So ponies can violate relativity, it seems. The relativistic forces accelerating me to 11% the speed of light should have torn me into plasma in a fraction of an instant. Without teleportation, that is. But instead it’s totally harmless. Even that glowing white border of the portal, it’s just a hot... fractally thing, that can give you a nasty friction burn if you touch it, but doesn’t vaporise your molecules or anything. It doesn’t even seem all that out of the ordinary! We have bent space around on itself, hopping back and forth through the portal with ease, and somehow our world hasn’t been torn asunder from the gravitational tidal forces from bending space.

Gravity itself is another casulty to pony science, since height of each portal doesn’t seem to matter, either. I guess gravity has been our bitch ever since pegasi figured out how to hover in mid-air, but it’s really obvious when we break open the ice on a mountain stream, and open our portal in the way of the flowing water underneath the icy creek. A second stream immediately pours out of the other end of the portal, uphill. It runs quickly into the same creek, returning to our downstream portal again. The water actually starts to build up as time passes, thankfully not because of matter creation, but just because all the water upstream is slowly accumulating in this impossible loop that just never quits flowing.

And... that’s the most of my involvement with the portal research. We don’t have much more opportunity to do cool experiments with it, besides repeating the same thing over and over again, to do measurements and statistics. Mostly it’s just advanced math the likes of me could never hope to comprehend, and unicorns trying things with some of that cinderblock energy just about any earth pony could create. It certainly doesn’t take time away from my enthusiastic training exercises, and it certainly doesn’t take time away from completely innocent preoccupations of mine, like stalking stallions who are married to other stallions, who I may have been fucking, and may have hooked one of my friends up with just a teensy bit.

Artemis’s wife is Dr. Browning, who’s also a scientist on the research team, making her and Artemis a match made in Heaven, if they both weren’t guys now. Once a woman, now he is a strapping strong green unicorn stallion with an orange mane, who definitely, beyond the shadow of a doubt identifies as male. I know I shouldn’t be meddling further in the relationships of others, but I’m still proud of this one, this final relationship I manage to heal.

I feel like there should be a less sketchy way to do it, but I have no better ideas, and I’m just observing things after all, not doing anything wrong, so in what free time I can eke out of training, I start... stalking Dr. Browning. Just following him when he thinks I’m not there, and being sneaky in general. Not the most ethical use of my training, but I do learn some interesting things. Especially when Dr. Browning prances up to an earth pony mare who’s certainly not any mare I’ve seen together with Dr. Browning or Artemis before.

Even I can tell from my vantage point beneath a snow covered tarp off to the side that the mare’s very hot and bothered. She smells like she was trying to be very hot and bothered, very recently, not an unlikely prospect.

“Hey there,” Dr. Browning says as the mare stares up at the approaching stallion, owlishly, “I don’t think we’ve met? I’m Charger, or at least that’s what I’ve been calling myself since I turned into a man. What’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m just... um... Private Westville,” the mare says in a cheery soprano, eyes widening as she adds, “You used to be a girl?”

“Why?” Dr. Browning, that is to say “Charger” asks, the orange and green maned unicorn squaring off in front of the green haired pink earth pony calling herself Private Westville. “You looking for someone to show you how?” he adds slyly.

Well one thing leads to another, and with Charger groaning in relief as he slides into the mare he’s mounted upon, I think... I have a plan. I don’t wait for Charger to impregnate the mare, though I don’t doubt that he does. Definitely have to talk with Private Westville after all this. For the time being, I go to Brian, and she doesn’t like it when I say,

“Okay, I have a plan that’s gonna work perfectly, but you have to stop having sex with anyone for the next few days.”

“What’s the plan?” Brian asks with an unhappy whicker.

“You’re gonna get another jerk boyfriend!” I tell her, with a totally sane smile.

A few days later, I have Brian about as aroused as a pregnant mare can be. Honestly it’s hard to get her very worked up with how nervous she is, but I manage. I don’t understand why we get so nervous about that stuff, since she’s already pregnant, but I guess it’s just something you have to deal with. In a scientific sense though, it isn’t something Brian needs to really hesitate on.

She gets over her stage fright quickly enough, seems eager even as I lap at her teats, Brian whimpering, “Oh god, I’m ready. I’m I’m gonna do it. Meadows this is... I want him...”

“Great job, looks like you’re still pretty easy,” I encourage her, backing off with a smile, “Now just stand outside the breakfast area, wave your tail a little, and if he asks, you haven’t had sex yet.”

“Right,” Brian whimpers, staring over at the building we’ve been serving food in. “Just... deceive him, just like that.”

“From what I can see yeah,” I remark thoughtfully, “He doesn’t ask a lot of questions. Just be honest with him, except for the you know... being a virgin part.”

“Right...” Brian says, taking a deep breath before trotting over there, and trying to stand nonchalantly. Her nervousness works in her favor, since it makes her seem even more antsy. So when Charger trots out of the cafeteria, and when Brian’s tail wafts her scent at him, he pauses, and turns to look at her.

Brian immediately blushes and looks away. Charger grins, and trots over in her direction. They talk in quiet tones, and I’m not hiding this time, so much as standing out of the way, so Brian flashes me a look, as she turns and heads off with Charger, as docile as can be. I am so glad she’s had experience with putting up with guys like that. I’d probably kick him or something if I tried to let him fuck me.

So with them headed off to consummate their brand new relationship, I hurry to find Artemis.

“I still can’t believe she’s been...” he says, trotting together with me as we hurry to the spot that Brian led Charger to, “Womanizing. I didn’t think she was that bad.”

“Well, maybe we don’t know the whole story,” I tell him reservedly, “But you have to admit, nobody’s gonna get in trouble, if you confess about Brian while your wife is fucking her.”

“...this is so very fucked up,” Artemis replies in confoundment. Both of us ignoring any reservations we might have, we peek around the corner, where Brian’s whimpering in a convincingly genuine way, and mounted on her rump, Charger is just going at her like there’s no tomorrow.

“Well, go on,” I whisper to Artemis, “I’ll be right behind you.”

Artemis just stares above me in shock for a moment, before blushing and pulling back around the corner. “Right, um...” he says, then reluctantly trots out into the open, clearing his throat, and calling out as Charger freezes on the spot, “Um... Adelyn?”

Without unmounting, the stallion turns to look in terror at his bat pony husband, as Charger stammers in a warm baritone, “I–I can explain t-this isn’t—”

“No, no, it is,” Artemis says in a chiding tone, “And I don’t know where you get off doing this, but I’ve... been... cheating on you.”

