The chaotic, rainbow swirl of the tunnel receded from Twilight's vision. Her feet, her human feet that she'd never fully grown accustomed to, caught on the pavement, and she stumbled backward, landing on her beskirted bottom with an oof. Panting, gasping, and rubbing her butt, Twilight looked around at the familiar sights of Canterlot High – the statue behind her, the brick building in front. She'd made it.

Twilight rose to her feet and tore off, trying and succeeding by necessity to readjust to a human body on the fly. Sunset Shimmer's plea had been vague, curt, and barely qualified as a complete thought, but it was enough to make Twilight drop everything and run through the portal in the cold grip of panic.

"Something wrong," the message had simply read. "Come quickly."

Lacking context, her mind tried desperately to interpret Sunset's message. Frightening and improbable scenarios arose in her mind, only to be discarded once something new came up that topped it. She passed the minutes thus, scared for her friend and trying desperately to ignore her burning, cramping muscles, until she arrived at the cozy, if not particularly stylish, two-storey apartment that Sunset Shimmer called home.

Twilight collided with the door and leaned upon it, pounding rapidly with hands kept curled into fists out of habit. "Sunset! Sunset!"

Or so she meant to say. What actually came out between gasps was an airy "Sahhsaaah... Sahhsaaaaaah!"

The wood of the door wasn't particularly dense – Twilight could hear Sunset's muffled voice on the other end. "That's her at the door now – we'll see you in a little while, okay?"

Was she on the phone? Twilight's lips tugged downward – how could Sunset be holding a conversation on the phone if she were in dire, mortal peril? Twilight continued her furious pounding, until the door unlatched and opened, and Twilight fell forward into Sunset's arms with a "wagh!"

"Twilight!" Concern rang in Sunset's voice – concern for Twilight, oddly enough. Twilight peeked at her face and saw that same concern etched onto her stunning features, but the girl looked, sounded, and for that matter felt no worse for wear. "Sheesh, look at you. You've sweated through your shirt like a hundred times."

"Ran... legs... body... feet... butt hurts..." Twilight panted, gulping down lungfuls of slightly stale, recirculated air.

Sunset Shimmer herded her houseguest inside and led her to a couch with faded purple upholstry, where Twilight gratefully collapsed. Sunset excused herself to the bathroom and stepped away, leaving Twilight to marinate for a while in her own sweat. The apartment was spartan, but well-kept, with inexpensive furniture, a dated-looking TV, a well-varnished coffee table with a pair of wine glasses and a bottle of something cheap... an odd detail, Twilight thought, but a trivial one.

Sunset returned in a moment with a wet towel and a paper cup of tap water. Twilight rubbed down her face with the former, and greedily swallowed the latter, while Sunset watched bemusedly. "Did you sprint all the way here from school, or something?"

Twilight polished off her cup, sighed with relief, and cleared her throat. "Had to. Got your message. Everyone... everything... okay?"

A faint blush dusted Sunset's cheeks, and she turned away from Twilight. "Yeah, um... look, why don't you relax for a moment and we can talk about it when you've caught your breath a little bit more?"

"Can't. Need explanation. Problem. What is." She folded the soiled towel neatly and placed it on the coffee table. "Self-immolation? Apple Bloom, perhaps?"

Sunset's head snapped back to face Twilight, and her eyes flew open incredulously. "What? No! Wait, why Apple––"

"Flurry Heart kidnapped by evil hoteliers?"

"No! It's... who's Flurry Heart? Isn't that your––"

Twilight grabbed fistfulls of Sunset's blouse and pulled their faces together. "Human Tirek broke free from Human Tartarus and is rampaging through the greater metropolitan––"

"Okay, you need to slow down. Another mouthful like that, and I'm pretty sure you're going to pass out." Sunset dislodged Twilight's hands from her blouse and scooted away from her. "Deep breaths. Steady."

Twilight wanted to argue, but acquiesced – her vision was darker and blurrier than it normally should have been. So she leaned back and sank into the squishy couch, until her heartbeat slowed and her breathing steadied and she could talk without risking a loss of consciousness.

"Okay." Twilight let out a breath, sat straighter, and cleared her throat. "I'm good. Now. What is the problem? You sounded so freaked out in your message. Uncharacteristically non-grammatical, too."

There was a moment's hesitation on Sunset's part before she answered. "It's... probably better if I show you."

Sunset's apartment had a kitchenette adjacent to the living room, separated by a swinging door. She placed her hand on the door, and looked back at Twilight. "Brace yourself for this," she muttered, and gave the door a shove, holding it open with the length of her arm.

"Oh, come on," said Twilight dismissively. "I've seen your kitchen before, Sunset; it can't possibly beaaaAAAAAAAAAAGH!" She recoiled, clutching her limbs against her chest. "Sunset! Who and what and how and why?!"

"All pertinent questions," said Sunset. "And I hope you'll help me answer them."

An eyeball floated in the middle of the kitchen, a foot off the ground. It was gargantuan, and perfectly spherical, with jagged red blood vessels running along its sclera, a vivid blue iris, and a pupil that dilated and constricted at an even rhythm. It fixed its monocular gaze on Twilight's own, and stared her down, silent, unblinking, and unmoving.

