Several questions were raised in my mind the moment I opened my bleary eyes and saw where I was.

Memories I'd rather have forgotten about what I just went through raced through my mind, but they were quickly and violently shoved to the side as I looked around me. I'd opened my eyes to see the night sky sitting high above me, which wasn't strange, but the moment I opened my eyes, I did get a sense that something was horribly off, and it turned out I was right on the money because when I sat up to get a better look at my surroundings I found myself sitting in the middle of a road. It wasn't just any old fashioned road either, but an honest to goodness asphalt road—like the kind you drive vehicles on.

On either side of the road were concrete sidewalks, and next to those, illuminating the entire length of the street in their bright yellow-orange glow were rows of street lights. On one side past the sidewalk and behind a chain-link fence that also ran the length of the road was a long line of pale green palo verde trees and some open desert. On the other side of the street, past that sidewalk, was some neighborhood cut off from the road by a brick wall that stretched on and on until you couldn't see it anymore.

Now, maybe this could've been some modern Earth-like version of Equestria with technology equivalent to what we had nowadays, but there was a problem with that theory. The biggest problem was that I actually recognized this street. This wasn't some 'Earth-like' version of Equestria, this was Earth. Specifically, Arizona—even more specifically Tucson. Even more specifically, this was a road I used to walk up and down all the time whenever I needed to pick up a game I pre-ordered at Gamestop, back when I lived much closer to the store than I do now—or rather did before I was flung across time and space in the literal blink of an eye. Yes, I knew this road very well, but what I didn't know was why the hell I'd wound up back here of all places.

Seriously, if I was gonna get dropped back into Tucson, why not back at my house instead of this random-ass location?

I should've been ecstatic to not only be back on Earth but deposited right back in my hometown. Hell, I could just walk home if I was so inclined. It would take a few hours on foot, sure, but I walked everywhere I went anyway. My previously horrendous vision meant I wasn't getting a driver's license any time soon. Yeah, I should've been over the moon that I was back, but all I felt was confusion and that troubling sense that I was missing something that would knife me in the neck if I didn't figure out what it was. There were a couple of other factors that stifled the urge to jump for joy at this incredibly bizarre, but not unwelcome development. Namely, the weakly groaning woman laid out not too far from where I was still sitting dumbfounded.

I looked over to the woman splayed out on her back on the street like a murder victim at a crime scene and what I saw only made me further scrunch up my face even more in bewilderment. Even with the thin brown summer jacket, plain black blouse, hip-hugging denim jeans, and the fact that she was human, I would've recognized that uniformly cut, pink striped indigo hair anywhere. Could it have been some other woman I bumped into who just happened to be enough of a fan of Twilight Sparkle to dye her hair like her mane? Possibly. Was that likely to be the case? Hell no, not under these circumstances. No, it didn't take me long at all to put two and two together; that was, without a doubt, Twilight Sparkle, and I was willing to bet a shitload of money that I didn't have that it was the same Twilight Sparkle I spent roughly a month trapped in a dimensional bubble with.

And of course, she looks damn good as a human too, naturally.

It really was just what I would've expected from this kind of situation; flawless cream-colored skin, a beautiful visage with a slightly Asian bent, curves in all the right places but nothing really all that far removed from reality in terms of proportions—essentially the perfect isekai heroine waifu come to life. The sight was so ridiculously on point I had to bite back an incredulous chuckle. Instead, I settled for a roll of the eyes and another suspicious scan of my surroundings while I waited for Twilight to fully come around, which didn't take too much longer. She groaned and stirred for another few seconds before her violet eyes finally blinked themselves open.

"Buh... w-what..." she slowly sat up and raised a hand to her forehead before looking around in a daze, "where... what's going on?" her eyes found me and she blinked again, "...Sal?"

