The three friends, Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie had been escorted by carriage back to their hometown in Ponyville about three days after the ICEC. Like any other road trip they had taken, their stay at the Canterlot Royal Palace was a fun-filled blast of unguided tours, both of the palace and the outskirts into the city, exquisite food that they would surely miss back home where it wasn't available, and sleepless nights of telling ghost stories, pranking each other, and a game of Truth-or-Dare that saw Rainbow Dash, at Pinkie's dare, sticking her head out the room's door screaming "CASTLE GUARDS SUCK!" responded to with a "Aw come on, that's not very nice!". Twilight and Pinkie were laughing themselves silly with that one.
They even had a chance to visit with Princess Luna, who was as entertaining as ever with her glory-filled tales of ages past, most likely greatly exaggerated to awe them even further. She was certain that they wouldn't find out the truth that it was just as stale and boredom-filled as the present day, but she had to nourish their younger minds with the wonders of history all the same.
Twilight was back in the Ponyville Library, shuffling around the room with her dragon assistant, sifting through a shipment of books on various small mammals that was ordered some time ago. They were in the process of checking them off, marking them, cataloging them, and storing the related tomes into their home, a brand-new bookshelf that had been similarly ordered, assembled, and tested for integrity about a week ago, put up over near the front door.
"So Twilight," Spike, who was busy stacking a series of mint-condition books on top of one another, asked the pony librarian, "how should we categorize everything?"
The purple unicorn was hard at work herself, making sure to label every level of the bookshelf correctly for each group that would sit in those spaces.
"Hmmm..." Twilight mused for a moment with a hoof up to her mouth, trying to figure out exactly how she wanted them organized, "I think we should alphabetize them A through E on the top shelf, F through J on the second, K through O on the third, P through T on the fourth, which would give us U through Y for the very last shelf."
Spike thought about it for a moment, weren't they missing something important?
"Uh Twilight, I think you forgot about Z."
Twilight turned to her dragon companion with a small grin, "No no Spike, we don't have any Z books yet, so this will be just fine for now."
She also gave her scaly assistant a view of the last shelf, demonstrating the space between the last book and the end of the bookcase with both hooves, "Also, if we do get a few Z books, since it's a less used letter compared to many of the others, there's some more space on the bottom for those."
"That's great," Spike jumped over to where she was for a moment to inspect the sturdy, wooden frame himself, "looks like your choice of the extra large model worked out after all!"
On a roll today, Twilight took a few of the books within her grasping aura, placing them efficiently into the exact slots that she envisioned. All of a sudden as the two were working...
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
"OH, could you get that for me Spike? I've gotta run into the kitchen for some of the other packages I left there," the unicorn asked him sweetly with a small sense of busy urgency.
"Sure thing, Twilight."
Spike walked over to the door nonchalantly, expecting another borrower to be on the other side.
"Welcome to th...?..."
As Spike swung the red door open, he was greeted by a truly unfamiliar sight. The...whatever that had just knocked on the door not but a few moments ago was staring back at him through some kind of beady, bespectacled eyes. The expansion and detraction of its torso clued to the dragon that whoever it was seemed exhausted, or panicked.
Some kind of oddly shaped clothing fit onto the body of the fairly tall biped, at least tall from Spike's stunted perspective. A thick, yellow long-sleeved shirt adorning its upper body bore many frays and dirty slices, as if it had been crawling on the ground in it. The blue...pants...on the weirdly crafted "legs" fared no better, splotchy brownish green markings and cuts peppered them all over.
It also had fingers with very short claws, one of the only traits Spike could actually relate to. The scuffed shoes hid whatever could be discerned of the hooves or feet, however.
After a round of heavy breathing and Spike standing wearily in front of the door, ready to shout for Twilight in case this thing wanted to attack them, the creature's lips started to move.
"Ah, you...must be...Spike."
That was all the little lizard needed to hear before he officially freaked out.
"Ummmmmmm...Twilight?" Spike yelled across the library to get her attention, tip-toeing back away from the visitor, "There's a strange something at the door that knows my name, even though I've never seen it before!..."
The dirty-looking being and Spike both heard an audible crash in the kitchen, obviously the violet unicorn was busy back there with something that needed lots of concentration. Yelping in pain and stifling a curse, the mage made her way into the lobby with a confused look on her face.
"Knows your name?" she parroted questioningly at the dragon's description.
When she saw the grimy visage of the two-legged one that had just crossed the threshold in the library, her eyes widened, both surprised and gleeful at the friendly, if not somewhat scratched and harried, face.