Twilight dared to uncurl a single finger from one of her tightly clenched fists and pointed it at the Eyeball. "That's... that's new, right?"

Sunset nodded her confirmation. The Eyeball's pulsing pupil spun counterclockwise.

"Right. I thought so. Because I don't remember that being here last time I was over. It seems like the sort of thing I'd remember."

"Yeah, well..." Sunset released the door and let it swing closed, blocking the Eyeball from sight. "Didn't exactly see it coming myself when I rolled out of bed, so. Imagine how I felt when I saw it."

Twilight stepped up to the door, pushed it open slightly, and peeked through. The Eyeball swiveled in the air to meet her gaze through the crack in the door, and Twilight yiped softly, scrambling backward.

"Yeah, pretty much like that," said Sunset. She folded her arms, with one forearm sticking up and a thumb pressed against her chin. "I'm sorry for freaking you out with my message. I went a little nuts and my first instinct was to pick up the journal and write to you. Probably should have taken a moment to calm down before I did, but in my defense..."

She put her thumb between her front teeth and bit down gently.

"Yeah, no, don't worry about it." Twilight looked curiously at Sunset. "It hasn't done anything... like... sinister, has it?"

"No. Nothing yet. Nothing... intentional..."

Twilight frowned. "What do you mean by that? What did it do?"

"It... It, um..." Another blush, darker this time, colored Sunset's face, and she turned her head to avoid Twilight's gaze. "Do, um... do ponies in Equestria say 'cockblock?' It's been so long that I can't remember if that's a thing over there, or just over here."

Twilight's eyes narrowed to half-slits. "What."

"Oh, I guess they don't. It means––"

"I know what it means, Sunset!" Twilight fumed, stamping closer to her friend. "That's what it did that freaked you out so badly that you couldn't even manage two whole sentences of description? I was worried sick about you – about everyone! You were hurt for all I knew, or dead, or... or hurt and dying! Or something else awful!"

Sunset whirled around. "Hey, something awful did happen, alright? Do you know how long it's been since I've had a shot at getting with a guy? I was evil the last time I got laid, Twilight. That's how long!"

"That's..." Twilight stepped back, blinking. "More than I think I really needed to know, first of all, and second, that's not the point I'm contending here."

Sunset scoffed and brushed past Twilight, moving toward the couch. She leaned against an armrest and wrapped her arms around her midsection. "Look, it's... difficult, alright? Living the kind of life I do. Even when you've got the best friends in the world, you can get lonely – longing for the kind of intimacy that mere friendship can't provide."

"Sunset, that's sad and all, but I think you might be ignoring what I'm trying to say––"

"Sometimes that means you make a call to someone you know should be off-limits, and you invite him over for movies and cheap wine that you bought with your fake I.D. Sometimes you wind up re-opening old wounds and crossing lines, lines you drew in the sand to protect the both of you from each other. And from yourselves! From making mistakes that would just make life more complicated for the both of you!"

"Why do you have a fake I.D.?"

"And maybe, sometimes, you step so far beyond those lines that you just know there's no going back." Sunset bowed her head and shut her eyes, and Twilight could see the tears pooling between her lids, beading on her eyelashes. "The die is cast, the Rubiclop is crossed, your panties are... somewhere... you're not sure where; you lost track of them at some point amid all the groaning and groping and gyrating. Maybe it's the half-glass of wine you got through before you pounced on one another, or the lingering attraction drawing you irrevocably together, but one way or another, you find yourselves stumbling into the kitchen, a tangle of wet lips and roaming hands, grunting and gasping, desperate to form the two-backed beast of forbidden teenage love – or the right angle of forbidden teenage love, which was kind of the direction things were going."

Nervous sweat prickled Twilight's forehead. "Uh, do you need a moment? 'Cuz I'm starting to think I don't really need to be here for this."

"Because maybe you maneuvered him into the kitchen on purpose; maybe you've always wanted to get bent over the kitchen sink, specifically, because maybe you get thirsty sometimes during the act, and maybe nothing kills the mood faster than getting up for a swig of Gatorade mid-coitus, and having a water faucet three inches away from your panting mouth can be incredibly convenient, you know?"

Sunset opened her teary eyes and looked at Twilight, frowning slightly. "Then again, maybe you... wouldn't know about that...?"

Twilight's face burned. "Hey!"

"But," Sunset continued, irritation now simmering in her voice. "Before you can even get your proverbial foot in the door and forever change the nature of your post-relationship relationship with your ex, he spots an obscenely large, cosmic Eyeball where there shouldn't be one. Then he freaks out and starts babbling in terror, yanks his clothes back on, and––"

"Ex-boyf – seriously?" The bottle and glasses and their purpose came into sharp, horrible focus. "You tried to have sex with Flash?!"

Sunset's arms dropped to her sides. "Oh. Yeah, um. I guess I should have led up to that a little more smoothly."

"Sunset!"

"Well, if it's any consolation, I doubt he's ever going to be able to look at me again without thinking of today, alright?"

"You – I – he – that – ohhhh...!" Twilight stormed over to the couch, past Sunset, grabbed a throw-pillow, buried her face in it, and screamed a long, throat-rattling scream of exasperation.

