Disclaimer: I am not Lauren Faust nor Hasbro. I do not own My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, nor Equestria Girls.

Opening Note:

See the opening note of the 'preludes.'

This chapter is first from the point of view of CPT Twilight Sparkle (i.e. human world Twilight Sparkle) and then of (human) Sheriff Silverstar. It features the only scheduled personal appearance of CPT Twilight Sparkle in part one of this story. She is not scheduled to make any further personal appearances until part two.

The first part of the chapter takes place in the afternoon of the day after ERAFOSS Twilight Sparkle arrived in the human world, and the second part takes place in the evening of that same day.

Warning: As noted in the preludes, this story is rated 'M'. This chapter also features mention of a hunting haystack – which is distinctly not usually a good thing to meet, even in the human world. Even if it is unclear by the end of the chapter exactly what has happened, some readers may find this chapter upsetting. This chapter and chapter 5 ('Reverberations') are likely the bleakest chapters in part one covering events in the human world. Mars from Gustav Holst's Planets Suite level bleak in places.


Chapter 4:

Twilight Sparkle, student of Crystal Prep Academy, had returned home from school for the day, and had checked her daily exercise data. She had discovered – based on her calorie intake for the day, sleep patterns so far for this week, and several other factors – that she was ten minutes underdone on her daily exercise today, and needed to remedy this, urgently. A short brisk walk would be ideal.

A minimum level of exercise was necessary to keep the body in good shape, and there were plenty of studies that showed that a body in good shape was beneficial to keeping the mind in absolutely great shape.

And Twilight Sparkle needed to keep her mind in absolutely great shape, so that she could work out the most optimal course for her life, and solve the riddle of the hole that she was increasingly becoming aware of in her life.

She had a number of theories as to what the hole might be due to, and had worked her way through and discarded a number more. She was down to 'lack of respect', 'lack of power', 'lack of knowledge of some kind which she had not yet had the opportunity to study', and 'lack of respectful listeners who would always pay attention when she had anything to say'. She was in the latter stages of a project to select an ideal pet companion, right now, to see if a respectful listener who would at least almost always pay attention when she had anything to say would resolve the feeling of a 'hole'. (If not then it would be on to the next thing.)

She believed that she was going to have to buy a dog, and was currently studying the factors as to which breed would be ideal. A puppy would be a lot of work, but would be trainable, she had already figured out. And the proper name for a dog had been child's play to calculate.

And even if getting a dog did nothing to deal with the problem of a 'hole', it should, according to Twilight's calculations, allow her to get at least 75% more value out of any exercise time.

Twilight's older brother, Shining Armor, was on the telephone in the hall as Twilight pulled on her coat and checked her boots. Shining Armor was talking to Dean Cadence by the sound of it. Even though Shining Armor had graduated over the summer, he was still helping the Dean with various projects.

Twilight was absolutely certain that it was because he was so conscientious and had 'school pride' that her Big Brother Best Friend Forever was helping the dean. Others might have made the error of thinking that it could be because he had a crush on the dean, who was a few years his elder, but Twilight was certain that if her brother was dating anyone he would have been furtive about his communications, using email and his mobile, and not overtly using their house's landline.

Still, as she went past him, she puckered up her face and made 'kissy kissy' motions with her lips, and he swatted her playfully around the head.

"What? No. That was just my Small Sister Supreme Friend Forever going past." she heard him say to the dean.

Twilight got to the front-door and checked her phone again for the weather report. No danger of precipitation, one email just in – offering her a 'psychic warning of a life-changing experience on your doorstep'.

Twilight deleted the email, put the phone away, and pulled open the front door.

Her brain shutdown and she froze.

There was a haystack on the doorstep.

There was no logical reason that she could think of for a haystack to be on the doorstep.

She frantically tried to reboot her brain.

If this were a Glitterdust Valiant novel, the haystack would of course be The Ninth Haystack of the Kingdom of Shadows, but the Glitterdust Valiant stories were amusing fantasy, and… magic wasn't real anyway – was it?

Psychic warning of a life-changing experience on your doorstep.

There was a rustle of dried grasses and meadow-herbs.

And Twilight was engulfed in suffocating darkness.

She was vaguely aware – as if from very far off – of a flash and a bang happening to other people, and of fire, but sensations of the world were fading away.

You couldn't just… on the doorstep of your own house… like that… could you?...


