Author's Notes:

I'm sorry

I honestly expected a trap. The sudden surrender from the alien, the map they just left behind, the fact that half of us were tossed like rag dolls but they still didn't seem strong enough. Really?!

As it turned out, no obvious trap was shown. The lock was easy, too. I pointed my keyblade to the key hole, and a beam of light unlocked it immediately. The lock fell to the floor in a loud CLANG before dissolving in neon green light. The gate swung open in an equally loud creaking noise, and the yellow filly inside hopped out.

"Hey Applebloom." I mumbled, still a little dissapointed in the ease of the mission.

She didn't even hear me. She tackled Scootaloo with a hug. No talking, no warning, just a random cuddle bug. I didn't realize how bored i was until i found myself running after the alien.

"Hey, Weiss! I actually had some more questions!"

She stopped suddenly to look back at me. "You do realize I'm supposed to kill you?"

"I don't care, kill me later." I desummoned my blade, the crystal teleporting back to my neck. "You have your reasons for making that perfect world, and i get that. Just explain why you're running away right now? You haven't lost yet."

"Are you asking me to kill you now instead of later?" She inquired.

"Oh nonono, by all means, kill me later." I strolled to her, even though her rapier was aimed between my eyes. "I'm just wondering why you don't just finish us off."

"Hm." She smirked and began to go away, a light hop in her step as she skipped off. "I see that you guys are well grouped. It'd be pointless to attack. Go enjoy Valentine's Day, i simply adore chocolate! I'll be back, let's see, a week? Meet you at Camp Half-blood later." She then dissappeared out the cave.

I knew there wasn't a point in following her, so i turned back to my new friends, all waiting for me to come back.

They watched me walk in, and continued to stare as i monitored the map. "What?" I asked, a little too forced to sound friendly.

"Well, we still need access to the map.", Scootaloo said. "It has to be used from the inside, like the planet thingy, according to Ship."

"Zaanne, do you want to enter it again?"

~Sure~, he responded unsurely. He didn't say much about their memory in there, but It seems Zaanne also had a past he has to figure out. I guessed the blue pony was also important, but to what extent? He was a major part in tossing the firewall aside last time, and maybe contact with another device will give him more refined details.

I placed my hand on the machine, closing my eyes and attaching myself to it with my will. A small intangible string of energy flowed through my fingers, up my arm and into where my heart should have been. I then felt Zaanne's presence swell abit from my chest, passing through the connection into the machine.

"If Zaanne is in, why do you still have to hold on?" Scootaloo asked, also feeling him leave the crystal momentarily.

"I think he's like a bridge back to the crystal," Rainbow considered, "when me and the gang used the Elements of Harmony to turn Discord back to stone, that's kinda how it felt to me."

My veins glowed green with magic blood, the crystal glimmering with a soft light that reminded me of the grass mid-Spring, back in Texas. Blue Bonnets were my favorite flower, and i enjoyed picking them for my mom.

The world melted away for me, leaving me in my own head. Memories flooded to me in a slow pace, much nicer and clearer than my stupid amnesiac dreams. It was like small images of my past telling their thousand word stories all at once, but voices over by the real Morgan Freeman.

My mom wouldn't keep the flowers, losing them quickly. I still treasured them to myself. Getting pretty things was my hobby before i started school; finding the most colorful specks of nature and watching how they blended together. After i went through pre-K and kindergarten, i became more violent, natural for most children. My stepfather, Sleepy, told me that if i didn't become kind, I'd become my biological dad, who began to go in and out of jail.

Memories became slower, making me long for more, the real world drowning back into existence. After a few punishments, i stopped doing bad things. At least, not on purpose, and when it was on purpose, I'd react baddly to it, like Jim Carey saying no in "Yes Man".

A memory of me pranking Sleepy by putting a fake spider on my hand popped up clear as day, outside of the fading memories. I recall that because i shared his fear, dropping the toy as soon as he got startled from it. From then on i was deathly arachnephobic, even more than Sleepy was. I was not even able to think of them without going into a mental lockup. After almost seven years, the memory of that stupid toy knocked me out of the trance.