When she was finished, and turned around to look at the nonplussed Sunset again, her face was calm – her outrage was left behind on the pillow as a vaguely circular stain, the size of her mouth. "Alright," she said serenely. "We're getting off track here. Whatever reasons you may have had for calling me over here, and however..." She inhaled. "Annoyed I might be that you had your impeccably manicured hands all over my not-boyfriend... you were right to call me over."

Sunset smirked and stretched out her hand to regard her fingernails. "They are pretty nice, aren't they?"

"Mm." Twilight rolled her eyes. "Look, let's just... put all our other concerns aside for now, and just work this problem. Alright?"

Sunset shrugged. "Sounds good to me."

Awkward silence settled on the pair, as they gazed anywhere but at one another. Or at the kitchen.

"Incidentally," said Twilight. "How can you afford a place like this?"

Sunset shrugged. "Helps that I live in a crummy neighborhood."

---

To Twilight, there was nothing quite like an educational environment to melt away negativity. The air hung heavy with the sharp tang of disinfectant, sweeter than any perfume, and the sterile white glow and subtle hum of the fluorescent lights overhead lent a clinical air to her surroundings.

At the front of the room was a computer console and a polished black table, where Sunset sat beside a stack of science textbooks. Twilight ran her fingertip along the top row of buttons on the keyboard, and "qwerty" appeared on the computer's screen beside a blinking cursor.

Sunset watched her with a wry smile. "I've seen actual kids in actual candy stores who were less excited than you are whenever you see a computer."

Twilight grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. It's just..."

"Nah, yeah, I get it. No judgment here. Revel in the splendor of human technological sophistication, my friend."

"I had a computer back when I lived in the library, you know, but it was nowhere near as sophisticated as this one. Puts every piece of machinery I own to shame." Twilight propped her elbows on the console and rested her cheeks in her palms. "I wish I could show this stuff to Starlight..."

Sunset's smile flipped into a frown at the mention of Twilight's student. She picked up a textbook and flipped open to a random page. "Ah yes. Her. And how is she doing with her studies?"

"Oh. Uh, y'know." Twilight forced a shaky smile. "Progressing. Naturally. Learning a lot about the magic of friendship. Every friend made and every lesson learned is another step on the road to redemption, y'know. Heh."

Sunset's eyes flicked up at Twilight briefly, narrowed, then returned to the pages of her book. "Hmm. How lovely."

Twilight's face fell, and she mentally slapped herself – Sunset always got weird whenever the subject of Starlight Glimmer came up. Insecurity, Twilight always figured – unfounded, to be sure, but it was something she could sympathize with.

She rounded the console and sat beside Sunset, the stack of textbooks between the two of them. "I'm not replacing you with Starlight, Sunset. You don't need to be worried."

"Who said anything about being worried? Or replaced? I sure didn't use those words." Sunset flipped to another page.

Twilight bit her lip. "Look, I'm sorry for bringing her up; I know you don't like talking about her. But I promise, there's enough room in my heart for the both of you, and you don't have anything to be jealous about."

"Also not a word I used," said Sunset sharply.

"You don't need to say it; it's plain as day how you feel. And you don't need to feel that way! Look, Starlight and I came into each other's lives at a very unique time, when she needed guidance that only I could give her. I mean, she was evil, and tried to brainwash people, repented––"

"Oh yes. Such unique circumstances."

Twilight tossed her hands up with a groan. "You two are nothing alike, okay? Your situations are completely different. Just because I redeemed her with friendship after she tried to perform acts of unspeakable villainy, that doesn't make her..."

Sunset glared at Twilight.

"I mean, she, um..." Twilight coughed. "Sh-she's wracked with inner guilt and turmoil over her past actions. She, uh..."

Sunset raised an eyebrow.

"She has trouble making... making new friends... and, uh, she's..." It came to her in a flash of inspiration, and Twilight grinned triumphantly, clapping her fists together, and pointing her knuckles at Sunset. "She's purple!"

Sunset's eyelid twitched. She slammed her book shut, sucked in a breath, and opened her mouth to speak.

The classroom door opened, silencing her preemptively. A bespectacled, purple face peeked timidly through. "Sorry I'm late. I wanted to check up on a few things before I headed over here. Uh, any new developments I should know about?"

Sunset sucked her teeth and looked away from the Twilight sitting next to her. "Nothing that springs to mind."

"Phew. I'd really hate to have spent so much time crunching those numbers only for something new to come along and throw all my data completely out of whack. Not that I don't enjoy crunching numbers, but I understand that you're kinda looking for expediency here." She glanced at Twilight, looking her from head to toe quickly with a faint blush. "Hi, Princess Me."

"Hey, Other Me." Twilight waggled her fingers. "You're looking awfully bespectacled today."

"Right back at ya! Except, uh, without the, um... because obviously, you don't wear glasses, and I just... I mean, uh..." Bespectacled Twilight coughed to clear her throat and shuffled into the classroom. "Anyway."

Sunset shut the book and slid off the table, dusting off her bottom and sticking her hands in her back pockets. "What've you got for me?"

"A theory. Not a whole lot more than that." She shrugged, glanced at Twilight again, flicked her gaze over her counterpart's bare legs, blushed brighter, and turned to the classroom's whiteboard. "This actually dovetails nicely with a project I've been working on since the Friendship Games – a working theory of interdimensional dynamics."

