Equestrian Girls
1st April
22:17 GMT -6
"So…"
I lean back slightly and fold my arms across my chest as Miss Shimmer
cringes, eyes darting left and right as her brain frantically tries to come up with a justification for what just happened.
"How did the trip home go?"
She brings her fists up to just underneath her chin and grins
slightly manically. "
Funny story."
"Oh
do tell."
"Okay, so-." She shakes her fists, then blinks at them-. Ah, she's forgotten to open them, reverting to her hoof-use mannerism. She takes a breath and focuses on her fingers, forcing them to uncurl. "So, the portal opened again, and I used the gems to switch the anchor point to
here-."
"
Yes, I
was here for that."
"I just wanna go through it all in order,
okay?"
I raise my eyebrows, sigh, then nod.
"So I
anchored it, made sure that it wasn't going to close on me again, and then I went through. It was night time there, and the mirror was still in the same place as it was a year ago."
She hesitates, her mouth twitching a little. Ah. Yes. That probably means that no one bothered looking for you or even tried to work out where you'd gone. Uncertain whether to hug her or not, I settle for patting her limply on the right shoulder with my left hand. She reaches across with her left hand to lay it on top of mine for a moment, then pushes mine off.
"And they'd.. locked the door. And hadn't changed the lock. Took me a moment or two to get used to using unicorn magic again, but the lock wasn't any harder to pick than it was last time I did it. It was dark outside, so I headed for my room, dodging the guards-."
"Why?"
"I didn't have time to bring all my stuff with me when I came here the first time. I wanted to see whether to not it was still there."
"No, why did you dodge the guards?"
She
squirms.
"See
eee… Yeah, that… I.. might..
possibly..? Have left out a thing or two about… Y'know…
It's a funny story, actually. Y'see-."
"Miss Shimmer,
just tell me."
This Is An Order.
"
Ikindagotbanishedforlookingatevilmagicbooks."
I take a moment to parse that. "Books that were themselves inherently malicious, or regular books that contained potentially harmful spells?"
"Ah… Both? One of them was talking to me, trying to get me to raise an army of demon zombies." She frowns. "And I think it was written in blood."
"Doesn't blood make really bad ink?"
"… Magic? Anyway, I was really just trying to find information on the mirror, and that wasn't even a dark magic artefact."
I frown. "Then why did they put it in the dark magic sect-?"
"Can I just
finish?" I nod. "So one of the librarians ran to tell Celestia, and she turned up and I… Said some things I.. probably shouldn't have. And.. she had the guards escort me out of the palace and you'd think she'd really have, heh, learned by now that two pegasus guards against a
magic expert wasn't a remotely fair fight-."
I nod. "You beat up the guards."
"Stunning spells are
perfectly safe, in moderation. And then I came through the mirror and had the most disorientating ten minutes of my life. So I didn't think asking the guards for directions was a good idea in case they remembered me, despite the head trauma. And I couldn't just.. run for it because I needed to come back through the mirror
afterwards."
"Okay, that actually sounds reasonable. Then what?"
"I got there, and… It wasn't the same. I just sort of… When I walked in I was so
surprised that I didn't realise that there was a pony in my bed. Or…
Her bed, I guess. I was just.. looking around in a daze, and she woke up and I panicked."
I nod slowly, then turn my attention to where the young woman I assume is the
human form of Twilight Sparkle is chained to a chair.
"'Panicked'."
"Mpmf!"
"She was making a noise in a palace full of guards and Celestia! And I knew a spell for tying ponies up really quickly-"
I look at the ball gag and raise my eyebrows.
"-and
it was a really instructive book! And so I used
that, but I couldn't risk staying there and I couldn't let her tell anyone I was there. So I brought her back."
She gulps.
"So… You thought that bringing her back, from a civilisation that undoubtedly has all sorts of magic-based tracking techniques, was a better way to handle the situation than pretending that you were a maid?"
"I wasn't wearing a maid uniform."
"And she would have seen that in the dark
how?"
"I-." She looks away again. "Okay. Yes. That probably would have been a better plan."
I sigh. "Okay, right, not the best way to handle things, but given that you were exiled
anyway we can probably still fix this."
"
How?"
"
I go through, carry the portal to somewhere outside Canterlot and we go from there. No guards and no Celestia until we're ready. Okay?"
"I.. guess… But what about-" She looks at Ms Sparkle. "-
her?"
"Well, assuming that she's adapting to her human body just as well as
you did, she won't be able to move, pick things up, use magic or speak any local languages. So she isn't really a
security risk." I walk over and kneel down in front of her. "I'm going to take the gag off now. I realise that this is a
very unpleasant situation for you, and I intend to return you to Equestria just as soon as we can without compromising our objectives."
"Mhra?"
I smile. "Just so. Hold still a moment." I reach forward and
undo the gag preventing Miss Sparkle from speaking. "I'm
very sorry about this." I pull the gag from her mouth and hand it to Miss Shimmer, who takes it, notes the saliva and puts it down on the workbench before wiping her hands on her trousers.
"Who are you? Where am I? What's going on? Why am I a monkey-? No, that's not right. No tail. Some kind of ape? But my hind limbs don't seem to have any grasping capacity? Maybe if I take these boots off-." Her chains rattle slightly. "Oh."
"My name is Grayven, you're presently in the Challenger Mountain facility on another world accessible through Starswirl's mirror. It appears to turn ponies who enter from your side into an example of the dominant local sophont species: humans. Humans are a type of ape adapted for the savannah. As such, they have hair on the top of their head to act as a sunshade but not anywhere else as they generally need to lose heat rather than retain it. As they spent more time walking on their hind legs and not climbing trees they lost the grasping capacity but gained land speed."
"Oh. So what
other species are there-. Wait, another
world?"
"Yes, but don't worry, the portal's staying open this time. I'm going to nip through
now, and all being well we'll be returning you within the next hour. Miss Shimmer-."
"But
another world!" Twilight beams excitedly, quite ignoring the chains. "That's
amazing! I mean, I know Starswirl the Bearded wrote all kinds of fascinating spells, but I've never heard of one like
this."
Miss Shimmer rolls her eyes. "Yeah, Celestia puts anything not friendship-related in the restricted-do-not-read-on-pain-of-banishment section. How about I give you a tour while Grayven hides the mirror?"
"Um." Miss Sparkle tries to move in the chains again. "That would be-." Miss Shimmer raises her right hand and clicks her fingers, a sympathetic effect causing the chains to unlock. "
How did you do that?"
"You girls have fun while I'm away."
I stride towards the tape outline marking out this side of the mirror. How hard can being a pony be?
