113. It's All Junk

THE TRAMPOLINE DANCEFLOOR, THE LABYRINTH

"Is this…a trampoline dancefloor?"

That was the question on Rarity, Helena, Fluttershy, and Ludo's minds as they stared at the landscape before them; Rarity was the one to voice it aloud. They stood at the edge of a meadow that consisted of a grid of trampolines set in the ground, with thin, squared pathways of grass leading between them. The sky was darker here, a blue that barely escaped being black, and hovering up in the air were several disco balls that, instead of reflecting light from any outside source, generated their own light as they spun, causing rainbow flecks to fall over the black mesh of the trampolines.

"It certainly looks like a trampoline dancefloor," Helena confirmed.

"Oh, no!" Fluttershy realized the significance. "Does this mean Jareth is changing things to look more like Pinkie Pie?"

"Oh, nonsense, dear," Rarity tried to reassure her. "That wouldn't happen. Not unless Jareth had somehow become obsessed with…well. I suppose that COULD have happened…he seems to favor the same offbeat design scheme as her…"

"I think that just means we should hurry," Helena pointed out. "Now, that just leaves us with the question of what's faster: to walk or to bounce?"

Ludo raised an arm to point out at the field. "Light dancing," he observed.

"What's that mean?" Helena asked.

"He means the light is dancing!" Fluttershy realized, looking closely at what lay before them. "Look!"

At first, it seemed that there was nothing there but the disco balls and the trampolines. The multicolored lights ran into each other, mingling, reflecting, and scattering in all directions. It gave what at first seemed to be an illusion that there were figures made of rainbow light leaping and whirling above the trampolines. Upon closer inspection, it was no illusion. They were faint, barely visible, but once you saw them, it was impossible not to notice them. They were vaguely humanoid in shape, leaping from trampoline to trampoline, making grandiose flips and twirls in midair as they flew to their next destinations.

One of them spryly sprang across the field to land right in front of Helena, Rarity, Ludo, and Fluttershy. Xe first gestured to the quartet with xyr intangible arms that sparkled of all colors. When Pester hissed, xe floated over the ground, that much closer to Fluttershy, and reached above her mane to briefly stroke the lizard, who calmed down once the light being had touched him and established xyrself as a friend. The light being then glid backward, beckoning the group with both arms before leaping back into the fray.

"I beg your pardon…?" Rarity was confused.

Helena's face lit up. "I think it was inviting us to dance!"

"Should we?" Fluttershy wondered out loud.

"I don't see the harm in it," Helena pointed out. "Watch this!" She ran toward the first patch where the ground gave over from grass to rubbery black mesh. She jumped, hit the skin of the trampoline, then bounced high, performing an acrobatic flip. She'd picked up a few tricks back at the Brighton circus, and she finally felt as though here was an appropriate place to use them. When she descended, it was toward the next trampoline, which she used to springboard into a graceful airborne arabesque.

"My word!" Rarity gasped. "She's fantastic! Well! We simply MUST join in!" She too ran toward the bouncy surfaces, making a graceful leap. Her aerial spin was nowhere near as complex as Helena's, but she conducted herself with a sense of delicacy that made up for her lack of acrobatics.

"Um…are you okay with this, Pester?" Fluttershy asked nervously as she looked out at the bouncy dancefloor.

Pester gave a small yelp of approval.

"I promise not to spin too fast," Fluttershy said gently before she stepped gingerly out onto the first trampoline. After a few experimental bounces, she launched up into the air, deploying her wings in order to turn a graceful pirouette – though, as she'd vowed, not too fast.

Ludo was the last to hit the floor of acrobatic bouncing. When he jumped onto the first trampoline, he was launched high into the air, where he made a graceful somersault before landing and doing it all over again.

"That's it!" Helena cheered. "Now let's keep going! All the way to the end!"

Leaping and spinning and flipping and twirling, they proceeded forth, and the light beings were pleased to see their more solid guests join in the fun.

...

THE FAIRGROUNDS, THE LABYRINTH

Had Hoggle been with Sarah's team, he would have been stupefied. The cavalcade of carnival rides and games, all studded with electrically bright lights of all colors so that it stood out against the black and starry sky, had not always been where it was. In fact, only a few hours ago, it hadn't existed altogether.

Being a new location, Jareth hadn't had time to fill it out with inhabitants. The food booths smelled of deep-fried delicacies, but no one was cooking them. The game booths were laden with enormous plush animals with silken furry coats, but there was no one to hand them out. The roller coasters and the Ferris wheel were running, but no one was operating them.

"See what I mean?" Applejack said as she looked worriedly over the scene. "This is exactly what Pinkie Pie woulda loved. This is only here 'cause she's here."

"It's so lonely," Sarah observed.

"This is one of those 'It's quiet, too quiet' cases," Richard pointed out.

The various booths were arranged to form, as one would have expected, a maze. Sarah, Lancelot, Richard, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Didymus-aboard-Ambrosius made their way warily through the empty stalls, brushing past unused water guns and plush toys that seemed now to be grinning madly at the intruders. Perhaps it would have been a more welcoming place to Pinkie Pie – Jareth would have wanted her to have legitimate fun here – but for now, every detail was a message Jareth sent to his opponents that they were getting far too close. Even the churning of a taffy puller seemed reminiscent of ancient torture devices.