Bespectacled Twilight picked up a marker and drew an irregularly shaped blob on the whiteboard. "So this is us, right? This is our reality." She drew another blob beside the first, its edge pressing against the first. "This one here is Equestria. Now, as far as I can tell, based on what little info I've gathered on the subject, our dimensions sort of 'lean' up against one another. Along that point of contact, you can find the occasional spot where the border's a little weaker, places that make interdimensional travel possible. The portal in the statue, that's one spot: a stable, two-way portal that connects this world and Equestria."

"Makes sense," Sunset said, nodding her comprehension. "But how does that relate to the situation at hand?"

Bespectacled Twilight shuffled her feet and looked down. "Well, uh, recall if you will that a certain... someone... sorta opened a bunch of additional portals into Equestria and almost destroyed the fabric of reality." She coughed again. "If I'm right, then not all those portals opened into Equestria. A few popped up along an edge of our reality that didn't lean against another."

"So what did they open into?" asked Twilight. "Where'd Sunset's new roomie come from?"

Bespectacled Twilight drew a wide, asymmetrical oval around the two blobs. "According to my figures, the only dimension leaning against ours is Equestria. We're surrounded, on all other sides, by literal nothing – the negative space between realities, in which all our universes float, the same way stellar bodies float around in space within a universe. Who's to say our friend didn't come from there?"

Sunset titled her head with a quizzical expression. "So you're saying it came from... what, outer space?"

"Farther-out-there space, if you will. But yes, that's my working hypothesis. Of course, if we could communicate with it, it'd make matters a lot easier. But for all we know, we're as incomprehensible to it as it is to us." Bespectacled Twilight capped her marker and leaned against the whiteboard, partially erasing her drawing by mistake. She noticed, eep'd, and scrambled away, smoothing out her skirt.

"Huh. Neat." Sunset cupped her chin in her palms. "So. How do we make it go away?"

Bespectacled Twilight's spectacles slid down her nose, and she pushed them back up with a fingertip. "That's a complicated question that I don't actually have an answer to at the moment. B-but I'm sure that, between me and, uh, Princess Me, we can work out a solution."

Twilight nodded. "I'll need access to your notes and research materials, though. And a place to stay, too. Do you think Pinkie Pie would mind another slumber party?"

"Might draw some questions from her parents. Questions that they're probably not prepared to have answered." Sunset snapped her fingers. "You wanna crash with me?"

"No offense, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable sharing a roof with your, um... other houseguest. Maybe I'll just––"

"Stay at my place!" Bespectacled Twilight interjected. A grin bubbled on her face. "I-I mean, if you want to, anyway. It'd be convenient, since, you know, you need access to my research stuff. Plus, we'd probably have the place to ourselves – my parents are gonna be out of town for a few days, so, you know, there's no chance of anyone walking in on the two of us sleeping together!"

Twilight's eyes flew open; her mind blanked, and her face blanched. Her counterpart's face was a perfect, albeit bespectacled, mirror for her own. She turned around and planted her forehead against the whiteboard.

Sunset's and Twilight's eyes met.

"I mean..." Twilight tapped her knuckles together. "She's not wrong. If we're gonna collaborate on this, then it's probably best that we spend as much time together as possible. Staying with her would make a lot of things easier."

"Yeah, yeah." Sunset blew a lock of hair out of her face and turned away. "So what about me? What am I gonna do 'til we get this sorted out? I mean, it's great that you two are shacking up, but I'm the one who has to share a living space with a thingy from outer space, recall."

"Father-out-there space," Bespectacled Twilight corrected, turning back around. "I don't know that there's any need to do anything, per se. The Eyeball hasn't done anything bad, right? Besides that thing with Flash Sentry." A snorty giggle escaped her. "Goodness, he's never going to be able to look at you as a sexual being again, is he?"

Twilight and Sunset shared a look of irritation that lasted until Bespectacled Twilight finished laughing. "Anyway. If it's not acting maliciously, or giving any indication that it wants to hurt you, or even has the ability to hurt you, then why rush to judgment? Heck, maybe you could try communicating with it – if you can form some sort of rapport with it, learn something valuable, then it might help matters along a lot."

Sunset pointed at Bespectacled Twilight, frowned, and dropped her arm back to her side. "I can't actually find any fault in your logic. Much as it annoys me to admit it. Befriend a giant Eyeball in my kitchen... not the weirdest thing I've done since coming here, I'm sure, but still. Pretty damn weird."

"Well, if you're uncomfortable with it, then you can always..." Bespectacled Twilight cupped her hands behind her back and looked at the ground. "Come and spend the night at my place? With Princess Me and I?"

Twilight looked at Sunset and gave her a frantic, anxious nod of encouragement. Chaperone, she mouthed.

Sunset glanced between the two Twilights. A smirk crossed her face for an instant. "Nah. I think I'm good. Let it never be said that a floaty Eyeball chased Sunset Shimmer out of her own apartment. And, wow, that sure was a sentence, wasn't it?"

"Off topic," said Bespectacled Twilight, looking up at the Princess. "But, uh, I have an experiment or two I'd like to run with you, as long as the two of us are together. Just, you know, stuff like, uh..." She looked away, mumbling. "Genetics, and chromosomes, and... whether or not the two of us look identical naked..."

