Get Me Home [Twilight]

[Twilight Sparkle]

Twilight remained silent while Helena spoke. She turned attentive after the first few sentences. Parallel worlds? That existed side by side? It seemed like the most likely explanation for what was going on with them that Twilight had heard so far. Soon the violet-haired scholar was fumbling for that notebook again, the pen blurring across the pages. Multiple worlds... interworld travel... yes, that certainly made sense.

"It could be that the various worlds have influence on each other," offered Twilight, sounding hopeful and increasingly excited. "So that maybe creative stuff filters through. Like the Justice Guild you mentioned. Something like that. Which would... huh? Oh, the comics," Twilight turned, pointing. She might not have been here that long, but she'd certainly been around long enough to have the layout of the library memorized. First thing Twilight did whenever she got to a new location: learn its library. She pointed with her pen down several aisles. "I think they have the comics and such over that way. But you probably won't find anything that will help," she paused, looking in the direction of the comics before looking to Helena. "It's not likely that they're going to just leave it out in the open. Still," she shrugged. Information was information.

And Helena was providing Twilight with more. True, not all of it was directly pertinent to Twilight's interests and research. Much of it was likely to prove more or less useless in the grand scheme. That bit about computers made next to no sense, for example. But Twilight still nodded and jotted down a few more notes. She wrote administration and underlined it several times. Definitely important.

Realizing that she'd essentially ignored Helena for several moments, Twilight looked up, slightly abashed. "Sorry, I'm just---really focused. I want to figure this all out. Get us all home, get things back to... to normal, you know?"

[Helena Bertinelli]

She glanced away to scan the library again as Twilight pulled out her pen and paper. Something about the location was giving her the creeps. It felt as though someone was watching them just out of the corner of her eye. She tried telling herself it was just her imagination. After all, hadn't she always been the crazy one?

"You're probably right," she said, already heading in the direction Twilight had pointed. "But it can't hurt to check." And you never knew what you could find. "I guess if anyone is going to get echoes of parallel worlds, though, it's probably some artist high on creative juices of one type or another." It made more sense than just about anything else she could think of. Parallel worlds already existed, right? So clearly that's what was going on here.

"Have you seen any sign of your world affecting this one?" Helena asked Twilight, scanning the shelves again, this time in search of comics. She looked over at the girl, who was still jotting things down in her notebook. After watching her for a moment, Twilight glanced up and apologized.

"It's no problem. I completely understand wanting to get out of here. I definitely have some...unfinished business back at home." She frowned as she considered everything going on back on her planet. A new villain every week. "Though I doubt normal is ever going to happen again. Unless there's some sort of memory wipe when we get back. Forgetting all of this is going to take some effort." She managed to find a comic book and pulled it out, though she didn't recognize the people on it at all. "Though maybe this world has leaked into our own, too. I wonder just how much of what we know is really a reflection from somewhere else." She wasn't usually into such speculation, but spending a lot of time around a conspiracy nut had given her strange habits.

[Twilight Sparkle]

Twilight certainly couldn't argue Helena's point about information nor the bits about artists. if anything, that just gave her more sub-notes to make in her main notes. Perhaps there was some sort of bleed-over, a spread of influence from one world to the next that resulted in the various worlds taking bits and pieces of the culture. It certainly explained a few things. Like why not quite everything felt entirely out of place here. The food, for example, while decidedly more... meaty than the food of Equestria, was still digestible. And comics still existed. And books.

As Twilight lifted her head from thoughts and notes, her mind replayed the last few sentences Helena gave her. The scholarly unicorn-girl blinked several times before nodding, the gesture slightly absent. "It's possible that it works the other way around too, that this world influenced ours. Maybe some bleed-over effect. So it's hard to say which world influenced which first," Twilight realized that they had, at some point, drifted toward the comics. She turned her attention to scanning the covers, wondering if she'd see anything familiar.

That didn't stop her from continuing the conversation, however, and she picked up where Helena more or less left off: "I don't know; my friends and I have seen some strange things. This would just be one more oddity, you know? Plus, weren't you the one talking about alternate dimensions and stuff?" she gave a slight smile before turning back to the shelves. To her surprise, her eyes fell on a familiar title. "No way," she murmured, her hand going out to pick up a rather worn looking comic:

The Adventures of Daring Do.

"This is... this is a book series from back home..." she said, flipping through the comic. Without stopping, she turned and headed for the section she suspected the Daring Do books would be in. Surely they wouldn't...

