The answer to the issue of free will is simply that it depends on the individual case. Some gods, when creating a sentient being, take it upon themselves to determine every aspect of the being's life and personality. Others tend to allow their creations the freedom to choose their own paths, using the personality they created as a starting point. Whether either one of these methods is better than the other is another argument that has no real answer.

Chapter 6: Temporal Suppression

Asuna stared out the window, focusing all of her willpower into a vain attempt to make the distant figures move. Eventually she would have to turn around, but at the moment, every fiber of her being revolted against the idea. She could make excuses for why the tiny people scattered across the campus weren't moving. Maybe they were just standing still for some reason. It could happen.

But the scene behind her was inexplicable; the ponies' manes failing to flow like they should, the still flame above the stove, the potatoes hanging in the air above the pan as it had been flipped...there were no explanations. As long as she didn't look over it, she could just barely believe that it wasn't real; that one of her dreams had stuck in her brain as she woke up, and if she just gave her mind a few minutes to clear itself out-

"Whoa, Asuna! How'd you get over there?"

"Huh?" Asuna spun around to see her roommate and the two ponies staring at her. "What the-?"

"I could have sworn you were in bed..." Konoka said, completely oblivious to the fact that she had been frozen a moment before.

"You didn't teach her how to teleport, did you, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Nope." The unicorn shrugged. "She must have learned it on her own."

"I didn't teleport!" Asuna said, trying to keep her voice steady. "I got out of bed, and all of you guys were-" She paused, realizing that there was no way they were actually going to believe what she had planned to say. Everything was so normal now (aside from the ponies, at least), that even she had a tough time believing what had just happened. Maybe it was all in her head. "You know what? Yeah. I'm a ninja. I've been taking lessons from Kaede about ninja things."

"What's a ninja?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Ask Haruna about it. I'm sure she has plenty of movies on the subject." Asuna started to rub her eyes, which had obviously just been playing tricks on her. "Konoka, can you throw some bacon on there for me? Konoka?"

A twinge ran down Asuna's spine as she realized that it wasn't just Konoka that failed to respond. Her eyes snapped open. The twinge turned into a shudder and cold sweat.

"Hello? Rainbow?" She stepped forward and waved a shaky hand in front of the pegasus' face. Rainbow Dash's eyes were fixed open, but she obviously wasn't seeing anything. "What the hell is going- EAH!"

"WAA-!"

Asuna jumped back as Rainbow Dash suddenly sprang to life. The pony threw herself backward with a look halfway between terror and surprise plastered on her face. She had only recoiled a few inches before freezing again. Asuna pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart had gone straight past regular beating and was pounding so hard that she felt like she would have bruises on the inside of her ribcage, if such a thing were even possible.

Whatever was causing this whole mess had to be just messing with her. Why else would Rainbow Dash only snap out of it when Asuna was practically touching her? Asuna paused. She held her hand up again, this time in front of her own face. Had she unwittingly brushed against the pony's mane? Come to think of it, there was some sort of a sensation on the edge of her palm... She took a deep breath and grabbed hold of Rainbow Dash's mane.

"-AAA!" The pony immediately began trying to wriggle out of Asuna's grasp. "What the hay are you doing?"

"Hold still!" Asuna clamped her other hand on Rainbow Dash's head.

"Are you sure you can't teleport, because you were over by the window, and then you were suddenly like right in my face, and then you kinda spazzed for a sec- Wait, what's going on?" She twisted her head far enough to see Konoka standing unnaturally still.

"I'm not sure...can you just hold still for a second? I just want to try something."

"Okaaay..." Rainbow Dash said, narrowing her eyes.

"Just sit tight, okay?"

Asuna released the pony's head, and held up her hands. The pegasus was still as a statue.

"Hello?" She waved a hand in front of the pony's face. "Anybody home?" No response. "Thought so." Asuna once again took hold of the pony's mane.

"Ow! What are you doing? I thought you were going to do something!"

"I did! You just didn't know it because you were frozen."

"I was what?"

"Look!" Asuna grabbed the pony's head and turned it to look at Konoka. "See? She's not moving. Twilight isn't moving. Nothing is moving except for us! I got out of bed and all of you were frozen. I went over to the window to look out and you started moving again. Then you all froze again. You started moving again when I touched you."

"Wait, you mean that I was like that?" She waved a hoof at Twilight, who had a fairly ridiculous-looking been-frozen-in-the-middle-of-saying-something look on her face.

"Yeah, then I touched you and started moving again. Then I stopped touching you and you stopped moving."

"But I was moving just fine! I wasn't frozen or anything! You were just sort of appearing and disappearing."

"You mean you don't remember being frozen? Weird..."

"So what are we supposed to do about it?

"I don't know, maybe we should-"

"Asuna, what the heck are you doing?"

Both the girl and the pony looked up to see Konoka staring at them.

"I- uh... Listen, what I'm about to say is probably going to sound ridiculous, but just hear me out, okay? Something really weird is going on here..."

Fluttershy gradually came to her senses with a groan. Something was wrong. The last thing that she could remember was being awoken in the middle of night by some sort of ruckus in the town, and that was a vague memory in and of itself. She had never been more than half awake, and had promptly fallen back into whatever dream she had been lost in. But that pleasant dream had passed, replaced by a nightmare.

