1: This Is Why Long Distance Teleportation Is A Bad Idea
Ever since the restoration of the Castle of the Two Sisters, Twilight goes there to check up on its condition every moon. Today is one of those days.
"Okay, just one room left," said Twilight to herself. "Walls are clean, check. Ceiling... check. Furniture, a bit of dust..." She dusted the marble statue in the corner and the shelves that lined the walls. "There, the last room done, and the sun hasn't gone down yet!"
She exited the castle, stowing her tools into her saddlebags, when an idea popped into her head. What if, she wondered, what if I were to teleport back to the castle? If I could do that, that would cut my castle inspection time by half an hour, or an hour round trip. Oh, I could finish reading all the unread reports today!
Excited by the prospect of getting her work done, she readied herself for the teleport. Her castle was four kilometers away from where she now stood. Having never teleported such a large distance, she calculated the amount of magical power to put into the teleport, just to be safe. "The optimal teleportation time is the square root of displacement over the optimized pony teleportation coefficient. 4000 meters divided by 56.5 is 70.8, and its square root is... 8.41. The velocity is displacement over time, which is 4000 over 8.41, or around 476 meters per second. The optimal energy is the optimized pony teleportation coefficient times mass times displacement. 56.5 times 47.2, plus saddlebags, so 50, times 4000, for a total of 11.3 megajoules of energy. Add another 1.2% to account for the transformation of energy into heat: 11.44 megajoules. Wow, this is going to be hectic," Twilight said to herself. "Good I brought some energy crystals with me, or else I might not be able to... Oh wait, that's only 9 megajoules; I need 2.44 megajoules more energy. Hmm, I'll just have to use my body's own energy then."
She charged up her horn, preparing for her teleport. It occurred to her that this would be the most energy-intensive spell she has ever cast, except for maybe some of the high-energy photon beams she fired when fighting Tirek which, really, weren't all just her magic. She extracted the energy from her energy crystals, building up energy in her horn. It was all released at once, half of the energy used to raise all the magicons in her body to a much, much higher energy level, while the other half accelerating her to 476 meters per second. Then, in a fraction of a second, everything went black.
Spike was sweeping the floors of the Friendship Castle. He's already finished sweeping most of it, which took up most of his day. Ever since they moved to the Friendship Castle, he has had to sweep a much larger floor than in the library. He disliked it, but fortunately, Twilight said they only had to clean the most frequently used rooms; the unused rooms don't really get dirty. Why does the castle have that many rooms anyway? It's mostly just for the bearers of the elements, and the occasional celebration or two.
Suddenly, a bright lavender-colored flash of light could be seen, followed closely by an intense BANG! that made the walls and the windows of the castle vibrate.
"What was that?" asked Spike to nopony in particular; not like he was expecting an answer. "Hey, I might as well check it out, since Twilight is busy at the castle in the Everfree Forest. Speaking of which, she should be about back in maybe half an hour or so." He exited the front castle gates and saw a lump on the ground beside the road leading into Ponyville, some distance away. It was getting dark, and with that distance, he could barely make out any details. The young dragon decided to investigate. When he got closer, he realized what the lump was.
The lump was Twilight Sparkle.
Also there was a smaller lump on the ground next to her, but he didn't really notice it.
"Oh no, Twilight, what happened?" Spike ran towards the unconscious Twilight, who was half-stuck in the dirt. Her horn was glowing red hot, with some magical residue crackling around it. "Twilight, wake up!" He shook Twilight, but she stayed limp with no signs of consciousness. "Hold on," he said. "I'll go get Starlight. I'll be right back!"
He ran as fast as he could back into the castle. "Starlight! Starlight! Oh right, she's cleaning the bathrooms today, hmm." Running into one of the many bathrooms, he realized that it wasn't even a bathroom at all. "Nope," he said, panting.
"Spike, are you looking for me?" asked Starlight, appearing from the bathroom door behind him.
"Yes... *huff*... yes... Twilight, she's... out."
"Um, right. She's in the Castle of the Two Sisters, isn't she?"
"No... I mean, she's... unconscious," Spike answered.
"Unconscious? What happened?"
"There was some magical explosion thing, and she ended up on the road outside. In the ground. Unconscious."
"Oh! Let's go see what happened." Starlight picked Spike up with her telekinesis and plopped the exhausted dragon on her back. She galloped through the hallways, down the stairs, and out of the castle through the main hall.
They slowed down as they got near the still half-buried lump. Starlight lowered Spike down on the ground. Energy continued to crackle around Twilight's horn, albeit with noticeably less intensity. She was still unconscious; a nudge confirmed it. "This looks like it could be caused by an overexertion of magic. Actually, this is way more magic than anything I've ever seen before. She must have used up her energy so fast that she blacked out," said Starlight. "Well, let's get her to the hospital."
