The first thing Twilight noticed was the wet grass pressed against her back. She tried to open her eyes but the sun’s light blinded her, forcing her to close them again. While there were strange noises all around Twilight, it was the smell that really got to her.

Last time she had been through the portal she quickly grew accustomed to the new smells. Sure it was different but it wasn’t intense. Her human form didn’t have the same sensitivity to smells that her pony form did.

This time she smelled everything, it was like every scent and odor that could be smelt assaulted her nostrils all at the same time. As if the smells weren’t bad enough, the sounds that attacked her ears started to grow in intensity until they were almost deafening. She covered her ears in an effort to block out the noises.

A shadow fell over her face, blocking out the sun’s glare. “Twilight,” the voice came as a whisper from her friend. “You’ve gotta get up, we’re getting some really strange looks.”

Twilight opened her eyes, shocked at what she saw. Standing over her was Rainbow Dash. Although, that was not the strange part, the strange part was that she was still a pegasus. “What the…” Twilight tried to say, she cut off her own sentence when she saw the tip of her muzzle. “No, no, no, no, no, no!”

Rainbow was pushed to the side as Twilight scrambled to her hooves. “This is wrong, this is very, very wrong!” The alicorn glanced all around. Whereas she expected to see Canterlot High School, instead she only made out a park. The park was covered in grass with a large sidewalk running through it. In the distance she could easily make out huge buildings that reached up into the sky.

She could deal with all of that, what she couldn’t deal with was what she looked like. Twilight held up her hooves in front of her face to verify for the third time that they were still in fact hooves. She turned to look back for whatever portal they had come out of; there was nothing there, just more grass.

“Mommy, mommy, those are the ponies I was telling you about!” a voice called out in the distance. Rainbow crouched down low with her ears held flat against her head.

“Twilight…” Rainbow said with a small groan as she stared at the creature looking in their direction. It was a four limbed bipedal creature that only seemed to walk on two of them. The creature seemed to have no fur other than at the top of its head; save for the strangest designs that covered its torso and most of its hind legs. She heard Twilight say once that creatures like this were called humans, but this was her first time seeing such a thing.

What she couldn’t get over was how tall the creature was. It would easily stand up to Celestia’s height, and if she heard it correctly, it was only a foal. It didn’t take an egghead to know that meant it was small and that there were bigger ones.

Twilight simply stared at the little girl, she knew she was a human, but the human didn’t look like the ones she had seen before. The humans she had seen before were like her Canterlot High friends. This was not; this human had beige skin color.

Her mind was desperately trying to connect the dots.

“Think Twilight, think Twilight, think!” She hit her head with a hoof over and over again; hoping that she might jar something loose with the action. Something other than what the facts were saying.

The facts were saying that they were not in the other world; they were not there at all. Somehow, the portal had sent them to an entirely different world, and unlike last time, it didn’t change their forms. She had no idea where they were, no friends to seek help from, and no known way back.

“Think, think, think,” Twilight said as she continued to hit her head with a hoof.

Rainbow wasn’t a thinker; thinking was for ponies that lived life on the slow train. She was a mare of action. Let others come up with a plan, she preferred to charge in head first with a war cry on her lips then to stop and consider what she should be doing.

And right now, based on the looks that foal was giving her, they needed action, not a plan.

Twilight felt a rough pull on her tail as Rainbow bit down. “Rainbo-” her question was cut off as the cyan mare shot straight up into the air with her mouth fully clinched on Twilight’s tail.

Rainbow ignored the squirming purple bundle swinging under her while she headed for the safest place she knew: A cloud. Eyeing a rather big one she made a beeline for it and dropped Twilight gently on it. By gently she simply made sure that her falling upon it wouldn’t cause the alicorn to bounce off.

“Rainbow! What in the wide world of Equestria was that for?” Twilight immediately started in on her friend as she rubbed the dock of her tail.

“I saved us, egghead. Sometimes thinking about a situation isn’t the best plan, with all the attention we were getting we needed action!” Rainbow replied sternly.

“So you thought we’d attract less attention by grabbing me by the tail and zooming up here as quickly as you could?” Twilight asked with no small amount of sarcasm.

“I know, I know, I’m awesome, but feel free to keep talking about it!”

“That was the dumbest thing you could do! With your little stunt I’m sure that even the smallest human noticed us!” Twilight yelled at her.

“Hey, I didn’t see you doing anything to get us out of there, unless you count trying to knock yourself out with a hoof?!” Rainbow yelled back with her brow lowered and eyes glaring at the alicorn.

“I was trying to think of the right thing to do!” Twilight screamed.

“And while you were thinking I was doing!”

“But you did the wrong thing!”

