though he failed at getting rid of Elusive, there still might be a chance that Elusive had not met with Rarity just yet. However, Spike had no clue how to stop him. He couldn’t give Elusive no directions, because then he would just ask someone else. He couldn’t give him wrong directions, because if Spike did another suspicious thing to Elusive, Elusive for sure would try to figure things out. Spike went with his last plan, make random things up.

“I would give you directions to it, but something has happened there recently and I recommend you don’t go there.”

Elusive was now curious. “What happened?”

Spike sputtered out all he could think of. “There was a... alien invasion! A deadly disease was born there! An Alaskan Bull Worm destroyed it!”

Elusive just looked at him. “Ooookay...”

Spike then hurried inside the library. Elusive was left with just himself.

“Well, I can easily find my way from here,” Elusive thought, “I’ve done it a hundred times…”

Suddenly something donned on him. “Oh drat! It’s time to meet up back with the others! Visiting my, well technically not my, boutique will have to wait I guess.”


Elusive hurried off to report what had just happened to him.

> Chapter 4: The Partyholic...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	                  *Flashback to the time right after everyone split up to go their separate ways*

“Have you…umm seen anything out of the ordinary?”

The light blue-green unicorn just shook her head and walked away from the purple colt asking the question.

Butterscotch sighed. “What am I supposed to be looking for anyways?” he thought to himself, “Oh, I’m just glad I’m disguised. It would be way harder if I wasn’t. It’s easier to talk to people when they can’t recognize you for who you really are.”

Butterscotch observed the town in front of him, wondering what he should do next. A group of three mares were gathered in a corner. One was pink with light lime green hair and had two daisies marked on her. Another was light yellow and there was a bunch of reds in her hair. A rose was stamped on her side. The last one was a darker pink than the first mare, with golden brown hair and there were three lilies that had gathered by her tail. They were taking care of some flowers in a garden.

Butterscotch looked to the right to see two colts talking to a mare working at a stand. The mare, who seemed to be the owner of it, was covered in a bright yellow color and had flowing brown hair that contained a hint of orange. One of the two colts that were talking to her was light blue and his white hair had thinned over the years. The other colt had a red vest on and had thick brown hair. They left the stand without buying anything and went on their way.

Butterscotch turned to his left to see a stallion walk up to another stand. The white stallion was humongous, with his arm muscles bigger than his head. His eyes were a pure bright red, making him stand out even more. His light brown hair was cut so that every hair was the same length. His petite wings seemed nonexistent due to the size of his back muscles. A small black dumb bell was pictured on his ripped butt. When the red-haired orange colored mare behind the stand asked if he wanted anything, he shouted, “Yeah!”

“Well if anything out of the ordinary here, that would be it,” Butterscotch said to himself, “I definitely don’t remember anypony looking like that!”

Butterscotch started to walk towards the muscular pony. Then, suddenly, his field of vision turned pink.

“Hello there! Are you new to town?” the pink blast asked.

“Oh, ummm ya I am…” Butterscotch replied.

Butterscotch looked at the pink mare. She had bouncy curls of pink hair flowing down her back. Her tail continued this trend and her tail hair bounced all the way to the ground. Her eyes had a...”You don’t have to describe every last detail about me you know!” the pink stranger butted in.

Huh?

“You describe every character in great detail you silly goose! Why don’t you just show them pictures like this or this?”

It allows the reader to create a unique picture in their head.

“Even characters they already know?”

Yes.

“Okkkkay. This also bugs me. Why don’t you just say the names of the character in their descriptions?”

It gives the reader a time to guess and figure out who the character is before being told.

“Like a guessing game!”

Yes.

“Oooo, nice.”

Well, can we get back to story and stop interrupting me?

“But it’s so much fun to jump into your narration!”

*Sigh* Fine. Unless it is a really clever joke though, you stay out of my commentary. Okay?

“You got it!” the pink pony that seemed to move like a bouncy house replied.

“Who are you talking to?” Butterscotch had finally decided to say something to the strange newcomer.

“Ummm,” the pink menace thought about whether or not she wanted to try to explain the existence of the fourth wall to a random stranger, “No one. Just myself.”

“Ooookay,” Butterscotch replied puzzled, “and who are you?”

“My name is Pinkie Pie!” the cotton candy haired pony answered. “What’s yours, Mr. Random Stranger?”

“Oh, my name is Butterscotch,” the owner of that name replied, glad that this Pinkie Pie had finally said a sentence that made logical sense. 

“You know what you need Butterscotch?” Pinkie Pie was grinning from ear to ear.

“Wha..‘A PARTY!’” Pinkie Pie grabbed Butterscotch and dragged him away.
*****************************************************************************************
When the shock of the meeting had finally worn off, Butterscotch figured out who this stranger was.

“Wonderful. Of all the ponies I could have run into, I end up meeting Bubble Berry ’s gender swapped counterpart. Just great!” he whispered to himself.

Butterscotch turned and saw that they had arrived at their destination. It was a giant red building, with a great white stripe going down the middle. Through the windows, Butterscotch could see everything a pony needed for a party. Streamers, balloons, paper plates, cakes, and even plastic ponies for those who wanted to have friends, and didn’t. The air around the building was even filled with the party spirit. 

“He’s doing it again...” Pinkie Pie muttered underneath her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing…nothing. Hey, let’s go get some supplies for your party!”

As they entered the building, Butterscotch tried to explain something to Pinkie Pie. “You really don’t have to throw a party for me…”

“I know I don’t have to throw you a party,” the bubbly pony responded, “I want to throw you a party!”

Before Butterscotch could say anything in response, Pinkie Pie quickly turned to the clerk. “What do you have in stock?”

The clerk turned to face her. His skin was a bright light yellow and wore a blue and white striped shirt. The sleeves were pulled up all the way to where his legs started. He had donned on his head a yellow hat, to cover up his red and white-striped hair. His tail stuck out his back, fiercely showing off the red and white pattern. A big black bow tie was stuck to his chest, completing his work outfit. 

“Well,” the clerk cleared his trout, “we have beverages, napkins, cake plates, cups, cutlery (that means spoons, forks, and knives young lady), dinner plates, luncheon napkins, dinner napkins, tablecloths, balloons, banners, centerpieces, confetti, party blowers , party hats, streamers, wall decorations/cutouts, plastic ponies, yard signs, drinks and ice, food for a meal, ice cream, snacks, activity items, craft supplies, art supplies, prizes for games, cake candles, matches, cake platters, serving knifes, extra tables, extra chairs, ice buckets, cameras, film, serving dishes, bowls, and cake.”

“Hmmm, I’ll take a set of everything! Bring them over to the Sugarcube Corner as fast as you can. I want everything to be there in less than an hour!” Pinkie Pie replied, putting a good sum of money on the counter.

“Great Scott! I better hurry then!” the clerk sprinted off into the back room.

Pinkie hopped back over to Butterscotch. “We better get going too! Your party needs to be all planned out!”

Butterscotch looked at her. “You bought all that stuff, yet you don’t have a clue what you’re going to do with it?”

Pinkie just shrugged. “Ya, I guess. Never stopped me before!”

Pinkie bounced out the front door, with Butterscotch reluctantly following behind.
****************************************************************************************
Pinkie Pie led Butterscotch to a wonderfully strange building. Butterscotch looked up at it to see a white building with brown lines all over it. The roof flipped the colors, with it being brown and had white curved lines all over it. A strange purple chimney popped out on one end of the roof, and a nest was been beautifully made on the other side. The very top of the building had a giant non-edible pink cupcake, which was for someone turning three.

“C’mon! Let’s head inside!” Pinkie Pie shouted over her shoulder at Butterscotch.

As Pinkie Pie flew through the front door, Butterscotch slowly poked his head in. Inside there was a sweet themed room. Pieces of candy were topped as decoration on one of the passageways. The pillars were candy cane colors in the middle. The tops and bottoms of the pillars resembled chocolate. Cupcakes, mini versions of the one on top of the building, sat on a stand for ponies to look at. The floor was the only thing not themed. Its wood was a dark teal and was accompanied by a light green rug. 

“Ta-da!” Pinkie Pie screamed, “Welcome to the Sugarcube Corner!”

Before Butterscotch could comment, Pinkie Pie interrupted him. “Well, first thing we need to do is to figure out how to invite everyone to the party.”

If Butterscotch was drinking anything, he would have spat it out. “Everyone!”

“Ya, sure! Why not?” Pinkie Pie replied giggling, “The more the merrier!”

Butterscotch was worried. “Everyone!” he thought to himself, “Oh no, that probably means…”

“I usually have a route I randomly make, yelling all the way to everyone that they are invited to my party,” Pinkie Pie completely ignored Butterscotch’s worried face, “but since at the store I thought, ‘Let’s start this party real soon!’ I might need some extra help.”

“Ummm...extra help?” Butterscotch repeated while snapping back to reality from his thoughts. 

“That’s what I said!” Pinkie Pie replied with a grin, “And I know some ponies that will be willingly to help!”

“Who?” Butterscotch was pretty sure that he knew who, but he wanted to make sure.

“My bestest friends in the whole wide world! They helped me save the world you know!”

“You saved the world?” Butterscotch decided to play dumb about the whole thing.

Pinkie Pie sent out a gleeful giggle. “Ya I know. Who would have thought I would, but I did! Now, I’m getting a bit off track, like I always am. I need to see if I can find my friends.”

“Who?” The purple pegasus was slowly turning into a curious owl.

“Well…” the pink earth pony started, “Twilight Sparkle is the librarian in town and she’s a tad on the nerdy side and does a lot with books and magic and all sort of stuff like that.”

“Dusk Shine.” Butterscotch thought.

“Rarity is the local clothes shop owner and she loves doing stuff with clothes. She has even made me and the rest of my friends their own dresses for a fancy occasion once. We even had our own fashion show!”

“Elusive.” Nervous thoughts started popping into Butterscotch’s head. “Can I fool them all?”

“Applejack is the hard-working farmer that lives on the farm right outside of the main town. She speaks in a really weird way and so does the rest of her family!”

“Umm...Applejack. That’s easy to remember.”

“Rainbow Dash is a shades-wearing, fast-flying, rainbow-making, pile of coolness! She has pulled some crazy pranks with me!”

“Rainbow Blitz.” Butterscotch had done the math. He figured out there was only one more…

“Fluttershy is the most timid pegasus I think that has ever lived! She loves animals with all her heart and has her own little cottage in the woods to take care of them!”

"Me." Butterscotch was a tad scared how accurate that sounded.

“And they’ll all be coming here to help us!”

Butterscotch gave Pinkie Pie a scared stare. “Here! Like here here?”

“Of course silly! Where else would here be?”

Butterscotch was flipping out. “Oh dear, they are all coming here to help make a party for me!” Thoughts were flying around his brain. “They will surely figure out who I am, especially with all of them together at once! Then they’ll take me some scary place and try to figure out where everyone else is! Maybe even do some tests on me! They’ll take needles and poke me and who knows what!”

Pinkie Pie looked over at his newly found guest. “Are you alright Butterscotch? You look a little...strange.”

Butterscotch’s eyes were rapidly twitching back and forth in their sockets. His lip was stuck inside his mouth, and was being bit upon. His feet were flying all over the place.

“What? *quick breathing* I’m fine!” Butterscotch’s voice was very shaky. “I’ve never been better!” *nervous laugh*

Butterscotch didn’t have the faintest idea why though everything had suddenly turned black as he fell over onto the floor.

> Chapter 5: The Fashionista...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


*Flashback to roughly 15 minutes after the big split-up*


“You’re not going to get away with anything on my watch…”

Rainbow Blitz was stationed upon a cloud above Ponyville. He was staring through a pair of binoculars that he had “found” lying around. The orange pegasus’ eyes were intensely staring at his main goal right now. It was pink unicorn named Elusive.

“I’m going to make sure that if you do anything girly, I will know,” Rainbow muttered to himself, “I’m not going to lose this bet to you! Nothing is going to stop me!”

Rainbow’s mind, however, had a different idea. It started to wander back to the time where he found the fancy binoculars that he was using.

“I’m glad I found these,” Rainbow said moving them around in his hooves, “This spying thing would be way harder without them. However, I’m not sure if I should keep them…”


*Flashback to about twelve minutes ago*


Rainbow was flying above town, searching for something to do.

“You know, I thought this trying to save ourselves from a completely different dimension would be, I don’t know, more exciting?”

Rainbow Blitz had blasted off as soon as the order to split up had been given. However, his enthusiasm was quickly sapped dry. He decided to land on a decently sized cloud placed over the center of town.

“No giant robots, no secret clans, no super villains, not a single dangerous thing has happened!” Rainbow Blitz exclaimed. “Who knew alternate universes were so…normal.”

Rainbow collapsed on the cloud. Suddenly, something caught his eye. Two ponies were huddled in a corner. One was definitely old, with his thin white hair completely screaming it. His body was a light blue, and this seemed to stand out due to the red cloth thing that the other pony was wearing. Rainbow Blitz couldn’t tell from his perspective what the cloth exactly was. He could see the red clothing colt’s brown hair sitting upon a green head. They put a black object down, and quickly walked away.

“Hmm, that’s strange,” Rainbow’s curiosity was piqued, “I wonder what that could be…”

Rainbow dashed down to see what it was. He landed and walked up to the mysterious object. It was mostly two black columns, with glass on both ends. They were connected by a small black square. This had a dial on it, which seemed to move the black columns when twisted.

“Binoculars!” Rainbow had seen a ton of the years, mostly in movies, “But why did these two have a pair of binoculars?”

Rainbow tried to think of ideas, but came up completely blank.

“Well, I could use them to search around town…” Ideas were brewing in Rainbow’s head. “I could also…use them to make sure Elusive doesn’t cheat on our bet! Finally, something to do!”

Rainbow quickly grabbed the binoculars and flew away to find Elusive.


*Flash forward to where the first flashback flashbacked to*


Rainbow stared at the newly gotten possession.

“I probably should give them back,” Rainbow thought, “it would be the right thing to do…”

*Poof* A cloud of smoke appeared on his left shoulder.

“Pffft, who cares about them?” A mischievous voice shot out of the smoke. “You know what they say, ‘Finds keepers, losers weepers!’.

As the smoke cleared, Rainbow saw a tiny, dark red pegasus standing on his shoulder.  His hair was even a darker red looking closer to black than red. The style was so that it stuck out from the front of his head, and ran down the back of his neck. His tail was actually not hair, but resembled a thin dragon tail. Two horns stuck out of the small stranger’s head. His wings did not come to a curved end like normal; instead they ended at sharp points.

“Who are you?” Rainbow was completely caught off guard by this new comer.

“I’m the malicious side of your personality,” the little red pony gloated. “I resemble all the evil thoughts you have every day. I show myself like this when you’re having a moral dilemma. You are having one, correct?”

Rainbow Blitz nodded.

“Good. Now I say that you should…” the evil side of Rainbow’s thoughts started.

“Hold up, hold up!” Rainbow stopped him. “If you’re my evil side, shouldn’t I have a good side here too?”

“He told me he was going to be a tad late today,” the dark side responded, “something about the traffic being bad or something.”

“Traffic?”

The red menace just shrugged. “I don’t know! He was the one who said it, not me. He should be here any second.”

They both quickly turned to look at Rainbow’s other shoulder, in hopes that the good side would show up in some great convenient timing. Sadly, that was not true.

“So…umm, what’s your name?” Rainbow decided to try to make small talk until the other half of his thoughts were represented.

“My name is…,” the red colt paused for dramatic effect, “Bill.”

Rainbow splat out a laugh. “Bill?!”

“And what’s wrong with the name Bill!” The owner to that name shot back a glare. 

“Nothing,” Rainbow couldn’t keep the laughs from passing his lips, “but I was expecting…I don’t know… a little more devilish name.”

“What name would be a more devilish?”

“Well…” Rainbow started, but was interrupted by a sudden noise coming from the other shoulder. He turned to meet another newcomer. 

“Hello! I have finally arrived! Sorry for making you guys wait.”

Rainbow was met with a bright yellow pegasus. His light blonde hair flowed further down the neck than either Rainbow or Bill. His white wings almost shined and were bigger than the dark half’s. His tail took up the fashion of most ponies; with it being hair. This hair was a glowing light yellow.

“Finally!” Bill muttered, “We were getting bored here!”

“I’m so sorry! Let’s get started then, shall we?” the bright one asked.

“May I ask you one question before we start?” Rainbow raised his hoof and point at the yellow stranger. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, how impolite of me for not saying anything before!” The yellow colt cleared his throat. “My name is Paul.”

“I need to have more creative thoughts…” Rainbow thought.

“Hey!” Bill, who had clearly lost his patience, screamed. “Can we start now? I say you just keep those binoculars. They won’t miss them!”

“Au contraire!” Paul gave his counterpoint. “Since that was the only thing they put down, they would definitely see that it was gone!”

“It doesn’t mean that they held any value in it. They could be trying to get rid of it!”

“Who would get rid of perfectly good pair of binoculars?”

“They’re some strange ponies in the world!”

“Did they seem strange to you?”

“I don’t know, but I have never seen them around before. Suspicious I think.”

“We’re in an alternate universe; you’ve never seen anyone around here before!”

“Oh…well you know why I think you follow my idea?” Bill turned to Rainbow, “Because I’m the cool one!”

“You’re the cool one?” Paul raised an eyebrow. “What makes you the cool one?”

“Because,” Bill pulled something black out and put them on his face, “I have the shades.”

“What does that…,” Paul stopped midsentence, “Where did you get those shades?”

“When you’re a figment of someone’s imagination, you can do things like this!”

“It doesn’t matter anyways!” Rainbow butted in, “I’ve forgotten where I got them from anyways…”

“I win!” Bill raised his arms into the air.

“And your conversation has made me lose Elusive!” Rainbow added.

“That’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” Paul turned to look up at Rainbow, “Should you really be spying on your friend? Don’t you trust him?”

“Seems like a good tactic to me.” Bill commented, “That way Rainbow here can make sure he will not be fooled at all!”

“Arrgh! You guys are so annoying!” Rainbow Blitz flew off as fast he could.

He landed on the ground about a tenth of a mile away. He breathed a sigh of relief.

“You know we are parts of your imagination, you can’t really run away for us.” Bill’s words startled Rainbow.

“You could just think us away though…” Paul commented.

“Why do good guys always have to be so helpful all the….”

Rainbow was finally alone, even though he really wasn’t with anyone before. He looked up to see that he had arrived at a tall fancy building. The outside walls of the first floor were a light blue, with a fancy white pattern. The upper walls had a purple checker pattern, with the colors alternating between purple and light purple. Two silhouettes were on poles that lived near the top. At the tip top there was a lonely red flag. 

“The Carousel Boutique… “Rainbow muttered to himself, “Well, if I’m going to look for Elusive again, I should probably start here.”

When Rainbow pushed open the door, he got a sight that almost made him barf. There was more purple, pink, and hearts then a seven year old girl’s room. Every piece of cloth that hung around the room was saturated in purple and then tipped at the edges with pink. Sometimes, pink bows were tied on to add even more girliness. And there were a lot of pieces of cloth. Curtains were everywhere, hiding random corners and mirrors. Walls even had pieces of cloth hanging from them (“What is that even for?” Rainbow thought). The walls themselves were painted a rich purple color, and even some sported a pink “x” pattern at the bottom.  Red hearts were painted on the top as a decorative border. The floor was mostly not purple, but when the white color of it stopped, sometimes it had a band of light purple going around. The only thing in the whole room that wasn’t pink or purple was the mirrors. The mirror themselves was obviously clear, and the border was alternating yellow and orange stripes.

“Has this place always been so girly?” Rainbow thought to himself, “It doesn’t seem to be like this back home…I wonder if Elusive changes it. I don’t know how any guy could live in this place! Well… I guess it is ‘Lucy.”

Since he was as transfixed as he was, he had no clue where he was going. Suddenly, a loud *CLANG* rang out. Rainbow turned to see that he had knocked over a metal stand used for holding clothes. When Rainbow scooped down to pick it up, a high pitched voice rang from upstairs.

“A customer! Hold up, I’ll be right down!”

Rainbow Blitz muttered a word that will not be written so this story can keep the rating it has. He stumbled around with the stand, trying to get it upright as fast as he could. However, due to that he was in such a hurry, he ended up knocking it down again. Finally, he got the stand to stay upright, but by then it was too late.

“Ah, that’s what got knocked over,” the voice spoke again, “Don’t worry about that stand, it has a weird a habit of falling over. Come, what can I do for you good sir?”

Rainbow slowly turned to see one of the most gorgeous ponies he had ever seen. She had beautiful purple hair that curved and fell in the most perfect way. Her pure white body showed off all the feminine beauty any pony could have. She was skinny, but at the same time had more curves than the Lombard Street. Her long tail followed the wonder perfection of her hair, curling and twirling all the way down to just before the floor. Her well-shaped posterior showed three light blue diamonds. Her dark blue eyes were accented by a patch of light blue above each of them.

“She’s hot…” was all the Rainbow’s mind could think of. 

The hot one just looked at him. She decided to speak again. “Welcome to my boutique good sir. Is there anything I can do for you?”

The words “my boutique” echoed over and over again in Rainbow’s head.

“Wait a minute…you mean…this is…Elusive!” Rainbow’s mind almost exploded. 

Rainbow’s stomach couldn’t handle this thought well either. Rainbow was snapped back into reality by a sudden disgusting feeling in his stomach. He summoned all his willpower to prevent himself from showing this pretty girl his lunch.

“Are you alright sir?” She-Elusive was looking at Rainbow with concern.

“Ya…I’m fine,” Rainbow was barely able to spit those words out.

“You really don’t look fine though…” the boutique owner said as she pointed to Rainbow’s orange face, that had started to get a hint of green in it.

Rainbow quickly turned away. “C’mon Rainbow, don’t let this mare get to you!” Rainbow tried to focus himself, “Stop thinking about the fact that this hot pony here is your girly colt friend. Think…that she is just an assistant to him…that he has hired to work when he is out of his shop. She’s not Elusive…she’s not Elusive...”

Surprisingly, this mental process actually got the green out of his face and allowed him to actually speak without the fear of making the carpet light purple and green. However, the queasy feeling in his stomach remained.

“I’m sorry for coming in here and disturbing you,” Rainbow quickly changed the subject. “I’m new to town and…I’m just been wondering from store to store, seeing the sights. I’ll be leaving now...”

Rainbow quickly turned for the door. “Well that was easy! Now, to get back to finding the male version of Elusive.” Rainbow was already making plans in his head.

A sound pierced through his thoughts though. “Wait!” it cried, “This is going to sound weird, but can you actually stay?”

The noise was the voice of the only other pony in the room he was in. Rainbow turned back to look at her and gave her a puzzled look. 

“Why?” he asked.

“Well…this is also going to sound strange, but I have this strong urge to make a fancy suit,” the seamstress began, “I get these random urges now and then. One time, it was to make edible hats. That was a disaster! None of them looked good. All the colors clashed and the styles were completely off! I would definitely say they would not look good enough to eat, but they were made out of food.” 

Rainbow still had the puzzled look on his face.

“Oh dear me, I’m getting off-track aren’t I?” the fashionista apologized.  “The colt I usually get when I want to make a suit is sadly working all day today, and currently I’m looking for someone to make a suit for. The suit I make for you will be free of course, take it as your pay. What do you think? Will you stay, please?”

Rainbow started to think about this offer. Suddenly, before he even could get his thoughts flowing, a voice interrupted him.

“Pfft, who cares about her? Leave and get back to finding Elusive, to make sure he doesn’t do anything girly!”

Another voice soon followed. “The poor mare has asked you for your help in her time of need, and you’re just going to abandon her?”

Rainbow looked down to see that the red devil-pony and the yellow angel-pony had both returned.

“Ah, shush it you two!” Rainbow told them, “I already made up my mind.”

“Yes?” they both questioned him at the same time.

“I’m going to take her up on the offer. Number #1: An independent bachelor like me is never going to turn a hot mare down. Number #2: Knowing how good Elusive is at making clothes, this mare here should do a great job. Even if I don’t want to keep the suit, I can sell it for some money!”

“Oui, I’m so glad you’re going to accept my offer!” the only female voice rang.

Rainbow’s face got a hint of red when he realized that his conversation with Bill and Paul was out loud.

“Oh…umm you heard that?” Rainbow said, “Umm...ya, I guess I will be your…model for a suit.”

“Great, come this way please!” she gestured to the staircase, “My work studio is upstairs.”

They took only a few steps before the tailor stopped abruptly. She did a quick 180 and faced Rainbow.

“I am so sorry! Where are my manners? My name is Rarity, the fine owner of this magnifique place called the Carousel 	Boutique! What’s your name?”

“My name is…” Rainbow stopped to think quickly. “My female counterpart might have a very similar name to me. Since she would look similar to me, I would say the rainbow hair would stay. She would probably keep that part of the name also.”

“Blitz,” the orange pegasus replied. “My name is Blitz.”

“Wonderful!” Rarity turned back to the stairs, “Now let’s get started, shall we?”
*****************************************************************************************
“I do have to say Mr. Blitz,” Rarity held up a tape ruler with her magic, “you definitely have a great body!”

“Umm, thanks,” Rainbow replied. He would normally jump on that statement and brag about all the things he has done in the air, but the extreme awkwardness of the situation kept him from doing so.

“I should be excited to get a mare this hot give me a compliment like that,” Rainbow thought, “but the fact that this is Elusive is ruining the whole thing for me.”

Rarity was running the tape rule all over the place, measuring Rainbow’s neck, back, legs, head, and even his tail. After every measurement, she jotted something down on a piece of paper she had placed on a nearby table.

“Can you bring that piece of fabric over here darling?” Rarity asked the filly standing next to her.

“Sure thing sis!” the filly replied.

The filly then scampered off to the far side of the room. She had joined them when she saw Rainbow and Rarity heading upstairs. When Rarity explained what was going to happen, the filly eagerly asked if she could join them. Rarity had said yes. 

