Even more thorny is the issue of free will. A god who creates a universe will almost inevitably create (or in some cases, borrow) beings who populate it. While it cannot be denied that the god creates the starting personalities of the beings, there is quite a bit of debate concerning the development. The primary argument is whether the god determines the directions in which the beings develop, or whether the beings are left to go their own way.

Chapter 5: Visitors, Prisoners, and Mustaches

"Who the heck are you people?" Evangeline said, glaring at the new set of intruders with annoyance as they leveled guns in the vague direction of the group.

"We could ask you people the same question," one of the figures barked in a gruff voice. Fittingly enough, he had a jaw so square that he wouldn't have been out of place in a 90's superhero cartoon. "Not to mention why you're holding a member of our team prisoner."

"We're holding him prisoner because we found him sneaking around in the girls' dorm!" Konoemon answered.

"Seriously, Morgan?" The other figure lowered his gun slightly. He was rather nondescript; brown hair, slightly nerdy looking, that was about it. "What the heck were you doing in a girls' dorm?"

"I don't know. I just sort of appeared there," Morgan answered. "I mean, what about you guys? We aren't in Switzerland anymore, in case you haven't noticed."

"Yeah, we noticed," the gruff one muttered. He remained mostly still while his eyes darted around the room. "What's going on in here anyway? A bunch of kids and an old man? And…small, odd-colored horses? Why are they holding you prisoner?"

"I have no idea, okay? They don't know how I got here either, so they just wanted to...keep tabs on me until they figured out what's going on."

"Well, you're coming with us, buddy," the nondescript one said. He turned to the rest of the room. "Uh, we're just going to take our friend; we've got some stuff to do..."

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," Evangeline said as she took a dramatic step between Morgan and his two supposed rescuers. "He's staying right where he is."

The square-jawed man rolled his eyes, and turned to the other man.

"Chuck, could you please move the kid out of the way? I'm sure you wouldn't want her to get hurt."

"Uh, sure." He leaned towards Evangeline. "Um, we really need to get him out of here, and we're both trained special agents; and we really, really don't want any collateral damage. Especially not kids. So if you could just, you know, let us take him..."

"Not happening," Evangeline said. She cracked her knuckles and struck a suitable martial arts pose. She narrowed her eyes at Chuck. "If you want your friend you go through me."

The room went silent for a moment as he returned her stare. Suddenly, his entire body twitched, and his eyes briefly rolled back as his head spasmed. Then with a shout, he struck his own pose. Evangeline just smiled.

"So you know Aikijutsu too, huh? This is going to be more fun than I thought."

A dark smile flashed across her face as she lunged forward.

"What the heck is going on here?" Chisame muttered to herself. Despite looking about as far from being a secret agent as was really possible, this Chuck guy was apparently quite capable in hand to hand combat. And even more bizarrely, Evangeline was matching his every move. Apparently it wasn't enough for her to be an immortal vampire mage; she had to be a kung fu master while she was at it.

"Dibs on the big guy!"

Chisame turned around just in time to see Rainbow Dash barreling towards the square-jawed man, leaving a multicolored contrail in her wake. The man leveled his gun at the flying pony and squeezed the trigger. Rather than the expected loud bang, it released a quiet pop. Rainbow Dash spun out of the way; despite never having seen any type of gun, it was fairly obvious that he wasn't pointing at her for fun, and being in front of it when it did whatever it did was probably bad. Unfortunately enough, Chisame was directly behind where the pony had been a moment earlier.

"Huh?" Chisame looked down at her shoulder to see a small tranquilizer dart sticking out of it. "Oh damn it," she mumbled, before tipping out of her chair and onto the floor with a splat.

"Nice try!" the pony shouted as she rushed towards her target. He ducked out of the way at the last second as Rainbow Dash shot past him, knocking the gun out of his hand before barreling through the one remaining intact section of the window.

"What the hell was that?" He turned to look out the window, but Rainbow Dash was already out of view.

"Flying rainbow pony," Morgan answered with a shrug.

"A what?" The square jawed man glared at Morgan, as if daring him to repeat himself.

"Listen Casey, I just call them as I see them, okay?" Morgan said. Suddenly his eyes widened. "It's coming around again!"

Casey spun around just in time for Rainbow Dash to blast back through the window, ramming him in the torso. He found himself lifted off his feet for a few seconds as the pegasus carried him across the office. There was an enormous crash as both of them crashed into the wall at the back of the room, dropping onto the couch next to Twilight, who scrambled out of the way.