"Arthur! I don't...how did you?..." she sputtered as the gears in her head cranked out any possible way the aardvark could've crossed dimensions all on his own.
"Oh...thank goodness...I found you, Twilight!" Arthur threw up his hands in relief, looking like he was near a fainting spell after the long trek he trudged through to get here.
The unicorn had no conceivable idea how the unassuming, meek Arthur had crossed through to their world the way he did. The state of his dress was definitely a sign of struggle, but it should be almost impossible for anyone to do so. She gave language to the concerns muddled in her head.
"How did you get here, Arthur? This is absolutely incredible!"
Arthur took a few more breaths before he continued, short on it from the heavy run to the tree-house.
"There were...mutants..."
Twilight's face fell in dead-panned disbelief, "...Mutants?..."
"Yeah," Arthur kept going as if the puzzled looks on Twilight and Spike's faces were of no indication that he should explain that important little detail further, "and...they were...shooting green slime at me...through their mouths..."
"..." Spike waved a claw in front of his own face, "I'm not even going to ask..."
Twilight decided to get to the reason why the intrepid inter-dimensional explorer had gone through a feat thought hopeless, risking his life and limbs in order to meet her at the library.
"What could you possibly need from me that you couldn't get in your own world?"
Arthur slowly limped up to his pony friend, placing his hands on her shoulders to accentuate his distress, an almost crazed stare showing the tiny bags under his eyes locking with hers. Spike "urped" at the bold contact while Twilight blushed in confusion and embarrassment.
"That's exactly why I came! ...You've got to...you've got to bring Princess Celestia back to Elwood City, or find some way for Mr. Ratburn to be able to make it here, somehow!"
Twilight made an open-mouthed frown, the request was a daunting one which the mare couldn't really accept. Only Princess Celestia was THAT powerful to be able to jump between worlds with her magic, and with how little she actually did it, there must have been some kind of limits, or it drained her profusely.
"HUH? I'm not sure what you're getting at with this, Arthur..."
The Lakewood Elementary student pleaded with the purple unicorn. "PLEASE TWILIGHT! It's a nightmare! Mr. Ratburn is so obsessed with the princess now that he can hardly even teach us anything!"
He let go of Twilight to make wild hand gestures as he broke down his last few days of espionage on the cake-loving teacher.
"Every day for the last three days I've been sneaking by his house, watching through his windows to see what's been bothering him, and it's even worse than I thought at first!"
The distraught aardvark's head whipped around the room to look for something, his bloodshot eyes danced in mad joy as he found an object to further elaborate on his teacher's never-ending quirks, a quill pen and parchment on the nearby podium. He started feverishly scribbling on the parchment, detached cackles vibrating from his throat as he jerked spasmodically.
"He's drawn a realistic chalk drawing of Princess Celestia!"
When Arthur was done with his own chicken scratches, he let out a "HA!", replacing the quill pen and grasping the paper roughly in his fist. Twilight and Spike leaned back a little in slight fear as Arthur thrust the drawing in their faces. It was a crudely drawn stick figure of the princess, so horrible that it was barely recognizable as anything other than a bunch of lines.
"He's been staring out the window for long periods of time...in the MIDDLE OF CLASS!"
Arthur did an abrupt, 180 degree turn toward the nearest window, coming to a stop in front of it. He planted his elbows into the wooden frame, leaning on them almost school-girlishly from what Twilight and Spike were gathering. He put the palms of his hands together, making a prayer gesture, except he leaned his left cheek into his right hand. He sucked in a deep breath, releasing it and sighing obnoxiously. After the love-filled sigh was done, Arthur hoisted himself back up, turning and speaking with further ire toward the rat. "I haven't even seen him touch one bite of cake! How do I know that, you might be asking?," Arthur put up his index finger, pointing it to them as if they had asked the, at best, rhetorical question, "Because he sets out a piece for himself at dessert every night, tries to put his fork in and take a bite, but ends up dropping the fork to the table," he made more wacky hand gestures, "throwing it even, and once I saw him slam his hands on the table in frustration for it!"
Twilight tried to calm the nervous, volatile Arthur who was holding his hands to his head in exasperation. Spike just looked on in a daftness that could not possibly be concealed.
"Settle down there, Arthur. Maybe he's just still mad about the tie in the competition."
"No, there's the other problem," Arthur grinned desperately, maniacally, toward his other-worldly friend, "Some of my other friends and I went over that same thought, but I heard him yell really clearly one night as he threw his cake fork down..."
