"I'm just saying that they aren't real. That doesn't mean I can't still enjoy them, can I?" Twilight asked Pinkie as she and her friends sat around the Everfree Forest for a camping trip. The bonfire was lit, and the girls had been roasting marshmallows as they waited to head Pinkie Pie's famous ghost stories.

"Listen, Twilight. Ghost stories might not seem real to you, but some of us like to have an illusion to fall back on, just to spice up our lives a but more." Rarity tossed her hair before taking a bite out of her marshmallow.

"Yeah, Twi. Every camping pony likes a good old scary story to get their blood pumping." Rainbow Dash stood on her hind legs. "Tales of vampires, ghosts, dragons, or hungry, hungry timberwolves..." She then looked over to Fluttershy, watching her whimper. She walked over to her and let her hug her for protection. "Don't worry, Flutters. I'm not gonna let some monsters get in the way of you or my friends." Her gaze returned to Pinkie. "Now, come on, Pinks. What terrorific story have you got for us tonight?"

"Well, this one's quite a new one, but it's sure to knock the wind out of you..." Pinkie Pie pulled out a flashlight and flicked it on so that her face was clearly visible. "Once upon a time, in a forest just like this, there was a pony just like Twilight over there." Pinkie pointed over to her.

"Hey!" Twilight shot back.

"She was miserable; tired of the forest and its' sticky tree sap that made her hooves stick to her hair, and fed up with the many different bugs and insects that kept trying to munch on her skin." Pinkie wiggled the flashlight in an attempt to act scary. "She said, 'I wish I could just disappear off the face of this stupid planet!'

"Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a little capsule machine that looked hundreds of years old..." Pinkie Pie used her mane to make an accurate representation of the machine in question.

"A capsule machine? Really?" Rainbow deadpanned. "With that kinda build-up, I was expecting something like a bear or a snake, or a cockatrice or something."

"Oh, it's not so bad, Rainbow." Fluttershy seemed to have lightened up as she pulled her hair out of Rainbow's chest. "A capsule machine always has nice prizes inside." She smiled. "Go on, Pinkie. What happened next?"

"She looked at the capsule machine and scoffed. As a young filly, she never got the toys she really wanted from those machines, and she had a hunch she wouldn't get anything good anyway," Pinkie continued. "However, she still had a bit on her and decided to use it, saying, 'I just hope that I'm lucky this time.'

"She put the coin in, turned the handle, and got that little ball that always pops out of the bottom of the machine." Pinkie used a fake ball to recreate the events. "The mare tightened her grip on the ball and ripped it in half to reveal the prizes inside. But then..."

Everyone gasped.

"What happened?" Rainbow asked.

"Please, darling, let us know!" Rarity pleaded.

"Put us out of our misery!" Applejack added.

"I don't like this story anymore!" Fluttershy whimpered and buried her head back in Rainbow Dash's body.

"This is the weirdest ghost story ever." Twilight groaned, but still listened.

"The mare, instead of getting a toy, was met with a white blast of light!" Pinkie made explosion noises with her mouth as she waved the flashlight all around the campfire grounds. "It was so bright, that the filly got her wish. She vanished into the darkness, and nopony ever saw her again!"

Everyone let out a slight scream before they looked back at Pinkie and giggled.

"Wait! I'm not done yet." Pinkie's voice got deep and slithery. "Legend has it, that that machine is still there, waiting for its' next unfortunate victim. Dare you feed it a coin and disappear like the mare in the story? Or will you instead reap the rewards and get a great toy?" She let out a small giggle. "Well, don't ask me. It's up to the machine..."

"So, where did you hear this story?" Applejack asked once Pinkie turned the flashlight off.

"Oh. I heard it from Discord." Pinkie Pie chuckled. "That kooky draconequus and his stories. He always knows how to get me on the edge of my seat."