Rainbow Dash flailed helplessly as she tried to get airborne, but Casey had his arms locked around her. For the moment, her wings were useless. She flailed her limbs as she tried to free herself.

"Twilight! Do something!"

"What should I do!-?" Twilight babbled.

"I don't care! Just do something!"

"Oh-okay!" She closed her eyes and pointed her horn at the scuffle. She took a deep breath as she gathered magical energy. There was a flash of light from the tip of her horn, and the fight froze. Casey was keeping his grip on Rainbow Dash, but neither of them continued to struggle. Both of them were too busy trying to identify what it was that had just happened to their faces. In particular, they were both rather surprised by the fact that they had spontaneously grown mustaches. Casey slowly raised a hand to his face, gingerly touching the bushy mass of black hair that had sprouted on his upper lip.

CLONK.

Casey toppled over as Rainbow Dash delivered a solid foreleg to his jaw. She rolled awkwardly off the couch, stretching her wings to make sure none of the pinions had been pulled out.

"Mustaches? Really, Twilight?"

Twilight bit her lip, fighting the urge to laugh at the psychedelic Fu Manchu protruding from her friend's muzzle.

"H-hey! Watch it, Chuck!"

Both ponies turned to the front of the room at the sound of Morgan's yelling. Somehow, in the course of Evangeline and Chuck's kung fu battle, they had ended up on opposite sides of the unfortunate prisoner; and both were throwing a flurry of punches and kicks dangerously close to his head.

"If you're going to do that, could you at least do it somewhere else? Whoa!" He tilted his head out of the way as one of the blows took out the corner of the chair's back. "You see that? You guys could have taken my head off!"

"Morgan, I'm kinda busy!" Chuck gasped. He took a step back, causing a lull in the fight. Then with a shout, he hooked his foot on the arm rest and thrust the chair back. The chair, with Morgan still magically bound to it, landed flat on its back, inches from Chisame's head. Chuck resumed his stance as he faced Evangeline. "How are you this good? You're too young to be this good!"

"Oh, right. You missed that part of the conversation," Evangeline said, breathing more heavily than she had in quite a while. "Let's just say I'm older than I look."

There was a flurry of blows as she leaped at him. They spun in the air for a moment. Then there was a thud as Chuck landed facedown on the floor, his limbs in a tangled knot behind him. Eva was somehow holding his arms and legs in place with only two fingers.

"That was awesome!" Haruna shouted. "I have no idea how that was even possible, but it was freaking sweet!"

"What happened!-?" Morgan shouted, craning his neck in a vain attempt to see what had caused the noise. "What's going on? Chuck?"

"Your friend is indisposed," Evangeline answered. She smirked as she bent over to talk to Chuck. "You're pretty good, but you need to work on your counters."

"What exactly did you do?" he gasped. "I know 47 different martial arts and I've never seen that before."

"When you've been doing this as long as I have, you learn how to improvise," Evangeline said, patting him on the head with her free hand. She turned back to Konoemon, who was surveying the damage that the unexpected intrusion had caused. "What should we do with these guys?"

"Take them all to Mana and have her put them in the holding cells until we get everything figured out," he said with a sigh. "Negi, take Chisame to the health center and make sure that she's alright. The rest of you can go back to the dorms. However, none of you are permitted to tell anyone about this." He focused a beady eye on Haruna. "Especially you. If you aren't sure about who's already in on it, ask Negi. He's the only one who can keep everybody straight. Normally I'd give you my speech about why it's important not to spread the knowledge of magic, but for now I'll just leave it at this: If you blow Negi's cover, I'll turn you over to Nitta-sensei. Understood?"

He received a roomful of nodded responses.

"Good. Now get out of here." He flapped his arms at everyone as if he were shooing away an unwanted cat. "I want to get this mess cleaned up, and I can't bring in the maintenance crew to fix the windows until you're all out of here."

He put a hand on his forehead as he watched everyone file out of the room, rambling quietly yet excitedly about everything that had just happened. A deep sigh escaped him as he surveyed the room, which looked not unlike the aftermath of a tornado. Hopefully his insurance would cover it.

"Did you see me!-? I totally kicked his butt! Pow!" Rainbow Dash whipped one of her hooves through the air. "Boom! Knocked him right out!"

"Shhh!" Twilight whispered, poking Rainbow Dash in the ribs to quiet her down. "You heard Konay...Konak...Kog...that old guy! We have to make sure that nobody sees us."

"Well, duh, that's why we're wearing these, isn't it?" Rainbow Dash held up a hoof, shaking the black cloak that was draped around her.

