“Sir, I’m picking up the presence of Q on the planet surface,” said Lt. Jae, who was filling in for Data at the Ops station.

“Well, I guess that means he’s finished whatever he was going to do, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing him at all,” said Riker. “What is his location?”

“In the Ponyville library,” said Jae. “He is in the presence of six others.”

Riker nodded. “Back to where he took her from, it sounds like.”

“Of course,” said Q, who suddenly appeared in the seat that Riker normally sat in, while Riker himself currently occupied the captain’s chair. “It would be rather ungentlemanly of me not to walk a lady back home after such a… hot date, wouldn’t you say? What, did you think I was going to go off and leave Pinkie Pie stranded on the surface of the sun or something crass like that? We just chatted for a little while, that’s all. She’s perfectly fine now, I can assure you. Besides, Riker, don’t you have more important things to be doing other than keeping tabs on me?”

“If you’re referring to finding the wormhole location,” said Riker irritably, “then we’ve nearly completed the full scan of the planet. As it turns out, we’re fairly sure that we found it almost as soon as we began the search. There is a large concentration of verteron and chroniton particles above Ponyville, or over the Everfree Forest more specifically. Apparently, there is some sort of large structure found within the forest, and it is directly above this that the collection of particles is found.”

“Ah, yes, the old abandoned palace of the royal family before the capital was moved to Canterlot,” said Q, nodding. “Analogue to Dream Castle in the other world, just as Ponyville is the analogue to Paradise Estate. It is entirely fitting that the portal would be found there, of course. Well, now that you’ve found it, all that’s left now is for the ponies to use their Elements of Harmony to open it up. I guess that means you need to get Celestia on the horn and get this ball rolling.”

Riker gave Q an aggravated glare, shook his head, and then tapped a button on the armrest of the command chair. “Enterprise to Captain Picard.”

“And so it’s decided, then,” said Princess Celestia. “We will allow the portal to be opened.” Her gaze drifted around the room to the ambassadors from the griffon, zebra, minotaur, and dragon nations, and then finally came to rest on Captain Picard. “All that remains is for the location of the portal itself to be found.”

Picard nodded and said, “And so it shall be. As you all know, my ship has been conducting a search of the planet for the past several hours now, and I expect this to be completed momentarily.”

“In that case, I believe our business here is concluded,” said Celestia. She turned to the ambassadors and said, “I thank each of you for your prompt responses in this matter, and I wish to extend my thanks to your leaders for agreeing that it is indeed in the best interests of our world as a whole to establish relations with the Federation.” She nodded as each of the ambassadors gave their reassurances that this was indeed the case and that they would pass along her regards to their respective rulers. Finally, she said, “You are free to stay here as long as you like, or if you prefer to return to your homelands immediately, my court mages are available to expedite your journey via teleportation.” With that, each of the ambassadors paid their due respects to the leader of Equestria and filed out of the room.

As if on cue, it was at this moment that Riker’s voice issued from his combadge, “Enterprise to Captain Picard. Sorry to disturb you during your meeting with the ambassadors, but you requested to be contacted as soon as we found something.”

Picard tapped his combadge. “We’ve just finished, Number One. Go ahead.”

“We’ve found the location of the portal, sir,” said Riker. “It is above the Everfree Forest, directly over a structure that Q calls the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.”

“Very good, Number One,” said Picard. “I’ll be returning to the ship in a few moments. Picard out.”

Celestia closed her eyes and shook her head. “Of course it would be there,” she said with a weary sigh. “Discord knew all along it would be there.”

“Is there a problem?” asked Captain Picard.

“Not as such, no,” said the Sun Princess. “It’s just that this location has… historical significance to Equestria… and to me in particular. However, more importantly than that, it has been long abandoned to the wilds of the Everfree. I doubt the Bearers of Harmony are going to be very thrilled to hear that they need to venture inside that forest once again.”

“Indeed, Q warned us away from there before we first came down here,” said Picard. “He claimed that it was a dangerous place.”