“You’ve been—?!” Charger says coming to a choked halt, “But— I— we...” he gestures at Brian with a forehoof in confusion. “I’ve been cheating on you!”

“Yes, I know,” Artemis says, tilting an ear, “You’re cheating on me right now.”

“You know?!” Charger retorts, then blushes and adds, “I mean o-of course you know. I-I’m...” he faces forward, looking down at a pensive Brian saying, “I am so sorry I didn’t think he’d... it just didn’t come up!”

“Of course it didn’t come up,” Brian says testily, staring at the ground with her shoulders hunched as she adds, “Because you’re being a jerk.”

“What?” Charger balks, as the mare he’s fucking totally tells him off. “I’m not being a...! Oh god.” He totally dismounts Brian then, who turns in a circle, then looks back at him warily. Ignoring her (natch), Charger faces Artemis, stammering,

“Y-you don’t know what it’s like... I-I didn’t think it would be this different! It makes me want to... how do you deal with staying horny all the bloody time?”

“I... I don’t,” Artemis says ruefully. “I’ve been cheating on you, too.”

Staring back blankly, Charger stammers, “O-oh. Right.”

“With her,” Artemis adds, pointing a hoof at Brian.

Charger blinks.

Brian walks over to stand with Artemis, bravely telling Charger, “We’ve been having... sex. And that’s o-okay. I wanted you to have sex with me, so you couldn’t get mad at Artemis. Because now you know how good I feel in there, and you can’t blame him for...” Brian glances back uncertainly, then patting her own green ass with a wing and an awkward smile, “...tapping that?”

“You set me up!” Charger says staring at Brian in shock.

“For friendship!” Brian retorts hotly, “I never lied to you! I didn’t have to! You can...” Stepping away from Artemis she presents for Charger, saying, “You can finish if you want, even! I just don’t want you to get mad at Artemis, for... doing me.”

“I can?” Charger asks dumbly, then looks at Artemis and repeats in incredulity, “I can?”

“Go ahead,” Artemis says glumly, waving a wing at the other stallion dismissively, “We can talk about this afterwards. According to Meadowsweet and Brian, we might have to change our relationship, but that doesn’t mean we have to end it.”

Charger blinks at Artemis, then says flatly, “No seriously, I can just... fuck her? Right in front of you?”

“Well somebody fuck me,” Brian says in feathery flusterment, “Because I’ve been getting edged for the last hour!”

Brian is definitely standing when Charger mounts her, giving a delighted little “Oh...!” when his penis hits home again. She looks over her shoulder at his hips, while Charger stares down at her as if seeing her for the first time. With slitted eyes, Brian purrs, “That’s it... push it aaaaall the way into me...”

“What’ve I gotten myself into...” Charger says upon bottoming out in the mare.

“Me~!” Brian sings joyfully, pushing her rump up against Charger’s pelvis.

Charger seems like he’s going to back out, but his eyes lose focus as he starts to rhythmically slide in and out of her. Her smugness fades as the dizzying pleasure of a man filling her starts to get to Brian, and soon neither he nor she are concerned with anything other than fucking. “It... it is kind of beautiful, after all,” Artemis remarks to Charger, “Seeing you as a stallion, just lost in the... need to mate.”

“I... I...” Charger says, blushing in flustered lust, “It’s making me want to...” then he grabs Brian’s rump hard, hunching over her and humping into her as hard as he can, much to her delight. Artemis and I let him do his thing then, as we’ve both had enough sex to know that Charger just needs to focus on this now. Artemis knows exactly how Brian feels inside, and how much her hot passage makes him want to push deep and cum. When Charger flares, he looks up from Brian, saying to the engrossed looking bat pony anxiously, “Art, I’m gonna...!”

“Don’t tell me, tell her,” Artemis chides him.

With short, deep, needy thrusts, Charger tells Brian, “Miss, I’m... I’m going to... c-cum in you. It’s just f-filling me up. Every... inch of my... penis’s tingling. I can’t... stop I’m gonna... Miss I’m gonna c-cu-cuahnnhh!”

He pushes deep, intense, and stops for a silent moment, before Brian’s eyes light up, and she arches her hips back against his.

“Oh, I feel it,” Brian says in wide-eyed wonder.

“I c-ca–Art, I—!” Charger barely vocalizes at the same time, before Artemis kisses the stallion right on the lips, standing alongside the pegasus mare who Charger is impregnating. Surprised at first, Charger kisses back harder as he gives one strong, decisive hump against Brian, then holds quietly close to her, the base of his penis pulsing as he fills his female up with seed. Their kiss grows tender as Charger finishes ejaculating, and when they part lips, every drop of Charger’s semen is pumped up into his female. Brian takes it willingly, acceptingly, and indulgently, the container for his semen, and the incubator for his child.

For someone’s child, at any rate.

Satisfied that all is well, I quietly back up from where I’m watching them on a nearby roof, then on the other side of the building, I shimmy my way down the drainpipe, trotting out between the buildings and the fence, leaving the three of them to work things out from there.

The three of them work things out great, and one day, I coincidentally, totally randomly and unintentionally approach a green haired, pink furred earth pony who I haven’t met yet, who’s working on shovelling fresh snow out from the pathways between buildings.

“Mind if I help?” I ask, a second snow shovel coincidentally laid across my back. She pauses and looks at me with purplish eyes slightly darker than the color of her fur coat, which is itself pink... or purple. I dunno.

How do you tell if something’s pink or purple?

Well the purplepink mare nods wordlessly, since she has a shovel in her mouth, and with my help it goes almost twice as quickly. I’m slow at first, just from figuring out how to wield a shovel with a foreleg and a mouth, but I watch and learn from her, and we swiftly get the job done.

“Thanks,” she says in her cheery soprano and a sort of southern accent, panting and wiping her brow after dropping the shovel. I’m panting too by now, as the exercise has both of us much warmer than the cold snowy landscape around us. “Whoever you are. Did the sergeant send you?”

“What? No, I just thought you looked like you could use a little help,” I tell her, not sure which sergeant would be “the” sergeant. “Also I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Well shoot,” she replies amiably, “Whatever might you wanna talk about with me? Name’s uh...”

“...Private Westville,” I cautiously answer for her.

“Oh right, you’d know it,” she says, looking down, “Sorry I’m just still not used to calling myself by this here ‘private’ thing. I only been enlisted for uh... well, I met the President on accident, so now I’m here.”

“It’s no problem,” I say easily, with a jostle to her side to get her to look up and meet my eyes, “My name’s Meadowsweet.”