"Somehow, I don't think that these really make us any less conspicuous..." Twilight muttered, pawing at her own cloak, which was uncomfortably long. "I mean, humans walk on two legs, so we still stick out."

"Then why did he give us these things?"

"I don't know, alright? Just be quiet until we get into my room, okay?" Twilight said as she rapped her hoof on Asuna's door, "Are you sure you don't want to go back to your room?"

"Nah, I've been pretty much living under Haruna's bed and I was getting kinda cramped under there. I gotta keep my wings in good sha-OW."

Rainbow Dash did a backward somersault as the door opened surprisingly fast, hitting her right in the head. Konoka's head popped out of the doorway.

"Oh, hey Twilight! My grandpa finished giving his speech?"

"He never really got to that," Twilight answered. "There were some complications. I'll tell you about it once we get in the room."

"Really? Come on in, then." She gasped as she finally noticed Rainbow Dash crumpled against the far wall of the hallway, "Oh! I'm sorry! Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine..." Rainbow Dash grumbled as she picked herself up and ambled into the room. "Wow, this is a lot bigger than Haruna's room?"

"Yeah, being the principal's granddaughter has its perks!" Konoka said as she shut the door behind the ponies, "You want some ice for your head?"

"Nah, it's fine." Rainbow Dash answered as she fought her way out of the cloak. It obviously wasn't designed with a pony in mind.

"She rams into stuff with her head all the time," Twilight said, giggling as she watched Rainbow Dash's losing fight with the cloak. "So that old man is your grandfather?"

"Yeah, he can be a bit airheaded, but he's been principal for years and the school hasn't collapsed completely yet, so he must be doing something right. So what were those complications you mentioned?"

"Well, you know that person we caught in the bath? Two of his friends crashed through the windows to try to rescue him."

"I beat one of 'em up!" Rainbow Dash declared, her voice muffled by the cloak, which was now wrapped around her head. "I rammed right into him and took him OUT!"

"Mmmnh?" A discontented rumble came from the bunk as Asuna poked her head out from under the covers. "Who's making all the noise? Oh." She squinted against the brightness of the room, looking at the ponies, "You're that other pony that Haruna was hiding."

"That's me! Rainbow Dash. Fastest pegasus in Equestria!"

"Yeah, that's nice..." Asuna said with a yawn. "I'd love to talk, but I kinda have to get up in..." She glanced at the clock. "About two hours. So you guys can fill me in on it tomorrow." She disappeared back under her blankets.

"Don't mind her. She has to go to work tomorrow," Konoka said as she took a seat. "So tell me about the meeting. You said that guy's friends came in through the window?"

"Yes, they said that they were there to rescue him," Twilight answered. "One of them got in a fight with...uh...I'm not sure who it was. She was really short and had long yellow hair."

"Was she wearing a really frilly nightgown?"

"Yes, now that you mention it."

"Oh, that was Evangeline. She's actually a few hundred years old, although she looks like she's just a kid. Some sort of weird vampire magic thing."

"She was awesome!" Rainbow Dash tried to strike the same pose that Evangeline had used, but got tangled in the cloak and toppled over with a crash.

"Anyway..." Twilight rolled her eyes at Rainbow Dash's antics. "Evangeline defeated one of them."

"I took out the other one!" Rainbow Dash hopped back to her hooves, finally free of the cloak. "He grabbed my wings, but Twilight distracted him with her magic and I took him out!"

"Oh, you used your magic on him?"

"Yeah…sort of..." Twilight mumbled.

"She made him grow a mustache!" Rainbow Dash gave Twilight a hefty pat on the back.

"Oh, is that why you have a...uh..." Konoka wiggled her finger in the general direction of Rainbow Dash's nose.

"Huh?" The pegasus crossed her eyes as she tried to look at the mustache on her own face, which she had neglected to remove. "Oh, that. You have anything I can use to get rid of it? It's sort of...attached."

"I'll get you some scissors," Konoka said as she patted Rainbow on the head. "Why don't you two catch up? If you've been living in Haruna's room, I'm sure you have some good stories for Twilight."

"Yeah! She had these 'movie' things that she let me watch while she was gone! Like there was this one with this human that was actually made out of metal! And from the future! And there was this other human, who was normal, but he was from the future too! And he tried to blow up the metal human, although nobody else knew that the other human was made of metal..."

Asuna rolled over and buried her head under her pillow as her roommate and the ponies continued rambling, oblivious to her efforts at going to sleep.