"Well, for a ghost story, this one seemed pretty tame." Twilight Sparkle stood up and walked around the fire to reach Pinkie. "I mean, a capsule machine? Seriously? I have to agree with Rainbow Dash on this one. You could have had something much scarier for a story. Not just a filly opening up a prize and then disappearing."

"But she got her wish, didn't she?" Pinkie Pie was still smiling. "She wanted to disappear forever, so that's exactly what that magical ball did to her. I'd say that's pretty scary."

"Yes. And it teaches an important moral, Twilight." Rarity got the whole group together.

"Be careful what you wish for." The five ponies all said together with deep voices as they draped their hooves over each other's shoulders.

"Well, I don't mean to bring logic to the story, but there are plenty of scenarios that could've made her disappear like that." Twilight pulled out a scroll and began to write on it. "She could've gotten blinded by somepony's foolish prank, or some unicorn could have flashed her with light, or maybe even..."

"Great. Now we got her thinking." Rainbow face-hoofed. "You don't think about what could have happened in a scary story. You get scared, and believe that the story is real."

"Well, it looks like she'll be busy for a while now." Rarity watched as Twilight continued to scribble on the scroll with her quill. "Do you think she'll mind if we sing campfire songs without her?"

"Maybe not." Pinkie Pie watched Twilight wandering deeper and deeper into the forest, her scroll and quill still being used as she kept on babbling. "I just hope she can find her way back to the camp, though. It's pretty dark out, and you know what the Everfree Forest is like at night."

"Don't remind me." Fluttershy sighed as she went off with the rest of the girls to prepare for their songs.

"But then if she could've been blinded by somepony using her magic, then wouldn't she at least be able to feel some hooves being wrapped around her?" Twilight questioned her own logic as she ventured deeper and deeper into the trees. "No. That's ridiculous. The pony could've also used some kind of magic to lift them up and carry them away into the dead of night. Uggh! This conundrum might be harder to solve than I thought!"

"But then at the same time, going back to my theory about the unicorn, there's no feasible way that it could've been actual ghosts." Twilight was now much deeper into the forest than she had ever gone before. She was well away from the campsite and the Castle of the Two Sisters, and was walking blindly into the more dense and unexplored region of the Everfree Forest. "Ghosts don't actually exist in Equestria, even if many other things do.

"So, could it have been zombies?" Twilight asked herself before she blew a raspberry. "Nah. That's completely ridiculous. Zombies don't exist in Equestria either. Or at least, not to my knowledge. Which reminds me, I need to make a mental note when I get back to start looking into some necromancy spells to try out. I bet the results would be amazing!"

"Pinkie? Do you think you could remind me to find some necromancy spells once we get back to the library?" Twilight called out to Pinkie, but heard nothing. Her friends were nowhere to be found, and she was now a long way away from the campfire. "Pinkie? Girls? Where are you? And for that matter, where am I?"

Twilight took one step forward, and she found herself falling down a cliff, letting out a high-pitched scream as she rolled down to the ground and tumbled through the forest at breakneck speed. She shot through multiple different bushes and past a nimiety of trees before she finally crashed into a capsule machine that looked identical to the one that Pinkie had described.

Twilight groaned as she clumsily stumbled to her feet, shaking the bugs and insects out of her mane and cleaning her sap-laden hooves with her own spit. "You know, sometimes, I worry that I'm too smart for my own good." She shook her head to re-orient herself once her hooves were clean.

When Twilight laid her eyes on the machine, they went wide as she fell back onto her flank again. "No way! It actually exists?!"

Twilight looked at the machine from all angles. She saw archaic markings on each side that she couldn't read, and capsules inside that were all black and white, with no mention of toys or prizes on the glass. The handle looked like it had gathered rust, but it was still functional once Twilight decided to test it out. It didn't move all the way, though, as machines like that usually operated on coins.

"How odd. What would something like this be doing in the Everfree Forest?" Twilight asked as she squinted her eyes to make sure she wasn't dreaming. "It just doesn't make any sense."