“He’s right,” said Celestia darkly. “He should know, given that he’s the one who made it into such a dangerous place in the first place. Several thousand years ago, it was just a normal forest like any other, but thanks to Discord, or Q as you call him, it’s now a wild place, ever free from the influence of all pony magic, including my own.”

“Why am I not surprised that he would be involved in such a thing?” muttered Picard. “Well, perhaps we can be of aid in this situation as well. Rather than have your ponies make the trek through the forest unnecessarily, we can transport them directly to the location of this castle. By your leave, I shall return to the ship and make the necessary preparations for this.”

Celestia nodded. “That would indeed simply things greatly, and I thank you once again. Well, then, I suppose I should gather Twilight and her friends and then unlock the vault containing the Elements of Harmony for them.”

“The Everfree Forest,” said Twilight Sparkle, as she read the letter from Celestia. “Just above the Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.”

“Where it all began,” said Applejack. “It figures.”

“D-does that mean we have to journey through the forest again?” asked Fluttershy, the nervous hesitation at such an undertaking evident in her voice.

Twilight finished reading the letter. “No, we don’t. Captain Picard has offered to transport us to Canterlot to gather the Elements of Harmony and then directly to the castle, bypassing the forest entirely.”

Rarity sighed in relief and said, “Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t have minded visiting with Steven along the way, of course, but I much prefer to not have to get my hooves dirty in that nasty place.”

“We still have to go back to that creepy old castle, though,” said Pinkie Pie. “Oh well, at least it’ll be daytime this time. Maybe we should try to clean it up a little bit once we get there.”

“Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash, “I guess it wouldn’t be good that the first thing visitors from Earth see when they get here is a broken down old castle.”

Twilight shook her head. “While I do agree that the old castle could definitely use a good repair job, I think our first priority should be to get the portal opened. We can worry about anything else after that. For now, I just need to send a letter back to Princess Celestia letting her know that we’re ready, so she can contact the Enterprise. Spike!” She looked around the library foyer. “Where’d that dragon get to? He was just here a little while ago.”

The front door to the library opened and Spike came through. “You called?” he said. “Sorry, I only just got back from the café with lunch for everypony.”

“Oh how thoughtful of you, little Spikey-Wikey!” said Rarity. She walked over to him and gave him a quick kiss on the top of his head. Then she had to quickly catch the food with her telekinesis before it fell to the floor, given that Spike was now swooning and staggering around, with a blissful smile on his face and completely unaware of his surroundings.

The other ponies giggled at this display as Twilight rolled her eyes and said, “Well, we might as well have lunch first then, since Spike won’t be good for much of anything for a while.”

Roughly an hour later, as the transporter beams faded away, the six ponies looked quietly around at the somewhat familiar surroundings of the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. Each of them was wearing their respective Element of Harmony.

“Mr. Worf, do you read anything?” asked Commander Riker. Given the potential danger from the surrounding Everfree Forest, Riker and Worf had accompanied the ponies back down to the planet, both of them armed with Type-II hand phasers.

Worf scanned the area with his tricorder then shook his head. “There’s nothing in the immediate vicinity, sir, but I am detecting multiple life signs in the area. Some of them appear to be rather large. However, they seem to be keeping their distance, at least for the moment.”

Applejack glanced in the Klingon’s direction, and then looked up at the castle. “So… here we are again, back to the place where we first found these things.”

“It certainly does look different in the sunlight,” said Rainbow Dash.

“I agree,” said Rarity. “It doesn’t look nearly as creepy and evil as it did the last time that we were here.”

Pinkie Pie bounced over to the open door that led to the interior of the castle and stuck her head through it. “You know, this wouldn’t be such a bad place if it didn’t have this spooky forest all around it.”

“It looks a lot like the palace in Canterlot,” said Fluttershy. “I guess that makes sense, though, since it used to be where the Princesses lived a long time ago.”

Twilight tilted her head back and gazed up at the upper reaches of the castle. “I suppose we should try to head up to one of the upper balconies. It would probably be easier to do this if we’re closer to the portal.”