"This seems incredibly ominous," Sir Didymus observed casually.

"Yeah, well, I'm not scared!" Rainbow Dash replied, though no one had accused her of being scared.

"Nor I!" Sir Didymus proclaimed. "It will take more than mere carnival games to shake the foundation of Sir Didymus!...Ambrosius, will you pick up the pace?"

The sheepdog was trembling with every step. As was Richard, who pointed out, "This looks like the beginning of at least ten different horror stories. Okay, just remember not to enter any closed tents, don't accept invitations to shows that start at midnight, and don't eat anything."

"I'm gonna fly up and see how much we have left of this place," Rainbow Dash decided. She shot into the air, and for once, nothing grew to try and match her height. She took a good look around. The fairgrounds only went on for a while longer before coming to a stop at the edge of an enormous chasm. On the other side of the chasm was a wide field, and at field's end, Goblin City's spires loomed. There was a single attribute connecting both sides of the ravine, and Rainbow Dash quickly sped down to report it: "See that rollercoaster over there?" She pointed to a bright confection of multicolored metal, with a train several cars long rushing down a series of dizzyingly high drops before loop-de-looping in a series of inversions. "It loops all the way around, but it's HUGE. It goes all the way across a valley, and it looks like it's the only bridge. Goblin City is on the other side! All we should have to do is get on it, ride to the other side, and then jump off!"

"I don't think we should jump off a moving rollercoaster," Lancelot quickly brought up.

"The majority of rollercoaster related deaths are caused that way," Richard added.

"But if it's the ONLY way across," Sarah pointed out, "maybe we should ride it and take a look at what we're dealing with. We can always circle back here and walk across the track."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained!" Sir Didymus reminded the crew. "Onward, Ambrosius!"

They made their way up to a small hilltop, where the rollercoaster's entry point was situated. As bear, humans, ponies, and fox-aboard-dog approached, the coaster train clacked into place before them, brightly painted in neon hues and studded with tiny pink lights.

"I shall take the frontmost car!" Sir Didymus decided, leaping nimbly off his steed to take his place. "That, after all, is the seat of the brave! And Ambrosius shall sit beside me – "

Ambrosius had other ideas, getting in the third car back.

"Seat of the brave?" Rainbow Dash repeated. "Sign me up!" She took her place next to Sir Didymus in the front. As she did so, she noticed something rather odd about the design of the train. "Is that a…steering wheel?" She pointed to the area just in front of Sir Didymus, which might have been considered a dashboard on other vehicles.

"I do believe it is!" Sir Didymus confirmed. "Though it seems utterly frivolous for this sort of contraption!"

Sarah, Richard, Lancelot, and Applejack filed into the cars behind them. Richard, taking the seat in the rearmost car, was beginning to wish he and Bastian hadn't separated. He was having far too many suspicious feelings about this roller coaster. When all were arranged, the overhead bars came down and clicked into place in front of them, locking them securely into the train, and Richard knew there was no chance of turning back then.

The coaster lurched into motion, beginning its ascent up an enormous ramp. "Just think of how much fun Pinkie Pie would be havin' with this," Applejack said nervously from her position next to Ambrosius. "Why, she'd be talkin' about how excitin' it was goin' up this here ramp, 'cause the drop on the other side was gonna be so big…"

"Don't remind me," Richard groaned.

Sarah found herself reaching over toward Lancelot's paw. When she caught herself, she withdrew her hand. Lancelot told her, "It's all right," and Sarah moved her hand back toward his paw until she was gripping it, and he was lightly squeezing her hand in return.

Up and up went the coaster, click click, until it slowed slightly at the zenith of the ramp. From here, for just a moment, the entire fairground was visible, as well as the chasm beyond and the field on the other side. But then, with very little warning, the drop came, and the coaster was racing down the other side at top speed, plunging down and down. Its passengers felt their stomachs churn and flip, and the screams came unbidden from them. However, instead of fear, their instinctive response was to cry out from thrill and joy, and the scream that the rush brought on sounded like a resounding "WAAAAAHOOOOOOOOO!"

The coaster went up and down several more ramps before entering the swirling corkscrew of loops, and by this time, even Richard was laughing with ecstasy. The lights blurred past, pink. Loops, drops, twists, and turns fraught the way across the chasm, and the occasional inversion put thoughts into the passengers' minds of dropping out of the cars and down into the deadly drop, but they all remained securely put. On the other side, for a moment, the track leveled out, offering no twists or tricks, but instead a smooth ride across a curve that offered a view of the field ahead.

"Should we try and jump off?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"No!" Sarah yelled. "We're moving too fast!"

"An' these bars are holdin' us in anyway!" Applejack reminded her.

"Do I NEED to remind you what causes most rollercoaster related deaths?" Richard yelped from the rear car.

"It looks as though we are in for a long walk!" Sir Didymus resolved. "But fear not! A true adventurer does not shy away from – "

"What was THAT?" Rainbow Dash quickly craned her head around to look at something the coaster had just passed. The others all followed her gaze, worrying she'd seen some sort of henchman of Jareth's, but instead, she'd been remarking on an unusual facet of the coaster's construction. There seemed almost to be a fork in the track; another set of track led to a downward ramp that trailed off on the ground of the field. But obviously, the coaster was not set to take this track, and had passed it right by.

"Aw, man!" Rainbow Dash moaned. "If we could've just gone THAT way, we would be there by now!"

