Saphrim goes to Equestria

Dear diary. Or journal. I don't really care. I am writing in this to prevent my sanity from slipping away after finding myself in the most bizarre of situations. Or I could be writing this to slow down my descent into madness, either way I still don't care. This planet seems to have stolen all of my fucks. Anyway, I have found myself in a land filled with sapient (I think...it's hard to tell) creatures and am surrounded by complete idiots. The population of the country I'm living in is comprised of glorified, colourful horses that seem to love to be bigots for some strange reason that I have yet to understand. I doubt I will ever understand, but I will not judge them for their ways.

Another thing, as noted previously, is that they all seem to be completely nuts. What's worse is that I think that it’s starting to affect me. The ‘ponies’, as they call themselves, seem to break down over simple things, have sudden and spontaneous mood swings and personality shifts, have some form of superiority complex, and are just overall off the deep end. To make matters worse, I experienced one of their ‘personality shifts’, which is why I fear I'm being affected by my environment somehow.

They all seem to believe in what they call magic, which given the complexity of the technology that drives this belief, I can understand why. I have made it a personal goal to study this magic whenever I have free time on my hands, which, as of late, is in abundance. On the topic of magic, I believe I should write down some of the more bizarre traits of this world (as if everything else wasn't strange enough). The most major point I have observed is that the Concept of Continuity seems to be in lesser effect than from my home (a planet from the Graduur Galaxy) and seems to be causing every other strange occurrence here. Again, I have chosen to look into this as it is causing me quite some grief.

Even this journal is being made with me in a position of...I don't know how to describe. Pain, I guess, would be the best term. Why, even the ink of this book isn't ink at all. It's written in my blood! Why, you ask diary? Well, it was the only thing around at the time, and I'm still stuck to the floor since my last encounter with one of the inhabitants. I don't dare get up just yet, in case they have more traps deployed in my own house.

I think I'm rambling. Forget what I just wrote, I’m going to try and un-impale myself from the floor. Wish me luck.

That really didn't make you feel any better, but at least you had something to do with your hands while you were stuck to the floor. Ok, so maybe it did distract you from the insane world outside of your mind, but it wouldn't last forever and now you would have to remove your self from the improvised wooden nails holding you down.

You chucked the conjured book to the side for now and dropped the improvised-wooden-debris-pen to get to work on the other debris that was in your body and not in your hand. You would start on the biggest piece as that would offer you more monuvearobilty to get rid of the other pieces. Right here goes.

Just before pulling it out of your leg you look around quickly to make sure Gilda wasn't around with more IED’s to lob at you. Fortunately for her, she wasn't, because if she was she was going to be made into a feathery quilt for your still furniture-less bedroom. Lucky for you Gilda.

You went straight for it, pulling it out as fast as possible. It hurt a lot less than you thought it would, the pain was nowhere near as bad as getting stuff fused into your bones, or being slammed crotch-first at probably a hundred kilometres per hour into a stone pillar. It still hurt though, although not enough to make you scream out in pain. One down, numerous others to go.

You began the process of removing the rest of the overly large splinters from your body, which at first was painful but became tedious as they became more normal splinter sized and were harder to remove.

Eventually you managed to get them all out after much effort and concentration. Now it looked like you were just laying in a large pool of your own blood for no reason, as your wounds had already sealed up. Your clothing also regenerated, which you were happy for as it meant your design had worked and you had conclusive testing to show for it as well.

You almost forgot about the huge hole in your house. It was still trying to repair itself, and was succeeding somewhat. The hole was growing back at a faster rate than a normal plant and also in the shape of your design but still relatively slow. It just needed a little help from you that's all. With a mental shove you forced the Nanites to work faster and you saw the fruits of your effort in the form of the tree growing back before your eyes. Now that that is taken care of, what were you doing? Oh yes, that's right, decision time.

Now, to decide whether to get up and hunt down Gilda, stay here and study, or go into town and see what’s been happening in your absence. Thinking about it for a while, you decided to go back into town, as the inhabitants were probably getting into some crazy situation or another, if your past experiences were anything to go by. Plus, you might learn something else about your current situation from one of the obnoxious creatures. You would have to find Gilda later it seemed! Or at least wait until she came back.

Oh yes, you also needed to get some certain...supplies from Ponyville for your next experiment. You had already planned it all out, you just needed a few more ingredients. To be honest you had no idea what would happen but it would be nice just to do something other than reading. Besides the results would be interesting either way. To Ponyville it was.

You passed the still healing doorway and started running in the direction of Ponyville. You couldn't get lost, as you had decided to start compiling a digital map of the entire world so that you wouldn't. It would have certainly been helpful to have yesterday.

In your journey you noticed none of the predators were attacking you any more. Had you built up a reputation that quickly amongst the forest dwelling inhabitants? It seemed like it. Either that or you had killed off all the apex predators in the localised area, which was less likely as there was bound to be more than just two types of predators in this huge forest. You didn't even know how large this forest was, as every time you jumped into the air all you could see was forest. All the way to the horizon. At least on one side anyway, the other half of the horizon was Equestria which was mostly rolling hills with two distinct mountains ranges.

In your musings you had failed to notice that you had already reached the edge of the forest, and when you went to leap forward again your foot met nothing but air, courtesy of the sudden elevation upon the entrance to the forest. This caused you to land on your legs funnily and smash face-first into the dirt hill. You had your eyes open, so when you landed on the ground soil filled up your eyes lids and scratched away at your eyeballs. It wasn't a pleasant experience to say the least.

You stood up and removed the dirt from your eyes and looked at your clothes, once again satisfied that no dirt had clung to it and no other form of damage had taken to it. There was still some aspects that you had made for it that you had yet to test, though you could do that later. For now you wanted to check on the town.

It was...different. You couldn't exactly say what was different, but something was definitely off about the small little village. You would have to investigate this. For now though you decided it would be best if you just went straight to Pinkie to get your needed supplies.

You made the rest of the walk to town in under a minute, and on your way you noticed even more oddities about the little village. For one it seemed to be completely void of all life.
For another the buildings looked different since you last saw them, and again, you couldn't quite exactly place what was different about them. Still though the silence was unnerving, so you pulled out your blade and produced a second one so you could have one in each hand. You would feel really embarrassed if everyone was just in their houses or if there was some other stupid explanation.

“Hello?”

You got no response whatsoever.

“Anyone there?”

Again, no reply. You changed the way your blades were facing in nervousness. Where was everyone? Oh, you noticed something that had changed. The damage done by you was no longer here, although you doubt that was the only thing that had changed as the whole town felt...off.

You ran as quietly as possible towards a wall of one of the buildings and lent around it to see more abandoned streets. You crept out of your hiding place and walked down the street, not being overly cautious as you thought the coast was clear but not trying to deliberately attract attention either. You still had yet to find any signs of life.

“ - The Great and Powerful TRIXIE!”

Suddenly fireworks shot out of from behind the building to the rear, scaring you to no end. If it were possible, you would have most definitely had a heart attack from that jump. Regardless, your heart was still pounding in your chest.

Once you had your heart rate under control you decided to investigate the source of the noise. You chose to keep your knives out because you would hopefully be able to return the favour of a fresh heart attack to whoever decided to scream and launch explosives into the air.