The filly had alternating light purple and pink strands of hair coming off her. Her hair fell in small curves down her neck. Her skin was a very light grey, almost as white as her sister’s. Her eyes were a rich green color, way different from Rarity’s blue eyes. She was definitely on the young side, probably the same age as the apple filly Rainbow had met earlier in the main part of town when he was with the rest of the group.

“Thank you Sweetie Belle!” Rarity responded as the young unicorn gave her the cloth. “Now, let’s work some fashion magic!”

With the piece of cloth Sweetie Belle had retrieved, Rarity walked over to another part of the room. Here was a large wooden bookshelf, with a number of fabrics stored on it. Next to this was good sized wooden table with a sewing machine placed on top. Notes in various colors were stuck upon the wall behind this. Some of them had fancy handwriting written delicately on them. A tall mirror with a fancy wooden frame stood right of all of this.

“This might take a while,” Rarity spoke over her shoulder, “You can’t rush art! I’m sorry that I don’t have much for you to do while you wait Blitz. You can check on the hair salon that is downstairs with Sweetie Belle, but I doubt a colt like you would have any interest in that sort of thing.”

Rainbow shrugged. “It’s better than doing nothing though…” he replied.

Sweetie Belle jumped up. “Come this way mister!” she tried to sound professional, but her enthusiasm destroyed any chance of that. 

Rainbow Blitz followed behind Sweetie Belle as she pranced down the stairs.

“I’m guessing that this is the female version of Sweepy Belle, Elusive’s little brother.” Rainbow thought, “Makes sense.”

They then came to their destination. It was another room that was stricken by the light purple and pink curse. The main part of the walls was made of a pink wood. The floor was made of substance that was a light purple. Certain parts of the wall, especially by the yellow and orange mirrors that resembled those in the main room, had a checkerboard pattern of light purple and pink. Wooden counters were spread out in front of the mirrors. A couple of silver sinks were installed at the ends of the counter. Giant green hoods sat in the very front of all this, waiting to be used.

“Well, this is it!” Sweetie Belle announced. “We better get started, Rarity doesn’t take long when there’s only one piece of clothing to be made.”

“What do you mean ‘get start….” Rainbow started to say.

He was suddenly shoved by the light grey filly under one of the giant green helmets. As he turned to see what was going on, the green menace fell upon his head.

“Hey!” Rainbow yelled annoyed, “What’s the big idea!”

“I thought you wanted to use the hair salon…” Sweetie Belle replied.

“I wanted to look around, not use it!” Rainbow snapped.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know!”

Rainbow sighed. “Fine. Can you get this thing off my head then?”

Sweetie Belle shook her head, even though Rainbow clearly couldn’t see it. “I don’t know how to stop it after it starts running; I guess you’ll just have to wait until it is done.”

“What!? How long is that!?”

“Roughly ten minutes, it isn’t too long.”

Rainbow mumbled something under his breath. “I guess that isn’t too bad...but what do I do until then?”

“I don’t know…Ooo, I could sing random songs for you! I need to practice singing in front of ponies anyways! Plus, it will be easier for me, because I know you can’t see me!”

So, Rainbow was forced to listen to a few random songs that Sweetie Belle knew by heart. She sang this, this, and even this. Rainbow had to admit, her singing voice was actually quite good. He was still very glad though when the green monster (not the baseball wall) was lifted from his head.

“Finally,” Rainbow breathed a sigh of relief, “I can see and move again.”

He turned to face Sweetie Belle, who was staring back at him with a puzzled face.

“I don’t remember it being able to do that…” Sweetie Belle muttered.

“Do what?” Rainbow was a tad concerned.

“It changed your hair color from its normal yellow to the whole entire rainbow!” she exclaimed.

“Rainbow…?” Fear started to spread over his face.

“Ya!” Sweetie Belle replied, “Don’t worry; it looks really cool on you! It’s almost like you were made for it!”

Rainbow panicked. These thoughts flew quickly around his head. “Oh great, the spell has partially worn off! I’ve got to get out of here! And fast!” 

He quickly headed for the door. “Sorry kid,” he called over his shoulder, “I just remembered that I have to go do something important. See ya!”

Right as he ran out of the salon’s door, Rarity came down the stairs. 

“What’s that matter Mr. Blitz?” she questioned Rainbow as he flew past her.

“No time to explain, I need to get going!” Rainbow shot out the door.

“Wait!” Rarity ran to the door, “You forgot your…”

But when Rarity peered outside, she saw no remains of the rainbow haired pegasus.

> Chapter 6: The Farmer...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
*Flashback directly to right after everyone went their separate ways*


“Hello random stranger! Have you by chance seen anything really strange or craaaaazy at all because me and my friends are looking for a way back home, because we’re not from around here at all!”

The dark blue haired stallion who was being questioned just slowly backed away.

The questioner zipped over to a different pony, a purple haired filly. 

“Have you seen anything weird or strange or bizarre at all happening around here?”

The white skinned pegasus shook her head slowly, with a hint of fear in her eyes.

“Well, if you do see anything weird, will you tell me? K thanks.”

The blue earth pony blasted off. After he took a few steps, he gave a big sigh.

“Think Bubble, there has to be better way!” the yellow haired colt thought, “Surprisingly going up to random people and asking them if they’ve seen anything is not working. I need a better plan…”

Bubble Berry paced back and forth as he pondered some ideas.

“I need to do this a little more secretive and undercover... Ooo, I could do this like one of those detectives in those old black and white movies! But, how can I pull that off?”

Berry walked back and forth some more. He was started to leave a big impression on the ground below him. Suddenly an idea struck him. He raised his head and looked up into the sky.

“Mr. Narrator! Can I ask you a favor?”

There was no reply. He did however; get a few heads to turn and stare at him confused.

“You can’t fool me narrator! And they look more annoyed than confused!”

…..Fine. What do you want?

“Can you make this story go old school noir style?”

How?

“I don’t know…hmmm…Oh! You could make everything go black and white and play mysterious background music!”

I guess I could. What’s in it for me?

“You could have a pretty interesting chapter on your hands!”

…Anything else?

“You wouldn’t have to narrate at all! I would do all the narrating for you! You could take a break and watch your own mystery movie!”

I do like a mystery…Maybe I could watch a Columbo.

“See! Now, what do you say? Do we have a deal?”

…I guess that’s fine.

Suddenly all the color seemed to be drained from out of the town. The town’s great variety of different colors was replaced by grayscale. Music started to play from some unknown source. The now light gray colt with pale white hair looked around in amazement.

“That’s so cool!” Bubble Berry shouted with excitement, “Thanks narrator!”

Hey, you’re welcome. Now…to see how Columbo solves this one.

“Wait! Could I ask you for one more thing?”

…What?

“Can I have one of those hats the detectives always seem to wear? It would make this whole situation seem even more noirish!”

Bubble felt something on top of his head. He quickly reached up and grabbed the mysterious new arrival. It was exactly what he had hoped for. It had a grey brim that went around the whole hat. It stuck out about five inches.  It had a darker grey strap that went around where the main part of the hat met the brim. The main part of the hat rose up for about a foot.

“Thanks!”

Don’t mention in. Can I finally take my break now?

“Of course you can man! Have a wonderful break!”
***************************************************************************************
It was normal sunny day in Ponyville. Something was different today. This wasn’t the Ponyville I knew. This was one from a different dimension entirely. I had to find a way back home, and fast.

I quickly scanned around to see if there was anything of interest. I saw a familiar building that I have seen many times throughout my life. The building’s lower walls were white and they had lines of dark grey going straight up. The doors and windows were a darker grey, but matched the shade of the roof very well. The roof was tipped in white frosting. The top of this building was made to look like a giant cupcake, and it accomplished that very well. Three giant grey candles with lighter grey stripes were on the very top.

I entered the Sugarcube Corner, a place where I called home. I wasn’t sure if I was welcomed here, being in a completely different dimension and all. I saw something placed on top of the counter across the room. I walked over and saw that it was a pie. A blueberry pie. A note had been placed behind the pie. It read, “To be delivered to Sweet Apple Acres.”

“Hmm...” I thought to myself, “Deliveries aren’t usually made and they are definitely not let to sit out of the counter like this! Maybe I should pay Sweet Apple Acres a visit, with my special guest…”

I picked up the pie, “…this pie!”

I turned to leave. However, a voice called out from behind a corner.

“Did those colts end up sending someone to pick up a pie for them?”

I glanced over my shoulder to see a middle aged middle grey pony with hair that was a tad lighter grey at some points and a darker grey at others. Its style was ice cream like. You know, when you go to one of those ice cream machines and the ice cream slowly comes out and is all nice and swirled? It was like that. Her tail also resembled that. Three grey cupcakes were on her grey behind, making it impossible to see if I hadn’t squinted. She wore a lighter grey apron that had wing things sticking out. Grey circles that matched the color of half her hair were stuck to her ears.

I fully turned around to speak with her. “No ma’am, I just wanted to be a good pony and help you out. I was heading to Sweet Apple Acres anyways.”

“Oh, that’s so kind of you!” she exclaimed with a big grin of her face, “My husband and I are about to leave and go have some fun this afternoon together. We’re leaving Sugarcube Corner in the hooves of our only other worker, and I bet she’ll be glad to not have to worry about that. Heck, I’m glad not to have to worry that pie!” 

She gave a quick laugh to top of her statement.

“Well,” I turned my attention back to the pie, “I better go deliver this pie then. Have fun!”

“Wait!” She called for me before I could move my feet even an inch. “What’s your name kind stranger?”

I quickly thought of the most detective-like and cool name I could think of. “Bond. Berry Bond.”

“Why, thank you Berry Bond for going out of your way to do this delivery then!” She was waving to me and I exited the front door.
***************************************************************************************
I took my merry time to get over to Sweet Apple Acres. I wanted to make sure nothing bad happened to my precious cargo. I protected the pie with my life, even though there really was no need to. No one even got close to harming the pie on the way. However, this brought me and the pie closer together. In fact, I was thinking about what name I should give him when I arrived at my destination. 

I looked around as I walked through the apple themed arch way that led into the farm; nothing seemed really out of place. The giant grey barn stood front and center and the white trimming on it was still white. The lightish grey multileveled roof still possessed a giant apple on its top. I saw someone moving over on one side of the barn. I bounced over to see who it was.

“Hello.” I tried to remain professional, but part of me was getting annoyed by that and wanted me to stop that nonsense, “Did you order a pie?”

The pony glanced over her shoulder. She was, well, obviously grey. Her long lighter grey hair was done back in a ponytail. I couldn’t see all of it, due to a darkish grey hat that sat on top of it all. Her tail matched her hair in both color and style. I could see some apples, three in fact, on her butt. She was covered in some grey paint, since I had interrupted her painting the side of the barn.

“No,” she answered, “No, Ah don’t think Ah ordered any pie.”

I was pretty dang sure that the mare in front of me was Applejack, one of my good friends. He lived on the version of Sweet Apple Arcs that I knew, with his brother and sister. It wasn’t that fact that made me think this was Applejack. The hat was very similar to the one he always wore and the thick southern accent screamed him. 

“Well, whoever did order this pie left a note that said to bring it over to Sweet Apple Acres.” I explained.

“Hmm. That’s strange.” the mare thought about this for a little bit. Then, she spoke again. “Ah’ll tell you what sugar. Ah’ll brin’ this pie inside and see if anyone comes around to claim it.”

I thought this was a perfectly fine plan. “Sounds good to me!”

“Would you like to join me for a snack of something?” she asked me as she started to pack up her painting equipment. “Ah feel bad for makin’ you come all the way out here for no good reason.”

“Hey, thanks!” I never turn down an invitation to a gathering, no matter how small. “I would love to! What’s your name by the way?”

“Mah name’s Applejack!” She held out her left hoof. “What’s yours?”

“Berry Bond.” I used the same name that I made up on the fly back at the Sugarcube Corner. 

I put down the pie carefully as I shook Applejack’s hoof. Applejack then went inside the barn to put away the painting stuff.

I made a few mental notes. “Applejack’s name is the same in mare form too! How strange. I’ll have to tell Applejack that when I meet back up with him. Hopefully   they’ll never meet because a conversation with them would get awfully confusing!”

Applejack came out of the barn with no painting equipment, but some paint remained behind to continue the journey. Suddenly, a shot or bullet of something landed close to my feet. It gave off a mini explosion as it landed. We turned around to see two colts standing there. One was a light grey, with his thin hair being a lighter grey and kind of shot out everywhere from his head, like he had a balloon rubbed on it. The other colt was grey and had a darker grey vest on. He had a weird thingamajig in his hooves, which must have fired the shot. His hair was a different color grey, lighter than his vest but darker than his skin.

“Hey, give us that pie!” the colt with the vest shouted at us.

The thin haired one muttered something that I couldn’t hear to the other colt. They turned around and started to have a private conversation.

“What do you think those strange colts are doing over there?” I asked Applejack.

“Ah don’t know, and Ah don’t want to find out.” Applejack replied.

“What do you think they want with Tim?”

“Well, it can’t be good ‘cause they’re willin to use force agai…”Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Tim?”

“Ya, Tim the pie!” I held Tim up so Applejack could see.

“You named the pie…Tim?” 

“Ya! I was trying to think of a name for him and I was really struggling to figure out a name for him, and that’s when I looked at him. Suddenly, I saw the pie tin and I thought. ‘Hmm, a pie tin. A pie named Tim!’ And that’s how I got that idea.”

Before Applejack could say anything about my brilliant idea, the stranger with the weird doodad shouted the same words as last time.

“Hey, give us that pie!”

This time however, they started to walk toward us.

“What should we do?” I asked with a hint of panic as my professionalness that I had tried to keep this whole time was started to slip away.

“I say…” those words were almost a whisper, “RUN!”

She sprinted off and I followed suit, bringing Tim along for the ride. When the mysterious duo figured out what had just happened (it wasn’t that confusing so they figured it out pretty quickly), they turned and chased after us.
*************************************************************************************
After about five minutes of dodging random trees and bullet things, we were nowhere closer to losing our chasers then we were before. You could hear their footsteps when they stepped. We sprinted all over the place, well, all over an area that you can reach about in about five minutes. We always went through areas with trees, in hoping that it would increase the chance of them losing track of us. 

“Where should we go next?” I asked, taking a breath in between words.

“Ah…Ah really don’t know…” Applejack ducked to dodge another blast from the thingamabobber. 

I jumped over a root that stuck out the ground. “You know what; this reminds me of this one time when a friend of mine was messing around with a beehive with me. We were having a great time, but it turned out the bees weren’t. We ended up running away from an angry swarm of bees, just like this, except there are no bees, just angry ponies.”

Applejack did a quick hop to dodge a rock. “How did y’all get away?”

I shook my head, which is really hard to do when running really quickly. “We didn’t. I was in pain for a quite good chunk of time.”

Applejack muttered something to herself, probably something about how great my story was. Her head then abruptly shot up and turned to me, “Berry, do you hear that?”

I listened. “Hear what? I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly!” she exclaimed, “We must of finally lost them!”

“Hurray!” I reached and grabbed Tim and held him up, “and we still have Tim!”

Due to all this sudden excitement, I had completely lost track of where I was going. My right front hoof whammed into the corner of a truck of the tree. My upper body slowly flew forward and got me airborne. I was brought back to earth with a crash as my face and front left leg collided with the ground. With nothing to hold him, Tim flew through the air, did a couple of wicked tricks, but couldn’t stick the landing.

“Tim!” I got up and hobbled over to him. “Tim...Nooooooooooooooooooo!”

“Berry!” I turned to see Applejack quickly walking over, “Are you alright?”

“No…” I was trying to hold back tears from falling down my face, “Tim…Tim is dead!”

Applejack turned and saw the remains of Tim. “Yes…Ah guess he is…”

I held the tin of Tim in my arms. I looked to the heavens and screamed soulfully, “Why must the good die young!”

I turned to see Applejack pointing to my left front leg, “Berry, Ah’m pretty sure that ain’t natural...”

I looked down to see that the upper portion of it had turned into a way darker grey. “It’s alright. That’s just a flesh wound.”

Applejack didn’t believe me. “We need to get you back to the farm as fast we can to help heal you! Can you walk on it?”

I grinned through the pain that was starting form from that region. “Of course I can, see!”

I took one step and returned back to the ground with a scream of agony.

“It’s worse than Ah thought!” Applejack exclaimed. “Here; put your leg on me. That should allow you to walk back to the farm.”

I did what she said. I put my leg on her for support, and it turned out she was right. It wasn’t pretty, but I was able to sort of make the movement to walk now. We started to head in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres, leaving behind the scattered remains of a fallen comrade. 
***************************************************************************************
When you’re slowly limping your way along, you can see exactly how far you can run when you feel like your life is on the line. The time it took us to make it all the way back to Sweet Apple Acres was more than double the time that we had spent running. As we stumbled into the farm, a small filly ran out to greet us.

“Applejack, where have you been?” She greeted us with concern.

“Well, Applebloom.” Applejack began, “Some weird colts chased us. They were tryin’ to get a pie that here Berry Bond brought.”

I grabbed my hat with my right arm and put it over my heart. “He will be missed…”

I looked down to see a really light grey filly. She had medium grey hair that went all the way down her neck. Her tail, that was the same color, sprang out of her rear casually. A giant light grey bow was placed in her hair. Her great grey eyes were looking up back at me.

“Are you okay mister?” she asked me, “You don’t look okay.”

Before I could respond, Applejack jumped in. “He’s in quite a big deal of pain. Would you like to go and do a favor for me and Berry?”

“Sure!” Applebloom replied happily.

“Can you go and find Twilight? She should be able to help us with some of her magic.”

'Can do!” Applebloom quickly ran off.

Applejack then led the tattered me inside their house. I was in both physical pain, due to the great injury in my leg, and emotional pain, due to the loss of a dear friend.

> Chapter 7: The Scholar...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


*Flashback to where there is only fifteen minutes left in the hour of the split up plan*


“I can’t believe he could treat me like that!”

The snow-white dragoness was furious after meeting with Dusk Shine. They ran into each other while searching around town.

“He treats me like I’m his lowly side-kick!” Spines muttered to herself, “I bet he thinks that I’m incapable of doing anything by myself!”

Spines kicked a good-sized stone on the ground in frustration. It hurt her foot a little bit, but she did not care enough to notice.

“I can go things by myself!” Spines still couldn’t get over what Dusk had mentioned to her, “Just because I work as an assistant to him does not mean I can’t do anything without him! I’ve done plenty of stuff without him around. Not just inside the library mind you, but outside the library as well!”

Spines made a scowl that sadly not even a puppy would find scary.

“Does he also think that I have no life outside the library?!” Spines could not get the conversation she just had with Dusk out of her head, “My life does not just include the library!”

Due to the fact that she was completely not looking at where she was going, she whammed into a wall that had suddenly appeared in front of her. She looked up to see that this wall was part of a building that was very familiar to her. This building seemed to double as a giant oak tree. Its green leaves were cut around windows that somehow were in the tree itself. The glass windows seemed to be scattered around in random places, really having no theme at all. The trunk, aka the wall that Spines just ran into, had a welcoming red door in the front. On either side of this door were groups of green bushes, which were so nicely kept.

“Speak of the devil,” Spines was amazed be her timing, “the Golden Oaks Library itself.” 

She was about to continue casually on her way when an idea popped into her head.

“I wonder if Dusk’s counterpart is here…” Spines thought, “What was her name again? It was Twilight…something another, I don’t quite remember the second word.”

After giving a quick look around to see if anyone was in the area, Spines started to tip-toe to the very front of the Golden Oaks Library. She then quickly snuck into the bushes. She stuck her head out of the bushes in such a way that the rest of her body was completely concealed. After this, she looked through a lower window that was placed in just the right location for her to be able to do so.

Spines’ eyes scanned the interior of the tree for any sight of Dusk’s doppelganger.  All her eyes could seem to find at first though were tons of shelves, filled with books of every color. These shelves were actually carved into the wood of the tree. This gave the library a natural look and plenty of shelving area. And thank goodness for that, because the library was filled to the brim with books. Spines wasn’t looking for a book however, she was looking for a bookworm.

After some more searching, Spines saw something interesting. In the far back corner, there was a purple figure moving about. Spines could not see the figure very well and got nervous for a second that she would have to get out of her perfect hiding spot to be able to complete her mission. Lady luck however seemed to be on Spines’ side now, because the purple pony picked up a book using her magic and carried it all the way across the library to a bookshelf that was right in front of Spines. This gave her a perfect view of the pony inside.

The pony inside was indeed the one Spines was looking for. Her skin color was almost the exact same color that Spines’ skin color was normally. However, the color on the mare was just a hint lighter. Her hair flowed casually all the way down her neck. It was mostly a very dark purple color, so dark that it almost seemed black. Her hair also included a stripe of pink. Her tail copied her hair with the colors and grew all the way to the floor. On the upper part of her rear legs, there was a pink, six pointed star. Many miniature white stars were around that. She had bright purple eyes and a purple horn that proved her unicornhood. 

Spines exploded with laugher. She didn’t know why exactly she found this so funny, but she did. Maybe it was because she was so mad at Dusk and the first thought that popped into her head was that this was some sort of unfortunate curse placed on him (even though the mare wasn’t really Dusk) were the reasons why she found it so enjoyable to laugh at. It didn’t really matter however on the reason why, all that does matter is that she fell backwards into the bushes and rolled around laughing and laughing and laughing.
*****************************************************************************************
Twilight Sparkle was going through some much needed organization of the books at the Golden Oaks Library. She was making sure that every book was present and in the right spot.

“I wonder what has been taking Spike so long to get back,” Twilight thought, “It was only one errand!”  

A loud rustling noise suddenly broke through Twilight’s thoughts.

“Hmmm?” she asked out loud, “What could that be?”

She turned away from the bookshelf she was looking at and started to walk towards the front door. There was only one way to find out.
*****************************************************************************************
Spines recovered from her laughing fit just in time to poke her head up and see that Twilight was starting to walk away from the bookshelf.

“What is she doing now?” Spines pondered.

She realized, after seeing the direction that Twilight had taken after a few steps, that she was walking towards the front door.

“Oh drat!” she exclaimed in her head, “She must have heard me! What do I do, what do I do!?”

Spines mind raced with possibilities. She could try to stay there and hide, but as she looked around, she saw that the area she was standing in was now pretty dang flat. The rolling part of her laughing fit must of flatten every bush around her, leaving a nice spot if you wanted to be seen from a mile away. She knew that option was out of the question.

She thought about racing around the library and heading straight through the back door and hiding inside the library. That was pointless though, because she would just be out of the frying pan and into the fire. She would have to somehow escape from inside the library to back the outside without being caught by Twilight. Another idea about that plan that came into her head basically put a nail into its coffin.

“What if it is locked? Then I’m just standing outside, trying to break into a library. That’s not going to work out at all!”

She thought about just running away from the library. However, she didn’t know if she could run far enough away to not to be seen by Twilight. If she was in the range of sight for Twilight at all, she figured that Twilight could easily chase her down and ask her questions. She knew that Dusk was faster than she was, so she assumed the same would be true about his female counterpart.

As luck would have it, the mail pony had decided that it would be a great time to go and deliver a package that needed to be delivered to the library. The light grey mare flew in and placed down the package right in front of the door. Before she left, she gave Spines a confused strange look, though all her looks were strange due to the cross-eyed nature of her eyes.

“I’ll…” Spines managed to get out, “I’ll bring that package inside for you!”

The mail pegasus just shrugged and went on her way.

Spines shot out of the bushes and picked up the package. 

“What could be in here?” she wondered, “It is far too big for a normal sized book and is far too light to be a bunch of books. What else would be delivered to a library?”

She turned around just in time to meet the face of Twilight looking out the opened front door.

“Yes?” she asked curiously.

Spines was barely able to gather herself just enough to have a conversation with the female clone of her co-librarian.

“Here,” she stammered, “Package for you.”

“Hey thanks!” Twilight replied and took the package by magical force, “Do you know who sent it? I don’t remember ordering anything...”

“I just deliver them,” Spines stated with a hint of a smile, “I really don’t know who sends them.”

“Oh,” Twilight sounded disappointed, “Well, I guess you should never complain about getting a free package. Thanks for delivering it!”

“I’m just doing my job.” Spines said quickly and briskly walked away.
*****************************************************************************************
Twilight brought the package inside and sat it next to the door.

“Maybe Spike would want to open it when he finally gets back,” Twilight thought out loud, “The object inside the box could be his reward or something.” 

Twilight went back to the bookshelves that she was organizing before.

"I was going to ask that dragoness where she was from, since I had never seen another dragon around here besides Spike,” Twilight told herself, “But she seemed anxious to leave and I didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable. I bet she gets asked that question a lot.”

She stopped her organizing to think more clearly.

“Maybe Spike will know,” Twilight pondered, “He might have heard something about another dragon visiting town. Meeting another dragon would be nice for him.”

Twilight saw a book that was completely out of place and quickly pulled in out. She walked across the room to the correct bookshelf.

“She did have a similar body structure to Spike though…” her thoughts kept on coming, “Do dragons’ bodies usually look that same, or do they usually look completely different? I should do some intense research about dragons.”

She carefully slid the book that she was carrying into the correct spot on the bookshelf that she now at. Her eyes caught a glimpse of the spine of the book next to it.

“Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons (Ologies)” she read to herself, “Seems like a wonderful place to start my research!”

She pulled the book out and quickly went to find a comfortable place to read.
***************************************************************************************
“I can’t believe I got out of that situation unscathed!” Spines exclaimed.

Spines had made sure that she was definitely out of ear shot before she said anything.

“I thought for sure she was going to be more curious about a dragon delivering her mail!” Spines swiped some glisten off her forehead, “Maybe she was just being nice; or she really, for some weird reason, didn’t care at all; which would be really strange for Dusk, so I assume the first reason is why.”

While Spines was thinking about all of this, she was suddenly nudged by someone sprinting by. The momentum from this caused her to spin in circles, but she was able to quickly stabilize herself with ease. 

“Ah’m so sorry!” the high pitched voice rang as the owner continued to run, yelling back at her, “But Ah’m really in a hurry so Ah hope you’re fine!”  

Spines turned around to barely catch a glance of the young filly running away. Her skin was a cream yellow color. Her hair reminded Spines of some form of red licorice. Her tail perfectly matched her hair, as it seems to be the case with all ponies. What stuck out for Spines, and probably anyone else who had seen her, was the giant pink bow that sat on the top of her head.

“You would think that thing would just fly off when she runs, wouldn’t ya?” Spines' thoughts asked herself.

She thought a little bit about that random stranger. Suddenly, something dawned on her.

“She looks familiar…” Spines whispered, “Could that have been…Applebuck?”

Spines gathered herself and started again on her way back to the meeting spot.

“I’ve got to remember,” she muttered to herself, “that no one is safe with this gender swapping thing. No one...”
> Chapter 8: The Humanitarian...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


*We have to go (thirty minutes) back in time…*


“Hello? Is anybody home?”

The purple earth pony knocked on the door that was stationed on the outside of an old tree. Its trunk was twisted and demented as it winded its way upward. The roots partially stuck out of the ground. They also had gaping holes that you see right through. Leaning against one of these roots was an ancient tribal mask that looked to have African descent. Another mask that was very similar to it dangled over the top of the door. Vials of some sort hung over a couple of the serpent-like branches. They seemed to contain potions of varying sort, each vial being a different color. The tree was overcasted with a dreary look, due to the fact that the sun was completely blocked out.

Applejack had decided to visit this dismal tree to see if the owner could help him out in any sort of way. The colt who owned this tree in Applejack dimension had a way with strange magic. Applejack was hoping that this colt’s counterpart could help him and his friends out, like he had done before.

Applejack rapped on the door for a second time. This time Applejack caught a glimpse some movement through one of the two windows that were carved out of the front part of the tree. He suddenly heard a strange voice call out to him.

“Oh my, who could it be? Come inside, so I can see!”

Applejack pushed open the door and entered the gloomy tree. Inside, he saw an assortment of jars and vials. Some were hung from ropes just like the ones outside. Others were stationed on wooden shelves that were placed in random corners. Masks, like the ones placed outside, were tacked high on the walls and over saw the whole room. A few vines grew on the light green wooden walls, giving a constant reminder to all who saw that they were now inside a tree. In the center of the room, there was a giant black cauldron that had a fire going underneath it. The owner of this fine establishment stood there, mixing a brew inside the pot.

She was definitely one of the strange sorts. She was covered from head to toe in a light grey color and had black markings accenting it. Some of the markings were just stripes, like ones that circled around her legs. Others were jagged lines, like the ones that sat on her back. Her hair took the 20s black and white TVness and the 70s Mohawk style. She wore a bunch of gold on her. Some of it was in the bands that had around her front left leg and neck. The rest of it was contained in the dangling gold earrings that she had on. She had a dark grey spiral placed on her butt. The only thing normal about her was her black and grey tail, which hung there typical fashion.

“Hello there, you are new. Come on, say it, who are you?” she asked with a deep African accent.

“Mah name’s Applejack,” the southern responded.

“Hmm, I do indeed know that name,” a thoughtful look appeared over her face, “but you and her are not the same.”

“Well,” Applejack responded, “that might not be exactly true miss.”

She looked at him with an intrigued look.

“The reason Ah come to you is to ask for some help,” Applejack continued, “You see, me and mah friends are from a different dimension. There everyone is the same as the ponies here in this dimension, but they all have their gender swapped. Ah’ve come to ask if you can help us find a way back home, using some of your magic.”

“Well, there’s one thing I must say. Call me Zecora, if you may,” she replied.

“Okay.” Applejack was getting anxious for an answer, “Is there anything you can do Zecora?”

Zecora lifted the metal spoon she was mixing with out of the pot. She walked over to its proper shelf sat it down. She turned back to face Applejack.

“I may not be of any use,” she rhythmically uttered, “and that is not my normal excuse. I have never heard of things like this. This is something I can’t dismiss.” 

She reached for a heavy book that was tucked away on an old dusty shelf. Applejack observed the books on the shelf. The only book she had up there that Applejack could read the title of (most of the books were written in a foreign language) was How to Rhyme All the Time by Gruntilda Winkybunion. Zecora pulled down the book she had reached for and gave a quick blow to remove all the dust covering it.

“However there is something I must ask, to help on this little task,” Zecora opened the book and the pages starting to quickly fly past her face, “How did you end up here? This is a story I must hear.”

“Well, I reckon it all started when Dusk Shine, a good friend of mine, asked me and mah friends to meet up at the library for somethin’ or another,” Applejack began. “He never did explain why before we all got there. When we all arrived, he started to talk about somethin, but Ah didn’t pay complete attention to what he was talkin’ about. A weird blue portal thing had appeared behind him and that took all of my attention. We all went and looked at it and before we knew what hit us, we were all sucked right in!”

“This is definitely one strange tale,” Zecora slammed her book shut; shooting out little bits of left over dust and cobwebs. “Have you met with one of the female?”

“The plan was not to, and Ah’m glad to say that the plan has worked so far.”

“Well now it’s time not to be glad.” Zecora gave the book a quick shove as she put it back in its place. “For my news is sadly sad. I have searched through the whole book. You can even take a look. There is no spell that I can find, that could give help of any kind.”

“There’s got to be somethin’!” Applejack exclaimed. 

Zecora just shook her head. “There is nothing I can do; I have looked completely through and through. If I get an idea though, I will make sure to let you know.”

“Okay,” Applejack couldn’t hide a hint of disappointment from seeping into his voice, “Thank you for at least tryin’!”

Applejack turned and headed out the door. When Zecora heard the door close and his footsteps start heading away, she went and got the metal spoon she had been working with before. 

“I do hope he stays out of trouble,” Zecora muttered to herself, “or his problems will surely double.”
**************************************************************************************
Applejack’s mind wondered as he started to wander his way back to Ponyville.

“You know, Everfree Forest ain’t as bad as it usually is on a sunny day!” Applejack thought as he looked up to see the sun had come out of hiding and had thrown itself front and center. “Why does it seem like every time someone has to go in here it’s at night!”

Applejack glanced at the mangled branches and the twisted vines that threw themselves together into a huge lump.

“Sure, it still ain’t the prettiest sight to see,” Applejack's brain commented, “but it ain’t bad when you can see more than three feet in front of your face all the time.”

As he reached the end of the forest, he turned to give one last look at the unnatural piece of nature.

“Ah always wondered,” Applejack pondered to himself, “why is the end of the forest so dang sudden? It’s pretty strange.”

He did a quick 180 with his head and looked at the trees that were placed along the next part of his route. They were perfectly normal trees, without any obvious blemishes.  Some of them stood tall and straight and reached for the skies with all their might. Others were stout in appearance and seemed to try to throw as much shade as they could upon the ground. None of them resembled the twisted nature of the trees he had just past. 

“Ah guess that adds to the fact Ah’ve said before,” Applejack gave a quick shrug; “this place ain’t natural.”
*************************************************************************************
Applejack had been mozing himself along for a few minutes now. He knew that he should be back in Ponyville by now. Something was up.

“Ah knew Ah should have taken a left turn at that old stump back there,” Applejack said regrettingly, “Now who knows were Ah’ll end up! Ah guess there’s little use in turnin’ around though. Only goin’ to get mahself more lost.”

He continued on the invisible path in front of him. Weeds had started to spring up ahead of him. It wasn’t hard for him to get through these though; he could easily trample them as he walked. As he went farther and farther though, he noticed something strange about a certain few of them.

“What in tarnation is this?” Applejack scooped one up to get a closer look.

The weed was perfectly normal is every way, except that it had a good-sized hole pierced right through the middle of it. The very tips of the edges of this hole were black, almost like it was burned.

“What on earth could have caused this?” Applejack wondered.

As he raised his gaze from off the weed, he noticed that a number of other plants had this similar hole situation going on. All the holes seemed to be in the range of a pony’s height.

“I wonder what happened here….” Applejack pondered.
**************************************************************************************
Nothing out of the ordinary happened to Applejack until he happened to find a pile of carrots sitting out on a path. They seemed relatively clean for lying on a dirty path and looked good enough to eat. Applejack’s stomach responded to this newcomer with an accompaniment of growls.

“It has been a while since Ah last ate hasn’t it?” Applejack gave a short laugh. “Ah haven’t eaten since beginning mah work and that was before all this stuff went down.”

Applejack sat himself down next to the heap of carrots to enjoy a quick snack. He picked one up into his hooves and munched on it.

“Mmmm, not bad Ah say,” Applejack said with pieces of carrots bouncing around in his mouth.

As Applejack chowed down on his new find, a rabbit appeared from behind one of the bushes only about ten feet away from the pile. He was a small white rabbit, with a bushy tail and small beady eyes. His head was bigger than his torso, but it somehow had no problem being supported. His long white ears stuck out from the top of his head like any other rabbit in existence. Three thin white whiskers stuck out from each side of his face. His small mouth, which was underneath his tiny pink nose, was stationed in a neutral position. 

Applejack was beginning his second carrot when he noticed the rabbit. The rabbit began to beckon to himself with one of his hands.

“You want one of these little fella?” Applejack asked pointing at the pile of carrots.

The rabbit gave a quick nod. Applejack reached over into the heap and tossed a carrot out to him. He caught it and placed it behind him. However, this seemed to not have satisfied him, as he repeated his first action again.

“Sorry fella, Ah’m only to give you one,” Applejack explained as he finished off the second carrot. 

The little rabbit was not going to be bossed around by a random pony. He charged ahead at the pile of carrots.

“No you don’t!” Applejack exclaimed as he clasped his hooves around the rabbit in mid air. The rabbit had tried to jump into the carrot pile.

Applejack stood up and put the intruder of his carrot peace a good distance away and went back to his carrot munching.

The white rabbit was surprised by the athleticism of the carrot protector. He stood there and tried to think of an idea on how to get the treasure placed in front of him. Suddenly he whipped around and stuck two fingers into his mouth. He blew as hard as his little lungs could and sent a piercing whistle into the air. 

After a few moments, two more rabbits appeared from out of the bushes. One was a little skinnier than the rabbit that had summoned him and had a spot of black fur pasted over the top of his right eye. The other rabbit was shouter in size and was almost completely brown. His tail was rebellious to the brown cause by being pure white. They each had a black line underneath both of their eyes.

The creature that had brought them together made some quick hand motions to them indicating something. The rabbits understood what they meant somehow and they sprinted off and disappeared into the forest. They came back as quickly as they left, however they had gained no more possessions then what they left with.

Applejack started to chow down on his third carrot. He looked down to see three angry rabbits staring back up at him.

“Umm…hello?” he asked them with a hint of nervousness in his voice.

The rabbits quickly pounced on top of Applejack. They kicked him and smacked him with their little limbs. Surprisingly, these tiny limbs’ impacts actually hurt Applejack. The rabbits seemed to have the upper hand at first, with the element of surprise on their side. Applejack had stumbled away from the pile and fell into the weeds behind it, causing an explosion of leaves to fly up in the air. Applejack recovered from the first attack and was able to gain back some ground in this war. One by one he was able to throw the attackers down in front of him and pin them to the ground victoriously.

The noise of this chaos must have been pretty loud, because when Applejack looked back up, he could see someone running over to him. She stooped down and gazed at the aggressors. 

“Are you alright?” the mare asked them in a quiet caring tone.

She slowly stood up and turned to face Applejack. Applejack saw that the new comer was a light yellow color from head to toe.  Her hair was a rich pink color that flowed down off her in two main strands. One fell down the back of her neck and hung by her side, while the other one flew over the front of her face. Her long pink tail reached the ground with ease and almost formed a mini puddle of hair. The presences of wings on her back showed to Applejack that she was indeed a pegasus. When he glanced at her face and her turquoise eyes, he saw that there was a look a panic and worry.

“Why are you standing on top of Angel?” she meekly asked Applejack.

“Who?” Applejack was trying to figure out why this mare ran so many bells in his head.

“One of the little bunny rabbit that you are standing on,” she responded softly. “He’s my friend.”

“Oh,” Applejack looked down at his prisoners, “Well your friend here just attacked me. See the bruises?”

The caring mare spotted the discolorations of skin that had started to appear across Applejack’s body. She bent down low and focused her attention back on Angel.

“Angel!” she exclaimed in the same volume as everyone else does normally, “That is not a very nice thing to do!”

The white rabbit just gave a quick shrug of the shoulders. The light yellow mare returned her attention to Applejack.

“I’m so sorry for his actions,” she apologized. “He’s normally not like this…”

Applejack gave a quick chuckle. “Alright. Ah believe you. Ah’ll let him go for you.”

He raised his hoof and the newly freed prisoners stood up and brushed themselves off from being pinned to dirt.

“Now you apologize for what you did to him,” the pegasus softly told Angel.

Angel shook his head in a horizontal direction.

“Please?” She leaned down closer to him, almost being eye level with him.

Angel gave a deep sigh and disappeared behind the two ponies. He returned with the carrot that Applejack had first given him and placed it back on the carrot pile.

“Thank you,” she quietly replied with gratitude.

“Ah’m sorry,” Applejack turned his attention from Angel back to the mare, “Ah haven’t introduced mahself at all. Mah name’s Applejack.”

“Mine name is Fluttershy…” she replied timidly.

When Applejack raised his hoof to shake hers, she flinched backwards in fear. Applejack raised one of his eyebrows. Fluttershy, then seeing that he just wanted to make a formal greeting, shook the outstretched hoof.

Suddenly, a sharp whistle pierced their ears. Applejack and Fluttershy looked down to see that Angel had released another call into the air. Before they could ask him what he was up to, a hoard of rabbits popped out of the bushes surrounding the area. Some of the rabbits were helping to hold a rope.

“Uh oh…” Applejack started to slowly back away.

The rabbits charged at Applejack, paying no attention to Fluttershy. Their numbers easily over powered Applejack’s number of one and brought him to the ground. As Applejack struggled to get back up, the group with the rope quickly delivered their product to the whole mass of rabbits. They quickly tied all his feet together, preventing him from moving in the slightest. They somehow managed to pick up their new prisoner and carry him away to some undisclosed location.

“Wait!” Fluttershy called out in a meek voice, “Please, don’t do that to him!”

Fluttershy quickly started to chase the rabbits and their captive, “shouting” soft commands and timid statements after them.
	
> Chapter 9: The Athlete... 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


*Flashback thirty-five minutes*


“There goes all the leads I have thought of…”

The yellow unicorn stepped out of a colorful looking shop. It looked the same as any other shop in Ponyville, or any other building in Ponyville for that manner. Almost every building had a yellow straw roof and pale yellow walls that were lined with straight pink stripes. Dusk always wondered why only a few buildings didn’t follow that design pattern. It was almost like the architects had some really creative designs at first, but then just lazily repeated the same layout for the rest of the town.

“I need some help,” Dusk stated, “this splitting up idea wasn’t really the best plan of action when I look back on it. I have to remember to chalk that one up as a bad idea.”

Dusk quickly whipped his head around to see if he could find anyone he knew.

“Where did everyone go anyways?” he pondered out loud, “Ponyville isn’t that big.”

As he strolled by a couple of identical houses, someone he was hoping to see came into view. Dusk picked up his pace to talk to the only female that he could actually make a reasonable conversation with.

“Spines!” he called.

The young white dragoness turned her head to see the incoming colt.

“Oh, hi there Dusk!” Spines said as Dusk stopped right in front of her. “How has your search been going?”

“I haven’t found anything useful at all.” Dusk replied disappointed, “You?”

Spines let out a heavy sigh. “Same.”

“Do you want me to help you search around?” Dusk asked her.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Spines asked a tad harsh.

Dusk was awestricken by the sudden change in her voice and attitude. 

“Well…nothing really,” he stumbled through his words; “I was thinking that my presence…would help you out and increase any chance of success!”

What Dusk had just said must have really ticked Spines off, because she was definitely not looking like a happy camper.

“I can do things by myself, thank you very much!” her voice was almost a furious shout.

“But…we usually do things together!” Dusk was confused why Spines was getting so upset, “You are my assistant!”

“Oh yes! I’m your lowly assistant,” anger had spread across her face like a fire does in a forest roasted by the summer’s heat, “I can’t do anything by myself without the help of the ‘brilliant’ master!”

Dusk opened his mouth to try to make his point, but Spines turned on her foot and stormed away. Dusk was left alone in the middle of town with his mouth hung wide open. Silence followed as random ponies walked by, giving quick glances at the bizarre sight. Finally, Dusk was able to gather himself enough to close his mouth.

“What did I do?” he asked no one in particular in complete confusion. 

His gaze fell to the ground. He racked his brain trying to figure out what had just happened. A laugh rang through the air from what seemed to be nowhere, snapping Dusk out of his thoughts.

“You definitely have a way with women,” a voice sarcastically rang from above.

Dusk looked up to see a giant white cloud floating next to him. He looked up even higher to see a light blue face staring back down at him. She got up from lying on the cloud and prepared herself to fly down to him. This was all done with a mischievous grin placed on her face.

The mysterious pegasus swooped down and landed right in front of Dusk, giving him a perfect look at the stranger. The first thing that got Dusk’s attention was the rainbow hair the mare possessed. Her bangs swept to the right side of her face and fell nicely down the back of her neck. Her butt looked like it shot out a rainbow, due to the position of the hairs of her tail.  By the rainbow’s starting point was not a pot of gold, but a raincloud and a rainbow lightning bolt.

“You were as smooth as sand paper out there!” she exclaimed as she gave off another giggle.

“Umm,” Dusk wasn’t sure on how to react to the new comer, “who are you?”

“The name’s Rainbow Dash!” she exclaimed, “The fastest pony in all of Equestria!”

“I first failed the plan by not splitting up the whole time and now I’ve failed it by meeting one of our doubles,” Dusk muttered underneath his breath. 

“You should’ve seen the look on your face when she walked away in anger!” Rainbow let loose another round of laughter. “Priceless!”

“How much of…umm… our conversation did you hear?” Dusk asked. 

“Enough to see you get horribly rejected!” Rainbow exclaimed busted into laughing once more.

“I did get rejected…” Dusk replied with a hint of sadness in it, “I w-wonder why. She is my friend after all…”

“Hey, sometimes just because she is your friend doesn’t mean she likes you like that,” she told Dusk as she flew over next to him.

“Wha-?” Dusk exclaimed.

“Boy, do you need help!” Rainbow walked back to her position right in front of him, “Now, it is usually a colt’s job to give you tips on getting mares, but seeing how horribly bad you screwed that up right now, I think it has to be my job to give you some well needed pointers.”

Before Dusk could correct her on any of that complete nonsense, she continued right along.

“Now the first thing you did wrong was that you were in no place special,” she was now flying slow circles around him. “When you ask someone out like that, you should at least make the occasion somewhat special! It doesn’t have to be under the stars or anything like that (but it would surely help), but doing in the middle of a public place, you’re definitely setting yourself up for a quick failure. The second thing is…”

“Hold on!” Dusk finally got over his spinelessness and spoke up, “I wasn’t asking her out!”

It was now Rainbow’s turn to say, “Wha-?”

“I was just asking her if I could help her search around town for something, that’s all!” Dusk stated.

“Sure...” Rainbow replied, not sounding convinced. 

“Yes!” he yelled. He tried to think of a reason to support the fact that he really wasn’t asking Spines out on a date. 

“Besides, did you see how old she was?” Dusk asked her, “She’s not even ten years old yet!”

“I was going to make a comment about you being a tad of a pervert…” Rainbow replied.

Dusk sighed. “Fine. Whatever. Why were you listening in on our conversation anyways?”

Rainbow finally stopped her slow circular flying and landed with her back facing Dusk.

“It’s so much fun to eavesdrop on conversation from up there in the clouds,” she stated pointing upwards.

“Don’t you have better things to do with your time then listening in on random ponies’ conversations?” Dusk questioned her choice of time usage. 

“Na, not really. I have nothing to do and all day to do it!” she exclaimed happily.

“I’m getting nowhere with this…” Dusk thought. He knew he probably should get out of this conversation as fast as possible. He was pretty lucky that Rainbow Dash had no clue who he really was.

“Well, it was nice meeting you!” Dusk told Rainbow Dash as he slowly started to back away.

Before he could make his full escape, an unknown voice yelled at him.

“Hey! Hey you! The yellow unicorn! Stop!” the voice exclaimed.

Dusk turned around to see two colts running over to where he and Rainbow Dash were standing. They collapsed on the ground, breathing heavily.

“Too…much…running…for…one…day,” the older one said in between gasps for air. 

Dusk stared at the strangers. The one who had just spoken had light blue skin that was mostly hidden by a white lab coat. His hair had already starting to thin due to age and lost any color it had. His tail contained some color pigment, by showed a hint of brown, while his hair showed absolutely none.

The younger colt looked as out of breath as his older friend. His thick brown hair was drenched in sweat, keeping it plastered to his head. He was wearing a thick red vest, probably the cause of all the sweat he was soaked in. His skin looked like the color of his hair mixed with the color of the trees. Due to the clothing being worn by both colts, he could see neither of the colts’ cutie marks.

“Come with us…yellow one,” the younger one told Dusk, still trying to recover all of his breath.

“Why?” Dusk logically asked, “And who are you guys?”

“We…can’t tell you…the answer to…either of those,” the older colt replied.

“Going to a random place with strangers for a reason I don’t know really doesn’t really scream ‘safe’ to me,” Dusk answered.

“But…we need you to!” the younger one exclaimed.

“Sorry guys,” Dusk apologized, “but unless you can tell me the whos and whys, I’m not coming with you.”

“Then…I’ll make you come,” the younger one staggered to his feet, swaying a bit, “with force!”

He mustered all his remaining might to lung forward at Dusk. Dusk, seeing that the colt was in no position to do anything of the moving sort, gave him a quick side step and almost bumping into Rainbow Dash (who was just standing around watching all of this unfold). The charger tried to get back on his feet, but he lacked the energy to do so.

“That isn’t going to work!” the older colt yelled over to him, “We don’t have the stamina to do that again!” 

He tapped his hoof to his chin and tried to come up with a clever plan. He looked over at his friend and caught a glimpse of Rainbow Dash. Suddenly, an idea was being formulated in his head. You can see the moment of realization in his face when he had put the final touches on his plan. He slowly waltzed over to Rainbow Dash.

“I may be completely wrong here,” he began slow and deliberate, “but you look like a pretty fast flier.”

Rainbow’s face gleamed. “I’m only the fastest flier in all of Equestria!”

“You definitely look the part too,” the older colt replied, “And I’m taking a huge guess here, but since you are such a fast flier, are you by chance a fan of the…Wonderbolts?”

“Ah, ya I am!” she exclaimed, “They’re only the most coolest and most talented fliers in all of Equestria! Who wouldn’t be?!”

“Ah yes, silly me thinking that anyone could not be a fan of them,” his voice was straight, sounding like he completely agreed with what she was said, “Well, I happen to know a member of the Wonderbolts, one of pretty high stature too. And since you are the ‘fastest flier in all of Equestria’, I’ll gladly put in a good word for you the next time we meet.”

“Really?” her smile was now from ear to ear, “Thank you!”

“However,” he put his hoof up to stop Rainbow Dash as she dashed towards him, “I believe what you say about being the fastest. My friend however, might need me to give him an example of your skills.”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “What are you asking?”

“Well,” he stepped back to get the female blue blur out of his face, “if you could chase someone down and bring them back here, it would not only show off your speed, but also your endurance and agility, no?”

“Ya,” Rainbow nodded her head in agreement, “I say it would.”

“Well in that case,” he made a gesture to Dusk, “Can you by chance chase down this unicorn colt here and bring…”

That’s the last Dusk heard before he started sprinting as fast as he could away from the two mysterious colts. Not too long after he started to run though, he could hear the sound wings flapping as they started to fly. He dived down a dark alleyway and hid behind a dumpster that was placed behind a restaurant. This maneuvering tactic seemed to work because it was not long before he saw a light blue flash speed past him. Dusk’s heart was beating heavily as he waited in the shadow of the garbage.

“Great,” he muttered to himself, “they have Rainbow Bli..I mean Rainbow Dash chasing me down.”

He stumbled out of his hiding spot, giving one last look around before completely removing himself from his safe haven.

“I have to get her to stop chasing me…” Dusk pointed out the obvious, “But how?”

He quietly sneaked out the other side of the small alley and poked his head out. He peered around for any sigh of his pursuer. To his left, he did see a very strange sight. A bunch of construction crew’s tools were sitting next to a darkly lit building. Nothing really interesting stood out. It was a plain brown building, with a bunch of windows on the side facing the street in front of it. A giant wrecking ball had punched some holes in it however, so that was also strange. The wrecking ball punched the final hole that it needed to and the whole thing came tumbling down.

Suddenly, Dusk heard screaming coming from the area of the wreckage. He started to run over to the building, when he remembered that he had checked only one direction. He knew he should probably check both sides, just to be safe.  Dusk turned around and scanned the skyline behind him. He saw nothing, until the very end where his eyes met with those of a light blue pegasus setting on a cloud about a fifty feet away.

“Drat!” his mind screamed and he ran down a different alleyway. This one was in between the buildings that were right next to the wreckage.

His running ran him into a pile of garbage cans that someone had sat out to be picked up. As he tried to pick himself out of the stinky mess that he had just created, he heard talking taking place right outside the alleyway.

“Whoever was bringing down that building must of saw me!” he whispered to himself, “She’s going to easily find me if I just sit here! I’ve got to come up with a plan, and fast!”

Dusk quickly tried to summon all the brain power he had. “Think, think, think,” he muttered to himself. 

His hoof then bumped into one of the garbage can. He looked down and stared at it thinking. Suddenly a brilliant idea came to him. He hid behind one of the walls of the nearby buildings and waited for Rainbow to come flying down the alleyway.

As Dusk predicted, Rainbow Dash came flying down the alley way in search for her prey. Dusk, using his magic, quickly levitated one of the garbage can lids that were placed on the ground. It flew into the air, and smack tab right in the pathway of the flying Rainbow Dash.