Night had arrived and after several hours of careful labour the emergency rescue team had concluded that there was now nobody left alive to extract from the wreckage of the house, and had departed the scene to leave law enforcement to conclude the initial stages of their own grim business of investigation. Under the glare of the imported site-lights, to the accompaniment of the background chug of the generator which powered them, a sheriff and his handpicked aides had carried on taking photographs, interviewing possible witnesses, and collecting evidence. They had just about finished for now.

The site-lights cast monstrous shadows about the front lawn and wreckage – although the most monstrous thing about the scene cast no literal shadow at all by their illumination.

The sheriff in charge of the 'law enforcement' side of the investigation was named 'Sheriff Silverstar', and like the counterpart that he did not know that he had in another world, he had a broad brimmed hat, a magnificent handlebar moustache, and a tendency to drop the letter 'g' from the ends of words finishing with 'ing'. The officers he had brought with him from out-of-town to assist him were a female deputy by the name of 'Shooting Star' – with short-cropped blonde hair and new enough still to retain a degree of an enthusiasm for the job, although that latter was rapidly eroding under the current circumstances – and an old hand and technical specialist by the name of 'Access Keys', his greyed hair tied back in a pony-tail, a fashion throwback to the days of his riotous youth.

Sheriff Silverstar had been hastily summoned into Canterlot and put in charge of this investigation, since the regular Canterlot police were practically all committed to the search for Juniper Montage – the niece of the famous film director, Canter Zoom – Juniper having disappeared the previous day. Sheriff Silverstar himself had been inclined to take a philosophical view, at least initially, when he had been called in to cover this investigation: it was being done so that the Canterlot Police Department could continue undistracted with the search for what was – regardless of her connexions – after all a missing young woman, who although unaccounted for might still be alive somewhere. And every ounce of local knowledge of where to check and who to ask questions would be essential for that search; whereas this case, which the Sheriff had been called in for, where a combine harvester had ploughed into the front of a residential building and exploded, whilst highly tragic, was something where officers from out-of-town could deal with the preliminaries.

The first response emergency workers – picking through the wreckage already whilst the Sheriff and his officers had still been on their way into town – had been booked in for trauma counselling, and those who had retrieved what was left of the girl who had been standing on the front porch had been put on immediate leave. Although the rescue workers had had the satisfaction of eventually successfully extracting the deceased girl's elder brother, still alive and breathing, from the rubble.

And with the living and the dead dealt with, it was up to the Sheriff and his team to discover what had happened and who – if anyone – was responsible.

Shooting Star had been on a tour of the neighbouring houses and collected statements on what people had thought that they had witnessed happen – which she had just finished reporting to the Sheriff.

"That's a remarkable coherence of accounts of what folks reckon took place." the Sheriff fretted. "And a lot of folk who just happened to be lookin' out of windows at exactly the right moment."

"By all accounts, sir, the vehicle was making a fair amount of racket as it came down the street." Shooting Star said.

"And where's the driver of the agricultural vehicle?" the Sheriff asked. "We have, by the account of the rescue workers, the remains of Miss Twilight Sparkle which they discovered on the front porch – badly mangled but identifiable. We have Mr. Shining Armor extracted alive and breathin' from the ruin of the house a short while after we got here. But no-one that I've heard has said a gosh-darned thin' about another body, either livin' or deceased."

"It might have been one of those hi-tech automated self-driving ones." Access Keys said, who had been standing nearby, listening to the discussion, as he updated an entry in an evidence log app on his official issue Sheriff's Department phone. "No human being needed in the cab. Just punch some buttons, and away it goes, driven by computers." He paused. "And that could explain what it was doing here in town, if it was self-driving and the system had gone haywire."

"Are you seriously tellin' me that a combine harvester could drive itself maybe miles into town from some farm or other and ram itself into this buildin' because some electronic doohickey went bad?" the Sheriff asked.

"It's unlikely but possible." Access Keys said.

"Well at any rate, that bein' the case, there should be a farm somewhere missin' an expensive piece of machinery." the Sheriff said. He glanced at Shooting Star. "The witnesses all agreed on a description of the vehicle in question?"

"Absolutely, sir." Shooting Star replied. "Right down to the license plate." She frowned. "Under other circumstances, I'd find that odd, but… but… it just seems right and to make sense in this case."

"And we found nothin' so far that actually looks like an identifiable component of a piece of agricultural machinery?" the Sheriff pressed, looking at his two fellow officers.