Well, at least you found out where everyone was. It seemed like the whole town had gathered before this one mare and her stage for some reason. Was she some kind of deity to them?

“Apparently we have some Neigh-Sayers in the crowd.”

That sentence alone put that theory to rest, and also informed you of a very, very bad pun used around these parts. That still left a question unanswered though; why exactly were they gathering here? Your best guess would probably be that she was some sort of actress or entertainer of some sort, and that she was putting on some form of show. If her apparel was anything to go by then she was probably a magician, but then you remembered that magic was a common sight around here. Maybe she was talented at it? Her, what was it...cutie mark?

“Oh please. Everypony knows that I'm the best.”

“Oh really? Come then Pegasus, prove yourself to be better than the Great and Powerful Trixie; anything you can do, I can do better.”

“You're on!”

Rainbow Dash was the one being an annoyance to the mare, her voice made it obvious. She rocketed up onto the stage to glare at the blue Unicorn before racing off into the sky, performing many stunts and tricks to impress the gathered audience. Some of them were quite good to be honest. She sailed into the air before crashing down through multiple clouds and landing on the stage with a dull thud. Another interesting anomaly occurred because if this; the vapour left from the clouds formed a small rainbow directly over Rainbow’s head. That wasn't the truly interesting part either; the Unicorn mare on the proceeded to use her magic to pull on the light and turn it into a whirlwind of colours. Fascinating, you wonder what else this mare could do.

Rainbow Dash waddled off stage, clearly disorientated by the sudden miniature tornado of bright light.

“Clearly Trixie has proven that she is the Greatest and most Powerful Unicorn in all of Equestria. Are there any others who dare doubt her superiority?”

The crowd began to cheer, bar a few, amongst which were Twilight and her companions. They seemed to dislike this magician for some reason. You wanted to find out why.

You began wading through the crowd trying to reach the little ponies. They were easy to spot, what with you being so tall and all, but they seemed to be discussing something amongst themselves and Twilight looked as if she was actively avoiding attention. You had to pass both humans and ponies but you made your way to the small group of equines.

“Hey. What are you guys doing?”

You sat down on the ground to try and make yourself eye level with the ponies before you. It was futile but at least they didn't have to crane their necks as much to look you in the eyes.

“This show-mare is being most boastful and obnoxious.”

“Well you can talk Rarity.”

She narrowed her eyes at you.

“What does that mean?”

“It's means that you're obnoxious as well.”

“But - I - how rude!”

Rarity stormed off. Or at least tried to; the crowd of ponies and humans was making it difficult to leave.

“So...yeah. That was something. Oh yes! Have you seen Pinkie Pie anywhere?”

Twilight, who seemed to have ignored the entire conversation between you and Rarity, turned away from Spike and looked towards you.

“I'm not entirely sure, she could be anywhere but I think I saw her in the crowd earlier.”

“Ok, thanks.”

You began your search for the Pink mare, standing up and walking amongst the crowd in the process. For a bright pink pony she sure knew how to blend in; you were having quite some difficulty finding her. You would see a pink fluffy tail and then it would just disappear a second later. You saw something out of the corner of your eye, something pink and bouncy. It must be Pinkie.

The blur left the gathered crowd and raced down a street in a direction towards Rarity’s home. You left as quickly as possible, trying your hardest not to knock any of the ponies over in your rush. By the time you reached the edge of the audience the pink speeding blur had already vanished beyond your field of vision.

You ran down the streets in pursuit, going down the way you saw Pinkie last in the hopes of finding her. You ran around a seemingly endless amount of streets and pathways before finding Pinkie entering Sugarcube Corner. Funny, you thought Rarity’s place was here.

You pushed open the door and crouched to enter, which was another thing that you had just noticed; all of the doors seemed smaller than last time you were here. Inside you found the place to be in a relatively similar state to when you last saw it. Any differences you could write off as being modifications made by the owners. Things like moved furniture and different candles used for light.

You spotted Pinkie by the entrance to the kitchen, about to enter.

“Hey Pinkie.”

She turned around in a split second, so fast you could barely keep track of her movement.

“Oh hiya!”

She began waving her hoof at high speeds, again you could only just barely able to see her movements at all. How did she do that? Well, you suppose you could wait a few more hours before performing the test you had been conceiving since first meeting Pinkie Pie to find out answer to that. Speaking of which.

“Hey Pinkie can I ask you for a favour?”

“Hmm?”

You took her head tilt as questioning, though it was a little difficult to tell at first seeing as you still had very little grasp on Ponies’ facial expressions, human as they may be.

“I was just wondering if I could have some of your...hair?”

“My mane?”

Pinkie’s eyes rolled up to look at her fluffy mane, the mane that you wanted a piece of.

“What would you want my mane for?”

“It's a secret, I can't tell you. I really need it...please?”

“Well...ok. But keep it safe! My mane is very special to me.”

“Don't worry I will. Do you want me to cut it or you?”

“You can do it if you want, but please only take a small piece. My mane is really, really special to me.”

“I will only take what I need, don't worry.”

You pulled up a piece of Pinkie’s mane and cut it using your ‘magical’ technology. The small tuft of hair fell into your waiting hands and you quickly put it away for later, not decomposing it as that would void your whole expedition into Ponyville.

You took note of Pinkie’s reaction though. She seemed to flinch at the ‘touch’ of your Nanites. You had no idea her hair meant that much to her.

“There, all done.”

She opened her eyes; you had failed to notice her closing them in the first place.

“It's over?”

She seemed on the border of being traumatised. Did her hair really mean that much to her. You wanted to know but you didn't want to press the matter, as doing so might upset her and you already had what you came for.

“Thank y...ou?”

Pinkie disappeared, probably off to do some baking or other such chores that you took no interest in. You had what you came for so you didn't care where she went off to, although you were a bit concerned about Pinkie. Nothing to dwell about now though.

You walked, or rather crawled, through the door to the bakery and into the outside world once more. You briefly thought of anything else you could do while you were here in town, as you might as well do it now while you were here. You came up blank; you really couldn't think of anything else to do while you were here. You didn't exactly feel like going back home just yet either, that would be a waste of time despite how quickly you can make the trip here and back.

You could always check up on the others to kill some time. At least that would make this trip somewhat more worthwhile.

With that decided you began looking for them. The first pace you would search was obviously where you last them, at the centre of town. Hopefully they hadn't wandered off to do some chores or whatever business ponies get up to in their spare time. Having to look all over town would just be inconvenient.

It seemed like they would still be there as there was still nobody in the streets. Perhaps they were still watching that magician? You had a few questions to ask her, specifically how she manipulated that rainbow with her magic. At the very least you hoped she would be able to give you a spell of some kind, or at least direct you to a place where you could find the spell.

Luckily for you everyone you were looking for were all where you last saw, sitting around in the middle of the town centre. With the exception of Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Fluttershy everyone you were looking for was here. Well, you weren't exactly looking for Twilight and Applejack, they were more of a welcome surprise. Still, the mare - Trixie you believed - was here, and she seemed to have some spare time on her hooves so she might be able to answer some of your questions.

You approached the small group of ponies; they seemed to be discussing or arguing about something, you weren't entirely sure which it was.