With that, the six Bearers and their two humanoid companions began their trek through the dilapidated castle. The trip was mostly uneventful, aside from the occasional pebble breaking loose and echoing through the empty halls as it clattered around. Eventually they reached a room that somehow seemed to be a lot less timeworn than the rest of the castle. Something about it piqued Twilight’s memories and her eyes widened as she realized what it was.

“This… this looks like…” The unicorn gazed around at the room. “I believe that this used to be the personal chambers of Princess Celestia. It looks rather similar to the ones she has back in Canterlot.”

“Indeed it is, Twilight Sparkle,” said an unexpected new voice. The ponies, Riker, and Worf whirled around to see Princess Luna entering the room behind them. Worf glanced down at his tricorder and frowned, given that he hadn’t detected her presence at all, prior to her sudden appearance. Either she had only just arrived, or she had been somehow masking her presence until now.

“P-princess Luna!” said Twilight. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

Luna strode slowly into the room and looked around. “I’m not entirely sure why I’m here, myself. It’s just… when I heard from my sister that this is where you all would be coming, I just wanted to be here. I can’t really explain it. In fact, I haven’t even thought about this place much at all since… the last time we were here.” She let her voice trail off, as she was unwilling to bring up the circumstances surrounding the last time they had all been there.

“Why does this room look less run down than the rest of the castle?” asked Riker.

“That I do not know,” said the Princess of the Moon.

“That would be my doing,” said another new voice, one that was familiar to all of them. With a burst of light and sound, Pony-Q appeared in the middle of the room, next to Luna. “I couldn’t bear to let the ravages of time take this room as it has everything else. Call it silly sentimentality on my part, if you want.”

“Why are you here, Discord?” said Luna, dangerously.

“Sheath your claws, Luna,” said the entity. “I have no quarrel with you, as much as I know that disappoints you. I am merely here to make sure that nothing goes awry at the last minute. This is, after all, the big moment, isn’t it? The moment that all of this has been leading up to: the opening of the portal to Earth.” He looked around at the Bearers of Harmony and the slightest whiff of impatience entered his voice. “In fact, I would have expected you to have it already opened by now.”

Twilight considered arguing with him, explaining that they’d only just gotten here, but decided there would be no point to it. Instead, she looked toward the balcony and said, “I believe that will be the ideal place to attempt this.” As she and the other ponies moved toward the balcony, along with Riker and Worf, Pony-Q sidled up closer to Princess Luna.

“Ah, this brings back memories, doesn’t it?” he said.

Luna narrowed her eyes as she looked down at him. “Are you sure you wish to stir such memories within me? None of my memories involving you are pleasant ones.”

The entity smiled and said, “Well, then perhaps we can create some new ones here and now. The opening of this portal will mean the dawn of a new age for this world. I won’t take all the credit for it, but… well, I guess it’s safe to say that this moment wouldn’t be happening at all without me, right?”

Luna merely snorted and then ignored him completely as she walked out to join the others on the balcony.

“Hmph,” muttered Pony-Q. “That’s what passes for gratitude these days, I guess.” He watched through the open doors and smiled as the Elements of Harmony began to glow, the eyes of the Bearers became milky white, and the Rainbow of Light began to form. It was a much more pleasant sight now than it was the last time he saw it.

Vice Admiral Alynna Nechayev leaned back in her chair in her office at Starfleet Command headquarters and rubbed her eyes, glad for the brief respite from her duties. The last few days had been rather tense. The sudden disappearance of the USS Enterprise had been a top priority ever since the ship had failed to reach its destination several days earlier.

The respite was short-lived, however, as the voice of one her aides sounded through the communications panel on her desk, “Admiral, you have a Priority One communiqué waiting for you from Captain Jellico of the USS Cairo.”

Nechayev sighed and said, “Patch it through to my office.” She turned the viewing screen on the desk around to face her. A few seconds later, the screen winked to life and the face of Captain Jellico appeared. “Hello, Edward,” she said. “You have good news for me, I hope?”

