Screwed Minds

After we woke up and got clean in the somehow still intact bathroom, I moved the cupboard hiding the exit and ended face-to-muzzle with a pony guard, who was nice enough to show me the way to the breakfast room we were the day before. When I arrived, Princess Celestia was already eating some sort of cake and Princess Twilight was sitting next to her, chatting happily. I sat next on Celestia's other side and greeted her before greedily snatching at least one of every pastries on the table for myself and started to devour my new treasure. Twilight blinked and glanced at her ex-teacher, uncertain, when the bigger Princess just giggled at my antics.

"Did you sleep well, Recto?" she asked.
"Yep!" I answered, my mouth filled with a pancake. "I had this awesome dream where I was swimming in a giant pool of chocolate milk with cookie islands, it was just so great!"
"I certainly sounds so," she said with a nod. "And, Verso?"
"He had a nightmare," I told her. "He said he talked about it with you?"

Celestia just blinked, looking a bit lost. I guess she forgot about it during the night.

Recto, raise a hand, please.
Hum? Why?
I just need to discharge a little if I want to come out and I don't want to destroy anything.
Okay!

I raised our hand and Verso immediately took the controls again, discharging his magical surplus in a beam of light that shattered before hitting the ceiling. Celestia glanced at him, looking a bit nervous, and Twilight just stared at us with no idea what he just did.

"Yes, Celestia, remember? I woke up in a nightmare and inadvertently destroyed half the room before I realised I was awake," Verso reminded the princess while looking rather intensely at her. "I'm still so sorry about it."
"Oh..." she said with a little hesitation. "Oh, yes, I remember. It's quite alright, Verso. But I take it you slept well after that?"
"Nothing noticeable."
"Excuse me," Twilight intervened, looking at Verso, "but what did you do with the magic beam just a second ago? And you destroyed half a room in a burst of bad-dream panic?"
"Nothing that... Oh yeah, you'll be our magic teacher, that's right. I guess it does concern you... Long story short, our body can't handle the full extent of my power yet, so I have to 'vent off' the surplus when I come to the front."

The 'you gotta be kidding me' look on her face made me giggle and forced princess Celestia to explain our situation more throughly, but that was just so boring that when Verso got back to back of our mind, I was having a hard time not falling asleep again, with all Twilight's question about 'overloading thaums' and other technical mumbo jumbo like that. Who could have guessed magical talks could be so boring? Isn't magic supposed to be fun and everything?

Anyway, the painful discussion thankfully came to a stop when the other ponies arrived, mainly when Pinkie jumped out of the pile of pastries with a burst of streamers and balloons to basically tell her to stop talking before our ears exploded. After a few minutes of joyful chatting, I noticed that someone was still missing though.

"Miss Princess Celestia, isn't Luna coming to eat today?"

It's funny how she just seemed to freeze like some some video buffering on the database when they had problem with the connection, but she got ahold of herself quickly enough and smiled at me.

"My sister wasn't feeling too well this morning and decided she would rather get some rest."
"Aw, really?" Wasn't that just too bad? I would have liked to see her once again before going to Ponyville, wherever it was. Then, the greatest idea of all time hit me. "Maybe I could bring her something to eat and..."
NO! Verso shouted in our mind.
"No!" Celestia nearly shouted too. When she realized she had just got everyone's attention, she cleared her throat and continued. "She is probably sleeping as we speak, and I wouldn't want to trouble her much-needed sleep."
"Aw..."

We finished breakfast in a kinda awkward silence and quickly turned to leave in direction of the palace's entrance, which by the way is a silly name as we were about to exit the palace through it and enter the city, but I don't suppose it's important. What was important was that I suddenly realized it would be the first time we would ever get in a city. Like, a town, with people not supposed to guard us. I must admit, it had me kinda stressed, but excited as well.

We finally arrived in front of the big doors, the only thing separating us from being out in the pony capital of Equestria. And I wasn't the only one stressing out about getting in a big city anymore.