She lifted the unconscious alicorn onto her back and kept her in place with her magic. She glanced at Spike. "Sorry Spike, you'll have to walk there by yourself."
"What is that?" asked Spike, noticing the small lump next to the Twilight-shaped depression in the dirt. "It looks like Twilight brought it here."
"I don't know," said Starlight, inspecting it. It seemed to be some sort of small creature, wrapped in cloth. It appears to be sleeping. Or unconscious; you never know.
"Well, I guess I'll carry it then. It might have also gotten hurt." Spike carried the creature in his arms. Starlight started to gallop down the path towards Ponyville, but Spike's short legs couldn't keep up. "Wait, Starlight!" Starlight picked him with her telekinesis, and they continued onwards at a faster pace.
"Good. Okay, if Twilight really overexerted her magic, that means she'll be out for at least a few hours, maybe as long as a day, but she'll be fine otherwise," said Starlight. "First, we need to cool down her horn."
"Because a hot horn releases a chemical signal that stops a part of higher function in the brain, so that the pony stops using magic as a survival mechanism," said Spike.
"How do you know that?"
"Heh, just one of those things I get for being Twilight's number one assistant."
"Well, good to know," replied Starlight. "Thought, you feel heavier than you should be, Spike."
"Maybe because I'm holding this creature?"
"No, it feels heavier than when you hold a stack of books," Starlight explained. "It's like my magic isn't grasping you fully."
"Am I? Wait, maybe it's the creature that's doing it."
"Maybe, or it could be just trying to telekinetically transport so much mass while galloping that's causing it."
The two went off the path towards the right, where the hospital could be seen behind the few houses that dotted the outskirts of Ponyville. After a few more moments of galloping, they approached from the side of the building and turned right to face the front entrance. Starlight opened the door with her telekinesis and barged in, decelerating as she entered.
It wasn't a particularly busy day at the hospital. Nurses walked around inside, carrying trays, towels, vials, and whatever doctors and patients needed. There weren't many ponies in the waiting room, which was a good thing, as they really needed to get Twilight to a doctor fast.
"How may I help you, Ms. Glimmer?" the nurse standing at the reception desk asked, confused.
"Twilight had a magical accident. We're not sure what happened. There was a loud "bang" and a flash of light, and we found her lying on the ground outside of the castle, unconscious," explained Starlight as she lowered Spike down onto the ground. He stood a bit unsteadily, recovering from the dizzying telekinetical journey to the hospital.
Another nurse appeared, and motioned for the two to follow. They cantered to the emergency room, where Starlight lay Twilight on a stretcher and lifted her saddlebags off her back. The nurse immediately lodged a thermometer in Twilight's mouth and another one on her horn, and the doctor arrived with a notepad, ready to take notes. "Okay, Ms. Glimmer, what happened to the princess?" asked the doctor in a somewhat monotone voice as he studied Twilight. Starlight repeated what she had said earlier.
"Okay." The doctor gently prodded at her horn with his hoof and wrote something down. Her temperature was recorded, and after a few moments of examination, he looked up. "It seems like a severe case of overexertion of magic, but she should be conscious again after a day, but let her rest for a couple more days. Keep her horn cool and don't have her use any magic. Bring her to room 8." He passed the clipboard to the nurse, who hung it on a hook on the end of the stretcher.
Starlight and Spike followed the nurse as she maneuvered the stretcher out of the room and up the stairs. The halls were quiet, with only a few soft impacts of hooves on carpet. They walked down the hall, took a left turn, and opened the door. Room 8 was no different than the other rooms, except that nopony occupied either of the two beds. The nurse moved Twilight onto the bed closer to the window, while Starlight helped using her magic, and the nurse transferred the clipboard from the stretcher to the bed. Another nurse pushed a trolley of medical supplies into the room and promptly left.
The nurse then grabbed a towel and went off to the bathroom. Sounds of splashing water could be heard as she soaked the towel with cold water.
"Hey Starlight, maybe we should take some measurements on the temperature of her horn first so we can work out the intensity of her magic," suggested Spike as he rummaged through Twilight's saddlebags for a piece of parchment, a quill, and some ink.
"Good idea." Starlight took the thermometer from the trolley and held it up to her face. "Ambient temperature is 287 Coltvin."
Spike took the thermometer and held it next to Twilight's horn. "It has been twelve minutes since the flash of light, and the horn temperature is... let's see..." He looked at the display attached to the side of the device. The needle pointed at around 330 Coltvin. "Ambient horn temperature is 287 plus 2, which is 289 Coltvin. The temperature difference is then 330 minus 289... uh..."
"41 Coltvin?"
