“Really, Sketch?” asked Lightning Star. “You sure?”

“I’m sure,” he answered. “I’m definitely staying.”

“Not that I’m disappointed, but what made you decide not to leave?”

“Well, remember when we first got here, I told you that this is a parallel universe, and that our minds are-”

“Short version, please!” the Pegasus interrupted, not wanting his brain to be overloaded by another lecture on parallel universes.

“Okay, well if we exist in this world, then our families must exist here, too, so there’s no reason for us to leave!” Sketch said as if he was the first stallion to discover fire.

“Whoa…” Lightning said as his friend’s realization finally clicked in his head. “Leave it to you to think of that, but I’m glad you did.”

“Thanks, but there’s something else I’ve been thinking about, too,” said the unicorn.

“Like what?”

“While we obviously need to tell Celestia that we’ve decided to stay… we also need to tell the others that we’re not from here.”

Lightning’s ears twitched at this. “What!? Why would we need to do that!?”

“They’re our friends, Lightning.” said Sketch “We shouldn’t keep secrets from them. Don’t forget that Twilight already knows, and it wouldn’t be fair to have her keep this from her best friends. Besides, I don’t think they’ll think any differently of us.”
The pegasus sighed. “If you say so, Sketch…” he said. “So, when should we tell them?”

“I was thinking tonight,” the unicorn answered. “The sooner, the better.”

“In that case, I’ll call Twi,” said Lightning.

“Spike, could you get the door?” Twilight asked her assistant as she shelved a book.

“Sure thing, Twilight,” he said eagerly as he jogged towards the library’s front door. “Hey, Sketch. Hey, Lightning,” he said as he saw who was at the door. “Twilight told me that she was expecting you.”

“She did, did she?” asked Lightning.

“Yes,” Twilight answered. “You sounded serious on the phone earlier,”

“Well, this is pretty serious,” said Sketch.

“In that case, take a seat,” said the princess as the two stallions complied with her request. “Would you two like some tea?” she asked.

“No thanks,” the two stallions said.

“Okay then. So, what did you guys want to talk to me about?”

“Well, there are two things we need to tell you,” said the unicorn. “Firstly… we’ve decided to stay here in Equestria, and we plan on telling Princess Celestia as well.”

“Really,” the alicorn asked in disbelief. “That’s great to hear!” She clapped her hands together in excitement, but that excitement quickly faded as she saw the worried expression on her friends’ faces. “What’s wrong?” she asked, unaware of what they were about to tell her.

“Well, there’s something else,” said Lightning. “We plan on telling the others, too.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Well, firstly, we don’t think it’s fair for us to have you keep this secret form your closest friends,” Sketch explained. “Secondly, we think they deserve to know. They’ve helped us to get used to life here, and we wouldn’t even want to stay here if it wasn’t for them.”

“Well, when you put it that way, it makes sense,” Twilight admitted. “So I’m guessing you want to tell them tonight.”

“If it’s possible,” said Lightning.

“Well, I’ll contact them and get them all here,” she offered.

“You don’t need to do that,” he said.

“I know. I want to,” she insisted. “It’s the least I could do. Besides, you two could use some time to… prepare for what you’re about to tell them.”

“Thanks, Twilight,” said Sketch. “Maybe we could use a sip of tea.”

“Everypony’s here, guys,” Twilight said to Lightning and Sketch, who were sitting in her guest room while they waited for everypony to arrive.

“Thanks, Twilight,” said the unicorn. “We’ll be down in a second.”

The princess nodded her head as she left the room and headed downstairs where her friends were waiting.

“Well, it’s now or never, buddy,” said Lightning.

“I know,” said Sketch. “I know I said that they wouldn’t take it too badly, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Well, there’s no turning back now,” said the pegasus. “Let’s just hope that you were right.”

Meanwhile, down on the ground floor of the library, Twilight’s friends were wondering what Sketch and Lightning had to tell them.

“They’ll be down in a second, girls,” said Twilight.

“Ah wonder what they wanna tell us,” Applejack thought out loud.

“Well, it must be important if they insisted on telling us tonight…” Fluttershy said.

“Which only begs the question of what they want to tell us even more,” Rarity added.

“Anypony want to take a guess at what it is?” Spike asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“Oh! Here they come now!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed as she spotted the two stallions coming down the stairs.

“Goodnight everypony,” said Sketch as he and Lightning reached the foot of the staircase. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“No sweat, guys!” Rainbow Dash said, waving a hand. “We’re your friends. It’s only natural that we’d want to come.”

“Thanks, Dash. That should make what we’re about to tell you a lot easier,” Lightning said with a pause. “This may sound really crazy, but just bear with us.” He then looked at Sketch, not wanting to be the one to drop the bomb on everypony. Sketch was okay with it, though. He was prepared for this, at least somewhat…

“We have a secret that we’ve been keeping from you, and we feel that you all deserve to know,” he said before taking a deep breath. “Lightning and I… aren’t from Equestria. In fact, we’re not even from this universe.”

All the ponies, plus Spike, had varying looks on their faces. Some were of shock, others were of disbelief. The only one in the room that had a neutral reaction was Twilight, since she already knew this.

“Now, before you start assuming that we’re crazy, hear us out,” Lightning said before anypony could get a word in. “We really are telling the truth. We were pulled into this world by an ancient spell known as the Dimension Orb. Twilight helped us find out about the spell.”