"At least we know a way to get down when we walk!" Sarah pointed out.

The coaster began its track back across the chasm, breaking out more drops and loops. Once it was back on the fairground side, the train righted itself, and the track straightened out. As soon as everyone had clear vision of what was ahead, they screamed once more, but this time in horror.

Had Jareth taken Pinkie Pie to this fairground to look around, it would have been an innocent place of fun where he would have looked to please and impress her with a rollercoaster that merely took you round and round. However, as intruders had come into the fairground in order to use it to get closer to Jareth, he'd put other precautions in place. Three adjacent circular saw blades, each one enormous, jutted up in the middle of the track, threatening to slice the train and its passengers to thirds.

"What do we DO?" Sarah yelled, jiggling her safety bar; the coaster wasn't about to let her out.

"Uh…uhhhhh…" Rainbow Dash struggled for an answer, looking around.

"Fear not!" Sir Didymus called out. "There must be a way to slay this metal behemoth!"

Rainbow Dash spotted it: the branch of track, just between them and the blades, that led upward and away to the original loop of coaster. "STEER!" Rainbow Dash cried. "USE THE WHEEL! GET US OVER THERE ON THAT ONE!" She pointed frantically.

"Oh?" Sir Didymus experimentally put his hands on the wheel before him.

"NOW!" Rainbow Dash urged.

Sir Didymus cranked the wheel to the far left, and the coaster diverted itself onto safer track, leaving the blades behind. "AHA!" Sir Didymus cried triumphantly. "I HAVE TAMED THE METAL BEAST!"

"NOWGORIGHT!" Rainbow Dash screamed, noticing another branch in the track that was set just between the train and some sort of elaborate metal gun suspended in the air. As the coaster went back on track, the gun fired on empty space, revealing that it was in fact a giant blowtorch.

By this time, Richard was close to passing out from fear.

Now safe from both obstacles, the rollercoaster was making a loop back to where it started, blowing past the boarding station without giving its passengers a chance to disembark.

"I know what we have to do now!" Rainbow Dash realized. "When we get to the other side, you gotta use that wheel to steer us down to the field, Sir Didymus!"

"I can take this foul contraption wherever we need be!" Sir Didymus said confidently.

The ride over the chasm was the same as before, and now that a solution to the problem was in sight, Sarah, Applejack, Lancelot, and Ambrosius let themselves have even more fun screaming on the way down from every drop and up and around every loop. Richard had decided to cling to his safety bar, as he was now a flushed shade of pale all over from the double near misses.

The gentle slope across the other side of the chasm arrived again, and this time, Sir Didymus cranked the wheel hard. The coaster diverted onto the other track, dropping even more sharply than before. At the bottom, it leveled out, the track continuing for a while over the ground of the field; then suddenly, the track was gone, and the train moving over open ground directly toward the center of the labyrinth.

"GOBLIN CITY, PREPARE THYSELF!" Sir Didymus whooped. "WE ARE ON OUR WAY!"

Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Lancelot, and Sarah cheered. Ambrosius barked. And Richard just let out a sigh of relief as the rollercoaster train sped onward to their final goal.

...

GOBLIN CITY, THE LABYRINTH

Sarah was getting far too close to the castle, and in all honesty, Jareth could have tried harder to stop her.

Even now, he thought about throwing something in the way of the rollercoaster cart. He could have done more than just a saw blade and a flamethrower, after all. He didn't even have to have given them a way to steer around those things. He wasn't sure if he'd stopped trying because he simply saw it as pointless – no matter what he threw at her, she'd overcome it. That was a fact.

But was he failing to try because she still held onto some piece of him deep inside? It couldn't be. He had someone new. Someone he hadn't seen for a while yet. This time, Pinkie Pie refused to be found. Jareth supposed she was running through the halls at top speed, trying to get herself as lost as possible.

He was watching the rollercoaster train approach his city now, using the crystal sphere to scry, focusing in on Sarah and the way her dark hair whipped in the wind. The look on her face displayed more determination than ever.

And she would have had the right to it, had she not made her fatal mistake at the Great Clock. But as it were, Jareth knew he probably wouldn't need to install many more obstacles. Just a few troops surrounding Goblin City's interior would suffice. Because their time was running out. Soon, they'd arrive altogether late to retrieve Pinkie Pie. All of their work would have been for nothing, and Jareth could open a new chapter of his life. One where he could rebuild his world alongside a beautifully creative mind, perhaps one suited for a queen. And when he did, he would drive every last trace of Sarah out of it, and he would never catch himself staring at that face again.

...

THE JUNKYARD, THE LABYRINTH

The road Twilight, Hoggle and Bastian had taken led them downhill to a vast wasteland covered in various discarded objects. Junk of all sorts was splayed out across the dark horizon, from furniture to toys, from broken parts of chariots to shredded rags that had once been clothing.

"I remember THIS place," Hoggle realized. "We're a lot closer to Goblin City now than we were before!"

"This is the junkyard Sarah told us about, isn't it?" Twilight recalled.

"Yes, it is!" Hoggle confirmed. "And BE CAREFUL! There are all sorts of traps in here!"

"I'm not surprised," Bastian replied. "There's room for all kinds of traps in here. We'll have to be ready to face any enemy. And we'll have to keep an ear out so we know what's coming!"