Her eyes widen at that, as she says, “Oh you’re the civvie who’s some kinda magical earth pony that they was talking about, right?”

“...every earth pony is magical,” I grumble, “I just got a little extra magical for a little bit there.”

“Well, no worries,” she replies with a smile, “What can I help you with?”

My sweat’s already starting to freeze as we stand here outside, so I look around, saying, “You wanna go somewhere warm to talk?”

There is some nice heating in the buildings, at least. Apparently the old sawmill had been heated using scrap wood, and the insulated piping for that was still in place when they put these buildings in. Stick some radiators to that, and you can heat a good sized area. So she takes me into her apartment, where the air is toasty warm, and thankfully there’s no one else in here.

“So um... West, can I call you West?” I ask Private Westville, “Since we aren’t using uh... first names.”

“Oh, yeah, you. Uh...” she says, lifting a deceptively dainty looking hoof, still crusted on the bottom with snow despite kicking it off when we came in. “That’s about right,” she settles on eventually.

“So I um... was talking to... Charger,” I tell her with a sympathetic wince.

“Who’s that?” she asks with a confused head tilt. Really?

“He’s a green unicorn stallion, with an orange mane and tail,” I offer cautiously, “You might’ve... run into him before.”

She might have purple fur, but West’s entire face is blushing red now.

“It’s okay if you, um...!” I reassure her unreassuringly, lifting an appeasing foreleg, “I just wanted to know if you’ve been getting... sick lately.”

“Sick?” she asks faintly, giving me a sideways look.

“Especially in the mornings, just having an upset stomach, getting dizzy, feeling... strange,” I list for her, “Stranger than usual, I mean.”

“N-no I haven’t,” she says in befuddlement, “Is there something going around?”

“You could say that,” I reply with my ears going flat in self-disgust. “So you’re... probably not pregnant then.”

“O-o-oh,” she replies lamely, turned so sideways, she’s looking away from me entirely behind herself, ears dropping.

“...do you have anyone to talk about it with?” I ask her less than hopefully.

“N-no, uh, I uh—” her voice catches as though she was about to cry. I am totally screwing this up! Maybe if I don’t talk about her?

“I used to be a man, just in case that isn’t clear,” I tell her, “And I got... pregnant one day. M-maybe more than once, even.”

At least her ear is turned my way.

“It was... really amazing,” I continue, “I couldn’t hold back, and neither could he. It was a lot different than... doing it as a guy.”

“Why are you telling me about this?” West asks looking at me in a fearful puzzlement.

“Because I think it’s okay to do that with stallions,” I tell her urgently, “Getting pregnant isn’t okay, I mean, but it’s okay to want it. And if it happens, well... I know how you feel, and I wanted to know if you wanted to... talk. About it.”

“How could you know?” she asks in a hurt tone, “Yours didn’t just... started doing you without even asking,”

Well crap, I sure hope I’ve managed to stop Dr. Browning’s behavior.

“A-actually my stallion did, but I wanted it at the time,” I tell her, “Did you... want it?”

“No, I... started... wanting it,” she admits guiltily, looking away.

“After he was inside?” I ask.

She nods, looking severly troubled.

“It makes me want it, too,” I gingerly admit, “So it’s alright if you start wanting it, even if it made you start wanting it. Not like it makes him any less of a jerk, right?”

The private might have a shadow of a smile at that.

“It sure is a rush when your urges take you,” I sing to her fondly, “Your fears and worries melt away. You start to feel the girl it makes you, to be like that, it’s all okay.”

“What we did is not okay though,” she sings bleakly, “I couldn’t make myself say no,”

“What that man did was not okay,” I retort as the song picks up in earnest, “What’s okay is what you do! You stop wanting to get away, wanting a foal when he cums in you,”

She looks like she might nod, at least.

“Well that’s okay, it’s all alright,” I sing to her encouragingly, a jaunty little tune as I prance in a circle around her “The difference between day and night! Nice guy, mean guy, doesn’t matter. It’s still okay if you want to get fatter. Then freak out after the urge to breed, thinking about want or need.

“Because it’s not your fault at all,” I continue, “When you’re heeding Nature’s call. You didn’t stop having a vagina overnight. Don’t blame yourself for his mistake, it’s just not right!”

“I really started wanting to have a kid!” she sings in distressful protest, “But I’m scared of all that screaming pain. I freaked out after what I did!”

“In a heartbeat, would you go again?” I sing wryly.

At her blushing non-answer, I continue, saying, “When I freaked out from being mated, the scariest was wanting more. Even in my fear belated, even knowing what’s in store. Your belly gets bigger deep inside. Then one day you’ll find you just can’t stop, your contractions pulling your cervix wide, they say you can feel your own foal drop.”

She listens in fascination, as I relate to her something I’ve never experienced, reiterating, “But still it’s not your fault at all, when you’re heeding Nature’s call. You didn’t stop having a vagina overnight. Don’t blame yourself for his mistake, it’s just not right!”

“But I don’t want to be a mother!” she sings fretfully, “Why me, and not some unlucky other?”

“It doesn’t matter why it’s you,” I reply, crossing before her to face her seriously, “It’s just less scary when you think it through.”

Presenting my butt for her, I declare, “Your body’s made to have a child! You can give birth if it’s in the cards. I hear it feels pretty wild, just stand there, stretching, pushing hard, soon your foal’s just hanging out of you. You keep on pushing till it’s through. Your brand new foal will start to nurse, while you push out the afterbirth. This is something you can do. And if he doesn’t ask before he takes you, well...”

I lean in her direction, tilting my eyebrows at her expectantly.

“What we did is not my fault at all,” she sings with a shy smile, “If I’m just heeding Nature’s call. I didn’t stop having a vagina overnight. I can’t blame myself for his mistake. I’ll just give birth, and”

And we sing together, “It will be... all...right~!”

...

“And to be fair, he only did it once, right?” I ask.

She nods.

“If you go three weeks without feeling seriously funny, they you should be fine,” I assure her, “So just forget about him, and don’t be afraid to kick a stallion who tries to rape you. If you do, then I will personally find a stallion to impregnate you, who isn’t a rapist at all. So you don’t have to worry about missing your chance.”

“Thanks, that’s... comforting, I think,” she says with a cautious stiffness to her tail base.

“I mean I’ll do my best, at least...” I say sheepishly. “I’ve just had some luck with that recently.”

“Say, weren’t we singing just now?” she asks in a curious sort of surprise.