Twilight slumped.

---

Sunset Shimmer entered her kitchen, with a tin paint tray and a squeegee under one arm, and a gallon of eyedrops in the other. "Hey," she said. "How was your day?"

The Eyeball regarded her in silence.

Sunset sighed. "Don't know why I even bother."

In three days of living with her new roommate, she'd failed to establish a dialogue with it. She spoke, and it responded in its own fashion, but neither she nor the Eyeball seemed to understand the other.

"So, I was thinking," she said, setting her things down on the kitchen counter. "I noticed that you don't have any way to moisturize, right? No eyelid?"

The Eyeball's pupil constricted to a pinprick before expanding outward rapidly again.

"Uh-huh. So I was thinking, maybe I could help you out with that. I picked up some stuff to, um... moisturize you." Sunset uncapped the eyedrops and poured a generous amount into the tray, then dunked her squeegee into it. "I'm not sure what'd work best on you, since, you know, you're an Eyeball from outer sp – or farther-out-there space, rather. But this stuff's supposed to be for extra-sensitive eyes, so I figured, when in doubt..."

For several seconds, the Eyeball vibrated rapidly, with thick lines like cables undulating across its pearly white surface.

"Yeah, uh. Me too, buddy." Sunset raised her squeegee, droplets sprinkling into the fluid-filled tray.

To her surprise, the Eyeball didn't move at all as she circled it, gently stroking her squeegee over its rubbery surface. Either it understood her request, or it intuited that it needed to remain still for the procedure – which, now that Sunset thought about it, would indicate that it was capable of intuiting that the procedure would be good for it, and that it didn't mind being subjected to gentle, yet thorough, moistening.

"I can't speak for the both of us," Sunset muttered, "but I for one am learning quite a bit about you right now. Of course, I maintain this would have gone faster if we could just chat over coffee. Too bad the machine's fried. Meant to get it fixed, but then I spent my coffee maker funds on that wine." She sighed. "For all the good that did me."

Sunset dipped the squeegee into the tray again and squatted to rub the Eyeball's underside. "Not that you'd even be able to drink it. Not sure where on your body you have room for a urinary system, and finding out is a bridge farther than I think I really wanna take this little experiment. Although I guess it'd be a good way to get myself published, make a name for myself in cryptozoology, or whatever. Not a field I really saw myself going into as a filly, but... what else do I have to look forward to out here in humanland?"

Finished with its underside, she rose and dunked her squeegee in the tray again, and began working her way to the top of the Eyeball. "Y'know, what's funny? Speaking of? I have no idea what the hell I'm gonna do once high school is over. I mean, I didn't really have any long-term game-plan besides 'amass phenomenal power' when I came here from Equestria. I guess the sky's the limit, but..."

Sunset caught a glimpse of her warped reflection in the Eyeball's surface and sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't just go back to Equestria and try to pick things up over there. But what would I even do? I can't face Celestia again, not after the way I left things. Maybe I could work something out with Twilight – live with her for a while – but with Starlight in the picture..."

The Eyeball's surface hissed and sizzled. A droplet ran down its surface and splattered against the floor.

"Yeah, I'm being petty about Starlight freakin' Glimmer. I know it; I own it. It's just..." Sunset turned away from the Eyeball and dropped the squeegee in the tin, and wrapped her arms around herself with a sigh.

"Don't get me wrong; I love my friends. But Twilight... I feel a lot closer to her than I do to the others. Like there's stuff about me that only she could understand. I thought we had the kind of friendship that was, I dunno, special, or something. Now that she has Starlight Glimmer in her life, where do I fit in? Important as she is to me, I feel like I'm less important to her now. Not to mention this thing with Flash, which I knew was a mistake on many different levels. Not the least of which being because the two of them habitually collide with and make goo-goo eyes at one another whenever they're in the same reality."

She sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and chuckled wetly. "I guess I was just lonely. And he was... convenient. And willing. And have you seen his pecs?"

The Eyeball whirled around, its pupil exploding into a six-pointed star, before normalizing back into a head-sized circle.

"Silly me." Sunset chuckled again. "'Course you have."

---

Shattering glass and a hissed curse from downstairs wrenched Sunset out of her dreamless sleep.

"Shut the hell up," someone hissed. "You're gonna get us arrested."

Robbers. Loud, incompetent robbers.

Sunset reached for her nightstand and groped vainly for her phone, until she remembered that she'd left it downstairs. The intruders had probably pocketed it.

"Screw it," she muttered to herself. "I'm not helpless."

Sunset rolled out of the covers, took hold of the cord to her bedside lamp, and freed it from the wall. Lifting the lamp, she crept silently to her door.

"Ooh! Lacy." One of the voices, distinctly female, carried up to her room. "Check it out, bro. Think these'd look good on me?"

"What the hell, sis?! I don't wanna think about that! Put 'em down and go wash your hands before you touch anything else."

Sunset flushed. She'd liked those panties...

She heard a door swing open from downstairs and a loud, shocked gasp from the woman. "Dude, you gotta get a look at this!"

"Get a look at – whoa! Sweet mother of––"

"I know, right? Frickin' sweet, isn't it?"

"It's a stupid, pointless, worthless-ass kitchen island. Damn hipsters these days with their damn hipster decorations."

