It was yet another beautiful day in Ponyville with Celestia’s sun shining brightly on the inhabitants. At the edge of town a delightful little song could be heard playing by none other than the town’s resident party pony, miss Pinkie Pie. With the sun out and with such perfect weather, everypony was outside enjoying the bright and cheerful day.

Well, almost everypony.

In Twilight’s Castle, a lavender alicorn fretted over the small maintenance she was performing on Celestia’s full length mirror. When she built the device to open and close the portal to the other dimension, she had simply used whatever parts she had around the castle at the time. However, that was somewhat inefficient and sloppy; some of those parts were rather old and would not last for more than a hundred or so uses.

Ever the scientist, she could not stop thinking about it. Three weeks ago she’d begun work on improving her original design. She ordered hundreds of new parts and accessories to improve upon the device and make it as efficient as possible. With surprise and a squeal of delight, she had woken to find that the first batch had arrived early that morning.

“Spike! Spike! Spiiike!” Twilight yelled out a third time. “Bring me the magical amplifiers!” She kept her ears up, waiting to hear a reply from her number one assistant.

When there was no reply she called out again. “Spiiike!” She held her breath, thinking that maybe he was downstairs.

Still nothing; worried, she looked up from her adjustment on the magical inhibitor sphere that balanced the transfer of magic from Celestia’s book to the mirror. “Where is he? Oh…that’s right, Rarity came and got him this morning for a gem hunt.”

The mare facehoofed, spreading a small stain of oil across her brow. “Guess I’ll just have to get it myself!” She said cheerfully right before the amplifiers were dropped on the table in front of her by her trusty owl.

“Thank you, Owlowiscious!”

“Whoo.”

“You, that’s who.” Twilight laughed at her own joke; Owlowiscious did not. He merely glared at her. “Don’t give me that look; with this device I should improve the efficiency of the portal by a whole twelve percent!”

“Whoo.”

“I know right! A whole twelve percent improvement, I can’t wait to publish my notes about it! I wonder if they’ll put it on the cover of science weekly!” Twilight said with an excited grin on her face as she clapped her two front hooves together.

“Whoo.”

Owlowiscious flew off; he loved her to death, but there was only so much of her he could take in a single sitting. And truth be told, it wasn’t that much.

“Suit yourself,” Twilight replied as she installed the amplifier and gave the inhibitor sphere a quick once over. Happy with the result, she picked up the device with her magic and moved to place it back on the mirror. “I can’t wait to tell everypony about this,” she said with a smile as she rotated the sphere over in front of her.

She was one-hundred percent sure that her friends would find it just as fascinating as she did.

Rainbow Dash flew at full speed away from Pinkie’s latest musical number. The pink mare always seemed to be breaking into song about one thing or another and if that wasn’t bad enough, she expected others to join in too.

Rainbow had already lost track of the number of times that had worked on her, she knew it was over ten, and that was ten times too many. While most of Ponyville was more than happy with it, Rainbow felt like she was losing cool points every time it happened. And after the last time she had silently vowed to never let it happen again.

“Rain-bow Dash!”

Pinkie’s sing-song voice sent shivers down Rainbow’s spine. Dash knew what that meant; it was her turn to sing the chorus. Her mind instantly took in every place she could hide and she started crossing them off one after another.

Apple farm? No, too obvious, Pinkie would easily find me there, and besides Applejack might try to put me to work.

Fluttershy’s? No, last time I was there she made me help her clean up after the animals. No thank you.

Rarity’s?

As soon as she thought it, her mind instantly shut it down. Images of all the dresses that would look simply divine on her sprang to mind.

Dash flew as high up as she could. Already she could see the pink mare bouncing around town at supernatural speed, asking everypony if they had seen her. Curse my awesomeness, she thought. It was hard to hide when you simply stole the spotlight everywhere you went.

Her gaze fell upon the one place she hadn’t thought of.

Twilight's!

Pinkie’s senses bordered on supernatural, they were almost magical, as such maybe a magical castle could hide her?

Without even considering other options, Rainbow beelined it straight for Twilight's Castle at near sonic rainboom speeds.

The sooner she got there, the less likely it was that she’d be discovered.

Twilight walked over to the mirror. She smiled happily as she thought of all the intellectual discussions she would have with her friends over the possibilities it presented, and what ideas they might have to improve upon it. She was already even starting to think of changes for the changes she wanted to make on her changes.

“LOOK OUT!”

The shout almost caused Twilight to jump onto the ceiling like a cat. With a shriek, she flapped her wings and just barely avoided a cyan-blue and rainbow cannonball as it crashed into the floor directly under her. Her eyes went wide as she saw the sphere she had been working on fall out of her magical grip.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” Twilight closed her eyes, not wanting to watch the magical inhibitor sphere break against the floor. Even though no sound came, she kept her eyes closed in fear that maybe she simply missed it, and were she to open them she would see the inhibitor in pieces on the ground. There was no way she could fix it anytime soon, no way to get all the stuff she needed without at least a two week delay.

“Whoo.”

At that noise she opened her eyes again, surprised, and eternally grateful to see her trusty owl flying next to her with the sphere held in his talons.

“Saved me again, Owlowiscious, or at least the sphere, thanks!” She landed on the floor and took the sphere back. Twilight flashed her owl a smile as he hooted one more time before flying off.

“Of course, it wouldn’t need saving if somepony didn’t crash into my house every other day!”

Rainbow opened her eyes at that. She was lying upside down with her flank and tail covering her head. Rolling over, Rainbow picked herself up off the floor, and then said, “Hey, I didn’t mean to do it!”

“Sure you didn’t, Dash.” Twilight rolled her eyes and turned around.