The frown on the captain’s face answered her question before he even began speaking. “I am afraid not, Admiral. We’ve scanned the entire sector surrounding the last known location of the Enterprise. We have found absolutely nothing that would give us even the slightest indication as to what could have happened to her. There’s no sign of debris to indicate that she’s been destroyed, at least, but it’s like the ship has simply vanished into thin air.”

“That… is rather unfortunate,” said Nechayev. “I was hoping that there would be at least something out there to give us a clue as to what happened.”

Jellico sighed and said, “It’s a shame to lose such a fine ship like the Enterprise. I’ve heard plenty of stories about her and her crew. From all accounts, Jean-Luc Picard was a damn fine captain. I wish I could have met him.”

“You may yet get a chance to meet him someday, Captain,” said Nechayev. “I wouldn’t be so quick to write off the Enterprise. As history has shown us time and time again, rather strange things tend to happen to ships that carry that name. Continue the search and keep me informed. Nechayev out.”

Once the connection was closed, the admiral leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes again, sighing with frustration. She hardly had time to even begin processing what she’d been told by Jellico, however, when red alert klaxons were suddenly blaring throughout the building.

“What in the hell?” she said. It was a rare event indeed when something happened to raise a red alert at the very heart of Starfleet Command.

“Admiral!” shouted the voice of her aide over the comm channel. “Planetary defenses have lit up! Something… something is happening over Iowa!”

“You can be more specific than that, ensign!” barked Nechayev. “Give me some info here!” Rather than waiting for the aide to respond, she started rapidly typing keys on the pad in front of the screen through which she had been speaking with the Cairo.

The aide’s voice sounded incredibly nervous as he said, “There appears to be some sort of… wormhole forming in orbit above Iowa. It is extending down several miles into the atmosphere as well. There appears to be something coming through it. It looks like… like…” The aide’s voice trailed off.

“I’ll be damned,” muttered Nechayev, in great shock of her own. Her screen was giving her a visual feed of what was going on in space above the state of Iowa. Assuming her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her, it appeared that a Galaxy-class starship was beginning to emerge from this newly formed wormhole. She could clearly see the registry on the hull of the ship: NCC-1701-D.

“Admiral,” said the aide once again, “there’s something else coming through the wormhole as well, but lower in the atmosphere. I… I don’t… surely there’s some sort of sensor malfunction, because it appears to be… winged horses!”

“So… this is it, huh,” said Q2. He and Q were standing on the highest point atop Starfleet Command headquarters and were looking down into the courtyard. Far below them, in the gardens, they could see the tiny figures of humans and ponies. Picard, Princess Luna, and the six Bearers of Harmony were meeting with several high-ranking members of Starfleet Command and the Federation Council. “The big pay-off.”

“Yeah, this is it,” said Q. He turned to his companion. “See? I told you it was nothing that would interest the Continuum. What do they care if there’s one more wormhole connecting two worlds?”

“Why go to all the trouble, though?” asked Q2. “You could have just opened the portal yourself. You didn’t have to bring the Enterprise all the way out there for that.”

Q turned his eyes back down to the meeting happening down below. “This was never about just linking the two worlds. I was far more interested in having my favorite little ponies meet my favorite little humans and then seeing how they would get along with one another.”

“So, would you consider your experiment a success?” asked Q2.

“Resounding,” said Q. He smiled as a short flash of bright yellow light heralded the arrival of Princess Celestia herself on Earth. For the briefest of moments after she arrived, she looked up in his direction and caught his eye. Q tossed his hand up in a lazy wave. She nodded at him almost imperceptibly and then turned to face the rest of those gathered nearby, none of whom had noticed this exchange. Q nodded. “Yes, I do indeed think it was all a huge success, if I do say so myself.”

Author's Notes:

Author’s Notes (07-29-2012): Now with 100% less Doctor Whooves. I got some not unjustified complaints about shoehorning him into the previous fic in a totally pointless throw-away scene, just for the sake of having a totally pointless throw-away Doctor Whooves cameo in that fic.

Anyway, spoilers abound from this point forward, so read the actual fic first.