“At least I did something, miss magic!”

“We don’t even know if magic works here!”

A loud, quickly approaching noise interrupted their bickering. They both snapped their heads in the direction of the noise and gasped as a giant white object quickly closed the distance to the cloud they were on.

Twilight gasped. “That’s a… BUCK!” she cried before she grabbed Rainbow in her hooves and tried to flee. A vicious suction trapped the two in its grip and pulled them to a cylinder object on one of its wings. Twilight panicked and powered her horn in a desperate hope that it might save them. The two mares teleported away right before they were sucked into the airplane’s intake.

Rainbow felt like she was coughing up a lung after that teleport. Twilight's grip combined with that horrible suction had forced the air out of lungs and her body did not like trying to get more back inside. “What… the buck… was that?” she managed between coughs.

Twilight fell on her stomach as her heart beat a mile a minute. “That Rainbow… that was an airplane.”

“What the hay is an airplane?” Rainbow asked as her body fell next to Twilight’s on the surface of wherever they laid.

“Humans can’t fly or teleport. They use machines to get around, like that one. It moves them over great distances. When I was in the other world Rarity told me all about them when I saw one in the sky. I’ve never been that close to one before though.”

“That’s… that’s nuts,” Rainbow replied as she sat up and looked around. “Where are we anyway?”

Twilight sat up and took a look herself. They were up high on a cement floor. She had no idea where she teleported to as at the time she just wanted to get away. Nearby she could see the top of another building. “I think we’re on top of one of the larger buildings, Rainbow.”

“You’re telling me,” the cyan mare laughed as she stood back up to her hooves. She walked over to the ledge of the building and looked down.

She was used to being up high, as a pegasus native to Cloudsdale she lived her life up high, but this was different. This was the first time she had been this high and not been flying. Rainbow was standing on her hooves, at a height that she could only describe as Canterlot Mountain high.

“If they don’t have magic… how did they…” her voice betrayed the fear she felt. It was all so new, so different; too different.

“How did they what?” Twilight asked.

“How did they build all this?” her gaze fell to the entire town. There were huge buildings all around her, some even bigger than the one she was on. She could see the humans now, all walking to and fro like little ants down on the ground. Other, smaller machines went back and forth on the black surface, faster than any human could hope to travel.

Twilight walked over and took in the view as well; it was breathtaking for lack of a better word. “There are different kinds of magic, Rainbow,” she said in awe.

They both took in the sights, the sounds, and the smell. As ponies their senses were far superior to humans, a factoid that did not help them right now. They were assaulted by everything around them.

“I’d like to go home now,” Rainbow replied as she walked back from the ledge. A fully grown dragon was one thing, a pissed off alicorn, heck, even a dark being trapped in ice for a thousand years. She’d fight them all without a second thought. However, this was completely out of her wheelhouse, she had no idea what to do, or if there was even anypony to fight.

“Umm… yes, about that,” Twilight started to mumble to herself.

Rainbow looked to her, “What?”

“Well… this is not… this isn’t the world I normally go to.”

“What… what are you saying, Twilight?”

“Umm… I don’t know how to get back.”

“What?!”

“Normally, when I go through the portal I come out a statue in front of Canterlot High School. This time we appeared out of the air, almost as if…”

“As if what?” Rainbow glared at her.

“As if there is no portal here. We… we might be stuck here, Rainbow.”

“Egghead, what did you do?” Rainbow felt her anger rising.

“I didn’t mean to. When I plugged the sphere in without the focusing cube it must have caused a buildup of magical pressure in the mirror and it activated on its own.”

“How did you forget to install the cube?!”

“Hey, I’m not perfect!”

“Then why do you always act like it?!”

“I don’t always act like I’m perfect!”

“Sure you don’t, egghead. You always point out everypony else’s flaws. You always correct everypony whenever they do anything wrong!”

“I’m just trying to help!”

“If you spent a little more time helping yourself we might not be stuck in some strange world!”

“Grrrrr.”

“Growling, really Twilight?”

“That wasn’t me.”

They both turned as one. They had falsely assumed that the top of the building was clear, that there was no threat. They were both wrong. There were two huge black dogs, easily bigger than either pony staring at them, teeth bared, and fangs sharp. A glance behind the dogs told the two ponies that they had come from the structure on top of the roof. No doubt the dogs were alerted to their presence by their bickering.

Rainbow grinned; this was something she could deal with. “Bring it,” she said.

The two dogs leaped at them. Rainbow readied her back legs to spring up and meet them head on. At the last moment a purple magical aura surrounded her tail and yanked her in the air away from the dogs.

She glared up at the lavender alicorn that elected to avoid combat rather than fight. “Twilight, what the hell?!”