"Nuh-uh. We're taking this."

"Get serious."

"I am. I want this and I'm taking it home."

"What could this possibly be worth? The TV might get us a couple hundred; the cell phone definitely will; we haven't even been upstairs yet, and who knows what's up there. You really wanna waste time jackin' this... this... whatever the hell it is?"

"It's an Eyeball, Tryhard. Duh."

"Duh yourself. I wash my hands of it. Speaking of, don't forget to – uh, what's it doing?"

"I dunno. It wasn't doing it when I came in, though. I'm not sure if––"

There was an otherworldy shriek that curdled Sunset's blood, and then a cry of terror from the woman. "Get it off of me! Get it off!"

"Hang on! I'll – I'll get a knife!"

"A knife?! What's that gonna do?!"

"Well if someone hadn't sold our guns to buy these stupid masks and turtlenecks––"

"They're designer, you ingrate! Good shit costs money! Now shut up and – urk!"

"You miserable bastard; that was my sister! I'm gonna – ah, shit, no, lemme go! Lemme go! I don't wanna die! I don't wanna––"

Silence reigned.

Sunset crept downstairs, the lamp clutched tightly in her hands. She tiptoed to the kitchen, shutting her front door as she went – the robbers had left it ajar, the lock probably picked or broken.

Gulping, Sunset shouldered the kitchen door open.

The Eyeball floated serenely in the center of the room, its iris glowing with a pale blue light. Its pupil looked wider, fuller, darker. Of the robbers, there was no sign.

Sunset fainted.

---

"I need that thing gone, Twilight." Sunset clutched a mug of the Cakes' overpriced brew between trembling fingers.

Princess Twilight sipped from a steaming mug of the Cakes' surprisingly affordable green tea. "Did you sleep at all last night?"

"Of course not!" Sunset snapped, sipping. "Spent the whole night on the couch with the heaviest thing in the house that I could find."

"To defend against home invasion, or the Eyeball?"

"Duh." Another shaky sip.

Twilight drank deeply from her cup. "If it's any consolation, I'm sure you're perfectly safe. If the Eyeball could do that to the robbers, it's plausible that it could have done it to you at any time. The fact that it did it to them, and not you, suggests that it may have been acting in your defense – maybe it was protecting you from what it perceived as a threat. Maybe it likes you."

Sunset glared bloodshot daggers at Twilight. "That. Does not. Make me. Feel better." A long slurp followed, during which she never broke eye contact with the Princess.

"Need I remind you that you decided to stay put. Coulda come and stayed with me and Other Me." Twilight shrugged. "Although I don't think that would have been much of an upgrade. We have made a lot of progress working together while sharing the same space, granted, but it's also kinda... awkward. Hanging out with yourself isn't all it's cracked up to be." She lifted her mug to her lips and muttered into it. "Plus, she keeps trying to peek at me in the shower."

Sunset's jaw dropped. "Twilight. Please tell me you're not comparing your sitcom relationship with your pervy purple doppelganger to me living with a time-bomb that will do unspeakable things to me if I get on its bad side."

Twilight's eyes widened and she set her tea down, lifting her hands defensively. "No no, I didn't meant to – I just thought we were, y'know, venting about our––"

Sunset leaned across the table and pressed her face against Twilight's. "I need that thing gone. Right now. I can't keep living like this. Please, please, please tell me that the two of you worked out something good between pillow fights and spin-the-bottle sessions."

"Not sure how you even play spin-the-bottle with only two people." She unlaced Sunset's hands from her blouse, but kept their fingers clutched together. Their eyes met. "Look, we... we do have a theory, alright? We were gonna wait for a while, run a few tests, but if you're really this worked up, then..."

Sunset nodded furiously.

Twilight squeezed Sunset's fingers. "We're gonna need some back-up."

---

Rarity leaned from side to side, meeting and never losing the Eyeball's gaze. "Is it just me," she murmured, "or do the two of us have the same eye color?"

"Who knows?" Pinkie chirped. "You know how there's an entire world out there where all of us are ponies? Maybe this thing's from a world where we're all floaty Eyeballs! Maybe this is your alternate universe Eyeball doppelganger!" Pinkie fixed the Eyeball with a grin, and it swiveled to bore into her with its piercing, unyielding gaze. "What do I call you, big guy?"

The Eyeball's pupil swirled and took new shape: a thin, black spiral, rotating counter-clockwise, one which flattened and extended into an undulating line. A ripple ran up and down its length, starting from one end, reaching the other, and then bouncing backward in an endless rhythm that precisely matched Pinkie Pie's heartbeat.

"Think I'll call him 'Ferb,'" said Pinkie.

Seven girls gathered in Sunset's kitchen. They waited for their eighth, commiserating, inspecting Sunset's unwanted houseguest, and – in Rainbow Dash's case – raiding the cupboards and cabinets.

Sunset was less than thrilled with the arrangement. Not that she minded the company, or that she thought the plan wasn't going to work. Weakening the dimensional barriers separating the human world from Equestria nearly had disastrous consequences the last time it happened, but the plan had approval from both Twilights, and Sunset trusted their judgment. If they said that their combined powers would be enough to stabilize an artificially created rift, then Sunset would take them at their word.