"No…" Access Keys said, struggling to get the words out. "But… but…"

"Yeah. I know. The explosion could have distorted and bent or melted anythin' out of shape into unrecognizability, not distinguishable from contents of the buildin' or parts of this here buildin's superstructure." the Sheriff finished for him. He scowled. "I don't like this case at all, and that's not on account of just the tragedy, but the feelin' that somethin' or someone is pullin' my strings and laughin' at me." His scowl deepened. "I can't see how we're not gonna write it off as nothin' more than a tragic farmin' accident, but every one of my lawman's instincts is screamin' that somethin' is very wrong with that analysis. And there's the deceased girl's mobile phone. Almost any teenager of her age from a well-to-do family like this should have had one, but we found nothin' and the workers who collected her remains didn't report findin' anythin' like that either. Now maybe it's somewhere in the wreck of the house, still, or maybe it was melted into a shapeless blob by the fire, but I'd feel much happier if somethin' like that was accounted for. She was goin' out, and if she had it on her person, it should have been there and identifiable – an unpleasant sight to look at, Miss Sparkle may have been, but she could be identified, after all."

He was upset, and a voice at the back of his head, which he didn't know if he could call his own or not was telling him that he was upset simply because this was such an upsetting case. So tragic. So difficult to think straight.

The Sheriff made one final effort.

"And do you know somethin' else strange? Try breathin' in deeply."

Shooting Star and Access Keys duly did so, the Sheriff doing so as well.

"You smell that?" the Sheriff asked. "Freshly mown and dried grass and meadow herbs. I just cannot for the life of me place where it's comin' from though. And I really wish that I could pinpoint the source of it. I have a feelin' that in a case as tragic as this that it's somehow important. And before anyone says it, it sure don't smell to me anythin' like what a combine harvester ordinarily ought to have been harvestin'."

The lawmen looked around, completely ignoring the large haystack perched in deceptively innocent fashion on the lawn in front of the wreck of a house where a human girl called Twilight Sparkle had so recently been living. The large haystack which in the overwhelming glare of the electrical site-lights was flagrantly casting not the slightest shadow – and there were not so many lights so positioned that that could be natural.

Even had the lawmen somehow noticed it though, they probably would have been compelled to write off its presence as being somehow connected with the recent 'accident' – which the haystack's presence actually was, but not in the way in which they would have written it off.

And none of the three would have had a hope of recognising a technique of 'fake farming accidents' once 'arranged' by the evil ram sorcerer of another world altogether known as 'Grogar'.

It was possible that in a quieter period, if he hadn't been running around dealing with dozens of problems in other places, that an available archmage might have noticed this most unlikely of 'farming accidents' and investigated further, tearing through the layers of magical mind control and deception; but the only archmage even remotely in the vicinity was busy saving the world from other disasters, and this slipped by his attention. And there were no alicorn princesses as yet in play. Not in this world. The havoc caused by a lord of chaos and a failed student fleeing him had not spread that far – as of yet.

No: there was nobody capable and on the scene able to push through with the questions in need of asking, in the face of the magical might and will of a hunting haystack carrying out the 'wrap up' of the mission that its current suzerain had set it upon.

But from the blasted and haunted ruins of Spyte in one world, where a pony champion of sorcery's belief in the ultimate power of friendship died, to a storage locker to be acquired by a wizard of practical bent in the human city of Canterlot before the current human year is out, the consequences of unearthed or soon-to-be-unearthed history are stirring; and when cracks spread through ice on the surface of a lake, not all cracks spread in a direction that favour one standing on the ice who dropped the stone that broke it.

Two Twilight Sparkles now have fallen. But – like the Celestia who is a Princess – the Principal who is Abacus Cinch has had many students. And even if none of those students may match the intellect of the Twilight who has fallen now to a haystack, they may excel in other qualities, such as bravery in the face of any challenge.

But that is a way off in the future as of yet – for after the funeral.