A highly dramatic retelling of the scene played through Arthur's head as he acted out Ratburn's part. "Mr. Ratburn" threw his fork down on the table, making it ricochet off of the wood onto the tile floors of his home, skidding along with the force of the toss. Ratburn threw his fists up in the air, turning his head skyward and let out a cry of bitter agony.
"OH CELESTIA!" the rat's student play-acted his role to the letter, "IT'S JUST NOT THE SAME WITHOUT YOU!"
Arthur was splayed out exactly as he had informed Twilight and the baby dragon of how Ratburn looked that night, the last night before Arthur had high-tailed it through the space between dimensions, nearly getting himself killed to bring the help he was craving from them, tired of Ratburn's incessant crush. The unicorn and her assistant just stood by, gawking, while Arthur slid to the hard library floor with a pointed thud, now completely out of breath and energy spent from the militaristic crawling he was subjected to not but a short time ago. His pony friend lifted him back to his wobbly feet with the magic from her horn.
"Oh dear, Arthur, are you okay?"
Twilight's concerned look wasn't the focal point of Arthur's attention. The horn on her head was glowing with purple waves emanating from it.
"Okay, now I KNOW I'm starting to hallucinate!"
Twilight made sure to steady the wrecked boy before letting him go, he was a little disoriented, but kept on his feet, which was a start. She giggled a little at the exclamation Arthur made before.
"No, silly, that's just my magic."
"M...MAGIC?" it was Arthur's turn to stutter like his brain was being fried.
Twilight bashfully turned her head with a front hoof to her mouth, forgetting that Arthur probably wasn't aware of magic, since it didn't seem to be used in his world.
"Um...I'll explain that to you some other time after we've tried to solve your problem."
Arthur closed in on the bookpony, elated.
"Does this mean that you'll help me get those two together?"
Twilight gave Arthur a subtly uncomfortable smirk at his extreme enthusiasm. She remembered all of the times at the palace that Celestia had acted in the same or similar ways, and she firmly believed that what Arthur had told her about Ratburn was certainly reciprocated by the princess.
"Well...Princess Celestia had the same issues with eating her nightly cake desserts, which she would order, but never be able to even take a bite. I also remember hearing her whisper Mr. Ratburn's name when she tried and was not successful."
"Oh, thank goodness the princess feels the same way about Mr. Ratburn! I was about ready to beg my parents to switch schools if this didn't work out!"
Twilight incredulously eyed the frantic aardvark, "Come on, Arthur, it couldn't have been all that bad..."
"Oh REALLY?" Arthur rebuked...
Another scene was reenacted, Arthur Read as Nigel Ratburn.
"Alright class, turn to page Celestia in your Celestia books," Arthur put on his best, dopey Mr. Ratburn impression, "Celestia, I mean, Fern! What did I tell you about Celestia in the Celestia for your Celestia?"
"Alright, alright," Twilight rolled her eyes amused at Arthur's humorous antics, "I get it! It is just as bad as you say it is..."
"...So...you definitely want to help out then?..."
Twilight looked to Spike for some kind of input, but the little guy just shrugged his shoulders, not a clue what Twilight should or should not get into. She turned back to Arthur, and with a short nod and optimistic smile she gave him her answer.
"Well...wouldn't want to keep the two lovebirds apart now, would we?"
"OH THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!"
Arthur's thirst for aid had been quenched, and in a spur-of-the-moment gesture, he wrapped his arms around his unicorn pony ally. Twilight's pupils dilated slightly at the contact, shifting over to Spike again, who just looked on with a mildly disturbed, disgusted grimace. Although caught off guard for a minute, she wrapped her own hooves around Arthur, reciprocating the, hopefully, friendly action.
He pulled back when it felt like he had been a little too clingy for a little too long...
"Um...sorry about that, Twilight, heh heh..."
"No no, it's fine. I should've said something if it wasn't..."
A thick silence enveloped the little lobby. Arthur had his arm behind his head, scratching the back of it. Twilight had thrown her right foreleg around her left, nervously rubbing it up and down. Spike...well, other than a few conspicuous glances between Arthur and Twilight, was uneasy, but overall doing pretty well given the circumstances.
"I guess...uh...let's get to it then, why don't we?" Arthur's head scratching hand went back to his side.
"...Sure," Twilight mumbled, not exactly sure where to even begin with all of this, "we'll show them that they don't have to hide their feelings any longer."
They stood there in another bout of silent contemplation, these awkward situations were starting to get a little...awkward...as it were...
"So...uh...any good ideas on what we should do?..."
Twilight and her dragon companion face-hoofed/palmed, Arthur didn't seriously come to their world just to have NO ideas on how to go about this, did he?