"Are you absolutely certain your ponies won't just go all 'Argh, there's a monster, let's kill it'?"
"Yes, Verso, for the third time, you will be safe," Celestia answered with a small laugh. "Canterlot is a big commercial city, and I assure you the townsponies have seen their share of exotic creatures."
"As much as I don't really like being referred to as an 'exotic creature'," Verso glared at her, "I see your point. Still, I think I have reasons to be worried."
"Oh, stop being such a grumpy sad-face and just get out already!" Pinkie Pie said.
Verso sighed. "I guess no amount of worrying would change the outcome anyway."
Exactly! Now, we can just get out and discover the wonders of being completely outside of a building!

Verso sighed again and got back in the backseat, leaving me in front of the doors. The guards' horns shined and the door opened on its own, letting the sun's light inside to blind us momentarily, only for me to glee in wonder when I saw the various buildings outside and the crowd of ponies walking in the streets, others standing outside what I realized were shops, trying to get some of the bystanders to get in and buy their products. Even the air was filled with pegasi, patrols of guards in golden armor and... was that a griffon? It's so cool!

Princess Celestia smiled happily at my expression and cleared her throat again to get my attention back. Which failed terribly by the way, because she did so at least three times, called us twice and finally decided to just step in front of us to cut the visual connection and get me back down to... Equestria, I guess? I didn't quite caught the planet's name. Anyway, back to the topic at hand/hoof.

"I suppose the view leaves you breathless?"
"Heavens thanks, no! We would have serious health problems if I stopped breathing because of some pretty landscape!" I replied, making Verso mind-palm and groan while at least half the ponies just blinked.
"... Indeed," Celestia said, a bit more used to the confusion than the others. "But I am sad to say this is where we say goodbye. It was a pleasure meeting you Recto. And an... interesting experience to meet you, Verso."
Yeah, right, 'interesting'.
"It was super great to meet you too!" I said to her, surprising her with a neck hug that left the others looking at me like I was crazy. "And please tell Luna it was great seeing her too! I'm sure Verso will come around the whole 'parasite' thing. I hope she gets better soon."
"I'll make sure to tell her," she said with a somewhat empty smile.
"We'll see you again soon, right?" I asked, using my best puppy-stare, daring her to answer the negative.
"Of course. I have the feeling we'll meet plenty of times soon."
"Yay!"

Twilight and the others started to say their goodbyes too, so I just resumed my city-gazing until we were finally off to the train-station. Yeah, because we even get to see a train! Isn't that just awesome? But we first needed to walk across a good kilometer or two of the big shiny city of Canterlot. And I must admit, it was a bit strange to see so many people in one place. A good half of them stared at me ostensibly and the other tried to be a bit more subtle about it. A few ponies walked to us just to ask what we were and an old-looking unicorn with a beard and glasses was even scribbling something in a small notebook and at least two different groups of ponies carrying black boxes that let out flashes of light came our way and flashed us with their boxes. And while Verso was groaning something about 'image copyrights', I chatted with the others, mainly Twilight, about the city itself.

"You mean that about a hundred thousand ponies are living here?"
"Well, not exactly," Twilight confirmed with a nod. "Only a few thousands live in the part of the city hung on the mountain, mostly the nobility and the guards. The majority of the inhabitants live at the foot of the mountain, next to the Canter-lake."
"That's so much! I was told only six thousand of us were living in Haven!"
"That's the town y'all are coming from?" Applejack asked.
"Well, we weren't living there, the Institute was supposed to be a few hundred meters away from it, but that's the idea."
I don't understand how there can be so few of them...
What do you mean? There are a lot of ponies! A hundred thousand! That's like, a lot!
You may remember from the history lessons you didn't follow that it's about the tenth of the human population of Rome two thousand years ago.
Bah! History and math! Two of the most dreadful topics of them all!
Yeah, drop it, it's not like it's important anyway.
"I can't get my head around the fact you've lived underground for so long! How what kind of pony could live like that?" Rainbow asked.
Probably the kind that joyfully nearly-eradicated itself in just a few hours. And that isn't a pony.
"It wasn't that bad you know. And in the end, here we are, out in the open!"
"And we've arrived!"

I must admit that we were both a bit confused when we first saw the train. I mean, there was no doubt it was a train, so it was great, but something was looking really odd about it.