“It's ok to have talent Twilight, just as long as you don't go around showing it off. That's my job!”

“You sure are full of yourself aren't you Rainbow Dash.”

All ponies present - excluding Trixie, who was busy doing something to her stage - turned to face you at the sound of your voice.

“What do you mean by that, monkey boy?”

“Monkey boy? What is that supposed to mean?”

“It mean you're stupid.”

“...you do know that humans are more intelligent than ponies...”

“Exactly!”

“...what.”

Twilight took this opportunity to smack herself in the face with a hoof, which looked like it would hurt quite a bit. Rainbow Dash was smirking for whatever reason. You decided you wanted to leave, fearing that you might catch their stupidity. Seeing as you somehow managed to ‘catch’ Luna’s breakdown it didn't seem like that big of a stretch and you didn't want to take any chances.

“Goodbye. I'm going to talk with that Unicorn over there, wait, can you even understand my words?”

“Of course I can. What, do you think I'm stupid or something?!”

“Yes.”

The conversation died. Just like that, it ceased to be. At least, until Twilight brought something else up.

“You're going to talk to Trixie?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I just thought I should let you know that she is really boastful of her magical prowess.”

“I think I can handle it.”

As you said it you looked to Rainbow Dash. She hadn't been overly boastful in huge time you had known her but she emitted an aura of snobbishness, just like Rarity did.

“Yeah partner, she's real obnoxious too.”

“Oh don't worry, I think your all obnoxious.”

Your comment was left unheard because Rainbow thought it would be a good time to interject.

“Yeah! And she talks in third-pony! How weird is that?”

“Well, not really that weird. I mean, I think to myself in second person.”

You wondered why you did that. Maybe I could try- no, no way too difficult. Besides the Other voices didn't like it when you thought in first person. In your thinking you had failed to listen to the words coming from Rainbow Dash.

“Sorry, what was that. I was busy arguing with the voices in my head so I didn't hear what you said.”

“I take it back; you're not weird, you're insane.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn't a compliment.”

“Oh, I know it wasn't. But for me it is. At least I'm intelligent enough to have more than one line of thought at once.”

“...What?”

“Oh forget it, this is pointless. You could cut off my big toe and it would have more brains than all of you combined.”

You turned towards Trixie and walked off before any of them could get another point in. You couldn't exactly place it but they seemed to be acting differently compared to what they usually are. Then again you hadn't exactly known them all that long, maybe this was how they acted all the time.

Trixie appeared to be packing up things from around the stage, which was now no longer a stage and was instead some form of transportation that you struggled to identify, probably because you hadn't seen anything like it before in the time you had lived. If you did some study though you would probably find something similar to it in ancient human history, but you lacked both the resources and the patience to do it.

You only just noticed now because of your proximity to her, but something felt ‘off’ about this mare and you couldn't quite place it, a similar feeling to how you couldn't tell what was different about the buildings. Even then this kind of ‘off’ was different; She just didn't feel right.

“Hello there. I was wondering if you could-”

“Please just fuck off, Trixie is very busy.”

“...pardon?”

“You heard Trixie.”

Wow. The first pony you had heard - no, the first intelligent creature you had heard use a swear word.

“I like you already...”

“Yes, yes. Now go away.”

“Ok I will, but I was wondering if you could teach me how you manipulated that rainbow. I'm curious as to how you did it that's all.”

Trixie turned to face you, seeing your form for the first time. She seemed shocked, if her open mouth and wider-than-alredy-huge eyes were anything to go by. You didn't know why she was shocked though, because of your height difference or something else perhaps?

“Uh, of course. Trixie could probably spare a few minutes before resting. She is that Great after all.”

“Ok, thanks.”

“Uh-huh, j-just follow Trixie over here. Actually, just take this spell book. This is where Trixie learnt how to control rainbows.”

She started walking back to her home, or what you presumed to be her home.

“Ok, thanks again. Hey wait!”

She turned back to face you.

“What is it?”

“I could make a copy of this if you want. You could keep the original if you wanted.”

She pondered this for a moment.

“No, no. You keep it; I've already learnt all the spells in there anyway.”

You looked down to the book in question. It looked like it had a lot of pages in it.

“Ok then thanks agai-... Where'd you go?”

She had disappeared. Your first guess would be that she was back in her mobile house, but that didn't matter, you got what you needed and it was almost dusk.

On your way through town you noticed a couple of young, male ponies. Colts, if you remembered correctly. One was orange-y and the other was a blue-ish colour, and both of them were talking to Spike about something that you couldn't hear from this distance.

After tossing the idea around in your head for a bit you decide that their argument is of none of your concern, and instead opt to find a quiet place to read the book Trixie gave you. An ideal place is spotted by you, just out of the corner of your vision, over by a park bench. Said bench had no ponies around it so you figured that it would be less distracting there than out in the open.

Within moments you were sitting on the small- scratch that, tiny bench with the book in your lap. The bench was so small, you were surprised it could even hold your weight, so tiny compared to your figure that you decided you would be better off just sitting on the grass floor than on it.

You pulled the book out after settling comfortably onto the grass. The book in question had a simple title of ‘Illusion Magic’ in large stylised text. You had no idea how you knew it was stylised as you didn't actually know the language. It must have just been the Nanites in your optical nerve Woking their magic on your perception. You were still thankful for that.

You turned the book open to the first page, ignoring the contents for now. You began to read the book in silence amongst the fading sunlight.

Welcome to the the art of Illusion, one of the most difficult classes of magic out there. In this book you will learn some basic spells in this school of magic and will also be educated in the subsets of all Illusion category's. Why would you want to learn illusion magic, you might ask? You could learn how to alter your appearance, or perhaps confuse others around you. Maybe you will choose to become completely invisible. This book features all and beyond in terms of the illusory arts!

The basics should be taught first before attempting this book, so if you don't have an at least basic understanding of magic you should probably read something else first. Let's get straight into it! First of all, illusion magic is the art of changing the surrounding light, not the surrounding objects. Depending on the specific type of spell, altering matter would either come under transmutation, alchemy, or any of the major elemental manipulation categories. Seek other books if you wish to be able to control the environment around you; this book does not teach you how to do that.

Now onto the magic itself. Illusion itself can be broken down into three main classes; Refraction, Reflection, and Projection. Refraction is the art of attracting or repelling light, Reflection is the art of changing the properties of existing light, and Projection is the art of creating new light. To become a true master of the illusory arts one must first master all three classes of illusion, and the only way to do that is through practice, practice, practice! This book has hundreds of spells for you to practice and excel at, the difficulty ranging for both those who are just starting to those that are masters of this particular field of arcane power.

You flicked though the rest of the book after that, as it was just spell after spell from then on. The first few were vital for learning other spells in the future; spells like attract light, repel light, bend light and create light, just to name a few.

Once you had finished flocking through the entire book you opened it back up to the start and began committing all the arcane symbols to memory, not fully remembering them but storing them in the form of raw data in your Hives. The only time you didn't do this was when you found a particularly interesting spell and thought it would be fun to try sooner rather than later, so instead you put a little tag of sorts to mark its position in the book.