It was, to her, more a question of location than anything. "Must we really do this in my apartment?" she groused. "Because I'm not sure ripping apart the space/time continuum is covered in the lease agreement."

Applejack put her hand on Sunset's shoulder. "It ain't like we got a lotta options. Takin' it somewhere else'd just draw lots'a attention that we prob'ly really don't want. I mean, a big ol' thing like this is bound to draw some stares outside."

"Plus," Rainbow Dash added. "Doin' it here means that we can throw a kickass movie night immediately afterward. With wine! I saw that bottle in the cupboard – you've been holdin' out on us!"

Fluttershy nudged Rainbow Dash's shoulder. "Um, not to reopen old wounds, Rainbow," she said. "But remember your little misadventure in ninth grade? I think that's more than enough exposure to alcohol for you. At least until you come of age."

Rainbow Dash flushed, irritated, and folded her arms. Fluttershy smiled and patted her friend on the back.

There was a knock at the front door. Sunset quietly excused herself and went to answer it, letting a slightly disheveled, sleepy-eyed, and thoroughly bespectacled Twilight into the apartment.

"You coulda just opened the door, you know," Sunset said with a yawn. "The lock's kinda busted."

"Wish I could help with that, but my thing is cosmological and thaumaturgical research, development, and analysis. Not locksmithing." A purple disk dangled around Bespectacled Twilight's neck. Its plastic case was dented and blackened, but nevertheless, it thrummed with power.

"Took me the better part of the night to modify and repair this old girl," said Bespectacled Twilight. "She should do the trick. Without ending all life in the multiverse, or making me go all crazy and fiery again."

Sunset pulled Bespectacled Twilight in for a one-armed hug. "Thanks for this. Really."

She returned the grin, and let Sunset lead her into the kitchen with the others. Twilight averted her eyes from her counterpart as soon as the pair entered the room, instead focusing very intently on one of Rainbow Dash's aglets.

Bespectacled Twilight clapped her hands and grinned sleepily. "Okay! So. We all ready to do this?"

Sunset spoke before anyone else could: "There are no acceptable answers besides 'yes, yes, for the love of all that is good and holy.'"

Murmurs to that effect resounded throughout the room.

Bespectacled Twilight nodded. "Alright then. So. Everybody knows their role?"

"Hold hands with Applejack and shoot a rainbow out of my boobs," Rainbow Dash muttered. "Just like at Thunderlane's Bar Mitzvah."

The girls linked hands and formed a semicircle in front of the Eye, with Sunset in the center. Bespectacled Twilight stood off to the side, looking uncertainly at the Eye.

"You're absolutely sure you want to get rid of it?" Bespectacled Twilight said hesitantly. "I mean, this isn't the best part of town, and it does make a handy home defense system."

"It ate my robbers," Sunset groused. "It's not that I'm ungrateful for the gesture, but... I mean, you can't just eat criminals. You know? There's something wrong with it. Imagine if you all had eaten me when I was bad."

Bespectacled Twilight blushed, turned her head, and coughed.

The Eye gazed at Sunset, and Sunset gazed back. Then its pupil elongated obscenely, stretching out of its body. The others, aghast, watched in horrified fascination as a shape emerged – a human body, coated in black slime, yet with visibly female curves. Another body, a man's, slithered from the Eye's pupil, and plopped on top of the first.

Sunset's legs buckled. Twilight and Rarity, on either side of her, held her up. Fluttershy broke ranks and rushed to the pair of bodies as the Eye's pupil receded and returned to normal. She knelt and cradled the man's head in her hands, leaning her ear close to its face.

"Alive," she declared. "Both of them. I think."

The man rolled off of the body beneath him and huddled on the ground, fetal. "Eyes," he whispered. "Eyes in the dark. Vision in the inky black. Bottomless, topless, inside and all around, yet nowhere. Make it stop."

"It never stops," said the woman in the same tiny, scared voice. "Endless black. Everywhere, the eyes, piercing my flesh..."

Sunset looked from one, to the next, to the Eyeball. "Neato. Fluttershy?"

Fluttershy guided the pair away from the Eyeball, away from the radius of the spell, and returned to the semicircle, linking hands with Pinkie Pie. "Ready when you are."

Energy crackled and rippled around the seven as auras shimmered around their bodies. They sprouted ears and wings and ponytails, and their bodies lifted slowly, hovering mere inches off the ground. Hair and clothing whipped around them; cabinets and cupboards flapped and slapped noisily as gusts of energy swirled through the room.

Sunset's eyes met the Eyeball one last time. Its pupil shifted into a new shape – a U, it looked like, crude and lopsided. Then its iris flashed once.

Sunset frowned. She tried to say something.

Then their auras coalesced into spheres in front of their chests. Seven beams of seven different lights lanced out and collided in the same spot, in front of the Eye, blocking it from Sunset's view. Then an eighth light joined it, a white light, shining from the opened mouth of Bespectacled Twilight's device.

The fabric of reality gave way, and a vortex of light and darkness appeared. Inside, swirls and whorls and patterns churned and frothed, in every color conceivable, in grays and whites and blacks, in tones and hues unfathomable. Shrieks and screams and bellows of fury, of triumph, of agony and defeat, resounded from inside the vortex. The Eyeball drifted forward, into the vortex, and was gone. Bespectacled Twilight slammed the device shut, and the magic maintaining the portal ceased. Gradually, the seven drifted back to the ground; their auras and extraneous pony parts vanishing.