“Huh, I guess we were...” I reply bemusedly, “I hadn’t even thought about it. Ponies are pretty awesome, huh?”

“A lot more awesome then I thought they were when I woke up as one,” West says with a quirky smile.

“It was bar none the weirdest song I have ever sang in my life though,” I admit, going over the grotesquely bizarre yet catchy lyrics, wondering how I come up with this stuff.

“I definitely should probably stick to show tunes,” West agrees, with a sympathetic wince.

Through some combination of scheming, total honesty, putting up with jerks, and spontaneous urges to break out into song, I think I manage to play a part in saving Artemis’s marriage. At least it gave Charger enough of a fright to keep him from feeling too tempted to stray for a while. But Brian loves both of them, and that’s enough to make me think that maybe when I thought Charger was an uncaring, boorish jerk, I didn’t understand everything that was going on with him. Seeing Brian so happy between the two, or even seeing her searching anxiously for more marefriends to help her with the two stallions, I’m just glad something has gone right here.

Oh and Brian seems to be the first pegasus I know who loves getting double teamed. So Mira and her earth pony endurance can stuff it.

None of us earth ponies can feel any weird space folding happening anywhere around that portal, but the scientists say it’s okay because it just means the ends of the portal are very far apart, or even in different universes, natch. We can’t really open the Equestrian portal without unicorns on the other side, and apparently we aren’t there yet in negotiations. I get the impression it’s our side that’s reluctant to provide the unicorns, but I’m still not privvy to the top secret negotiations, so it’s just my impression by how the people are are acting about it.

Somehow I think that no matter what we did about that portal to Equestria, it would go terribly wrong in some way. We ponies in our secret military base practice observing the Equestrian portal. Not opening it, observing. We’re not stupid. Ignorant, maybe. Foolish. Desperate. But not stupid. With what we’ve learned so far, we could probably open it within a week’s time, given some help from the other side, and it is so urgent that we do so before a certain somepony can destroy it, or at least find some way to defend it from her. But with the amount of care the military are taking, I can understand if it takes a few months of thinking things through, before we actually get to see into Equestria, even after we have the ability to do so. Experimenting with the portal to Equestria seems to have stalled, for the most part indefinitely.

Fortunately, we once again have to rush things for the sake of that damnable mare, Twilight Sparkle.

They don’t tell us she’s been sighted, but the rumor goes around anyway, especially around me. I’ve been getting this nasty habit of kind of... curiously, coincidentally listening in on people talking about that stuff, even when they think they’re alone. I don’t hear concrete facts about Twilight, but... people know she’s a growing threat, and that she may have been warned about our base up here. If any of us leaked that info, the humanity of the whole world could be doomed.

I know I’m pretty sure I’ve come to know so much classifed information just by the rumor mill that under normal circumstances, they’d have to lock me in an isolation cell to keep me from blabbing their precious secrets. Not that I’m grateful Twilight caused a massive global crisis or anything, but I’m certainly glad these are not normal circumstances. Never again....

Lucy tells me she heard some of the soldiers talking about how Twilight Sparkle was heard interrogating someone out in a nearby town, right in the earshot of someone who knew about our base back here. No reports that Twilight Sparkle knows our exact location, though if she did it’d probably be pretty obvious. The portal would be destroyed, the remaining humans wouldn’t be humans, and Twilight would be laughing at us again.

So things are rushed along, and negotiations hastened, and one day all the best of us are in the portal chamber, ready to try and coordinate an experiment with the Equestrian unicorns on the other side. And I really wanna see it, but... I guess it makes sense that I wouldn’t be directly involved. Someone needs to be the first line of defense, after all. Plus I know Twilight Sparkle on a personal level, so I’m less likely to fall for her tricks.

Thus everyone gets to do incredibly exciting cross dimensional experimentation, and I get to guard the door. All the scientists are in on the experiment at least, maybe a few other ponies. Sue’s group is sheltering in our apartment without me, and of my other group, uh... well, Daredevil is in there, helping guard the scientists. I’m at the door at least, but the other 6 of us are just waiting out the storm elsewhere in other buildings. I kind of miss them.

I’m not the only one stuck guarding doors, but I’m the only one at this entrance, and it is the main entrance, I suppose. Just a precaution, they said. It’s boring as heck, and I want to help out somewhere else, but I don’t protest. I know that this would be the absolute worst time for Twilight Sparkle to show up, so of course she’s gonna.

It’s really boring to wait. I’m all alone standing in the entryway lobby thing, next to that reception desk that’s taller than my head. Tempted to flop out on my side, I just feel too on-edge to really relax. They’re doing something so important deeper within the building. I can feel it. And I just don’t know what could possibly go wrong.

There’s no way Twilight would even come here today! A nasty blizzard moved in yesterday, and it’s already dumped out a foot of snow. Enough to reach to my belly that’s for sure, and nothing makes me regret being a girl more than sinking up to my labia in powdery snow. It’s about as pleasant as kissing a snowman. I can’t say I’d rather be a guy though, because they’ve got testicles down there, and I don’t even want to think about how it feels to freeze your nuts off. It doesn’t seem to bother Sue or Dusty, at least? Okay, Sue did complain once by laying his cold testicles on my face and going on about how warm I was. I just rolled my eyes, beneath the furry nut sack lying against them, acting like I wasn’t enjoying it. His junk does feel kind of... adorable though. It’s so silky soft to the touch. ♥

The blizzard’s bad enough to have us locked us down in our buildings, for the most part, and it’s been going on for quite a while. So I guess we’re safe from Twilight. Even if she somehow realizes what we’re doing, I can’t imagine she’d risk the blizzard just to keep us from communicating better with Equestria. She’d just bide her time, and destroy the portal when the weather wasn’t too dangerous to travel in. Or run away, or hide, or find another world to portal to. Not even Princess Celestia could find Twilight on the entire whole planet Earth, I think. Especially with negotiations over jurisdictions and national borders and stuff.

We’re not even opening the portal all the way this time, either, so there’s nothing to worry about! It’s just a test run, where we’re going to widen the portal to just about a dime’s width, just enough to fit a borescopic camera through, to get our first look at the other side. So no problem, right? There’s no reason to think the Equestrians are going to even do anything bad!

Even if we’re not willing to open the portal all the way like they want, the Equestrians still agree to help. To gain our trust, I suppose. Not that someone’s more trustworthy just because they look good on camera, but it’s definitely a good first step. The procedure shouldn’t have a lot of fanfare either, just poking a tube through a hole basically. The President isn’t here, or even the General, since we’re just testing this time. We’ve all been in the portal chamber, so none of this is secret anymore. I should be allowed to see the footage they take of this experiment, at least.