I almost let my hand go, but I held on long enough for Zaanne to flow back in, him giving a deep sigh. ~Well, we aren't in any trouble for now, but it seems the map is still searching for your imaginary planets.~

"How many has it located?" Scootaloo shuffled to me, but i was in no mood to talk, or move.

"Five so far. This place, two Earths, a huge country that looks like it could possibly be related to Pokèmon, and some place called Death City."

Even though i made the places, i hasn't felt like I've heard of Death City before. Maybe it was a small part of some book i read or something.

The bad memory continued to burn in my head, but i heard hoofsteps echo through the cave, so i tried to force it out.

In came Twilight, who flashed through with a glowing flashlight for a horn. "Rainbow Dash!" She ran to her, delighted to see her friend was okay. "Do you know how long ponyville has been empty? We have to get everypony back to town!" Then she noticed the giand swirling vortex of space in the orb, and the unicorn went into a hushed gasp.

Rayden moved from R.D., whom he hadn't left the side of. He walked to the exit and motioned us along. "Right, lets get the ponies safely back."

We dismissed from the map room quickly, me at the end. Twilight would not stop asking Rayden questions about human anatomy, but Ship was the only one who answered her questions, which forced her to ask more questions, which, in turn, made me ask questions to contradict Twilight's.

Zaanne hadn't said much since he left the system, though neither had i. He obviously got another memory, one he was more reluctant to tell. I was happy for the silence in my head, but i also became concerned for him. I didn't like when someone acted sad, even though i couldn't ever tell whether they were or not. I figured asking him wouldn't get me anywhere, so I strolled silently out of the cave.

"We could go get a reward for all of you helping save Ponyville." Twilight said. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the dragons had a chance of coming back, considering we didn't necessarily scare them off. They just got bored and left. "Since you two are new to Equestria, do you have any bits yet?"

"No." Said Ray glumly. He'd been starring over the edge of the mountain, checking for a way to get down without teleporting, since none of us had enough mana to do so anymore. The changing to human, transferring Zaanne into the map and pulling him out had dropped me to around 20%, Scootaloo had just enough to rocket her's and Applebloom's way down, to Twilight's amazement, but the rest of us had to slide down.

Ray and RD sped down at a good speed, Rayden keeping his hands in his pockets to show off for the pegasus. Zaanne. Twilight and I slid down slowly, taking our time to keep from tripping.

"So," Twilight spoke up, "this is your human form?"

"Mhm, from a completely different planet."

"But Rayden doesn't have a magic crystal, so you changed him yourself?"

"That'd be my doing." Ship commented proudly.

"So, can you turn me into a human?" She asked quickly.

I hit the floor and halted. "Hm... I don't see why not. Ship?"

Ship shrugged in the back of my head. "Would you like to test it?" I was starting to wonder how much actual math was put into the crystal's power percentage, considering how enthusiastic ship was about this. Zaanne hadn't said anything for almost ten minutes, which rang plenty of warning lights, but i waited and watched Twilight. "Just stand still now."

Immediately she became consumed in Ship's signature flame. The figure changed into a column before lowering, showing a whole different species from the previous unicorn.

Now stood a five foot talk Asian-American girl, with a small nose and ears, bright violet eyes, long and flat purple hair and a pink highlight running through it. The tail and horn were gone, but traded with fingers and toes. She looked just like a thirteen year old cosplaying as Twilight Sparkle, doing a seemingly perfect job at it too. Still, something felt wrong.

"Zaanne, make some clothes for her."

"Damn Twilight, that a B-cup?" Fabric spiraled around her like a purple tornado until she was in some fitted clothes. A purple T-shirt with darker jeans equal colored, along with some neat gloves with pink Rhombuses on the tops. "There."

"You know if we made her blonde, she'd look like a female version of Odd..." Since i knew nobody knew who Odd Della Robbia was, i figured I'd leave it at that.

