Twilight walked up to the fancy door leading into Rarity's boutique. She knocked twice before asking, "Rarity? You around? We kind of need some help."

"Yes, of course! Come in, come in!" came the muffled voice from behind the door. "Please excuse the mess, I'm simply taking stock of what I have on hand. From the looks of things I may need to take a trip into Canterlot today." She opened the door for the group. They all went inside, Feaurax closing the door behind him.

"Whatcha' need in Canterlot?" Pinkie asked, looking at the various bolts of cloth Rarity had laid out.

"Oh, several different colors of silk, which I'm nearly out of, and some other things that I'd rather not mention. While I'm sure I could find somewhere in Ponyville that sells silk, and it'd do just fine, for some reason everyone who comes in here won't take 'anything less' than silk from a specific seller, whose only location happens to be in Canterlot. Snobs." She noticed Feaurax. "Oh? Who's this, then?"

Twilight started to speak up, but Feaurax raised a hand. "Please, Twilight. It's my story, I'd like to tell it myself." Twilight rolled her eyes. "Well. Miss, uhm, Rarity I think it was?"

"Yes?"

"My name is Feaurax. I'm in a bit of a pickle."

Twilight snorted. "A bit? This is what you call a bit of a pickle?"

"Hush, you. Anyway. I am an Isparian mage, among the last to cross over to Dereth to aid Asheron in making it hospitable for those unfortunate souls who were trapped there inadvertently by his experiments in the field of planar magic. Trouble is, I kind of touched something I wasn't supposed to, totally shattering the laws of portal dynamics and basically trapping myself here."

Twilight chuckled and said, "I guess you could say that. Poor guy slammed into my yard harder than a train, or as hard as Dash when she's doing one of those Sonic Rainbooms. Personally I'm a bit surprised he didn't bite the dust -- any harder than he did, at least. We need to talk to Princess Celestia about maybe getting him home sometime within his lifetime. Personally I think it would help his case if all of the ponies associated with the Elements were present. That is, if you aren't overbooked?"

Rarity smiled warmly. "Of course, dear. Just let me tidy up and write down exactly what colors I need and how much, and we can be off. Like I said, I was probably going to have to do some shopping anyway." She moved to start putting away the scraps of various sizes. Everypony else except for Rainbow Dash went to her aid.

"Yeah, I'd help, but I honestly have no clue where any of this goes." she said in her defense, "I'd just get in the way."

"You'll get no complaints from me. I haven't a single idea myself." Feaurax chuckled.

In no time they had finished up and were heading out the door, Rarity using her magic to flip the "Open" sign in the window to "Closed".

"Next up, Applejack. I really hope she's not that busy today." Twilight said.

They walked to Sweet Apple Acres, the whole lot of them wished that they had stopped by there on the way to Rarity's place, and managed to extract Applejack without too much grumbling on her part.

"You sure it's no trouble? We can do this another day, if you'd like," Twilight said, trying to get out of more walking than necessary.

"Seriously, Twi, it's fine. All the trees have water, Granny Smith's doing just fine and Big Mac's off doin' whatever it is he does in his free time. You'd think after all these years that ah'd know, but ah still have no idea what his hobbies are. With the way he tries to hide it, ah reckon it ain't healthy for him, whatever it is." Applejack replied.

"What about Applebloom?" Dash asked. "You've covered everyone but her."

"Honestly ah've got no idea where that filly ran off to, but ah figure as long as she's with Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle she ain't gonna get in no more trouble than usual."

Twilight sighed. "All right everypony, let's go. We're taking the train this time, apart from Feaurax here."

"What am I doing then?" Feaurax replied, curious.

"I'm going to teleport you directly to the outer gate of the palace. Wait there for us, or close by if the guards get suspicious." She flared her horn.

"Nononono wait--" There was a slight pop, and he was gone.

"Twi, what'd you do that for? He obviously didn't want to go that way." Pinkie asked.

"Well, I'm pretty sure bringing him on the train wouldn't end well," Twilight said, "And, I, um... Well, I only brought enough bits for six tickets. Minor oversight."

"You know I always keep some money on me." Fluttershy said, "I'm sure I could've paid for my own."

Twilight facehoofed. For as smart as she was, sometimes she could act like a grade-A idiot. "Why didn't I think of that?" she said to herself under her breath.

"Whatever, let's just get moving. I have a feeling we shouldn't keep him waiting for too long." Rainbow Dash said, displaying a rare example of forethought.

None of them knew just how right she was.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Feaurax got up and rubbed his head. What was Twilight thinking, just dropping me here? He stood up unsteadily, the recent intimate affair with the ground taking its toll on his balance. He went to bend slightly backwards in an attempt to crack his back, only to do so literally. A loud crack echoed down the alley that Twilight had dropped him in (seems she was just as terrible with directions as he was).

Then came the utter agony, and with it, the screaming.

When he came to, he was in the hospital wing... of the prison. Gotta love the racial equality and tolerance of Equestria's judicial system, who, while he was out, had found him guilty of plotting to depose the Princess(es) and sentenced him to death. At least his assigned guard had the decency to tell him so. Along with an awkward "But I don't think you did anything wrong. I'm just doing my job. I'll be the first to admit that the Equestrian judicial system works independently of the Princesses, and really has no sympathy for anyone who isn't a pony."