"Let's go," Twilight encouraged, and the trio began to cross the great field of garbage, staggering over the uneven terrain.

After some time, Bastian hissed, "Listen!" The footsteps of several beings were growing apparent, coming from higher up the hill.

"Goblins?" Bastian wondered out loud.

"I don't know," Twilight said, summoning up her staff. "But we better be ready for anything."

"Or it could just turn out to be more of our friends," Hoggle pointed out. "And we'll have gotten worked up over nothing again!"

"I'll take a look." Twilight moved behind a large broken wagon, peeking up and over it to see if it was friend or foe that approached, her staff in tow all the while. Once she saw the nature of the followers, she called out, "HEY! DOWN HERE!"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Hoggle snapped.

"You were right!" Twilight told him. "It IS our friends!"

Farther up the hill, Rarity, Fluttershy, Helena, and Ludo were alerted to the call. They all turned their glances down to where Twilight was waving them down. "TWILIGHT!" Fluttershy cried, taking to the air and speeding downward. Helena and Ludo followed. Rarity took the hill at her own pace, stepping gingerly in an attempt to avoid setting her hooves on anything dirty.

"How'd you get here?" Twilight asked once Fluttershy and Pester had caught up to her.

"Oh…" Fluttershy squeaked. "We got here by bouncing on a lot of trampolines while disco balls were spinning in the air and making all sorts of lights. I was worried that Jareth was making the Labyrinth look more like Pinkie Pie. That can't be what's happening, can it?"
"I think it is," Twilight informed her as the others caught up. "We ran into Applejack, and she said that she saw a field of gigantic cupcakes. Sounds like Pinkie Pie to me."

"But why?" Fluttershy asked pleadingly. "Why is this happening?"

"I think there's only one explanation," Twilight said somberly. "Jareth's getting attached to Pinkie Pie. And if that's the case…he might not be willing to give her up even if we DO get there in time."

"WHEN we get there in time," Bastian corrected.

"Bastian's right," Rarity told Twilight. "We've got to think positively about this. We've gotten out of worse before, haven't we?"

"I guess," Twilight admitted. "Though we've always had all six Elements. Even if we did, I'm not sure what we could do. I just know that if we did, we wouldn't be having this problem in the first place because it would mean Pinkie Pie was with us." She hung her head.

"What are these Elements, anyway?" Bastian asked.

"It's rather a long story," Rarity told him. "Shall we walk and talk?"

"Goblin City's that way," Hoggle said, pointing, and the seven set off in that direction.

"The Elements of Harmony are a magical power that my friends and I all wield together," Twilight explained. "They each represent a part of love and friendship. Five of them are Laughter, Honesty, Loyalty, Kindness, and Generosity. When they all come together, they make the sixth element: Magic. They're both our greatest strengths and our greatest challenges. The magic they fuel can do almost anything from growing trees to sealing away villains…or putting villains back in the place they should have been. We've grown trees, made shields, and dispelled glamour with them. But they're not for attacking or destroying. We still don't know what they can all do, but they get stronger as we get stronger. They only work when we have all six. With six, we might be able to turn back the clock so we didn't lose all those hours, or maybe light up a faster way to the center of the Labyrinth. But the only one who could use the Element of Laughter was Pinkie Pie." Twilight pressed a hoof to her amulet. "And things just won't work without her, in more ways than one."

"Element there?" Ludo asked, pointing to the necklace.

"Yeah," Twilight confirmed. "You could say that some of us put a lot of soul into keeping these amulets in working order."

"So we're not just looking for your friend," Helena summed. "We could be saving the world."

"More than one, actually," Rarity pointed out. "Though that's not the biggest reason we need Pinkie Pie back."

"I understand," Helena said with a nod.

A croaking voice asked, "Did I hear you say you were looking for something?"

All turned to see a stooped old woman, bent over with a heap of variegated objects heaped upon her back, addressing them.

"No, you didn't!" Hoggle huffed. "I don't know who you are, but you can't mean anything good!"

"Let's give her a chance," Fluttershy encouraged. She stepped forward to address the old woman. "We're actually looking for our friend at the center of the Labyrinth."

"I see!" the woman said enthusiastically. "We may not have your friend here, but we do have some things that you might find helpful!"

"Not interested!" Hoggle insisted.

Fluttershy ignored him. "What kind of things?" she asked.

"Interesting things," the woman replied. "We don't quite know what to make of all of them."

"Who's 'we'?" Twilight asked before looking around and getting her answer. Several other people who looked to be as elderly as the woman addressing them were milling around the junkyard, hauling unsteady towers of debris on their backs. She wondered what the purpose of the heaps of junk was.

"All of us who live here!" the woman insisted. She gestured to where a canvas curtain was strung up over a pile of garbage, indicating a door in the hill. "We keep all the things we find and don't know what to do with in here. Why don't you have a look?"
"I don't like this," Bastian stated. "It's too convenient. And it's not what we came for."

"Excuse me," Twilight told the old woman. She beckoned for Bastian, Helena, Hoggle, Ludo, Fluttershy, and Rarity to follow her some paces away. Once they were out of earshot, Twilight whispered, "She wouldn't have offered if she didn't think it was relevant. Then again, she might also have offered if it's a trap. But I think if she has something she thinks will help, we should at least take a look at it. We're down one Element. What if she has a magical item that can make up for that?"