She had been falling, falling through a void with bits and pieces of everything that she knew twirling around her. Flashes of Rarity's boutique and Twilight's library spun past her, mixed in with things and places that she couldn't recognize; there was an enormous square building, and what seemed to be a city constructed out of glass. Then everything went dark.

Everything was still dark; she was too terrified to even consider opening her eyes. She knew that she wasn't in her bed anymore; there was a mix of dirt and vegetation beneath her. She raised her head and gave the air a tentative sniff. The breeze was full of trees and leaves and moss and familiarity. Where had she smelled this before? The Everfree Forest? No, it was similar, but not the same. The air in the Everfree Forest was murky, so thick with dread that it took extra effort just to breathe.

This air was cleaner and sweeter; it practically flowed into her lungs. With each breath Fluttershy felt the horror of the unknown beginning to melt away. Not that she was at all at ease, but the foreboding that had grasped her and threatened to fray her nerves had released her. There was still fear, but it no longer clouded her mind, casting its shadow over each thought. It was something that she could face with a clear head.

She opened her eyes.

Everything around her was bathed in cool shadow. She seemed to be lying in a small patch of grass surrounded by a tangle of enormous roots, thrust so far out of the ground that they went over her head. She raised her head. Standing before her was the most enormous tree she had ever seen, silhouetted against the rising sun. She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. Not even the Everfree forest had anything like this.

Fluttershy crept up one of the nearby roots and cautiously peeked over the edge. A short way away, a path wound its way through the roots toward what seemed to be an expansive city at the base of the hill on which the tree stood. All of her joints wobbled as she gingerly made her way towards the road. Nothing looked even remotely familiar, but there had to be other ponies in the town who could point her in the right direction.

The air had a chilly bite to it; the sun hadn't been up long enough to give it any warmth. Aside from the occasion rustle of the leaves in the branches of the trees far above her, everything seemed frighteningly still, as if the world itself hadn't quite woken up yet. The tranquility had Fluttershy jump even higher at the sound of a stick snapping behind her. She spun around to face the direction that she thought the sound had come from.

"Uh...h-hello?" Her call was barely louder than a whisper. "Is-is somepony there?"

There was no answer. She began to continue down the path, trying to convince herself that sound was just her nerves playing tricks on her. The effort was short lived, as she heard another noise. Or rather, a series of noises. Footsteps.

"Don't move."

Fluttershy froze mid-step as a cold, feminine voice cut through the air behind her. The words were so matter of fact that the pony felt incapable of not complying. She pressed her hooves into the ground, trying not to shake.

"Turn around. Slowly."

Fluttershy obeyed, dragging her hooves through the dirt as she faced the voice. A lump formed in her throat. Standing on the top of a nearby root was a human. Standing face to face with a human was bad enough. Seeing that the human had a bow and arrow pointed directly at her made it even worse. Well, there was technically no arrow; a mass of glowing energy hovered in its place. Either way, it wasn't anything that Fluttershy wanted coming in her direction.

"Who are you?"

"I-I'm F-fluttershy..." the pony squeaked. She stared at her hooves, not daring to make eye contact.

"Fluttershy?"

"Y-yes. I'm from Ponyville. I don't know how I got here, and I'm sort of lost and I'm just trying to get home, but I don't know how to get there..."

"I'm sorry, I can't help you," the girl answered coldly. "I don't know where I am or how I got here either."

"R-really?" Fluttershy looked up to see that the girl had lowered the bow. While the girl's face was mostly emotionless, her vibrant violet eyes betrayed more than a trace of despondency. She leaped off the root, landing quietly on the path. Without giving the pony a second glance, she started off down the path. "Wait!"

"What is it?" The girl stopped, but didn't even bother to turn around.

"Um...do you remember what happened when you showed up here?" It was just a hunch, but once the question had popped into the pony's mind, she couldn't help but ask it.

"I don't really remember much of it. I was floating in the middle of a storm, and everything went black. When I woke up, I was here."

"O-okay..."

Both of them were silent for a moment, after which the girl turned and continued to walk away.

"Um...I...uh..." Fluttershy mumbled at the girl's back. Her voice trailed off as the girl looked back at her.

"Yes?"

"That-that sounds sort of like what happened to me..." Fluttershy said. "Do you think that the same thing happened to both of us?"

"It's possible," the girl said with a shrug before turning away again.

"So uh...do you think that maybe we can maybe...stay together? I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to, but I just thought that um...because neither of us knows where we are..."

The girl stopped again and spoke without even turning around.

"If you want to follow me, I won't stop you."

She started walking again.

"Oh, okay," Fluttershy said as she took a few nervous steps in the girl's direction. "Um, pardon me for asking, but what's your name?"

The girl didn't even stop walking.

"Homura."

"Ho-mur-a?" Fluttershy stumbled over the syllables; it wasn't like any name she had ever heard.

"Yes, that's right," Homura said as she resumed her walk down the path. "Are you coming or not?"

"Y-yes!"

Fluttershy took a deep breath before trotting down the path after Homura. She had no idea where they were going, but there was no point in wasting time getting there.

"Hey, Asuna! Hey, Konoka!"

Asuna cringed as she heard Makie's voice. She had hoped that she could make her way to Eva's cottage without running into anyone who would ask questions, but apparently that thought wasn't interesting enough. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever for Makie to be anywhere in the vicinity, but here she was.