You have no idea how long you did this for, but it must have been for longer than you thought because when you finished it was already dark and all the ponies had left the village streets. Some parts of the book were interesting, like the use of labels for the names of spells and classes. You could analyse it once you got home.

You stood up with the book in hand and tried to re-orientate yourself. You appeared to be near the centre of town - as you would have guessed - opposite the area where Trixie had set up her stage. You began off in the direction of your house but stopped; you could have sworn you just heard something. You shook it off and continued on your way, sure it was just your imagination.

You heard it again, slightly louder this time. It was coming from the Everfree forest and was getting louder with each passing second. Whatever it was it sounded big.

You decided to investigate the source of the disturbance as it was in the direction of your house anyway so it wouldn't be that big of a waste of time. You made it to the forest with no hassle but by now the noises were becoming almost audible if you weren't specifically listening for it, and now along with it you could hear two smaller, almost insignificant sounds along with it, although you had to strain yourself to hear it.

Quickly dashing around any trees or fallen plants you made your way closer to the sound, now loud enough to be distinguished as something running. Something that was very big. By now the sound was so loud you wouldn't be surprised if it started waking the inhabitants nearby.

You found yourself within a small clearing, much smaller than your one. The ground was visibly shaking by now and the bush behind you was rustling.

Suddenly two colts - the same ones arguing with spike earlier, if you were not mistaken - came running out of the bush.

“RUN!”

“What is i-”

You didn't get to finish as a massive ear splitting roar blasted across the clearing and beyond. You turned around in time to see what it was as it emerged from the tree line. It was huge. You only came up halfway on this monstrosity and even then only just barely. It resembled a bear in form but appeared semi-transparent and had what looked to be stars dotted all over it. When it opened its mouth again it didn't look transparent on the inside, so you inferred that it must bend light around it in some way, maybe as an evolutionary way to hide. You could see no reason why this thing would need to hide from anything.

Another roar tore across your form. Maybe now wasn't the best time for theorising.

The thing took a swipe at you, to which you barely avoided by diving to the side and rolling away from it. The thing went for another swipe at you. This time you stopped it mid-strike by grabbing it. Holding its leg up was difficult and it was all the more so when the thing started applying force, pushing you backwards and leaving big trenches in the soil where your feet were. You couldn't keep this up forever; holding it was started to tire your arms. You summoned as much strength as you could and flipped the whole thing over your head.

The thing smashed into the ground creating an earth shattering thump as it collided with the forest floor. It moved far faster than you expected it to be capable of, flipping itself back over and charging at you again. This time you were ready but there was one thing you had to take care of first. This thing was much larger than Nightmare Moon and would probably create much more collateral damage; you needed to get it as far away from Ponyville as possible.

You ran deeper into the forest but a problem soon arose as the gigantic bear lost interest in you and started off for Ponyville again, quite intent on terrorising it for some reason.

You needed a better plan, and luckily you thought of one. Using just recently acquired knowledge you produced a small white glow of light in front of the mammoth bear. It was poorly made and flickered in and out of existence for a few moments before stabilising somewhat and staying still, still breaking apart but at farther intervals.

It worked; you got the things attention back, although it wasn't interested in you, more that it was interested in the light you had created.

Here came the problem. You had used a basic Projection spell but now the light was stationery; you would have to move it closer to you with a Reflection spell without breaking the other spell and causing the light to disappear completely.

You timed it carefully, releasing the Projection spell just as you started moving the light with a Reflection spell, transferring it over to the new spell. You brought the light closer to you, the bear trying to claw at it the whole time, until it was just in front of you. You brought the light into your palm and dispersed it; its purpose was served. It had gotten the things attention, and now it wanted you. Maybe that wasn't a good thing.

It swung again, this time missing and roaring in annoyance before charging at you again. You dashed away as fast as you could and headed in the direction that the creature came from, leading it as far away from Ponyville as possible.

You eventually came upon a cave, large enough to have been the bear’s home and point of origin. You were far away enough now.

You sounds around suddenly and slammed your hands into the oncoming bear. Your attack took the thing by surprise and caused it to stumble in its footing, collapsing and sliding into the cliff wall surrounding the cave entrance. You had the sense to duck beneath it when it fell, bringing your blades out as you skidded across the dirt in the opposite direction to the bear.

You came to a halt and flipped back up into a standing position to face the creature once more. It crawled back into a standing position and began charging you again, this time stopping just before reaching you and taking a swipe instead. You ducked and brought your knives up to slice as the things paw went straight into your warm, sharp blades.

The bear released another roar, this time louder than the others as it howled in pain.

They came in rapid succession, attacks coming from left and right, howls of agony filling the air as you weaved around its attacks and delivered your own in return. After countless swings the thing just gave up and attempted to eat you, which was a huge mistake on its part.

You jumped over its wide-opened mouth filled with sharp looking teeth and landed on the things back.

It screamed louder than any other time as something broke within it, either bones or organs you couldn't tell. It tried to flick you off but struggled to even support your weight. You may have looked weightless but you would probably weigh just as much as the poor creature you were crushing, quite the feat considering that it was almost ten to twenty times your volume.

You brought your knives down into the back of the bears neck and pulled them up with all your strength, producing deep gashes in the things skull and effectively killing it.

You fell off the creature, feeling quite exhausted at your exertions. It was a strange feeling for you, feeling tired that was. You had never really felt tired in your life, as you seldom did anything strenuous and your body lacked any need of sleep, sustenance or maintenance in most cases of everyday life.

Your eyes snapped open to the sound of a low growl...which slowly turned into a roar much louder than the one produced by the bear you had just killed. You rolled over onto your stomach and brought yourself up to a standing position just in time to see something come out of the darkness within the cave.

It. Was. Massive.

That was an understatement. It was truly mammoth in size. Unlike the last one this thing was purple in colour with stars that matched its fellow bear. Likewise, both bears shared a transparent coat of fur, which seemed to sparkle occasionally like star light. You didn't notice it on huge smaller one, but this one had a large blue star on its forehead. You probably noticed this one because the star itself was almost as tall as you were.

This time it approached you slowly instead of charging in head first. It stopped before it reached you, standing absolutely still. It radiated anger and hatred and you could see something within its eyes; a thirst for blood. Your blood, it was hungry for your blood.

It clawed at you suddenly, it's speed surprising you greatly. The claw slammed into your chest as you had no time to avoid it and you probably wouldn't have been able to stop it with force either. You sailed through the air and smacked into the cliff face surrounding the cave entrance. That hurt more than you thought it would to be honest.

You didn't even have time to fall off of the rock face before the paw made another attempt at your life. It smacked into you and stayed there, holding you against the wall, then began scraping up and down. To you it seemed like something was trying to flatten you into a pancake, and that was exactly what was happening to you in a sense.

When the thing realised that it wasn't killing the pink squishy thing it tried a new strategy; It began punching you repeatedly. It wasn't a pleasant experience. You were practically bounced off of the wall and then smacked straight back ‘down’ again, over and over and over. At this point you were feeling a bit numb all over.

“Enough!”

You jumped out of the way just as the thing’s paw lifted off of your for another punch, forcing your legs to propel you upwards which was actually going sideways straight into the giant bears face. In hindsight that might have not been such a good idea.