Suddenly, a light gust of wind whistled through the trees and the leaves began to shake and shudder in it. An ominous howl filled the silence and made Twilight shudder. As the wind gradually got stronger, a voice appeared out of nowhere, saying, "Feed me... Feed me..."

"Feed you?" Twilight addressed the voice? "Who's there? And what do you want?"

"Feed me... Feed me..." The voice repeated as the capsule machine began to glow a shade of dark purple.

"Feed you?" Twilight raised a brow at the capsule machine before it began to sing.

Feed me!
Feed me!
Give me a coin
I'm so famished!

"Alright! Alright! Geez! No need to break out into song over it!" Twilight pulled out a coin and slotted it into the machine, turning a handle, and watching a capsule pop out of the bottom. She put her magic around the ball and was about to open it up, when she remembered Pinkie's story. "Wait. This isn't going to make me disappear, is it?"

She looked at the machine, and then to the trees, but she heard no reply from either. Clacking her teeth, she trembled as she opened the prize up. "Please let me live, please let me live. I don't want to vanish like that mare from the story..." She pulled both halves apart.

Then, true to Pinkie's ghost story, the exact same flash of light happened. White rings of energy appeared around the epicentre of the flash, and Twilight let out another scream as she crawled as far away from the light as possible. The light grew bigger and bigger, and a white being poked two arms out of the light, then its' head, and finally what looked like a ghost's tail before the flash subsided.

The monster that had erupted from the light let out a long roar as it stretched its' arms out and flew around the trees as fast as it could. It stopped in the air inbetween Twilight and the capsule machine and yawned in satisfaction.

"One-hundred and ninety years in a capsule like that will give you such a creak in the neck." The ghost-like being turned its' head and heard a crunching noise. "Ohh, yeah. That's better..."

Twilight whimpered as she backed up against a tree. She weakly fired a bolt of magic at the ghost and watched it go right through him. When she saw it pass, she cowered and hid behind the tree she was backed up against.

"Huh?" The ghost saw the cowering Twilight and flew over to her. "Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't know I was in the presence of guests." He stopped when she saw Twilight's hooves were still quivering against the tree. "Please. Don't be shy. Come on out. I'm not going to hurt you. Well, I can't really hurt you anyway. I am a ghost, after all."

"P-p-please. Don't make me disappear like that girl from the story." Twilight's voice was lacking in any sort of strength as she spoke to the ghost.

"Wh-what? Just because you heard one story, you think that all Yo-kai are responsible for the disappearance of children?" The ghost seemed offended. "Hmph! Honestly. What is happening to the youth these days?"

"Yo-kai? I'm afraid I don't really follow." Twilight came out from hiding, but she still didn't try to seem strong in the face of potential danger.

"You've never heard? Yo-kai? The ghosts of the world? The things that are responsible for all of life's little ups and downs?" The ghost questioned.

"No. Yo-kai don't appear in any of Equestria's history books on myths and monsters." Twilight regained a little bit of confidence as she raised a brow.

"Equestria? You mean, I wound up on an entirely different planet?" The ghost took a good look at Twilight, examining every part of her body. "Well, I suppose that would explain why I'm talking to a technicolour horse with wings and a horn."

"Who are you?" Twilight asked.

"Oh! Forgive me. I got so caught up with adapting to this new world that I almost forgot to introduce myself." It flew in front of Twilight and bowed to her. "My name is Whisper. Yo-kai butler extroadinarre! I'm your guide to everything Yo-kai related, and your own personal conscience from here on out," he said. "I'm here to teach you everything about th—"

"Look, can you just get to the important bit already?" Twilight butted in.

Whisper scoffed. "Obviously, you and your kind don't know about a thing called patience!" He shot back. "Honestly, I would have expected more from a pony like you."

"I'll have you know that I am an alicorn princess and one of the four rulers of Equestria." Twilight retorted herself. "And if you think that you can take over our world, then I'm afraid I'm going to stop your invasion before you even start!"