"I think Twilight's right," Rarity said with a nod. "It's worth a look, at least."

"She seemed to be offering just because she was nice," Fluttershy contributed.

"I don't like it!" Hoggle huffed. "This is DEFINITELY one of Jareth's traps! He's got her working for him the same way he had me!"

"Do you have any proof of that?" Helena asked.

"Well, no…" Hoggle admitted.

"But this is exactly the part of the story where the villain would try to trick you with a distraction to keep you from getting where you wanted to go," Bastian pointed out, thinking of a certain witch.

Helena was thinking of a witch of her own. "I think that's a risk we'll have to take. Sometimes, the thing you need is hidden IN a trap."

"Ludo?" Twilight turned to the largest member of the group. "What do you think?"

Ludo shook his head. "Don't like."

"So that's four of us who want to check it out," Twilight pointed out, "and three who think it's dangerous. By popular vote, it's in favor of seeing what she wants to show us. But…"

"Maybe you should," Bastian decided. "But if you do, I'll be right there to make sure nothing goes wrong."

"Damn it…" Hoggle muttered. "If you really want to see what that old woman's got up her sleeve, I'm going too. I'm not about to have you die from doing something so stupid while I sat back and didn't do anything!"

"Ludo go too," Ludo chimed in.

"Are you sure?" Twilight asked. "I mean…"

"Helena has a point," Bastian reminded her. "There might actually be something there we need, even if it is a trap. If we stick together, we should be able to figure out whatever comes!"

No one else voiced any objections, so Twilight nodded. "All right. Let's go."

The old woman was waiting just where they'd left her. "Well?" she asked impatiently. "Did you want to see what we found, or not?"

"We do," Twilight told her. "Is it just behind this curtain?"

"Take a look!" The old woman drew the curtain aside, letting the seven see a tunnel stretching beyond it, burrowing deeper into the hill. She then shuffled into this tunnel, and the others followed.

Some ways down, the way split into four. "Hm…now let's see," the old woman remarked. "I remember some sort of interesting drawing down that way…" She pointed to the tunnel on the far right.

"Drawing?" Helena repeated. "I want to go that way."

"Then I'll go with you," Bastian volunteered. "Just in case."

"Very good, very good!" the old woman said with a nod; she knew the other five were waiting to hear what lay down the other tunnels. "Now, THAT way was set up to be a home for some strange creatures…"

"I don't mind strange creatures," Fluttershy said calmly, and Pester gave a little yowl to assert the point. "I'll go see what's down that way."

"Ludo too," Ludo resolved.

While Helena and Bastian headed in the direction of the mysterious dwelling and Fluttershy, Pester, and Ludo set a course for the habitat of the mysterious beasts, the old woman pointed to the next tunnel in line. "Now, down THAT way – "

"Some sort of gem?" Rarity asked. "I can sense a gathering of them up ahead. I believe I'll take this one."

"It's all too convenient, if you ask me…" Hoggle grumbled as he followed Rarity down the path.

"Then that leaves this path," the old woman indicated, pointing to the far left branch. "THERE is where we kept all the strange old books we found. You like books, don't you? Come with me, why don't you!"

She ushered Twilight down the final way. Twilight was beginning to feel suspicious. There seemed to be things in these tunnels that very specifically corresponded to Helena, Rarity, Fluttershy, and herself. But at the same time, if there were books in the Junkyard, she wanted to take a look at them. Maybe one of them would contain a crucial clue: a map of Goblin City, or a dark secret about Jareth that would render him temporarily powerless. She pressed on eagerly, with the old woman following close behind, pieces of debris falling off the heap on her back every now and again.

Helena and Bastian reached a wooden door at the end of their route. "That's peculiar," Helena remarked. "It looks almost like…" She shook her head. There were many doors in existence. And most of them looked like the one to her room. She put her hand on the knob and twisted it.

Fluttershy was left confused by the door she faced as well. It looked identical to the door to her tree cottage back on Fourth Equestria. "I don't know if this is such a good idea anymore," she admitted, looking up to Ludo.

"Turn back?" Ludo asked.

Fluttershy shook her head. "Not when I've come this far." She opened the door.

"Why…" Rarity remarked upon coming to her own door. "It looks just like the entryway to the Carousel Boutique!"

"Too convenient!" Hoggle insisted. "It's a trap, is what it is!"

"You're most likely right," Rarity told him. "But…" She felt the room practically calling out to her to come inside. "It does seem that it was rather meant for me, doesn't it?"

"YES!" Hoggle cried, exasperated. "And that's what makes me so sure it's a TRAP! All the more reason for us to LEAVE!"

"I just want a quick peek at what's inside," Rarity stated, using her magic to open the doors without a further word. After a wordless groan, Hoggle followed her through.

"Wait," Twilight told the old woman. "This isn't right. This looks exactly like the door to the Golden Oak Library." She too felt a draw to enter, and that frightened her.

"Why isn't that right?" the woman asked, and soon she'd barged past Twilight, losing several more items from her back in the process, throwing the door open wide. "This is home, isn't it?"

"Home?" Twilight asked. "What do you mean, 'home'? This is the…"

When she saw what lay on the other side of the door, she was left speechless. It was the Golden Oak Library, exactly as she'd left it. All the books were neatly lined up on their shelves. The windows showed a view of Ponyville outside.

