Rarity woke up to the sight of three television cameras surrounding her, so she figured she should say something.

“I just had the strangest dream... I was this dog that looked like Twilight and....” She threw her blanket off, revealing her front legs. “AAAAAAAAH!”

Spitfire and Soarin’ were up on a cloud, not doing anything of note.

“Did you hear something?” Spitfire said. “Like, somepony screaming?”

“No.”

“Okay, I might’ve overreacted to that spider,” Rarity said. “But I think I can have just a small scream when I wake up to something like that.” With no need to spend half an hour waking up, she got right to her day, which was just another day running the Carousel Boutique with nothing interesting happening.

Rainbow woke up from a long, comfortable, rejuvenating sleep curled up on her cloud. “Wow, that was weird,” she said to herself for the cameras, “I dreamt I was a skunk. Seriou... oh... oh Faust. Whatever, I’ll just to go... Zecora... with no wings.” She looked down on whatever village it was the cloud had drifted to, which was definitely not Ponyville. “CAN SOMEPONY HELP ME?!”

Twilight was sitting in her bedroom, having a bowl of corn flakes with relaxed contentment. Spike came in carrying a book.

“Hi, Twilight,” he said nonchalantly.

“Hey.”

He put the book between two others on a shelf under the room’s non-bunk bed. “So when are you going to Sugarcube Corner?”

“It’ll be a couple hours. Why?”

“I don’t know. I just like to know where the pony who gives my life purpose is. What if I call you and you’re not there? That could be a whole minute wasted looking for you.”

“I’ll tell you when I leave, okay?”

At school, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were sitting against a wall, just around the corner from each other. They were both holding phones, and both unaware that the devices actually had calling capabilities.

“You are, like, so funny,” Diamond Tiara said. Silver Spoon didn’t respond. “Hey, there are Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. Let’s bug them to make us feel like we’re worth something.”

“And Ah knew Pinkie Pah had a pretty hah jump, but—”

“Hello,” Diamond Tiara said.

“What is it this tahme?”

“I... I don’t know. Hey, where’s Scootaloo?”

“Ah... Ah dunno.”

“Well, anyway... your... clothes are terrible.”

“Mah bow?”

“Yeah. That colour is just... awful.”

“Er... sure.”

“I’m afraid if we spend any more time like this, somepony might associate us with you. Come on, Silver, let’s go.” They went back to where they just were.

“Well, that was—”

“YOOOO!” Scootaloo came through the entrance on a skateboard, briefly in the air from a jump she made to get over the stairs. She jumped off the board into a cartwheel into a frontflip, letting the vehicle hit an irregularity in the floor and crash on its side into a locker. “Wazzup, sistahs?”

“Ah’m pretty good. Where did you get that?”

“I was literally starving and I went to Sparkstown to go skipping, and it was just there. It isn’t so useful on the gravel we have around here, though.”

“Hm. You gonna keep it?”

“Until it inevitably gets stolen the next time I sleep.”

“Do you know why I came to Sweet Apple Acres and teleported us to the middle of this soybean farm before you realised who you had just got the door for?” Trixie said.

“Actually, no,” Applejack said.

“Maybe this pack of cards will give you a clue?”

“No.”

“It’s because we’re connected, Applejack. On a magical level. You see, when bit by a burgundyback spider, we both transform into exactly the same animal.”

“What’s that and how do you know?”

“It’s just another magical animal, really, you won’t run into one unless you’re particularly careless in the Everfree or somepony deliberately brings one to attack you with. When bitten by one, you turn into a small version of an animal determined by various genetic factors. The point is that I got a bit of your blood and it turns out we’re the exact same animal. The chances of that without being closely related are extremely slim.”

“How did you get mah blood, and are we related?”

“I don’t know, you were asleep with Rainbow Dash and your leg had blood for some reason. So I teleported in and got the blood.”

“Oh yeah, Ah remember that. So don’t tell me we’re related.”

“The test said we aren’t.”

“Ah thought you said—”

“Yes, I know I said the chances are extremely slim. The point I was making isn’t that we’re related, it’s that we’re connected in a specific magical context.”

“What?”

“You can get Twilight to explain the science to you if you’re really interested, but what it means is that if one of us transforms, so does the other. That also applies to turning back.”

“So... if one pony is transformed, another prolly is too?”

“No. Even siblings tend to have completely different animals. Only most pairs of identical twins along with chance cases like us will be the same.”

“So whah do Ah even need to know any ah this?”

“Because I’m extremely lonely and I’ll take any excuse I can get to talk to somepony I like.”

“And whah did you suspect us of havin’ the same animal?”

“When I was getting my test for reasons unrelated to any of this, the pony mentioned offhoof that it was extremely similar to Big Mac’s, and I got curious.”

