"I am your father, Sweetie, and I will train you in the Art of War," Esteem explained as he walked down the halls of the Castle, with Sweetie following dutifully after him.

"Your training will begin immediately, there's not a moment to waste before—" he stopped abruptly, eyes widening at the presence of a large, imposing male alicorn. "Lord Titan!" he bowed immediately.

Titan looked down at Sweetie Belle, who gulped. "You do not belong here," he stated, levitating the filly in an impossibly strong telekinetic grip. Reality seemed to bend and a hole in space and time was ripped open. "Away with you."

He threw Sweetie into the dimensional hole, which closed immediately after her. Then he glared at Esteem. "General, make sure to follow my last commands. I must go back to the Everfree Forest."

"Y-yes your majesty!" Esteem stammered, not daring to raise his head until Titan was gone. He waited for a bit and gulped. It was then that, in the opposite side of the portal Titan had created and tossed Sweetie into, another opened, and the filly rolled out, stopping at Esteem's hooves.

"Um, hi," Sweetie waved. "I seem to be back."

Esteem blinked. "Wait... what happened?!"

Sweetie sighed. "Well... I'll have to be fast, before Titan returns and throws me into another dimensional hole and I have to do it all over again... it went like this..."

The world came back into view, and Sweetie Bell found herself surrounded by cardboard. She blinked and looked up, propping herself on the edge of the box she was in and looking at the desolated and blighted streets. “Where the hay am I?”

Something made a choking sound behind her and she whipped around, horn alight, ready to cast a spell. And she looked up at the gangly, depressed-looking human with facial hair that started under his chin all the way down to his neck that had walked up to her. “Uh... can I help you?”

The human just stared for a moment, his mouth opening and closing silently while a bit of drool slid down his chin. “Uh... Poneh... I adopt!”

"Wait, what?!" Sweetie shouted as the human leaned in and picked her up. "Nononononononononono! Bad human! Bad!" she shouted.

"I feed pone!" The human muttered happily, slinging her under one arm as he ambled past the abandoned streets. "I love pone! We family now!"

"Uh..." Sweetie ventured, unable to scurry free and too close to use her magic offensively. "How about you set me free? You know, run around, chase butterflies?"

"Nuh uh, must make sure you safe furst!"

Sweetie blinked. "Safe from what?"

The human paused, looked around and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, "other humahns."

"Ohhh." Sweetie said, nodding slowly, she sensed something as the human kicked what was presumably the door to his house repeatedly until it opened. "Say, you wouldn't have seen a purple crystal around here, would you?"

"Uh, huh!" The human said happily, placing her on a chair and pouring something called "Cheerios" out of a box onto a plate in front of her. He then skipped into another room and proceeded to throw boxes out of it. He eventually came out with what was indubitably one of Twilight's Fragments.

It had a bowtie.

"Dis is mistah crystal! Ah found it in anotha box on th' way home!" The human said happily, placing the fragment in front of Sweetie. "U can play wit it if u wanna! Buht be careful!"

"Uh... sure," Sweetie said. "Do ponies and stuff always end in boxes around here?"

"Uh,huh," the human said, nodding happily.

"This has to be the saddest universe I have ever been to," Sweetie muttered, then her eyes brightened and she pointed at the window. "Hey! Is that the sun?!"

"Where!?" the human asked, turning around and glaring straight into it. "Aaah! Blind human is blind!"

Nonplussed, Sweetie nevertheless managed to sweep the crystal in her magic and, barely managing to hear the relieved cry from Twilight's essence, faded out of that universe.

Author's Notes:

I removed the excess words... it was only worth it to make the illusion that this was an actual chapter. The links are still valid, so you can follow them around like on the original AF posting. For the record, it was a grand total of 35,742 extra words. All repeated.