"No," Twilight whispered, stepping into the library cautiously.

Helena and Bastian found themselves in a tiny bedroom. Bastian was confused as to why it looked so different from the tunnel, but he could see what the drawings were. They covered the entire room like wallpaper: a fantastic city done in black ink, with little details here and there of a being that defied logic or a quirky landmark, spanning page after beige page.

"Bastian," Helena said, awestruck.

"What?" Bastian replied.

"My drawings," Helena told him, her eyes nearly watering. "The ones I thought the princess destroyed. They're here. They're all here!"

Bastian realized that the art style was most definitely Helena's. How could he not have noticed it before? He'd seen it in project after project of hers, and she'd shown off material similar but not identical to this on multiple occasions.

"Oh, my…" Fluttershy had found herself inside the living room of her cottage. All of the furniture there was identical to that she knew back home. There was only one difference: other than Ludo, Pester, and Fluttershy, there was absolutely no sign of life. The beds and bowls set up for various animals were there – indeed, a dwelling set up for strange creatures – but no one was there to use them.

"Why, I don't believe it!" Rarity cried when she entered her own studio. "I'm home!"

"It isn't home!" Hoggle tried to persuade her. "It's some kind of trick! An illusion!"

"Oh, really?" Rarity found a mannequin upon which one of her favorite creations rested. "Does this fabric feel like an illusion to you?"
Hoggle ran a hand over the mannequin. It was solid, wearing silken clothes studded with gems. "Well, no, but…"

"It's been so LONG!" Rarity hugged another mannequin tight, running her hoof over the satin on its ensemble. "Oh, how I've missed you, darling!"

"What is this?" Twilight asked, turning toward the old woman. "Is…is this some kind of trick?"

"The trick is everything Jareth's been pulling on you!" the woman insisted. "It's too dangerous to go out there again! You'd better stay in here, where you know it's safe!"

Twilight took a step back. "Now I KNOW you're trying to trick me."

"But don't you miss your books?" the woman cajoled, taking one down off the shelf and holding it out.

"I – " Twilight glanced down at the book. "Daring Do," book five, chapter seven. She would have known it anywhere. "These books. They're not illusions. They're…" She levitated the book toward herself, flipping through the pages. "They're exact copies. Literally everything in my library is here, isn't it?"

"Exactly!" the woman confirmed.

"Then there might be something in here about how to beat Jareth without the Elements!" Twilight realized. As her horn shone, book after book poured down from the shelves. "I'm going to need to read up on goblins, pocket dimensions, shifting reality, Chaos magic, the Elements themselves…"

"What about mermaids and fin-folk?" The woman placed a book on Twilight's back. "Well, this is about sea ponies, but it's the closest thing you've got! And you met some spiders, didn't you? Well…" She set another book there. "You'll need a book on spiders!"

Twilight had begun leafing through the first book, but found nothing of worth in it, so she tossed it aside. The woman was quick to pick it up and place it on Twilight's back. So the process went with every other book Twilight checked and discarded.

Helena, in the meantime, had begun to peel each of her drawings off the wall. "What are you doing?" Bastian asked her.

"Saving them," Helena answered. "I can't let them get destroyed all over again. I have to take them with me! I just have to figure out how to carry them. Hm…" There was still tape applied to the back of the drawings she held. She stuck them to her back before resuming the process.

"Why did you put them there…?" Bastian asked, slowly making a connection.

"Because it's the best place I can put them and still have my hands free," Helena answered casually, gently peeling down another drawing and sticking it to herself.

"Seeing all this reminds me how much I miss home," Fluttershy confessed to Ludo. "Looking at it, I think…I think…" Her eyes filled up with tears. "I think I'm sorry I ever went on this adventure, and I just want to go home!" She ducked under a table, burying her head in her forelegs so she could cry.

"Fluttershy?" Ludo replied.

"I hate all of this!" Fluttershy sobbed. "We'll never get Pinkie Pie back! Every time we try, something horrible happens! The only way we can be safe is if we just…give up now and stay here!"

Rarity burst out from the back dressing room, enveloped in one of her more lavish dresses. "What do you think?"

"I think we've wasted enough time here," Hoggle huffed.

"Oh, but you haven't even seen the best of my collection!" Rarity pouted. "Here. Let me show you!" She grabbed another ensemble off a rack, taking it back to the fitting room. When she emerged, she was wearing the second outfit over top of the first.

"Oh no…" Hoggle muttered.

"I can't believe these are all here!" Rarity gushed. "I had thought Sweetie Belle would have sold them all by now. Perhaps I can do it for her! There must be ponies in this labyrinth, right?" She lay another dress across her back. "Surely they'd like to try on a few pieces of haute couture." Another. "Oh, but these are absolutely worthless without the accessories." A scattering of jewels was laid out over the stack of clothing on top of Rarity. "Ooh, I haven't seen THIS in forever! Not to mention this one, and this!" She set three hats in succession atop her head.

Twilight's reading pace had slowed. Instead of frantically flipping through the books, she'd given in to the strange desire she felt to simply lie on the floor and lazily read at her own pace. She'd also switched books from those concerned with more magical subjects to a fantasy epic about a band of young unicorns leading a rebellion in the middle of a desert empire.