When I started writing this, I had no idea it was going to end up being almost three times as long as my previous fic (it was around 37,000 words whereas this one clocks in at almost 100,000 words o_O). I was expecting around the same length, or maybe almost double at the very most, though I thought that would have been pushing it. But the thing just wrote itself. These guys kept wanting to do things that I had no idea they’d be doing before I started writing. For instance, the only things I knew for sure I wanted to do before I started was that Pinkie Pie would become a Q-like being, and that Rainbow Dash and Worf would fight (and, yes, Worf does indeed use what was essentially a shoryuken against Rainbow Dash, though I’m sure he calls the move an appropriately Klingon name or something). At first, I was going to have Pinkie be the one who was upgrading the weapons in the Enterprise with her Q-like powers, but then I came up with the whole thing with Pinkie getting “assimilated,” which freed up the weapons for Twilight (and Celestia’s nebulous, unseen “magical advisors”) to tinker with. This of course, led to the entirely unplanned bit with Twilight getting hurt and then almost dying, mainly because I wanted to have at least one more dramatic scene take place. That and I wanted to give Pinkie a chance to mimic another Q scene (from “Tapestry”). That’s how it went.

So… about Pinkie Pie. Oh, Pinkie Pie. Here’s the funny thing. As I was originally watching the show, I found Pinkie Pie to be kind of annoying. She was actually my least favorite character. (Well, aside from the Cutie Mark Crusaders, that is. I have no problem really with Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, or especially Scootaloo as individuals, but I hated me some CMC together, mainly because each of their episodes was just the same thing being rehashed over and over again. But then, of course, all four of them, the CMC and Pinkie that is, ended up being the very first of the main character ponies that the TNG guys even encountered. Go figure.) But, Pinkie started to grow on me as I was writing this fic, and as I kept going back and watching scenes of hers in the course of researching this fic. (Oh, and speaking of researching the fic, to go off on another short tangent, I actually went out and bought a bottle of prune juice. True story. Not really a fan, I have to say. My reaction to it is probably somewhere about half-way between Pinkie’s and Scootaloo’s. Finally managed to finish the damn bottle after almost a month.) Anyway, the fic started off with this premise: what if all those weird little things that Pinkie does really were indicative of her being more than she seems, rather than merely comic relief. This idea actually grew out of my previous fic, where Q explicitly says that Pinkie has latent powers that would put her almost on par with a Q. Sure, I’m not the first to come up with such an idea (thanks TVTropes and whoever else), but still. Yeah. Anyway, Pinkie Pie is not nearly so bad once you get to know her. Same goes for the CMC as well.

And now to discuss the Twilight Sparkle slash Riker ship. Um… yeah. I know that’s probably going to rub some people the wrong way. The whole thing ballooned way out of proportion from what I initially had in mind, which was itself just born out of another whim I had while writing the first pass. It was originally going to be just a few throw-away scenes, intended solely for the purpose of giving a little extra, unnecessary drama to Twilight’s existence during the fic (for the amusement of myself, at least, if nobody else). I mean, I knew all along that it wasn’t really going to go anywhere. I knew they weren’t going to “hook up” or anything, in other words. But it just kind of grew out of control. I wanted to have bits where Twilight would be all shy and blushing around Riker… while trying to keep such a thing in character for Twilight. But then I had to go and have others notice Twilight being all shy and blushing around Riker… and then I had to have Twilight need to deal with this somehow… and then it all just became this big ol’ Thing™. And then I was like, well how do I resolve this Thing™ now? And, so… I guess I didn’t really resolve it at all. She’s still just kind of crushing on him in the end, even if she knows he doesn’t feel the same way (though there are vague-ish hints that he might not be as unwilling to give it a shot as he claims, but I really didn’t want to go there >_>;). Anyway, for those who may enjoy that whole Thing™, (Fluttershy) yay (/Fluttershy). For those who don’t, well, I can totally dig why that would be the case, too. (I’ve been slowly working my way through the various Star Trek series over the past year or two and am currently up to Deep Space Nine. I was surprised and highly amused when I recently watched the episode “Melora.” Jadzia Dax shared a story with the title character of that episode that was very similar to the one Riker shares with Twilight in this fic, except that in Dax’s story, it was a Lothra and an Oxygene, rather than a Horta and a Medusan. That was entirely coincidental on my part, though I suppose it’s possible that when I first wrote that scene, I was channeling this episode based on vague memories of when I first viewed it almost two decades ago.)