"Thanks." Spike wrote the numbers down on the parchment. "What was her horn temperature when the nurses measured it?"
"332.5 Coltvin," said the nurse, coming out of the bathroom and wrapping the cold, wet towel around Twilight's horn, thus cooling it down much more quickly. The nurse then left the room, leaving the two to their business.
Starlight thought for a moment. "If I remember correctly, the clock in the emergency room said 17:53 when we got there, so it would be three minutes earlier."
"Yup, that's what it says on the clipboard as well," replied Spike, holding up the clipboard by the bed. On the row labeled "17:53", horn temperature was recorded as 332.5 K.
"Ah, well, that's enough data points to get a decent estimation of the original temperature." Starlight thought about it for a moment as Spike wrote the numbers down. "Do you happen to know the correlation between temperature and the energy used? If I remember correctly, it's something like 1.2*10^6*L*∆T, where L the length of the horn."
"I think the coefficient is 1.19*10^6."
"Yeah, it could as well be that. Now we just need to measure the length of Twilight's horn." Starlight approached the table where Twilight's saddlebags were currently placed. She searched through the many organized compartments and found a decently sized ruler. After feeling the towel, which was now somewhat warm, she removed it and lined the ruler up with the base of Twilight's horn. She peered closely at the graduations on the ruler near the tip. "Around 18.5 cm."
In the bathroom, Starlight squeezed the warm water out of the towel and drenched it in the cold water from the faucet. After getting rid of some excess water, she wrapped the towel back around Twilight's horn, cooling it down. It has already cooled quite a bit since they'd measured its temperature, but it was not yet completely cool.
Spike reached into the saddlebags and took out a slide rule. He did some calculations on it, scribbled something on the parchment, and then went back to calculating. After a minute or so, he announced, "The change in temperature is 52 K, and the initial energy is 1.14 times 10^7 Joules."
"Wow. That is a lot of energy."
"1.14*10^7 Joules is equivalent to 2.02*10^5 teleportation mass-distance, so you could teleport forty apples to Manehattan with that," replied Spike.
"The princess has definitely cast some spell that was too much even for an alicorn like her, and that caused her overexertion," said Starlight.
"But what kind of spell would she be casting a spell on the field outside of the castle?"
"Maybe she wanted to teleport back from inside the Everfree?" Starlight thought about it for a bit. "Actually, that seems like just about enough energy for a teleportation of this distance. Also, remember the dent on the ground? It looked like she slid towards the castle, which is the opposite direction from the forest."
"Hmm, I guess it's possible, but how does that explain this creature?" Spike pointed at the strange creature he was holding.
"I don't know. It could be a creature Twilight wanted to bring back from the forest. I think we should just wait for her to wake up before we do anything. It doesn't look hurt or anything, so let's not bother it while it sleeps."
"We don't know if it really is sleeping," stated Spike as he walked across the room to set the creature down on the other bed.
"Fine, or unconscious."
The duo stood there in the hospital room, in a moment of silence. Neither was sure what to do next. It was getting late, as well; the sky was getting dark, and the lights in the hospital have all come on to provide illumination for the ponies inside. They watched as Twilight lay there. She was breathing calmly; unconscious ponies tend to do that. After a while, the night sky had been raised, and the moon shone through the window at an angle.
"Should we send Princess Celestia a letter about Twilight being unconscious? We wouldn't want her to give Twilight some urgent mission when she is still recovering, or unconscious, even," suggested Starlight.
"Hey, that's a good idea." Spike took out another piece of parchment and wrote a letter to the princess detailing what had happened. The many years of practice from being Twilight's assistant had made writing effortless, though there was no Twilight to tell him what to write this time. Nevertheless, when he was satisfied with what he had written, he rolled it up, sealed it, and sent the letter off by dragon fire. "So, Starlight, are you going to stay here for the night as well? I mean, I plan to."
"Probably not. I should go back to the castle, in case anything happens," responded Starlight. "Actually, it's pretty late already, so I guess I'll go now. Bye, Spike!" She waved at him, and as he waved back, she walked out through the door and closed it behind her.
Spike sat on the other bed, thinking back on the events that have transpired that day. I can't believe that I was cleaning the castle just earlier today, he thought. I guess that was what had caused all of this to happen in the first place. I hope Twilight does get better tomorrow. Well, right now I should at least brush my teeth before I go to sleep.
He got up to the bathroom, and saw that there were no toothbrushes nor toothpaste. "Bummer! Hope Twilight doesn't find out that I didn't brush my teeth today. I'll just go sleep, then."
Despite not having Twilight to get him to sleep, Spike felt tired, and so he turned off the light illuminating the room, slipped into the sheets in the other bed, and voluntarily drifted from the conscious world into the depths of slumber.