"Yo," I raised a casual hand in greeting, "so I'd ask you not to freak out, but—"

"Wait..." she patted her forehead a few times and with each head pat, her eyes widened with growing panic and bewilderment, "w-wait a minute, where's my horn? Salvatore, where's my—"

she paused as the realization continued to set in and lowered her delicate hand down to eye level. There were a few seconds of shocked silence, and then she made this kind of sharp high pitched half-squeak half-grunt that, combined with the look on her pale face, would've had me rolling in any other instance. The freak out happened about a second later and yes, it was just as you'd expect from someone like Twilight; lots of yelling, loads of arm-flailing, tons of incomprehensible babble, far too much grabbing me by my favorite black fur coat and shaking me like a dog.

I tried to interrupt a few times, but she just verbally rolled right over me, and honestly, I had a few things I needed to think about on my own anyway, so I just sighed in resignation and let her burn herself out. I knew she would eventually, and though I had just as many questions as she did, I could wait a minute or two. Nothing had happened yet, and it was starting to seem like nothing was going to, and after that thought hit me, I suddenly, finally realized what was off about our predicament—aside from the obvious I mean. Thankfully, this realization came around the time Twilight started doing that deep-breathing, hand-to-chest thing that meant she was about to calm down. Her breath was shaky, and I could tell she was still far from okay with her current... condition, but she wasn't panicking anymore and I figured now was as good a time as any to say something, so I took the opportunity to try and explain what little I did understand about the situation.

But before that...

"Hey," I began carefully, "you good now? Well enough to talk for a bit?"

"Well enough I think, yeah," she croaked after a minute. She swallowed and let out a quick sigh before looking over to me, "where are we, Salvatore? What happened?"

"I know exactly where we are, and... come to think of it, you should too if you give it some thought," I answered before getting to my feet, "but first let's get out of the street, then we can talk about the 'where' and the 'what'. Standing around in the middle of the road makes me kinda nervous. Here, c'mon."

I held out a hand to Twilight, who stared at it for a second, then gave me a bemused frown before reaching out and grabbing hold with a muttered word of thanks. I pulled her up and together we quickly made our way over to the sidewalk closest to the brick wall. As we walked, I watched Twilight out of the corner of my eye, checking to see if she'd figure out where we were on her own. To my slight disappointment, she was too busy pensively staring at her hands to pay anything else much attention. I couldn't blame her really; I probably would've freaked out myself if I actually got turned into a pony. Sure I'd toyed with the notion before myself, but ultimately I was glad I'd gotten HiE'd as a human at the very least.

Though that still might be subject to change. I mean, look what happened to Twilight the poor girl must be having an existential crisis or something.

But contrary to what I thought, that didn't seem to be the case if her expression was anything to go by. In fact, as I watched, the look on her face as she continued to stare at her hands grew somewhat stormy; she'd clenched her hands into fists by the time we reached the sidewalk and that beautiful visage was twisted into an ugly scowl. That wasn't a look of existential crisis, that was the look of somebody who realized exactly what was going and was pissed about it.

What the hell happened to her after she vanished?

I was going to ask her about it aloud, but then...

"...Discord."

The name came out in a near whisper, but the venom in her voice carried more than well enough for me to hear. It was so loud in fact, that I couldn't help but wince a little at her tone. It really was unpleasant, and the fact that I hated being around angry people didn't help matters. I got enough shit from pissed off customers when I was working call center jobs as a customer service agent, and I had no desire to deal with it face to face if I didn't have to... but I'm getting way off-topic.

Discord, though... yeah, of course it was Discord... Goddammit.

"So that's why you vanished back there then?" I decided to ask anyway, "Discord pulled you out and left me to die, is that about right?"

"Huh? Oh!" Twilight turned to me, looking as though she'd just remembered I was even there, "Oh, geez, I'm sorry, Salvatore! I was—I mean... I didn't mean to leave you there all alone, but Discord, he—"

"Yeah, I get it. It's not your fault Discord is an asshole," I assured the mare-turned-human, "just... relax and tell me what happened to you first, then we'll figure out the rest. I assume Discord is the reason you wound up here with me?"