For a long, pregnant moment, none of them spoke. Sunset broke the silence. "So," she panted. "Universe still seems to be here. Gonna go out on a limb, say the spell worked."

"As an expert in virtually every scientific field known to human and ponykind," Twilight added, glancing around the room. "I'm forced to corroborate your findings. Spell worked. Everyone's alive. And there's no sign of any floaty Eyeballs."

Pinkie Pie clicked her tongue. "Darn shame."

---

Sunset bid each of her friends farewell with a hug and a personal word of thanks. "Just gimme a day or two to rest and tidy up, and we'll have that movie night." she promised.

"With wine?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Probably not. Pizza, though."

Rainbow Dash's hopeful expression vanished, and she sighed. "That's... fine. I guess."

Fluttershy insisted on personally accompanying the traumatized robbers to the nearby police precinct, with the others traveling as escort. Twilight lingered with Sunset after they left, giving her bespectacled counterpart a shaky smile and a noncommittal response when asked whether she'd see her at home.

Sunset watched them leave with a smile, her eyes lingering on Bespectacled Twilight. "Easy money says she makes a pass at you before the night's over."

"Not a bet I particularly want to take," Twilight sighed. "I swear, if I wake up with her spooning me from behind one more time––"

Sunset's laughter killed the rest of that sentence, and through Twilight tried to be indignant, she was soon laughing along with her.

"Hey, so, Twilight," said Sunset, when their mirth had finally run dry. "I want to apologize for that thing with Flash. I know the two of you... well, y'know."

"Yes, I do know. You're not incorrect." Twilight sighed and shook her head, a melancholy smile on her face. "It's alright. I mean... kinda makes sense that the two of you would hook up at least once. And something tells me the H.M.S. Flash Sentry, Prince Consort to the Princess of Friendship isn't a ship that's gonna leave drydock anytime soon, no matter how many notebooks I fill with that exact phrase. So I can't exactly hold it against you, now, can I?"

Sunset blinked. "Er... notebooks? Plural?"

"A girl's gotta have a hobby." Twilight shrugged and stepped closer to Sunset. "Y'know, I wasn't planning on going back for another day or two. Maybe we could do something, just the two of us? We haven't really had time to stop and catch up since I've been here. I mean, except for Sugarcube Corner. Which was mostly business."

Sunset bit her lip. "You sure you can afford to dilly-dally here for much longer? I hear being a Princess is a lot of work. To say nothing of being a teacher."

"Spike's ruling as regent until such time as I return. He's very efficient. Brutal and tyrannical, but efficient. Equestria's well taken care of, I assure you. Although it might be in dire need of a steam-cleaning when I get home."

Sunset stared blankly at her friend. "Was that an auditory hallucination from sleep deprivation, or did you just say what I think you just said?"

"Depends on what you think I said. As for teaching..." Twilight leaned forward and wrapped Sunset in a tight hug. "It's an important part of my life, true. But you're every bit as important to me, Sunset."

Sunset, exhausted and tongue-tied, squeezed Twilight back and rested her head on her shoulder, contentedly shutting her eyes.

---

A yawning Sunset Shimmer strode into her kitchen the next morning, refreshed and rejuvenated after a twelve-hour nap. Out of habit, she made her way to her broken coffee maker, before recalling that the thrice-damned thing was––

"Huh," she said with genuine shock. "Hello there, big ol' pot of coffee."

The pot was filled to the brim with steaming brown liquid, filling the room with the heady aroma of hazelnut. Sunset, not convinced that she wasn't dreaming – or hallucinating – slowly and shakily poured a cup for herself. She breathed deeply – certainly smelled real enough. She took a slow, tentative sip. Tasted real enough, too.

A glance at the pot sent needles of paranoia up her spine – the amount of coffee inside hadn't decreased in the slightest. It was still filled to the brim.

Sunset bit her thumb and mulled this sudden turn of events, trying to string together some kind of logical explanation. Once, she'd had a coffee maker. It had stopped working. Then, one day, a floating eye from another dimension occupied her kitchen, and when it left, her coffee maker had been fixed. Not only was it fixed, it thumbed its nose at thermodynamics.

And for all Sunset knew, that could be literal.

The Eye had done something before it left, Sunset remembered. It looked at her, deliberately; it formed a shape with its pupil. A U. Or so she'd assumed. In hindsight, it was more likely...

"A smile," she murmured. "It was trying to smile at me. That creepy, floaty, monocular... huh. Guess it really liked the squeegee thing."

Sunset downed a swig of coffee and refilled her cup – yet again, the pot remained filled to the brim. She set her mug down and stared pensively at it, gnawing her thumb between her front teeth. The Eye had freed the robbers when Sunset complained about it – took them in the first place because, Twilight had guessed, it saw them as a threat to Sunset. And it bade farewell to her in its own impenetrable, oblique sort of way. Could this have been a show of gratitude from the Eye? Repairing a minor inconvenience in her life, simply because she mentioned that it bothered her?

She wasn't sure, and had no way to be sure, really. But, she mused as she finished her coffee and poured herself a refill, it would probably be a good thing to discuss with Twilight.