We spent the next two hours talking in the garden, mostly about the flow of questions I was asking to put up with the wonderful feeling of being outside. Celestia and Luna were really kind and described most of the few small critters living here, such as funny hyper-active squirrels and the few birds that flew by. We also discovered we were actually situated in the Royal Palace of Canterlot, capital city of Equestria, perched on the side of the Canterhorn, a lonely mountain filled with jewels naturally growing in the caves under the city, with the help of the magical energy of the land.

That was pretty ridiculous, but it was nothing next to the next discovery we made, when we surprised a pegasus pushing a cloud around. We may haven't had the chance of getting outside in our homeworld, but even I knew for a fact that you can't just push clouds wherever you want them to got.

So imagine how we were surprised when Clestia exlained that not only could pegasi move clouds, but that they were monitoring and hoofcrafting the very weather of the land. Hehe, horse puns... They use a lot of them in their normal talking, that's really funny. But that's also not the point.

That's simply not possible, Verso mentally whispered in disbelief. Weather patterns are too complex for anyone to monitor.

I repeated his remark and Luna smriked and nodded.

"You are mostly right, it is a terribly complicated task. Errors keep happening from time to time, but our little ponies work hard to prevent disasters."

I tilted our head. Through the entire conversation, both Celestia and Luna kept saying "our little ponies". That was a very, very strange formulation. They talked about other ponies as if they were talking about children, almost like...

It clicked inside my mind. They lived in the Royal Palace, everyone obeyed and respected them, they wore funny jewelry and little tiaras, they were really kind, had a lot of magical powers and wings. They could only be one thing.

Verso, do you think they are what I think they are?
Well, I have to say it's pretty obvious they are...
They're fairy godmothers! Or at least, the pony equivalent of these!
... What?
How haven't I realized that before? All the signs are there!
Yeah, fairies, let's go with that. If that explanation makes you happy.
Now, they must be looking upon the royalty in the palace, probably a princess. 'Cause that's what fairy godmothers do. They help princesses fight evil witches.
And what about the King and the Queen? Shouldn't they help them too?
Don't be silly, Verso. Of course they don't. Kings and Queens are either evil or absent. That's common knowledge! Duh!
Your logic leaves me wordless.
No it doesn't. You just used some.

Verso didn't reply and I looked at the two alicorns with renewed wonder in the eyes. This day was definetely getting better and better. I glanced at the sky once again. The sun had rose well above the horizon - I still can't believe we can use this word to describe anything now - and shone warmly onto us. I like the sun, it's even better than the videos said it was.

A small cloud of ashes flew by and stopped itself in front of Celestia before it somehow turned itself into some kind of scroll she caught with her telekinesis. Is that a letter? Wow, their emails sure are strange. She unrolled it and smiled warmly - seriously, it's bugging me: how can a smile release heat? - as she read its content.

Her eyes suddenly snapped to us and I could feel she just had an idea. Her horn glowed brighter for a second and another scroll just popped into existence, alongside with a quill and an inkwell. She nonchalantly caught every new item in her telekinesis and wrote something on the scroll, proofread it and nodded to herself, satisfied. Another bright glow and the new letter was burned to ashes.

I don't think I understand their mail system very much.

"What was that? Why did you burn it? You just wrote it!" I exclaimed.
"Don't worry, Recto," she answered and sent back her quill and inkwell from wherever they came from, alongside the letter she received. "It may look strange to you, but that's how I write to one of my ex-students. It is a lot faster than regular mail, after all."
She has students? In what domain?
"Well," she reply after I voiced his question, "I am technically the principal of the school for gifted unicorns, and Twilight mostly study magic."
"Unicorns are the ponies with magical powers like mine, right?"
"Indeed," Luna confirms. "Manipulation of the arcanes of magic is complex and needs true instruction."

Okay. So the magical fairy god mother runs a school to teach how to do magic to young students. And I never had the chance to finish Harry Potter. I think I may have fangasmed a little there.

Did you hear her? A magical school! You think we should join it? Magical schools can't be boring!
I think we should wait a bit. We still don't know a lot of things about 'Equestria'. I'd rather we wait until we are more familiar with this environment before we did something like that.
Oh... You're sure?
As always, it's up to you to decide. But, you know, It may be preferable for us to wait until our body gets used to our new power and allows me to get out before we surround ourselves wth trained magicians.

I sighed. He was right, maybe I should just wait a bit. Just have to remember to ask her about that. And I noted that another letter had appeared while I was discussing with Verso. She nodded to nobody in particular and smiled to me.

"My ex-student and her friends should arrive later this afternoon to meet you. I'm sure they will give you a warm welcome to Equestria, Recto."
"And Verso," I remind her.
"And Verso. I'm sorry if I have offended you," she continues, her cheeks pinkening a bit.
Tell her I'm not. I'm expecting a lot of people to forget I'm here until I can finally get out.

I repeated his words, only to notice Luna's rather curious stare shifting to a dubious one for a fraction of a second. I tilted my head. Was she doubting that Verso wasn't offended? I would have asked her if there was a problem, but was unexpectedly covered by what Verso identified as 'spaghettis'.

