Twilight would have thought today was the weirdest day of her life, had she not totally lost track of time.

Aboard the buzzing and humming magic-powered-fluorescent lights Twilight couldn't tell whether it was day or night. She had lost all concept of time on this thrice darned metal ship.

After she had blacked out she had finally come to on a soft woven hammock. Twilight’s almost bare skin was covered with what looked like sewing pins piercing into her. The pins all shared the same wire thread between them and every now and again a crackle of magical static jumped across the wires with a slow crackle or a sharp, quick snap of power.

Pinkie walked in, still resplendent in shades and almighty jacket.

Pinkie Pie wasn’t bouncing, which struck Twilight as the most unusual part of Pinkie’s entry. Usually Pinkie Pie was so buoyant, bouncy and bubbly, but now she seemed almost grounded. Her usual attitude shone through the mostly subdued demeanour though.

“Hey, Twilight, you sleepyhead! I see you like my Captain’s jacket!”

Twilight woozily acknowledged the pink, curly mane Pinkie still possessed.  She felt overwhelming pangs of jealousy. Twilight looked at her body and confirmed she had only managed to grow back some patchy fuzz.

“Pinkeh,” Twilights sugar numbed mouth tried to articulate. “Wha deh hay isth goin’ on hearh?”

“I promised I’d give you all the answers didn’t I? I have to tell you later though, because it’s a doozy, and you need to recover. You haven’t used your muscles before, ever!” Pinkie rolled her eyes at this. “Oh great, and now I sound just like Applejack and Rainbow Dash did before the Running of the Leaves”.

Pinkie suddenly looked away from Twilight and sighed mournfully. She looked almost sad, a look even more perverse on the party ponies face than a serious expression ever could.

“I just don’t think they’ll ever be ready…” Pinkie suddenly snapped out of whatever it was that was bothering her.

“But it’s ok, because you’re ready now, Twilight, and that means I’ve got SO MUCH to show you… Later . For now, have fun watching the crackly muscle stick things, they’ll make you all better!” Pinky turned and left the room on this note in a motion that could only be described as a ‘gallumph’.

“Wai! Pinkeh!” Twilight tried to say.

Pinkie’s head reappeared through the doorway. She just looked at Twilight questioningly, in case she accidently interrupted Twilight’s weak tongue. The Poison Joke incident gave her a certain amount of empathy in this regard.

“Eye’mah sthtill hungreh.”

Pinkie Pie perked up with pride. Twilight doubted she could say that ten times fast even IF her tongue cooperated with her now.

“The NeverForever has the best food in the entire real world! That’s because nowhere else has me working the kitchen! I’ll go grab you something now!”

Twilight’s stomach gurgled appreciatively at the gesture.

*-*-*

“This is the best food?”

Twilight’s stomach gurgled again, this time in protest.

What had been served up to Twilight in its own little wooden bowl bubbled menacingly with a low audible pop.

Pinkie took a deep inhale Twilight took was meant to be a dramatic gasp.

“You’ve got to try it first, silly!” Pinkie’s smile dropped as the serious face descended again. “Seriously, this is all we’ve got, I do the best I can with it, honest." Pinkie sounded almost apologetic.

"I can’t Pinkie Pie swear on it though, because I don’t have any cupcakes around here to give you, let alone smoosh my eye with.”

Twilight nodded sadly from her hammock before levitating a spoon to her mouth. The spoon wrapped in a much paler aura than the one she was used to producing.

The menacing, gloopy substance produced an almost unnoticeable scent. Twilight had wished that scent had been completely unnoticeable. Twilight gulped and swallowed the spoonful.

It didn’t taste nearly as bad as it looked, smelled or even sounded, Twilight mused as she heard another ‘pop’ emanate from the bowl.

Now whilst this sentiment may have come from the fact that almost anything could taste better than the gruel looked, smelled and sounded, Twilight had tasted much, much worse than what was being proffered.

Truly Pinkie could make anything taste good.

Pinkie, for her part, just watched Twilight greedily down spoonful after spoonful. The small, soft smile never left her face whilst she gave her friend the first real food she would ever have eaten in her lifetime. Not that Twilight would know the significance of that fact yet.

Pinkie was so excited because all too soon she’d get to explain everything to Twilight.

*-*-*

Twilight admired the gleaning muscle tone she had developed in her time one the NeverForever.

Twilight’s unorthodox physiotherapy had worked. From what Twilight could observe the machine had sent electrical jolts into her muscles to simulate and to stimulate years of natural muscle growth and tissue to form.

The tissue development had made Twilight surprisingly exhausted, so what little time she wasn’t sleeping was spent devouring whatever delicious gruel Pinkie had made.

Twilight’s boredom and anxiety quickly grew however. Being in a strange new place tied down to a hammock will do that to anypony so she was less than totally disappointed when ‘Captain’ Pinkie Pie had told her that her that the machine she was hooked up to could do no more for her and that the rest of her therapy would involve exploring the ship.

It was disheartening to realize she would have to learn to walk all over again. Whilst Twilight might have liked learning new things forgetting things already learned was an almost unthinkable horror.

*-*-*

The first destination, Twilight specifically asked, was where ever Spike was. The unicorn was completely unsurprised to learn that Spike was spending most of his time in the Mess Hall eating.

Twilight stepped into the Mess hHall only to feel a tight prickling sensation around her ankles. She looked down to the purple dragon currently wrapped around her forelegs. It took a herculean effort to not topple over.