Feaurax sighed as he rubbed his temples. Just what had he gotten himself into?

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

The train carrying the bearers of the Elements of Harmony came to a stop in Canterlot several hours later, just as Feaurax was waking up, in fact. They arrived to find several ponies gossiping about recent events involving some kind of weird monkey and a plot to overthrow the Princesses.

"Excuse me," Twilight Sparkle said to one of the ponies, "What's this about a plot?"

"Oh, it was that deformed monkey. He was found guilty of plotting to overthrow the Princesses. We're supposed to be thankful that the spell that was used to bring him here backfired and left him on the other side of town, where the guards were heavily concentrated, but he really hasn't done anything wrong. From the sound of it, he even hurt himself when he got here. He's to be put to death sometime soon. Poor guy. Since the charges are so serious, they won't even let him have visitors. A small group of the guards are trying to get an audience with the Princess to try and prove him innocent, but the sod's likely to be dead by the time she starts listening."

Twilight's eyes went wide. "Then we have no time to waste, girls. Let's get moving." They tore off in the direction of the palace, where they were let in by a mean-looking group of guards.

One of them said, "Are you the calvalry, here to put down the beast that would dare attempt to hurt the Princess?"

Another chuckled. "Death by the Elements. That's sure to be painful. It'd have to be an overload of some kind, though."

Pinkie Pie, who chose that moment to be the excellent liar who'd save their time, said, "We aren't here about that! We didn't even know about that until we got here! Just let us in and we'll be sure to put it on the to-do list. We've got bigger fish to fry at the moment."

They were let in, and Twilight wasted no time in starting to look for Celestia.

They found her some time later, sitting in the gardens enjoying a peaceful day.

At least, it was peaceful.

"Princess! We need to talk to you about something!" Twilight said urgently.

"Let me guess, there's a long story that the judges got completely wrong about the guy who supposedly wanted to kill me?" Celestia said knowingly.

"Yeah, that. Where do I even start?" Twilight tapped her hoof absently. "Well, this morning he crash-landed into my yard. Some kind of inter-dimensional magical backfire left him trapped here. We were actually coming to ask for your help in getting him home. I sent him ahead of us because I ran out of money for the train tickets. Bad move on my part, obviously, because now we're here and he's going to be killed unless we all do something!"

Celestia rolled her eyes. "Those idiots that call themselves judges are a bunch of backward, racist pigs. I'd get rid of the whole thing, but then there'd be an uprising because of the lack of due process. What they fail to realize is that I am basically a living goddess, and if anyone knows whether the accused is guilty or not it'd be me or Luna. The duty'd probably fall on Luna. She gets kind of bored, just watching over the sleeping ponies." She caught herself, before she launched off into something they didn't have time for. "Oh, right. The monkey-thing. I'll just pardon him, and then I'm going to rely on you six to bring him to me. I need to know exactly what went wrong before I can help him."

Twilight smiled. "Thank you, Princess."

"Anything within reason for my most faithful student. And her friends, of course."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

A couple hours of internal debate later, Feaurax came to a conclusion. He would wait until someone came to rescue him or he was on the chopping block. If he made it to the chopping block, he'd escape and go off and do his own research into getting home.

Luckily for him, his friends had the ear of the Princess. He heard some familiar voices echo down the hall.

"Do you think he's going to be mad about this?" Rainbow Dash asked nervously. "He kinda struck me as the kind of guy who you really don't want to be on the bad side of when he's seriously angry."

"Of course he's going to be upset, Dash," Rarity said, "I would be too if I just got snatched up and told that I was found guilty of trying to kill the Princess."

"I dunno, Rarity, I'd mostly just be confused." Pinkie said.

"Oh hey, his door's open. Hey Feaurax! How goes the recovery? What happened, anyway?" Twilight asked.

"I tried to pop my back and ended up snapping something. Maybe I pinched a nerve, who knows. Next thing I know, I'm surrounded by guards. I woke up in here where a guard told me that I had been found guilty of trying to depose the Princesses, and that my punishment was death. I'm mostly okay now, speaking of recovery. I take it you managed to throw all that tripe out?" The man in question answered.

"Yeah, Princess Celestia is not at all impressed with the judges right now." Rarity chuckled.

"So we're supposed to bring you to her. Do you know exactly what went wrong to bring you here?" Twilight asked.

"Not exactly, but I have a hunch. I touched the cube, which had just enough of an enchantment to it to send me into portal-space, but not enough of an enchantment to determine for sure where I'd go, so it just dumped me wherever." Feaurax explained.

"Well that sounds like it should be easily reversible, provided you still have the cube. Do you?"

"Um... no. If it even came here with me, I imagine it's still embedded in your lawn."

"Perfect. I thought I was forgetting something."

"Oh, and either you're terrible with your navigational sense, or that spell you used to bring me here backfired. I ended up on the other side of town, from the sound of things."

"I heard. I was afraid of that. It might be an effect of unicorn magic trying to work on non-pony entities. Doesn't always work out."

"Whatever. Let's just go." Feaurax got up. "Are we going to go pick up my stuff first, or what?"

"You sure you're okay? You look tired."

"Yeah, I'll be fine. Let's just get this over with."

"Alright." They left the room. Next Chapter: The Long Way Home, Part 1 Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes