This is it, my very first chance to make an actual decision that I can’t weasel out of making. I’m standing on four delicately white hooves before a familiar looking wagon, hitched to a familiar looking scooter, ridden by a very familiar pony. More familiar than she used to be, now that I’ve seen Scootaloo in person, moving and turning, flicking her tail, testing out her wings in anticipation of using them. The vivid reality of it combined with the fact that she’s a naked little filly, and I’m a naked little filly is really thrilling. Where before all I could do is watch them have their childhoods from the other side of a screen, now we’re actually going to ride in her wagon, and hopefully not crash this time. But I have to make a decision, and there’s only one decision I can make. If I don’t say anything now, we’ll go and have fun down by the creek and I’ll have needlessly risked precious minutes or even hours not doing anything to save Sweetie Belle. If I let that happen I don’t know what I’d do, just blurt everything out to the pony who would get hurt the most about it probably. If I can just tell them where I need to go today, it’ll be okay. I won’t be totally useless and provoking my own imminent soul death. I just need to find Lyra, and trust Sweetie’s judgement that she’s the pony I’m looking for. I... I’m not ready to do that. But I’m not going to get any better chance than this, ever! So cautiously and cagily, I just casually mention to them, as I too begin clambering into the wagon for Scootaloo to pull us along, “Say... I think I remember a spiraly shape tower, somewhere in Ponyville. Like a tower, but with a spiral thing around it. What is that place?” “It’s a lab-or-a-tory!” Apple Bloom answers quickly, with enthusiasm, turning her bow to face Scootaloo, and her face to face me. “Big smart scholarly ponies from Canterlot set it up just a while back,” she says with a vivacious grin. “It looks like a lightning silo,” Scootaloo calls back, over the sound of her wings powering up. Underneath us, the wagon pulls against my plush white bottom, and starts to roll forward, with me and Apple Bloom both in it. Trying to talk has Scootaloo too distracted to just blast right out of here. Good. “What’s a lightning silo?” I distrask my orange and purple friend. “It’s a building they keep lightning in, like to save it!” Scootaloo answers, as my heart sinks when the wagon drops right off the porch stairs and lands on the cobble road outside, and wherever we go today, the three of us are on our way. It’s striking how smooth this wagon rolls, when it should be knocking our teeth out under that kind of terrain. Sure the cobbles are flat, but they have gaps between them, right? “Why does the laboratory look like a lightning... place?” I yell out to the pegasus in front of me. “I think that’s so they can keep it from blowing up,” Scootaloo says with an excited tail wiggle, “When they spare a mint on it!” spare a wat “They experiment in the tower, dummy,” Apple Bloom says in a snobby tone. Oh. “It’s just to hold the speriments,” Apple Bloom insists at Scoots, “Not to speriment on!” “Could we go҉ there?” I squeak a little too eagerly. Apple Bloom gives me an odd look, and I don’t think I really had the right context to say that yet. It still sort of came out of the blue. “I’d really like to...” I try to clarify, speaking slowly and carefully, “See if I can remember anything about it, and maybe even go in and ask someouhpony about ...stuff.” “Maybe they could find out what happened to me!” I finish, with a cheerful smile. “Ah’d think miss Twilight would already be talkin’ with them and stuff,” Apple Bloom says giving me a even more uneasy look. Crap biscuits what did I screw up now, and how do I fix it? “Are you sure you wanna go?” Apple Bloom asks me uncertainly, “It’s kinda a scary place. Ah don’t know if we’re s’posed to be there.” Oh now that’s just not fair at all. “Well, maybe we could go to the junkyard instead,” I say in a resentful, mocking tone. Then I blink and realize what I just said, or rather how I just said it. “I–I mean there’s nothing wrong with the junkyard,” I backpedal, “Just I didn’t think you would care about um...” jeez, what do I even say? Apple Bloom looks at me another moment, and then shakes her head slightly, a relieved smile spreading across her muzzle. “Well, if you’re alright with it, then it’s fine!” Apple Bloom says happily. She turns to face our driver, saying, “Hey Scootaloo, you hear that? Sweetie’s amnesia made her not such a fraidy-cat anymore! Let’s go have some fun!” “Alright!” Scootaloo says fiercely, “Creepy labratory: 1, dumb old creek: 0!” Then she hangs a hard right, and starts powering up speed, despite the ponies walking the street around us. “Careful, ScootaloooOOO!” I say, my forehooves clomping over the side of the wagon, holding on tight so I don’t fall back in the accelleration. I don’t know, but the ponies scrambling out of our way, as Scootaloo barrels forward, they probably share in my sentiment. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this. To Scootaloo’s credit, and actually a lot of credit is due, she doesn’t so much as tilt up a wheel of the wagon this time, and doesn’t think to go up any ramps for ill intentioned trick flips that being attached to living cargo behind you doesn’t make easy to do. A lot of credit, because we’re going way faster than I can track. She really must have a sixth sense for this stuff because she dodges obstacles before I even see them coming. I just give up trying at some point, and start taking in the area around me. The houses are taller along the road we’re buzzing down, with two story cottages being the norm. The thought of college dormitories comes to mind, despite the obvious lack of giant concrete boxes full of many floors of tiny rooms with bunk beds. I honestly don’t have any idea how Equestria does education, just that they have schools, and named schools, and schools for specific tribes. It’s a bright sunny day outside, with not many pegasi way up in the sky at all. At least not that I can see. I guess they only go out in force when the weather’s changing, would be my best guess at least. I can’t really track ponies around me fast enough to get an idea how many we’re passing who are grounded pegasi. I hope this laboratory tower won’t be some sort of sealed off corporate facility. In my old world when you tried to visit these sort of things, the first thing you run into is barbed wire fences, and guarded gates. If the place did have a public face to it, it was just this little tiny office in a giant warehouse complex of buildings. You walk in the door and there’s three chairs, a locked door and a counter protected by plexiglass. You better have a reason for talking with the lady there, and if you do they’ll tag you and badge you and make sure that they’re aware of every single thing you do. Just the thought of something like that in ponyland is too terrifying to contemplate, so I guess when Apple Bloom called it creepy, she couldn’t mean something as soulless and restricted as that. The other extreme from my experience being a public building at a public university, with free access to the halls and elevators, no checkpoints and very few registration kiosks, and most of the rooms in use having unlocked doors. Given a disparity like that, it always puzzled me why people don’t realize what a dangerous threat private corporate research and development is. Private access by default is just so paranoid, and requires so much nasty security, and it’s so limiting and restrictive to people who think outside the box. Not that you have to leave your dangerous chemical cabinet unlocked, but it’s just impossible to find unconventional solutions, when only restricted, monitored, pre-approved activity by select individuals is allowed, who are contractually obligated not to share with each other. So, I don’t mind if this tower’s full of busybody, snobby scholar ponies coming dangerously close to exploding things, but if it’s King Sombra levels of creepy, I might have to reconsider my approach. The tower is round and very large, at least the diameter of two houses back to back, larger towards the base slightly, where it curves up far, far above my head to a onion shaped dome of a dull bronze. The spiral around it is a light magenta in color, though appears to be a dull metal rather than painted, and it doesn’t quite reach the ground level before meshing smoothly with what appear to be white stone walls. It would look right at home... in Canterlot maybe. It manages to look strangely ominous, despite it being cheerful pastel colors in the middle of a bright, sunny day. “Alright Crusaders!” Apple Bloom shouts out definitively, as Scootaloo pulls up before the light magenta doors leading into the tower. “It’s time to get our cutie marks in...” “Science!!” “Science?!” Scootaloo and Apple Bloom both seem to know exactly what they’re going for, and... apparantly I do too, because somehow my alarmed protest came out at the exact same time that they shouted it out, rather than with any noticeable pause afterwards. I get my hooves over the edge of the wagon, and both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo are quickly trotting up the small set of steps across a circular porch to the magenta doors leading into this tower. I think I am beginning to see the flaw in my plan. “Wait, uh, girls, maybe we should—” I yelp out, but not before Scootaloo puts one tiny orange hoof on the door and triumphantly pushes it... not open. “It’s locked?!” Scootaloo says in outrage. “Course it’s locked!” Apple Bloom admonishes Scootaloo. “They got a buncha dangerous science in there. You think you can just walk in?” Scootaloo droops her tail and shakes her head, while I breath a sigh of relief. “You’re supposed ta knock first!” Apple Bloom concludes, turning to the door and rearing up against it. It resounds with a hollow sound as she clonks her hoof on it. “Please g-girls, I don’t think...” I almost get to say “I don’t think we’re supposed to do this,” but my words die in my throat. Didn’t they just say that I was some sort of big fraidy-cat? I’m not afraid of the laboratory though, no matter how much of an ominously silent, creepy tower it is, right in the middle of a pasturesque horsetown. It’s the two ponies trying to open the door into the laboratory that I’m afraid of! But they went to the junkyard without me, and if I tell them now, they’ll do this without me too, and stop letting me go with them! Isn’t having adventures just as important as being safe? But... but... disaster! My ears feel low, as I try to figure out what to say, before they decide to try and break into the tower. Thus, the sound of hooves crunching on dirt fails to reach my attention, before I’m blindsided by a large beige furred flank passing right by our wagon. It’s an older pony, a stallion from the shape of his jaw, oh and also the freaking balls between his—oh hey, his cutie mark is an hourglass? He must be a time pony! He must be a wait no, no, no way. I’m literally inches away from Time Turner right now. Oh shoot, he’s walking past me, right up to my friends! “Girls!” I shout frantically, “Cheese it!” “Cheese what?” Apple Bloom asks, turning around to give me a fickle look. Her ears immediately tilt down, as she looks up seeing the stallion walking right to them, that bow behind her cherry red mane mimicking their movements uncannily. “Hey there fillies,” he says in a chipper tenor. “You do know the laboratory’s closed, when there isn’t an experiment going on in there?” Scootaloo visibly bristles at that, jerking her head around even as her wings snap up at attention. “Ohh!” she says nervously, giving him a sideways look, “Yeah, we totally ...didn’t know that it was closed.” “What’re you two, er... three looking for?” he adds, glancing down at a much more perky Apple Bloom, and then once over at myself. “We wanna explore the creep—” Scootaloo starts, but Apple Bloom blocks her mouth with a hoof and and interrupts saying, “We wanna see if our special talents are in sciency things!” “I also wanted to ask somepony something,” I add in a shy, yet deliberate tone. “How old are you fillies?” he asks craning down with a smile. “9!” Apple Bloom immediately says with a proud smile. “I’m almost 9,” Scootaloo says, coming up beside her. “I only have 3 months to go!” And then he looks back expectantly, at me in the wagon, but I don’t really feel good about drawing attention. Not his attention! Did he used to be human? Or more than human? Or what is going on? Besides, I don’t want to admit how I’m freaking 8... how many months do I have left to go? I would ask Sweetie Belle, but um... god I need to tell him. Why is this so hard? I just have to say... something... something. “Can you direc—I wanna uhm... Lyra,” I announce to him intelligently. His ears lift up perkier, and he tilts his head, walking in an easy circle to approach me, while my ears go straight down, looking up at him in that confusion between awe and dread. His slicked back brown hair looks like a buzz saw, and his clear blue eyes capture my own in a fiery intelligence. I–I don’t know—do I look lost? Is he going to help? Does he know? Should I be acting different? I... I just... “That’s a very strange sounding number, little filly,” he says to me, with a sly twinkle in his eye. “How old did you say you were again?” “I need to talk to... I mean, I’m... I’m 8,” I finally manage to spit out, kicking myself mentally for not just answering his stupid question, so he can stop making me look at him, those eyes that were so full of deeper stories than I want to know. “If you fillies are interested in what we do here, you might talk with ponies in the study hall,” he suggests, gesturing with a hoof. “That double story building, over there.” The building he indicates is a... rather oddly rounded looking building, given the square, terraced looks of the houses around town, though it does have the same sloping straw roof as anywhere else. It’s much more short and squat than the tower, like someone took an oval, and stretched it lengthwise to make a straight section in the middle. “There is the auditorium down the road a ways, where lectures are held,” he continues with a laugh, “But you probably should ask your parents about it, before trying to put up with us stuffy, old ponies.” I can’t see the place he speaks of, but he does gesture vaguely down the street away from the tower. “Then there is the extension campus, with classrooms, right there across from the study hall,” he adds, pointing at a building with a sloped, shingled roof different from the straw roofs around here. It actually stands out for that reason, now that I look at it, even if the sides still seem to be wood framed stucco. Also it has multiple paned windows along its very long side, one I presume for each classroom. Eight, counting the second floor, maybe more on the other side. “You’ll probably want to be careful though,” he says more seriously. “If you aren’t very quiet, you could disturb the students there who are trying to learn. Can you promise you’ll be three very good little fillies?” “We uh, we maybe should avoid th’ classrooms though,” Apple Bloom says nervously, looking up at him with a little hoof lift. It’s funny how she looks next to the stallion, because I can sort of get the impression that she’s the little one if I look at it right, but even from far away she looks more normal sized to me, and everything else is just... large. Like this wagon. How big really is this thing? When I forget how big Apple Bloom is, it makes the stallion look gigantic in comparison. Transforming into a little filly is... weird. I guess at first, it seems weird because you feel so much smaller than you remember, but after a while it seems weird because everything else seems so much larger than you remember. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? I guess I’m exactly not an expert on switching bodies. At what point is everything just going to seem normal, though? It looks like The Doctor is looking for an excuse to walk off, so really quick, “Excuse me,” I speak up, once again attracting his attention. “If we want to talk with somepony, h-how would we do that? I mean, to leave a message, or... something.” “Well, you could leave a message in the mail room, I imagine,” he said, “It’s right in the dormitory on your left.” The building he indicates is a rather large two story cottage, two buildings really, one connected to the other by an arch over the road dividing the two of them. Bunch of windows in it, and a prominent pink painted door on the ground floor. “Alright,” I say looking from it to him, with as much a smile as I can muster. “Thank you!” He nods in acquiescence, saying to us in general, “Now you foals have fun, and I’ll just go check on an experiment I’ve got running in the study hall. We’re still all afluff about this fertilizer incident! If you don’t need me for anything else...?” I shake my head, and look at Apple Bloom and she shakes her head, and Scootaloo is just slouching there looking bored. So he trots off without another word, and Apple Bloom comes clopping up to me still in the wagon, with a curious look in her eyes. Uh oh. “Who d’you need to talk to here?” Apple Bloom asks uncertainly. “You coulda just said, if’n all you wanted to do was leave a message.” Uh... so she’s not suspicious? “I did say,” I say to her, a bit confused. “I wanted to talk to someb–pony, and also maybe see if they can cure my amnesia?” “Oh, yeah ah guess...” Apple Bloom says, looking down discontentedly. “Anyways, he told us how ta do that, so ah guess we could just do that, and go...” “Orrr,” I suggest tentatively, “You could go explore, and I can walk a little, just to the dormitories. Then I can come find you, if um... there’s time?” “Yeah I like Sweetie Belle’s idea,” Scootaloo says quickly. “Um... no offense, but he did say there were experiments in the study hall!” “I guess... they do less explodey experiments in there?” I speculate. “I wonder what they’re studying.” “Yeah, good idea Scoots,” Apple Bloom says happily. “Let’s see if there’s anything fun there!” “I hope you’ll be alright,” I say at the two, with no small amount of worry in my chest. What else can I do though? If they need rescuing, while I’m rescuing Sweetie Belle, then that’s just that! “Worry not Sweetie Belle, we’ll be fine,” Apple Bloom says, patting me on the back. “I just know there’s lots to do around here that we ain’t done before. You take care of you business, and we’ll meet back at the wagon.” “You can meet us in the study hall if you want,” Scootaloo suggested. “If they have some cool experiments happening there, I bet it’ll be awesome! Even if the uh, laboratory’s closed.” I take a look at the tower thoughtfully. “I wonder if they have tours or something. Maybe you could find out when the tower is open?” I suggest. “We can find out a lot of stuff!” Apple Bloom chirped out positively. “Long as we’re finding out what all them older ponies are doing for school.” “Lyra’s the only adult pony I know from the school,” Scootaloo said in a curious pensisivity. “I bet the others are just as cool, but I really don’t get why they haven’t finished school yet.” “They got their cutie marks,” Apple Bloom offered uncertainly, “So that caint be holding them back.” She looked around and added, “C’mon Scoots, let’s go and see if we can find somepony to ask!” “I can’t even imagine going to school at thirty...” Scootaloo can be heard saying, before they’ve gone out of earshot, heading for the study hall, leaving me at peace to go check out the dormitories. With some effort I manage to get out of the wagon, by sticking my legs over the side past those weird knee things and just pushing forward with my forelegs to slide my belly over the edge until I feel my hooves back there clomp down on the dirt securely. The wagon wobbles back and forth on its wheels for a minute, but then I push off the edge and my front hooves can plant too, leaving me standang there by myself, facing a red wagon, with the dormitories behind me, and only a clever professor’s advice to help me get around. It’s so easy to just stand here not moving, but I can’t. I have to risk tilting off balance, by lifting my hooves, and risk my hooves from catching on the ground, to move forward. I have to... walk, and hope for the best. I step deliberately forward with my front left arm/hoof, and then step forward with the other ...two. That’s enough for me to bump into the wagon, which I can stop and roll out of the way with my trailing front hoof. I look up at the tower again, mumbling numbers under my breath as I try to transition back to that natural walk, walk, walk gait. It happens well enough, even if I’m proceeding at what would be a stately pace for a fully grown pony, but I’m really not complaining. Truth be told, I’m too busy being filled with dread to panic. I had her. I had Sweetie Belle with me, and she just disappeared. There has to be a way to get her back, there just has to! And until I have, I just have to keep barrelling forward, or... stepping forward as such the case may be. The swaying of my body is familiar and I try to focus on that to give me some uniformity to my movements, instead of treating them like separate things. I trace a very broad circle, turning slowly until I’m facing the dormitories, just like Ace taught me. However well it works, at least the ponies walking around this university (?) square aren’t staring at me in alarm. I’m just here all by myself, a cute little white unicorn whose pink and purple fluffy tail and matching curls of their own bouncy volume for my mane make her look like walking cotton candy. My rump is as unmarked as the day I was born, in both senses of the concept, and the average pony has at least a head of height above my eye level. Though thinking about my eyes, aren’t they in the middle of my head, so maybe my forehead is taller and I’m not as short as I feel? Though, thinking about that I can’t be optimistic; I’m sure much of my perceived height is nothing but hair. I am clearly not a big pony. The oval dormitories come swivelling into view, and I find myself intrigued by the smooth curve of the building’s wall as I approach. It looks different than the stucco or plaster that most of Ponyville’s walls are made out of. I’m not really hear to admire the architecture. I’m here to mail a letter! But it does look neat. Maybe I can explore it afterwards. After I... mail a... I stop short, as the enormous hole in my plans suddenly becomes evident. What if I can’t find her? What if I do have to leave a note? Sure, I could maybe make a legible note to ask for Lyra’s discrete help, in English, but ponies only speak English. I’m... pretty sure I’m speaking English at least. My mouth feels way different, but ‘a’ is still where you curl your tongue slightly and raise a corner of your lip before vocalising, and ‘e’ is still the same as ‘a’ except with a breathier sound to it and the throat more expanded. Vowels are still vocalized, and consonants sibilant, so everything pretty much sounds just like a couple of humans talking to each other. Until you try to read the darn stuff. Or, no wait! My eyes light up and I move forward again. Of course, I don’t need to write the note myself. I can just ask somepony to write it! Assuming there is a pony taking mail that is, rather than a compact array of mailboxes unattended, each with the recipient’s name written on it. I... guess I could just ask any pony, in that case. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll pretend I need to write a complicated word, and need some help, then get them to write the rest. Assuming I can even work enough courage to talk to a pony in the nearby vicinity. I have to do it though! It doesn’t matter if I get embarassed or shy, because Sweetie Belle’s life is at stake! Or at least... my delusion in her continued existence is at stake. I can’t lose my nerve now; I have to keep up hope, and keep just going forward, not letting my hesitance or fear stop me. I hesitate on the verge of the main entrance to the dormitory. There are a few stairs leading up to semi-circular porch in front of the door. Allowing myself a satisfied little smile, I put my hoof on the stair, and climb up them until I’m standing on the porch. From there, it’s an easy stride to the doors leading into the dormitory. They have a doorknob. “Wha҉t?” slips out of me in a disbelieving squeak. It’s a... door knob. A door knob! Ponies shouldn’t have doorknobs. I know they do in the show, but this is just... it’s just impossible! No race of people without grasping fingers would design a doorknob. Hell, even humans are masochists for designing them. Doorknobs are just horrible! Handles are always always easier to turn. Am I really gonna get stopped by a stupid doorknob? How did I not notice doorknobs?! I look at it with distress, then lift a hoof up to touch the side... obviously, I can’t get a grip on it. This pushapulling thing is for flat surfaces, not curves, and I just can’t apply sheer forces. What is this, a unicorns only door? ...experienced unicorns only? I sit on my haunches, and reach up with two hooves, gripping either side of the knob in my hooves, trying to turn it. It doesn’t turn for the life of me, no matter how hard I squeeze and twist. Even when I put all my weight into it and lift myself up, it still—the door clicks, and swings open, carrying me hanging onto the doorknob along with it. I drop down to the porch, and look around from behind the door at the pony who came through it. She’s a unicorn, not Lyra though. Her coat is bright yellow, and her mane slate blue. Her cutie mark is... obscured by the door. “Having fun there?” she asks in a sweet, clear voice, in something between confusion and terrible amusement. I blush and say in my own rather sweet, but more squirrelly voice, “Just... hold the door, please. I–I need to talk with somep-pony living here.” Picking myself up, I carefully move to where I can hook my hoof around the edge of the door, and use that to pull myself around. “There is a mail room, or an office, right?” I ask this strange mare, just a teensy bit nervously. “Are you serious?” the mare asks, with a half smile. She sure is easy to listen to at least. “There are only about a dozen of us here. There’s a drop box, but that’s about it.” “With your names... written on it,” I mumble glumly. “Just tell me, and I can pass a message on to her,” the mare says, craning down and touching her nose to mine. Wow, her horn is big. “What is it you want to know?” she asks, “Summer project, maybe?” “I uh... yeah I just... need to talk to her about a creature I may have found...” “Ooh,” she says excitedly, “You wouldn’t be one of those fillies who found the Lurm would you?” “I um... yes, but it’s another... yes. I really need Lyra to help, like, as soon as she can.” “Might I have your name, little filly?” “It’s... Sweetie Belle,” I whisper. Even after all this, it feels really surreal to say that, especially in her voice. How many times have I actually said that out loud? “My name is Sweetie Belle,” I say a little louder, more for me than her. “Alright, I’ll let the professor know,” the lemon colored mare says, striding away. “She should be back from some field research in a few hours, so you might catch her yourself if you stick around.” “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say carefully. It’s clear now, I am not stepping one hoof off this campus without speaking to her. It was awfully nice of this lemon um... “Wait, I’m sorry!” I yell over to the retreating lemon pony. “I didn’t catch your name!” She laughs at my bright urgency, calling back, “Jn. Lemon Hearts, cutie!” Djun? That’s a weird name. “Thank you!” I call back politely, waving a hoof at her. Djun said “a few hours” so... well, I hope that won't be too long for my friends. If there isn't enough to do here though, I'll have to wait here and tell my friends to... go do something fun without me. Again. Ugh, I hate this! Why do I have to do all this? Why can't I be the irresponsible one? Ugh, I've just gotta calm down and... calm down. I'm sure that studying college level pony science will be just as fun as playing in the park, even if I can't read. I just wish I could... run. I really want to run. Sighing resolutely, I face forward and lift a hoof, then walk, walk, walk and then I'm at the stairs going down of the porch. I put my front hooves down a step, the leaning back of my body coming more naturally now that I've practiced it all morning with Ace. Three steps, and I'm on the level of the earth again, already somewhat pointed in the direction of that peculiar looking study hall. Where experiments are... studied? As distinct somehow from the laboratory, which despite being the biggest thing in the nearby area, is totally unused. Reminds me of home, heh. I have a few hours, so I don't hurry into the study hall. Mostly I'm curious about what the walls are composed of. This weird dumbell shaped building sure can’t be the same wood frame construction as everything else, at least not without really creatively shaped wood. The walls are straight in the middle, but segue into a smooth curve at either end. Touching it, it feels like... plaster. Just like the rest of town. I look at its evenly colored unbroken surface, and shake my head. I probably won’t even be able to speculate unless something blows a hole in the wall, or something ridiculous like that. I don't see many ponies mingling about the study hall. Mostly, they’re occupying themselves in walking past the building across the square that the spiral laboratory is located in. The door is propped ajar, and I make sure to check this time. Yep... doorknobs. How the heck does pony society function if they’re gonna invent doorknobs? Whatever, the door’s open, so I pull myself around it so that I can waddle straight into the dark confines of the building. As the light level lowers, I feel like my gut is being pulled... backward? I don’t know what this feeling is, but I don’t like it. My ears go down and my tail tucks nervously, as I look around. Strange noises echo down this corridor that divides the building in two. No indication of whether it’s better to go left or right. The hallway is lined with doors, with more of that inscrutable writing on plates on them. There’s a breeze blowing my mane forward, coming from the open door and entryway behind me. It certainly isn’t chilly in here, but it’s not oppressive. Still, I can understand why they’d leave the door open. I randomly decide to go left, so with help from a door and my shoulder, I get my hooves oriented in that direction, and start to travel that way. Nothing but doors to either side, and before me. But at the end of the hall, the door before me has a window, and bright light coming through that window. I rear up, “climbing” up the door enough that I can just get my eyes up to the level of the window, pushing my nose against the glass and... the door was unlatched all along, and opens inward. It creaks forward, and I tilt forward, and Sweetie Belle’s voice shouts out, “Woah-oah!” as I find myself in a brightly lit chamber faced with a winding set of stairs going down a whole story into the earth. I’d examine the ponies walking around down there at various parephernalia, but I’m too busy trying not to fall down the—! Falling down the stairs is an experience I would have to warn you not to repeat. Mostly out of obligation though. It’s frighteningly disorienting, and a harsh cry escapes me every time my neck, back, stomach, shoulder, or other body part comes in contact with the hard edge of a step, but when I splat face first onto the ground at the bottom, the first thought in my panicked mind is that I should be a lot more than mildly sore from all those bumps and bangs. “Sweetie Belle!” comes Apple Bloom’s voice, accompanying a pair of hooves clattering up to stand before me. “Are you okay Sweetie Belle?” Scootaloo’s voice echoes after Apple Bloom’s own. No, no she’s not. And I’m fine, but very, very confused right now. “I’m fine,” I say lifting my head up to see between my splayed white hooves the legs of my two friends standing there looking at me with worry. “But is it... safe to fall down stairs?” I have to ask them uncertainly. “Of course it ain’t safe!” Apple Bloom said vehemently. “That looked like it hurt!” Squatting on, or... bending my upper limbs, I push myself up into a sitting position. “Nnh,” I grumble unpleasantly, rubbing at a sore spot on my neck. A fading sore spot I might add. “Yes it hurt,” I say in an irked tone. “But I’m fine now. Am I supposed to be fine, after falling down stairs?” “Why wouldn’t you be?” Scootaloo asks curiously, as a third older pony also runs up to us. It’s a powder blue unicorn mare, with a rounded scruffy purple mane, strangely vivid in its two colors, purple eyes, and I can’t see her cutie mark because she’s facing us. “Are you okay, filly?” she says in a shrill voice along the lines of Bonbon in that one Lyra video. “Are you hurt? Didn’t you see those stairs? What are you doing? Oh gosh, be right back!” She runs away then, and lights up her horn, and she has some sort of elaborate glass apparatus set up, filtering red into yellow, or... something. Her magic spins around it like wispy spider webs, glowing around the valves and turning them carefully until the crucible at the bottom stops bubbling. While she’s doing... that, I get myself to a standing position, and push at my curls with a hoof, settling them more... comfortably on my shoulder. “Sorry,” I say to the two of them. “I’m still not walking so good, I guess.” I look around at the... the ampitheater we’re in, saying, “What is this place?” What look like stone walls rise overhead, to a sloping roof that’s parted like so many teeth, spreading its maw to let in the open sun, cascading down the walls to light up our location. The floor is just dirt, significantly lower than ground level outside. “Study hall, right?” Apple Bloom says patiently, “You forgot already? We saw a stallion, who said!” “Oh, yeah... yep, guess I... heheh. I remember now, thanks Apple Bloom.” I try smiling at her, though she doesn’t take as much comfort it in as I’d wish. There are a couple ponies in here, no more than a handful. Hoofful. Armful? Legful? There are tables set up in a ring around the room, atop cabinets with many drawers in them, and on the tables are what appear to be science projects. Appear, because one of them is just a pony ringing a series of triangle bells, listening to them each time, and another is... is that really? No, couldn’t be. My attention is diverted by a loud and relatively echoey “Woah!” in the distance. “C’mon let’s go see Scootaloo,” Apple Bloom says eagerly, darting skittishly in that direction. “The scholar pony even let her help out!” “Okay, hold your horses I’m...” I try not to giggle. “I’m coming.” She gallops off in that direction, and I walk on past, to the table where Scootaloo is standing. Scootaloo has her wings out with a big grin on her muzzle, and hovering above them is a ball of... rainbow. “They have physical rainbows here,” I realize, my eyes widening as I push myself faster. Come on, come on, yes you have the rhythm, yes got there! I approach with enough time to see the rainbow dissipate, flowing down Scootaloo’s wings like water down a slide, and just sort of fritzling out before it hits the ground. “Yess, that’s 30 seconds longer!” an enthusiastic alto of a mare says, making me look up from Scootaloo shaking out her wings to...Berry...Punch. She must notice me staring, that grape colored pony with a bright, berry colored mane. I don’t have to see her cutie mark to know it. She smiles at me and says, “Oh sweet, a unicorn! Can you use your magic, yet?” “I... no?” I blink. “No I might be able to soon, but—” “Here, catch!” she shouts, tossing a rainbow shaped blob right at my face. I cover my face with... wait, all my hooves are planted. I open one eye to see the blob resolve itself into a neat sphere, like a soap bubble except in true light colors, rather than oil colors. I’m... holding it? It’s hovering right on the tip of my horn making the whole thing feel... tingly. “A-am I using magic?!” I squeak, staring cross-eyed at it. “That’s just some reversified rainbownium I whipped up,” Berry Punch says proudly. “You don’t need magic, because it’s generational. It’s magicking you, not the other way around!” I can feel it magicking me. Six colors slithering down into me, like separate but unified ribbons of light. “Woah, cool!” I exclaim enthusiastically, when I lift my... thing inside my horn just on impulse, and the ball just sucks right into me, shrinking to nothing with a pop. And suddenly I’m dizzy, and my head is large, and left is up, and I can barely even focus on her as she laughs while I fail to form words. “Now you gotta let it go!” she crows. “How?!” I manage to say, my hooves feeling like jelly as everything lights up so weirdly swirling around behind my eyes. “What do I look like, a unicorn?” the yellow and blue no white and purple and pink, no what color is that? earth pony mare tells me. What am I gonna do? I’m freaking out here! I try to imagine a ball of thing just pushing out of me, and maybe imagining is enough. I try to push something—anything to get it out of me! And imagining does it. Not the act of imagining itself, but think of it like this. You have a cup before you, and you want it to rise into the air. So you imagine your hand lifting it up into the air. Then you just try moving things around your arm, and lo and behold you have the power to raise up your hand, just like you imagined. I imagined pushing it out desperately, letting it go or whatever, and as I did it made me aware of a pushy thing in... there, and my horn feels like a deflating balloon as the rainbow rushes out of me, splashing like a liquid, but curving in a neat circular arc that wasn’t a parabolic trajectory at all. I uh... it’s some kind of... distortion in the air? It’s like I’m looking at a spray of water with a rainbow reflecting on it, except there’s no water, and you can see it from the side. “Huh, you desolidified it,” the pony says curiously, who I can now see in her true berry colors. “I guess that’s a thing now, it passes out of a pony, it desolidifies.” As she speaks the rainbow shimmers out of existence. “I just made a rainbow come out of my horn,” I say in blank astonishment. “Heh heh, it was totally making you all dizzy too,” Scootaloo said, “And your horn was all rainbowy. Hey hey miss Shine, could I try making it go into my feathers? Could I have rainbow feathers?” “Not a bad idea cutie,” Berry...Shine says leaning over the table. “It’s not a dye though, remember your magic flows over your feathers. Your friend’s here’s more innieoutieish.” “Is that the technical term?” I ask skeptically. She blinks slowly at me. “Helical convection is the technical term,” she says skeptically, “But I like innieoutieishness better, don’t you?” “I-it’s kinda long,” I admit, trying to think of what a little girl would say. “Maybe just inoutish...ness?” She looks at me silently, until she stops being able to hold back the snicker, lifting a pastern over her mouth. Then she sweeps a hoof into a... ceramic, flower decorated bowl on her table, distracting everypony by saying “Okay, who wants to see what happens if I smash this stuff?” a dollop of gooey reversified rainbownium dripping down her pastern. “Me! Me!” both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo say, and I try to say “Me! Me!” with them, but end up finishing that sentence all by myself, and blushing again. Berry Whatever has a mortar in her other hoof, and just smashes the rainbowy one in it, smushing the stuff around with gusto. When she pulls her hoof back it looks like the mortar is empty. She gives it a shake, and out pops a baseball sized cloud: dark and stormy. “Cool!” the adult mare says, poking it with her hoof. It responds by electrocuting her, lightning leaping down her arm as the cloud explodes with a curt pang. The mare’s body hits the floor, with a wet thud. “Still cool!” her voice comes from behind the table. “Her name’s Berry Shine,” Apple Bloom says to me later, as we finally escape the rainbow hurling pony. “Right, Berry Shine,” I say purposefully, “Got it.” “...you stopped walking again, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo points out unhappily. “Ugh, sorry I swear it’s like chewing gum,” I say in apologetic disgust, looking down at my stupid hooves. “What’s that mean?” Apple Bloom asks curiously. I look at her blankly, but then, “Oh! Some peop...some ponies can’t walk while they chew bubble gum,” I explain. Oh boy I hope they have bubble gum here. “Or...hay...” I add just in case. “Just let me be quiet, I’ll be fine,” I say discontentedly. With my friends treating me like I’m walking on eggshells, we manage to explore the other experiments here. Two ‘study’ laboratories on each end of the study hall, walking from one to the other the student who decided to accompany us explains that these rooms are for big ponies to study in, and they hope that everypony will use them one day. I fail to fall down the stairs a second time, much to Apple Bloom’s relief, though I do have to rest halfway down. Reprogramming your brain that’s already programmed except not is exhausting. One of the ponies, by the name of Orchid Dew is studying soil samples collected from the site of the floraverundum attack. Yes, that’s what she calls it. I have no idea what it means. The professor we spoke with is in the other laboratory wing, busily poking several specimens of sappy green flesh with what looks like a stick, while Aquafresh Colgate (her name is Minuette) watches him engrossedly. To be specific, a pony with rough cut, blue and white hair, with an icy blue coat and bluer eyes, who doesn’t introduce herself at first, aids the professor while he turns to face the three of us who are busily walking up to him at ...my pace. He flips the stick, or... study wand off of his hoof to twirl in the air, only for it to be caught by Minuette, in sparkling blue magic with audible squee as she goes and excitedly starts... poking the plant pieces more. “Hello fillies, I see you found the study hall,” he then says pleasantly, looking down at the three of us. “Ah’m Apple Bloom!” Apple Bloom offers eagerly. “I’m Scootaloo!” Scootaloo responds in turn. “Sweetie Belle,” I say reluctantly. “Professor Turner, at your service good ladies,” he says with a dramatic sweep of his hoof that I assume is supposed to be a bow. “And this is my lovely assistant, Minuette,” She giggles quietly and blushes, waving with her stick floating in the air, but doesn’t otherwise introduce herself. “...what are you doing?” I ask them curiously. Then I shake my head and say, “I mean, pleased to meet you. And what are you doing?” “We’re trying to see if we can figure out how this archaea achieved its accelerated growth,” the professor says. “Nothing elaborate, mostly just monitoring the specimens to see how the cells divide in response to various treatment.” ColgateMinuette keeps poking them while he talks. “...by poking them with a stick?” Scootaloo asks in confusion. Oh good I was starting to wonder if that was normal. “That’s about the sum of it,” he answers with a smile. Then he goes back to monitoring Minuette’s er... progress. It takes two ponies to poke a thing with a stick apparantly. Scootaloo looks at me and I just lift a hoof up, shrugging. “Bored now,” Scootaloo announces, running off towards where a blue/grey stallion is coaxing a flame