Author Notes:

To try to clarify where this chapter came from, from a writer's perspective, the police in (human world) Canterlot are shortly going to be informed that a mysterious girl who self-identifies as 'Twilight Sparkle' was found at the bottom of a crater and has been transferred to hospital and she seems to be highly traumatised – and any remotely competent police-force at that point are going to try and figure out who she is and where she came from (not least since if she has been traumatised by abuse, those responsible need something doing about them.) And so the police are going to start asking questions, beginning by ringing around families known to have a girl in that age bracket who is called 'Twilight Sparkle'… Now, I'd prefer to simply handwave that stuff as 'Oh: it's taking place in the background; minimal results, except some cloudcuckoolanders and intelligence agencies take note and go "Huh: that's interesting"', but this is a fanfiction and it is at least in part taking place in a universe in which canon has established that CPT Twilight Sparkle exists…

Discussions regarding this story on the alternate history forum I have previously mentioned in notes made it clear to me that if CPT Twilight Sparkle remained in (human world) Canterlot, once the police contacted her (or her family) she was going to hijack large quantities of the story, and there would be endless complications (and several chapters' worth of police interviews and investigations which I'd feel no alternative but to have to write) to sort out so that it would be clear exactly what CPT Twilight Sparkle was going to be inevitably sticking her nose into. And CPT Twilight Sparkle was almost certainly going to intrude on ERAFOSS Twilight Sparkle, and maybe engage in attempted magic-stealing more than a year earlier than in canon in Friendship Games. This was not what I wanted to write, so CPT Twilight Sparkle had to be removed from the scene, at least temporarily – and in a fashion in which law enforcement wasn't going to be trying to talk to her, even by phone.

So, I reluctantly discarded a couple of scenes I had been working on featuring CPT Twilight Sparkle for part two, and instead introduced her to a hunting haystack on her own doorstep. Hunting haystack use was already intended for Equestria; now it was going to happen in the human world too.

For the record, I have read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I note and acknowledge some aspects of what happened to Arabella Strange in that novel may have been at the back of my mind when writing this chapter.

As far as I know, hunting haystacks (and their deadlier cousins, the thirteen legendary haystacks of the Kingdom of Shadows) are original to me, although powers and vulnerabilities may vary from story to story. Whilst this is not the time nor place for a full bestiary entry regarding them, for the purposes of this story they are assumed to be ambush predators, with an extensive history of working with the Equestrian villain Grogar (the real, original, one), but not seen much in Equestria since his defeat – except in a stronghold of evil which Star Swirl the Bearded shut down. (Although Grogar dictated a big book full of information about evil stuff which included details of how to summon hunting haystacks (and much, much, worse.))

There's not much backstory in the Friendship is Magic show about the original Grogar; for the purposes of this story I am expanding the background of him and his activities and the reference to Grogar arranging 'fake farming accidents' is as far as I know an addition by me to what was in the show.

A 'suzerain' in hunting haystack terms is a boss from outside the hierarchy of demons whose directions a hunting haystack follows.

The Glitterdust Valiant franchise is assumed to be an urban fantasy detective series which I have made up, for the purpose of hunting haystacks having some kind of legends-brought-up-to-date presence in the stories of the human world.

In the film Friendship Games in one of the lines of a song that (human world) Twilight Sparkle sings, she actually does specifically reference a feeling of a 'hole inside'. I've assumed here that more than a year earlier than that CPT Twilight Sparkle is aware of a feeling of missing something, and is undergoing a process of trying to figure out what it is?

Also, given that this chapter is taking place more than a year (in local time) before the events in canon of The Friendship Games, I consider it reasonable that CPT Twilight Sparkle had not yet obtained a pet dog (although dog acquisition was likely underway.)

Juniper Montage disappeared in this story from (human world) Canterlot shortly after ERAFOSS Twilight Sparkle arrived in it. Juniper's uncle (a famous film director) is assumed to have been sufficiently worried and sufficiently influential to have gotten pretty much the entire (human world) Canterlot police force out looking for her. (Not that they're likely to have much success, since Juniper Montage is a long way from (human world) Canterlot. But they're looking, and it's distracting them from giving as much attention to other things…)

There is an earth pony in Appleloosa in Friendship is Magic who is called 'Sheriff Silverstar'. He has two deputies shown in the sixth episode of Season 5, but whilst fandom and a collectible card game have assigned these ponies the names 'Star Spur' and 'Fetter Keys', as far as I can tell the shows never identified them. Also, as far as I know, human counterparts of any of these three ponies were never shown in Equestria Girls. I have gone with a human world counterpart to Sheriff Silverstar existing in this chapter, who shares the earth pony's name, and given him two assistants here, but have deviated from what little is shown of the pony assistants in Friendship is Magic and how fans and the card game name them.