"So, uh...why are you two dressed like that?" She asked, tilting her head.

As random as it sounded, the question did in fact have quite a bit of merit to it. Konoka was inexplicably dressed in a Victorian-style dress with enough frills on it for half a dozen more dresses. Asuna was hunched over in a rather uncomfortable-looking position, wearing an incredibly oversized trench coat over an enormous lump on her back.

"Uh...we're just trying out some new costumes for Mahorafest," Asuna answered, avoiding eye contact in hope of avoiding further conversation. "It's coming up pretty soon, you know."

"I didn't think it was for another month..." Makie said, scratching her head. "And I thought that the costumes for the festival were more like cosplay type stuff, not like..." She eyed Asuna's hump. "..Frankenstein, or whatever."

"Well, that's why we're testing them out so early! Right, Konoka?"

"Yeah, of course!" Konoka said with a giggle. "You can never start planning too early for the festival!"

"I guess you're right," Makie said. "Come to think of it, I should get started on my costume. I was thinking of dressing up like a magical girl from that-"

Asuna sighed in relief. She never would have thought that these random time freezes would come in handy. Konoka twitched back into motion as Asuna grabbed her hand.

"Come on, we don't have time to sit here and talk to her. I'm sick of everything freezing all the time!"

The redhead began to lurch in the direction of Eva's cottage, Konoka stumbling along behind her.

"This is freaking ridiculous! Who the hell thought it was a good idea to make Yoshi dissolve in water when the game takes place on a freaking island!-?"

"Still trying to get the last shine sprite, Master?" Chachamaru asked as she emerged from the kitchen. Eva apparently hadn't moved an inch since last night. "Shouldn't you get some sleep?"

"Oh, you're out of standby mode," Eva answered, keeping her eyes glued to the television screen in front of her. "I'll take a nap as soon as I finish this. It'll just be a few minutes."

"That's what you said four hours ago, master."

"I am the freaking Gospel of Darkness! The Dark freaking Evangel! The Undying freaking Mage!" She turned around and glared at the robot girl with bloodshot eyes. "I will not be defeated by

a damn video game!"

"I understand that, but you haven't slept at all in the past twenty four hours."

"I blame Konoemon for that," Evangeline grumbled as she turned back to her game. "That old coot dragged me over to his office at one in the morning. Ended up getting attacked by some more random people. Don't know why the hell he thought that I would have any idea what was going on."

"Perhaps your hundreds of years of experience?"

"Nah, I think he just wanted me around in case things went south. Which they kinda did, but I don't think it was anything that boya couldn't have handled. They were mundanes after all. DAMN IT!" Evangeline punched the armrest of her chair. "Stupid lily pad! How am I supposed to steer the damn thing?" She looked back to Chachamaru. "Listen, after dealing with this crap all night, I just want to get it out of my head."

"Master, you really should get some sleep, especially if it's possible that the Principal calls for your assistance again. Why don't you go to your resort? It will give you a full day's respite from interruption, and it's quite doubtful that the Principal will be requesting your presence in the next hour."

"Why the hell didn't I think of that?" Eva said, massaging her temples with her thumb and forefinger. "Yeah, fine. I'm crashing in the resort for a day. But first go make some breakfast. I'm starving."

"What would you like me to make?"

"As long as it doesn't have onions in it, I don't give a damn."

"Yes, master. It will be ready in a few-"

She was interrupted by a rather loud and frantic knocking on the door.

"Would you like me to answer that?" Chachamaru asked.

"You might as well. Doesn't sound like they're going to go away anytime soon," Eva grumbled. "If it's Konoemon, you tell him to shove it."

"Very well."

Chachamaru turned the doorknob, and the door burst open as Asuna and Konoka barged into the room, the bulky parts of their costumes making a rather large ruckus as they bumped into things.

"What the hell?" Eva said as she glared at the unwelcome guests. "And why are you dressed like-"

"BWAAHH!" The question was answered as Rainbow Dash's head popped out from under the many frills of Konoka's dress. "Whew, is it stuffy in there!" She said as she shimmied her way out.

"Yeah, it was tough to walk with you under there," Konoka said, lifting the edge of the dress to let the pony out from under it. "I'm surprised I managed to make it here without tripping."

"I don't want to hear about it!" Asuna grumbled. She lurched over to the sofa, and dumped her trench coat and hunchback onto it. After a few moments of wiggling, Twilight emerged from the tangle of cloth, flopping awkwardly onto the floor. "At least you didn't have to carry her all this way."

"Oh, it feel so good to get out of there!" Twilight's back cracked a few times as she stretched, happy to not be balled up any longer.

"And to what do I owe this pleasure?" Evangeline muttered, her voice practically dripping with sarcasm.

"Something weird is going on!" Asuna answered.

"I'm well aware of that." Eva eyed the two ponies. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Well, I got up this morning, and suddenly everything except me just froze! Stuff unfreezes if I touch it, so we had to come all the way over here like this!" She put one hand on Twilight's head, and grabbed Konoka's arm with the other. "As a matter of fact-"

Eva couldn't help but twitch at what happened next. Asuna somehow managed to do what was best described as "flicker". In seemingly no time at all she had suddenly moved from the far side of the room to being directly in front of Eva's face. It wasn't really even a movement; one moment she was over there, the next she was uncomfortably close. In fact, her hand was now clamped on top of the vampire girl's head.

