Courage is Magic

Prologue

The story begins again.

I looked out of the window of the plane, watching the landscape below go by slowly. I actually enjoyed being up in the sky, despite the fact that I never feel the wind. Now where are my manners, I can't tell a story without telling you a bit about myself.

My name is John; I am what you would call a treasure hunter. Only, I've recently declared myself retired. I am around my early 20's so I have given myself too much credit for treasure hunts. I'm around an average height of 6"5', and my hair is a brown color like dirt and it was short but raggedy. The only thing I ever wear is a yellow trench coat, and I really never bothered to replace it at all, so it was really worn with time. I've repaired it before, but I've never had the chance to really repair it then. Before, I used to cut myself off from everyone who wanted to actually be friends with me because of the memory that I've had before, now I've changed my views on that. Ever since my brother, or detective to some, found out and arrested years ago the true mastermind behind my best friend's betrayal, I've gotten to be a bit more friendlier. Now it's only my crazy personality that I've developed from something that happened a year ago that would drive people away from me. Not that I cared, I still enjoyed the peace and the quiet I got.

"John, you okay back there?" My pilot would ask me constantly. I don't trust myself to fly planes, so I hired an experienced pilot to do so. It wasn't cheap, but it was still worth being in the air.

"I'm just fine," I said in response. I checked my coat that I wore at all times for the single thing that mattered so much to me, a single yellow feather.

"You say that now, just wait until we actually get there," My brother said from the co-pilot's seat. His name was Chris, and I actually think that it's pretty simple for being a detective name. He wears a brown suit that you would see detectives wear, and his trademark fedora. Strangely enough, he actually loves his fedora... maybe even more than his job. I even managed to get punched hard for stealing it, but he wasn't going to kill me. We both actually were happy that we had family and were not about to break it now.

"We’re almost there anyways," I said to him with a glare and a smile. He would only chuckle.

"And I would bet that you won't ever get to... Equest-something-or-other," He said.

"Equestria," I corrected with a harsh glare.

"Right..." He said with doubt in his tone, he was still skeptical as ever about my stories.

"At least you are not crazy enough to jump out of the plane," I said, getting up and putting on a backpack. I double checked it to make sure it was a parachute, and not some bag that was full of something else because that would be Clichéd.

"Oh no you don’t!" He shouted, but he couldn't get up in time to stop me from opening the plane door.

"Guess you will need to come with me then, if you want to make sure I am okay!" I shouted over the wind flowing through the door, and jumped out of the plane.

"Keep flying, this will be the last time you see either of us!" My brother shouted at the pilot, and jumped out as well. He also had put a parachute on, but I guessed he only followed me because he wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to try to kill myself. I wasn’t that crazy, so I turned back down to the earth.

The wind was the only sound that I heard while I was freefalling. I was really enjoying the freefall, until I saw my brother catch up to me. He actually tied his hat to his head with a thin string, so he won't lose it as we fell down to earth. I wanted to chuckle, but the only thing going through my mind was the fact that I was enjoying my time in the sky. It sadly had to end, and I pulled a cord to get the mini parachute deployed for when I deploy the main chute. I saw that Chris did the same. We both fell for a few more minutes before pulling the cord to deploy the main chute. I felt myself jerk upwards as I had my decent slowed greatly by the chute. The wind stopped rushing by me, but I was still a distance above the forest. I pointed towards an area for my bother to know where to land, and turned towards it.

"Damn it John, you are crazy!" My brother said as soon as we touched solid ground.

"Then why did you follow me anyways?" I snarked at him, while giving him one of my trademark smiles.

"Touché" He said, being annoyed that I responded to him with a snarky comment.

"Yep, I need to take more lessons from Pyro about this when I see him," I said, thinking back to when I was in the world of Equestria two years ago.

"Again with this... You've told me this same story multiple times!" Chris said, being extremely annoyed at me for doing so.

"Hey, I actually liked being there," I responded.

"You keep telling yourself that..." He said as he cut the parachute off from the bag.