I gather from police procedural dramas and detective novels that multiple witnesses producing practically identical detailed accounts is something to be regarded with caution and as evidence of possible collusion. This is one of the things bothering Sheriff Silverstar and his team – or at least it's bothering them as much as the haystack hidden in plain sight will allow it. The bad guys team which the haystack is on put this operation together in great haste under difficult circumstances, and the Sheriff and his team, even with the mental pressure that they're under, are picking up on slips and mistakes which have been made.

I cannot take credit for the name 'Spyte'. I came across it as a partially ruined citadel, where magi and demons met, in the 'Dragon Warriors' franchise by Oliver Johnson and Dave Morris. There will be more on the Equestrian 'Spyte' in later chapters. This (Equestrian Spyte) is an expansion by me of Equestria's backstory, concerning events taking place during the centuries between the days when the authentic Grogar walked Equestria and the disappearance of the Pillars of Equestria.


Omake:

(NB: The following cut was from the version of this story which was being written before it became apparent that CPT Twilight Sparkle had to be removed from party one for narrative reasons. This scene would have taken place several days later than the events in this chapter which have otherwise occurred.)

When the telephone rang (the house telephone), Twilight Sparkle was half expecting it to be Dean Cadence – it was that sort of time of evening. Even though Twilight's Big Brother Best Friend Forever, Shining Armor, had graduated from Crystal Prep Academy, Dean Cadence was still occasionally telephoning Shining Armor about one school project or another.

Twilight picked the phone up, and found herself being talked to by someone claiming to be a police officer, who wanted to know if the household was missing a 'Twilight Sparkle'?

Which was weird and slightly creepy. Especially after Twilight verified the number with a 'caller ID' function, and confirmed that it did appear to be the local police precinct. Twilight informed him that no, as far as she knew, she was not missing. And then he asked her a couple of questions to confirm her identity, before explaining to an increasingly freaked out Twilight that no, since she was okay, and was who she said she was, there wasn't a problem, before hanging up.

Twilight stared at the phone for several moments before Shining Armor disturbed her.

"Was that the Dean?" he asked.

"No. It was the police for some reason, checking that I'm okay." Twilight stared at the phone.

"Maybe they're checking you weren't out for a walk and wandered into the river without noticing, with you having had your nose so far into a book." Shining Armor said.

"I think I'd notice the signs that I were approaching a river, even if it was a particularly fascinating book." Twilight responded.

"Well at least they didn't keep you on the line." Shining Armor said. "There's a particularly important discussion with the Dean I'm due to have tonight."

"Aren't they all particularly important, according to you?" Twilight threw back. "I'd think you were dating her or something, if she weren't several years old than you, she weren't using the house phone instead of your mobile, and I didn't know you better than that."

Shining Armor responded by playfully punching her, and they were in the middle of a playfight, when the telephone (the house telephone) rang again. This time it was the dean, so Twilight took herself off and stared at pictures of dogs online for half an hour, and wondered if she should get herself a puppy or ask for one for Christmas?

When Twilight went to bed that night, she slept badly though, dreaming that she was being stalked by the Ninth Haystack of the Kingdom of Shadows from out of the Glitterdust Valiant novels, and her only way of escaping it was into a woodland cottage surrounded and protected by a dome of red and gold flames shot through with purple sparks.

Except she couldn't get into the cottage because of the dome.

And then a Discord plushy toy appeared and stared at her, and then it spoke and said 'Wrong Twilight.' before being sucked and swept away in a storm of shadows.

And then there was a figure, with a tall staff, cloaked and hooded in shadows, who stepped out of a patch of darkness of the trees. The figure casually dismissed the Haystack, and stared at Twilight for a few moments, before turning and striding away into the trees, leaving Twilight alone and lost in the woods.

But she could hear sirens, and police cars nearby, somewhere, searching for her, so she headed for them.

Eventually she found them and ended up safe… for now.

(Author Note: As I said, it seemed to me inevitable that the police would try to check up on all known 'Twilight Sparkles', and CPT Twilight Sparkle would have found out about it one way or another, were she still on the scene. And CPT Twilight Sparkle is not the kind of girl who is going to let a mystery like that go, once she's been alerted to it, and is soon going to be poking around everywhere… (The Discord plushy toy in the dream sequence featured, by the way, on account of the book-burning in the Golden Oak library which the Lord of Chaos is carrying out, although from a narrative point of view it was a borderline decision whether the Discord plushy would have remained in or been cut.))