"Is that the Gingerbread Train?" I asked, unsure. "Is there some evil witch inside?"
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing..."

I guess the best way to describe it was just that : imagine a Gingerbread Train, build it out of wood and metal and here you go. It even had a name that made both of us giggle at the sheer girlyness of the thing : the 'Friendship Express'. I mean, it is ridiculous, isn't it? But a train is a train, so I was still very excited about getting inside it. Twilight gave some pieces of paper to a pony that glanced at us now and then and bam! we were in!

At least, the strange appearance of the train didn't get on the inside, as it was a bit more normal-looking for a train, with benches covered in soft cushions and colorful but thankfully not completely pink walls. I squeed in dignity and jumped on one of the window-sided seats to start gazing outside again. The ponies and Spike just gathered around me and started to talk.

A few minutes later and off we were! Towards the great unknown! Well, not so unknown, as someone had to have laid the tracks, but I think you get the general idea. So while most of them started to talk about things they had to do when they get home, I was simply bouncing from a window to another to try and not miss a single image of the landscape outside while Pinkie followed me to describe name everything we could see. A few minutes after the start of the trip, we could already see Ponyville beyond a huge forest, and the pink pony told me we would reach it a couple hours later. I could have spent the whole time watching outside in awe.

But instead, Twilight decided to start gauging our magical ability. That wasn't half as fun as it sounds, and it doesn't even sounds fun in the first place. I don't even know where she got half the stuff she used to do this!

"Here, take this," she said, levitating some sort of ball linked to a device that looked like a gauge. "Now, try exerting as much pressure as you can on it with your telekinesis."

I obeyed and the small arrow on her device rocketed to the high levels, making Twilight hum in contempt.

"Okay, now, can Verso do it too?"

We exchanged position and Verso took some time to look at the ball before effectively crushing it with his magic. Twilight's pupils were the size of pinpricks and her jaw fell.

"Uh, sorry?"
"But... How?"
"Wow, that's gotta give him a lot of points on your magic thingy now, doesn't it, Twilight?"
"That was supposed to withstand at least six hundred kilograms of pressure per square centimeter!" she squealed. "That... That's insane!"
"Excuse me, Twilight dear, but how much is that effectively?"
"It means that I could probably crush the entire car into a ball of metal and wood in seconds, because it broke way before I got to my maximum."

They all stared at us like we were a steamroller. Which was kinda true if the he really could do that. Twilight broke out of it rather quickly though, and her eyes filled with little stars of enjoyment.

"That is incredible! That's the first time a non-alicorn reached this level of magical power completely naturally!" She got a closer look to our hands as a beam of light scanned them. "And you don't seem to have a natural magical amplifier like a horn! How can you possibly master so much power?"
"Discord said something about getting it from elsewhere, but he stayed evasive about it, and I don't know how it works. It's there, we use it, that was the end of the research until now."
"Yeah," I confirmed, "it was really complicated, and I was distracted by chocolate milk when he was explaining anyway."
"I saw yesterday that you could be precise with it too! Do you know a spell that needs precision?"
"I think I have just the trick for you."

He closed most of the blinds of the car to let only one window from which we could see the sun outside and deployed his sense-field.

"Now, we used it mostly with artificial light, but I guess sunlight will do the job. Watch the shadow."

He then started to use our 'moving shadow' trick, bending the light entering the window in order to create a shadow picture of a small character on the ground. The small character then started to run around and waved in Twilight's direction.

