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"Merton College, Sparkle!"

"The Battle of Lepanto."

WHONNNNNNNNG

"And at the gong, UMIST have 120 points but going to the final are Merton College, Oxford with 195!" Applause rang out across the studio as Twilight Sparkle, currently studying Classics and last-minute addition to the University Challenge team, beamed like a lighthouse. "Well, well done to you, Merton. You just seem unstoppable! Full credit to UMIST, though, deserving semifinalists and worthy opponents. Join us next week for the grant final, but it's goodbye from UMIST."

"Goodbye," chorused the team.

"It's goodbye from Merton College, Oxford."

"Goodbye," Twilight Sparkle said, her Equestrian accent cutting through the other team members.

"And it's goodbye from me. Goodbye!"

The theme music started up and Rarity switched off the television. She'd seen what she wanted to see tonight. Sighing softly, she went back to work on her latest commission; it helped her stop thinking about her. Dawn came before she'd finished the dress, but it didn't matter; Sweetie Belle might not have been up to much in terms of cookery, but she made a cup of coffee to die for, even if it did have a tendency to eat spoons.

Her mission complete, her brain still wired beyond belief, Rarity decided to send a letter to her friend. She had to word it carefully, of course; however pleasant the idea of it might be, Twilight Sparkle might not appreciate being told that a friend she'd known for a long time was madly in love with her and wanted to do things to her that would, if written down, burn a hole in the parchment. Satisfied with the result, she trotted out to stick it in the post box at the end of the street.

Derpy Hooves, who cottoned on to love like that with surprising ease, looked at Rarity and said nothing.

*******

"Dear Rarity," the letter began. "I'm fine, and I really hope you're well too. Oxford's just wonderful, I've learned so much stuff and the work's not too bad when you have magic. Apparently, there have been papers written about me. Me! It's kind of embarrassing, but I quite like it too.

"I made a whole bunch of friends while I've been studying, and the girls on the team are really nice. Kazui in particular's amazing; she wants to be a fashion designer too, so you two'd get on like a house on fire! Pinkie Pie came to visit last month and we caught up a bit then. I still miss you so much, though. Still, fashion's a busy industry and I understand that you can't always get away.

"I'm kinda surprised that you watch the Challenge, though! I mean, it didn't really seem like your thing, quiz shows, but I'm really glad you're supporting me. The Grand Final's in five days, 'cause we shoot it a few days before it goes out, but I'm glad you're thinking of me. I'm thinking of you too.

"Ever your friend,

"Twilight Sparkle. x"

Rarity knew, deep down, that the kiss was just a little friend-kiss that ponies put at the end of their letters. She couldn't suppress the little bubble of joy that that single cross at the end of the letter brought to her, though, and was fair bouncing amid the steam of the Ponyville Spa.

"Hey Rarity... um, you look happy."

Rarity jerked to a halt mid-prance, something generally to be avoided if one wishes not to crash into whichever floor is nearest. "Oh... hello, Fluttershy. You startled me... how are you, darling?"

"Um, I'm alright. I guess you caught the show last night?"

"Yes. And?" A bead of sweat appeared on the back of Rarity's head.

"Oh, I just thought you were happy that Twilight's doing so well. She is, you know... I don't know what she's talking about but it seems to be working."

"Oh! Right. Hehe... yes, that was it. No ulterior motives and nothing at all to do with a potentially-unrequited crush on the filly in question, you know me, into stallions the whole way and nopony's able to change that, not that there's anything wrong with it of course, I mean Lyra and Bonbon look simply darling together and Applejack's still my dear, dear friend, but it's just not something I'm into at all, haha!"

Fluttershy stared while Rarity caught her breath. "Well, um, that was... specific."

"Yes, it was, wasn't it..." The unicorn blushed and looked at her hooves.

"Um, maybe if it was the case, you could go see Twilight and tell her after the grand final? I mean, everypony's visited her except you." Her voice carried a hint of reproach. "Um, if you want."