Someone else probably would have yelled in surprise. For my part, I was mostly confused.

"Pwah, he will never learn when to let go, will he?" I heard mister Discord's voice saying. "Well, at least I guess I brought lunch. Why are you two looking at me like that? And where are our two-in-one guests?" His tone turned to falsely accusative. "You wouldn't have already mooned him, Celestia, would you?"
How come every time he appears, he finds a way to get on my nerves?
Is he talking about us? I think he is. And what does 'mooning' mean?
I'll... tell you when you are older.
That's your answer to everything!
"We're here!" I signaled, trying to move our arms under our noodly bonds.
"What?" mister Discord replied in a surprise tone. "Noodle, you know I can't bring you here yet! Don't worry, I'll send you back."

I blinked under the sticky pastas.

Is 'Noodle' our new nickname? Because I don't really like it.
I know you can hear me, Discord. Get us rid of these this instant!
"Don't try to mimick grumpy-boy's voice, Noodle. I'm surprised you can even do this."
"Discord, he is under this mess," Celestia explained.
"See what you did here? Touching Celestia and Luna with noodly appendages is badly-written stories' fuel, Noodle. That's why you can't get screen time anymore."
Oh for the love of... Recto, use your magic to get us out!
But I thought I shouldn't use it? 'Too much chocolate' and everything?

I heard claws snapping and I suddenly could see again! Sweet, sweet light. Noodles are icky. All cold and slimy, ugh. Talking about that...

"What's this white stuff on us? It smells funny," I asked, reffering to the white liquid covering our body and clothes.

The two alicorns looked at us wided-eyed and blushed, while Verso mind-palmed. Mister Discord extended a finger to sweep a drop of it and tasted it. Celestia and Luna glanced at him with a disgusted expression while he was nodding with himself, reaching a conclusion.

"Carbonara sauce. Definetely Carbonara sauce," he declared. He glanced at me and grinned. "And you should go get a bath. It seems our females hosts here are pasta sauce intolerant."
"Yay! Bath time is best time!" I cheered.
I sure hope they don't use this green gooey thing to do baths here. It tickles the lungs for a week each time...
I'm pretty sure that he means a more conventional kind of bath.
I gasped. You mean there are other ways to bath?
You know, that's actually a pretty sad thing to ask.

As it turned out, there is another way to bath than to simply wait in a translucid green goo for people to tell you to get out, as Verso soon explained me the process. Who would have thought? At least, I didn't have to inhale the water like I had to inhale the goo, so that's a start. No itchy lungs.

The bathroom is really worth a description though: I was sent to one one of the guest rooms to wash while Celestia and Luna discussed 'grown up problems' as mister Discord sayed.I gave our clothes except our underwear to a unicorn mare wearing an apron and discovered the bathroom itself.

And kinda regretted not having asked for protection glasses : the golden walls shone like compressed sun rays. When our vision finally adapted to the brightness, I stayed aghast for a second.

"It's enormous!" I gasped. "It's bigger than our room back home!"
I really wonder how much it costed. There's frickin' gold everywhere!
"Silly Verso, they're fairies! They just used magic to create it from scratch!" I replied, as I walked toward the gigantic golden bath in which I could probably swim if I wanted to.
It probably doesn't work like that. The inflation problems alone would simply...
"Bleh, maths. Tell me, do you know how to pour water in this?"
You do realize I've been here for as long as you have been, don't you? And you're speaking aloud again.
"It's easier than thinking back at you," I muttered while glancing at a faucet with a red gem above it. "Same color-code than on Earth? Nice."
Are they really using a ruby and a saphire to indicate the cold and hot water faucets? This is madness!

I suddenly got the feeling that the whole universe wanted me to say something, but I shrugged it off. I manually opened the faucets to get appropriately warm water, and started to inspect the rest of the room while it filled.

"Now, where did they put the cleaning powder?"
I think you would have better chances to find traditionnal soap.
"What are you talking about?"
You know, a greasy ball made out of animal fat... Scratch that, there's no way herbivores would be using that.
"Why would anyone do that?" I asked, midly disturbed. "It sounds weird."
Just look at the bottles next to the tub.

I quickly grabbed on of the plastic bottles that made Verso cringe for some reason - Why would they have plastic so soon after the lightbulbs?! - and read the label. Or so I tried anyway - it was covered in gibberish.

"Uh..."
Great! They don't use the same written language! I found it hard to believe they spoke like us, and Discord probably has something to do with it.

I squeezed some of the liquid into our hand and looked at the thick pinkish liquid that got out of it. We were unable to recognize the smell, but at least it was a nice one. Probably shampoo or body wash. Or fur wash. Do ponies even have body wash? Now that I think of it, how do they even use bottles without fingers?

Nearly half an hour later, we decided that we were clean enough and I got out of the tub in wich I only nearly drowned once. I levitated a towel to us and got out of the bathroom quickly, to enter the bedroom itself. I stared at the big cushion on the floor that probably served as a king-sized bed for small horses and walked to the cupboard, searching for clothes.