“TWILIGHT!” Spike’s reunion with the Purple unicorn was heartbreaking, “You’re O.K!”

“Spike...Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Twilight was taken completely off guard. She glared back at Pinkie who, like Spike before her, had found her feet amazingly interesting rather suddenly.

In lieu of Pinkie Pie’s almost scholarly interest in her hooves Twilight decided to press further.

“Why  wouldn’t I be okay, Spike?” Twilight slowly questioned.

“Ahh…Well…about that…” Pinkie Pie stammered behind the purple unicorn.

Spike raised an eyebrow.

“I guess you really wouldn’t know. You were sort of not there at the time I guess. Twilight… Pinkie sort of ate you after you touched the mirror.”

Twilight gaped at Captain Cannibal behind her.

“You did what?!”

“And then” Spike continued solemnly. “She made me have some of you too”

Pinkie Pie coughed indignantly.. “Well, not MY fault she was made of awesome chocolate. I mean, you were made of awesome chocolate, Twilight.” Pinkie glanced at the still stunned ex-chocolate before continuing.

“Besides, I needed to show you it was okay so that when I DID give it to you you’d think it was okay”. Her smile reappeared and she stifled a giggle. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Spike’s happy reunion with Twilight finally continued after Pinkie Pie had excused herself from the room as fast as possible under the onslaught of Twilight’s laser-precision glare.

Twilight told Spike everything that had happened after she had been eaten, apparently, in an effort to calm the dragon’s nerves. He seemed to take her shorter fur and much shorter mane for granted, Twilight realized, and looking at him she could understand why.

His scales hung awkwardly off him, the usual shedding process all dragons go through periodically as they outgrow them had apparently never quite occurred in Spike’s lifetime. Spike had never undergone the same process that Twilight had upon awakening though.

“I didn’t wake up, like you did, I just sort of… Aappeared. I guess I know what a letter feels like now.”

“But how did you send yourself… Here? From Equestria? Where are we? Pinkie keeps saying this is the real world or something, but Equestria was the real world too, wasn’t it?”

“Oh cripes Twi, you mean she hasn’t shown you yet?” The dragon’s relieved expression changed to one of panic. “She’s still gotta show you?”

“Show me what, Spike? What’s going on?” Twilight was shocked at the dragon’s sudden change in demeanour.

“I really think we should let Pinkie explain,” declared a familiar male voice from behind her.

Twilight whipped around and saw a beige earth pony with a cropped brown mane and an hourglass cutie mark standing behind her.

“Sepia Tock, at your service, but you can just call me ‘Doctor’,” The new arrival stuck out his hoof.

“Doctor? Are you a medical pony?” Twilight shook the outstretched hoof with her own.

“When I need to be,. Mostly, I just fix things that need to be fixed.” Sepia glanced meaningfully around the room. “Somepony’s got to keep this bucket of bolts running”.

Spike shook his head vigorously, “He’s been teaching me to use the ‘computer’ over there, too.” Spike outstretched a pale talon towards a far door. Twilight could hear mysterious beeping emanating from the room, and a weird green light ebbed gently around the edges of the door.

“It’s always nice having a helping hand around. Seriously-” “ Sepia waved a hoof around indignantly, “Griffons and Dragons have all the luck with fingers. It’s not enough to read the script if you can’t do anything about it.”.

Spike waggled his talons and stuck his tongue out at Sepia, who returned the gesture in kind with one of his own. Twilight cleared her throat pointedly and Sepia blushed furiously.

“Pardon me Ma’am,; I’m not comfortable with the female company. Only one besides me on board these days is Pinkie, and she’s more often jacked in then she is unplugged,” Sepia heartbroken look could have disarmed even Twilight’s most lethal glare.

“But I guess that’s just the way things had to be until you showed up,” Sepia brightened noticeably at the prospect, shooting Twilight his friendliest smile. Twilight felt a sharp pang of responsibility all of a sudden but the sentiment didn’t make sense to her.

“Why am I so important if you have Pinkie Pie? What difference does it make if she’s jacked in or whatever?”

Sepia chuckled, but there was no humour in it. “You’re going to find out shortly enough anyway, Miss Sparkle, I think Pinkie is ready to give you your first lesson.”

“She’s going to give me a lesson? I thought she was going to give me answers?” Twilights body slumped in depression.

Twilight was puzzled and a little ripped off that she wasn’t about to get some answers now, even though she took the bloomin’ red one.

Maybe she should have asked for a Pinkie Pie Swear, and kept the cupcake just to enforce it…

“It’s going to be one and the same, so don’t get your tail in a twist yet, missy.” Twilight just snorted in response to Sepia’s calming tone.

“In fact, I think she’s waiting for you just past here. I believe she’s promised you a ‘room made of answers’? Well… That’s exactly what you’re going to get."

*-*-*

Authors note:

I don't think I'm doing well with this at all. I've got a lot of ideas to work with from here but I don't think I'm a good enough author to convey them well in text. IF I keep going with this I have to work a lot more on my sentence structure and definitely work on my expressive language. IF I continue with this I honestly hope you can see my writing level catch up to the ideas I really want to convey with this piece.

I might just call this whole thing an exercise in futility and delete this sometime tomorrow when I come to my senses.

To anyone who was read this far, unless I am overwhelmed by a nice comment or two here I think my inability to comment or edit will outweigh my urge to write more.