"So, uh, anybody got any plans for getting us out of this?" Morgan wiggled a bit in his chair. He was still magically tied bound to it, although at least this time he had someone to talk to. Chuck and Casey sat on either side of him, similarly stuck to the chairs via magic. "Preferably something that doesn't involve breaking my thumbs to escape. Not that it would really do much good, cause it's magic, but still-"

"I think we have some more pressing issues to tend to at the moment, Morgan," Chuck answered. "Like, you know, how on earth we ended up in Japan. Or why the people who captured us actually know how to do magic. Or how a talking purple unicorn somehow made Casey spontaneously grow a mustache."

"Well, the stuff about magic and the purple unicorn...I have no idea." Morgan tried to shrug, but was prevented by the magical bonds. He settled for nodding his head a little before continuing. "Maybe we got drugged or something and that was just a hallucination."

"Then how exactly are we stuck to the chairs?"

"I don't know! Some sort of new military technology, probably. Like carbon microfibers or nanobots or something."

"Okay, okay. I can buy that." Chuck nodded. He didn't really buy Morgan's explanation, but it was easily more plausible than the alternative. "But how exactly do you explain the fact that Casey still has a mustache?"

"He does?" Morgan craned his neck forward, trying to get a look. Failing that, he slowly began scooting the chair forward, a tenth-of-a-millimeter at a time. A painfully loud screeching filled the air.

"Morgan..." Chuck vainly tried to shield his ears from the onslaught by pressing his ear against his shoulder. "Morgan! Will you stop that!-?"

"Just a second, I can almost see it!" Morgan continued to drag himself across the floor. "Oh, wow." He stopped dead as he finally caught a glimpse of Casey's face. "Oh, nice. You have a serious Tom Selleck thing going on there. You should keep that! It looks good on you. Goes well with your chin."

Casey just grunted, still fighting against the headache that had been brought on by the hoof to the face. The grunt was accompanied by a rather toxic glare. It wasn't quite the worst look that Casey had ever given Morgan, but it was definitely near the top of the list. Morgan responded by slowly and noisily scooting his chair back to its original position, out of Casey's line of sight. He sat quietly for a moment, trying to ignore the feeling of anger that Casey was projecting in his direction.

"So..." Morgan bobbed his head, trying to break the heavy silence. "...Japan, huh? Wonder how that happened. I mean, we're disarming that timer thing, next thing I know, Boom! I'm on some girl's couch in Japan. It's weird, man-"

He clamped his mouth shut as the door swung open. Mana strode into the room, the half dozen or so guns she had strapped to her body rattling ominously. Setsuna followed behind her, hand resting on the hilt of her sword. Morgan swallowed hard as he noted the number of weapons and immediately switched into self preservation mode.

"Hello, ladies. How can we make your visit more pleasant?"

"Morgan, what are you doing!-?" Chuck shot an incredulous glance in Morgan's direction.

"What? I- ohhhhh..." Morgan's face lit up with realization. "Okay, that came out wrong. Uh...what brings you down here?"

"We just came down here to see what that racket was," Mana answered, noting that Morgan's chair was slightly crooked, and that the aforementioned racket had sounded not unlike that unpleasant noise of dragging them into the room in the first place.

"What racket? I didn't notice any racket." Morgan began to babble. Chuck just shook his head. "No racket in here. It's been totally quiet."

"You aren't fooling anyone," Mana said as she shoved Morgan's chair back into position. "Setsuna, can you use a spell tag to bind the chairs to the floor?"

"Sure, I'll go get the ofuda." As she turned to walk out of the room, an incredibly low-quality version of some sort of pop song began to ring out from her pocket. She drew her cell phone out of her pocket and held it up to her ear.

"Oh, crap. It's probably that old man!" Morgan whispered in Chuck's general direction. "He's telling her to kill us! She's going to cut off our heads! I mean, I guess if I have to go, getting beheaded by a samurai girl is a pretty cool way, but still."

Mana simply rolled her eyes at Morgan's distress and turned back to her companion.

"It's Konoka, isn't it?"

Setsuna nodded.

"Take the call. I'll take care of these guys." She turned back to the prisoners. "I'll be right back. You guys behave, okay?"

Both of the girls strode out of the room, slamming the door behind them.

Chisame squinted at her computer screen. The tranquilizer dart had worn off with surprising speed. Negi had claimed that some form of invigoration magic was responsible, but that was just absurd. Because magic obviously didn't exist. The pain in her shoulder was a bit tougher to explain. Maybe she had been stung by a bee, but she was allergic and therefore had hallucinated that whole thing with the guy in the scuba suit, and the ponies, and secret agents, and Evangeline being a martial artist. And obviously Negi had just taken to the infirmary where they had given her some sort of medication that was currently making her unnecessarily alert despite the fact that she was utterly exhausted.