It’s still frustrating though. I have to just stand here, far from the portal chamber, guarding the door against a unicorn who isn’t there, while incredible things are happening behind me. I can feel the power of the pegasi holding back the winds from our walls with whispers of their wings, all those people in the portal chamber, pouring their magic into it, earth ponies and unicorns alike. Bat ponies doing a lot of the fine manipulation with their mobility and their dextrous wing claws. All for opening a tiny hole across impossible, infinite distances, into a whole new world. A whole universe parallel to our own, where the show is real, and we’re as fictional in their world as they are in ours.

...

They’re sure taking their good sweet time of it.

I’m still bored to tears waiting for some muffled cheers deeper within, or for the sense of prodigious power coming from there to fall back to normal levels, or a failed experiment, or an explosion, or anything, when my ear moves toward... the door outside.

From laying on my side, I leap to my hooves as I hear a distinct crunch crunch of walking through the snow approaching the building. No one huddled in the apartments should have been out here. Everyone who was supposed to be in the laboratory is inside. It can’t be. This is literally the worst possible moment of all the possible moments for—I hear the tinkling of magic. I can hear her chanting maniacally as she approaches, “No, no, no, no, no...”

The tinkling grows to a shrill humm, just like the moment before any unicorn teleports, but more powerful than I’ve ever felt before. The ripple goes way past me, deeper into the building. I don’t know who’s outside, but I know exactly who’s outside, and I know what she’s doing!

Kicking out, I connect with the... thing, and Twilight Sparkle bursts into existence right in time for my hoof to connect, sending her tumbling into a heap.

She barely even acts like she feels it, not that there was any force behind my kick. Twilight Sparkle snaps to crouching on all fours in a single movement, her shrunken irises staring daggers at me as a single word drips out of her mouth with a oozing hatred, “You! ”

Her Twilight Sparkle disguise must be slipping, because she looks like a demon. Her coat is dry and dull, her limbs are thin and almost skeletal, and her dissheveled, uncombed hair hangs limply over her face. Her teeth are showing, her s-sharp and pointy fangs as she growls, “What. Are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” I yell at her in return, trying not to curl my tail between my legs.

“That’s none of your business,” she says with a disgusting sneer, trying to leap past me, and I... I actually grab her, and pull her back and force her down into a leg lock that I’ve been practicing. “Let me go!”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” I tell that stupid unicorn, who lights up her horn and blasts me right off of her. Landing, I say, “You can’t trick me again! I’ve been training every day to... to stop you!”

“I–I swear I’m not trying to trick you this time!” Twilight says, staring at me in a new light, eyes wide with what I hope is fear. “We’re all friends here, right?” she says with a nervous smile, “This is just a harmless prank right?” then her face just contorts in rage, as she bellows, “Get out of my way you idiot, I have to stop this!”

She blasts me with a stunning spell that I’ve never felt before, it just crushes me to the ground and I feel like every inch of my body is paralyzed. But I don’t... let myself be paralyzed. I manage to hook my foreleg around her hind leg and yank her bodily backwards as she tries to walk past me. She’s so light, she just collapses like a bundle of sticks when she loses her balance. Is this a fake Twilight? Some kind of golem made out of sticks?!

Twilight’s actually struggling to stand almost as much as I am this time, shouting, “You absolute fucking retard, you are ruining everything! I’ll kill you, if you don’t get out of my way! I will not hesitate to use lethal force! Do you want to be a statistic?!”

“You’re hesitating now!” I protest.

“I don’t want to hurt you Meadowsweet!” she outright implores me, actually managing to pretend to look upset, “Can’t you see what they’re doing? They’re sacrificing you so that I can kill you just so that you can stall... oh no you can’t stall me oh no nonono”

Her horn lights up, and Twilight starts to teleport past me again, and I don’t know why I feel terrible for doing this, but I kick out again, interrupting her teleport to unceremoniously dump her out in front of me again. “How did you learn that?!” she screeches angrily, stalking sideways to me.

“I’ve l-learned a lot!” I tell her furiously, “More than you ever taught me. I have real magic even though I’m just an earth pony, and I can defend myself too!”

Snarling openly, Twilight looks like she’s gonna leap at me to tear out my throat! She looks like she thinks I’m going to tear out her throat! She looks half dead! What happened to her? We stalk in a slow circle, as she searches me for any weakness, and I shout to her, “What happened to you? Why did you betray us? Why did you turn everyone into ponies?”

“Of course, they...” Twilight says staring at me with a blood curdling smile, “They taught you too. They taught you all the secrets. They told you everything.”

“Y-you need to stand ac-countable for your c-crimes against Equestria,” I whimper, when I should be just jumping her, and... and doing something. Instead I do nothing, Twilight lights up her horn, and we’re not sparring anymore. She’s not just gonna shock me or make me think I’m a pidgeon. I don’t want to die! I start to desperately leap at her as Twilight Sparkle vanishes in a burst of purple light. She—! I can’t...!

I land on thin air, and Twilight Sparkle is not teleporting past me, because we circled around until my back was to the door outside. Twilight teleports further into the complex, and all I can do is charge after her, screaming, “Twilight Sparkle! She’s here!” as loud as I can.

Running in a panic through the halls, not even stopping to open the doors, I’m still not fast enough, as I hear another tinkling teleport, and then another, and then I’m at the door to the portal chamber while on the other side of the wall, Twilight Sparkle teleports inside.

Bursting through the door, I shout again, “Twilight Spar—!” only to step back at the sight therein. Daredevil and another pony have Twilight Sparkle pinned flat on the floor, and Daredevil outright has her teeth on Twilight’s horn. The unicorns surrounding the portal to Equestria look almost serene, if they weren’t straining, their brows dripping with sweat as the glow from their horns flows around them. There’s some big metal... thing that three earth ponies are using to fuel the unicorns with special energy, and I think it’s actually working, because I can see a shining disc of white light glowing above the sealed cassette tape.

“No!!” Twilight screeches, reaching towards it with a hoof, “You are ruining everything! I haven’t found her yet! She’ll kill us all!”

Artemis has dropped his clipboard, staring at Twilight Sparkle in horror.