“In fact, the reason why the three of us went to Canterlot the other day was so we could learn more about the spell. Even the royal sisters know about this, and Celestia’s been trying to find a way to figure out how to get us home as well as who cast the spell in the first place.”

“Wait, Twilight knew!?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys, but I felt like this had to be kept a secret,” the young princess said apologetically.

“We’re not mad at you, darling. We’re just surprised that you knew,” Rarity said.

“We don’t blame you for keeping a secret,” Fluttershy assured.

“But wait, if y’all ain’t from here, how were y’all able to get used to life here so fast?” Applejack asked.

The two stallions weren’t expecting this, and Lightning turned to Sketch yet again. “Well, in our world, Equestria exists in fiction, so we were already familiar with it before we got here.”

“So those stories about how you got your cutie marks weren’t true?” Spike asked.

“We thought they weren’t, but we found out that they were true the next day when we got letters from the ponies we mentioned in our stories,” Lightning explained.

“But wait, you said that Princess Celestia’s been trying to find a way to get you home,” Pinkie Pie said. “Does that mean that… you guys are leaving?”

All the ponies and Spike pause at this realization, the possibility of their new friends wanting to leave going completely over their heads. Looks of sadness grew on their faces, especially on Pinkie and Applejack’s.

“We thought about it,” Sketch said with a sigh, “and we did want to leave at first, but after we got used to living here and got to know you all better… we’ve decided to stay.”
Cheers started to fill the room, and Sketch and Lightning were relieved that this all went well. Applejack and Pinkie Pie got up and hugged the two stallions, and that quickly escalated into a group hug.

“So what now?” Spike asks.

“Well, first off, we need to tell Celestia that we’ve decided to stay,” Lightning said.

“Well, that’s easy enough,” said Twilight. “Spike, take a letter.”

“Actually, Twilight,” Sketch interrupted. “We’d rather tell the princess in person. Can we request an audience with her?”

“That can be arranged,” she said as she found and audience request form as had Spike fill it out. With the form completed and proofread, Spike burned the letter with his magical dragon breath and sent it off to Princess Celestia.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think that you’ll get a fast reply,” the alicorn said wistfully. “Princess Celestia gets one or two audience requests every day, so her schedule might be ful-”

Just then, a knock on the door interrupted Twilight’s sentence. She walked up to the door, wondering who was there. The library was closed for the day, and she wasn’t expecting anypony else over.

“Good evening, may I… help… you…?”

“Who is it Twilight?” Spike asked from inside.

“P-p-p-p-…” the young mare stuttered.

“Goodness, Twilight,” said the pony at the door. “You’d think that you’d be comfortable having me over after all these years.”

Recognizing the voice, everypony rushed to the door to confirm their suspicion.

“PRINCESS CELESTIA!?” they all said in shock.

“Were you all not expecting me?” she asked casually.

“Well, no…” said Twilight, who finally recovered from her stupor.

“May I come in?” Celestia politely asked.

“Oh! Of course!” the younger alicorn said as everypony scrambled out of the doorway to let Celestia in. With everypony settled in the room, Celestia cleared her throat and began to speak.

“So, I received an audience request form from Sketch and Lightning Star, and I decided to come see you in person because I had a feeling that this was important,” she explained, then she turned her attention to the two stallions. “Well, what would you like to tell me?”

Once again, Lightning looked at Sketch, and the latter rolled his eyes. While he usually doesn’t mind doing the talking, sometimes he’d like somepony else to do it. He sighed, and then he looked up at the princess, who was a whole head and a half taller than him, and began to explain. “You see, Princess, Lightning and I are very grateful for all you’ve done to help us find out who brought us here, but…”

“But…?”

“We’ve decided that we’d like to stay here in this world,” he finally said. “We’re sorry if we wasted any of your time.”

Thankfully, Princess Celestia didn’t look upset. In fact, she even chuckled to herself. “It’s quite alright, young stallion. You haven’t wasted my time at all. I already knew who cast the Dimension Orb spell.”

Everypony’s eyes widened. “You did?” they all said in surprise.

“Of course I did, my little ponies,” she said. “It’d be pretty silly of me if I didn’t know that I cast the spell.”

“WHAT!?”

The princess of the sun merely chuckled again. “Allow me to explain,” she said. “For the past several months, I’ve been doing research on parallel universes, and with my recent mastery of the Dimension Orb spell, I wanted to see if beings from a parallel universe could adapt to living in this one. Luckily, I was able to find a universe where Equestria was a fictional place, so I picked to pull beings from there. I planned on letting you go home once my little experiment was complete, but since you’ve decided to stay, there’s no need for that.”

“Wait, so you just chose two random people to bring here so you could see how quickly we would adapt?” Lightning asked.

“Yes,” she answered.

“So we were just your guinea pigs?” Sketch asked.

“If you want to put it that way,” she shrugged.

“And here I thought that all the talk about Celestia being a troll was bullshit,” thought Sketch.

“In all seriousness, though, I’m glad you’ve decided to stay here,” the princess smiled.

“Well, thanks for bringing us here, Princess,” Lightning said gratefully.

“My pleasure,”

“You know what this calls for?” Pinkie Pie asks out of nowhere.

“What?” everypony asks.

The mare simply pulls a cannon out of practically nowhere and says “A PARTY!!!!”