*BANG*


Dusk, using his magic once more, caught the plummeting Rainbow Dash before she made contact the stone hard ground. He picked up a piece of dirty paper and a half-broken pencil that he had found laying on the ground. These were scattered around due to him crashing into the garbage cans before. He quickly wrote something on the piece of paper and placed it over the top of the head of the knocked out Rainbow Dash. He hoped that he didn’t permanently hurt her in any sort of way.

Dusk quickly tried to gather himself together and then sprinted away, hopefully leaving his pursuer behind once and for all.
 

> Chapter 10: The Rundown...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Where the heck is everyone?”

Rainbow Blitz smoothly landed on the ground that was predetermined as the next meeting spot, the same spot where the last meeting took place.

“Am I missing something here?” Rainbow thought, “This should be the place…and I think it’s the right time…”

Rainbow decided to give his surroundings another check to see if he perhaps missed something. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a familiar face mozing towards him.

“Oh, hiya ‘L…Elusive,” Rainbow swallowed his usually nickname.

“Hello there darling,” Elusive strolled up to Rainbow Blitz. He gave a quick look around, realizing the same fact that Rainbow had, “Where is everyone?”

“I don’t know,” Rainbow replied, “I just got here.”

“I see,” Elusive responded, “Oh, by the way, I did not do anything girly while we were all separated.”

“Wow, that’s a shocker,” Rainbow said with a grin.

Elusive was not happy with this snarky response. Before he could do anything about it however, a familiar voice turned their attention off each other.

“Hello guys!” Spines came running over to the two colts. She stopped and looked around. “Where’s everyone else?”

Elusive shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they wanted to be a little bit fashionably late.”

Rainbow turned and looked at him. “That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”

Elusive twisted his head to meet with Rainbow’s. “Oh, like you have a better idea?”

“Of course I do!” Rainbow exclaimed boastfully.

“Okay,” Elusive remarked, “what is it then Mr. Smarty-Wings?” 

Rainbow didn’t think this far ahead. “Ummm,” he stammered, “they probably got held up in some…random things…that are…keeping them from being here!”

“Hah…” Elusive stopped mid laugh, “Hey, I’ll actually give you credit. That’s not a horrible idea.”

“Of course it wasn’t! I wouldn’t say I had a better idea if I didn’t!”

Elusive rolled his eyes. Suddenly, the threesome’s attention was torn and thrown over to a newcomer whose breathing sounded more like a garage disposal then anything. He walked over to them and collapsed onto the ground.

“What’s up Dusk?” Rainbow asked the exhausted colt.

“Nothing much,” Dusk raised his head up to look at Rainbow, “just, you know, running for my life!”

This definitely got everyone’s attention.

“What did you get yourself into after I left?” Spines asked with care.

“Before I go on,” Dusk sidetracked himself, “I have to tell you something. I’m sorry that I made you upset. You are not lower than me, and I need your assistance. I don’t know what I would do with myself without you around!”

“Awww, thanks!” A little redness appeared in her cheeks, “I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier. It was unlike me.”

Spines walked over and gave Dusk a hug. Suddenly, a loud “Ehem!” quickly ended their hug. They looked over to see Rainbow tapping his hoof impatiently. 

“Sorry to break up your wonderful sibling love,” Rainbow interjected, “but I think Dusk was going to tell us a story.”

“Oh right,” Dusk shifted his attention back on the whole group. “Well, actually Rainbow, this story sort of involves you.”

“Me?” Rainbow exclaimed, pointing at himself.

“Yes you,” Dusk replied. “I was going around town and I ended up meeting up with Spines. We sort of had a little argument.”

“It was more than just a little argument,” Spines butted in, “and I’m so sorry that I caused that.”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Dusk comforted. “Anyways, after Spines left, a mare came down and laughed at me about having bad girl skills.”

“Who could be so rude and that!?” Elusive was appalled by that sort of action.

“Rainbow,” Dusk made a motion to him. “Well, his mare version that is.”

“Well I’m not surprised about that then,” Elusive commented, getting an angry look from Rainbow.

“What did she look like?” Spines asked curiously.

“Like Rainbow Blitz had been shrunken down and grew longer rainbow hair,” Dusk explained.

“Wait a minute! I just realized something!” Elusive whipped around and faced Rainbow. “Your hair is rainbow again! What happened to you?”

“Well,” Rainbow began his story, without letting Dusk finish his at all, “I happened to find the Carousel Boutique while wandering around.”

“You just happened to find it?” Spines inquired. 

“Maybe he wanted to get a good luck at his soon-to-be new working place,” Elusive shot him a smile.

Rainbow shot him an angry look back. “Anyways…my curiosity forced me to head inside and see…well,” he pointed to Elusive. “You.”

“Me?!” Elusive gasped. “Why on earth would you want to see me in mare form?”

“Actually, I’m a little curious what you looked like in mare form,” Dusk helped bail out his rainbow friend. “What did she look like?”

“Umm,” Rainbow’s eyes went to the ground, “there’s really no good way of putting it.”

Elusive raised an eyebrow. “What on earth do you mean about that?”

“She was…ummm,” Rainbow looked at the ground, even pawed at it once or twice, “she was…OH FOR PRINCE SOLARIS SAKE, YOU WERE SMOOKIN’ HOT!”

Everyone just stared at him with dumbfounded looks.

“And I don’t mean sort-of hot,” Rainbow went on explaining, “I mean easily a ten out of ten on the hotness scale!”

Rainbow gave a little shiver and the remembrance of that experience. A silence swept over the whole group. 

“Well,” Elusive broke the silence with a grin and a chuckle, “I’ll take that as a compliment.” 

“I’m glad you got some enjoyment out of this, because I’m awkwardly scarred for life!” Rainbow exclaimed.

“Umm, so what happened when you met her?” Spines asked to move the conversation along. “Don’t want Elusive to think about a pretty mare self, what if they meet…”

“She asked if she could make a suit for me,” Rainbow continued. “Something about a colt named Big Macatooshe, or something like that, not being available. She usually made suits for him when she wanted make one.”

“Could the name have been ‘Big Macintosh’?” Dusk asked, “You know, the one Bubble and I talked to before.”

“Ya, that was it!” Rainbow looked over at Elusive. “Do you make dresses for Macarenia?” 

“...She prefers to keep that fact a secret,” Elusive explains. “She thinks that it isn’t like a farm pony like her to get glorified with dresses. I think it’s such a shame; she definitely has got a fine body.”

Everyone else turned and gave him a bunch of confused expressions. 

“What?” Elusive went on the defensive, “It’s true! I’ve measured her plenty of times and…”

Dusk leaned over to Elusive mid speech and whispered, “You’re only digging yourself into a bigger hole buddy…”

Elusive stopped what he was saying, and realized that Dusk was right. He then decided to try to quickly change the subject as fast as he could.

“So...,” he turned his attention just to Rainbow, “Did you accept her offer to make a suit or did you reject the poor mare?” 

“I actually took her request,” Rainbow shot back; “I couldn’t deny a hot mare like that…even if it was you.”

A mummer of agreement come from the other two colts. 

“Then why don’t you have the suit?” Spines wondered out loud.

“I flew away as fast as I could after this happened,” Rainbow sharply pointed at his multicolored hair. “It turned back to this after I was forced to use the salon hair thing.”

Elusive laughed. “Who would force someone get their hair done?”

“Your little br – I mean her little sister, that’s who.” Rainbow replied.

“That would be something Sweepy would do…” Elusive agreed, knowing that his little brother commonly tried to be a little too helpful. “Well, it shouldn’t be too hard to just recolor your hair again.”

Elusive’s horn glowed as it had before and was shot towards Rainbow. The light was blinding to everyone’s eyes, causing them to shield them with their hooves. When Rainbow emerged from the glow, he had the yellow blonde hair that was donned on him before.

“I wish I could keep my rainbow hair,” Rainbow sighed. “It’s 20% cooler than this dull yellow color.”

“Hey, if it weren’t for the disguise,” Dusk pointed out, “You probably would have been discovered.”

“Ya, ya whatever.” Rainbow didn’t care. He just wanted to keep his rainbow hair again. “You don’t what you truly have until it’s gone. I wonder if I can wash it again when no one’s looking…”

“Speaking of being discovered,” Dusk turned his attention to Elusive and Spines. “Did anyone else get discovered?”

Spines and Elusive’s eyes looked around at random objects, not making contact with anyone at all. You could even hear some whistling. Dusk gazed at them with a face that screamed “really guys?”

Dusk sighed. “Which one of you wants to go first?”

“Ladies first,” Elusive stepped aside, leaving Spines by herself.

“Huh? Um, okay,” Spines was a tad confused on what just happened, but she started her story anyways. “After meeting up with you Dusk, I ended up walking over to the library. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but then my curiosity got the better of me, and I peeked into the front window to see she-Dusk.”

Rainbow snickered. “She-Dusk.”

“What caused me to laugh,” Spines used Rainbow’s random laughter as a foothold for her story, “was the sight of her. It looked exactly like Dusk, but in mare form. I don’t how why, but it was just so funny! My laughing must have caused a lot of noise because she came over to the door to see what was going on. Due to my fast thinking skills, I came up with a brilliant plan to get away.”

“What was your…” Dusk started to say, but Spines quickly kept on talking.

“After using my brilliant plan to get away, the filly version of Applejack’s brother ran into me, literally.” Spines finished.

“Speaking of running into literally,” it was Elusive’s turn to take the spotlight, “someone ran into me as well.”

“Who?” Dusk questioned.

Elusive raised his hoof back behind in his head slowly for dramatic effect and flicked it in the direction of Spines. 

“Her!” he exclaimed.

“That must have been interesting…” Dusk replied.

“Why?” Elusive asked; confused about what Dusk was hinting at.

“Well, because Spines has a…”

Spines ran over, shaking her hands at Dusk and yelling forms of the word “Shh!” as she went. She finally got a hand over his mouth. Dusk tried to say something more, but realized he couldn’t. He then resorted to using his magic to remove his mouth plug.

“The cat was let out of the bag a long time ago about Spines,” Dusk told her.

Elusive somehow made a snapping noise of realization. “Oh yes, Spines, you do have a crush on me. That might help explain the reason why your doppelganger tried to put an end me…”

A harmony of “What?”s came in response.

“He tried to bring an old clothing store down on me!” Elusive explained.

“Well that’s a little extreme,” Spines stated. “What did you do to him?”

“Nothing!” Elusive defended himself. “I just was my wonderful self.”

“That’s all it would take for me if I was him,” Rainbow cracked a smile.

“Maybe he just got jealous of you,” Dusk tried to connect the dots. “Maybe…he thought you were sent to take your mare self from him.”

“I guess it is pretty easy to get jealous of all this,” Elusive gloated.

“Rarity,” Rainbow randomly stated.

“Yes, I know. I’m one of a kind,” Elusive kept on increasing the size of his ego.

“No stupid,” Rainbow replied annoyed, “the name of your mare form, Rarity.” 

“Oh…” Elusive was taken aback, “Spines, yours was named…what was it again? Oh yes. It was Spike.”

“Spike,” Spines repeated to help her remember that, “I didn’t get the name of yours Dusk. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, I happened to remember it from before,” Dusk comforted her as a smile appeared on his face. “It was Twilight Sparkle. Rainbow Blitz, your mare counterpart’s name is Rainbow Dash.”

Rainbow thought about this name for a second. “Blitz sounds cooler,” was the conclusion he came up with.

“By the way Dusk,” Elusive remember something they had all lost track of, “why were you so tired when you arrived?”

“Oh that,” Dusk started to explain, “I was being chased by Rainbow Dash.”

“Why would she chase you?” Spines asked.

“Well, I ran into two weird colts on the way,” Dusk recalled, “and one of them tricked her into chasing me down for them.”

“Tricked?” Rainbow was appalled, “There’s no way you could trick me, even in lower mare form!” 

“They promised her that if she could chase me down, they would put in a good word for her with the Wondercol...I mean Wonderbolts...” Dusk replied.

“Oh,” Rainbow said. “Wellll, I guess that makes some sense. How did you get away? If she has any of my speed, she should have been able to chase you down no problem!”

“He probably just out witted her,” Elusive explained. “That was probably not too hard, knowing you…”

“Hey!” Rainbow exclaimed as Elusive and Spines enjoyed a little laugh.

“How do you know I didn’t just out run her?” Dusk questioned.

“Pla-lese Dusk,” Elusive replied, “This is you we are talking about. I’ve seen you sweat looking at a treadmill.”

This got another line of laughter out Spines. Dusk just took it in stride.

“Ya, ya,” Dusk didn’t doubt the comment though, “I did out smart her. I levitated the lid of a trash can into her pathway and due to her high kinetic energy, she was knocked out.”

“Wow, this ‘Rainbow Dash’ must be pretty bad compared to me,” Rainbow tried to keep his ego up, “I would never be fooled like that.”

“Ya, right…” Elusive muttered under his breath.

Spines suddenly remember something. She searched the surrounding small area in search of certain someones.

“They still haven’t come back yet!” Spines yelled to the others.

“Who?” Rainbow had completely forgot about what Spines had remembered.

“Applejack, Bubble, and Butterscotch!” Spines exclaimed.

“You’re right!” Dusk realized that they were indeed still missing.

“What’s taking them so long, I wonder,” Elusive pondered out loud.

“We should split up again and look for them!” Rainbow commanded. “Elusive, you take the forest area; I wouldn’t be surprised if Butterscotch went and checked in on the animals. Dusk and Spines, you two and search the remaining areas of the town we did not cover, especially anything that has to do with parties, this is Bubble Berry we are talking about. I’ll take the Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack might have gone there. Any objections?”

Dusk raised his front hoof in the air like an obedient school student. Rainbow however, didn’t care much for school and Dusk was sadly ignored.

“Okay, break!” and Rainbow blasted off in the direction of the farm.

Elusive looked over at Dusk, still raising his hoof. Elusive gave a quick shrug and ran off to the area of the woods just outside of town. Spines turned and looked up at Dusk, still holding up his hoof, and gave a soft giggle. Dusk looked down at her and gave a huge sigh. He removed his hoof from the straight up position and gestured to his back. Spines, understanding what that meant, hoped on his back. The duo rode off, back into town, together once again.

> Chapter 11: The Planned Extraction... 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Nope, not underneath here either.”

Rainbow Blitz muttered to himself as he checked underneath what seemed to be the millionth apple tree he searched.

“Where could Applejack be?” he thought. “If he’s not here with the trees, where else could he have possibly gone?”

A grown in disgust rang out from his lips as he shot back up, higher into the air to get a better aerial view. His eyes caught an object that he didn’t notice before, which was weird because it stuck out of the only hill like a zit on a teenage girl. It contained a mix of oranges and browns and the colors went together nicely. The brown parts of the building were made to look like sections of barrels. These sections had the occasional hole in them to allow the ponies inside a way to look out and vice-versa. The very top of the building had a random giant carrot balancing almost impossibly.

“Applejack’s house, of course!” Rainbow’s mind exclaimed, “That makes way more sense than being hidden the fields!”

He was about to blast over there when his peripheral vision caught a glace of some…things walking down the same road he was about to go fly over, the one leading up to Applejack’s house. He quickly changed his preplanned route and flew behind the great red barn that the Apples had made. He quietly peered around the edge of the barn to get a better view of these visitors.

One of the visitors was a purple mare that looked to be in a hurry. She kept turning around to encourage the other one, which was a small purple dragon with green bumps on his head. He was carrying a spacious bag of some sorts. This seemed to be very important, due to the reactions the mare gave when the dragon almost let the bag slip through his grasp. Rainbow watched as they hurried past. The mare knocked on the front door to Applejack’s house, and was hurried inside. By whom he did not know because his current position was not close enough.

“That must have been…umm,” Rainbow racked his memory banks to try to remember the name of Dusk Shine’s doppelganger, “Evening Sprinkle? Ah, it doesn’t matter! I probably should find out what they’re doing here. It looks like this rescue mission…has turned into a stealth mission.”

He sneakingly flew over to one the windows on Applejack’s home. As he tried to look inside of it, he saw that there was no way he was going to be able to see into this window.  Because all he got instead of a nice picture of a room was the image of himself.

“Sorry handsome,” he told his reflection, “I’m not looking for your good looks right now.”

He flew up a little bit higher and tried his luck with a different window. This time he hit the jackpot. This spot gave him a perfect view of what was going on. What he happened to see in the window was not that he was expecting.  If he was expecting to see anyone sprawled out on the guest bed, it would be Applejack. But instead, his eyes gazed upon one injured Bubble Berry. Several of his body parts were wrapped up with some makeshift bandages; however it was clear that the main target of this medicare was his left front leg. He was also completely out, with only the movement of his torso to show that he was alive.

“Bubble!” Rainbow exclaimed, opening the window, “What are you doi…”

Suddenly, Rainbow heard noises coming from right outside the little room that Bubble was currently stationed in. Rainbow quickly ducked his head out of sight, leaving the window wide opened.

“So, how did this end up happening?” A distinctly female voice asked.

“Well, Ah reckon that it all began when this colt came by and asked about a pie,” a thick southern voice replied. “Then we were chased by some random folk who for some reason really wanted the pie. We escaped them, but no without him getting injured.”

Rainbow stuck just the tip of his head over the ledge to get a look inside. The duo that was walking on the path outside had now joined up with an orange mare that wore a stereotypical cowboy hat with a bite taken out of the front. She and the other two mostly had their backs to the window, so Rainbow was certain he could keep a steady view in his secret location and not be caught.

“I do have to say Applejack,” the purple mare told the southern blond, “you did a pretty good job at bandaging him up.”

“Why, that’s mighty fine comin’ from you Twilight,” Applejack responded, “Ah learned how to make some bandages out of cloth just in case anythin’ would happen anyone on the farm.”

Twilight gave a quick nod of understanding before turning to the dragon that was following her.

“Okay Spike,” she laid out her plan to the dragon, “get all the tools laid out. I’m not sure how bad this injury is, so be prepared for anything.”

“Okay!” Spike responded before bringing the bag behind the bed and began to bring out a random assortment of instruments and tools.

“First thing I need to do here is see what I’m dealing with,” Twilight announced out load, really to no one in particular. She stuck her arm out and asked, “Scissors please?” 

“On it!” Spike eagerly replied, rushing over and putting the scissors carefully in her outstretched hoof.

“Thank you,” she responded kindly to Spike and began to cut away at the white cloth covering her objective.

It took a few clips, due to the fact that Applejack had tied the cloth very tightly. Twilight then pushed away the remains to see the leg fully exposed. It would take only a blind person to miss the swelling that had started to appear around the middle part of his leg. It also had changed from the fake light blue color to an even darker blue with a hint of grey. After staring at the sight for a little bit, she turned her attention to Applejack.

“Well, I have good news and bad news,” Twilight began. “Good news is that his injury is only a sprain. Bad news is that it is seems to be quite a serious sprain. I should be able to help heal it tremendously with some magic and medicine, but it won’t be perfect.”

She stepped back and her horn began to radiate a purple color.

“What’s his name anyways?” Twilight asked, only paying half attention to what she was saying, “I have not seen him before around town.”

“He told me that his name was Berry Bon,” Applejack replied. 

“Really Bubble?” Rainbow Blitz thought, still watching everything go down. “That’s the best you could come up with?”

“You said he was delivering a pie,” Twilight was just trying to make easy small talk and she focused on the patient, “what happened to it?”

“Berry ended up droppin’ it when he went down with his injury,” Applejack explained.

Spike gave a loud disappointed “Awww” that got the mares to laugh. Twilight pulled back her head and relieved her horn of glowing. She had little beads of sweat that now laid on her brow. Spike walked over and carefully tapped them with a towel that had been kept inside the medical bag.

Twilight gave off a quick laugh. “Thank you Spike,” she told her assistant. “Now, would you be so kind as to get the ice pack out of the bag?”

“Right on it!” Spike replied. 

He briskly hurried over to the organized rows of medical supplies. He searched around and picked up a light blue sack with a white circular tip on one end. He delicately carried it back over, where Twilight took it from his possession with a nod of gratitude. She placed the ice pack with care over the swollen area. The added coldness to his leg caused Bubble to stir, but not to be wakened. 

“That should do it!” Twilight exclaimed happily. “Now all we have to do is to let that sit and watch it do its work.”

Twilight stepped back to admire her work. As she turned to talk to Applejack again, she saw a strange look of curiosity and confusion slowly made its way over her face.

“Umm…Ah ain’t no doctor,” Applejack began to say, “but is the skin supposed to change colors like that?”

“Huh?” Twilight remarked as she slid her head next to Applejack’s to see what she was looking at.

Applejack was indeed right. The area of the skin that had made contact was indeed changing color. It looked neither like the darker blue that it was before, or like the light blue that the rest of his skin color was. No, it started to turn a completely different color no way related to both of them, a bright pink. 

“The medical books I have say nothing about this…” Twilight stated with a hint of panic in her voice.

She rushed over to her medical supplies and rabidity levitated a magnifying glass up to her face. She scampered back to Bubble and peered intensely at the bright pink spot on Bubble’s leg.

“What could this be?!” she muttered to herself. “What could this be?! This could be a completely new discovery! I could get my name written down in one of those medical books!”

“Umm, Twilight,” Spike began, “Don’t you think you’re over reac-“

“However,” Twilight continued, completely ignoring her assistant, “We need to first figure out how this happened. Hmm…”

Rainbow Blitz watched the purple mare pace back and forth in front of Bubble. Rainbow put his hooves quietly on the windowsill and quietly leaned forward to try to see what the entire hubbub was about. When Twilight ran over to the medical bag to grab a book, it gave him the perfect view of the pink outbreak on Bubble’s leg.

“Oh wonderful…” Rainbow was starting to join Twilight in her panicking, “the magic has started to disappear, just like it did before with my hair!”

Twilight turned around again and Rainbow quickly ducked his head, but left his hooves in place. 

“We need to figure out how this happened,” Twilight repeated to both Applejack and Spike, “Lucky, I have found a checklist in one of my books I brought along to help!”

She turned the piece of paper she was holding to show the others. It contained a bunch of little boxes on the left side of the paper and words following it. Before either of them got to read it, she flipped it back to herself and began to read.

“Number #1: Temperature.”

“It’s a normal sunny day here in Ponyville,” Applejack remarked, “Nothin’ out of the ordinary about that.”

“True,” Twilight replied. “However, let’s close all the doors and windows to see if making the temperature higher changes anything.”

She ran off to the only door in the room and began to close it. Spike and Applejack just looked at each other and shrugged. Spike walked over to the window that Rainbow happened to be stationed at, and slammed it shut.

AHHHHHHHHHH!

Spike paused a moment. He then gave another shrug and walked back to where Applejack and Twilight were standing.
**********************************************************************************

Outside, Rainbow had shoved both front hooves into his armpits and bit down hard on his lip to try to prevent anymore sound from escaping his lips.

“I’m going to get him for that…” he muttered underneath his breath, “even if it’s the last thing I do.”

He glanced down at his hooves to perceive the damage that had been done. Bright red lines had started to form across his orange skin. After muttering a few words that might put some sailors to shame, he peered back into the window. Sadly however, he could not hear anything now. 

“Great, now what!” Rainbow angrily thought. “There goes my only way of really figuring out what is happening.”

His position did however allow him to catch one important detail that everyone else inside had seemed to miss. Behind the panicking and ordering Twilight and her annoyed, but still loyal friends, something was happening. One of the eye lids of the sleeping Bubble had very slowly begun to open.

Rainbow started to panic. He waved his arms outside spazily to try to get Bubble’s attention. The one eye that had now completely opened luckily saw Rainbow attempt to get his attention. He started to get up, but Rainbow changed his motions to those of downward motion, trying to get him to stay down. Bubble understood, and immediately lowered himself back into the position he was in before. Rainbow then went ahead and pointed to his eye and then closed it. It took multiple times of him doing this for Bubble’s mind to register what he was supposed to do. When he did however, he ended up closing his eyes in such a way that it looked completely unnatural. 

“Oh great...” Rainbow muttered to himself, “I’ve got to get him out of there, and fast, before he does something stupid and gets us all discovered for who we are!”

With no time to lose, Rainbow backed away from the window and dashed off to see if he could get his pal out of this mess, without making it any bigger.
**********************************************************************************

Meanwhile…

Pinkie Pie nonchalantly sipped the cup of punch that she was holding. She stuck it back down on the table that was before her. It was completely covered with other ponies’ assortment of drinks. That was a good thing though, as she knew, because having a party with hardly any guests was no fun. 

She paused for a moment to try to listen to the party music that was being played over the sound of all the ponies talking. The song, along with the colorful display of lights that were being shown, set that atmosphere of the party perfectly. That DJ she chose to play was doing a great job, she would have to remember to hire her for her next party.

She swiftly turned and faced forwards, noticing something.

“Hello there!” she exclaimed ecstatically, seemingly speaking to no one. “Sorry for not seeing you there! Isn’t this a great party! It’s for…well you should know that already!”

She gave off a silly little giggle. “I can’t tell you much right now, the author will kill me. He just wanted something to break the action and show that other things are going on right now! Foreshadowing he called it.”

She went and reached down for her cup of punch, but stopped in midair. It seemed like she had forgotten which one was hers. She put on her thinking face and then after a moment of realization, she started to point to each glass, saying a word after each one. After stopping her hoof over one and picking it up, someone called her name.

“Pinkie!” the voice called. “You have more guests!”

“More?” Pinkie’s face it up. “Yippee! Sorry, I have to go. See you again in a later chapter!”

She bounced off as fast as she could; not paying any attention to the cup of punch that she was carrying was now spilling every time she hopped as she made her way through the crowed place. 
*********************************************************************************

“Is the most brilliant plan ever ready to go?” Rainbow Blitz asked himself.

He went through the mental checklist one more time, “Amazing and brilliant entrance? Check. Lies about who we are and where we’re from? Check. Epic escape plan? Check. Okay, time for step one of the most brilliant and undercover way of entering a building ever thought of in the history of the world!”