The two dogs under them started barking loudly as they leapt into the air over and over again after the intruders. The barking of the dogs became all consuming, so much so that Twilight almost failed to notice the noises coming from the structure.

“We need to go,” Twilight said as she powered up her horn.

“Where?!” Rainbow yelled.

“Anywhere else!” Twilight shouted as she teleported them away before they were spotted by the humans coming to check on what the dogs were going on about.

When they reappeared they were on the ground in between two large buildings. This time Twilight flew a little in the air and quickly spun around, making sure they were safe.

“I’m getting real tired of this, Twi,” Rainbow said with no small amount of bile in her voice.

Twilight shut her eyes and landed back on the ground. “Rainbow, can we not?”

“Not what?”

“Not fight. We may not be safe here Rainbow, I know it’s confusing, but bickering back and forth isn’t helping our situation.”

Rainbow sat down on her flank and sighed. Twilight was right; fighting with her was not helping things. As much as it was her fault, blaming her for it right now would not get them home any time soon. They needed to work together.

“Sorry,” Rainbow said.

“No… I’m sorry,” Twilight replied, “If I hadn't forgotten to install the cube this never would have happened. You wouldn’t be stuck here with me.”

Rainbow chuckled as she got up and walked over to her friend. “I think you forget something, egghead. I’m the one that wouldn’t let go of you.”

“If you go, I go,” Twilight paraphrased Rainbow’s earlier words with a raised eyebrow and a smile.

“Got that right,” Rainbow gave her a cocky grin before looking around herself. “You come up with anything yet?” she asked as she took in the surroundings. Friendly territory this was not.

“Well…” Twilight said as she looked around. It looked rather hopeless until she noticed that the sun was about to go down. “We should wait until nightfall before we keep looking around. That way there will be less of a chance of us being spotted.”

“So just wait for the humans to lower the sun?”

“Exactly!” Twilight said chipperly. It wasn’t exactly true. More than likely this world worked like the other one, in that world the sun came up and down by itself, or more precisely the sun stayed in place while the planet moved. However, explaining such a thing to Rainbow right now would more than likely start another fight. Something neither of them needed.

Besides, it was a hard enough concept for her to grasp, nevermind trying to explain it to Rainbow.

As the sun hit the horizon it shot a ray of light through the alley. Twilight looked up as she saw it hit Rainbow’s mane in just the right way. Her mind screamed at her as she remembered one more thing, one thing that she was sure would start another fight. Try as she might, Twilight couldn’t find a way to avoid this one.

“Umm… Rainbow?

“Yeah, what?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Twilight said sheepishly.

“Just say it.”

“When you fly it… it leaves a rainbow contrail behind you.”

“A what now?”

“A rainbow streak in the air.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s cool isn’t it?”

“Well… yeah, normally.”

“What do you mean ‘normally’?”

“Well… it would give us away if you did it now, especially at night.”

“So, we can’t fly?” Rainbow looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“Well… we kinda need to.”

“But you said…” her mouth fell agape as she realized what the egghead was getting at. “Oh no, you’re not carrying me!”

“You have a better idea?”

“Just… teleport us with your magic! It’s worked so far.”

“Rainbow… we’ve gotten lucky. We’re just as likely to teleport in front of a bunch of people as we are to land someplace safe, and if I stick to line of sight teleportation we won’t explore anywhere near enough of this place for it to do any good. Plus multiple teleports gets exhausting, if something happens I don’t want to be so magically exhausted that I’m unable to do something about it.”

“I don’t want you to carry me!”

“If you have another idea, I’m all ears.”

Rainbow went back and forth in her mind trying to think of something, anything else that might work. In the end she couldn’t figure out where they would get stealth ninja suits so she had no choice but to lower her head and shrug.

“No. But it doesn’t mean I’m cool with it.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell anypony about it.”

“You’d better not, egghead. If you do we might not be able to show our faces around Ponyville again!”

“Didn’t we agree that we wouldn’t fight anymore?”

“How would you feel if I had to carry you‽”

“Rainbow, you’ve carried me plenty of times.”

“That’s… that’s a totally different thing.”

“It’s not, Rainbow.”

“Argh, why do you always have to be right?” Rainbow pouted.

“Tell you what, I’ll make it up to you, when we get back you can carry me,” Twilight replied with a smile.

“Funny egghead,” Rainbow glared at her as the last vestiges of the sunlight fell beyond the horizon.

“Looks like it’s about time to go,” Twilight said.

“How… how we going to do this?” Rainbow asked with a small blush on her cheeks.

“Well… you normally just grabbed me around my front hooves.”