[Helena Bertinelli]

"I've heard some theories on the whole mess, but it's impossible to say what's true or not. I mean, are we all just from the infinite variety of universes that are created when different choices are made? Is there a set number of locations? Are more being invented every day? And in what day do these manifest and impact one another?" She was talking to the air, really, musing aloud. She didn't expect much of a response, much less an answer.

She saw some promising books, all about the right size for graphic novels. She sashayed over and crouched down to look at the books. Pulling one off the shelf, she looked at it for a moment in surprise. She looked over at Twilight, who was similarly looking at a comic book with awe.

Waving her own book in the air, she said, "I know how you feel." It was a copy of the Justice Guild, the world that the other superheroes had traveled to once. "But why would they have this? Unless this world is similarly parallel...?" It was making her head hurt. This whole universe jumping thing was creating problems for her logic facilities. She grabbed all the Justice Guild books she could find and followed Twilight.

"Maybe you could somehow world jump to that location from here, and then on to your own world?" she said, thinking out loud again. "I mean, if they have those books, it might mean that that world is rubbing against this one, and if it rubs against your own as well, well. Maybe it would be possible?" She glanced at the cover of the comic book. "Daring Do? I've never heard of it. I guess our universes must not be very closely connected.

[Twilight Sparkle]

Twilight would have nodded and agreed; there were too many questions and not enough answers. Except she had a much more physical one present before her. Somehow, somewhy, there were Daring Do books here. That... that just made absolutely no sense. Twilight only looked up when Helena held up the copy of a comic series from her own world... one that was similarly fictionalized. How would they...

"Unless there's some kind of crossover," Twilight hypothesized. "Maybe certain works have crossovers? Who knows, this world could be some kind of waystation for many other worlds," Twilight waved a hand before groaning in frustration. She ended up hitting her head a few times with the Daring Do book. There were just... Too. Many. Questions. Helena wasn't helping either, hypothesizing still further. Worse, it all made a crazy kind of sense and held so many different possibilities. Who was to say they couldn't hop over to the closest world and make it from there?

"Or we all end up trapped in some space between worlds with no hoping of getting home whatsoever!" Twilight exclaimed, waving her hands. She groaned again, tapped the book, and took several deep breaths. Too. Many. Questions. She tried to suck in more air, extending an arm out and letting it slowly come back toward her. One problem at a time, Twilight. "One problem at a time," she mumbled.

She nodded, then looked up at Helena, smiling bashfully. "Sorry... it's just... there's just so much." she held up her book, "I'm probably going to check this out... if you find out anything useful... would you let me know? It would help."

Twilight managed a slightly abashed, slightly hopeful smile. The more people she could get on her side, the better.

[Helena Bertinelli]

"Er..." Helena wasn't sure how to respond to either Twilight's questions or her frustration. She'd never quite known how to deal with people banging their heads on objects around her. Usually she was the cause of the head-banging, and knowing techniques to stop it weren't exactly a priority. "It's just an idea. I thought we were trying to generate ideas." Did it matter if they didn't have an answer now? They could think of possibilities and then find the evidence needed to put everything together. She wasn't particularly good at detective work, but she understood its benefit.

"Yeah, you go ahead and work on that. I'll just...I'll just let you know. I don't expect I'll find much, but I suppose you never know." That was probably the best solution, anyway. Go their own separate ways, discover things on their own...Helena preferred to work alone, anyway. "Sorry I kept you so long. You go ahead and go. I want to keep looking at something here." She went back to the comic book section to scan through every single one of them and look for anything familiar.

[Twilight Sparkle]

Twilight wasn't quite used to being around people who weren't quite used to not being around Twilight when she was having one of her little breakdowns. Most of the ponies in Ponyville had gotten used to the fact that occasionally (very rarely), the local unicorn would have these moments where she snapped and got a little weird. Pretty well everyone had figured out how to handle it after the whole Smarty Pants Incident (which went into the file of "we shall never speak of this again"). But Twilight didn't quite have that luxury here; nobody had seen her patented freak outs yet.

So now she was blushing and smiling nervously and trying to act like she hadn't just flipped her lid in front of someone who could potentially be a very useful ally in the grand scheme of things. Helena looked about as uncomfortable as Twilight felt, though the unicorn girl couldn't say whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. She took the last bit, nodded stiffly, and turned perhaps a bit too abruptly. In point of fact, it took all Twilight's considerable will not to simply break off into a dash to get out of there as quickly as her hooves could carry her.

She did have to check out the book first, after all.

But then she'd be getting out of there as fast as her hooves could carry her.