Unforeseen Anomalies

Chapter 4: injuries and home

I wake up on a large red cushion having no idea where I am. I remember passing out from too much magic but nothing after that. I raise my head and I take a look around only to find that, aside from me, the room is completely empty. There is a big red double-door about an easy five feet away from me. I stand up and I shake myself like a dog. I light up my horn and channel my magic on the door, only to find it locked from the outside.

“Great, I’m trapped. How do I get out?”

I scan the room and I come up with a list of things in the room: a shard of a broken mirror, a picture frame with a picture inside of it, a big red cushion, two wooden bed posts, and finally, a pair of scissors.

“not much to work with, im assuming this is some sort of test, Celestia was watching me the entire time yesterday, surely she wouldn’t allow someone to take me away like this for no reason”

I levitate all of the objects, aside from the pillow, over into a pile. First I look at the picture frame, it shows a long hallway with a red carpet, many white pillars, and abstract pieces of glass windows. I know that room! That’s the room that was shown in the episode that nightmare moon was introduced in.

Next I look at the piece of a broken mirror, I examine my reflection. Seeing what I look like brings back painful memories of earth. I mean, sure, being a princess is pretty cool because of all of the power that comes with the position, there’s also the fact that I switched genders upon arriving in this world. That was also a blow to my fading humanity.

Not seeing the immediate importance of the mirror, I place it to the side. Next I look at the cushion. Unless I can use the stuffing for something, it’s pretty much useless to me. I then examine the bed posts. I could probably carve a key of sorts out of the wood, but all I have to do that with is a pair of scissors, and they didn’t look sharp enough to do that. And even if they were, carving a key from wood would be a lot of trial and error.

Sighing, I drop the wooden bed posts and I take a look at the door, seeing if there’s any solution to my endeavor. Looking closely I see a small hole near the door handle, or whatever it is called in Equestria, an idea forms in my head. I could use the fragment of the mirror in an attempt to pick the lock… as unlikely as that sounds, the mirror is kind of broken in a strange way. I just hope I don’t break it.

I levitate the mirror through the small hole, on the other side, I use it to try to get a good judgment of where the lock is. Panning the mirror around, I spot the lock, from there I carefully levitate it upwards. Unable to see the lock nor the mirror makes me concentrate even harder in an attempt to not break focus and have the mirror fall and break.

Carefully, I use the mirror to search out the lock, it takes a good five minutes but I finally find it. Placing careful judgment in which side of the mirror has the oddly shaped end, insert it into the lock.

*SNAP*

“Damn it.” I lose focus and the mirror falls and breaks. “Great… just freaking great.”

I focus my magic on the lock, knowing where it is. I find a small shard of the mirror still inside the lock.

“Perhaps all is not bad.” I focus on the shard and I move it around.

*Click*

“Yes!” I surround the door with my aura and I push the door open to reveal a proud-looking Princess Celestia.

“Good job, I thought you would’ve taken longer to figure it out.”

I smile and bow to the princess. “I just suppose I am smart enough to get out of sticky situations in a rather decent time.”

The Princess just smiles. “Come, I will show you how to use those wings of yours.”

I get up and I follow her out of the room.

I wake up in a room with solid white walls, the sheer contrast is enough to make me close my eyes again to block the light. After a few minutes I raise my head and look around. It looks like a doctor’s office from earth. I look down and I see my entire midsection wrapped in bandages.

Memories flood back as I remember what happened before I passed out. The fight against a dummy nearly killed me. I tried to get up but a sharp pain forced me to stay put.

The door to the room I was in opened. In, stepped a white unicorn dressed up in baby-barf green clothes.

“Ah!” he exclaims. “You’re awake! Good! I’ll go tell General Fury you are conscious.” With that, he leaves the room, returning a minute later with General Fury.

Fury looks at me. “Thank Celestia you’re okay, you had lost so much blood, I thought you were dead for sure.”

I smile. “I’m just glad to live another day.”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“So, what happened exactly? I thought you told the unicorn to take it easy on me since it was my first day.”

“I did! He thought you had the capability to best his skills, but once the dummy cut you and almost made you bleed out, he was knocked out of his trance and immediately set to close the wound. He tried to fix his mistake.”

“I don’t hold anything against him. I’m still alive, am I not?”

He smiles. “That’s true. I think he’ll be happy to know you aren’t mad at him”

“If anything, I’m just annoyed. Angry? Naw.”

Fury steps out of the room, the doctor approaches and starts to replace the bandages with new ones. “Alright, you’re good to go, be sure not to stress that area until it’s fully healed. Aside from that, have a nice day!”

“Thanks doc” I carefully lower myself to the ground and limp out of the room and I join General Fury in the waiting room. I smile to Fury and approach him.

“Good to see you live and well, I heard that Princess Celestia is trying to teach Princess Reise how to fly. Would you like to accompany me there?”

“Sure would! Where are we going?”

“To the top of the castle.”

“Let’s go! We are probably missing some really funny stuff!”

Earlier

I follow the Princess up at least twenty flights of stairs to the top of the castle. Once there I look around, admiring all that I see. The small towns in the distance, the pure blue sky with a few puffy clouds floating around, and the bright warm sun shining down upon my skin.

“Wow! This is beautiful!”

“It’s also stunning at nighttime, you should see it. Anyway, I’m going to teach you how to fly. Here to help, is the Wonderbolts Captain, Miss Spitfire.”

Spitfire walks into view and bows. “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Reise.”

I smile. “It’s nice to meet you as well, Captain Spitfire.”