At the moment she was attempting to write out a blog post. Giving an account of her sudden allergic reaction and resultant bizarre hallucinations would certainly keep her audience interested. And as a bonus, it would give her an excuse to procrastinate on shooting the next set of pictures. The only problem was that she was having more than a little bit of trouble taking whatever was in her head and forming it into something coherent for her blog. She really should have stuck with her first attempt. While the grammar was atrocious and it was rather rambling, the basic idea was sort of clear. But each subsequent attempt looked more and more as if it had been written by a strung out hobo. The most recent draft was not unlike the online equivalent of the CodexSeraphinianus.

Maybe the best course of action would be to forget the blog for the moment and make another attempt at getting some rest. Even if she couldn't actually sleep, lying there and not doing anything was probably more productive than expending so much energy writing something looked like alphabet soup. Coherent thought could wait until tomorrow morning. Nobody would read what she posted at this hour anyway. It would take a while, but eventually she would fall asleep; and when she woke up, everything would make sense, and she would have a nice laugh at her bizarre dreams. She curled up in her bed, and was finally starting to nod off when she was shocked into wakefulness by a surprisingly solid knock on the door.

She grumbled something about Negi being too nice for his own good. He was obviously coming by to check on her. There was certainly no one else who would bother to come to her room at...she looked at the clock...four in the morning. She rubbed her eyes and tried to make herself look as not-angry as she could manage before she let him in. As much as she wanted to be asleep, he wasn't going to go away until he knew she was alright.

The door swung open, and Chisame found herself staring at two overly colorful ponies with proportions that didn't quite match what little knowledge Chisame had about what ponies were supposed to look like. Of course, the unusual body structure was inconsequential next to the fact that one pony had a horn protruding from her forehead, and the other had wings folded across her back. And the wings and horn were rather unimportant compared to the fact that the purple one was talking.

"Hello! We never really got the chance to introduce ourselves, and since we were keeping Asuna up, we figured we could check up on you. You looked pretty out of it after you got hit by that thing."

Chisame stared blankly for a few minutes. She really, really wanted to be angry, to be absolutely livid and rage against the universe itself and whatever god designed it for so much as even allowing this situation to occur. Ponies weren't supposed to be those colors, they weren't supposed to be mythical creatures, and they weren't supposed to talk. The very fact that they existed was bad enough, but the fact that they were talking to her was like a slap in the face. In theory, she could learn to coexist in the same universe as something that wasn't supposed to be there, but now they were actively inserting themselves into her life. It was adding insult to injury. The only thing keeping her temper in check was that between the tranquilizer and her exhaustion, she was physically incapable of anger.

"So can we come in?" The purple pony continued, "We're supposed to try to keep out of sight."

"Sure..." Chisame waved the ponies through the doorway. She couldn't fight it; she didn't have the strength. If her life was going to get thrown into a blender of magic ponies, she might as well try to come to terms with it now, while she was too numb to really suffer too much. "You can sit...or lie down, or whatever it is you do...over...there..." She waved her hand towards the couch, as she couldn't get the word to come out of her mouth.

"Thank you!" Twilight clamored onto the sofa and curled herself up on the end of it. "Everything in the bath happened so quickly that I don't think I ever got your name. I'm Twilight Sparkle, and this is Rainbow Dash."

"Twilight...Sparkle?" Chisame repeated, feeling a dull realization that if not for her exhaustion, she would have burst out laughing. Although she had to admit that the ponies were quite adorable, even if their very existence made absolutely no sense. She reluctantly extended a hand to the purple pony. "I'm Chisame. Chisame Hasegawa."

"Um…it's nice to meet you."

Chisame stood still as Twilight examined her outstretched hand.

"You're supposed to shake it," Rainbow Dash said, noting Twilight's confusion. "I don't understand it either. Must be a human thing."

"So you're Rainbow Dash?" Chisame asked. It was fairly obvious due to the multicolored mane that the blue pony was in fact Rainbow Dash, but she couldn't really think of anything else to say.

"That's me!" The pony's wings sprang out as far as they would go, which despite not being very far managed to knock several objects off of the nearby desk. "Best flyer in Equestria!"

"...Really." Chisame tried her best to sound interested. "Equestria, huh? Is that where you're from?