She stared at herself stunned, completely lost of words. Honestly, she looked pretty cool in my opinion. I had nothing against purple, and she pulled off the "nerd" aspect pretty well, even without glasses.

"I added something non-human to those gloves." Zaanne announced. "They can channel your magic energy outward, like your horn. May take some practice, but it should look badass if you can pull off being a Mage as well as a unicorn."

She tested it, raising a hand toward a large rock. The boulder, along with her arm, became enveloped in a pinkish glow, the rock floating up into the air. "It's not too hard." She dropped the rock.

"Well then, let's go back to Ponyville. Mind if i change everybody back to ponies? We might cause more uproar that there already is."

Twilight nodded assent, so we switched back to pony, including Rayden, and headed back to town.

You know when you're just randomly hit with depression after a while? That started to form as the town gathered together in the center of Ponyville.

That was about when the wave of guilt rolled through my shoulders as i hid away from the crowd. Their version of valentine's day was just around the corner, and i pretty much ruined their preparation time. It shouldn't have been much of a deal, since it was a safety requirement for the dragon invasion, but it still hurt abit inside.

Mayor Mare announced that we would be using the unharmed fruitcake as a community event, so a large group was taken out to begin sawing the fruitcake barrier down. Rayden went out with Rainbow, Applejack and her sister to harvest some apples, which seemed to foreshadow an akward moment.

Scootaloo and I got to join Sweetiebelle in decorating, since Rarity had insisted after hearing the story. She was mainly interested in how Zaanne could design clothes from the back of his head, or, my head. I figured I could trust the Mane6 with the "aliens coming over to fight aliens" secret.

"So, you can freely create any form of fabric," she asked, "so long as you know what the fabric is?"

"Yep!" Zaanne went off on a few different types of material, smartly not mentioning any animal skins. "I can also make latex outfits, but I doubt anybody would need it."

They babbled a lot about stuff i didn't care about, but i listened. I had a slight warmth in knowing Zaanne wasn't being droopy anymore, even though i was. I didn't need to fly, since Rarity hung everything magically. The tables were almost immediately placed by the Cutie Mark Crusaders' teamwork, so i didn't have anything to do.

I trudged over to the main hall, where Spike and some other ponies had begun assembling instruments. "Need some help?" I asked in monotone.

"N-no thanks," Spike tripped over a drum and crashed into the grand piano, which didn't budge to his puny weight.

"Well I'm gonna help anyway." I pushed up the drums with my muzzle. "You alright?"

"Just fine!" He rolled to his feet and hopped onto the piano bench, playing a random note. "Sounds good!" He smiles up to me.

"How can you be sure?" I sat next to him and played Chopsticks, suprisingly easy with hooves. It was completely natural to me, but Spike became transfixed on it. "What song is that?"

"Uh, it's called Chopsticks." I played it on a lower octave and looked up to him. "Ponies play piano, right?"

"Well sure, but not often. Nice song by the way." He played something that sounded similar to "Ol' McDonald" before hopping off to go prepare the cello.

I looked behind me slowly. ~Ship, can you give me just my hands and wrists for a second?~ My arms became human quickly.

Scanning to see if anypony was watching, I quickly played something way more fun than Chopsticks. Honestly, i didn't memorize the names for songs i played, they just sounded cool. As it turned out, ponies started to gather, marveling at the piano playing that a 10 year old human could play.

After a while of repeating the Jeporady and Zelda theme, i had almost fifteen ponies sitting around and smiling up to me. This meant i should stop, in my head. As i hopped away, hooves back, ponies clopped and cheered.

"It feels like they're enjoying different cultures or something." I started to fly off before crashing into a building.

"They are," Ship confirmed. "It is much like how you have Halloween while Mexican culture has the Day of the Dead. Try to go find some differences in your version and their version of Hearts and Hooves Day.

"Guess I'll be doing that until tomorow."

"What are you doing tomorow?" Zaanne asked.

"Somethin'." I strolled to the apple orchards, thinking about how to make a free picnic.