"Wow, you've gotta be super-good at shadow puppetry!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed just as the shadow character transformed into a bunny.
"That's so cute!" Fluttershy added.
"You are creating shadows?" Twilight asked.
"More like bending the light away to create these forms. It is kinda hard, and getting more powerful doesn't change a thing." he concluded, putting an end to his spell.
"That's... an incredibly complicated process for such a result!"
"Maybe, but we were creating these tricks on our own, and I didn't have any better idea. And besides, we used it mostly to make others think we were in another corridor, so it didn't last long. And I couldn't just screw with physics so much before we got here."
"I'm still interested in that 'sense-field' of yours. How does it works?"
"How could I explain that one..." he thought aloud while he opened the blinds again. "I emit a burst of 'layers' around me and I kinda 'feel' the things that move across them." he started just as Twilight began scribbling on a notebook with a quill. "That way, I create a mental tri-dimensional map of everything inside the spell. Both of us can do it easily, but I create a lot more layers than Recto, which means I'm far more precise."
"How much so?" Twilight asked while she was scribbling franticly and throwing used sheets covered in pony gibberish at Spike.
"Well... I could read what you've noted, if I knew how to read your written language, and can sort of feel the fibers of the paper too. And I also feel a steam of power originating from your horn and directed to the quill and the paper you're using. By the way, I must say that you ponies are weird."
Isn't that a bit offensive?
"How so?" Rarity asked with a huff.
Sounds like it was.
"Well, unicorns feel normal until they light up their horn which looks a bit like a beacon under this spell, pegasi radiate energy with their wings and hooves and earth ponies just glow with their entire bodies, and don't get me started on you alicorns." He glanced at Spike, a bit perplex. "And I don't really feel Spike at all. It's just as if the space he occupies is devoid of anything."
"That would be because dragon scales are resistant to magic," Twilight explained without stopping to write notes. "And I think you are able to detect the differences between the pony races' magic. That's incredible!"

From there began a long talk about the three pony races and how the alicorn aren't just winged unicorns, which was already awesome, but some kind of mix of the three other races. Long story short: it was boring but Verso was interested, so I guess it was worth it. But it ended only when we arrived in Ponyville, so I couldn't look outside any more.

Then, the realization hit me: we had reached Ponyville! And boy was it more beautiful than I had imagined, with all its little houses and trees and dirt roads and trees everywhere and ponies and even smaller ponies and animals and trees and trees and did I even mention the trees? They were everywhere! There was even a giant crystaly tree carrying the most awesome crystal castle of all times! Not that I was an expert of crystal castles, but it was still really awesome! It was all like a small village in these olds movies, but without the humans and with more colorful ponies. In fact, everything seemed to be more colorful. I don't really know what happened until Pinkie Pie suddenly popped in front of us with the widest smile of all time on her face.

"Welcome to Ponyville, Recto and Verso!" she happily shouted. She got a hoof in her mane and got two invitations out of it. "Here, take this!"
"What are..."
"These are your invitations to your 'Welcome to Ponyville, Equestria and Outside of a Mountain' party!"
When did she even...
"Invitations? To a party?" I weakly said, emotion filling my voice.
"Of course, silly! And it's thrown just for you two!"
How could she even plan such a... Recto? Are you okay?

The question could be asked, as tears were currently rolling down our cheeks, making our vision so troubled that I couldn't even read what was written on them anymore. I fell to our knees and hugged Pinkie's neck.

"Thank you so much!" I said a I could, a big ball obstructing our throat. "That's so nice and..."
"Aw, that's fine!" she answered, gently tapping our back with a hoof.

I let her go and wiped my tears with a hand, smiling at her.

"You have no idea how much it means for us. I..."
"Keep the compliments for the party, silly! I don't want you to run out of those 'til then!"
"Okay," I said with a nod, sniffing. "I just can't wait to be there! We can't wait!"
Yeah, woopy doodly doo. A party, that's sooo great.
Oh, stop being grumpy for once. And you will^ be attending this one. You are invited as well.
No offense, Recto, but not even you can force me to go to this. I despise parties. They're just a waste of time.

At the exact moment he thought those very words, Pinkie Pie's smile turned into a frown and her somewhat cute sky blue eyes became colder than ice as she somewhat glared at us. Well, not really at us, as we could clearly feel that this freezing glare was only aimed at Verso's consciousness. In fact, Verso instinctively took the controls back and jumped away from Pinkie in an instant like a startled animal.

That was terrifying.

Then, as if nothing had happened at all, her usual demeanor came back and she giggled happily while she mysteriously bounced away, still giggling like a mad mare. Verso kept our eyes on her as long as he could, completely ignoring everything else around us, our heart pumping fast and our breath short. He calmed down only when she completely disappeared behind a house.

What was that?!
I... think I know what other humans felt every time I got out...