“Yeah, but that was just to catch you when you were falling. It’s not something you can do over a long period,” Rainbow added, her blush getting slightly more noticeable.

“You just… you just want to get on my back?”

“No good, I’m too big, I’d interfere with your wings and you wouldn’t be able to fly.”

“So that just leaves…”

“We never tell anypony, ever!” Rainbow glared at her when she said that.

“Agreed,” Twilight said with a gulp.

Rainbow walked over and placed her hooves around her friend’s neck. Twilight started to flap her wings before wrapping her own hoof around Rainbow’s back legs, lifting her up into the air. Both mares were blushing as Twilight flew up, the extra weight slowing her down.

“Rainbow… you’re… you’re… heavy.”

“Hey! I’m not fat!”

“I never said you were fat; I’m… I’m just not used to carrying this much weight.”

“If you can’t do it put me down.”

“No… I’ve got it.”

Twilight strained as she flapped her wings that much harder. She had flown with Spike a few times, but this was something different, this time she was carrying a mare that was almost equal to her in body weight.

Still, this had been her idea.

To Rainbow’s amazement, they cleared the building and started to fly forward. She had been anticipating that at any moment Twilight would fall out of the sky and she’d have to catch her. However, despite a rough start Twilight actually impressed her with her flying skill.

Not that she couldn’t do better.

“What are we looking for anyway?” Rainbow asked as she glanced around. It was hard enough to see, much less find anything specific at this height in the dark.

“A library or something of that nature,” Twilight grunted.

“What’s with you and books?” Rainbow asked with a sigh.

“We need to learn about this world and try and find a way back. A library is our best bet.”

“If you say so,” Rainbow rolled her eyes. She was half tempted to write this whole thing off as a dumb ideal until she spotted a very particular roof off into the distance. It was only by a flash of light, a small glimmer in her eye that she saw it. It looked a lot like the roof of the Royal Canterlot Library, just… bigger, a lot bigger.

“Over there,” Rainbow gestured with a hoof.

“You sure?” Twilight sounded hoarse, it was easy to hear the strain in her voice.

“Yes, that way. Did you forget that I catalog everything when I fly?”

Twilight was about to comment that Rainbow wasn’t flying; however, she just grunted in acknowledgement instead and started to change direction. It took the rest of her physical strength but in the end she got close enough to see what Rainbow had seen. It was either a library, or some sort of school. Either way she should be able to get the answers they needed.

“You found it, Rainbow,” Twilight said as she looked down at the mare in her hooves.

“Was there ever any doubt?” Rainbow asked as she looked up.

It was exactly three seconds before both mares realized that their muzzles were an inch away from each other. Blushing, they each looked away and silently vowed to never mention it again.

Rainbow didn’t wait for Twilight to put her down. As soon as they were close enough to the building she wiggled away from Twilight’s grip and zoomed down to the roof, a colorful contrail in her wake.

Twilight almost fell out of the sky at that. Her wings never felt so exhausted before in her life. “I… I did it.”

“You say that like it’s a surprise,” Rainbow added with a smile.

“What do you mean?”

“Well… you did have a pretty awesome trainer...”

“Of course you would,” Twilight added.

“And she had an awesome student,” Rainbow continued.

Twilight looked at her with a smile. It took a lot to win Rainbow’s approval; as it wasn’t something she gave out easily. “Thanks.”

“You think Spike has noticed that you’re gone yet?” Rainbow asked with her usual tact.

The roof became dead silent as the implications of that started to play through Twilight's mind. The two ponies could hear several humans entering and exiting the building they were on as neither of them said a word.

As Twilight’s eyes started to go wide with worry Rainbow quickly realized that ‘that’ was the wrong subject to bring up.

“He’s going to be… I didn’t even… what if he starts to… I… I…” Twilight started rambling, her eyes started to tear up as horrible thoughts of what could happen to her number one assistant played over and over through her mind. She could just picture him bawling his eyes out as soon as he realized that she was gone, thinking she abandoned him.

That she left him to fend for himself.

That she didn’t love him anymore.

Rainbow saw all of this and more, she’d been around Twilight for almost two years now and knew the signs of a Twilight panic attack before they started. “Twi, relax, he’s fine. I’m sure he’s with Rarity and the others right now, trying to figure out some way to get us back.”

Twilight blinked three times before her mind checked back into reality. It took her another five second to process Rainbow’s words as another group of humans left the building.

She went to open her mouth to speak.

“That’s why I love you, featherbrain.”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped as TWILIGHT just said that she loved her.

“I love you too, egghead,” Rainbow said, just without moving her mouth.

They both stared at each other for another few seconds before saying at the same time:

“THAT WASN’T ME!”