“Abort the test!” Dr. Peterson squeals, “Abort the—”

All the unicorns yelp at once as the portal jumps to about the size, not of a dime, but more like a quarter’s diameter. I can only see this portal’s bright white ring, with darkness beyond it. Twilight kicks Daredevil then, somehow hard enough that the earth pony goes flying, then just... shoves the other pony off her, and lights up her horn. Our unicorns are struggling, tearing their horns out of the magic field one after another, but Twilight shrieks, “No! It’s too late!” I don’t know what to do as Twilight Sparkle standing there so alone, between us and the wavering portal she faces, her horn blazing like a star. Then everything comes clear, as through that hole in space, a long, slim black spire extends and extends, burning with a strange, dark fire.

“Run!!” Twilight screams as the portal explodes, tossing everyone across the room like ragdolls. I land hard, scraping across the floor as the portal bursts open wider and wider, cutting through the walls like a buzz saw, and the ceiling...!

I don’t even think. I just jump, kicking a falling fragment of the ceiling above me to smash another chunk of masonry away from falling down on top of someone. Everyone’s screaming, unicorn magic is shoving falling debris out of the way, and the whole ceiling just comes down on top of us! I throw a heavy support beam off of my back, about to go help those buried, when a horribly familiar voice behind me causes me to freeze on the spot. I don’t want to look back. I don’t want to look back. I try not to look back. I fail.

“Ah, my beloved subjects,” says an impossibly tall winged unicorn, black as night, stepping elegantly through the immense portal, beyond which I can see now an endless army of grim looking ponies in dark armor and perfect formation.

“It’s been so long, I was wondering whether you were going to invite me at all,” Nightmare Moon says in a deep, mocking tone that drives its chill deep into my bones. “And it seems some of you survived,” she says, her catlike eyes fixing powerfully on my own.

Then she turns away from us, striding gracefully back through the portal, saying casually over her shoulder, “Kill them.”

“Yes, my Queen,” Sergeant Roberts says quietly, along with one other.

It’s only then that I notice the humans in the room. Two humans, on either side of the portal room, in full uniform, looking out for any need to defend the experiment from any purple unicorns who come to call. One of them, I recognize, but it doesn’t matter at all, because there’s another horribly familiar deafening crack, and Lucy goes down screaming, because those two have lifted their assault rifles and opened fire on us. Holly tries to get away and they just cut her down right out of the air and I can’t take it anymore I have to get away I don’t want to die!!

I wish I could say bullets are whizzing past me, but they aren’t, because they don’t. There’s only this ear bleeding crack, and then a horrible smoking hole appears out of nowhere, wherever the gun was pointed. That’s how fast bullets move. The gun doesn’t point at me though. How can it not point at me? They’re busy killing everyone else, while I run for my life, scrambling up the piles of fallen debris, leaping until I’m climbing up all the way up onto the roof, out of the hole this portal caused. The creaking roof beneath me terrifies me, as I gallop down its slope and leap, flying off the roof to somersault into the thickest snow bank I could find in two seconds.

It’s not enough! The sounds of gunshots continue, and they’re gonna hunt me down and kill me! I have to get out! I bound through the snow as fast as I can, and it feels like the naked trees around me are howling monsters as the wind whips through their branches and blasts me with flakes of chilling cold. I run, and I run, and I run, and I can’t escape!

Finally... lost, and doomed to die in the cold, my heart just can’t take it. I stumble to a halt, wracked with sobs as they just... they just killed them! I’m not bleeding. There are no holes in me, trailing blood in the snow, only a long, broad abrasion along my side, where the jagged edge of the roof scraped me as I struggled up on top of it. How is that possible? All those people die and I only get a scratch? I-it’s the biggest scratch I’ve ever gotten, and my yellow fur is darkening with blood but... what?

What just happened?

What??

I start stumbling forward, wading through the unmarked snow. I don’t have anything more to do than that. Everything around me is icy, howling and white. I can barely see through the endless rain of terrible snowflakes. The sky is dark with them, the thick clouds showing no sign of abating.

I’m shivering by the time I find a road. My legs feel like ice. I... I need to get out of this snow. I need to find somewhere to keep warm. Somewhere to hide from that... thing. The show does not do her justice. The show does not do her justice. Her sharp teeth and her evil eyes, and that contemptuous hatred that burned in them. She was everything that ever scared me about the dark, a true nightmare given shape and form. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. Even thinking about how scared I was is terrifying.

I follow the road, hoping and praying it’s not the one that leads to our secret laboratory. I never want to see that place again as long as I live. She was just killing my... my friends and... I sink into the snow in confused sobs, unable to save them, unable to stop that look in Holly’s eyes, when she... died. When everything betrayed her, even her own body, all I could do was run away.

I force myself to walk again, hating myself for being the stupid, weak, helpless coward that I am, and always have been. I don’t want to die. I don’t deserve to die. This snowy road numbing my legs, and making my teeth chatter is my Hell, and I’ve just landed in it to suffer for all eternity, for being such a loser that not even God can forgive me.

A side road emerges from the formless white. Not even a road, just a driveway, winding into the trees to the left of me. A driveway means houses though, which means shelter, which means survival. Maybe I can warn anyone who lives there of... o-of what we did. Again.

How could we have been so stupid? I fight my way down the driveway, hating myself, my friends, and my government. It’s so obvious. Of course everyone in Equestria is just as evil as Twilight. We just connected to some stupid nega-Equestria, where her sociopathic behavior was the norm. Of course they knew how to open the portal after we got it started for them. We should have tested while they didn’t know, but we didn’t. Why did we trust them to help us?

I just don’t know how things went so wrong, so quickly. We just... let Nightmare Moon just walk into our world, and now? Now, I don’t... I don’t know. Is she going to hunt me down? I don’t know. Why didn’t she try to negotiate? I don’t know. Why were the humans killing us? Mind control? There’s no way they’ve been on her side all along, is there? I don’t know what’s going to happen, but Holly and Lucy, and probably everyone I love is dead, and... I don’t even know if anyone at all survived, because I ran away. I got lost, and now I’m approaching not houses, but a dilapidated, empty, abandoned... barn.

A dark shadow looms out of the blizzard, and for a moment as the wind whips through my mane and tail, I fear the dark hulk to be something even bigger and more evil than Nightmare Moon. But it’s just a building, a huge, dark, wooden building, leaning slightly amid the overgrown forest that now crowds closely around it. I suppose it makes sense there’d be abandoned propery out here in the middle of nowhere. Places like this don’t stay populated long, especially not with the constant pull to live in the increasingly dense cities.