"See! This is what I was talking about!" Asuna said, making sure to keep her grip tight, "Everything is frozen!" She pointed out the window where all the leaves had stopped rustling in the breeze.

"So it is," Eva mumbled. There was a vague feeling in the back of her mind that she should be more concerned about what was going on, but the annoyance of Asuna's hand on her head was crowding it out. "What exactly do you want me to do?"

"I don't know! Haven't you ever seen anything like this before? I mean, your resort stretches time out or something. Is something like that going on?"

"Well, yes, there's obviously some sort of time-related weirdness going on here. Not sure how it compares to my resort, though. That basically works by accelerating time inside the resort, not by slowing it down everywhere else. Accelerating time is far easier than slowing it down, so my guess is that something is making time flow faster for you and stuff you're touching rather than slowing everything else down. What's causing that? No clue."

"You don't know!-?" Asuna gave Eva's head a shake. "What am I supposed to do now?"

"First of all, get your hand off my head before I snap it off," Eva said as she grabbed Asuna's wrist, pulling it away from her head. "Second, I haven't slept in the past twenty-four hours, so you're lucky that I haven't already kicked your ass. Third, your best bet is to either go to see those science club girls from our class. I hear they've been experimenting with temporal manipulation, or whatever the hell it is they call it. Wouldn't be surprised if they're mucking around with using magic to power it."

"Chao and Hakase know about magic?"

"Yeah, they've been in on it for a while. Don't ask me how; I didn't ask questions. Now get the hell out of my house before I kick your ass out myself."

"Fine. Come on, let's get out of here."

Eva glared at the two girls and the two ponies, hoping that the concentrated frustration in her eyes would get them back into costume and out of her living room just a little bit faster.

Homura meandered her way down the hill. She could hear the clopping of the pony's hooves behind her. Sometimes they were a bit distant, forcing her to stop as Fluttershy caught up. At first she had been a bit wary of the talking, winged pony. She had never seen anything quite like her, but the general motif was unfortunately familiar. The pony wouldn't have been at all out of place inside of a witch's barrier. But there was no point in dredging up those unpleasant memories. The witches were a thing of the past, and it was fairly obvious that Fluttershy was far too personable to be a minion.

"Um...excuse me..Homura?"

Fluttershy's voice was so quiet that for a moment Homura wasn't sure whether she had actually heard anything. She turned around to see the pony pawing at the path.

"Yes?"

"I...uh...I was just wondering about what we're going to do." The pony's eyes met Homura's for a split second before focusing back on the ground. "I mean, we don't know where we are, but you looked so...I don't know, like you knew where you were going."

"I'm going into the town so I can find out what this place is. Once I know that, I can decide what to do from there."

Homura's voice sounded quite determined, but in reality she really had no idea what she planned on doing. Her life had been all but dedicated to destroying witches, and then to destroying demons. At the moment, neither of those appeared to be present. At the very least, her Soul Gem hadn't indicated that any of them were anywhere nearby. The corruption that had gathered within it had also completely dissipated for some reason, but she had no idea how or why. No point in dwelling on that. More than anything, she wanted to clear her mind; to get the distractions out of the way.

"Um...excuse me..."

Homura's thoughts had captured her attention long enough for Fluttershy to catch up to her. She looked down to see the pony staring inquisitively up at her.

"Yes?"

"I was...I have a question..." Fluttershy mumbled.

"What is it?"

"That thing on your arm..." Fluttershy said, "I was just wondering what it's for...?"

Homura sighed. Most likely the question was just a clumsy attempt at starting a conversation, which was the last thing she wanted to do at the moment.

"What thing are you talking abou-"

She stopped as her eyes came to rest on the intricately decorated metal disk secured to her arm. How had she not noticed it before? Maybe she had grown so used to its presence in her past that didn't feel out of place. The device had been taken from her on the day she had received her bow, and she had never quite grown used to it's absence; without it's weight bearing down on her arm it felt like a piece of her was missing. But how had it returned? What power could have possibly written it back into being after-

Homura's whole body shuddered at the thought. She could feel her face growing paler as the blood drained out of it. Something like this couldn't have happened. It was impossible. Her legs gave out and she crashed to her hands and knees.

"Homura! Are you okay?" Fluttershy squeaked. She began to prance nervously back and forth, unsure of whether she should attempt to help Homura back to her feet. "I'm so sorry! I shouldn't have asked anything! If I would have known I wouldn't have-"

"I'm fine," Homura grunted. "It just caught me off guard." She took a deep breath and forced herself to her feet. "I used to have this, but it was removed a while back. I was just surprised to see it again."

"Oh..." Fluttershy mumbled.

"This device allows me to temporarily stop time for myself, and for anyone that I'm touching." Homura's mind was still spinning, but she had already buried any outward indications of that. She had learned long time ago how to keep her mind from changing her face. Any traces of her momentary instability had vanished. "Don't move."

Fluttershy twitched as Homura took hold of her mane. There was a hum and a click, and suddenly the entire world went silent.

"W-w-w-what did you do!-?" Fluttershy said. All four of her legs wobbled as she forced herself to look at the now-still world.