"Isn't this better?" the old woman – a Junk Lady – asked, setting another book on top of Twilight. They stacked several feet high by this point. "Everything you want and love is right here. You can go on as many adventures as you'd like without having to leave your little library. Oh, here! You'll need this one. Remember the fun you had reading this one?"

"I haven't read that one in years!" Twilight exclaimed gleefully. "I DEFINITELY need to give it a re-read! But…I feel like something's missing."

"I don't think anything is," the Junk Lady cajoled. "See? Here's your book about weather patterns. And here! Your old favorite romance novel! Don't try and deny it; I know this one's one of your guilty pleasures! What's this? A book of folktales! And you should read up on your geology, too…you have absolutely everything in these books! You can read about all the different lands you would ever want to visit, and these characters will be your best friends!"

"My…best friends," Twilight repeated. The phrase stung her like a dagger to the heart.

"Please, Helena!" Bastian begged. "Can't you see what you're doing? You're sticking all those drawings to yourself, just like the people out there piled up all that junk on their backs. If you keep doing this, it'll turn you into one of them! That's why she showed you these! To make you just like her! These can't be your real drawings, anyway! You just said they were destroyed by some princess! These are fake!"

"There's a WORLD in them!" Helena cried.

"In the REAL ones!" Bastian told her. "Those are gone! These are just paper!"

"I don't care!" Helena said desperately. "This is the only chance I'll ever get to see them again! Every single one was one-of-a-kind!"

"Then make new ones!" Bastian urged. "Draw the adventures you've had in this Labyrinth! Draw the adventures you have after this! Draw the Junkyard! Draw that princess! Draw Sarah and Richard and me! But don't just stay here piling up old pictures!"

Helena shook her head. "I can't leave. I don't have all the drawings yet."

"Then what? Are you going to take them to Goblin City with you?"

"Goblin City?" Helena shook her head. "That's…where I was going, wasn't it?"

"You're forgetting!" Bastian realized in horror. "The more of those pictures you stick to yourself, the more you lose your memories! Trust me, Helena, your memories are something you can't afford to lose! What about your dad? Or your mom?"

"Mom," Helena repeated. "The drawings were destroyed because she was sick. I was so worried…"

"What will happen to her if you stay here too long?" Bastian asked. "She'll get worried for you, like you worry about her! Isn't she more important than these pictures?"

"Yes," Helena realized. "That's why…that's why I risked so much to get to the MirrorMask in the first place! These pictures are…"

"Fluttershy?" Ludo peered under the table to see the pegasus cowering there.

"I'm sorry," Fluttershy squeaked. "I just…I want to stay here."

Pester crawled out from his hiding place in Fluttershy's mane, creeping around the house, sniffing at one of the empty food bowls.

"Oh, you'll want something to eat!" Fluttershy realized. She knew it would mean having to get out from under the table, but her new animal friend was hungry, so she mustered up the strength to crawl out and make her way to the cabinet where she kept lizard food, among food for other creatures. As she opened the cabinet door, she laid eyes upon the bags upon bags of animal chow.

"You know…" she muttered. "There…really are usually a lot of other creatures here. If this really were my cottage back home, Pester, you'd have a lot of friends to play with." She turned to look at Ludo. "That's my favorite thing about home. All of my animal friends, playing and working together…when you go to my house, you're never really alone. Except for now."

"What now?" Ludo asked.

"Now…" Fluttershy cast her gaze around the house. Empty, but for herself, Ludo, and Pester. "Now that it's empty, and all my animal friends aren't here to enjoy it, well…well, it all just sort of seems like…"

"Listen!" Hoggle begged Rarity. "I know what it's like to want to keep your personal property with you and not have anyone touch it! Believe me! But that stuff isn't IMPORTANT right now! At the end of the day, what do you want to have? A fat purse, or your friends safe and sound? Because I thought I knew which I wanted when I started working with Jareth, but now I know I was wrong! Jewels don't mean anything at all if you let good people get hurt over them! And if you keep piling things up like that, you're just going to stay here in this dump forever and let your friends walk into danger without you! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?" Rarity had just flung another gown onto the haphazard pile on her back; Hoggle flung it right back off, onto the ground. "Who'd you make this for in the first place, anyway?"

Rarity looked down at the dress. It was easy to see why Hoggle had asked. It was embroidered with a rainbow pattern meant specifically to compliment Rainbow Dash's mane and tail. "Why, I made it for my friends," Rarity realized. "Oh, pardon me…for some reason, I just got all caught up in being in a familiar place with all of my familiar things. But I can't stay here any longer! There's nothing in this room that's going to help my friends! These jewels, these fashions…why, they might as well be…"

"There's one thing I DON'T have here," Twilight told the Junk Lady. "Real friends. Reading about characters in books can't replace them. I already made the mistake once of insulting a friend because I picked books over her, and wishing she would go away forever and leave me with my books. That's why I'm HERE. But I'm not going to make the same mistake again. I'll always love my books, but if they're all I have without any of my friends, then they're just…"

Helena tore a sheaf of drawings right in half: "JUNK!"

Fluttershy flipped over the table she'd been hiding beneath: "JUNK!"

Rarity bucked all of the clothes and jewels at the far wall: "JUNK!"

Twilight twisted so that all of the books fell off her back: "JUNK!"