over various metal rods. Apple Bloom walks with me as I follow, getting up to him right when Scootaloo jumps in place finishing her question, “...doing?” “Just checking what the specific heat of these metals is today,” he says in a reedy voice. The debonair looking unicorn stallion’s got a really wavy mane spreading around his long horn, in two colors of grey-blue and blue, with pretty eyes of burnt gold in color, and a short little equally wavy tail. What looks like a telescope for a cutie mark. “How d’you do that?” Scootaloo asks chirpily. “Well, this flame here,” he indicates the ...hoof mounted bunsen burner, “Is at a constant 550 degrees. So by measuring how long it takes to cause each of these rods to glow, I can estimate what their specific heat is!” “Don’t you already know that?” I ask skeptically. “I mean, what are they made out of?” “Oh, well this one’s gold, this one is silver, tungsten, and tin,” he says, pointing a hoof at each. “Should give me a good range.” “But I mean... what’s the specific heat of gold?” I ask persistently. That’s the sort of thing you solve in high school chemistry, because they can’t find anything useful for you to discover, so they force you to pretend that it hasn’t already been discovered yet. “It varies, really,” he muses to me, “Seems to stay within 0.1 and 0.3 though, a very easily heated metal.” “O-oh, it changes,” I respond with a blush. I—I must have been thinking about something else. It has been a while since I even thought about chemistry. “Everything changes,” he says with a pretty smile. “The question is to find what it has become, so you know how well your armor is going to hold up to dragon fire, for instance.” “Dragon fire?” Scootaloo says with big eyes. “Fillies!” an urgent voice shouts out from above us at the entrance to the atrium, bursting through and saying, “Are there any fillies here—oop!” Lyra falls down the stairs. She catches herself halfway down, hooves skating on what looks like a flat plane of magic, before depositing herself back on the stairs, to walk down them more carefully. “We really need to put a railing there,” she grumbles. “Professor Heartstrings!” the bunsen wielding pony beside us calls over. Lyra turns and brightens dramatically, the mint green unicorn getting a somewhat unsettlingly broad smile on her face as she immediately gallops over to us. “You can’t possibly have seen the Lurm again?” she said eagerly, “Was it some other creature? You weren’t in the Everfree, were you? Was it a beast? What sort of creature was it? Was it bigger than a breadbox?” “Uhm...” Apple Bloom says, ears down and backing up beside me. Scootaloo being equally confused. So I...don’t back up, and before them, I state to her, “Actually it’s just me. I just had a... question about a monster,” I say unconfidently. “What?” Lyra looks down at me so confused. Her slender, aquamarine barrel is still heaving with her breaths. Did she just... run from wherever she was? “But you said it was really important. And... you found the Lurm and...” her ears start to tilt down. It’d be absolutely adorable if she wasn’t twice my size, oh no wait, still adorable. “It is important,” I assure her. “What’s she talkin’ about, Sweetie?” Apple Bloom asks me in a tiny uneasy voice. “I-it’s nothing,” I tell her nervously, “I mean, it’s just a question about... you know... when we were...” “Oh, um,” Apple Bloom shuts up, lifting a hoof and looking down at it self consciously. “Alright, well, what’s your question?” Lyra says in an irritated alto. “I’m kind of busy today, if you hadn’t noticed.” Oh good grief I can’t ask this in front of them. “I need to ask you um... alone...” I say trying to figure out a good way to justify it. But I simply cannot think of anything, and I’m at the end of my rope. “In private,” I add firmly. Lyra’s looking from them to me. My cotton candy tailed butt is so dead if I screwed this up. Or, my old butt, a life of cursed nothing followed by utter annihilation, a butt to whom I’ll be banished, after everypony panicks about what happened to Sweetie Belle. “Oh, I see,” Lyra says in a tone of quiet comprehension. “You want to join me in a study room then, Sweetie Belle?” I rotate my head around to look back at my friends, saying, “Sorry, girls... it’s nothing big I mean maybe it is, just about my amnesia I mean nothing specific just kind of embarassing.” “If you say so, Sweetie,” Scootaloo says with a lifted eyebrow. Smooth as silk. “I–I’ll be right back, then,” I stutter out, and turn to look at Lyra. “Alright then,” she says with a smile and a wink at me, “Come on we’ll get everything all cleared up, cutie.” Lyra turns on her heels then, and trots over to the stairs. Uh, oops. Okay, walk, yes put hoof down, and pull back up, yes, walk, walk, ugh, walk. She looks back once she reaches the base of the stairs, noticing I’m only following along slowly, and waits for me, saying, “Are you okay?” “I’m fine,” I say tightly, “Just... a little slow because of... um... injury,” “You gonna be okay with the stairs—oh, I guess you are,” she says, as I pass her, then determinedly begin climbing up the stairs. Once we’re at ground level, I find myself at the lead with no idea which study room she wanted to go into. So I just look back and say, “Um, tell me which room to go into,” to her. “Just pick any with a green light,” she says. “The ones in-use have a red one.” I look—oh, there’s a slightly glowing gem right beside the door. I wonder how that works? I pick a random door and say, “...that one.” “O...kay,” she says to me. “You want me to open it?” I blush again, saying, “Y-yeah I don’t have magic yet, so I can’t really turn doorknobs.” Lyra looks at me oddly, then puts her hoof on the doorknob, and the door just clicks open. W-what? “After you,” she says pleasantly, holding it open for me. What? I... I have so many questions. But this is too important to be distracted. I’m up shit creek if I don’t tell her now, and Sweetie Belle might be in even worse. So I walk in the room, Lyra follows, closing the door, and she turns to face me, saying in an excited tone, “So, what was your question? What did you really want to talk about?” “I–I just wanted to ask a question,” I say swallowing tightly, “About Nightmare Moon.”