It looked like she was about to start babbling again, but then she took a deep breath instead and thankfully managed to compose herself for the most part.

"Yes, yeah he is... okay... alright so," she paused a second to collect her thoughts, then, "when I... the moment I tried to fix your eyes I felt this weird... pull, like I was being yanked in every direction at once, and then... I blacked out I think, and when I woke up..."

From there she proceeded to tell me about what happened after Discord ripped her from her own Equestria. She told me about how Discord did very much leave me to die... again. She told me the truth about what—or rather who—had screwed her Equestria over so bad and how they'd done it; I hadn't expected it to be Chrysalis, but I wasn't surprised either. Twilight had to recompose herself a couple of times throughout her explanation, particularly when she talked about Spike's death and the supposedly horrifying things going on outside the dimensional barrier, things Discord had shown to her just to make a point. That last one made me slightly uncomfortable, if only because it sounded like something I would've put her through in one of my stories. I did have a tendency to put my protagonists through more trauma than they probably needed to, and since most, if not all of my stories put Twilight in that role... well...

Oof...

"...and now I'm here with you because that's what he wanted," Twilight finished, her eyes once again drawn to her own body and a look of... I wasn't really sure what on her face. Whatever the look was, it changed to something more thoughtful a minute later, "he said it would be better for both of us if I traveled along with you. He didn't really give me a choice in the matter, but..."

She trailed off and looked around her, probably giving some actual thought to where she was for the first time since she woke up. Once she was calm enough to actually think about her surroundings, it didn't take very long for the light of recognition to show in her eyes.

"Wait... I think I do know this place," she turned to me, eyes wide with disbelief, "Salvatore, isn't this... isn't this your world? This is Earth, right?"

"Yup," I replied readily, "well, maybe. There's something weird going on though, so I actually have my doubts as to whether that's the case, or if this is Tucson, then something strange definitely happened."

"Really?" Twilight asked worriedly, "what do you think happened?"

"I don't know, but it's too damn quiet," I tried to explain, "and there's no cars or people or... anything. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but everything feels... static. It's not a normal silence either, it's like... the kind of stifling silence in one of those, um... ah, shit what were they called..." I snapped my fingers a few times as I tried to remember, "those soundproof rooms—anechoic chambers! That was it."

"Huh, now that you mention it..."

Twilight furrowed her brow and took another look around. I had to raise an eyebrow when she reached up to grab one of her ears in confusion, then it dawned on me and I had to laugh a little.

"Twilight, human ears don't move when they're trying to listen for something like yours do—did," I paused, "well, that's not entirely true I guess; there are some rare instances where..." I paused again, "...you know what, nevermind. You get my point though, right? That something's definitely off?"

"Um... right, I think so," Twilight replied, trying to shake off my stupid tangent. She frowned in thought, "well thankfully, while I removed your more... personal memories from my mind, I actually did keep a lot of information about your hometown of... Tucson, right? Tucson, Arizona?"

"Yup, and do you know where we are specifically?" I asked.

"More or less," Twilight answered after another few seconds of thought, and some more scanning of the area, "I also know that there should be tons of cars going by, even at night... I'm pretty sure you're right, Salvatore. Something certainly feels off, and I think it might have something to do with magic."

"You can tell?"

Twilight's frown deepened and she closed her eyes.

"Sort of... this human body," she began, "it's... it feels weird, but not unnatural. I should feel like a complete stranger in my own skin... but I don't, and I think that's what disturbs me the most about it. I don't know what Discord did to me—to us, but as far as I can tell, I only have my connection to magic insofar as I can still feel it around me."

"Oh?" I asked curiously, "you already tried using magic? When did you—"

"While we were crossing the street," she explained, "I tried to focus the way I normally do at first, but since I don't have my horn anymore I didn't really know how," she shook her head and her expression turned somewhat pained, "I tried to use my hands as a catalyst because I remember from your memories that human mages in fantasy fiction sometimes cast magic from them, but that didn't work either, and now I don't know what to do," she looked at her hands again, "Discord... he said he'd give me my horn back, he was supposed to return my magic to me..."