"I already told you. I stopped time." Homura gave Fluttershy's mane a light tug. "Come on, we have to get moving."

Fluttershy swallowed hard, nodded, and the two of them started back down the path.

Asuna sighed as she dragged herself down the path away from Eva's house. Makie was still hanging around for no particular reason, and she was the last person that Asuna wanted to deal with at the moment. Fortunately, the time stop had once again worked in her favor, and Makie was just hanging in the air, mid-skip. Asuna gave Konoka a tug.

"Pick up the pace! I don't want to get stuck talking to her again when things start moving!"

"I'm trying!" Konoka answered. "Slow down! I'm going to-" Her uncertain steps graduated into a stumble and she found herself flat on her face, dragging Asuna down with her. "Sorry. It's hard enough just trying to walk in this dress without hiding a pony under it."

"You think you have it bad?" Rainbow stuck her head out of the bottom of the dress. "At least you can see where you're going. And you keep kicking me in the flank."

"Will you get back under there!-?" Asuna said, waving her free hand randomly in an attempt at a "get back under there" gesture.

"Give me a minute, will you?" the pony answered. "It's tough to breathe under there. And I haven't been outside in forever!"

"Fine, fine! Can we at least move away from from her?" Asuna pointed at Makie. "She's the last person that I want to have to explain this mess to."

"What about Asakura?" Konoka asked as she wobbled her way to her feet, stepping awkwardly around Rainbow Dash. "I bet she'd be worse than Makie."

"She already knows. I don't know how the heck Negi managed to keep her quiet, but...what the hell is that?"

"What's what?" Twilight's head popped out of the hump on Asuna's back. "What's going on?"

"Look!"

Twilight turned her head to see Asuna's arm pointing off into the distance. Despite that everything from the birds to the leaves on the trees was still, there were two small figures moving quickly along a path. Twilight squinted. One of the forms was humanoid, but the other one looked surprisingly pony-like. And it was yellow, with a smudge of pink. Twilight swallowed, trying to resist the temptation of assuming that the pony-like figure was who she thought it was.

"Fluttershy?"

"Who?" Asuna attempted to turn to look at the unicorn, but due to her not being an owl, her neck didn't rotate far enough and she was forced to look at Twilight's nose out of the corner of her eye. It had taken her long enough to adjust to the fact that "Twilight Sparkle" and "Rainbow Dash" were actually names, and this new one sounded like something that Konoka would have come up with in elementary school.

"She was one of my friends from back home!" Twilight answered. "Rainbow Dash, doesn't that look like Fluttershy?"

"Sure does! Let's go!" Rainbow Dash rushed forward, only to stop with a jerk. She looked back to see Konoka holding onto her tail. "What are you doing? They're going the other way! We have to catch up!"

"Yeah, but if you aren't touching me or somebody who's touching me, you freeze, remember?" Asuna held up her hand, which was still gripping Konoka's wrist. "Either I have to run over there by myself, or we all have to maintain contact."

"But we'll never catch up to her like this!" Twilight's voice wavered a little as she watched the pastel blur that was very possibly her friend grow smaller and more blurry as the taller, darker blur dragged it further away.

"Oh, we'll catch up to them all right," Rainbow Dash said. "Asuna, Konoka, hold onto me and don't let go." The pegasus tensed herself and pawed at the ground with her front hoof as the two girls latched onto her tail. "About time I get to stretch my wings a bit. Hold on tight!"

Asuna didn't know much about physics, but she was still quite sure that Rainbow Dash had broken several of its laws as she blasted forward, towing the two girls and the unicorn along behind her as if they were as light as balloons. The entire world seemed to have been replaced by a whirl of psychedelia. The only things she could see that weren't hidden by the spiral of color were the two distant shapes, which were rapidly becoming less and less distant. In fact, they were now uncomfortably close, and Rainbow Dash wasn't showing any sign of slowing down.

The spectrum of colors exploded around her as she felt herself rolling along in a jumbled tangle of limbs, both human and pony. Everything came to a sudden stop with a thud. She blinked a few times to get the flashing colors out of her eyes. As her vision cleared, she had come to the realization that she was upside down, propped up awkwardly against the wall of a nearby building. She turned herself over with a groan, only to find herself staring at the form of the taller, more human figure.

Seeing it so close it was quite clearly a black-haired girl, wearing what appeared to be some sort of vaguely school-ish uniform that didn't even remotely resemble the Mahora uniform. Her face seemed to be devoid of any emotion, although her eyes were so harsh that a chill ran down Asuna's spine. Somehow, she had managed to extricate herself from the wreckage caused by Rainbow Dash's crash, and had a bow and what seemed to be a magic arrow pointed at the rest of the group, who were still recovering from the collision.

"Who are you?" The mysterious girl's voice was just as flat as her demeanor implied. There was no anger or malice, but there was an inexplicable quality to it that made it quite undeniable that she was not to be trifled with. Asuna smiled awkwardly as she tried to think of a suitable response.

"Uh...I'm Asu-WHOA!" She flipped over into the dirt as Fluttershy scrambled out from under her.