Rarity's shoulders sagged and looked even more sheepish. "I suppose... if that was the case, then it would be worth doing. Especially since the final's on Hearts and Hooves Day. Which I definitely did not check and then cry over... oh, heavens, that was too specific as well, wasn't it."

Fluttershy sighed. "Let's go pick you out a card, Rarity."

*******

"Oh. Celestia." Twilight dropped the letter from the embrace of her magic and skipped into the living room. "You guys! Rarity's coming to visit!"

"Whooza? Wha- JESUS!" A gangly-looking man with a hairstyle that made him look like a Rastafarian lion and skin whiter than scared Tipp-Ex leapt backwards at some considerable speed. Twilight jumped herself and proceeded to cringe slightly.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. Um, I'm Twilight. Sparkle. The pony from the team?" She deployed an expression that would have seemed calculated on someone less, well, calculating. "I'm really sorry, it's... I only got down with my books from Oxford about an hour ago."

"No, no, 's'fine. M'Dave... izzat blood? Yeah, 's'blood. Fack. Hol' on." The man produced a grimy-looking black T-shirt from the pocket of his army jacket and pressed it to the back of his head. "Dave Farrance. Multimedia. How 'boutchu?"

"Twilight Sparkle, Classics. So, what happened to everypo - everyone else?"

"Wha, th'team? Theyz in th'livin rum. Hehehe. Livin' rum. Speakin' of... y'gorra drink?"

"Oh... um, I'll be alright. Living room, you say? Best get to them now. Good news an' all that." Twilight vanished with her usual pop and reappeared on the battered, mint-green sofa. Only Connect was blaring from the screen in an attempt to counteract next door's dubstep. It wasn't working.

"Oh, hi Twilight. 'S'up?"

"Hey Ed. How's the wall going?" She was talking about the Connecting Wall, one of the BBC's most fiendish tests of mental agility (the most fiendish of all being the question of their continued hiring of Chris Moyles).

"Sorry, Twi, we've already solved it... there's gonna be another one along in a minute, though." Ed looked slightly bashful and offered a hug, which Twi accepted.

"Chocolate gloop incoming!" piped up Kazui from the kitchen. A few seconds later, bearing four spoons and an industrial-sized bowl of chocolate Angel Delight, the slim Japanese girl plonked herself down in the middle of the sofa. Twilight's magic grabbed a ladle from the kitchen drawer as her eyes widened and she made a peculiar noise like a rubber duck being trodden on. Twilight had been introduced to Angel Delight when she'd joined the Challenge team and the results of her being presented with it generally amounted to Verdun, Stalingrad, or Pinkie Pie, depending on the flavour.

"You do realise we aren't going to get any, right?"

"Oh, Ed, I know that. But look at her, isn't she just the cutest?"

"nyarm nyarm nyarm," nyarmed Twilight. Ed hadn't previously thought it possible to eat through a rictus grin. "so happy. so much happy."

"Awww. Anyway, you said you had news? Heard you in the other room. OH COME ON, YOU DULLARD, IT'S THE SPY IN BLACK! THEY'RE POWELL AND PRESSBURGER FILMS! Twi, girl, you and I would rinse this."

Twilight looked up from her foodlike pudding substitute. "Yeah, I guess... also, stop shouting at the TV. They can't hear you. But anyway, Rarity's coming to visit!" The rubber duck noise came back for an encore. "Oh, you'd just love her. She's like Kaz but more pony and she's really pretty and-"

"Is this the Rarity you've been writing in that diary about," said the fourth Challenger from across the room. His name was Jamie, and he was on the blunt side of a ball-peen hammer. "Only, I sleep next door to you and it would answer a lot of questions."