The door into the barn is... not exactly attached, just stuck lying askew, partially blocking the doorway. I squeeze under it and the howling wind vanishes around me. The icy white snow turns to cool, blue darkness. A cloud of snow bursts off me as I shake like a dog, and I don’t even care, because I’ve done that reflexively since turning into a pony, and it’s probably the least weird thing I do. I’m still shivering, and all four of my legs are numb, but I find some... some straw left over from whatever livestock were kept in here. Walking on it, my hooves work it loose so I can scrape the straw over myself, sinking into the ancient dead strands, like the scratchiest blanket ever created. But it works. I slowly stop shivering. My legs start tingling and throbbing. My side hurts. I wish I could start a fire, but I don’t have... Holly...

I dig further into the straw, wanting to hide from... everything, and just feeling dead inside. What was I supposed to do? All that horrible stuff just happened so fast, even though I wish it wasn’t so. What do I do now? Do I sneak back? Can I sneak back? Maybe I’m super sneaky, so not even Nightmare Moon will notice I’m there? Maybe I’m just full of it. What would I even do if I got there? Pick open their iron manacles with a hairpin in my teeth? She was just killing them! She wasn’t even capturing them, or talking to them. We would have talked with her! We would have negotiated with her, no matter how black or scary she was, as long as she treated us nicely! She just... Lucy’s scream...

There’s a crunching in the snow outside, just some wild animal stupid enough to be out in this weather. And by stupid wild animal I mean a fellow pony, since deer and rabbits are far too smart to be caught out in the year’s first big snowstorm. It’s Nightmare Moon! It can’t be! I’m paralyzed with fear as the other door to the barn groans and clunks, then barely slides open. I didn’t even think to check for a back door. I remain hidden, as the pony softly clops forward in the dark shadows, looking around suspiciously, then lighting up her... horn.

No. No it couldn’t... possibly be her. Not again. Again. Again! I recognize that glow though, that distinctive purple glow. Or... not exactly purple, but... purplish?

Buried in straw, I watch a little purple unicorn named Twilight Sparkle quietly gather a pile of branches by an open window, and with a spark of her horn, start a fire. She clears out any loose hay from the area with a whoosh of her magic, but it doesn’t reach the pile of hay containing me. She’ll kill me if I reveal myself. She’ll... will she kill me? I foiled her plans though! Or did I? Wasn’t Twilight planning on handing off our planet to her... her queen?

The deranged looking unicorn sits her bony rump in front of the fire, facing away from me as she stares into it, and she too is shivering. Shivering in the soft sighs that are her real voice. Not exactly the one from the show, but the similar voice I learned so well, when she was my friend. Our friend. In the heat of the fire, her shivering evens out, as I gaze out at her from my hiding spot, and Twilight Sparkle starts to cry.

It’s worse than crying, because she tries not to. A choked sob escapes her and she swallows, sniffling as she rubs her foreleg across her nose. “Why—” Twilight croaks, and her voice sinks into another sob. She stiffens, trying to take in a deep breath and release it, but her breath shudders as she does, and in the end she just gives up, defeated, hunched there on her haunches, sobbing bitterly into the fire before her.

Something is wrong.

It doesn’t make sense. She caused all this. She orchestrated it! But there’s nobody around to cry crocodile tears in front of. Why is Twilight crying? Is she just crying like a petulant child, upset that a bigger kid came along to take away her toy? Why does she sound so full of grief then?

The straw makes no noise when I slip out of it, because I don’t want it to. I might be able to make my way out of the barn without her ever knowing I was here. But instead I draw nearer. Why? Twilight Sparkle doesn’t deserve anything; not respect, nor pity, nor even trust. She could have just warned us about Nightmare Moon, and we wouldn’t have opened the portal. She could have just stayed with us, and gotten pardoned with us, and wait no that wouldn’t have worked at all. But Twilight could’ve done so much good, and she didn’t. She ruined everything. Any decent person would just kill her now, before she could cause any more harm.

I think I may be a horrible person.

“Twilight—” I start to say as Twilight heaves in a shocked gasp, and falls to her side, craning her thin neck around to stare at me frozen in fear, with shrinking purple irises, her cheek fur wet with tears. Flickering firelight paints her side in its orange glow.

I don’t even protest at this point. I worked hard to get this sneaky, even if I seem naturally inclined to do so. I don’t even know what to say to her, or why I’m even doing this. My best guess is I’m a horrible person, and quite insane, possibly thanks in part to Twilight’s transformative cookies. “...hi,” I tell her with a weak wave of my foreleg.

As her speechless silence ends, Twilight’s irises return to normal, her body subtly relaxes, and her eyes dull. She climbs back up to a sitting position, turns back to the fire. “I don’t even care anymore,” she murmurs flatly, then stares silently at it, while I come and stand by the fire in view of the evil unicorn. I kind of want to sit down beside her, and give her a hug. I don’t know why.

The fire’s heat quickly warms me more than any old moldy straw ever could. I notice Twilight’s even dug out a little pit in the ground, to keep the fire contained. That’s smart. Don’t want the fire to reach the walls after all. Where did she learn that?

“Why are you here?” Twilight suddenly cuts in coldly. “To kill me?” the sickly purple unicorn asks bitterly, “You missed your chance there.”

“I didn’t come here to kill you, no,” I mumble, staring into the fire.

“Why then?!” Twilight shouts angrily into my right ear, and I look at Twilight, but she’s glaring fixedly at the fire again, not me, “Why do you keep coming back?” Twilight angrily asks the fire, “Are you that stupid? Why are you acting like I have done nothing to fuck you over? Why are you here?!”

I don’t think she wants to know that I just randomly wandered into the same barn as her, to get out of the snow, but it seems like there’s nothing else to explain. It seems so self evident why I’m standing here with the unicorn, even though it’s so hard to put into words exactly what I’m feeling. Feeling like I’m totally lame for describing it wrong, I answer haltingly, “I just thought—you looked like you could... use a friend, right now.”

Twilight turns to me, meeting mine with her beautiful violet eyes. Her mouth slightly opens as if to speak, as she gives me a look that somehow manages to be uncomprehending and understanding at the same time. Her eyes fill with tears again though, and Twilight Sparkle angrily wipes them off with a foreleg, staring into the fire again.

“Twilight, I’m... sorry,” I say with ears low, taking a step her way.

“You couldn’t possibly have known what would come through that portal,” Twilight says dismissively in an empty voice, “I made sure of that. You’re giving yourself way too much credit if you think this is your fault.”

“No, I mean I’m sorry for treating you like Twilight Sparkle,” I tell her in wistful regret. Twilight turns an ear my way, so I continue, “When I found a purple unicorn out in the snow, I thought—”

“Lilac,” she grumbles, turning her ear back.