"Twilight! Rainbow Dash!" The yellow pony threw her forelegs around her friends and gave them a hug. "I can't believe it! Where did you come from?" Even if they heard the question, they were still too stunned by the impact to respond outside of a pair of dazed smiles. Fluttershy looked up. "Homura, put that down! These are my friends!"

Homura kept the bow drawn, but the pony's voice was so unexpectedly forceful that she felt compelled to lower it.

"I can't believe I found you!" Fluttershy buried her face in her friends' manes as she squeezed them even tighter. No way was she going to lose them again. "I had no idea where you were or where I was and I was so scared-"

"F-fluttershy..." Rainbow Dash groaned, the words being squeezed out of her as if she were a tube of toothpaste. "Can you let go?"

"Oh, sorry!" Fluttershy relaxed her grip, but only slightly. "I just can't believe that you're actually here! I thought I was alone!"

"Well, you aren't!" Twilight said. "We're going to stick together, okay?"

"Of course!" Fluttershy said.

"What about those other two?" Homura asked, eying Konoka and Asuna apprehensively.

"Uh...I don't know..." Fluttershy's voice reverted to its previous whispery volume. She seemed to grow smaller as she noticed the presence of the other two humans. She had just climbed out from under one of them, and was currently sitting on top of the other.

"They're fine," Twilight answered. She pried herself out of Fluttershy's grasp, and stepped off of Konoka's back. "They helped us out after we got dumped here."

"I see," Homura said. Her narrowed eyes seemed to say that she wasn't entirely ready to take the pony at her word, but she waved her hands and the bow vanished into the air.

"So, I was-uh, we-" Fluttershy babbled, trying to decide which of hundreds of questions bouncing around her head she would actually ask. "What happened? How did we end up here? Where are we anyway?"

"Calm down!" Twilight said as she patted Fluttershy's head, "We're still trying to answer those questions ourselves. All we know is that we're in a country called Japan, at a really giant school called Mahora Academy. Rainbow Dash and I have been staying in the dormitory with these girls." She waved at Asuna and Konoka, who were now back on their feet.

"I'm Fluttershy." She bobbed her head.

"I'm Konoka, and this is my roommate Asuna. It's nice to meet you. Who's your other friend?" She indicated Homura, who stood rather awkwardly on the edge of the conversation.

"My name is Akemi Homura." Having introduced herself, she bowed slightly, but showed no other inclination to offer anything else.

"I met her right after I got here," Fluttershy said. "We thought we should stick together until we figured out what to do. At first I was kinda scared, but then I found out that she has this magic device that lets her stop time-"

"Waitwaitwait!" Asuna interrupted. "She can stop time? She's the one who's been freezing everything?"

"Yes." Homura held up the arm with the metal disc on it. "This allows me to temporarily suspend the flow of-"

"Dammit, you nearly gave me a coronary!" She thrust a finger in Homura's direction. "You shouldn't go around randomly stopping time like that! I had no idea what the hell was going on when everything around me just stopped!"

"You were unaffected?" Homura tilted her head slightly, her blank expression hiding most of her confusion. "That has never happened before."

"It's some sort of weird magic immunity thing," Asuna said with a shrug. "But yeah, it didn't freeze me or anything I was-..." She stopped and looked down at the ponies, who were all sitting together a good ten feet away. "...touching. Time is running normally now, isn't it?"

"Time resumed flowing normally when you collided with me."

"Oh crap!" Asuna rushed over to the ponies and began to shoo them towards the shrubs that lined the nearby building. "You guys have to hide before-"

"Wow, ponies!"

"Dammit." Asuna's eye twitched as she recognized the voice of her gymnastically inclined classmate.

"They're so cute!" Makie skipped past Asuna and wrapped her arms around the ponies, aggressively cuddling them.

"Hey, watch the wings!" Rainbow Dash yelled, wriggling furiously in an attempt to break Makie's grasp.

"They can talk!-? That's so cool!" She squeezed even tighter. "Cuuuute!"

"I think that's enough, Makie," Konoka said as she peeled the girl's arms off of her targets. "You wouldn't want to hurt them, would you?"

"Of course not!" Makie answered, releasing the ponies. "Oh, who's this?"

"She's a...visitor," Asuna said. She took a deep breath and closed er eyes as she tried to think of a way to explain this incident to Makie without actually telling her anything.

"Of course. I didn't think I'd seen you around here before! My name is Makie!"

"M-my...my name is Homura." She babbled, speaking about twice as fast and with a good deal more uncertainty than anything else she had said thus far.

"Okay!" Makie seized one of Homura's hand and shook it wildly. "Are you one of Asuna's friends?"

"I...I'm not from around here..." Homura stared at the ground, trying to hide the fact that her cheeks were starting to flush. "I just ran into them a few minutes ago..."

"Well, this is just great..." Asuna mumbled. She was mildly curious about why Homura now sounded more like that yellow pony they had just met and less like the assertive hardass who had been trying to boss her around a few minutes earlier, but there were more important issues to attend to at the moment. "Konoka, get the ponies out of sight before somebody else sees them and give your grandpa a call."

"Okay!" Konoka nodded happily as she directed the ponies towards the bushes.

Asuna sighed as she dug around in her pockets for her pactio card. She wasn't sure where Negi was, and she didn't have the time to wait for him to answer his cell phone. The pactio card was more or less guaranteed to get to him, and had the extra bonus of making it obvious that she required his immediate attention. She faced away from the open space and pressed the card to her forehead.