There was a rumbling, and the walls of the four caverns meant to replicate nostalgic safe spaces crumbled in, leading to the Junkyard outside and offering once more a clear view of the Junk Ladies and Junk Men who picked their way through the debris, adding more and more to their heap in hopes of satisfaction, having been lured there once before by the same promises that had brought Twilight, Fluttershy, Helena, and Rarity to their traps.

As Twilight clambered out into the Junkyard and saw the other six emerge from their own caverns, she could guess what had happened. "GO!" she yelled. "AND DON'T LOOK BACK!"

The seven took off across the Junkyard at top speed, ignoring the Junk Lady's plaintive cries of "No! Come back here! Don't you want your things? Your Daring Do books? Your new Gala gown? Your comfy couch? Your sketchbook!"

...

GOBLIN CITY, THE LABYRINTH

There was a brief moment of panic when Rainbow Dash wondered if the rollercoaster train would actually stop or if it would just ram right into the wall. Before she could order Sir Didymus to start driving in circles, the carts slowed to a halt right before the gates of Goblin City, and the safety bars popped up, letting Rainbow Dash, Sir Didymus, Lancelot, Applejack, Sarah, Ambrosius, and Richard out. The latter had to be dragged out of his seat, as he was clutching the sides of the car, paper-white with fear.

At the same time, Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy with Pester, Hoggle, Ludo, Helena, and Bastian came running out from the Junkyard's outer borders, arriving at the same gate.

"TWILIGHT!" Rainbow Dash surged forward to envelop both Twilight and Fluttershy in a tight hug. "FLUTTERSHY!"

Pester gave Rainbow Dash the smallest of nips out of affection as Twilight and Fluttershy both laughed; Twilight commented, "We missed you too, Rainbow Dash!"

"Good to see ya, Rarity!" Applejack called out.

"And you as well!" Rarity told Applejack, they linked forearms in greeting.

"Sir Ludo!" Sir Didymus proclaimed. "My brother in arms! How I have missed you!"

"Brother!" Ludo beamed brightly at the sight of his comrade. Ambrosius scampered up next to Ludo, expecting pets, and Ludo obliged, scratching his back a little.

"Well, it's good to know you made it here all right," Hoggle told Lancelot.

"If not for the lack of Jareth trying," Lancelot told him.

Sarah and Helena also embraced tightly. "Looks like we'll be doing this together after all!" Helena laughed.

"I'm glad," Sarah replied.

Richard practically collapsed onto Bastian, wrapping his arms around him like a vise. Bastian gently returned the gesture, noticing Richard was shaking. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"DON'T EVER MAKE ME GO ON A ROLLERCOASTER AGAIN" was all Richard offered by way of explanation.

"Okay," Bastian affirmed, needing no clarification despite being incredibly curious. "I won't." He gently ran one hand through Richard's hair.

"Wait a minute…" Rainbow Dash backed up, looking over the group. "We're all here. We all got here at the exact same time. That means all that exploring we did on all those different paths was POINTLESS! We could have just stayed on the same path!"

The others let that revelation sink in. Then Sarah realized, "But it wasn't pointless. Horatius said if we hadn't gone to the Great Clock, we wouldn't have learned."

"I might not have met Pester," Fluttershy realized.

"What if we didn't run into Sir Didymus?" Rainbow Dash wondered out loud.

"If we hadn't been in two different places, we might not've been able to help the Fire Gang get back together," Applejack added.

"I'd like to think we helped the spiders out," Twilight brought up.

"I don't miss the old drawings I lost anymore," Helena realized. "That world is doing just fine without me anyway. I know it."

"If we hadn't split up," Bastian realized, "then Richard and I might not have figured out how we felt about each other." He then addressed Richard: "You okay now?"

"Still recovering, if that's okay with you," Richard told him, refusing to let go.

"It's fine," Bastian said happily, gently patting the blond on the back.

"But this did give me a chance to face down another monster and hone my drawing skill," Richard contributed.

"It's all about taking things for granted," Sarah recalled. "Everything we've done here WAS important to us. Even if it took us all the same amount of time."

"Speaking of which, the sun's down now," Twilight pointed out. "How much time do we have left?"
"I…don't know," Sarah admitted. "So we'd better hurry."

She turned to face the arched wooden gates set in a stone wall. The others all lined up to follow her, Richard finally letting go of Bastian and Sir Didymus vaulting to a sitting position atop Ambrosius.

The gates opened of their own accord. Jareth was ready for them.

...

Chapter 113:

· This chapter was written while listening to copious amounts of Midnight Syndicate. Particularly the "Carnival Arcane" album.

· The Junkyard scene is one of the ones I was most excited to write for this storylet, not to mention one of the ones I'm proudest of. I like scenarios that allow me to dig into my characters' psyches by using a surrounding environment.

· I do think that if we weren't on the clock, Twilight, Fluttershy, and Rarity might have stopped to figure out if the other Junk Ladies and Junk Men could be liberated, or wanted to be liberated. I feel a little bad leaving that plot in the dust, but we are on the clock.

· Also, yes, I will confirm that the Junkyard replica drawings do NOT contain or have any connection to the world of MirrorMask. Helena did not just rip that world in half.

· I actually hadn't realized EXACTLY how many parallels MirrorMask and TNS had until spelling them out here. And it kind of makes me want to know how the Queen of Shadows and Xayide would react to each other.

· Next chapter is going to be the LAST ONE in the storylet! Get ready for the final showdown and some revelations!