“So what about Apple Bloom?”

“Woah, she’s a foal. I wasn’t going to spy on her sleeping, doing it to an adolescent is creepy enough.”

“She wouldn’t mahnd more than Ah did. They grow up quicker in Equestria.”

“Yeah, but I still couldn’t make myself do it.”

“All raht. That’s all great, can Ah go now?”

“I’m very lonely.”

“Just take me back.”

Pinkie Pie had a lot of things to bake, and Twilight was helping by occasionally levitating something, massively cutting down the time wasted on carrying things.

“Seriously, I need to thank you again. I couldn’t be doing this without you.”

“Well, levitating a baking sheet isn’t much work....”

“Don’t be like that, you took a lot of time out to help. You deserve a pat on the AAAAAAAAH!”

“That’s, like, the tiniest spider I’ve—”

“Kill it!”

She lifted the spider to eye level and turned it to dust. “Better?”

“Yes. Now we can continue. So all this work isn’t boring you, is it?”

“Not with you to talk to.”

“Aww. Well, I’m glad you’re having a good time.”

“Yep, I am. Pretty much the only thing that could ruin it is if I heard that somepony I loved was transformed into an animal and helplessly being carried away from Ponyville.”

“That sure would suck in a specific way.”

“Yeah, that’s the joke.”

A pale yellow pegasus with a pink mane landed on a cloud which held a skunk of foal-like proportions, six centimetres high on her hands and knees.

“Fluttershy! I’m Rainbow Dash!” Rainbow said, which unbeknownst to her came out as a bunch of skunk noises.

“It’s okay, I’ll get you back to the ground,” the random mare said, picking her up. She carefully made her way to the ground, not making any sudden jerks, and put her down. “Off you go now.”

She was in a middle of a village that was no more than a few dozen houses on either side of a single gravel road, and she didn’t know which way led to Ponyville. “Fluttershy?”

“I have to go.”

She went back up. With no way to tell, Rainbow took a guess and went in the opposite direction of where the cloud was going until she got to the edge of the village. There was nothing over the horizon, and thinking about how long it took her just to get where she was, she decided it would be better to go door-to-door for help.

After she scratched at the first door for five minutes, a pony answered. Seeing that it was an animal, she immediately shut the door. She got a bit further with the second one.

“Uh... hello?”

“Do you know how I can turn into a pony again?”

“Um... I don’t speak skunk.”

“What?” He shut the door. “Speak skunk... crap, nopony understands me. I’ll just have to use charades or something.”

The third pony, after being confused for a moment, looked down and saw her. “Oh, you look like an adventurer bit by a burgundyback spider.” Rainbow shrugged. “I know somepony who can fix you.” She nodded. “I’ll get a bag, you wait right here.”

The pony came back with a purse around his neck and bowed so she could get in. After a very bumpy hour or two, they arrived at a particular doorstep of an adjacent and very similar village and he knocked the door, to be answered by a white earth stallion with a long, very curly white beard, quite similar to the pony carrying her except for the extra hair.

“Hey, bro, I found another one.”

“Two in the same week... I hope it’s just a coincidence... anyway, come in.”

The carrier stepped inside and followed him to the kitchen, and the apparent town Zecora opened one of the cabinets above the sink. “It should be... yes, here.” He took out a glass bottle and, with amazing coordination, got a measuring spoon for a single millilitre and filled it up. “Ready?”

Rainbow nodded and he fed her the liquid, then the carrier took her outside and bowed to let her out. She went a couple metres away from him. “It should take about a minute,” he said. And indeed it did, with her disgustingly transmogrifying back into a pony in the span of four seconds once the time ran out. “Wait a minute, Rainbow Dash?!”

“Yeah.”

“Holy fuck!”

“Which way is Ponyville?”

“The same way we’ve been going. Take a right at the middle of the next town.”

“All right.” She got in the air and headed off.

“Wait! You’re Rainbow Dash!”

As was her plan, she came to Twilight’s place that night. “Hi, Twilight.”

Too concentrated on her book to previously notice her, she turned around. “Oh, hi. Anything super crazy happen today?”

“I woke up and I was a skunk.”

“Oh. How did that happen?”

“Apparently there’s this spider—”

“I know that. How did one get wherever you were?”

“I don’t know, I was on a cloud. Maybe somepony brought one because they had an evil plan.”

“To say the least. We could’ve needed to save the world today.”

“So I was the only one this happened to?”

“Spike got transformed into a really, really book dumb lizard, but that’s it.”

“I see. So will this ever happen again?”

“I don’t know.”

“That isn’t comforting.”

“The truth rarely is.”

“That isn’t comforting.”

“The truth rarely is.” Next Chapter: Chapter 66: The Sweet Apple Prison Estimated time remaining: 12 Hours, 37 Minutes