The thing opened its mouth and flicked you off of its snout, causing you to fall down into its maw. You jumped off of its tongue before it had a chance to chew into your flesh and eat you entirely. The thing somehow managed to hit you while you were in the air and you were sent flailing towards the tree line, rolling around before landing back on your feet near the trees surrounding the area.

You didn't know how much more of this you could take, time to electrify this fucking thing.

You commanded your Nanites and sent out arcs of electricity to fry the freakishly huge creature and hopefully end this things life. Your hopes are dashed though, as the bear doesn't even seem to be phased by the massive amounts of current coursing through it. On closer inspection you see that the electricity wasn't even going through the bear as it should have. It was bouncing off of its fur and pooling on the floor as a liquid. A fucking liquid.

The electricity seemed to have angered the bear further because now it was charging at you again. Thinking quick you decide to use magic for this one and look to the major sources of energy in the area. The amount of energy seemed to be fairly balanced in the surrounding area, but that gave you an idea. You focused on the magical strands in front of the charging beast and pulled them all to a central focus point, so much so that the surrounding matter was left with nothing at all and became an visible dust, visible only to you because of your spatial and temporal manipulators detecting it. When the bear stepped above the focus of the magic you released it causing the energy to explode out in every direction and in every form. Heat radiated outwards, a shockwave of sound blasted your eardrums, and the gravitational pull in the area went nuts.

The bear was sent flying into the air as a result, something it wasn't too pleased about if the roars it was making was any indication. It landed with a massive thud and collapsed into a heap, staying down for a while. Not for long it seemed, as it struggled back to all fours and glared at you menacingly. You still had yet to kill it and you couldn't just zap it like you did to Nightmare Moon, meaning you would have to fight it in a more conventional way.

You pulled up your hood - which had fallen off during the scuffle with the annoying bear you currently faced - and had your Nanites produce two more small knives to use, the previous ones also being lost in the chaos. You charged at it before it had a chance to charge at you, jumping into the air once you got into proximity with the bear and then landing on its snout for a second time. You began slashing at it, cutting at its flesh and drawing large amounts of blood from its head. What seemed like lots of blood for you though was probably more like a paper cut to this thing; it didn't even seem affected by your efforts at all.

You jumped off of its head once you realised your efforts were futile and instead you formulated a new plan. As you landed on the floor you kicked off of it and sailed back to the things head but this time instead of landing in it you kicked it as hard as you could, and with your mass that was quite a bit of force.

The knock confused the bear and gave you the time you needed. You ran back to the tree line towards the thickest tree you could see, a pine tree. Once there you ripped it out oft he ground and threw it into the air with a precise accuracy. You jumped again, this time landing on top of the tree in the roots, your force tipping it over so that the top of the pine was pointing towards the earth. The initial throw made it so that it was still flying through the air with you on it, now you just had to time your next jump perfectly.

...

...

Now.

You jumped off of the log of wood and in the direction of the bear’s snout, in doing so causing the log to surge towards the ground and impale the bear’s paw. You then jumped off of the bear’s snout and back onto the tree impaling the creatures paw, sending it further into the dirt and the bear’s claw, branches snapping off as they reached the base of the creatures legs. This did not please the bear. Not at all.

It roared to the point that you could feel blood coming out of your ears, so it was probably really loud. You couldn't tell at this point because you had gone temporarily deaf. Ignoring your deafness you took out your knives once more and started slashing at the bear’s neck, the log you stood on having brought you up to the base of its neck. Blood began pouring out in torrents, flooding over you and flowing down to the ground below. You stopped; the bear had ceased its screaming.

You pulled your arm out from the wound in which it was stuck in leaving you covered in blood and bits of meat. You jumped to the ground from your spot on the tree and landed with a soft thud in the dirt ground below, the impact causing small splatters of blood to fall off of you and stain the floor. You looked like someone had poured a bucket of thick, red paint all over you.

You examined the bears both flopped to the ground, dead. You didn't know what to examine first; the liquid electricity, the bears strange fur, or the intangible material from the magical land mine.

Eventually you settled on the bears fur. You hadn't encountered either of the other two curiosities before but you had heard about them before so you could examine them later for now you would settle for the bear. As you walked over to the corpses you blood-soaked pants made wet slopping sounds akin to pulling something out of thick mud. The excess blood also made it semi-difficult to move, but you managed anyway.

Upon closer inspection you found that the bear’s fur was actually some sort of microscopic crystalline insulator, but at the same time it was a conductor as well. That still didn't explain why the electrons had just abandoned their nuclei and become free radicals, much less explain why those said free radicals had bonded together and made liquid Electronium. Speaking of which.

You walked over to the pool of liquidised Electronium. You had never seen the stuff in any form, besides arcing electricity but then that wouldn't technically classify as Electronium. The pool was glowing a bright blue, bordering on white, which was weird as usually it was relatively colourless. It must have been a side-effect of the way the electrons had bonded together. You just didn't want to be around something this unstable that wasn't produced by human hands; the stuff was incredibly unstable and could explo- shit!

You dove to the ground just as the liquid began vibrating at high speeds, producing quite a lot of heat and sound in the process. No sooner than you touched the ground did it explode, arcs of electricity was sent flying everywhere as electrons shot off into the surrounding atoms; into the air it went, into the ground it went, and most importantly it went into you.

It didn't hurt you, which surprised you. You would have thought that you would writhing in agony by now since last time you were electrocuted that's what happened. The only thing that changed since then was your understanding of magic and your use of electric Nanites. You guess it must have been the latter that was preventing your pain, though, you weren't exactly complaining about it either.

You looked to the blast site. The dirt in which the liquid had combusted on was vitrified and the surrounding soil around that was glowing white-hot, a testament to the amount of heat released by the sudden reaction. Well, there was nothing you could do about it now that the electrons were balancing themselves around the surrounding environment. The only thing left to analyse now was the residue left behind from your magical explosive.

You approached the crater. To an onlooker it may have been but an empty hole with blackened stains, but you knew better than that. You crouched down besides the hole and pulled your hand through it. Just as you suspected; nothing in the hole, or at least, nothing tangible. The affects of such an anomaly were often referred to as ‘ghosting’ due to the fact that nothing could interact with it. The only reason people could see it was because they could use devices to sense tiny, minute changes in gravity suggesting that something should be there instead of nothing. Usually the only time this stuff was seen occurring naturally was at the collapse of the Universe and the beginning of a new one; that brief moment that lasted an eternity where everything in existence just collapsed and restarted all over again again. Of course you hadn't been around long enough to actually experience the end of an eternity; there had only been one hundred and fifty during humanities reign over the Universe, and your relatively short lifespan had yet to see such a rare event.

You looked back to the hole, or rather, the intangible mess of matter that filled that hole. You didn't exactly know what to do with it; all of the material’s electrons had been removed, it had zero energy left inside the atoms comprising it, and to top it all off a quarter of the Quantids that made it up had been removed from existence as well, all of the R variety. You decided to just leave it as it was and salvage whatever else you could from the bears’ corpses.

You definitely wanted to keep some if the fur from the bear corpse, the uses for such a material being unknown at this point but the properties of the material were too good to pass up. Another thing you wanted was the larger bear’s DNA, so that way you could make more fur if you somehow lost the pelts’ of fur acquired from said bear. You could fortunately get both at the same time.