These being semi-inebriated undergraduates, the humans laughed like geese. Twilight turned purple with rage, the effect of which was obviously minimal, and transposed his chair with the kitchen bin. The result made the other humans laugh harder, since it is a truth universally acknowledged that anything is intrinsically hilarious if it goes squelch and doesn't happen to you. Thus avenged, Twilight went back to making rapturous advances to her bowl of chocolatey health hazard.

"Seriously, though, if you love her you should tell her," said Jamie from the bin. "'S'how I got Kazui, after all."

"Yeah, who'd have thought that one pity date would lead to a life of adventure such as ours?"

"Hey!" By this point, Jamie'd extricated himself from the bin and was fetching a change of clothes from the large orange suitcase he effectively lived out of. "I resent that. Adventures are for people with mythic qualities like the Purple People Eater over there."

"Oh, no," said Twilight through a fine brown mist. "It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You do those things because you have to, and because there's no-one else... gosh, that was miserable. Let's talk about something else..."

And so they did, and so turned the world.

*******

"Okay Rarity, Ah think that's everythin'. Now, remember y'all gotta speak to Ambassador Lyra on the human side of the Hole, and don't go near-" Rarity cut off her friend with a slightly imperious sniff.

"-near the Desolation of South Avon - I did read the guidebook, darling, it isn't just ballast." The unicorn shuffled her feet at Applejack's stern look. "I'm sorry, Applejack... you know how nervous travel makes me, especially travel through a giant swirling disc of blue energy."

"But y'all ain't done it before..."

"That's most of the reason why."

"Right. Well, stay safe; you're mah friend, Rarity." They hugged briefly (before, Applejack joked, Colgate could get jealous) and the white mare turned to the rest of her friends.

"Well, this is it... I'll see you in a few days, everypony. And Fluttershy... thank you for helping me pick the card." Her little yellow friend blushed fiercely and received a set of questioning glances before the light bulbs switched on over their heads.

Before they could see the fire threatening to consume Rarity's own face, she had galloped past the customs pony and through the void-

through darkness and brightness and falling
an eternity of falling
darkness shading to blue and fading to white

-and into summer. And also into a huge customs officer in a blue uniform capable of housing several countries.

"'Ello, marm, an' welcome to the United Kingdom. First time? You'll be wantin' the second door on the left, an' step lively 'cause whatever it is you people eat's a bugger to get out the carpet."

Rarity thanked him, jammed a hoof into her mouth and staggered off towards what amounted to the little filly's room. About twenty minutes and one scene from The Exorcist later, the little white pony trotted out.

"Better out than in, marm, better out than in. Right. Got anyfing on that list there?" The customs man pointed at a large poster, written in slightly garbled Equestrian and the strange alphabet of English. A brief scan, and Rarity shook her head.

"Length of stay?"

"A few days, probably... call it a week, just to be safe."

"Okay. Doin' much nice on your stay?" He stamped the mare's passport.

"Oh, yes. I hope so, anyway. I'm visiting a friend, Twilight Sparkle-"

"What, off the telly?" The man's face lit up.

Rarity bridled. "Um, yes... is that a problem?"

"Nah, nah... give her my best for the Challenge, eh? My lad got into Merton last year, Natural Sciences. No idea 'ow. Enjoy yer stay, marm."

"Thank you. Oh, you wouldn't happen to know where to find the Equestrian Embassy, would you?" Rarity batted her eye in a way that spoke of long practice sessions in front of a mirror and several glossy magazines.

"Er... just get a cab. It ain't that far. Bureau de Change is up there."

"Oh, thank you, sir." Rarity trotted off, did all the necessary things at the Bureau de Change (discovering in the process that exchange rates were one of the few things immune to her charms). She trotted outside to hail a cab, stopped dead, and stared.

It wasn't outside at all. The place was vast and made entirely of glass and white-painted metal, letting the sunlight shine onto the thousands upon thousands of people walking, talking, buying, selling, milling around and attempting to round up errant family members. Everything was white and clean and pure, and the noise of the place, the sheer, almost chewable noise of people at their business, stunned Rarity. Canterlot had a hundred and fifty thousand ponies within its limits; here, there were cities of millions.