"I will," I responded, and did the same.

________________________________________

We kept the bags with us, and cut off the parachutes since we may not need them anymore. I, for one, was glad that I had kept the bag. You never know when you could need one. After a quick trek through the forest, we would come across an old temple. Huh, Déjà vu... I thought, as I compared it to the one I saw two years ago.

"This is the place... anyways, this temple was the only temple that sent many treasure hunters back home in disappointment... and I can see why," He said, pointing at the temple door that blocked us from entering. The door slowly grinded open as I walked towards it.

"You say something?" I asked him, with a mock questioning look. He said nothing in response, but he did give me a harsh glare. I chuckled to myself as we both entered into the temple.

________________________________________

Strangely enough, most of the temple traps were almost exactly the same as the temple before, with the only exception of it looking even older. In fact, it was old enough that the ruins were actually crumbling away with time. Because of that, some of the traps would fail to activate. The dart trap however worked perfectly fine, and I had to work together with Chris to through the room.

"I hate dart traps now..." He said, pulling darts out of his beloved fedora.

"Now you know how I feel," I responded, also pulling darts out of my bag and my skin. Chris managed to use me as a human shield to avoid some darts, so I was of course mad at him for a while. But I never hold grudges forever, so I forgave him.

We made our way to the room before the treasure room. I was right in my assumption of Déjà vu, since this room had a pit in the center of it.

"No way we can jump the pit," Chris pointed out.

"That much was obvious Sherlock..." I told him with a frown.

"Don't compare me to him," He told me with a light punch to the arm, “You know I’m way better.”

"Since it bothers you so much, I won't if you help me find a way over," I said looking around the room.

"Alright then," He said, and goes to investigate any nearby object that could be used.

A minute of searching later, Chris got my attention by waving at me as I looked around the room. I walked to where he was to see what he found.

"Hey, how about these dry planks?" He said showing me the planks.

"I'm surprised that they’re dry, but time doesn't really like this place," I pointed out, and pushed lightly on the center of the planks. They snapped apart very quickly like twigs, leaving my brother to hold two broken planks.

"Right... I've also seen some vines-" He started to say, but I shook my head.

"We both know we can't jump high enough to reach those," I told him.

"Good point... unless you happen to be a super human in that world," He said with a half mocking tone. He would discard the broken planks as well since they were useless.

"Wasn't even a human," I responded back in mock shock of him asking.

"Oh yeah... you clearly stated that so many times," He said, trying to egg me on, “You were some sort of horse with wings.”

"Pegasus. Hey look, that ledge looks like a good way," I said, completely changing the subject. He would glare at me for how I have managed to avoid the subject entirely.

"Yeah... it looks wide enough-" he started to say.

"To edge across," I finished for him."You've done this before?" He asks me with a raised eyebrow.

"Something similar," I responded with a shrug.

"Figures, I might as well go over first," he said, and made his way to the ledge. He put a foot down and skillfully edged across.

"Figures that you'd get practice doing that," I said, following my brother across the ledge.

"More than you would think," He said in an attempt to be mysterious. I rolled my eyes in response to his attempt, “How else do you think I got into your apartment when you wouldn’t open up?”

"Let's just go," I said, walking to the entrance of the treasure room.

________________________________________

"Really..." I heard my brother say in disappointment as we entered the room.

"What?" I asked.

"That's the thing that we went in here for..." He said, starting to become very annoyed.

"Pretty much... this reminds me so much of the first time I've done this, and that was two years ago," I said.

"It’s a glass statue," He said, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose out of annoyance.

"So?" I questioned, while moving towards the center of the room to pick it up.

"It is just a stupid-" He started to shout, but I picked up the statue and the whole room would turn white. I heard nothing else, and I don't think my brother even noticed it since he was shouting at me with his eyes closed. He does that when he thinks that I've just built up his hopes so high, only to be let down just as quickly. But that was not my thought anymore.

My only thought was this: I was finally going back home after all of these years of being away.