"Yes, we're both from Equestria. I'm originally from Canterlot. Rainbow Dash is from Cloudsdale, but we both ended up living in Ponyville."

"Ponyville. That's…uh…I have no idea where that is."

"That's true; I guess you wouldn't have any idea what I'm talking about," Twilight said, in a more chipper manner than anyone, human or pony had a right to be at four in the morning. "Anyway, how are you feeling? You just sort of keeled over when you got hit with that...thing."

"It's called a gun, Twilight. You point it at stuff to attack it or something. It was in those movies that Haruna showed me," Rainbow Dash said, in a voice that made it evident that she was only half paying attention. "Hey, Chisame, what's this thing?"

The bespectacled girl's mind snapped back into partial wakefulness as she realized that the pegasus was poking at her computer.

"Don't touch that!" She tried to rush forward and shove the pony away, but she tripped over her discarded maid costume. After everything that had happened, actually putting away her clothes hadn't been high on the priority list. Mentally cursing her laziness, she scrambled to her feet to see that Rainbow Dash had somehow, despite having never so much as seen a computer before, managed to activate the webcam.

"Hey, I can see myself!" She began to make faces into the camera. "Is this computer thing supposed to be like a mirror?"

"No, it's not! Get off of there before you break something!" Chisame finally made her way to the computer and shoved the pegasus away from it. "It's really expensive."

"Expensive?" Rainbow Dash grumbled as she went back to the couch, her excitement deflated. "It's just a box with a mirror on the front of it. It can't cost that much."

"It's not just a mirror!" Chisame glared at Rainbow Dash, trying to remember that the pony legitimately had no idea what she was talking about.

"Then what's it for?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"I really would be interested to know how it works," Twilight added. "Negi has one and I see him using it a lot, but I never got a chance to ask what he was doing."

"It's sort of a multi-use thing, okay! Write stuff, take pictures, play games, talk to people, find information, look up porn, watch-"

"What's porn?" Rainbow Dash interrupted.

Chisame's eye twitched as she glared at the pegasus, trying to make her disappear through sheer force of willpower. Failing that, she sighed. If this pony didn't know what porn was, Chisame wasn't the one who was going to sully her innocent mind.

"You don't want to know. Trust me." She turned to back to Twilight, who seemed to be the more logical of her two unwanted guests, and continued talking, hoping that she wouldn't echo Rainbow Dash's question. "Anyway, it's called a computer. It's connected to a bunch of other computers through a thing called the internet, and you can use it to send information to other computers. Like you can write notes or papers or whatever on it, and send them to people."

"That sounds really useful," Twilight said. She had only a vague idea of what Chisame was talking about, but the idea of a new note taking method had piqued her interest. "Is that what you use it for?"

"Well, mostly I take pictures of myself wearing costumes and put them online for people to look at, so they-" Chisame clamped her mouth shut, but it was too late. The ponies were now aware of her secret hobby.

"What, is that like that porn thing?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"No! It has nothing to do with that. It's more like...modeling. You know, like different outfits."

"Oh, one of our friends from back home runs a dressmaking shop!" Twilight exclaimed. "Although she might have trouble making anything for you because you aren't a pony, but she'd probably just take it as a challenge."

"I'll be sure to look her up if I'm ever in Ponytown or whatever..." Chisame grumbled.

"Okay! It's the Carousel Boutique. It's right off of the town square. You can't miss it."

"I'll keep that in mind." Apparently the ponies didn't do well with sarcasm either.

"So when you put these pictures of you on the computer or whatever, how does everybody else find it?" Rainbow Dash asked. She was slowly edging back towards the computer, but one harsh glance from Chisame caused her to back off.

"I just put them up on the internet and people just come across it." Chisame shrugged, unsure of how else to explain it. "If they look for stuff like costumes, my stuff will pop up."

"So you can look for things on the internet?" Twilight asked. There was a distinctly hopeful gleam in her eye.

"Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff on there. You can find information on just about anything if you-"

"Can you teach me how to use it!-?" The gleam in the unicorn's eyes exploded into a puppy dog stare. "Pleeeeaasseeee?"

"Yeah, sure, fine!" Chisame bit her tongue as the words tumbled out of her mouth. Her intent had been to give a reluctant sounding apology for the fact that she had too many other things to worry about, but her mouth had gotten ahead of her. It was too late; even if she could force herself to rescind her answer, Twilight looked too happy. If Chisame backpedaled now, the unicorn would obviously be crushed. And making the adorable magic pony cry would give Chisame so much bad karma that it was probably easier to just go along with it.