My main worry about this fic, however, is all the interminable talking. It just goes on and on and on and on. I tried my best to spruce it up as much as I could, and to have Q hang a lampshade on it from time to time, but there are just too many scenes where they’re all simply standing around and talking. And talking. And talking some more. I feel that these scenes are still important scenes, for the most part, it’s just that they’re way too… inactive. It’s one of the main reasons I tried to split the main six up as often as I could, because it’s most noticeable when they’re all in one place, especially the scenes where it’s them and Picard and Riker and Q and Princess Celestia and Spike and the CMC and whoever else just happens to be there, standing around gabbing it up. Of course, on the other hand, it is Next Gen. They did an awful lot of talking on Next Gen. And, for me personally, while I do like the scenes where there are spaceships flying around shooting phasers and torpedoes at each other, or guys with hand weapons blasting each other with energy death, or Worf killing a fool with a bat’leth or whatever, I actually much preferred the scenes where the crew were just, you know, sitting around and playing poker or hanging out in Ten Forward, so I think this influenced my writing.

Oh and here’s a not-so-quick note about timeline stuff, and some major problems with it that I realized I had long after getting into it, but eventually decided to just flat out say screw it. It doesn’t really bother me enough to try to make it work, but it does bother me enough that I’m going to rant about it here. Okay, so here’s the deal. As far as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is concerned, this fic takes place not too long after the season 2 finale “A Canterlot Wedding.” As far as Star Trek: The Next Generation is concerned, this fic takes place at some point between the season 6 episode “Rascals” and the two-parter “Chain of Command” (or between “Rascals” and the first Deep Space Nine pilot episode “Emissary,” whichever happened to come first between “Chain” and “Emissary”). The reason for this is that “Rascals” is the last appearance of Miles O’Brien on TNG, and “Chain” is the one where Captain Jellico takes over the Enterprise. (All of this means that, as far as Q is concerned, “True Q” has occurred as of this fic, but “Tapestry” has not.) Anyway, neither of these things matter all that much in and of themselves. It’s when you combine them, and then on top of that try to relate it all back to my previous fic that this becomes a problem. See, in my previous fic (“The Quandary of DisQord”), I said that the TNG pilot episode “Encounter at Farpoint” occurred shortly after the FiM two-parter “The Return of Harmony.” The framing story for “Quandary” occurred right after the TNG season 3 ep “Deja Q,” which occurred about two years or so after “Farpoint” (if you assume a season counts as a full year). And now, “Rascals” occurred about three years after “Deja Q.” See the problem here? A total of around five to six years passed between “Encounter at Farpoint” and the beginning of DS9. But, of course, that many years have not passed between “The Return of Harmony” and “A Canterlot Wedding.” Only a year or so at the most has passed between those. So… for anyone else that is really bothered by this, just… I dunno, chalk it up to “complex temporal and spatial technobabble” and apply the MST3K Mantra to it. That’s what I’ve ended up deciding to do. Hell, maybe this is the revenge of Doctor Whooves, given that I didn’t mention him at all in this fic.

Some other minor things… many thanks to both the MLP:FiM wiki and Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki. For instance, I’d remembered in “Melora” that she and Bashir had eaten some Klingon food and that it specifically wasn’t just a bunch of nasty meat dishes like it was in the TNG ep “A Matter Of Honor”, but hell if I’d have been able to remember the names of them without looking them up on the wiki.

(Update 08-05-2012) Removed the "Deleted Scene".

(Update 01-19-2013) Moved the author's notes down to this spiffy new "Author's Notes" section.