Negi, we might be in trouble. Another pony, and a girl showed up. Also, Makie saw the ponies, so yeah, I'm sure you realize the problem here. We're just sort of hiding around the administration building closest to Eva's cottage. Hurry up!

She lowered the card and took a deep breath. The ponies were totally out of sight, except for the odd rustle and muffled complaints about how the branches were poking them in uncomfortable places. Granted, a group of four middle school students pacing nervously behind one of the most out-of-the-way buildings on campus was still kinda suspicious, but it was better than having to once again make an attempt to explain the ponies. At least Makie didn't seem too curious about them; she was currently too distracted blabbering about why waffles were superior to pancakes. Oddly enough, it seemed to be distracting Homura equally well. Hopefully it would keep both of them occupied until Negi showed up.

Casey didn't get tired easily. Years of NSA field work had trained him not to fall victim to fatigue. Both mind and body had been honed by countless hours of alert stillness, whether weathering a jungle monsoon, or spending a week living inside the walls of a Communist Dictator's mansion. Mere men might find their resolve flagging after four days and nights of winding their way through the Swiss Alps to infiltrate the mountain retreat of a dangerous arms dealer, but Colonel John Casey didn't so much know the meaning of the word "tired". Well, he did, but not from personal experience.

But despite his typically inhuman stamina, he found himself fighting to keep his eyelids from drooping. It wasn't from any sort of physical exhaustion; he had been counting the hours since he had last been asleep, and he knew for a fact that he had at least eighteen hours lefts before he needed to rest. No, this was a mental weariness. No matter how hard he fought it, he couldn't keep himself from dozing. For the first time in years, he was losing the battle against fatigue, all because that old, eggplant-headed man would not shut up.

It had started off well, with the assurance that they would shortly be freed, but Konoemon had long since gotten off on a tangent about how that girl who was apparently a vampire or something had tricked him into an Eternal Life loop in their last weekly game of Go. At least he had had the decency to release them from the chairs and give them some food. And he wasn't skimping either. Casey knew all the best meat bun stands in Tokyo, but the ones the Principal had brought along were the best he had ever eaten.

"I mean, one would think that the ko rule would prevent those sort of things, but apparently there are some infinitely looping positions that are so rare that they didn't bother creating a rule to avoid them. I suppose that a super ko rule would have-"

"Everybody was Kung Fu Fightiiiiing!"

He stopped at the sound of a muffled voice from his robes. Konoemon reached into an inside pocket and drew out his cellphone.

"Those cats were fast as lightning!"

"I'm sorry, I have to take this. Granddaughter." He flipped the phone open. "Yes, dear? What is- oh. Another pony, you say? Who? Ohhh..." He groaned. "I'll be right there." He closed the phone with a click. "I have some business I must attend to. Just as well. I believe I've given you all of the most important information. I'll have Mana come along in a moment to show you to your new lodgings. I apologize again for the inconvenience." The old man bowed before heading out the door, not even bothering to close the door behind him.

"Well, I think that went well," Morgan said, as he took a meat bun from the table that Konoemon had set up. "We finally get to get out of here, get some sleep-"

"Yet we still have no clue how we ended up in Japan, or why there are magic ponies. Magic ponies, Morgan!" Chuck grumbled.

"Well, yeah..." Morgan said with a shrug. "But it's not like we can really do much about that." He took a bite out of the meat bun and continued to mumble around the mouthful. "You heard that old guy. He'll let us know what's going on when he makes any progress, so while we wait for him to do stuff, we might as well make the most of it."

"Are you crazy?" Chuck stared at Morgan, utterly incredulous at how blasé the latter was being. "I'm not going to just sit on my behind and do nothing!" He leaned in and lowered his voice. "We have no idea where Sarah is. I can't just sit by. We have to find her."

"I know, Chuck," Morgan answered, "...but just think about about it, man. We have no idea how we got here or why there's suddenly magic and pixie dust and fairies and whatever. At least that old dude sort of had some idea of where to start, which is more that we have." He took another meat bun. "Besides, I'm kinda tired, and I bet Casey has a headache from getting kicked in the head. He probably wants to get rid of that mustache too."

"Oh come on!" Chuck turned to Casey. "Are we supposed to just hang around and twiddle our thumbs or something while Sarah is out who-knows-where?"

"I hate to say it, but I'm with Grimes on this one," Casey answered. "You should know by now that the first step to getting anything done is reconnaissance. We need to gather information before we go off looking for Walker. Besides, you know as well as I do that she's perfectly capable of handling herself if she runs into a group of wizards."

"They prefer to be called mages, actually."

All three men looked up to see Mana standing in the doorway, her cold glare making it clear that she'd rather be elsewhere. Chuck and Morgan wilted slightly under her stare; Casey merely responded with a stare of his own.

"We're putting you up in the shrine for the time being. It's hardly the best accommodations, but it's certainly more comfortable than this cell. If you'll kindly come along, we can have you situated within the hour. I'm sure that after the events of the past day, you'll be needing some rest."

Casey gave an affirmative snort as he stood up and nodded at his two companions to do the same. Morgan sprang out of his chair and headed for the door, Chuck following reluctantly behind him. Even for a spy, this had been a long day, and they needed some time to get a plan together.