Heathrow Airport and Dimensional Vortex Facility isn't so bad, if you're new.

Rarity's eyes widened as she made her way through the throngs of people, fighting for every gap and trying to keep a firm grip on her luggage. She spotted a gap, galloped for it, made it past the barrier and-

"RARITY!"

-And there she was. Twilight Sparkle, a lurid orange beanie hat perched atop her head, wrapped in a purple college scarf slightly longer than the Nile, a puffa jacket, band t-shirt and black jeans covering her body in ways that made the fashionista inside Rarity's brain start trying to bite its own legs off and the whole of her heart just melt. It was so her, so irrefutably her-

"Rarity... you're... crushing... meeee..."

"Oh, yes." Rarity dropped out of the hug she'd unknowingly dragged Twilight into. "Darling, it's been far too long. You look so well! How has university been treating you?"

"The degree's going fine; the dons say they'll cut me a bit of slack on deadlines 'cause of the Challenge, but I'm still not behind! Oh, and I found you this fantastic book. Here!" Twilight's magic flared and a leviathan book caught Rarity hard amidships. "The complete Ovid, translated into Equestrian." she said with a smile of utter contentment. "Take a look sometime."

"I certainly will. Now, are we meeting Ambassador Lyra together, or-"

"Nope! We're going to go shopping in Oxford Street and then out to dinner! I made an itinerary!" Twilight produced the aforementioned plan with a flourish of a small black rectangle swaddled in purple magic. It was a strange place to keep a plan, and Rarity said so. Twilight just smiled and passed it to her. Ten minutes later, Rarity was loudly declaring her love of all things Apple Industries whilst playing Angry Birds with the ease and grace of a bag of angry spanners.

"Kazui's waiting for us by the car - oh, that's something I forgot to put in my letters! I can drive now! It's even legal!" Twilight beamed.

Rarity just smiled, important parts of her brain lying back in the face of Twilight's adorable enthusiasm. After making idle conversation punctuated with cuddles for the best part of ten minutes, they arrived in front of a squat, slightly curved box on wheels with a quite hideous pearlescent orange paint job. Twilight began to explain what it was, but Rarity produced a gift from Rainbow Dash - a year's subscription to Top Gear magazine - and idly mentioned that after spending ten seconds in the mare's company one knew every facet of human automotive engineering it was possible to know. Twilight pulled out a pleading expression and a human Rarity took to be Kazui sighed and produced the keys. Skipping happily around to the driver's side, Twilight slotted herself in the peculiar bucket seats and gunned the rather louder than anticipated engine. A gentle hum of power shook the car slightly; Rarity wondered whether bits might fall off. Not out loud, of course. That wouldn't be proper.

Then Twilight set off, slammed up through the changes, and there was noise.

*******

Jamie's phone rang. "Yello... Oh, hi sweetie! Oh, great!" He took the phone away from his ear. "That's Kazui. They're just leaving Heathrow now."

"Great," said Ed, "They'll make good time. What car are they in?"

"What car are you taking, Kaz?" A small pause. "They're in the Orange Avenger."

A sudden chill ran up the group's collective spine. "Who's... driving?"

"Who's driving, honey?" Another short pause. Jamie went the boarding school-porridge grey of the near-terminally terrified.

Ed edged closer. "Who is it, Jamie?"

Jamie took a deep, steadying breath. "Twi is."

"RUN LIKE CHILDREN!"

*******

"So anyway, that was when Kazui took me to learn to drive through the Hove one way system at nine p.m. on a Saturday, and I know that Pinkie Pie took you all to see the good Star Wars movies, so you remember the asteroid bit in Return of the Jedi? It's like that but with minicabs."

"argh," chorused her passengers.

"But yes, it was absolutely a-OK and I passed! Eventually. Took me a few times 'cause the examiner hated me but he kept slamming his clipboard on the dash at random moments and you know what happens when I get scared and besides I thought he made a lovely paperweight."