You brought out another knife, having lost all the others at some point, and started cutting into the large animal’s fur coat, blood gushing out in the process. You took this opportunity to collect some DNA samples from the large quantities of vital fluid pouring down onto the dirt before continuing with your gory task. By the time you were done you had about twenty square metres of pelt folded up into a nice, small square that was comfortable to carry. You could have just broken it down to single molecules but that might risk damaging the cell structure due to its weird attributes; it was far better to be safe than sorry, in your opinion.

Now you just had the task of getting back home, the same journey you attempted to make before some...inconveniences decided to intervene with your plans. Such a waste of time.

The journey back to your house didn't talk all that long, as you were already halfway there, the little detour having actually been in the right direction to home, surprisingly enough. You were glad you dealt with the bear problem now though, having them suddenly appear next to your house would not have been a very pleasant experience.

You walked up to the door of your tree home and pulled it open, not even bothering to close it behind you. You found Gilda within the first few seconds of even stepping into your house, she was sitting by the table enjoying some of the pancakes that you made, somehow not spoiled despite not being kept cool. Also, where did she get them? She turned to face you, probably alerted to you by the sound of blood dripping off of your clothes.

“Oh...I thought you were dead.”

You clenched your fists to your sides and spoke in a chilling tone.

“You...”

“Ah, he he...um, bye!”

Gilda dashed across the room and dove out of the window to quickly escape your wrath, where once outside she promptly started to fly away.

“Oh no you don't! Get the fuck back here!”

You dove out the window as well, although because you were much larger than Gilda you also took out half of the wall at the same time. You grabbed onto Gilda's lion-like tail and made sure that she definitely couldn't get away from you. You had to commend Gilda, you had no idea she was strong enough to drag you across the floor. You attempted to get yourself back up to your feet so you could stop Gilda but all you succeeded in doing was standing up, still being pulled along by Gilda’s implausible strength.

You began dodging the obstacles sent your way, forcing your limbs to twist in ways that probably weren't very healthy for you and looking like you were doing a weird dance of flailing limbs. You failed to notice a rock that you were heading straight towards and you ended up smacking into it crotch-first, sending you sailing into the air and smacking into another tree. Tree after tree impacted you as you were sent hurtling through the forest like some kind of human pinball, each crash harder and louder than the last. Eventually your torment ended and you were left to be dragged across the dirt.

You made a few more attempts to get Gilda to stop but gave up in the end, besides being pulled across the floor wasn't really that painful. You wondered when Gilda would stop, she must have been going for a solid five minutes now, which for an Equestrian resident was a total of twenty minutes. She must have been exhausted by this point.

You suddenly found yourself in the outskirts of town, Gilda still carrying you along across the dirt roads. Also, at some point it had become day time, and now you were earning many glances from the town’s inhabitants, which quickly turned into screams and shrieks at the sight of your blood-soaked body. Gilda made a sharp turn, forcing you upright and onto your legs again before continuing back down the streets of Ponyville once again, this time in the direction of the Everfree.

Now you found yourself at the forest edge again, Gilda not stopping to think before diving into the forest filled with supposedly ‘dangerous’ animals, the same forest she was petrified of days before. Your game of pinball with the trees continued once again, with team tree being victorious in the tournament.

You lost focus for a split second as your head collided with a particularly thick tree, surprisingly thick enough to not be obliterated upon contact with your also thick skull.

“Gilda!”

That was all the time she needed to get away apparently; she was nowhere to be seen, she didn't leave any footprints, she didn't leave any indication of which direction she took, and she most definitely wasn't in the air. Shit, you were so close to getting her!

You managed to calm yourself down before going into a fit by reasoning that she would probably come back to your house again at some point or another, sooner or later. For now though, back to your house. You had many things in mind that you could do once you arrived back home, with the primary one being your planned ‘experiment’, among several others. With that in mind you headed off towards your home in the woods, first off though you had to find directions to said home. You didn't want to brute force any more data, so the only option left would be to sift through the data in your Hives; you had already began constructing a map, you just didn't know where it was exactly.

After sifting through approximately three hundred thousand folders of data you came across the folder containing the map, the program to read it, and any miscellaneous files needed to properly use and navigate the map from external devices. The folder itself contained one point seven exabytes of data, relatively small for how much it had within, you had expected it to be a much larger file. No doubt its small size came from the incredibly complex programming contained within as well, the same coding that you failed to understand to any in depth sense; you couldn't code, but you understood how it worked...somewhat.

You pulled open the map, more than ninety percent of it was black as you had yet to explore those areas of this planet’s estimated total size. Furthermore, the area in which you could visibly see was constantly changing to be an exact copy of the environment. The map using data constantly streaming from your various devices and sources to update the atomically accurate map; if you so chose to view the world an atom at a time, then so be it, the map could handle it more than easily.

You were currently thirty four kilometres away from your house, to the east of it to be exact. You once again found yourself marvelling at Gilda’s super-endurance. She must have travelled at least twice that distance to get you to where you were now, and your weight wouldn't have been easy to drag around everywhere, especially with you struggling the whole way. Perhaps you should look into that later as well, for now though, to your house.

You were getting tired of having to run to your house all the time. Maybe now would be a good time to learn about teleportation magic, Pinkie certainly seemed to enjoy talking about how amazing it was. No, not yet. You had one experiment you had to do before doing anything else, you feared for your sanity if you didn't do this, the very thing that had been annoying you since you first came to Ponyville; you were going to figure out Pinkie Pie, and you weren't stopping until you had it completely understood and figured out. First things first though; preparation, lots and lots of preparation.

You already had Pinkie’s DNA so with that you would be able to find whatever it was that gave Pinkie her strange abilities, so really yet he only things you needed to get ready was some equipment; a genetic analyser would be needed, along with an atomic reader, a genetic synthesiser, and some form of base for the DNA to ‘rest’ on, although that would be entirely dependant on the DNA itself so that would come last.

For the genetic analyser you would first check your Hive’s database to see if it contained the blueprints for one, otherwise you would have to make on from scratch and that would take a large portion of time, so hopefully it did have designs for one in there somewhere. You were in luck, it seemed, as there was blueprints for such a device, several in fact. You just needed one though, so you began making it after briefly checking over all of them to see which best suited your needs.

Your hands glowed blue as the Nanites within surged outwards into the air around you. They took to flying in patterns, large circles in the air that when put together formed a sphere just in front of your at head height. The machine started to take shape, first a glint in the light as a tiny piece of metal appeared, then more tiny shiny sparks as many pieces of metal began to form in the air. The glints converged and formed a new, larger piece of metal, the base of what would eventually become the genetic analyser. More sparks appeared, repeating the same process as before until two small pieces of metal remained floating in the air. These two pieces then fused together to make a large piece, still small in size though and only about your thumb in length and half that in width. This process repeated further, tiny bits of metal forming into existence then fusing together to become larger pieces and then fusing once more until a large piece of metal was left levitating in the field of blue Nanites, about the size of your hand in length and half that in width once again.

You went to pick up the floating chunk of metal before realising that it wasn't entirely finished forming yet, so you let it be for now.