"Thank you so much!" Twilight bounded forward and wrapped her forelegs around Chisame's midsection. Rainbow Dash just rolled her eyes; she had seen Twilight going into learning mode before.

Chisame gave Twilight an awkward pat on the head. She hadn't known that ponies were even capable of giving hugs. It was a bizarre sensation. Apparently most of what she knew about horses didn't really apply. Twilight was a lot softer and fuzzier than she had expected. She was mildly cautious about being accidentally stabbed in the stomach by the horn as Twilight nuzzled her, but other than that it actually felt rather nice. For beings that weren't really supposed to exist, these ponies weren't too bad. Maybe she could take some pictures with them for her website. It wouldn't be hard to pass them off as giant stuffed animals, and her fans would love it.

"Uh, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash poked at her friend. Being normally surrounded by that kind of cuteness, she didn't really have any qualms about ruining the moment. "You gonna let go any time soon?"

"Oh, right." Twilight, backed away, leaving Chisame with a coating of purple fuzz.

"You're welcome..." Chisame mumbled. She cleared her throat, sensing an opportunity to salvage the night while at least one of the ponies was on her good side. "Well, I still have to go to class tomorrow, so I sort of need to get to bed..." She nodded at the clock, which showed that it was 4:43 in the morning.

"Of course, of course." Twilight nodded energetically. "Sorry about keeping you up. Especially after you got hit with that thing." She trotted over to the door. "Anyway, it was nice to meet you and I'm glad to see that you're feeling okay. I'll talk to you tomorrow about that computer thing, okay?"

"Sure..."

"See you tomorrow then! Sleep well!" Twilight said as she walked out of the room.

"Goodnight!" Rainbow Dash waved at Chisame before fluttering after Twilight.

Chisame could only sigh as she closed the door after them. Maybe this was just part of the hallucination. Maybe her subconscious had some self-loathing issues and was just taunting her. Why else would she have actually agreed to teach the unicorn how to use a computer? Well, other than the fact that she was too cute to refuse. But it was irrelevant. When the medication wore off, she'd wake up in the morning and have a good laugh at herself. Everything would be back to normal.

"Please don't kill me! Please don't kill me! Please don't kill me!"

Morgan's babbling had been triggered by Mana's sudden reappearance. Or more specifically, the fact that when she made said reappearance, she was wielding an unnecessarily large nail gun.

"If she's going to kill you, could you at least do the rest of us a favor and die with dignity?" Casey growled.

Mana just rolled her eyes and strode towards Morgan's chair. He clamped his eyes shut, and shuddered as he heard her pull the trigger four times. Either she had horrible aim, or being shot with a nail gun wasn't nearly as painful as he had assumed. There were another four shots, this time off to his left. He opened his eyes just enough to see Mana turning away from Chuck and pointing the nail gun at the floor around Casey's chair. He released a sigh of relief. She was just nailing the chairs to the floor.

"There." She rested the nail gun on her shoulder. "Now you guys won't be making those squeaking noises. I hate that sound. The proper authorities will be here to deal with you in a few minutes. Once we get this sorted out, we'll let you out of the chairs." She strode out of the room and closed the door.

"Morgan, do you speak Japanese?"

"Huh?" Both Chuck and Morgan turned to look at Casey, who was the least likely to bring up such a non-sequitur.

"Uh...no..." Morgan answered. "I mean, I have quite a bit of anime on my hard drive and I had a little bit of a crush on Sailor Moon in high school-"

"Too much information!" Chuck said, loudly enough that anything else Morgan said would be drowned out. "We don't need to know that."

"Nope. No Japanese. Why?"

"Because that girl was speaking Japanese, and you understood everything she said. I know it because of my training, and Chuck has it programmed into his brain. You shouldn't have been able to understand her."

"That is really weird..." Morgan nodded in agreement. "What exactly does that mean?"

"I don't know, but it has to be related to whatever that group was doing with the collider. Whatever it was, it teleported us to Japan, somehow."

"You know..." Chuck mumbled, half to himself, half to his fellow prisoners, "Now that you mention it, I did pick up a strange transmission on my headset right before everything happened."

Casey shot him a surprised glare.

"And you didn't mention this before because?"

"It seemed kinda minor compared to the fact that we got teleported to Japan for no apparent reason."

"Well, what was the transmission?" Morgan asked.

"Well, it was just this voice. I couldn't even tell whether it was a man or a woman."

"What did it say, Chuck?" Casey growled; it was more of an order than a question.

"Uh...it said 'The Poet is coming.'"