"There's a what?"

"A temporal anomaly."

"When did you discover it?"

"I was conducting the preliminary assessment of the Cassiopeia's displacement algorithms. While a rapid succession of activations successfully mimics the effects of a cessation of normal temporal progression, any attempts to create a retrogression have been unsuccessful. The diagnostic program records no damage in the device itself."

"Well, then the problem is obviously in the program."

"I believed that was the case, so I reinstalled the beta version of the program as a control test. Despite successfully creating a retrogression in the temporal flow on all previous occasions, all attempts met with failure. As such, I attempted to apply the device manually, at which point I received the same result. It seems to retain full function in slowing and stopping chronology, but reversal seems to be impossible."

Chao began to shake out of pure frustration. The whole incident with her magic stockpile spontaneously dwindling was bad enough, and now her attempt to divert her thoughts away from it by dedicating her attention to another project was backfiring rather spectacularly. Fortunately, she had plenty of experience keeping all of that stress beneath the surface. When see finally turned around to face Hakase, she appeared as bright and chipper as she ever had.

"So the Cassiopeia no longer travels back in time, you don't know why, and you want me to take a look at it?" she asked.

"Yes. My specialties lie in robotics, chemistry, and physics. Temporospatial programming is not one of my areas of expertise. Especially as you've only recently informed me that it is a viable scientific discipline. You don't suppose that this issue is related to the sudden decrease of mana, do you?"

"It's a possibility, I suppose," Chao said with a sigh. "Were the mana levels inside the test chamber set to the standard concentration?"

"Of course."

"In that case, I'm a bit hesitant say they're definitely related; you know the relationship between correlation and causation as well as I do. Although I must admit that such a large coincidence does merit investigation. Tell you what, I'll go take a look at the Cassiopeia. Meanwhile, I need you to go log into the University Science Department's network and download all the data concerning mana levels around campus. Their records are far more comprehensive than anything I've measured."

"Even I don't have the authorization to access those records," Hakase said. "None of the students do, even at the University level."

"I know, which is why I have this." Chao smiled as she held up a USB drive. "Plug this in and it'll save you the trouble of having to bother with the passwords. Now get going. The offices are usually empty this time of day." She waved Hakase away and spun her chair back around to face her desk.

Her face now out of sight, she grimaced. The two most central components of her plan were currently acting up in a way that made absolutely no sense. She had been crunching numbers all night, and everything was totally inconsistent with everything else. Worrying about the fact that the stupid tree had suddenly crapped out on her was bad enough without having to worry about getting the Cassiopeia to do what it was supposed to do. And it had broken in an impossible fashion; it was one of those things that either worked or it didn't. Being able to stop and slow time but not reverse it was like breaking a bottle by being able to fill it but not pour it out. If the issue really was with the device itself and not the program...she didn't even want to think what that implied.

Ding!

She glanced at her computer screen. A small flashing window in the corner told her that someone had sent her a message. Her eye began to twitch as she saw the flashing name in the window. No way was she going to waste time with this. The handle was...fitting, to say the least. No point in adding any more frustration to what was already one of the worst days she had had in the past two years. She slammed down the lid of the laptop. Time to get back to work.

.

Apologies for taking so long. It's coming to the end of the semester, and I had like a gazillion papers to write. Not to mention that I had a nasty case of writer's block for the middle section of this chapter. I don't think it's ever taken me so long from start to finish. Hopefully as the semester ends, I'll be able to update quicker.

Anyway, for those of you who don't recognize her, Homura is one of the main characters of Puella Magic Madoka Magica. No, her inclusion in the story does not mean that everything is going to suddenly become all dark and depressing. I intend for the bulk of this story to be lighthearted, so don't worry about that. While I'm at it, I definitely do recommend Madoka Magica; it's rather dark, but it isn't totally hopeless, and it's one of the most tightly-plotted animes I've seen. Also, if you've been meaning to see it, I suggest you do so now, because I'm probably going to end up spoiling quite a bit of stuff about it, and I guarantee that this is a series where you don't want to go in spoiled.

Moving on, there was quite a bit of stuff that I was going to put in here, but it was getting long enough as it is. I was going to stick in more Chuck-related material, and actually include more of Konoemon's speech, but it was unnecessary, and I'm starting to get sick of all the "character gets introduced to magic" scenes, so I'm going to try to keep those to a minimum. Similarly, I'm getting a bit sick of writing nothing but introductions all the time, so I'll probably introduce new characters a bit differently. If they seem to integrate into the cast with surprising speed, remember that it's either that or having see yet another scene were X Random Person expresses surprise at the fact that there are magical ponies.

I had also considered actually including the online conversation that Chao is having, but it makes more sense to shove it off until later, in no small part because I don't want to introduce that character quite yet. Besides, there's no point in dragging the end of the chapter out after the main conflict gets resolved. Needless to say, the character in question is actually related to the overarching plot (yes there is an overarching plot other than "random characters appear")

I still have finals next week, including two end of semester final papers, so don't expect an update until after Christmas. Possibly until after New Years, if I get Skyward Sword for Christmas. This also sort of applies to Nerima, which I'll try to update before Christmas, but no promises.

Thanks for reading thus far. Hopefully it's been enjoyable. Reviews are awesome.