“Okay?” I reply uncertainly, “But I thought my greatest hero had just appeared before me. I took you in and... treated you like someone you’re not.”

Twilight just stares into the fire.

“If I had known, maybe we could’ve worked together,” I plead to her, “Maybe you wouldn’t have had to hide from me. I–I don’t know why all those things you did were to save the world, but it seems pretty obvious now that you were just trying to stop your true enemy, Nightmare Moon.”

Twilight jerks her gaze at me to give me a conflicted look, then just sighs, glaring into the fire again.

“Maybe we could have defeated her without turning the whole world into ponies,” I speculate, “Maybe we could have worked together with all the governments of the world, to give people a choice to become a pony or not!”

Twilight doesn’t seem to want to speculate.

The wind is moaning overhead as the storm whips through the trees surrounding the barn we’re hiding in. Sitting here by a fire with Twilight Sparkle, I tell her with immense conflict in my heart, “Turning into a pony was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to a lot of people. But... changing everyone against their will? You were laughing when you betrayed your friends!”

Twilight only responds by flinching, ducking her head guiltily low with her ears laying back against her head. Is she ever going to speak to me again?

“I guess I just couldn’t see that there was still some good in you,” I tell her mournfully, “I did everything I could to stop you, when I didn’t even know what you were doing in the first place. I know you’re not the same purple unicorn I came to love from the show, but I think I could have loved the real you too. You have just as much right to be that wonderful, magical purple unicorn as she does. Maybe you just had to deal with things she never had to face. When I first met you, I thought ‘That’s Twilight Sparkle!’ but I should have seen you and thought, ‘I wonder who that purple pony is?’ You may have purple fur, and a purple mane, but it wasn’t right for me to—”

“I am lilac!” Twilight Sparkle literally snaps at me, making me scramble back from almost hugging her, as the hideously skinny mare practically takes off my nose, then stands on her hooves, her glare full of fire as she stomps the ground, shouting at me, “Lilac! Lilac! Lilac! ”

Throwing her head up and pacing away from me around the fire, she gripes to the ceiling, “I am lilac, and all you stupid humans keep calling me purple. I am not purple, I am lilac! You care so much about skin tone, but soon as a pony’s fur is another color, you can’t even be bothered to get it right!”

Around the fire to glare in my face me again, she accuses, “Didn’t you all spend the last half of a year as ponies, and you never once thought that maybe you need to be little more specific in your description of somepony’s color? That maybe it is incredibly insulting that somepony thinks you look like a grape popsicle, when you are clearly lilac? I am not purple. I am lilac!”

“What’s lilac??” I ask in terror, afraid to even move enough to push her away from pressing her snout against mine.

“What?!” she announces in outrage, backing up a little at least to look at me in measured fuming.

“I d-don’t know what lilac is, sorry,” I tell her, cringing away.

“You... you don’t... you really don’t know what lilac is,” she says, staring at me in amazement.

I nervously shake my head.

“Wh—but I know what lilac is!” Twilight sputters, “How could—how could you not know? Haven’t you ever even read about it in a book before?”

“Maybe? I don’t read a lot of books,” I tell her as full of remorse as a sort of yellow and sort of green little pony can be, “I’m more of a movie buff. I didn’t even know it was so important to you. I-is lilac the color of your fur, or your mane?”

Giving me a silently thoughtful look, Twilight Sparkle says evenly, “Lilac is the color of my fur. People keep thinking it’s purple, and... honestly doesn’t it look more blue than purple?”

“Compared to... Rainbow Dash?” I ask skeptically.

A shaky laugh escapes Twilight as she says, “Fair enough. Well, for your information, I have lilac fur, and my mane is indigo blue.” With an exaggerated groan, the unicorn paces agitatedly away from the fire across the barn while saying, “You would not believe how many humans think my hair is purple. It has a purple eye band, and that’s it. The vast majority of it is undoubtedly, definitely blue.”

“And the pink stripe?” I ask curiously, following the demonic looking unicorn away from the relative warmth of that tiny flame. “I mean—um, or—w-whatever color it is.”

“It’s my sparkle band, and it’s a deep rose magenta,” Twilight says, looking at her ragged tail somewhat dejectedly, where the two bands of color still retain some definition, “If my magic were the same color as my eyes, they would just be one band of color. It’s very rare to have two.”

“Do know what color I am?” I ask her hopefully. At her look of surprise, I blush and admit, “I don’t know what my colors are other than yellow a-and green, but it’s a weird green, and there’s this grey stripe in it. Does that mean my magic is grey? But my eyes are red! I–I just don’t know much about colors.”

Twilight’s big conical ears go down, as she shivers, saying with surprising demurity, “Normally a pony would study what their colors were, and tell anypony who asked. I don’t think anypony ever asked me what their colors were.” With a wistful look my way, she says mournfully, “You really are a human, aren’t you.”

“Yeah, I was,” I say, and I can’t help but notice how much she’s shivering. It almost looks like her body is going to fall apart on the spot, so I ask, “You wanna... go sit by the fire again?”

Bowing her head, Twilight looks so defeated as she stalks back to the little fire, staring into its life giving warmth as she sinks to her haunches. It doesn’t look like she has much life left to give. As I approach, Twilight remarks,

“You’re some sort of creamy yellow. Custard comes to mind. Your mane is a medium aquamarine, I’d say, which is not green. Your stripes... I dunno, beige? They’re pretty desaturated. And your eyes are a ruby red. They look...”

Twilight Sparkle looks into my eyes for a moment, before turning away and just silently staring into the fire.

“C-can I... is it alright if I sit by you?” I ask her politely, and maybe a bit desperately. She needs... she needs something.

Hanging her head wearily, Twilight groans, “Why not...”

I come sit beside her, wrapping my tail around the unicorn’s bony rear, while Twilight pokes at the fire with a stick in her magic. The unicorn mare sounds on the edge of tears again as she continues looking away from me and asking the fire bitterly, “Why not? Why not just sit here with you? All my plans have been ruined, and there’s nothing I can do about it now, so it’s not like I have anything better to do.”

At Twilight’s heartbreaking despair, I gingerly suggest, “Well, you could...”

“What?” she asks, sparing me a disgusted glance, “What more do you want from me?”

“I–I just had a few questions,” I nervously reply, “About... everything.”

Twilight Sparkle sighs, but at least she doesn’t snap at me. “Go ahead,” she says listlessly, “I can’t imagine what questions you’d have for me at this point, but I’ll tell you whatever I know.”

Author's Notes:

Well?