Rainbow went up to the front door and knocked. After about half a minute, the door slowly opened. Standing there on the other side of it was the dragon assistant, Spike. A look of confusion was placed on his face, due to the fact there was a random stranger was there to greet him, who he had never seen before in his life.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Umm,” Rainbow was looking for the right way to word all of this, “I arrived here in this town today…with a friend of mine. Being from a completely different place, so far away that we’ve never ever heard anything about Ponyville until we arrived here today; we got…lost and ended up being separated. I…wanted to know, if by chance, that you’ve met anyone…unusual arrive around here?

Spike thought for a moment, when he heard Twilight say something that Rainbow couldn’t completely hear. He then seemed to have some sort of epiphany.

“Is your friend…a light blue color, have curly yellow hair, and is about…yay tall?” he questioned, having his hand hover above his head, giving a quick hop to show the complete height of the pony in question.

“Exactly!” Rainbow pretended to be excited, which he thought he did a pretty good job at, “Have you seen him? Where is he?”

“Follow me and I’ll show you!” Spike beckoned Rainbow inside and led him into the room that Rainbow was looking into before through the window. As Spike closed the door behind them, Rainbow made a beeline for Bubble. He wanted to make sure that Bubble didn’t “wake up” to greet him and ruin his whole plan. He bent down and whispered the details into his ear.

“Keep pretending to be asleep buddy, I’ll get you out of this mess,” Rainbow explained, “When I call ‘Bubble’ I want you to jump up and get on my back. You got that?”

Bubble gave off a horribly fake snore. Rainbow took that as a “yes”. Rainbow then focused his attention on the others, so he could set up his amazing escape.

“What happened to him?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.

“He ended up arrivin’ over here with a pie,” Applejack explained, “then we were chased by some colts who wanted it for some reason. He ended up fallin’ and hurtin’ himself. Ah helped bring him here.”

“I have been healing his leg,” Twilight jumped into the conversation. She made a hoof gesture at Bubble’s leg. 

“However, it started to turn pink. I think it’s some new scientific discovery that will change the world!”

“She’s the only one…” Spike whispered into Rainbow’s ear.

“So, since you’ve healed his leg, can he leave now?” Rainbow questioned.

“NO! Of course he can’t!” Twilight yelled.

“Why?” Rainbow asked dumbly.

“Because, this could be a great event in science history!” she exclaimed excitedly. 

“Fine,” Rainbow pretended to be defeated, “but I’ll open the door at the very least. It’s getting a tad warm in here…”

As he began to walk in the direction of the door just a tad bit faster than normal, Applejack stepped in the way of his path.

“Na uh,” she told him, “you’re not goin’ to open it to get some cool air in here. You’re just goin’ run out that door with your pal the first chance you see.”

“No, of course not!” Rainbow used all the skill he had gotten over the years of ditching to try to get him out of this situation, “Why in Equestria would I do that?”

“Well,” Applejack backed off a little bit, surprised by his comments; “you just asked about ten seconds ago if you could leave.”

“But your friend here just told me that I couldn’t leave with him,” Rainbow continued on. “Why would I, a complete stranger, disobey an order that was made by a pony so kind enough to heal a random stranger when he was in a time of need?”

“Ah…” Applejack stammered, not sure what to say to that, “Ah guess that makes sense…”

“Also, one thing I should add,” Rainbow slowly walked around her, keeping eye contact the whole time, “Thank you miss for letting him stay at your place while he is injured. I hope he appreciates that fact as much as I do, and if there is anything I could ever do to pay you back, just let me know.”

“Aww shucks,” redness started to appear in Applejack’s cheeks. “There’s no need for that. Ah...Ah was just doin’ what Ah was told all my life to do if someone evar get injured. Ah was taught that you should-“

She was interrupted by a loud “Bubble!” coming from the other side of her. She whipped her head around to see that indeed Rainbow had been the one to let the word loose and also had achieved his goal of getting the door opened.
Suddenly, the light blue pony that had been “asleep” for this whole time sprang up. His leg was just healed enough for him to take a step on it and dive onto Rainbow’s back. Rainbow collapsed a little, due to the extra weight that had jumped on board. Before anyone could stop him, Rainbow went as fast as he could with the heavy weight now on his back out the door and ran for the front door. Applejack, Spike, and Twilight ran after them, but they were too late. Rainbow had gotten the door open with ease. Before he disappeared, he said one thing to them in celebration of his victory.

“And that’s why I’m not the Element of Honesty!” Rainbow yelled. He turned and flew off not as fast as he would normally, due to not being used to having his normal weight doubled.

Spike busted out laughing at Rainbow’s one liner. Applejack made the move to start running after them, but Twilight stepped in front of her to stop her from going.

“We need to be the bigger ponies here,” Twilight explained, “just because he was mean does not allow us to get revenge on him for it.”

“Fine.” Applejack knew Twilight was right, but she was not happy about it.

“Besides,” Twilight added sadly, “that Berry colt will probably run into something to contaminate his leg, ruining my chance at scientific fame…”

Spike however, had slowly started to stop laughing. He instead was starting to think about something that Rainbow had mentioned before.

“That’s strange…” Spike said.

“What?” Applejack responded in a sour tone. “That he would do ahead and make someone believe him while he is telling nothing but lies?”

“No, not that…” Spike continued to ponder his idea. “He said before that he knew absolutely nothing about Ponyville.”

“Would make sense…” Twilight replied, “I have never seen either of them around here before.”

“Ya,” Spike agreed, “but how in Equestria would he then know about Applejack being the Element of Harmony?”

Twilight was awestricken but what Spike said and just stared at Spike. 

“You’re right…” she said after a bit of just staring. “And…of course! That also makes sense now!”

“What makes sense?” Spike asked, completely confused.

“No time to explain,” she dashed back into the bedroom and carefully threw all the medical stuff into the bag and gave it back to Spike.

“Applejack, forget what I said before,” Twilight told her. “We’re going after them.”

A big grin appeared across Applejack’s face. “You don’t have to tell me twice!”

And the three of them were off in pursuit, trying to catch them for the reason of revenge, and whatever reason Twilight had figured out…


 




> Chapter 12: The 'Scapecolt...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Ah! Oh no, help me! Anything, oh, anything but this!”

While exploring the forestry edges of Ponyville for Butterscotch, Elusive came face to face with one of the most deadly features of the wilderness, a giant mud puddle. After stumbling a few times to try to get himself out of this mess, he was finally able to succeed in standing up. He then tried to get as far away from his new found discovery as possible.

“Oh! Water, water!” he exclaimed. “I need some water!”

He whipped his head around frantically in his search. Luckily for him, for there to be a mud puddle, you need some good old H2O. He finally saw a little stream that ran nearby right behind the puddle. He rushed over to it as fast as he could, while making sure his body didn’t get anymore dirt on it. He kneed at the water’s edge and plunged his front legs into the water. He rubbed them back and forth against each other in a desperate attempt to get clean. He pulled them out, satisfied with the result, but as his eyes drifted down past them, he saw that he had a lot of cleaning to go.

He gulped nervously. He slowly inserted himself into the stream, with one leg gingerly going in after the other. He winced every time a leg made contact with the water that was lazily flowing down the stream. Eventually, he got himself completely submerged, well, all the way up to his stomach at least. He stood perfectly still for a while, not wanting to continue. However, he finally mustered up the will to start delicately flipping some of the water onto other parts of his skin, in a measly attempt to get the mud off. It was slow work, but he actually managed to clean most of his skin of the dirt.

He looked down at his reflection, to see sadly that he had missed one important detail, his hair. His wonderfully styled pink hair had now been accompanied by brown splotches of mud. 

“Oh no…” he whispered in fear, “not the hair too…”

But he knew it sadly had to be done, because, if he didn’t, it would be harder later on to get out the dried mess. So, he took a gasp of air and plunged his head into the murky depths of the stream. He yanked his head out as fast as he could when he felt the water completely surround his head. Then, he scampered out of the water and back onto the dry land. 

After recovery for a bit, he carefully turned around and lowered his tail into the water. When he thought it was clean, he yanked it out, hoping that finally all the work was done. To make sure of this, he looked down at his watery enemy and peered down to see his reflection. He was relieved to see a clean white skinned colt staring back at him.

“Wait…”  Elusive realized something, “that’s not right…”

His horn started to glow as he casted the palette swap spell once again on himself. When the glow subsided, he was back to the colors of his disguise.

“That’s better!” Elusive commented, seeing his reflection now matched the correct colors of pink. “Now, I must fix my hair. The water has completely ruined my coiffure…”

His horn started to glow once more, but it was not alone. His hair started to peel itself from his skin and gain a little bit of volume, looking more like its original form. It then began to stylize itself on his head. The pink hair parted in certain places on his head, while other parts had begun to twist and fall perfectly down his neck. The hair on his tail seemed to come alive as well, regaining its curves that had been lost.  He twisted his body around to get a better view of his work.

“Not too shabby, if I do say so myself!” he thought as he critiqued his handiwork. “Though it is not as magnifique as it is normally, I guess it will have to do for now.” 

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a soft noise that was barely audible. It was just loud enough so he could hear words being said, but not understand what was actually being said. Elusive searched around, trying to pick out where this noise was coming from.

“Is it coming from over here?” Elusive started to walk towards a huge boulder sitting next to a huge mound of dirt, blocking his view. 

He peered around the edge of the boulder to see that his ears were indeed correct. There was a thick group of trees packed tightly together, forming a wall. This wall seemed to wrap itself around in a circle. There was only one gap in this formation of trees, just wide enough for a pony to go through. Standing in front of this gap, the mystery of the mysterious noise was solved.

It was a mare, which was calling into the gap. The mare definitely looked nervous and worried, Elusive noted. She was pacing back and forth in between her soft calls and would bite her bottom lip periodically. Elusive saw something similar about this mare, with her light pink hair that flowed in straight bands, but winded downwards, curving left and right once or twice before ending. Her cream color skin was the nail on the coffin.

“Pale light rose hair, light grayish gold skin and obviously timid in both stature and personality…” Elusive quickly made his final conclusion, “Mare Butterscotch.” 

Elusive pondered the idea of leaving her alone, due to that meeting Butterscotch’s double might put him in danger of being discovered, but he quickly shot that thought down.

“What kind of gentlecolt would I be if I ignored a mare in a time when she desperately needed my help?” 

Elusive quietly walked over to the mare, trying not to startle her in any sort of way.

“Excuse me, miss?” he asked her, in almost a whisper.

Even with all of Elusive precautions, the mare still gave out a yelp of fear as soon as Elusive’s words escaped his lips. She slowly backed away, dipping her head close to the ground.

“I mean no harm!” Elusive replied, caught a tad of guard by her reaction. “But it seems to me that you could use some assistance. Is that true?”

She stared back at him, eyes still containing fear. However, she managed to make a response. She moved her head in one of the smallest of nods ever made.

“May I ask what the problem you are having is?” Elusive spoke softly and with deep concern.

She looked down at the ground and started to bit her lip again, looking uncertain of what to do. She looked back up at Elusive and took in a deep breath, but was stopped by a voice that came down from over head.

“Hey Fluttershy, what’s up?”

Both Elusive and the mare, which seemed to be named Fluttershy, turned to look at who ever had made the remark. Their eyes were met with one snarky, light blue pegasus as she landed right next to them. She turned and ended up looking straight at Elusive with a hint of disgust.

Elusive observed the new arrival. Her hair, which seemed to contain all the colors of the rainbow, flowed down to about shoulder length. This, along with her tail, stopped roughly with jagged ends, giving it a spunky feel. To go along with this, her bangs not only went down like normal, but also shot outwards. Her body, he observed, was very lean and aerodynamic, perfect for an athletic pegasus.

“Rainbow colored hair, light cerulean skin, and an in-your-face and bold attitude and style,” Elusive gave a slight groan, but at the same time gave a small smirk at the sight in front of him. “Mare Rainbow Blitz.”

“Oh, umm hiya…Dash...” Fluttershy cowardly replied.

Dash gave a short wave, but kept on eyeing Elusive suspiciously.

“Who’s this colt?” Dash finally asked Fluttershy. She stuck her face in Elusive’s, “Are you giving my friend a hard time?”

“That’s nonsense!” Elusive replied, a tad appalled by the accusation, “I was just asking your friend here if she could use some of my assistance. She looked like she was in some sort of trouble.”

“Really…” Dash doubted him. “Why in Equestria should I believe that!?”

“Umm…because it is the truth.” Fluttershy quietly defended Elusive.

Dash turned and looked at Fluttershy with a mix of confusion and surprise.

“He…he really did ask if I needed help,” Fluttershy began to gain some confidence in now speaking before the stranger, due to one of her friends joining in one the conversation, “And I…I was about to tell him when you arrived.”

“Ohh…” Dash responded. “Well, what's the problem?”

“Oh, well you see,” Fluttershy made a small gesture to the fort of trees behind her, “I was walking around when I saw a colt fighting with Angel and some of his friends,” she faced Elusive and explained, “Angel is my bunny friend.”

“I see.” Elusive replied.

“I stopped the fighting at first…” Fluttershy continued, with a hint of sadness, “but Angel came back with more bunnies and they over powered the poor colt and carried him away!” Fluttershy looked down at the ground in disappointment of herself, “I tried to stop them, but, but they wouldn’t listen! I followed them all the way here. I would go inside, but I’m a tad scared…”

“Well,” Dash moved over to Fluttershy and put her arm around her, “with me here, there is no need to be scared any longer! Let’s go!”

Before Dash could force Fluttershy inside, Elusive politely cleared his throat, to remind Dash that he was still there too. Dash looked hopefully at Fluttershy, wanting to just leave him behind.

“I...” Fluttershy stammered at first, “I would prefer it if he came in with us…”

Dash whipped her head around and glared at him. Elusive just smiled. He walked right next to the opening and paused.

“Ladies first!” Elusive told the mares, as he motioned to the open passageway.

Fluttershy giggled quietly as she walked past, with Dash right on her heels. Elusive however, stuck out his hoof to stop Dash from passing.

“I believe somepony owes an apology,” Elusive explained, with no malicious intents.

Dash paused to think about this for a moment. “Na, not really,” she replied and side-stepped his hoof and went off to catch up with Fluttershy.

Elusive was left with his jaw dropped open. He sighed and headed off in pursuit.
********************************************************************

A little while in, Fluttershy started to have a conversation with Dash just soft enough that Elusive couldn’t hear.

“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy whispered as sternly as possible. “Why did you have to be so mean to him?

Rainbow Dash turned and looked at her, “I…I just don’t trust him.”

Fluttershy raised an eyebrow, “Why? Did…did he do anything to you?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head. “No, no he hasn’t. But for some reason, something about him just bugs me.”

“Oh, alright…” Fluttershy replied meekly, “But, could you please try to be nicer to him though? I mean, he’s hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Rainbow sighed. “Fine,” she whispered back, “I’ll try. But I’m not making any promises.”

Fluttershy just smiled. “That’s all I want.”

Rainbow looked back at the colt following them. “What the dude’s name anyways?” she asked Fluttershy.

“I…I don’t know,” Fluttershy replied quietly, “I was going to introduce myself first to him…but I never got the chance to. I thought it would be rude of me to ask him without giving mine first.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and do it now?” she suggested. 

“Oh…I guess that would be fine,” Fluttershy pondered this idea, and found no wrong with it, “Would you come with me?”

“Na, go without me,” Rainbow pushed that idea away, “I will probably end up making fun of his name, better not do it to his face.”

“Oh...okay then,” Fluttershy started to walk back to Elusive.

“Hey, one more thing,” Rainbow whispered back to Fluttershy. She turned back and walked with Rainbow Dash again.

“Remember our bet?” Rainbow asked.

Fluttershy nodded. “I…I’m pretty sure that I haven’t messed up yet.”

“Ya…” Rainbow seemed half-interested in what Fluttershy said. She glanced back once again at Elusive. “It has become more important than ever to keep it though, I want to test something and if you break the bet, it all becomes pointless.”

“Umm…okay,” Fluttershy was confused about what Rainbow Dash was talking about. Fluttershy slowly slowed her pace until the colt had caught up with her.

“Hello…” Fluttershy said when Elusive was finally standing by her side.

“Hello again,” Elusive returned her greeting.

“Umm,” she stared at the ground for a bit, before looking up at Elusive, “may I ask what your name is?”

“Of course you can,” Elusive replied sweetly. “My name is Elusive. What’s yours?”

“Oh, my name is Fluttershy,” she responded softly, “and the name of my friend over there is…Dash.”

“I’ll have to introduce myself to her later on,” Elusive commented. “It seems like we haven't gotten off on the right hoof.”

“Oh. I’m sorry about that,” she replied apologetically.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Elusive gave a small smile. “There’s nothing you could have done about it. What is in the past is in the past.”

Before Fluttershy could respond, Rainbow Dash called back from up ahead.

“Hey! I see light coming from over there!” Elusive saw that see was pointing to the left at something. She turned and headed off in the direction she had pointed.

“Let’s go,” Elusive stated. He looked down into Fluttershy’s eyes. She just looked up and him and nodded. He hurried off after Rainbow, with Fluttershy making sure that she was by his side.
********************************************************************

The trio popped their heads out of a nearby bush, one after another, to see what lay ahead of them. There was a tall wooden poll stationed at one end of a clearing, which formally was a tree. It had died due to all the other trees taking over all of the available sunlight. It was now being used as a holding devise for a prisoner. He was the colt that was talked about by Fluttershy. He was struggling now and then to get free from his prison. His purple legs had started to get little marks from the pressure of the ropes.

His captors were in fact the rabbits that Fluttershy had chased. They now had little lines underneath their eyes and some of them carried weapons, such as mini-spears. They marched around the colt, checking in periodically to make sure he was not going to escape. On a lowly stump, they had placed the captor’s precious hat. There was a humongous black pot in the middle of this encampment, roasting over a camp fire.

“Applejack?!” Elusive exclaimed. 

The trio ducked back down behind the bush, so they wouldn’t be seen by any of the rabbits.

“You know that colt?” Rainbow Dash questioned.

“I do,” Elusive responded. “He is one of the colts that I came to town with. He is a good friend of mine, though we don’t always see eye to eye.”

“Gotcha,” Rainbow Dash said. “Let’s go take out the bunnies and save your friend!”

Rainbow Dash started to get out of the hiding spot.

“Hold it!” Fluttershy commanded meekly . Rainbow stopped in her tracks and looked over at her, “I don’t think just going at them is a good idea. Someone might get hurt…”

“I agree,” Elusive backed Fluttershy up on her idea. “We don’t want to cause injuries that can be easily avoided.”

“Oh come on,” Rainbow countered, “they’re just bunnies…”

“Oh, never under estimate a rabbit,” Fluttershy quietly answered, “they can be very mean sometimes...”

“Let’s make a plan of course of action that doesn’t include barbarically attacking,” Elusive pitched.

“A plan!?” Rainbow couldn’t believe what she was hearing, “A plan for tiny, delicate bunnies? I mean, if he was captured by some other ponies, then maybe a plan would work, but just bunnies?!”

Fluttershy and Elusive both gave Rainbow Dash a stern look. She finally gave in.

“Fine,” she said with a heavy sigh, “what’s the plan?”
*********************************************************************

Fluttershy and Elusive headed away from their bush encampment and went into their planed positions. Rainbow stayed behind in the bushes, waiting for her time to come. Fluttershy went to the very front of the camp and started her part of the operation.

“Umm, may I speak to you all…please?” Fluttershy spoke nervously. She had faith that they wouldn’t attack her… at first at least.

She was right. The rabbits’ first move seemed to be one of aggression, however, when they recognized the speaker, they decided against it.

“I…I’m sorry that this colt that you have here ate some of the carrot you found,” she continued, “but that doesn’t mean you can just tie him up.” 

Fluttershy began to read the bunnies the riot act, but they paid as much attention to her as students do on the last day of school. Elusive on the other hand was sneaking through the shadows around the back of the camp. Due to the sudden appearance of Fluttershy, he easily slipped behind the wooden poll that Applejack was tied to. His horn glowed softly as he used his magic to carefully remove the ropes from Applejack. The ropes eventually fell to the ground, with Applejack soon following with a soft womp. 

“Huh?” Applejack asked, confused about what was going on.

“Don’t move!” Elusive hissed. Applejack looked over his shoulder to see his rescuer.

“Elusive?” Applejack questioned the fact that of all ponies he would be rescued by him.

Elusive’s horn started to glow once again. This time, it wasn’t the only thing glowing. Applejack’s body had now started to radiate a dim light pink color. Applejack looked around frantically, puzzled about the whole situation.

“Don’t…move!” Elusive hissed once again.

This time Applejack obeyed. When the dim glowing around Applejack’s body and Elusive’s horn had finally ended, Elusive stepped a couple of steps backward. Applejack had a bewildered look on his face, before and even more after Elusive seemed to randomly shout, “Now!”

All the rabbits who were pretending to be engrossed in Fluttershy’s speech whipped around to see that their captive was now living free. However, before they could do anything to stop him, the bush the trio had called their base exploded into a variety of braches and leaves. Rainbow Dash shot out of it like a cannon and flew straight over to where Applejack was standing. She picked him up with ease and took off straight into the skies (the spell Elusive had cast made Applejack as light as a feather). The only thing left of Applejack left behind was picked up by Elusive as he ran back to Fluttershy.

“Allez! Come on!” Elusive commanded her with a hint of panic in his voice.

“But...but,” Fluttershy tried to protest, “I can stop the rabbits!”

Elusive didn’t believe her, “Not when they’re like this!” He paused before saying, “Please?”

Fluttershy looked up at Elusive, “Okay…” she quietly responded.

She hopped on his back, something that Elusive was not expecting. After a few stumbles, he got up to speed and sped off as fast as he could, with an army of angry rabbits chancing after him.
*******************************************************************

Meanwhile…

A dusky, gloomy room held the most important thing to Pinkie Pie. The only source for light was a lonely light bulb that swung back and forth, casting long shadows across the walls.  The entrance was barred shut by a sturdy wooden door. Knocking could be heard from the other side.

“Let us in!” a voice cried desperately. “We can’t let you do this to him!”

There seemed to be no answer. A strange figure however gradually crept up behind the door. Its skin was a sooty, faint pink color. The hair of this beast was a dismal mix of purple and pink. The hair fell over one eye, blocking out any of the light that was shown its way. When it had finally arrived at its destination, it yelled in a bone-chilling voice, “No one takes the guest of honor!”

It slammed one of its hooves into the door, which gave off an earth shattering bang. Whoever was unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end seemed to have swiftly fled in pure terror.

The creature was satisfied. It crept back into the far debts of the room, hoping that its treasure would be disturbed no more…
*******************************************************************

“I…I can’t…I can’t go any farther,” Elusive was gasping for air in between words.

It had only been a quarter of a mile, but to Elusive it seemed like eternity. He was never one for sweaty, physical exercise, such as running, and now it was definitely showing. His adrenaline had helped him get so far, with the loud noise of the rabbits chasing after him, but his energy tank was starting to go on empty.

“I…” Elusive’s breathing made it hard to figure out what he was trying to say, “I just can’t…”

He finally collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. Fluttershy slowly got off, not sure what was going to happen.

“Go!” Elusive wheezally commanded her. “Save yourself! I’ll try to hold them off as long as I can!”

Instead of obeying his command however, Fluttershy stood facing the incoming rabbit attack. They were getting closer and closer, and Elusive was pretty sure that either Fluttershy had not heard him or that she was petrified with fear. However, neither seemed to be the case when she shouted with some actually firmness and volume behind it, “Stop!”

The rabbits in the front of the attacking stampede quickly put on the brakes, causing themselves to start sliding across the ground. The rabbits behind them couldn’t react in time, and ended up colliding into the ones in front of them. This continued for all the rows of incoming rabbits, until there was a giant pile of furry body parts heaped right in front of Fluttershy and a shocked Elusive.

“You all should be ashamed of yourselves,” Fluttershy scolded the pile a la rabbit, “this is no way to treat guests of your forest!”

She leaned into the pile to single out one in particular.

“And you Angel!” Fluttershy plucked him out of the pile and placed the little guy in front of her. “After calling peace before, you still went ahead and attacked-- “

She broke away from staring down Angel and looked over at Elusive. “You said his name was Applejack?”

All Elusive could do was give a dumb stricken nod. Fluttershy continued sternly on her speech.

“--Applejack and captured him and planned to do who-knows-what to him!” Fluttershy stepped back a little to help drive in the last line. “I am very disappointed in you.”

Angel looked gloomily at the ground, agreeing with the disappointment. He gave a tiny sniff, trying to hold back his rabbit tears.

“There, there,” Fluttershy quietly comforted her friend, “No need to cry. You’re not a bad bunny, I know that. You just made a bad decision. Now, go gather your friends. You just need to find a better spot to keep your carrots. That’s all. I’ll tell Applejack that you’re sorry, okay?”

Angel lifted his head and nodded to show that he understood. He beckoned the rest of the rabbits, who had successfully escaped their pile, to follow him. He slowly hopped back into the trees, with a long trail of rabbits running behind him. 

“Wow…” Elusive’s thoughts were finally coming back to him, “I can never get used to Butterscotch’s, or rather in this case Fluttershy’s, connection to animals.”

Elusive gathered himself and got back on his feet. He walked over and stood next to Fluttershy. When she made eye contact with the colt, she suddenly found her leg something very interesting to look at as her face rapidly gained a tint of red. Before anything could be said, a familiar voice interrupted them once more.

“That. Was. Awesome!” The light blue mare quickly swooped down and landed right in front of the two.

“Ah definitely have to agree,” Applejack quickly slid off Rainbow Dash, gladly returning once again to the ground he knew and loved. “You definitely have a way animals Miss…”

He hung his statement, making hoof motions in the air to show that Fluttershy could finish it for him. It took a little bit for her to notice however. 