The Nanites continued their task, circling around the newly formed rectangular piece of metal with the same steady speed as before. Two new formations began, to the left and right above the rectangle. These too were made in the same way as the previous structure, forming smaller parts before joining together to make the whole of the object. The process kept on repeating until the two separate parts were finally finished and left floating in the air. Before they moved towards the incomplete device another much smaller chunk of metal began forming in the air above the device on the side furthest away from you. The two angular pieces glided down and rested bare millimetres above the device just as the last peace was completed, before that too floated down to the analyser.

The Nanites, finished with their task, spread outwards away from the rectangle before funnelling back into your palms in a dazzling display of lights. Despite this, the box of metal did not fall to the floor, the device seemingly ignoring gravity all together in its successful attempt to avoid the wooden floor below. You reached out and the plucked the thing from the air, the machine suddenly remembering gravity at the proximity to your hand and falling into it.

You walked over to the table in the middle of the room with your new toy, placing it on the wooden surface and sitting down next to it after creating a chair with your Nanites. The device would act as both a analyser and a base for the DNA, now all you needed was an atomic reader and a genetic synthesiser, the latter being easy to acquire while the former would not.

You went back into the Hive, sifting through more blueprints looking for the one you had seen while looking for the analyser. You eventually found it amongst the masses of files and documents, however there was one problem. You lacked the required materials to make it. You were missing two of the required materials; sugar and phosphate, both of which were needed to create deoxyribose, an essential ingredient in most DNA strands. Now, acquiring these would be easy, all you would need to do is strip mine them from a tree, or any organic substance for that matter. You probably could have synthesised these from raw elements but it would be much quicker to just destroy a plant and get what you need in the process.

Considering you were surrounded by a plant, extracting the materials would be easy. You singled out a piece of wood and ripped it away form the tree with your hands, the missing piece starting to grow back the moment it was removed. You went to dissolve the chunk of wood with your Nanites when you realised you were unable to do so. A warning started flashing in your vision, startling you quite a bit, the sudden red text appearing just in front of your eyes in the form of a hologram.

Huh. So an in-built command prevented your Nanites from destroying any organic matter that was still alive, with a few exceptions, one being if it was in your stomach. You could see the reason for such a command, so you let it stay, assuming that you could remove it at all that is. That still left you with the problem of mining the cube of wood, and since you didn't particularly feel like eating a box of wood the only option was to somehow kill it without the use of your Nanites.

The first thing that came to mind was magic, and that was a little concerning. Still though, it was a good idea so you left the table and headed upstairs to where all the books in your house were. You began sifting through all the books you had on magic, looking for one capable of reducing the temperature of an object. That was your plan, to freeze the wood until it classified as ‘dead’.

You found a book that looked like it would contain damaging spells, then you flipped it open to the contents to see if it had what you were looking for, or anything similar that could be used instead. After flipping though the first couple of pages, all of which were contents, you found a spell that literally fit exactly what you needed; a spell, one that would reduce the temperature of a given area or a specified object, if so desired.

You quickly read over all the symbols needed to perform the spell correctly. Literally, you used your Spatial and Temporal manipulators to directly engrave those images into your brain, you lacking the patience and the focus to properly learn the spell, as you had been doing up until now.

With the spell learned and added to your ever-growing arsenal you decided to give it a few test runs to make sure you had memorised it correctly.

You went downstairs after confirming that the spells did indeed function properly. You had tested it on some of Gilda’s shit that she had just left lying around. You hoped that those pills weren't of any importance to her.

You found the piece of wood where you left at the table right next to the analyser and across from the device still manufacturing what you hoped would be able to transport you away from this cartoonish nightmare. You picked it up with your levitation and spun it around a little, just to make sure that it was firmly in your grasp which once was proven to be correct you began the spell.

At first nothing noticeable happened, with the exception of the wood stopping its motions through the air because you had to focus on the ‘chilling spell’, as it was called in the book. Then the fun started, or at least something interesting. The wood began to expand while gaining frost on the edges, slowly at first but then gaining speed in both its expansion and it accumulation of ice. It expanded to the point where it suddenly cracked and splintered open, tiny fragments of frozen wood showering everywhere. You stopped at this point, deciding that the wood was most definitely ‘dead’.

One thing you were curious about though. Where had all that energy gone? You took the heat away from the object, so surely you should have gained some energy from that reaction. You scanned quickly while stripping the wood for the minerals you needed to continue your little project. Hmm, apparently the energy ‘disappeared’ back into the veins of magic that seemed to be everywhere here, becoming a part of the surroundings once more. With a little tweaking of the spell though you should be able to direct that energy to you rather than having it go into the environment, possibly for any spell that you will ever learn as well. Although, that would have to wait as you hadn't yet seen a book that tells you how to ‘spell craft’.

Storing that idea away for later, you begin producing the synthesiser you had chosen before. Unlike the other device that was materialised this one formed differently. Instead of forming separately, this one formed many tiny pieces of metal all at once, all of which were very angular and sharp. These pieces all converged together once they were finished, forming one, much larger piece of metal. Like before this one remained stationery in the air after its completion, until your hand drew near, that was.

You placed the device on the table besides the analyser and thought about the last thing you needed. Acquiring an atomic reader would be rather difficult, or at least you assumed it would. You got lucky finding those other machines so you hoped your luck would continue on and you would find another design that would be able to make an atomic reader. You had searched through hundreds of thousands of files already but there was still billions more in the Hives inside of you, maybe, just maybe one will work.

You sifted through the endless lists, numbers and letters flashing past your mental vision as they scrolled by at incredible speed. It was easier to focus on more things at once since you didn't have to worry about other things such as sight, taste or any other sense for that matter. It was borderline brute forcing code really but you were still aware of your surroundings due to the fact that you were still receiving data from the world outside your own mind, just not as ‘HD’ as it were normally.

Wow, you got lucky. You found one, an atomic reader perfect for what you needed to do. You had all the materials required to make it as well, so that was extra lucky for you. You briefly consider what the odds were of getting three devices that weren't all that easy to come by, sure, maybe two may have been common, but the third? Also, why was it that atomic readers’ were so much more difficult to come by in tier ten tech and galaxies? You would think that it would be common, despite being shunned by most of your worlds’ population due to the stubborn, borderline-religious traditionalists that they were. They usually really didn't care at the end of the day, so why was this little device so rare in your home galaxy? Questions for later, you decided.

You started the production of the third device, this one being constructed like the first one, a seemingly slower process. Instead of watching this one build though, you decided to get ready for the experiment by pulling out Pinkie’s hair that you had acquired earlier that day. You pulled out a single, fine strand of hair from the small tuft and put the rest away. Then you ripped it to pieces using your Nanites, leaving behind nothing but pure DNA. You then stretched it into a long rope, curving it around in a way so that it wouldn't hit the walls. Luckily pony DNA seemed to be significantly shorter than human DNA, so you didn't have to have it as tightly compacted as you would have for a human genetic strand.

You placed the strand on the first device in a spiral to fit it all of the hard light, said screen that had appeared on it as the three parts came off at the presence of the DNA in your grasp. Everywhere it touched on it the light changed from a soft white to a deep, blood-red colour, slowly becoming a warming green colour as it was decoded bit by bit from the centre outwards.