"argh," chorused her passengers.

Twilight had, as was her wont, done a lot of research on driving. Indeed, she had researched all the WRC champions and perfected their smooth, easy, ridiculously fast driving styles. Coupled with a disregard for other road users that bordered on sociopathic, a tendency to prattle on while she did it, and a perception of the bicycle as being fundamentally racist towards ponykind, she tended to have the same impact on the roads in and around Oxford as a ballistic missile, and drove at roughly the same pace.

After approximately half an hour of causing other people to have minor accidents and her passengers to have more heart attacks than an American at an all you can eat burger buffet, Twilight parked up and herded her friends onto the Underground. A few minutes of safer travel later, even if it did smell strongly but non-specifically of genitals, and they had arrived in the shopping mecca of Oxford Street. Twilight felt something bubbling up inside of her; she tossed a glance at Rarity, who nodded, feeling the same thing. Thus let loose, Twilight through her mane out of her eyes and began to sing.

Now you're here, you've been gone far too long
Far from my sight and side where you belong
And now we're here, this shopping street our journey's end
And I'm so glad that you're here with me, my friend

Rarity took the next verse.

My darling dear, I just couldn't agree more
So let us see the dresses sold in human stores
And the food and wine and gadgets without end
Oh yes, I'm so glad that I'm here with you, my friend

"Why are they singing," whispered Ed perplexedly.

"Don't know," answered Kazui in equally hushed tones. "I think it's a cultural thing. Like Morris dancing, but socially acceptable."

The mares were now alternating between couplets. Jamie had got out his iPod.

And though everything about you, every look and every smile
Makes asking you the burning question more and more worthwhile
And when you turn your eyes on me, my heart begins to burn
Do you feel the way that I do, oh, when will I ever learn
You're a beauty
You're a wonder
How I've fallen
How I'm under
The magic of friends in love has cast its spell...

"Do they... do they even realise other people can hear them?"

"Edmund, that's probably a bit racist."

"Shut up and keep listening to Dire Straits."

"D'you want a headphone?"

"... Maybe."

*******

"Twilight, this was too much. I've heard about the Savoy; they weigh your bit bag on entry!"

"Oh, Rarity, we've been through this; nothing's too much trouble for y- for a friend."

They'd had, despite some occasional problems and interruptions involving mutants from the Desolation of South Avon, a wonderful day out. The night was drawing to a close, though. Twilight paid in cash, to the waiter's considerable amazement, and wrapped her scarf back around her again. "You know, I wanted to take you to the theatre but I couldn't get tickets, I think you'd love Shakespeare, especially Much Ado About Nothing-"

"Twilight, please. Today was just... perfect. I, um... thank you. So much."

"For what?"

Rarity took in a deep breath. Come on, filly, just like we practised in front of the mirror... "For not getting mad at me."

"Why would I get mad?"

And then, slowly and awkwardly and in a manner about as polished as a tramp's boot, Rarity leaned towards Twilight and kissed her, ever so gently, on her lips.

"For wanting that," Rarity said, "after today and before it for as long as I've known you."

"Rarity, I... I'm not mad... I..." Twilight was wide-eyed in shock and Rarity looked almost close to tears. Focus, Twilight, focus! Proper technique! Not too sticky, not too dry, did you remember the mints, please say you remembered the mints... "I just never thought I'd get it. Ever. 'Cause... well, there's a lot of people like me and nopony, nopony I've ever even seen, who's as beautiful as you. So, um... oh, hay with it."

And so Twilight craned her neck up slightly and kissed Rarity back, a flickering street lamp the only light in the sky above them but drowned completely by the light of love in four Equestrian eyes. Tomorrow would bring the Challenge, and almost certain victory against a UCL side that had got through on luck. Twilight couldn't think about it. All she knew was this perfect, ever-present now.

She guessed she could live with that.