"You mean that I've been talking to royalty?!" Whisper was stunned by Twilight's title and immediately flew down to kiss her hooves, "Forgive me, your highness! I was just so glad to get out, and I thought you were just a commoner!"

"Stop that." Twilight said sternly to Whisper. "Now, can you tell me what's going on here, and what Yo-kai actually are?"

"Sorry." Whisper flew back up and cleared his throat. "Yo-kai are invisible creatures that live all around the world. They come in all different shapes and sizes and can inspirit people and make them think and do things they wouldn't expect," he said. "Yo-kai exist all around you, and no mere mortal can see them. And yet, with every thing that the Yo-kai do to the natives of that world, they just keep on going like nothing's wrong.

"But I am no ordinary Yo-kai. As you probably know by looking at me, I am probably the only Yo-kai that resembles a ghost, and as such, I was locked away by some blind-sighted priest for one-hundred and ninety years." Whisper looked back at the capsule machine and shuddered. "But now that you've freed me, you've not only proved that mean old man wrong, but are also in valuable need of my help."

"Help? I'm pretty sure I can handle myself just fine, thank you very much." Twilight rolled her eyes as she flashed her wings and horn.

"By releasing me, you've opened yourself up to the Yo-kai species as a whole." Whisper patted Twilight on the shoulders. "Now you can communicate with us, and try to bring some normality in your soon-to-be plagued city."

"Soon-to-be-plagued? What do you mean?" Twilight raised her brow again. "What did you do?"

"Me? I didn't do anything. Honest." A halo appeared around Whisper's head. "But by freeing me, you've opened the gate for the Yo-kai to appear in your world, and there's no doubt that some have already begun inspiriting your fellow ponies."

"Well, then we've gotta go help them!" Twilight was about to run off, but Whisper grabbed on to her shoulders.

"Uh-uh-uh, your highness. You can't go without this." Whisper produced a white watch with a bubble dome, a small slot for inserting coin-shaped objects, and what looked like a design for a watch without any numbers inside.

"What is this?" Twilight turned around and felt the device drop into her hooves.

"This is a Yo-kai Watch." Whisper explained as he strapped it onto Twilight's front right hoof. "Simply flip the lens and look around to find a Yo-kai that might be inspiriting the ponies of... wherever it is you're from."

"Okay." Twilight tightened the watch and flipped the dome up with a push of a button to act as a makeshift lens. A noise she had never heard before in her life emanated from the watch, but when Twilight looked through it, everything was unchanged.

"Nothing here at the moment, but if you have any friends, I think it would be best to check on them to see if there's something wrong with them." Whisper put the lens back down onto the watch.

"They're back at the campfire, probably worried sick about me." Twilight hung her head for a few seconds before she looked at the watch and unfurled her wings. "I have to help them!"

"Then there's no time to waste, your highness!" Whisper threw his arms back, ready to fly with Twilight. "Are you ready for your first real experience with ghosts?"

"Yes. And I have a name you know, it's Twilight. Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria." She bowed before Whisper.

"That's a lot to take in. I'll just call you Twilight, if that's alright with you," Whisper said.

"Why not? Thay's what everyone else calls me anyway..." Twilight blushed sheepishly.

"Very well then, Twilight! Let us be off, posthaste!" Whisper hurled himself into the air.

"Yes! Let's!" Twilight took off as well, soaring above the trees alongside Whisper. With all the stuff she had been informed about, she knew deep down inside, that her life was about to change forever.

Author's Notes:

And there we have it. My first Yo-kai Watch crossover.

Now, keep in mind that this is my first time writing Yo-kai Watch and MLP side-by-side, so don't expect it to be perfect. In fact, if you have any comments on how to make this better, I'd love to hear them.

And as always, be sure to rate, comment, favourite, follow me if you like my writing and want to see more, and be sure to stay tuned for the rest of the story.

Have a good night, everyone!