“I swear; I was just trying to escape a Pinkie Pie song when I lost control and crashed. You know how it is.”

“And the reason it’s always my house is because?”

“It’s not always your house,” Rainbow said defensively.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Dash, I’ve asked around, I’ve asked everypony in Ponyville. You never crash into their houses anywhere near as much as you did the library. I was hoping that it might be a location issue, but this is the third time you crashed into the castle this week!”

“So?”

“It’s Tuesday,” the alicorn said flatly.

“I don’t do it that much.” Rainbow looked at her hooves when she said that line.

“Ehm.” Twilight cleared her throat as she reached out with her magic to a scroll in the other room, it teleported to her in a flash of purple energy. “Let’s see, according to the list I was able to recover from the library’s destruction, you’ve crashed into the library seven times the week it was destroyed, eight the week before that, and ten the week before that. Hey look at that, only twice before that. Wait, it’s because you were in Cloudsdale for most of that week…” On and on it went.

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Okay, you can stop now.” Only Twilight would keep records of something like that. The thought filled her with a deep sense of melancholy. It hurt her more than she cared to admit that her friend would keep track of her failures with such tenacity.

Seeing the downcast expression on Rainbow’s face told Twilight that she might have struck a nerve. “Well, I guess it’s not too bad, at least this time you didn’t knock over an entire bookshelf.”

Twilight gave Dash a warm smile, walked over, and lightly bumped Rainbow with her flank in a playful manner. When it seemed to cheer Rainbow up she started walking back to the mirror. “I gotta get back to work, Rainbow.”

“What are you working on?” The pegasus asked as she snapped out of her funk and flew back up into the air. She turned upside down as she examined the sphere held in Twilight’s magic. “Is that some nerdy egghead soccer ball or something like… uh… that round thing circling over Cloudsdale’s weather station? Or maybe just one of the thousand weird experiments you’ve been doing all day?”

“No Rainbow, it’s not a nerdy egghead soccer ball, so please don’t kick it. That’s a meteorological sphere over Cloudsdale’s weather station, and my experiments aren’t weird, they’re important!” Twilight exclaimed. “It’s a magical inhibitor that will improve the efficiency of the portal to the other world by twelve percent!” There was a noticeable giddiness in her voice when she said that.

Rainbow deadpanned. “Twelve percent?”

Twilight failed to register the deadpan expression on Rainbow’s face as she cheerfully went back to work. “I know, right?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes, exasperatedly. “You know, it’s still totally unfair that you won’t let us go with you. I mean, you get to see a whole new world! Not to mention a whole new me! You know, two of me, that’s like twice the awesomeness! I gotta say Twi, I’m jealous.”

“Well, as much of an honor that is, I’ve already told all you girls why you can’t come with me. It might upset the balance of the other world if there were two of you walking around.”

“Key word there, egghead, ‘might’, as in you don’t know for sure. And besides, it never seems to ‘upset the balance’ when you go there.”

Twilight looked up at her friend. “It’s not a risk we should take lightly. Believe me, I’d love to take you, all of you, but it’s just too dangerous.”

Rainbow looked ready to pout but at the last moment she let it go. “Okay. I guess no world can handle two of me,” she said with a smirk.

Twilight laughed as she went back to work. “Don’t ever change, Rainbow.”

As Twilight stuck her head behind the mirror, Rainbow looked around the room. There was so much egghead stuff all around that she felt nerdier just looking at it. Well, it has to be somewhat cool if Twilight likes it. The thought didn’t help her much. She flew over to the worktable and saw a plethora of tools laid out on the bench.

Most of them she knew: screwdrivers, sockets, ratchets, hammers, nails, and even a wrench set. Some she had no idea about, and one of those looked rather interesting. She picked up a small cube-like device with two wires hanging off and stared at it. Turning it around, she saw what looked like connection ports. She had no idea what she was looking at, but it didn’t look like any tool she had ever seen before.

A sinking feeling that it was somehow important developed in her gut.

“Hey, Twilight?” Rainbow asked with a gulp.

“Not now, Rainbow. I’m about to connect the inhibitor to the transformer!”

“Eh, this might be important!”

“Can it wait five seconds?” Twilight grunted as she used her magic to push the sphere into place. Hmm, seems like one of the connectors is open. Is there something missing? Can’t be, I know I got everything. After all, I double checked my checklist yesterday, she thought.

“I don’t thi-“ before Rainbow could even finish the word, Twilight cut her off.

“Ah ha! Got it! Now what did you need, Rainbow?” Twilight said as she pulled her head back and stood up right in front of the portal.

“What’s this?” Rainbow asked, holding the strange cube up in her hooves for her friend to see.

“Oh, that’s a magical focusing cube designed to prevent accidental build up and discharges, why?” Twilight’s eyes went wide as she recognized what her friend held in her hooves. “Rainbow, where did you get that?”

Rainbow gestured to the workbench with a hoof. “It was just sitting on the table.”

Twilight began to panic as, at that moment, the portal behind her started to sputter to life. Before she could even charge up her magic, she felt a huge sucking sensation begin to pull at her flank.

“Rainbow!” Twilight yelled as the portal started to draw her into it.

“I gotcha!” Rainbow replied as she flew at her. She reached into the portal and grabbed Twilight with her front hooves. Dash pulled with all her might, even using her back hooves against the sides of the mirror for leverage.

The tug of war game was a no-win situation for the rainbow mare. She quickly found herself losing to the magical grip of the portal.

“Let go!” Twilight yelled, not wanting her friend to get pulled in too.

“No deal! If you go, I go!” Rainbow yelled back. Her words quickly became prophetic as the pull increased exponentially in power and they were both dragged into the portal. It shuttered and closed behind them, trapping them wherever it had sent them to.