“Oh! I’m sorry…” any sign of the stern, bold speaking Fluttershy had quickly disappeared. “My…my name is Fluttershy…”

“Why Ah thank you for helping me out of that jam I was in,” Applejack took off his hat and tipped it towards her in gratitude, “Ah don’t know where Ah would be if you didn’t come along to help! Same goes for you two.”

He made his way from next to Rainbow Dash over to Elusive. He pulled Elusive aside from the other two mares.

“Ah have to say,” Applejack whispered, “Ah’m surprised that you even came out here to this dirty forest and left your clean town behind.”

“I can handle the dirt and mud just fine, thank you very much!” Elusive shot back in whisper form.

Applejack raised an eyebrow. 

“Okay…” a small smile had now replaced the look of pretend offendedness, “maybe I don’t handle dirt the best...”

Applejack grinned. “Maybe?”

Elusive laughed. “Okay, maybe I don’t handle dirt well at all, but that wasn’t going to stop me from saving you. Besides, how could I, a true gentlecolt, deny a mare’s call for help?”

“Oh, Ah see how it is!” Applejack had on a wide grin as he teasingly made eye motions from Elusive over to Fluttershy.

“What? No…you got it all wrong!” Elusive was now flustered, which caused 
Applejack to burst out laughing. “I don’t…you know that…do you know who she is in our universe?”

“Who?” Applejack asked, still grinning from ear to ear.

“Butterscotch!” he exclaimed. He intently quieted his voice when he saw that Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had started to stare over at them. 

Applejack stopped his annoying grin and thought about that for a second. He glanced over at Fluttershy a few times, to double check Elusive’s suspicions. He finally stopped and just stared back at Elusive.

“Ah always knew you had a thing for Butterscotch!” he exclaimed before breaking out into laughter once more.

“What?!” Elusive yelled angrily, causing Applejack to laugh even more. He looked back over at the other two to see now that they had started to walk over to them.

“Umm...are…are you okay?” Fluttershy asked with genuine concern.

Applejack’s laughter slowly settled down. “Ya…” he still wore the great grin on his face. “Ya, Ah’m alright. Just got a little carried away there.”

“A little?” Elusive asked scornfully, a tad pissed off at Applejack. All Applejack could do was smile back.

“O…kay then,” Rainbow stated, completely unaware of just went down. She just wanted to get out of there and leave Elusive. “I’m gonna go now…”

“Hey,” Applejack held out his hoof, “thanks once again Miss…er…Rainbow--”

“—Dash,” Elusive finished for him, “Rainbow Dash.”

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy exchanged glances. Rainbow then busted out a toothy grin.

“No, no, no!” she spoke slowly, sounding like there was a hint of evil intent in every word. “It was all, my pleasure.” 

She shook Applejack’s out stretch hoof. Applejack and Elusive then exchanged set of glances of their own, ones full of confusion and uncertainty. Rainbow whipped around and faced Fluttershy.

“Come on Fluttershy,” Rainbow motioned Fluttershy to follow her, still having the weird tone in her voice, “I believe we have something that needs to be done.”

“We…we do?” Fluttershy didn’t like the way Rainbow Dash was acting. It made her very uncomfortable to just be around her.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy walked off, with the latter almost being forcefully shoved so they could leave quicker. As they left, Applejack could make out the words “clones”, “trap”, and “Twilight” being spoken by Rainbow. When the two had completely disappeared back into the forest, Elusive let out a heavy sigh.

“What was that all about?” Elusive questioned.

“Ah don’t know,” Applejack spoke slowly, “but Ah’m pretty sure that we’ll surely find out, whether we like it or not…”

Elusive nodded in agreement before turning to his left.

“I say let’s go home,” Elusive exclaimed. “I’ve had enough of this filthy forest for a whole year!”

As he started to hurry off, Applejack called him.

“Elusive,” Applejack gestured to their right, “Ponyville is that way.” 

“Oh, hehe,” Elusive quickly made a U-turn and started off in a great haste.

Applejack just rolled his eyes. Before he followed in pursuit, he glanced over once more to where Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had walked away. He wished that they wouldn’t run into those two ever again.

But sadly, that would turn out not to be the case.

> Chapter 13: The Rescue Party...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“This is never going to work you know...”

“Shhh! I’m trying to listen in!”

Dusk Shine rolled his eyes. Spines had begged him to cast a spell to magically increase their hearing. She had come up with a plan that involved eavesdropping on random ponies’ conversations in order to find out information relating to their missing friends. Her certain target was two mares gossiping next to an average wooden bench.

“I’ve crunched the numbers,” Dusk explained to Spines, who were both hiding behind a nearby building, “and even if we eavesdrop successfully on five different conversations for five minutes each, there is only a 32.3 (repeating of course) percent chance that we’ll find any important information. I suggest that we…”

Spines whipped around from her position at looking at her target to blow another “Shhhhh!” into his face.

“I’m trying to listen here!” she complained once more. “This is just the sort of thing that had me upset at you before. You being all the boss and what not. Why don’t we just go with my plan for once, forget about all the math and science who-haw have to say. Just trust me on this.”

Dusk looked down to see Spines’ serious expression. He cracked a small smile and nodded his head.

“Okay,” Dusk replied calmly, “even though I’m pretty sure I could figure out a better plan, I’ll trust you on this one.”

“That’s all I want,” Spines spoke as she turned her attention back to the gossiping mares, “a little truth and respect.”

Dusk walked up next to Spines and tuned his own amplified listening skills onto the conversation happening across the road.

“And that’s why I know, like, the difference between a mouthwash and toilet cleaner very well!” The first mare explained. Her hair was a rich blonde color and was laid in bumpy chunks. Her skin was a pink with a hint of purple.

The other mare laughed. “I would imagine so! That’s seems like a real crazy event!” Her hair contained two different tones of hair color, one was a dark blue and the other was your average pink. Her hair stayed perfectly straight, until it reached the very end when it curved back upon itself. Her skin’s pigment was a very light beige.

“Ooh that reminds me,” the blonde mare exclaimed, “have you heard what Pinkie Pie is doing today?”

“Let me guess,” the two-toned mare replied, “is she, like, throwing another party?”

“Yes, but that isn’t the interesting part!” The blonde mare explained. “What I’ve heard is that it’s for a random colt that, like, no one has seen before.”

“Really?”

“You know what else I’ve heard?” The blonde paused for dramatic effect, “I heard that he’s totally a cutie.” 

“Really?” the two-toned one replied once more. “I wish I could, like, get into that party…Why didn’t she invite us?”

“Phff, who needs an invite?” the two-toned looked at the blonde with confusion. “I was going to totally go over there right after I was done talking with you and, like, walk straight in there. I don’t think Pinkie Pie, like, even cares who shows up, as long as ponies are there.”

“Hey that’s right!” the two-toned mare smiled. “She, like, totally won’t mind if we drop in. Let’s go right now! I really want to see how cute this cutie is.”

They stormed off, leaving the spying duo behind. Spines turned around and gave Dusk a gigantic toothy grin.

“And you said it wouldn’t work,” Spines gloated. “See, this is what happens when you listen to my genius.”

“Hmm, I guess I do need to place a little more trust in your abilities,” Dusk pondered out loud. He motioned for Spines to follow. “Come on now, we have some party crashers to follow. They are our only lead.”

Dusk started to leave when he heard an “Em hem!” behind him. He turned to back to see Spines with her arms crossed across her chest.

“What did I just talk about?” she asked kiddingly.

Dusk smiled and gave a soft chuckle. “Do you agree with this course of action, assistant that I should treat more like an equal and give more respect and trust to?”

Spines giggled. “Yes I do.”

She quickly climbed on top of Dusk’s back. Dusk then hurried off after the gossiping mares, hoping that they hadn’t gotten too far ahead of them.
****************************************************************************************
Even if for some reason they weren’t able to follow the gossiping mares, it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out where the party was taken place. When Dusk and Spines arrived at the party’s destination, the Sugarcube Corner, the party was going in full swing. The music that was booming inside could be heard from roughly half a mile away and the gingerbread themed building was vibrating with every bass beat.

Streamers were attached in a random assortment of areas on the lower part of the roof. They hung down, causing themselves to get in the way of ponies entering or exiting. A few lonely balloon animals had separated themselves from the others and had been scattered around the entrance. One balloon animal had even taken encampment on top of the roof.  

The pink and normally clear windows seemed to take some sort of beating. Some of them had gotten little smudges streaked across them. A small window near the far left side had a small crack going down its right side. Dusk noticed that one of the front windows had a giant red stain plastered to it from the inside.

“Umm…” Spines was not sure about the look of the situation, “are you sure we should go inside?”

Dusk nodded sternly. “It’s the only lead we have so far. And if my prediction is right, that random colt that the two gossipers were talking about is one of our lost friends.

Dusk open the door and walked straight inside. Spines gulped nervously and hurried in after him. She bumped into the back of Dusk as he had paused to look around the partying Sugarcube Corner.

The first thing that stuck out to Spines was not the fact that the inside of the Sugarcube Corner had seemed to grow twice its size to fit all the ponies, nor was it the loud blasting music that pumped life with every  thundering beat, nor even the wild assortment of activities that were taking place. No, the first thing that caught Spines’ eyes was the almost purely white skinned, fashionably purple haired unicorn that seemed to get a lot of attention from the colts that walked past.

Spines grabbed Dusk’s head and pointed it in the direction of the mare. “That’s Elusive’s mare double,” she shouted in Dusk’s ear, just so she could be heard over the sound of the music.

Dusk stared at the mare in question. “The resemblance would be uncanny otherwise,” Dusk commented. “She also seems to fit Rainbow Blitz’s description. And, wow, he wasn’t kidding.”

Before he could say anything more, the Elusive doppelganger felt Dusk’s eyes staring at her. She casually turned to look in Dusk’s direction and made eye contact with him. He quickly pulled his eyes away, but it was too late. The mare Elusive had already started to stroll over to them.

“Why, hello you two,” she said simple, situating a small sway in every step. “I believe I have not seen either of you two before. May I ask where you are from?” 

“We’re…err…from…emm…” Dusk stumbled over his words.

“We’re from a town way far away,” Spines stepped in to help the bumbling buffoon. “We’ve never decided to travel in this direction before.”

“That would make sense,” the mare replied. A small smile appeared on her face. “May I ask, what the name of this town is?”

Spines was caught completely unprepared. “Err…it doesn’t really matter what the name is. You’ve probably never heard of it…”

“Oh, but I insist!” The mare kept on pushing for more details. “I really like to know where my new found friends are from!”

“Well, uh…” Spines looked around for some help. Her eyes landed on Dusk, who had seemed to go out of commission since the arrival of Elusive’s counterpart. 

“Why don’t I let Dusk, our local town expert, tell you?” she asked the mare, as she japed her elbow into the upper thigh of Dusk.

“Ow!” he exclaimed in a way that deducted a lot of points from his colt card. “What was that for?”

“A town name,” Spines hissed. “We need to come up with a town name!”

“Oh, a-a town name,” Dusk eyes darted around, searching for inspiration. When his eyes landed on the questioning mare, he gave a nervous smile and continued on.

“The town…our town name is…” Dusk tried to stall this out as long as he could. His eyes finally rested upon something interesting. Then it hit him.

“Who brings a beach ball to a party?” Elusive’s doppelganger exclaimed. She turned around to see who could’ve thrown it at Dusk. As she searched the skyline of numerous ponies, Dusk made a small attempt at kicking the ball, but whiffed. 

“Come on Dusk, think!” he whipped his head around frantically. His eyes caught a glace of the almost pure white perfectly shaped body. After a tiny bit of a delay, he moved his eyes away once more.

“Rainbow Blitz was right about what he said about her, that’s for sure,” his thoughts lagged behind his eyes, “She fits his description to a tee.”

To get his attention away from the mare who was still searching the surrounding ponies with a scowl on her face, his eyes searched around once more. This time he caught not something interesting, but someone. Two ponies standing around one of the many punch bowls were the same two ponies that had started the chase scene before, with Dusk being the victim. He managed to focus in on their conversation, due to his hearing still being souped-up from the magic. 

“Want some more, doc?” the younger colt with the thick brown hair asked. 

“N-no thank you,” the older colt with the thinning white hair responded. “We need to focus on f---“

“As I was saying…” Elusive’s doppelganger had seemed to have given up finding the culprit of the ball situation. She turned and looked straight at Dusk. “What is your town’s name?”

“Umm…” he stuttered once more. He knew he had to make up something, no matter how bad it was. Stalling was just making it more obvious.

“Err…” he sputtered. He looked once more at the beach ball at his hooves. “It’s b- ball…”

He looked back up to see the purple haired mare once more. “…tee…”

He whisked his eyes back over to the strange two colts that had chased him before. “…more. Ballteemore.”

The sound of a slap soon followed. Dusk looked down at saw that Spines had indeed face palmed. She slowly removed her hand and nodded with a shipped in smile.

“Ya,” she repeated sheepishly, “Ballteemore.” 

Elusive’s doppelganger just smiled and nodded. However, after a moment, she suddenly exclaimed, “Really? I have a friend that lives there!” 

Dusk and Spines just looked at each other in shock. “You do?” they asked simultaneously.

“Yes!” she continued right on. “It’s right next to Baltimare, isn’t it?”

“Umm…yes, yes it is,” Dusk decided to go along with it, “the original founders got mad with some of the neighbors…so they spilt the town in half. Sadly, Baltimare had access to Horseshoe Bay and Ballteemore didn’t, so the latter never really grew in size.”

The purple haired mare shook her head a little bit, “That’s really sad. However, the town does have a very quaint charm, doesn’t it?”

Spines nodded her head. “Ah…yes, yes it does.” She looked at Dusk once more in surprise that this mare had actually known the town Dusk had made up.

The purple haired mare nodded back. “Oh, how rude of me!” she exclaimed. “I should introduce you to the host of the party! I’m good friends with her and I know she would love to meet you two”! 

She turned away from them and called into the mess of partying ponies, “Pinkie Pie! You have more guests!” 

After a short moment, a sudden ruckus appeared. Ponies dodged and twisted quickly to try to get out of the way of a pink pony. She bounced along happily, paying no attention to the ponies diving every which way. When she finally arrived in front of Dusk and Spines, she threw her front legs into the air (which spilled anything left in the red plastic cup she had rested on her hoof) and sang, “Ta-dah!”  

Spines eyed the pink menace. Her hair was kept in organized chaos, with the reddish-pink strands falling down her back in curvy and mangled manner. Her tail poofed out in the same color, which twisted and curved its way downward, before stopping right before the floor.  Her joyous smile, filled with happiness, gleamed from her light pink face.

Spines looked over at Dusk, who now displayed a great look of concern. He had perfect reason to, because his first meeting with one of these party ponies had gone so well.

“Are you two new guys too!” the pink party pony exclaimed with excitement. “That makes three so far today. Well, really four because of the one Rarity talked about, but I haven’t met him yet but hopefully I do because I would really love to make another new friend and he might not have any and he might love to have me be his!” 

“Umm…” Dusk tried to recover from the blast of words that had just been shot into his face. He decided that he should at least try to bring the conversation back to a more logical level. However, if this new pony was anything like Berry Bubble, he knew there was no chance of any of that. 

“Are you Pinkie Pie, the host of this party?” Dusk asked slowly.

“You betcha!” Words just kept on spewing out of her mouth. “And this here is my friend Rarity, but you probably knew that already. I’m throwing this party for a new friend I just made not too long ago, just an hour in fact! I wish he could enjoy this party as much as I am right now, but sadly he really needed to take a nap, so I let him sleep on my bed upstairs. I made sure it was nice and comfortable for him!”

“Aww, that’s where he is?” Rarity replied. “I was wondering where he was, I wanted to meet him. Say, Pinkie Pie…” Rarity slid next to her and nudged Pinkie Pie with her shoulder, “can you show me upstairs and see if we can wake him up?”

Pinkie Pie whipped her head from side to side, causing strands of her hair to swing back and forth rapidly across her face. “No can do. I promised myself that I wouldn’t wake him until he felt like waking up by himself. Don’t want him to feel bad during his own party!”

Rarity stepped back, a tad shocked by the rejection. “Are you sure?” she pleaded once more, “But, I’ve heard great things about him…and a lot of it from the appearance department.”

Pinkie Pie this time turned into a huge pink bobblehead. “I’m sure,” she repeated the “sure” in the same manner that Rarity had done and giggled. “But I can describe to you what he looks like!”

Pinkie Pie began to slowly stroke her chin. “Let’s see,” she thought for a moment. She stayed still, holding her hoof halfway down her chin. Suddenly, she popped back to life. “Oh I remember now! He was purple, just a little bit darker than Twilight, but a little bit lighter than a well picked grape. He had a cutie mark, but I don’t remember what the shape was exactly, some sort of animal I think. Anyways, it was the color of a classic jelly donut, maybe just a little bit lighter. His hair color reminded me of green frosting, the good kind, not the bad kind. His hair also curved a little bit, and his tail reminded me of a mop when it’s wet and you pick it up and it starts dripping a little bit onto the floor because you didn’t dry it out well enough.”

“Ookay Pinkie Pie,” Rarity responded. “Thanks for that…lovely description.” 

“Umm, yes thank you Pinkie Pie,” Dusk repeated. He knew that they should really get out of this conversation, before more ponies got involved. “I think…umm I really need to get a drink. I…had some…pretzels before and I haven’t had anything to drink since then, to wash away the salt. Boy,” he smacked his lips to emphasize his point, “those pretzels are making me thirsty. Come on Spines.”

Dusk scrambled away awkwardly, almost bumping into a pony walking the other direction. Spines hurried off after him in pursuit, shaking her head a little bit at Dusk. Pinkie Pie whipped around and waved after them energetically. Suddenly, she gave small hop, looking like she remembered something she was going to do.  She then blasted off to whatever or wherever she needed to be.
*************************************************************************************
“Really Dusk, Ballteemore?” Spines questioned.

After getting away from Rarity and Pinkie Pie, they had snuck through the masses of partiers and had made their way quietly to the steps at the back of the first level’s main room. They had scampered up the steps and had arrived in front of a normal oak door.

“I panicked, okay?” Dusk answered defensively. “You of all ponies should know that I do horrible under pressure!”

Spines giggled softly, remembering embarrassing moments from Dusk’s past. 

“Besides,” Dusk spoke up once again before Spines had a chance to talk about those moments, “she believed us, didn’t she? We’re in the clear now.”

Spines shrugged. That stumbling to make up a name had gone over with Rarity really well. Too well in fact. She must have gone along with what Dusk said, even though she knew it was made up and not a real town.

“But why?” Spines pondered. “Why wouldn’t she accuse us right on the spot? Maybe she was being nice, showing that she respected the reason for our secrecy. That’s probably it. I know Elusive would do the same thing if he met a stranger like that. He’s sweet like that…”

A crisp knocking noise brought Spines out of her thoughts and back to reality. Dusk had gone the polite route and had begun to rap on the door.

“If my calculations are correct,” he waited a moment before starting another round of knocks, “the colt behind this door should be Butterscotch.”

Dusk knocked once more. No response. He gave a hard push against the door. It didn't move an itch.

“Here, let me try,” Spines stated, gesturing Dusk to move aside.

Spines reared back and sprinted toward the wooden door as fast as her little legs could carry her.

*Bang*

Spines tumbled back and collided into the side of Dusk. She slowly gathered herself back to her feet only to see that the door had seemed to go under no changes. Suddenly, a voice growled out from behind the door.

“Who goes there?” it asked in a raspy tone. The voice would be somewhat terrifying, if it didn’t start at such a high pitch before going lower in tone.

Dusk and Spines looked at each other. That was definitely not Butterscotch’s voice. 

“Umm, we’re friends of a colt that we have been told is up here,” Dusk replied nervously, “can we see him?”

“No, no you cannot!”  The throaty voice replied. “He must be protected until his party is done.”

“Please?” Spines pleaded. “We need to talk to him and get going. I mean he—“

Spines was cut off by a low growling sound. It got slowly louder and louder until “No one takes the guest of honor!” rang out.

Dusk and Spines exchanged glances. The shout that had ringed out had flipped on and off from the gruff voice from before to a non-menacing squeal. Soon after the yell had diminished, a soft thump could be heard from the other side of the door.

“I’m…” Dusk started, a tad puzzled about what just happened, “I’m just gonna teleport inside now…”

“No, no please don’t,” it was the voice inside’s turn to plead, “it is very *cough* *cough* *sputter* *cough* dangerous to come inside!”

But the voice’s warning was completely ignored. Dusk’s horn began to shine and he enveloped himself in bright light. When the light had faded away, he found himself in a poorly lit room, with all the outer light being closer off by the light blue curtains. Directly in front of Dusk, there was bed, with alternating light and dark pale green checker pattern. The bed seemed to bulge on one end, and there was a slight shiver periodically. 

“Please stay out!” the voice called once again, this time behind Dusk. “Pretty please?”

Dusk curiously turned around to find out who the owner of the suspicious voice was.  He was greeted by the backside of a grayish pink mare. Her tail’s hair was completely straight, well it would be if it wasn’t taken over by gravity and forced downward. Her hair color was a dull, dreary pink and the hair on her head followed the straight design as her tail. Most of the hair fell off to the right, making her right eye live in darkness.

“I hear no more noises,” the gruffness slowly lifted from the voice. “Yay! Good job Rosy!” She went over and patted the chair that was propped up against to the door, “Thanks for helping me keep them out! You know your work is always cherished by me.” 

Dusk cleared his throat to let the mare known that she was sadly mistaken.

The mare whipped around to see who had made the sound. After seeing Dusk standing there, she gave a quick smile, turned back around, and whipped her head back to Dusk once more, this time with a serious look on her face.

“Get out before it’s too late!” she warned, back in her old, raspy voice. “This is…oh, forget it.”

She slumped down unto her haunches and looked glumly at the floor in defeat.

“Umm, is that you Pinkie Pie?” Dusk asked, as he slowly made his way over to her.

“You betcha…” Pinkie Pie replied with none of the joyous enthusiasm that she had when she had said that line moments ago.

“May I ask what was with you and talking in that strange voice?” Dusk inquired.

“I was trying to scare away you and your little dragon friend from this room and prevent you two from taking Butterscotch…” she motioned slowly to the budding bed, “my guest of honor, from the party. I put so much effort and heart into this party, and now you’re going to ruin it by taking him away.”

She looked at floor once more and sighed. She continued on in sadness, “When I saw you and your friend, I guessed that you would end up coming looking for him,” she looked up at him and cracked a half-hearted smile. “We don’t get a lot of new ponies in Ponyville, and I figured one new colt in town is probably looking for the other one.”

Dusk gave a small smile back. “That’s good deduction on your part. Maybe you should become a detective,” he joked, trying to brighten up the depressing mood.

“Heh, ya,” Pinkie Pie responded with as much excitement as a charter accountant’s job. “Anyways, I gathered up some friends here and even requested a post that was an over exaggerated foreshadowing of this event in the chapter before…”

Dusk ignored the ending of the last sentence and focused on the “friends” that she had mentioned. He surveyed the room for any pony that he somehow had missed, but he didn’t find anyone to speak of.

“Err…what friends?” Dusk asked.

“Well, I have Rosy here keeping the door shut,” she gestured her hoof towards the chair she was talking to before, “and I have Donald on look out,” she pointed to a book with glasses taped onto the front, “who didn’t do a very good job at it!”

Dusk looked from Pinkie Pie, to the book, and back again at Pinkie Pie. As Pinkie Pie randomly cringed, he could have sworn that the area behind her changed from the normal door scene to a strange image that was a pure green color with random bright red dots smeared in all different locations. He blinked, and the green mess was no more.

“So take him,” Pinkie Pie threw her arm up lazily in the direction of her bed. “Take him and leave me alone in my partyless misery…”

Dusk slowly turned around and started to head for the bed. He only took a few steps before he suddenly stopped.

“I can’t leave her like this!” his thoughts exclaimed. “Mare doppelganger or not, she still is my friend Bubble Berry . I’ve got to help her out of this! But how? What would Prince Solaris do?”

Dusk stared to pace back and forth between Pinkie Pie and Butterscotch. After a few moments of elaborating ideas in the almost darkness, he began to give his speech to Pinkie Pie.

“Pinkie Pie,” he stated, trying to get the mares attention before he started. She looked up at him with sorrow filled eyes. “I’m sorry that Butterscotch has to leave with me, but you shouldn’t focus on that fact. Nothing good will come out of that attitude. You should instead embrace the time you got to spend with him and cherish those memoires. I know Butterscotch would not like to see you all upset over his departure.”

Silence filled the room. Dusk wasn’t sure if he had said the right thing. He had never really been good at the whole “talking with girls” thing. 

Pinkie Pie suddenly sprang to her feet, “Does that mean I should throw a going away party of Butterscotch?”

“Umm…” Dusk wasn’t quite sure if that was really the main measure behind his spiel. “Sure…why not!”

“Yippee!” she screamed, throwing her arms into the air with pure excitement. As soon as the word escaped her lips, her hair suddenly poofed back to its normally curly self. Her skin also brightened back up into its normal joyous pink color. “Thanks Dusk!”

“Err…you’re welcome?” He was going to say more, but he was stopped in his tracks by a surprise hug from Pinkie Pie. It lasted just a moment, because Pinkie Pie was soon on the move once again as she blasted out the door, with Rosy falling to the side. Pinkie Pie came roaring back as soon as she left however, and flew past Dusk to go to her bed. She yelled, “Have a nice trip Butterscotch! Hope you enjoyed your one of a kind party!”

Dusk felt a breeze go past him and he looked around to see that Pinkie Pie was no more. He glanced at the door and could still see it moving back and forth. Spines peered through the open door way with a puzzled look. She cautiously stepped inside and started to head over by Dusk.

“Umm…,” she glanced back at the doorway, confused, “what just happened?”

Dusk chuckled. “I have no idea. The important thing is that Butterscotch is safe.”

They headed over to the quivering bed. Dusk magically levitated the thick covers and moved them aside. Underneath was a trembling and confused purple colt.

“Hey Butterscotch, it all gonna be fine now,” Spines comforted. “We’re here to help!” 