“Alright, let’s get going! It isn’t every day that I get to order a princess around!” She blows on her whistle and points a hoof to the nearest cloud. “Fly to that cloud!”

She can’t be serious, I don’t even know HOW to fly yet, how can she possibly expect me to fly to a cloud without even telling me anything? Well, I’d better try at least.

I spread my wings and I run to the edge and jump off.

I guess the birds are right, one of the best ways to learn how to fly is just like how adult birds teach their young… by kicking them out of the nest!

It was like that. Instead of at least soaring, like I was expecting, I dropped like a stone hitting my head on the side of a building on my way down. I straightened my wings and angled my body so my wings could hit a draft of wind. Well, they did, which caused me to shoot back up like a bullet. Wow! Flying was great!

Spitfire stomped her hooves in approval as she saw me flying back up. But then stopped when she saw that I was losing speed. “Flap your wings! Keep going! You’re doing great!”

I do as she says and I flap my wings. I had to concentrate on the movement in my wings which caused me to only be able to flap one at a time. Flying for the first time takes a lot of focus.

I pull out of my ascent into more of a horizontal path. I try to flap my wings, with more focus, my wing flaps slowly become more and more in-sync.

“You’re doing great!” The Wonderbolt Captain joins me in the sky. “Flap them in-sync! See how I am doing it?”

“Yes I do and I’m slowly getting the hang of it! It’s quite difficult the first time.”

Spitfire just laughs. “Yes, yes it is, I certainly remember the first time I try to fly, it didn’t go so well, but the second time i—“

“Sorry, but there will be time for flashbacks later, I’m trying to focus on not plummeting to my death.”

“Ah but that’s just it, after a bit, the movements of flying become almost second nature. You’ve gotta learn how to make it become second nature as soon as you can! Doing so will make flying much easier!”

“If you say so.” I take her advice and focus on something other than flying. I think about my old world and how I came to be here.

“Now you’re doing it!” Doing what? Oh right. I start thinking about flapping my wings again causing me to flip out of control. I start to fall but I don’t get too far as I land on a cloud.

“Well… that went Reeeally well,” I said sarcastically. “At least your advice really did actually work, but once I started thinking about it, I lost control”

Spitfire just shrugs. “At least it’s progress.” She looks at me. “I suppose I’ll see you around… I have a Wonderbolt’s show to attend in an hour, see you around!” She flies off.

I nod and look down towards canterlot to see Celestia still there watching me. The door behind her opens and reveals Silver lining and General Fury walking into the room. I wave a hoof at Silver lining and smile at him. I spread my wings and I glide down to meet him.

“Hey Silver, you look hurt, are you okay?”

“I’m okay, the docs patched me up real nice. I got injured during a training exercise. It sucked but I lived through it.” He smiles at me. “I nearly died from what Fury told me.”

My eyes widen. “You haven’t even been here a week and you already almost died… wow, that’s a bit disappointing.”

Celestia walks up to me. “Reise, it is time for you and Silver to leave canterlot, I will be here to help you with anything you may need, but you will be mostly on your own.” She leans down to whisper in Silver’s ear. I could hear what she said. ‘Don’t let her try to fly you around… at least until she gets better at flying.’

I roll my eyes. “Okay, so where are we going?”

“To Ponyville!” Celestia responded. “Time for you to go live with other ponies.”

Silver grins happily. “Sweet! I can’t wait! But how are we going to get there?”

“You two shall take the royal chariot.” As if on cue, a big golden chariot pulled by two Pegasus ponies also wearing golden armor arrives.

Silver and I walk up to it and we get in. Before we fly off, Celestia addresses me one more time.

“Be sure to talk with Twilight Sparkle about Teleportation and how to change the form of something. She is my personal protégé and should know how to do that. I also sent her a letter about your arrival, so don’t be surprised if the town looks like a gigantic party.”

With that, the chariot departs the castle and toward Ponyville.

As the Chariot pulls closer to Ponyville, I start seeing the shapes of all 6 elements of harmony as they wait for our arrival.

When we landed, both silver and I jumped out and were immediately greeted by all six ponies.

“Welcome back sugarcube.” Applejack says to me. “Glad your trip went okay.”

I sit down and I wrap my tail around my side. “Yeah, I’m glad to be back here.” I look around. “Am I going to be able to meet everypony else in this town? I sure hope I do.”

“OH OH! I know everypony in Ponyville! I can show you around and introduce you to everypony!” no prizes for guessing who said that.

I look at the pink mare. “Are you sure? Do you have anything else to do? I mean, as much as I’d like the tour, I’d rather meet them all on my own.”

“Okay then, that’s fine.”

“If you would like, you can tell them all that I’d appreciate it if they treat me like any other pony instead of how they’d treat Celestia.”

“Okie doki loki!” She disappears before my eyes.

“Wait… what?” I look confused. “How did she… never mind, don’t answer that.”

Twilight giggles at my utter confusion. “It’s just pinkie pie, you’ll learn to get used to it.”

I nod. “I’m sure I will. I’ve seen weird… but what I just saw surpasses everything I knew about logic.”

Twilight giggles again.

The trip through town was quite eventful, it seems everypony wanted to meet the new princess. Even some adorable little fillies came up to me to meet me. I recognized them from the tv show I used to watch. They introduced themselves to me.

An orange-ish Pegasus introduced herself as “Scootaloo”

A white unicorn introduced herself as “Sweetie belle”

And a tan-colored earth pony introduced herself as “Applebloom”

I look them in the eyes. “My name is Princess Reise. No need for formalities though.”

I could tell, just from these three fillies alone, this week was going to be quite interesting.