"Well, that's entirely useless." Morgan said. "Maybe it's like a code name for some arms dealer or something."

"Not any arms dealer that I've ever heard of," Casey grumbled, not happy that the only potential lead had turned out to be a dead end. "Maybe it's classified. Sounds vaguely familiar, though."

"Maybe this Poet person is responsible for teleporting us here."

"Seriously, Morgan?" Chuck tried and failed to hide the skepticism in his voice. "That's ridiculous. Just because this guy got mentioned in that transmission, you're going to assume that he's the mastermind behind this? That doesn't make any sense!"

"Chuck, we're stuck to these chairs by magic, you got beaten up by an elementary school girl, and Casey got beaten up by a pair of magic ponies. Waking up in Japan is not the weirdest thing that's happened to us today."

"If you think you have it bad, I assure you I have it worse."

All three prisoners looked up to see that Konoemon had somehow managed to open the door and enter the room in complete silence. One of his hands rested atop a cane, the other bore a rather large coffee mug.

"You people just had to sit there. I have to worry about who you are, why you're here, and how you appeared on my campus. This is going to wreak havoc on my blood pressure." He took a long gulp of coffee. "Now, I have some questions, and it's going to be easier on all of us if you just answer. And don't lie, I can tell. Can you do that? I'd really like to get some sleep tonight, and I'm sure you'd love to get out of those chairs."

"That would be nice," Chuck answered with a nod. "I think we can manage that. Can't we, Casey?" He glared at the large man, who grunted in reluctant ascent.

"Sounds good to me," Morgan said. "I really have to go to the bathroom."

"Good." Konoemon took another swig of coffee. "Then let us get started."

Asuna's alarm clock always seemed to know when she hadn't slept well. It was always loudest on the days when she felt the least inclination to get out of bed. So naturally it was as loud as it had ever been, if not louder. A rush of cold morning air rushed into the bed as she lifted the edge of the blanket enough to stick her arm out. She shivered as she punched alarm off and drew her hand back in. There had been late nights before, but this was the worst. Under normal circumstances, she would have been entertained by the ponies' conversation; listening to one of them attempt to describe the plot of the Terminator franchise despite not really having any understanding of robots, computers, or really anything required to make sense of the movies was comedic gold. Or at least it would have been if not for the fact that her need to wake up at a ridiculous a disgustingly early hour had squelched her sense of humor.

Even though she had her head sandwiched between her pillow and her wadded up blanket, she could still make out the muffled voice of her roommate discussing something with the ponies. While cooking them breakfast, if the smell was anything to go by. Asuna poked her head from under the blanket to find that sure enough, Konoka was hovering by the stove, tending to a skillet filled with a mountain of hash browns. But something seemed a little off.

The first thing she noticed was the lack of sound. The sound of conversation seemed to have vanished, along with the sizzling of the pan. Then she noticed that everyone in the room seemed to be moving very slowly for some reason. In fact, they weren't moving at all. She tossed her blanket to the side and began to climb out of her bunk. It was bizarre. Twilight seemed to be just sitting normally; curled up in a chair at one end of the table. Rainbow Dash seemed to be holding herself still in the middle of a rather awkward gesture, with one of her hooves thrust into the air.

And come to think of it, Konoka wasn't exactly holding a very comfortable position either; she was holding the massive frying pan with one hand, a few inches above the burner. Asuna felt a chill run down her spine as she realized that they weren't just standing still for no reason. There was something more to it. As she looked closer she could see that Rainbow Dash's mane seemed to just be floating in the air. The steam from the skillet hung in the air.

Asuna took a step backward and gasped as she felt something on the back of her neck. She spun around to see that her blanket hadn't fallen back onto her bed after she had thrown it off. It dangled motionlessly in the air, right where she had tossed it. Not wanting to believe what was happening, she ran to the window. Her heart sank as she saw a handful of human figures scattered across the campus. Not one of them was moving. She clutched the window frame to keep her hands from shaking as her exhausted mind finally put the pieces together. Except for her, the entire world was frozen.

.

Yay cliffhanger. I'm evil, I know.

Anyway, for those who don't reconginze them, the guys who bust through the window are Chuck and Casey from Chuck. Which is awesome and you should go watch it.

This chapter has a bit more foreshadowing, although for obvious reasons I'm not going to point out what it is. Or rather, what they are, because there are several things that will become relevant later on. A few more characters will be introduced next chapter, including at least one from a franchise that hasn't been included yet.

Thanks for reading, and (meaningful) feedback is always appreciated.