“Oh, am I glad to see you guys!” Butterscotch stopped his shaking and peered back up at them. “I was going to hide in this bed until the party was over. It was all going well until Bubble Berry ’s mare version started making that scary voice…”

“Well, she’s gone and so is her scary voice,” Dusk explained.

“That’s good to hear,” Butterscotch stumbled out of the bed and carefully placed the covers back where they belong with gentleness. “I was so nervous when she started to list off all the ponies she was going to invite. Especially when she listed her best friends.”

“Us you mean?”  Dusk asked. “Do you remember their names?”

Butterscotch nodded both times. “My mare version’s name is Fluttershy, Elusive’s mare version’s name is Rarity, and Applejacks’ is Applejack coincidentally. We heard Rainbow Blitz and yours before; Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle.”

Dusk nodded back, remembering their first arrival into this Ponyville. “Well, I have good news, only one of them showed up, which was Rarity.”

“You are correct,” a voice rang out from behind them. “Pinkie Pie got a tad distracted after she invited me.”

Everyone whipped around to see Rarity standing in the doorway. 

“I had some suspicions that you two were not as you seemed,” she took a step forward and used magic to close the door behind her, which allowed her to keep making eye contact. “I appreciate you for putting any remaining of doubts to rest.” 

The trio exchanged glances full of worry and fear.

“Now, I would also appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind just staying up here for a while, until the rest of your friends come looking for you,” a small grin appeared on her face. “If you don’t feel like it, fine. I do however have a nice bucket of water with me here,” she levitated a wooden bucket from behind her and placed it in the center of the room. “I’m pretty sure that my sweet double used a palette swap on you all. This should wipe that silly disguise right off.”

Dusk and Spines gulped while Butterscotch returned to his trembling. 

“W-why Rarity?” Butterscotch asked. 

“Ya Rarity, why would you do this to us?” Spines snapped at her.

“Because, after many years of experience, I have figured out that the only pony that knows how to treat a mare like me that way she deserves would be myself,” Rarity explained. She made some hoof motions to emphasize her points along the way. “And now the opportunity to meet a colt that can treat me as I deserve has finally arrived, thanks to you, and I do not wish for it to be wasted!”

Spines eyes grew three sizes that moment. She whipped around to face away from Rarity.  

“We need to get ourselves out of here!” Spines whispered.

Dusk nodded and lowered his head and voice. “I’ve been doing some thinking and I think that I have come up with a fool-proof plan. I’ll distract her, and you and Butterscotch go for the window. If I remember correctly, they open out onto the roof. Butterscotch can then fly you down to safety,” he turned to Butterscotch. “Is that alright with you?”

Butterscotch responded with several small and shaky nods. 

“Oh, but Dusk, how are you going to get out then?” Butterscotch asked.

“When you guys are safely outside of the window, I’ll wait a few seconds before doing anything,” Dusk explained. “Then, I’ll hurry out the same window and jump down after you. A levitation spell should slow my falling speed down.”

“Oh, okay,” Butterscotch replied timidly.

“But, how are you going to distract her?” Spines raised an eyebrow.

“If she’s anything like Elusive…” Dusk slowly stepped forward and away from the others.

“Okay Rarity, you are clearly too smart for us,” Dusk stated. “As we wait for the others, may I ask how you figured this whole thing out?”

“Well, you see this all started when a friend of yours came by to my boutique,” Rarity started to pace back and forth as she reeled off the day’s events. “See, I thought it was a tad strange that a colt like that would come through town today. Also, the reaction he first gave me when he looked upon me was one of…”

Dusk turned around and smiled. He gestured to the window with his head. Spines got the memo and hurried over and pushed it opened. She hopped out, with Butterscotch following right on her tail…literally. As Spines pulled it out from underneath her foot, Butterscotch began to apologize profusely. She quickly shushed him, and they headed towards the edge of the roof. 

Spines mounted Butterscotch and gave him some encouraging words. He started to shake, before gulping and flying slowly to the ground in very twitchy manner. He still was successful however, as he made a perfect four point landing. Spines got off and stared up at the window they came from.

“…and then I started work on the suit. The hardest part was trying to figure out what colors of materials I would need to use for it. I had to figure in the wings, because I knew that it would be better if they weren’t cramped up in the fabric. Besides, that would look hideous. So, I went to the drawing board and I had…”

Rarity had turned away from Dusk as she continued on with her story of brilliance. Dusk carefully made his way over to the window and gently lower himself down to roof level. He tip-toed across the roof and stopped by its white edge. He was going to jump before he heard a commotion behind him.

“…then I sowed…wait. Where did they go!?”

Dusk jumped off the roof and casted the levitation spell in midair. As he predicted, the spell reduced his falling speed by roughly half. As he fell to the ground, he tumbled a bit, before getting up and brushing himself off. After a quick moment of celebration, Dusk, Spines, and Butterscotch looked up at the place of their imprisonment to see a white and purple blob sticking out.

“Where are you guys going!?” Rarity exclaimed. “Don’t you leave me!” She stuck her head back inside and started to call around. “Pinkie Pie! I need your help wit---!”

The trio didn’t wait around to hear the end of that sentence. They hurried off, hoping that they would find the others before Rarity, or any of the other mare doubles, could.
 

   
> Chapter 14: The Reunion...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Oh, hello there Dusk! Oh, and Butterscotch and Spines! What is the matter?"

Applejack looked up to see that the three Elusive had just listed were indeed running over to them. Dusk arrived first, slumped to the ground, and started to breathe heavily, trying to catch his breath. Butterscotch soon fell in behind him, looking more worried than tired. He carefully bent his knees, allowing Spines to disembark.

“Elusive…your double…” Dusk wheezed. “…Trapped…chasing…figured out….find…others!”

“Hold up there partner,” Applejack replied. “Ah can’t understand a thing of what you’re tryin’ to say. What about Elusive’s double?”

Dusk just continued to breathe heavily. He looked over to Spines for some help in explaining the situation. 

“His mare double, which we found out is named Rarity, is currently chasing us,” Spines explained to Applejack. “Also, we’re pretty dang sure she has figured everything out and wants us, especially Elusive!”

“Wants me?” Elusive answered. “Why does she want me?”

Spines hesitated to give him the answer and just bit her lip. Before either of them could ask her why she was doing that, a call could be heard softly coming from the direction where Dusk, Spines, and Butterscotch had just run from.

“Dusk!” it cooed. “Where are you?”

Dusk shot up in panic, barely recovered.  “There’s no time to explain!” Dusk told Applejack and Elusive. “We need to find the Rainbow Blitz and Bubble Berry eventually. But first, we have to lose Rarity!”

He scampered off in the opposite direction of the voice. Spines quickly hopped back on top of Butterscotch and they followed in pursuit. Applejack and Elusive exchanged a quick glance, before heading after them.
****************************************************************************************
“Dusk-e-poo!” Rarity cooed once more. She went around a corner and continued into an alley, continuing to call, “Where are you? I can assure you that this is all a big misunderstanding!”

“Er…Rarity, what exactly are you doing?”

Rarity turned around to see Twilight Sparkle walking over. She had along with her Applejack, Spike, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy.

“Oh, hiya girls!” Rarity exclaimed. “I was just looking for somepony, but it seems they have disappeared on me.”

“Really? Why, join the club Rarity, we’re all lookin’ for somepony,” Applejack replied.

“Yes, indeed we are,” Twilight echoed in agreement. She levitated a thick, brown covered book that Spike had been carrying and spread it out in front of Rarity. The pages glowed purple as Twilight flipped through them, looking for the correct one.

“Rainbow Dash flew over to me with Fluttershy just before with what I thought was, and still think is a bizarre theory,” Twilight began as the page flipping started to slow. “She first stated that two colts came by her and Fluttershy. The strange thing about them she claimed was that they seemed just like you and Applejack, in both appearance and actions.”

“They even had the same cutie marks!” Rainbow Dash declared. “I saw the Applejack clone dude’s when I had to fly carrying him, and Fluttershy said that she saw that your clone dude had the same cutie mark as well, right Fluttershy?”
A hint of red covered Fluttershy’s face before she nodded.

“Also, Ah encountered a funny colt when I was workin’ on the barn,” Applejack added. “He got himself injured, so Ah sent Applebloom to get Twilight. When Twilight came over to take a look at him, another colt came not to long after. They both flew to coop after a while. Ah never seen them around before, but they somehow knew about me being an element of harmony, and exactly which one Ah was.”

“I was the one who pointed that out,” Spike gloated. “One of them even claimed that they had never been anywhere close to Ponyville. So, when he mentioned Applejack’s honesty, I geniusly figured that something was up with those two.”

“The colt who arrived after I came definitely reminded me of you Rainbow Dash, due to his brashness and the high velocity in which he took off with,” Twilight stopped turning the yellowed pages. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to the other at all, but Applejack told me that he was very random and energetic.” 

“Like me!” Pinkie Pie shot out from behind Rarity, causing her to flinch back. Pinkie Pie turned to her and saluted. “No sign of them to the east of here! Where should we look next captain?”

“Actually Pinkie Pie,” Rarity directed her to the book placed on the ground, “it seems like we are not the only ones looking for our party guests.”

“You see Pinkie Pie,” Twilight motioned to a bolded heading. “These colts may not just be some random strangers who happened to wonder into town. According to page sixty-three of The Universal Guide to Parallel Universes, it might be possible that they are colt versions of us. Personally, I think that is highly unlikely, due to the amount of energy you would need to cross into a different dimension, but Rainbow seems pretty sure of it.”

“It is just like that one Daring Do’s adventure when she discovers a mysterious glass mirror,” Rainbow Dash explained excitedly. “Instead of giving a normal reflection of her, it reflects back an image of a colt that looks exactly like her. Suddenly, a gust of wind pushes a light that was hanging on a pedestal into the mirror and shatters it. As she is scrambling around in the dark, a figure suddenly lights a lamp for her to see. She looks up, and sees the very reflection standing right in front of her! They end up working together, solving all the puzzles that appeared before them! And then, at the end, Daring Do has---“

“Hold up there partner,” Applejack interrupted. “Ah think we all get the point. We don’t need the whole entire fourteen page summery!” 

“The main problem to this theory,” Twilight stated, “is that the colts are all a different color than us. If they were just colt versions, they shouldn’t be a different color.”

“I think I can explain that,” Rarity answered. “I know a spell that allows a pony to change the color of their hair and skin to one of those around them. If Rainbow’s idea is correct and they are colt versions of us, which I also agree with by the way, then the colt version of me could easily have casted the spell and changed all of their colors.”

“Well, the only way to figure this all out and see if that’s for sure is if we find them and ask them!” Twilight declared. “Rainbow Dash, you take the skies and scout around to see if you can get an aerial view of them. The rest of us should stay together and ask ponies around town. If we were to separate, the chance of finding one would increase greatly. However, the colts could easily escape, as they have shown to do multiple times.”

“Roger that!” Rainbow Dash shouted as she blasted off into the sky. The others watched her go, and then decided on continuing the search in the direction Rarity had been going before.
*****************************************************************************************
Rainbow Blitz and Bubble Berry had taken cover in a messy alley way. A couple of trash cans had been tipped over and one of their lids had been thrown to the complete other end. Rainbow Blitz first had planned to use it as some sort of resting place for Bubble’s leg, but it was strangely mangled.

“And I thought my place was a mess,” Rainbow Blitz commented as he kicked a loose can that had spilled out of a ripped open garbage bag. “Kind of wish that some of this stuff was useful.”

He glanced down at Bubble’s swollen leg. “How’s your leg feeling?” he asked.

“It’s feeling better every second!” Bubble exclaimed. He took a few steps up and down the alley way, giving carefree bounces now and then to avoid the scattered garbage. He cringed after Rainbow looked away however. 

“There you guys are!” a familiar voice shouted. Bubble and Rainbow turned to see Dusk and the others coming their way. They maneuvered their way out of the alley way and greeted them in the street.

“What has happened to your leg, Bubble!?” Elusive exclaimed. He raised up Bubble’s leg to get a good look at the swelling and the pink coloring. 

“Well… I was going all detective like to find out information, like we were told to,” Bubble began to tell his day’s story. “I went to the Sugarcube Corner to ask around for some information. There, I was given a task to deliver a blueberry pie. It smelled really good, so I made sure that as I went there I was extra careful with it, you don’t want to ruin someone’s handy work by hitting a little bump and---“

“Can we just get to the part about your leg?” Spines asked impatiently. 

“Oh, that happened when I was being chased and tripped on a root,” Bubble responded.

“C-chased?” Butterscotch asked worriedly. 

“Yep!” Bubble Berry went off once more. “You see, there were these two colts that I’ve never seen before that came around to Sweet Apple Acres, the place where I was being sent with the pie. They---“

“Sorry to stop you Bubble,” Dusk interjected. “But, can you finish this story when we get to a place that is a little more…private? We are currently on the run from Rarity, Elusive’s mare version.”

“Okey-dokey!” Bubble shouted. “Ooh, we can head into the library! When Twilight was busy working out what was wrong with me, she mentioned that she would barely be at the library today, due to all the things she had to do!”

“Sounds like a good idea to me!” Applejack replied. “Let’s go y’all!”

They quickly headed off towards the Golden Oaks Library. Bubble Berry however, slowly began to fall behind the group, limping now and then on his swollen leg. Applejack looked back and saw this. He casually slowed down until Bubble had reached him.

“Need a lift?” Applejack asked as he motioned to his back.

Bubble grinned back. He quickly flopped onto Applejack. After a quick stumble, Applejack hurried off to regroup with the rest.

After a while, they all arrived at the front door to the Golden Oaks Library. Dusk opened the lone door, and let everyone filed in.

Bubble Berry chuckled as he got off Applejack. “Somepony doesn’t like landscaping!” He pointed to the bushes that had been crushed. He chuckled once more before following Applejack inside.

As everyone was inside, Dusk Shine began to close the door. However, he caught a glimpse of some sort of a fast blur moving up above him in the sky. He blew it off.

“My imagination must be playing tricks on me now,” he reasoned. “The stress of this situation is making me see things.”

He carefully closed the front door to join the others. As the door clicked shut, a lone object slowly teetered to the ground. It only settled on the ground for a moment, before a gentle gust came along and blew the light blue feather away.
**************************************************************************************
Numerous of colorful books greeted our intrepid heroes as they slowly walked around the library’s entrance.  It was basically the same library that they were used to, Dusk noted. Books were kept four shelves high and the statue head placed in the center of the room was the same from back home. The wooden walls and the carved steps kept the natural nature feel alive. Flowers were placed around in nooks and crannies, though there seemed to be more than he remembered.

“They put hearts going up the stairway!” Spines cried out. She ran over to get a closer look. “We should totally do that when we get back home!”

Dusk just rolled his eyes. 

“So, umm, what exactly are we going to do now?” Rainbow Blitz asked as he strolled over next to Dusk. “I mean, after searching around all that time for information, we really haven’t gotten any closer at figuring out has what happened!”

“Oh, maybe since we left our world from this library, maybe a clue to what happened is here…?” Butterscotch offered.

“I suppose searching around wouldn’t hurt,” Elusive replied. “Who knows, maybe we will even discover a thing or two about our friend Dusk!”

He gave a friendly nudge to Dusk as he walked past him. Dusk rolled his eyes once more and smiled. He followed Elusive through an archway that separated the first floor into two halves by narrowing the walking space. As everyone slowly wandered in this second half, Applejack pointed out where the blue portal had appeared before.

“Ah remember staring right at this very spot,” Applejack stomped one of the corners of the room caused by the narrowing of the arch. 

Everyone gazed down at the floor that Applejack was standing on. It looked no different than any other piece of the brown, wooden floor that spread throughout the whole library.

“Well, I guess we should go upstairs and take a gander around to see if anything of importance is up there,” Elusive stated. 

Before anyone had the chance to start moving, Spines suddenly stopped them with a loud squeal.

“I hear hoovesteps coming!” she exclaimed. 

Everyone paused to listen. 

“I hear them too guys!” Dusk shouted. “We need to hide! Quickly, everypony get into the corners, there is no time to head upstairs!”

Dusk dived down into the other corner created by the archway. Spines instead crouched down, hiding herself between Applejack and the wall. Everyone else just looked at them like they had claimed flower pots were brain-sucking aliens.

“Ehh, I don’t hear anything guys,” Rainbow Blitz commented. “I think it all might be in your---“

*Ra-te-te*

The sudden noise of the doorknob rattling stopped anymore words from coming out of his mouth. He and Elusive sprang over to join Dusk in his corner, while Butterscotch, Applejack, and Bubble Berry plastered themselves to the wall and joined Spines in hiding there. The loud bang of a door against a wall could be heard, soon followed by some female voices.

“Umm…I don’t see anypony Rainbow Dash,” one voice stated. Two sets of hoovesteps could be heard rapping against the wooden floor. “Are you sure you saw them go in here?”

“I’m positive!” a different voice shot back. “They must have just gone upstairs or something...”

Soon, more and more sets of hoovesteps rang out, equally proportional to the amount of voices. However, after the conversation between them all began to come into full effect, there was one for voice than hoovesteps.

Dusk gulped. Applejack and Berry Bubble were doing their best to calm down Butterscotch’s nervous shivering. It was making it difficult to shove three colts and a dragoness into a corner when one of them was shaking.

“How are we now going to get out this one?” Dusk thought panicking.
*****************************************************************************************
Eventually, Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Spike, Applejack, Rarity, and Fluttershy all had made their way into the Golden Oaks Library.

“Ah’ll go around the back, and make sure that nopony leaves, if they are still here,” Applejack told Twilight as she turned to go back out the front.

Twilight observed the room. Nothing seemed out of place. Books were still in order on the shelves. Everything was normal…

“Except…” she thought, “for that…”

Sticking out from one side of the archway, a blonde colored tail had slowly been lowering itself and draping across the floor. Its familiar bouncy curves and color reminded Twilight of someone.

“Actually Applejack,” she called back to the farmer, “I think that won’t be necessary.”

She walked carefully over to Applejack and pointed to the tail that was now lying completely on the floor. Applejack stared at it for a bit, before breaking out into a small smile when she recognized whose it was.

“Berry Bond,” Applejack hollered. “Your tail’s stickin’ out.”

The tail zipped back behind the wall.

“And now you’ve proven that you are there by moving your tail,” Twilight added flatly.

“Come on! Let’s get them then!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. She shot for the archway but was stopped when Rarity slid in her way.

“Eh, eh eh!” Rarity shook her hoof in front of Rainbow Dash’s face. “It is proper etiquette to have the colt make the first move, not the mare.”

Rainbow Dash just stared back at her. “I really don’t think that matters.”

“Well, it does to me,” Rarity replied. She turned and called through the open archway. “I think we should let these fine gentlecolts decide on how they want this to happen. To be discovered by us, or to have them come out willingly.”

“Ah don’t follow ya,” Applejack responded confused. “What if they ignore you and just try to run away?”

“Excuse me for trying to be polite, that’s all!” she turned back to focus on her fellow mares. As she continued on with the second verse, a flash of purple light quickly appeared and disappeared as quickly as it came. “I thought it would just be proper to show these colts respect! I mean, all we have done today is...”

She suddenly stopped her speech, due to the strange reactions of her friends. Pinkie Pie had started to bounce up and down and wave rapidly. Fluttershy had gone ahead and hidden behind Applejack, who was pointing behind Rarity, along with Rainbow Dash. Twilight sputtered out words like “dah” and “der” before finally falling face first on the floor. Spike glanced down at Twilight, and quickly ran off to get the emergency water bucket. 

Rarity cautiously turned around to see six fine colts, along with one young dragoness, standing in a row in front of the archway.

“Ah told ya it wouldn’t work,” the bright orange colt snarked, who was donned with a classic cowboy hat.

“Hey, predicting at least one of their actions correctly isn’t too horrible,” the light grey colt shot back, and to Rarity’s prospective, the most handsome one.

“I thought it was a good idea…” the cream colt added timidly with his long, light pink hair swooping towards the floor.

“I still think my idea of bolting for it was the best!” another colt remarked. His jagged hair along with cerulean skin tone reminded Rarity of what the sky looked like after a rainstorm.

“If these mares trusted us enough to allow us make the call on what to do,” the lavender unicorn colt explained. Even with the three new colors in his hair, Rarity recognized the colt due to his horrible choppy bangs. “We should trust them that they won’t do anything rash with us.”

“I just think it is funny that your mare version was the one to faint,” the purple dragoness looked over at Twilight and giggled while pointing. She had brilliant green scales sticking out from the back of her head down to the tip of her tail.

Before anyone could say anymore, the front door to the library swung up and whammed against the wall once more. Everyone whipped their heads around to face two more colts step into the library. The older colt had pale, white hair that was barely able to keep his light blue skin from showing on his head. The younger colt had thick, luscious brown hair and wore one of the oddest of clothes, a thick red vest.

“Dun, dun, dun!” the bright pink colt, whose hair resembled cotton candy, shouted as he slammed down on his imaginary keyboard.
> Chapter 15: The Reveal...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Dun, dun, dun!” Bubble Berry slammed down on the invisible keyboard once more for an encore.

“Bubble!” Dusk Shine hissed. “This is not the time crazy nonsense! Can’t you see that-“

“Shush, silly,” Bubble interrupted. “I want to hear what he’s going to say!”

Dusk began to protest, but stopped himself, knowing that it would do no good. He brought his attention back to the two colts that had barged through the front door.

“Finally!” the younger colt exclaimed, as he slowly trotted towards the center of the room. “We’ve been trying to catch you guys all day!” 

He squinted his eyes as he surveyed the ponies in front of him. “Now that we have you right where we want you…”

He carefully turned and stared specifically at the colts, “we’d like to help send you guys back home!”

... 
…

“Wha—eally--ou ca--How do yo--so they’r—how is that—“

“Hold up, hold up, hold up,” the younger colt tried to quiet down the wave of questions that came back to him. Eventually, the silence returned. He looked back at the light blue colt who had followed him in. “I guess we have some explaining to do…”

“I would say so!” Rarity interjected.

“Ah agree,” Applejack added on as she pointed to the six colts. “Are they really colt versions of us? Is that even possible, because Twi said something about…” 

Applejack glanced behind her for some help in explaining Twilight’s theory, only to find Twilight sprawled across the floor, completely out.

“Working on it!” Spike shouted as he ran back into the room. He emptied a bucket of water that he was carrying onto of her. On one of the sides of the bucket, it read “In Case of Fainting, Dump Water”.

“Ahh!’ Twilight screamed as the almost freezing water jolted her awake. She gazed around to see that all the mares were staring at her now and she saw even some of the colts looking at her. Her face began to redden as Spike came back with a yellow towel. On the side, a tag was stuck that stated, “In Case of Wetness, Damp Skin.”

“As Ah was saying…” Applejack turned away from this mess to ask her question once more about the other, “Are these colts…us?”

“Yes,” the older colt answered. “They are from a dimension where everypony’s gender is the opposite.”

“It appears that we arrived here through some sort of blue hole that formed in the Golden Oaks Library from our dimension,” Dusk added. “Do you know anything about that?”

“Well…that actually is our fault,” the older colt explained. “See, there is this machine I have been working on, with some help of course. Fox here was helping me a test run this morning.  It was supposed to make two portals, an entrance and an exit, on either side of the machine.”

“Oooo!” Pinkie Pie squealed as she interrupted the story. “Was one of the portals orange?”

“I don’t know, because one of the codes I put in the machine became corrupted by a bug in the system,” the light blue colt continued. “The machine suddenly shook like an earthquake had hit and two random coordinates appeared on its main screen. One of them I quickly figured out, the coordinates were for an area just outside Ponyville. The second coordinate I couldn’t figure out as easily. It had some weird “D” coordinate in front of the normal “X”, “Y”, and “Z”.”

“I pointed out that the “D” could stand for dimension,” the younger colt jumped in. “The machine wasn’t made to cross into other dimensions, but…another pony was looking around in the machine’s programming about the chance of it.”

“Another pony?” Rainbow Blitz echoed. “You mean there’s more than just you two?”
The two colts exchanged concerned glances. 

“Come on, doc,” the younger colt tried to push the other one out of his uncertainty. “We already told them a lot. Besides, it does relate to why we’re here.”  

“I suppose then it’s alright…” the older colt replied reluctantly. He turned his attention back to the now twelve confused ponies, along with two puzzled dragons. “Yes, there is a third pony. We contacted him as soon as we found out something had gone wrong. I used a device that lets you communicate instantly from two completely different locations. He told us to find out what exactly got corrupted and what dimension the other portal was sent to.”

“Then, it was just a random coincidence that their dimension, out of the all of the possible dimensions, happened to be affected,” Rarity pointed out. “How…” she paused for a moment, taking a quick glance at her colt counterpart. She tried to hide a small grin, “unfortunate.”

“Actually, it wasn’t that random,” the younger colt spoke up. “It was one of the few alternate dimensions that he had looked into, so the data for it must have still been somewhere within the programming. If you were wondering why, let’s just say working on secret science stuff isn’t the best place to find mares…” 

“After I discovered what went wrong inside the programming,” the older colt took over the reins to the story once more, “I contacted him once again. He told me that he would love to go out and fix the problem himself, but sadly he promised his wife that he would spend the afternoon on a mini-vacation with her alone.”

“That’s nice of him…” Butterscotch responded, barely louder than a whisper.

The older colt just went on talking. “He came up with the idea of writing some equations and steps that I would need on a piece of paper. Then, he planned to send it to me in secret, so nopony would find out, especially his wife. He needed us however to go visit his workplace. Before we left, I grabbed a gadget that would detect anypony who had gone through one of the portals.”

“We went to his place of business, only to find that the object he mentioned that the piece of paper was hidden with had already been taken,” the younger colt continued vaguely. “When we asked about it to his wife, she mentioned it had been delivered. We couldn’t figure out exactly why he had told her that it had to be delivered somewhere. Maybe it was the only way he could get it out and in the open so we could take it without being suspicious.”