Moving on you pulled another piece of Pinkie’s mane out, repeating the same process but this time putting the strand of DNA in the now-finished atomic reader instead of the device working away next to it. At the presence of a solid material the machine exploded into the smaller fragment that had formed it earlier, tiny angular devices filled with sensors and Nanites. These small devices began encircling the strand of DNA, like before making it glow red then green as it was analysed at an atomic scale. You supposed it did that so you could see where the genetic strand was, and also to show the progress if you had to guess.

Once both strands of DNA were fully scanned and glowing green you pulled up a hard light display with the details of the scan, showing the code itself and any anomalies within the genes of Pinkie. Both the atomic reader and genetic analyser had picked up anomalies, both within the DNA and within the atoms themselves. You decided on viewing the atomic reader first; start small then work upwards, so to speak. Actually, you have a better idea. You would simply push all the data onto one hologram for you to read all at once.

So Pinkie’s ability stemmed from an extra chemical, a fifth nucleobase. Said nucleobase wasn't throughout all of Pinkie’s DNA, oh no not at all, it was confined to a single, larger-than-normal codon, with a length of four base pairs instead of the usual three. Now this is where it got interesting; this nucleobase was forming a new chemical, which you guessed gave Pinkie her powers. You would need to synthesise this and then run that through the reader to get any more useful data, so you did just that.

You extracted the DNA from the reader before placing it in the synthesiser besides it, programming the spherical machine to produce only the codons that were forming the ‘Pinkie chemical’. The DNA hovered in the air, glowing red before disappearing entirely. It then began reforming, looking like a glowing green string in the air.

Once the entire strand was complete you pulled it away from the machine using your Nanites, careful not to damage it in any way shape or form. Now the only thing left to do was get this into a living cell and start making some chemicals. But first you needed a cell to implant the DNA in, the nearest being your cells or the trees cells. Since either would work you pulled a leaf off of the tree and inserted the DNA strand into the cells’ nucleus, removing the plants own DNA in the process. You then forced the plant cells to start replicating, killing it in the process since the DNA carried only the instructions to make a single chemical and not the ones the plant needed to live.

Once finished you looked to the floor, now stained with a patch of pink fluid. Seeing as your sample was now contaminated you pulled another leaf off of the tree and made sure this time you caught it before it hit the floor. This time you were left with a small amount of floating pink liquid, held aloft by your Nanites. You needed more than this so you repeated the process until you had about twenty litres of the stuff, all wobbling in the air in front of you. Ok, so maybe you didn't need that much. You put more than two thirds of the substance away inside a separate space-time pocket within side yourself, storing it for later use.

With that done you went to put the pink substance in the reader but then realised that it probably still had some leftover cellular organelles. You concentrated and your Nanites quickly removed anything that wasn't Pinkie chemical, leaving you with pure, refined Pinkie. This stuff was probably a lot more potent than the stuff flowing through Pinkie’s body though, at least twenty times potent if you had to guess.

You shuddered at the thought of Pinkie ever getting ahold of this. And on that line of thought, what would happen if you injected this into you, or anything else for that matter. There was only one, well, two ways you could figure that out, and one involved a syringe. Not yet. Soon, perhaps, but not yet. For now simple testing only.

With that in mind you placed the pink substance within the still-spinning devices that made up the atomic reader. Unlike before with the DNA, this time the thing didn't glow red. Instead a wall of green light started travelling up and down the floating chemical. It repeated this action twelve times and then stopped, displaying the data it had collected the same way as it did before. Within moments you were upon the holographic display, soaking up the information it held within it.

The first thing your mind picked up was the fact that this innocent looking pink liquid was actually extremely volatile, containing enough energy to melt through a good four square metres of solid lead. You decided to be very careful with it from now on. It was fragile enough to explode from mere contact with anything but oxygen, after all. It was a good thing nothing had touched it yet as you didn't want to find out that snippet of knowledge from experience. Your house had seen enough explosions for now.

The second thing you took note of was this molecules natural ability to form complex magical symbols, usually only done by a unicorns’ horn or a humans’ mind. The magic was flowing through it then it suddenly began warping into different shapes before flowing out the other side again, seemingly unaffected by its small detour. What made it even more fascinating was that it was forming actual arcane symbols. Granted many of them you couldn't understand as you hadn't learn them yet, but a few you could make out; levitation, motion, freeze, magic, sight, vision, sound, light, heat, energy, life, just to name a few of the countless thousands that were constantly forming and changing within the molecule itself. Not just that, each individual molecule had a different symbol from all the others at any one time, so it was forming actual spells within the substance; they were actually working, as well, they were just too small to have an actual visible field of affect, besides the actual affect itself. Pinkie was literally a walking spell.

On top of all these amazing properties, this Pinkie chemical also had some biological properties as well. When taken into a cell this chemical would send production of ATP into overdrive, simultaneously removing any and all waste from the cell in the process. It also had several neurological aspects as well; it decreased the need for sleep by a large margin, increased focus, memory and logic substantially, and gave a massive increase in the reaction time of the brain. All in all, it was a super chemical, and it explained Pinkie Pie pretty well.

You were pulled away from the holographic display by the other holographic display, the one for the reader. It had apparently discovered something else that hadn't been transmitted to the panel you were currently reading. Intrigued, you stepped over to the red flashing display and had a look at its contents.

Oh...well, fuck. Apparently the Pinkie chemical did react in oxygen, it just needed time to form its own catalyst. The display showed you the molecules breaking apart into singular atoms before they were enshrouded in magical veins that coated them completely, shaking violently. You needed to act quickly as you really didn't want another hole in your house and this substance was going to make a huge bang. You checked what this stuff needed to be stable and was briefly shocked at what it was, before remembering you had a short while before this thing went boom. It needed DNA.

You quickly reached out your arm, leaving above the air of the now-glowing substance. You pulled out a knife a carved it down the entire length of your forearm, making sure that the entirety of the substance was covered in your blood. To an outsider it would look as though you were performing some sort of dark ritual, but it didn't matter since you were alone and you didn't care what other people thought of you either.

It seemed that your efforts were futile; the light building up was now so bright it was like looking into a miniature sun, something that you could do but wasn't exactly pleasant when you were this close to it. Seeing as your blood wasn't doing anything to halt the impending disaster you pulled the knife out from your arm, it healing instantly thanks to the Nanites in your blood. Trying a new tactic you summoned your Nanites and surrounded the machine, hoping to at least contain the blast to a small area.

It exploded. It was so fast that you suddenly found yourself on the floor with no breathable air as it was currently travelling outwards from the blast radius. There was surprisingly little heat considering the amount of energy the substance had, akin to that of a small fission device. All that was left was a cloud of dust, but just as you began standing back up the air that had been forced out to form a temporary vacuum came back in, knocking you down to the ground again and returning sound, something you hadn't really noticed was missing. The sudden fluctuation in air pressure left the room covered in more dust, making it so you couldn't see anything.

You stood up and started forcing the dust to clear. There were a few small fires - which you quickly put out - and many pieces of wooden debris scattered across the hole-filled floor. Something took your attention though, something obscured from view by the still lingering dust in the air. It was... Oh.

Well this just got very interesting.