"Hey, now c'mon," I tried, "look, there's still a lot we don't know about our situation. Let's just take it one step at a time and figure things out as we go," I gestured to her body, "If it helps, I highly doubt this is a permanent thing knowing Discord, so just bear with it for a bit until we can find out what the hell's actually going on, alright?"

She gave my words some thought, then gave them a bit more thought, then finally, after what felt like a couple of minutes of awkward silence, she gave a slow, hesitant nod.

"I guess you're right," she relented, "it wouldn't help either of us if I lost hope now, and... and I do want to help," she raised her head and looked me in the eye, "I'm still not fully convinced that I couldn't do anything to..." she trailed off again, her face growing pale and her expression frozen in horror. Her next words came out in a hoarse whisper, "to... save my world... oh sweet Celestia, it's gone, isn't it? It's really gone..."

Her words stabbed at both of us like a knife in the gut.

Whatever she was going to say was drowned beneath a sudden wave of despair at the realization that she no longer had a home to go back to. She was homeless in just about every sense of the word—a creature forced into the life of a multiversal drifter alongside me by one very fucked up draconequus. For my part, I'd completely glossed over the fact that her world was destroyed because it had happened three times now, and I hadn't given any thought at all to what that meant to Twilight. To be fair, the fact hadn't registered for her either until just now, but that didn't change the fact that I felt like garbage. If what Discord had shown Twilight was true, then her world probably really was fucked, but even if that were the case, it was still her home at the end of the day.

Her ashen expression was enough to remind me of the gravity of what I was doing—of what Discord was making me do. It reminded me that I couldn't just hop from universe to universe destroying worlds and not expect some kind of blowback for my actions, intended or not. The fact that Twilight was here and hurting was a living testament to that fact, and there were probably other consequences that I wasn't even aware of behind the scenes. In the end, all I could really do here and now was try my damndest to comfort Twilight, and that's what I tried to do.

"Hey... look, Twilight I—"

Something in my inner coat pocket vibrated twice in quick succession.

Knowing instantly what that sound meant, I reached into my pocket to find my Note9—a Note9 I distinctly remember not being there before. Horribly confused, I pulled it out just as it vibrated again and tried to unlock it. Sure enough, it was definitely my Note9 and it was at full charge to boot. Upon checking, I saw that I had two new text messages from... I had no idea. Where the contact name or phone number should've been there was just a blank space and the message preview only showed a bunch of garbled nonsense. Wary, but almost certain this was something I needed to see, I hit the blank contact and frowned at the two wordy messages in front of me.

[Welcome back, Salvatore. I'd imagine you must feel either incredibly refreshed or horribly delirious after sleeping for so long—323 days, in fact, quite a feat! Either way, you're finally awake, and that means we can meet face-to-face. We have a great many things to talk about, after all. You, Miss Sparkle, and I.]

[Also, forgive me for the inconvenience, but due to your unique condition I couldn't bring you any closer to your home than where you wound up. I imagine you'll want to return, so I'll be waiting to greet you and Miss Sparkle once you both arrive. You two must have a great many questions and you'll only have more as you travel, but I will be happy to explain everything, though try not to take too long. I believe I've spent enough time waiting for you to awaken as it is.]

And that was it, two messages sent by some anonymous dude that was apparently squatting at my place while I was away. Not only that, but apparently he'd known who the two of us were and had the answers we needed. I knew this scenario, and if it was anything like what I imagined, I could probably at least trust that whoever this was was probably telling the truth to some extent. Still, a text message? And he'd said I'd been asleep for how many days?

Just... what the actual fuck?

No, this isn't a one-off, I actually am moving the story forward along with all my other stories. So rejoice!

Or not, I don't mind either way.