“I think you can stop being so mysterious Fox; they probably have already figured it out who he is,” the older colt stepped in. “Especially if they have heard about the whole farm occurrence.”

“Oooh!” Bubble exclaimed. He quickly searched around his curly, mangled mane. Eventually, he whipped out a white strip of paper. “This must be yours then!”

He bounced over and gave the paper strip to the older colt. “I only read the first two words, that’s a Bubble Promise, one that it berry-ly broken! When I saw that it read ‘Top Secret’, I knew it must be very important! So, I told nopony about it, not even hinted at it. I even didn’t tell the reader!”

“Hold on there sugar cube,” Bubble turned around to face Applejack. “Your sayin’ that the piece of paper stayed in your hair the whole time we were bein’ chased?” 

“Uhuh!” Bubble replied, resembling a bobblehead.

“…And during the time when Applejack took you into their house and I helped heal your wound?” Twilight asked.

“Uhuh!” Bubble repeated again, his head still bouncing.

“…And when you got up, jumped on my back and I zoomed off in a blink of an eye?” Rainbow Blitz added.

“Uhuh!” Bubble gave the same response with the same action.

Elusive shook his slowly head. “Bubble Berry…remind me to get you a comb as a present for your next birthday.”

Bubble blinked. “What’s a comb?”

“This is great doc!” the younger colt shouted as the older colt carefully put the strip of paper into one of the many pockets of the white lab he was wearing. “We finally might see the Warp Zone work properly after all the work we’ve put into it!” 

“Hey, I just relieved something!” Rainbow Dash yelled as she swooped over to the two colts. “You guys are both huge science nerds! How on earth do you know some high pegasus in the Wonderbolts!”

“Err…” Doc muttered as he made eye contact with the floor to the left of him.

“You lied to me!” she screeched, pulling back in surprise. “Why I oughta—“

“Whoa there, Nelly!” Applejack called as she pulled back on Rainbow’s tail.

“Speaking of which,” Dusk said as Applejack tried to keep Rainbow Dash out of the two colts’ faces, “why did you two want me anyways?”

“We figured we needed another smart pony to help us work on the Warp Zone,” Doc explained. “Fox noticed that the colt’s craziness resembled Pinkie Pie, one that Mr. Cake talked a lot about.”

“Wait, Mr. Cake is the one super good with the sciencey stuff!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.

“A lot of science goes into baking high quality cakes,” Fox replied with a smile.

“Anyways, on our way back we put the Zapper back in one of our secret hiding places,” Doc continued. “The Zapper is a machine that shoots stunning shots.”

“Was that the weird object that Applejack mentioned you using while chasing them?” Spike asked.

“Yes,” Doc confirmed. “Fox thought it would be best if we brought it, just in case there were any problems. However, it seemed that him bringing it just ended up making problems.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you two like that,” Fox added. “Guess I sort of just panicked.”

“I checked the gadget I brought to see if his suspicion about the colt we just ran after was correct,” Doc motioned to Bubble. “It had registered that a pony we had been close had traveled through one of the portals. An idea was made that since Pinkie Pie’s interdimensional colt self had traveled through, her friends’ colt selves might as traveled through as well.” 

“Even though we are scientists, it doesn’t mean we live under a rock,” Fox explained, giving a quick laugh at his own joke. “We know about the Elements of Harmony and the well known smarts of the bearer of the Element of Magic.”

Twilight blushed a little at the compliment. 

“We hurried back through town, searching around for a unicorn colt.” Doc continued on. “It wasn’t too hard to find you. When we tried to convince you to come with us however, we realized we didn’t have a good case for you to come with us. That’s when we decided to try using force again, and again it failed. When we saw Rainbow Dash knocked out on the ground of one of the alleyways sometime later, it was decided that we should head back to the Sugarcube Corner in hopes the Mr. Cake would still be there.”

“Knocked out!” Fluttershy cried. “That must have hurt really badly! But…I thought you said you let him go because you thought something suspicious was going on…”

“Umm…well,” Rainbow Dash stammered. “Let’s not bother with details like that…heh heh…”

“To our surprise, when we arrived at the Sugarcube Corner, it had been turned into a monster party location,” Fox said. “Though, we really shouldn’t have been too surprised. When we were leaving the Sugarcube Corner for the first time, we saw ponies putting up some decorations outside. I guess we should have paying more attention to that.”

“We stayed at the party to …you know; scientifically study the characteristics of a good party,” Doc smiled sheepishly. “When we heard the commotion coming from upstairs and outside, we jumped back into action. We knew we had to end up finding you colts and tell the situation at hoof. It was the only possibility left. So, we decided to quietly tail you mares, after we figured out you were going to do your own searching for the colts.”

“It seemed you were having better luck finding your colts selves than we were!” Fox added.

“And now…” Doc glanced around the library, “we’re here!”

“May I ask you two one more question?” Elusive piped up. “I find it extremely rude of us for not asking you two this before, but what are your names?”

“My name is Flying McFox,” the red vested colt motioned to himself, “and he is Doctor Emit Blue.”

“Well, how do you do Flyin’ McFox!” Applejack gave him the tip of her hat. “Though, I must say that the name “Flying” seems strange for an earth pony like yourself.”

“Actually, the vest I’m wearing is to cover up my wings,” McFox cleared up. “I do that so I don’t stand out when walking around Ponyville, especially when I’m trying to be secretive.”

“Anyways,” Doctor Blue spoke up before anyone could criticize how counterintuitive that idea actually was, “that should be all from us. Thanks for the help! We should be heading back now and see what we can do.”

“Wait!” Pinkie Pie yelled. “You can’t leave us now! There’s one thing that all my new friends need to get before they go!”

“You betcha!” Bubble Berry joined right on in. “I agree with my mare-y form! Everypony I know gets one, and I don’t want you two to be left out. That wouldn’t be nice!”

“Okay…” Doc Blue replied hesitantly. “What is this…”thing”?”

“A PARTY!” Pinkie and Bubble exclaimed in joyous union. They quickly dashed off, Pinkie dragging a confused McFox, while Bubble pulled along a stunned Doctor Blue.

“Umm…I think we should follow them…” Dusk spoke up after a short moment of silence.

“I agree,” his mare counterpart answered. “I don’t think this dimension can handle a full blown double Pinkie party.”

“Or a double Bubble bash,” Dusk added.

As their minds filled with images of the possible destruction, everyone saddled up and hurried after the pink menaces. 








> Chapter 16: The Return
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Come on, please…”

“You only hired me for a few hours.”

Twilight and the gang arrived at the Sugarcube Corner to see Pinkie Pie and Bubble Berry negotiating with the DJ who had helped set up the whole celebration of Butterscotch and Pinkie Pie’s new found friendship. Flying McFox and Doc Blue had taken the liberty in separating themselves from their captives and had moved to the far side of the room, hovering by one of the back doors.

Sugarcube Corner was in even a more chaotic state than the one that Dusk had first experienced when he arrived looking for Butterscotch. Paper cups littered the floor. Tables had been trampled and upturned. Punch stained the floor. Light streaked in from cuts in the curtains. It looked nothing like the well cared and professional place of business that the Cakes presented it as.

“And besides, I have gigs already planned for the rest of the day,” the DJ added, adjusting her glasses. 

“Pleeeeeeeeeease?” Pinkie Pie repeated once more, holding the “e” even longer to show her desperation. 

“As I have been trying to tell you two, me and Doc really don’t need to have a party,” McFox shouted from the other side of the room.

“Why throw a party for someone who doesn’t want to enjoy one?” the DJ bolstered the scientists arguments. “I know you like throwing parties, which I greatly appreciate because over half my gigs come through you, but maybe, just maybe, they would prefer something a little lower key than my party rockin’.”

And with that, the DJ carried the last of her party equipment and walked out the door.

“Aww…” Pinkie Pie slumped down against the wall. “Without out throwing a party, how am I going to be able to meet and welcome my new friends?”

“You know that it isn’t always necessary for you to acquire a cacophonous setting to welcome a pony in?” Rarity replied. She started to make her way from the doorway up to Pinkie Pie by tip-toeing around the dastardly putrid objects that lay out on the floor, cringing with every miss step.  

“I know that silly,” Pinkie Pie said with only half the bubbly enthusiasm she once contained, “but it is my talent and I think since it is the best thing I can do it shows me at the finest. First impressions are important.”

“Umm, excuse me, not to trying to take away from you in making a first impression and all Miss…Pinkie was it?” Dusk interjected. “But shouldn’t we be focusing more upon fixing the Warp Zone, the machine that got us here? I mean, the ponies back in our world must have started to worry about us by now. We can’t, err, focus on enjoying a party when we know ponies at home are missing us.”

“And not to worry anyone or anything,” Doc Blue added on, “but we really haven’t fully tested the effects of dimensional traveling just yet. Nothing could happen or…a lot could happen.”

“Like what?” Twilight was intrigued.

“Well, there's a chance that there could be slight changes in personalities and skin tones,” Doc began to form a list, “there could be slight changes in weather and the atmosphere or you can have major disturbances, like time repeating itself in some places or even messing up core physics.”  

Everyone took a quick glance at one another.

“That’s heavy.” Rainbow Dash stated.

“Actually, it would most likely would be become lighter,” Doc answered.

“Well, we should definitely focus on getting the Warp Zone back to working condition then!” Rarity exclaimed. She turned back to Pinkie Pie. “You can throw a party when these nice colts return once again and thank you for everything.”

Pinkie Pie beamed. “Okay! Let’s go fix the Warp Zone! I don’t want my skin to turn green!”

She zoomed out the front door, leaving a trail of clouds in her wake. She, however, quickly returned, rewinding herself to where she originally stood.

“Umm…where is the Warp Zone exactly?” she asked Doc Blue.

The old colt laughed. “I’ll lead the way.”

As everyone began to file out of the Sugarcube Corner, Elusive stopped Applejack as he walked past him.

“Why did she mention that we’re going to be returning here?” Elusive asked, dodging the litter scattered on the floor.

“Ah don’t know, she’s your double Elusive,” Applejack answered. “Maybe it is because she’s been tryin’ to find you all day.”

“Ahh yes, that,” Elusive remembered the details of the story that Dusk told them about her. “You know, I’m flattered that another mare has fallen for me, but it is becoming rather creepy. Besides, along with that fact, I have almost gotten killed and, worse of all, dirty, I don’t think I want to visit this place ever again.”

Applejack nodded in agreement, as being kidnapped by bunnies usually doesn’t increase the wanting to return to a place. Seeing that their conversation was done, they both resumed walking to find the Warp Zone and to try to create a solution for this whole situation once and for all.
***************************************************************************************
The Warp Zone was hidden in the trees near the entrance to the Everfree Forest. It was hidden far enough from the main town so no one would happen to stumble upon it, but it was close enough so if anything was needed from Ponyville to work on it, it wouldn’t be too hard to go back and get it.

The Warp Zone was designed with the knowledge that it would have to be hidden in the trees. It was tall and lanky, with the main base colored brown and its seemingly random pipes, leavers, and buttons colored a dark green. This color coordination helped it mimic a tree quite well and it wasn’t until they were within a few feet before they could fully tell it was there. 

“This will only take a few minutes,” Doc Blue informed as he started to punch numbers into the keyboard that was attached to the main base. He and McFox began to discuss scientific mumbo jumbo as they used the paper that Mr. Cake had written.

Twilight noticed Rarity beckoning for her to come by her, for Rarity had started to move away from the rest of the group. Twilight, curious, carefully removed herself from the rest of the group as well.

“So,” Rarity began with a giant grin, “is he everything that you hoped for?”

“Huh?” Twilight replied.

“You know what I’m talking about. Dusk!” she exclaimed in a hushed whisper. “He’s smart, he’s understanding, and, as a bonus, he’s even somewhat good-looking!” 

“That is because he’s me, so…thanks?” Twilight responded.

“I’m so glad I finally got to meet my wondrous double!” Rarity whipped Twilight around in hopes that they both could stare at him lovingly. “I bet he understands feelings and fashion like no other colt in the world. And, of course, he knows how to take care of his blessed looks that he was given.”

“Umm…Rarity?” Twilight looked at her astounded. “Are you in love…with yourself?”

“Who better to know my needs and wants in a relationship?” Rarity shot back. “And besides, everypony knows that the closer two ponies are personality wise, the better chemistry they will have!”

“I don’t know, Rarity…it just sounds wrong. I don’t think you need to travel to a different dimension to find the love of your life.” Twilight answered. “And what happens if there are problems with interdimensional travel? Would you rather mess up, who knows what, so you could just be with yourself?”

“I was actually going to ask you if you could look into interdimensional travel and see if there were any horrific problems that could arise.” Rarity countered. She drooped her lip and made her eyes as big and sorrow filled as possible. “Could you do that, for me?”

Twilight rolled her own eyes in response. “I was planning to look into it anyways, for future reference sake. It’s a field that I don’t have any experience on and---“

“Thank you Twilight!” she preceded to squeeze Twilight in a hug. “I’ll go talk to him for a bit before they all have to go! You should do the same with Dusk!”

Before Twilight could voice a response, Rarity was already trotting over to where her white stallion stood. Elusive glanced around and noticed her coming. He made a head motion meant for Butterscotch and Bubble Berry, who he was in a conversation with. They looked over at Rarity coming over and nodded in understanding. Butterscotch helped Bubble Berry walk over to where Dusk and Spines were observing the scientist at work, leaving Elusive alone. 

When Rarity finally reached Elusive, his eyes drifted from watching Bubble and Butterscotch leave to her. Rarity immediately knew something was up. His facial expression did not share the same joy that she had with finally getting some alone time with him. Instead, his expression was stone cold, with his eyes showing hints of inner sadness.

“I know what you want to do,” Elusive began. He tried to keep his emotions out of his voice. “I’ve known ever sense Dusk informed me that you tried to entrap my friends.”

Rarity’s happiness slowly drained from her face. Elusive turned away from her, and stared away into the forest.

“I know that you want to have a future with me, to be the one you can call your coltfriend,” Elusive paused dramatically. He turned his head back to make eye contact. “And also I know that I can’t accept.”

Shock smacked Rarity and flipped her upside-down. She was being rejected…by herself? Her mind scrabbled to find some sort of explanation, some sort of reason.

“Hearing about how brash all your actions at attempting to meet up with shown a lot of late onto the situation for me,” he explained, knowing that if he was in this very situation, an explanation is if what he would ask for not. “I will admit, after finding out that we had gotten ourselves into a dimension where there were mare versions of ourselves, I thought of the same idea.”

He paused to let those words sink in.

“They were even bolstered after hearing Rainbow Blitz’s encounter,” he smiled with memories of Blitz exclaiming how Rarity looked. “My curiosity was even more piqued. I began to think thoughts about how this mare could be the one I had been looking for that could give the relationship a colt could only dream about.”

Elusive let out a sigh. “However, your actions directed at my friends opened my eyes at something. I was thinking of my own betterment before anyone else’s. If I was going to go through with the plan of being together forever, I was ignoring needs of a certain mares that I am going to meet sometime down the road. I don’t know what my support will be needed for, but I do know that while having a relationship where the other pony knows exactly all my needs and wants. It won’t help anypony else and it won’t help ourselves improve.”

And with those final words, he began to make his way back to the rest of the colts, leaving a stunned Rarity behind.
***************************************************************************************
As Elusive neared the group of colts, Rainbow Blitz zoomed over to meet him and almost ran him over.

“I found a witness that states that you did do something girly!” Rainbow Blitz declared. “I was going around, asking the different mares if they had seen or heard you do anything girly for a bet…”

“Even your mare double, Rainbow Dash?” Elusive asked smugly.

“Yes!” Rainbow boasted, but after a knowing look from Elusive, he stopped. “No, I didn’t ask her…because…I figured that we already knew where she was the whole time, so I didn’t need to ask her. A-at all. Nope.”

“Anyways, when I was asking Fluttershy,” he motioned for her and Butterscotch to come join him, “she stated that she heard you give off a high pitch scream in the forest when looking for Applejack. Pretty girly if you ask me.”

“I’m-I’m not sure about the whole girly part…” Fluttershy said meekly. “But…it did sound like your voice Mr. Elusive, sir and there were really no other pony in the forest at the time…”

“Ha! In your face! I knew you couldn’t do it!” Rainbow Blitz was enjoying his sweet, sweet victory. “Now the whole town will get see you walking around in a dress tomorrow!”

“Umm…may-may I say something here?” Butterscotch asked. Rainbow Blitz and Elusive looked at him. “Well, should you guys be really punishing each other by making a bet that goes against who you guys are at in your cores?”

“I appreciate where you are going with this Butterscotch,” Elusive replied, leaning closer to whisper in his ear, “but I have a plan with dealing with this bet. It’s no big deal.”

“Oh…if you say so,” Butterscotch whimpered back.

“Come on you three!” Dusk, standing by the Warp Zone, yelled to get their attention. “They are finally ready to send us back home!”

“Ooooh, I can’t wait for tomorrow!” Rainbow Blitz smiled and flew the couple of feet that were needed to reach Dusk.

“I-I guess this is good bye,” Butterscotch turned his attention to Fluttershy. “It’s been nice meeting you.”

“Same here!” she chirped. She gave a tiny wave and a big happy grin as she departed back to the rest of the mares. He watched her leave, with the same happy grin placed on his face.

“Umm…Butterscotch?” Elusive asked with a smirk. “Do I need to give you the same speech I just gave Rarity?”

“Heh, no, I know,” Butterscotch replied with the grin still on his face. “Let’s go home.”

They walked over to where Dusk and the rest of the colts were standing. A white “X” was placed right in front of them. Dusk gave Doc Blue and Flying McFox the signal and they pressed some buttons and pulled a lever that made the machine come alive, giving off a gentle hum. A familiar blue portal appeared over the “X” and one by one everyone jumped in, bringing an end to their adventure in a different dimension. 
***************************************************************************************
Rarity gave a sad filled sigh as the portal closed up, leaving no remains of the colts behind.

“You sure you’re going to be alright Sugarcube?” Applejack asked, giving her an affectionate nudge. 

“Yeah, I’ll be alright,” Rarity replied with a half smile. “They’re lessons I’m glad I heard from…myself and not somepony else.”
Applejack chuckled. “There’s somepony out there for you, and you don’t even need a dimension doohickey to do meet them.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed as the rest of the mares (and Spike) rejoined together. “Besides, if Twilight here is going to find a colt who likes her in the near future, you’ll have no problem!”

“Yes, there’s plenty of-” Twilight cut herself short. She spun around to meet Pinkie. “Wait, what?!”

“Yeah, there’s even going to be a whole movie dedicated to it!” Pinkie began to ramble. “Well…not to the whole “you finding a colt that likes you” sort of thing, that’s going to be somewhat of a subplot to the whole you going to another place where you have hands and stuff and you go ahead and stop this one mare who goes to the same place and basically rules the school that is there! Oh, and there’s all versions of us, but we don’t know you, and we all have hands and the same stuff that you know have and we all have to join together in this show down with the bad guy and transform and win!”

“And best of all,” Pinkie winded herself up for the big finish. “It’s all canon! Though, we’ll never really ever talk about it again…”

“Oh Pinkie,” was all Twilight could really say in response. “That’s just crazy.”

“Yeah!” Spike joined in the fun, “A colt, liking Twilight!” He gave a disgusted Twilight a playful nudge before bursting into laughter.

“Crazier than meeting versions of us that are from a different dimension and are all the opposite gender from us that get here from a machine that was made by three secret scientists that have been hiding out in the woods that we try to track down to see if they are legit and they try to avoid us at the same time, but in the end we end up all meeting up and ending up help solving the scientist machine and even have them leave some sort of an impact on us?” Pinkie asked.

“But…it’s not really canon…so…” Pinkie gave a shrug. “Who really knows?”

...

“Oh Pinkie,” Rarity giggled and laughter slowly made itself around the whole group. “Thanks for cheering me up, I say we should all go back to our homes now. I know, for me personally, Sweetie Belle must be wondering where I have been.”

No one opposed the idea, for the day had been an exciting, and definitely interesting. They all returned to their homes, remembering their adventure that day and the ideas and thoughts that were made that day as well.
***************************************************************************************
The colts, as well, went back to their daily life after their whole trip.

Butterscotch went back to his cottage and helped take care of the animals he cared for with so much passion. His mind was kept busy by keeping track of what every animal’s needs were and where they were living, however, when it began a little overwhelming, his mind wished for another pony that could help with the same care that he did, but he remember that he was never was lonely with his friends and if he was ever in too much trouble, he could always ask them for help.

Applejack went back to work at Sweet Apple Acres and kept on working the apple orchard with his sister Big Macareina. He once shared the story of his trip to another dimension with her and Pappy Smith, but the ponies who enjoyed the story the most where the Crusaders. Applejack compiled what happened from the other six and told a little bit of the whole adventure each time, enthralling the young colts. It became a staple of the Crusaders weekly activities during the summer.

After Bubble Berry’s leg healed from its sprain, he was back to bouncing around and planning parties like he always did. He would share the story of his great adventure of being a sleuth while dealing ponies from another dimension when throwing these parties, but those who heard him just pushed it off as Bubble being Bubble. 

Dusk became obsessed with the idea of multiple dimensions. He met up with Mrs. Cake and asked if she really was a scientist, using the adventure and the Warp Zone to bolster his claim. She stated yes and even asked him if he could help with figuring out more about multiple dimensions. While at first the research seemed to be all harmless, the more they looked into the possible results of tampering with other dimensions, the more the realized that it was better to focus on improving their own dimension, rather than risking destroying their own and others.

Spines helped Dusk work with learning about multiple dimensions and was the biggest supporter of not experimenting by traveling to other dimensions, whether it was because of the risks involved or some other reasons. She wrote down Applejack’s wording of their adventure after he was done telling the story to the Crusaders and placed it in the library, so others could enjoy reading about their tale of excitement. She also wrote out a different version, full of more personal thoughts, and kept it in a private place in her bedroom.

Rainbow Blitz woke up around ten the day after the adventure (bright and early for him) to see Elusive in the dress, as foretold by the bet. However, when he spotted Elusive, he noticed that while he was wearing did seem to look like something that could be called a dress; it was not what he was expecting.

“What is that?” Rainbow Blitz motioned to the garb Elusive was wearing as he landed next to him.

“This?” Elusive asked, using his horn to levitate the ends that touched the ground to show it off more. It was a one piece tunic that almost blended in perfectly with the color of his skin, as it was made from a pure white fabric. It started from his shoulders and flowed across his body and draped itself around his tail. There was a golden sash that pulled the fabric close around his stomach. Finally, Rainbow Blitz noticed some sort of branch looking thing carefully placed in his hair.

“This happens to be a toga,” Elusive explained. “It was worn in ancient times as a symbol of wealth and power.”

“A dress that symbolized wealth and power?” Rainbow Blitz scoffed. “Get serious.”

As it turned out, Elusive was being serious. While Rainbow Blitz enjoyed himself at first for commenting about how Elusive was wearing a dress, a lot of other ponies recognized the piece of clothing. And in turn, a few of them thought it was more funny that Rainbow Blitz had no clue what a toga was rather than the fact that Elusive was wearing one.

As the day wore on and the enjoyment of the fact that Elusive was wearing a dress lessened and lessened. Eventually, Rainbow Blitz decided to call it in early.

“Well, I’m going to go take a nap now,” Rainbow Blitz commented, hiding his disappointment on how the day was going. “Have fun with your dress ‘Lucy!”

Elusive watched him go as he zoomed off into the skies. “Some ponies never change,” he commented, smiling at his observation.

Elusive, personally, liked retelling their adventure, especially the part of dealing with Rarity and how he sacrificed relationship bliss to keep himself open for the mare he was destined to be with. One particular time he told the story was when he had asked Big Macareina to come model for another style of dress he wanted to make some days later.

“And that’s how it ended!” Elusive announced, putting the finishing touches on a pink and blue dress with silver designs. “So, what do you think?”

“If you mean the dress,” Big Macareina always spoke a little bit on the slower side, showing that she made sure to choose each of her words carefully. “Ah like the simple and elegant nature of the dress and Ah do happen to like the colors that you chose. If you mean the story, Ah have heard it before from my brother, though Ah noticed that you chose to focus on different points then he did.”

“Oh, so sorry for the confusion there,” Elusive apologized and motioned for her to follow him to the mirrors so she could get a better look at herself. “Why I always do enjoy what your opinions on my designs are, I was actually asking about the story and more importantly the lesson that I taught myself.”

Big Macareina twisted herself to get the best view of the whole dress. “Well Ah think that it was good for you to remember that a great relationship brings out the best in the two ponies,” she began. “There are certain qualities in ponies that are only fully brought out when dealin’ with a certain somepony.”

“A point I agree with one hundred percent!” Elusive announced, moving around to the front of the changing screen as Big Macareina went behind to slip out of the dress.

She gave Elusive the signal and Elusive levitated the dress to him and placed it on one of the plastic manikins that he had nearby. He was still wondering where he wanted to keep the dress, either put it in the window so others could see, or in the storage room so he could pull it out in a time of need. Dresses like this weren’t in high demand during the summer.

“Ah would also like to add that that’s the reason why a lot of times opposites attract,” Big Macareina stepped out from behind the screen, only wearing a simple brown yoke that reminded ponies that she always had a part of her mind on work. “They balance each other by compliment each other’s strengths and helpin’ their weaknesses.”

“Exactly!” Elusive exclaimed. “I’m glad you understand my thought process so perfectly! Oh, and thanks for coming in once again and trying on another dress design! I know it must be bothersome sometimes to come in on such short notice.” 

“It’s always a pleasure,” Big Macareina replied. “Ah always enjoy myself when Ah come over here and spend this time helpin’ you.”

Big Macareina moved past Elusive and made her way for the door.

“Umm…Macareina, there’s one more thing that I would like to ask,” Elusive spoke right as Big Macareina reached the door. She turned and noticed a hint of pink appearing in his cheeks. “We’re opposites, right?”

Big Macareina paused for a moment to let those words sink in. Finally, she smiled and spoke a single word before leaving through the door.

“Eeyup.”