You know, I don't think they would have clothes for us stored anywhere if we are the only human to have ever come here.
"Nonsense. We're in a land of magical ponies that move cloud 'manually' and . I'd be surprised if we don't discover a wizard robe in our size somewhere."

As crazy as it may sound, though, there wasn't anything we could use in the entire room, so we were kinda stuck like idiots, waiting for clothes until I had the brilliant idea of using a few towels to simulate a roman toga. It was awesome.

We look ridiculous.
"You're just grumpy because you didn't think of it first."
I'm not 'grumpy'.
"Hey, now that I think of it, why didn't we ask mister Discord to get us new clothes, like before?"
Well... I...
"Keep thinking about that, I going back to talk with the Alicorns," I told him, opening the door to look at the three guards accompagnying us. "We're done. Could you all bring us back to the garden, please?"

Without a word, one of them nodded and we started to walk down the hall. I noticed the armored ponies all had the same neutral expression, just like the royal guards in England, as the database described them. So of course, I did the only logical thing in such a case:

"Are you obligated to keep silent and look boring all the time?" I asked.

Their lack of response was enough of an answer for me, confirming my thoughts and putting the next step of my plan into action. Said step being: making them laugh. As I started to make faces at one of them, Verso's voice rang through our head.

Please don't, this is childish.
Wrong, this is funny. I told him mentally. You see, you're grumpy, you can't apreciate funny things.
There's something else, you know. They may...
"It has been bugging me for some time, sir," The guard I was bugging finally said, unknowingly cutting Verso. "You have strange teeth."
... Notice that. Here's hoping they don't have problems with that.
"What do you mean?" I asked both.
"Well, you have sharp teeth and I saw bigger ones behind them. I was wondering, sir, what exactly do you eat with those?"

I blinked. I tend to do that pretty often lately. Go figure. I took a pensive posture, still trying to make him smile. After the obligatory thoughtful hums, I answered his question:

"Well, pretty much anything, in fact."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"Humans eat pretty much anything they can get there hands on, so I can eat wheat, some mushrooms, fruits, vegetables, cakes... Oh, and meat too, of course. Never got to try myself, but it is said to be rather tasty. I heard good things about beef or veal."

I heard Verso mindpalming as the guard looked at us with disgust and sickness in his eyes. It made me worry, it looked like he was pretty sick. Maybe he ate something he shouldn't have? Anyway, the other two ponies glanced at me, slighlty less disgusted than their counterpart.

"You are a meat eater?" one of them asked.
"Nah, we are omnivore. I told you so, I also eat plants and stuff," I repeated. Boy, weren't they paying attention?

The last one, a unicorn, made his horn shine a gray light for a second and I felt a tiggling sensation. He looked rather disturbed after that.

"It... You feel strange! My hunter spell doesn't know what to do with you!"
"Your what?" I deadpanned.
"It's designed to determine whether or not you are a hunting species, and it doesn't work!"
"Funny. How does it show it?"
"Green lights are peaceful ones, red ones are hunters. It stays gray with you!"

Another guard was about to say something when we conveniently arrived outside, just a half a minute of walking from the point where we left the ponified fairy godmothers and mister Discord. That alone wouldn't have stop them, but they were being pretty loud, especially Luna, who we could hear from here.

"I get it that he comes from a terrible place, Discord, and that he is a bit 'special', but that isn't enough of an explanation!" she shouted at the funny chimera. "We must help him as much as we can!"
"Luna, we don't know much about them, nor about their species," Celestia countered. "What may seems disturbing for us could be normal for 'humans', little sister."
Hey! They are talking about us!
Yes, but what are they arguing about?
"Don't even try that one with me, Celestia!" Luna growled, anger in her eyes. "I know first-hoofingly about the whereabouts of such an infection! And what we saw about his condition is obviously an advanced stage!"
Do they think we are sick? Is it because of the toga?
They haven't seen it yet, Recto. Maybe it looks like we have contracted an illness of this place? 'Wouldn't be that surprising.
"This 'Verso', as it calls itself, has convinced poor Recto, if it even is his real name, that they always cohabitated!"

Verso's half of our brain froze. We were about ten meters from them now, and Luna was turning her back to us, unaware of our presence. That didn't prevent both Celestia and mister Discord to realize where we were standing still. Celestia's pupils reduced to the size of pinpricks and she tried to stop her sisters'rant with little success.

"Luna..." she whispered.
"This parasite even has the gut of acting as if it owned Recto's body! You heard it on the mirror! We must get rid of him as soon as we can! I would have asked the Bearers to..."

She would probably have continued to explain her probably detailled plan haddn't Verso's souls abandonned its kinda frozen state to explode in fiery rage. I felt a lightning sensation flow through our nerves as he ripped me away from the commands and endured the painful state of controlling our body through the magical overload.

"I AM NOT A PARASITE!" Verso's voice quite litteraly boomed in a decent shockwave as he got to the control.

Author's Note

Yay, updates! Woohoo!

Now, I should (and probably could) have published this a heck of a lot sooner, but would you believe it is actually the sixth totally remade version of this chapter that I wrote? And that's without the edited or corrected ones. Nah, I just had a pretty big problem to introduce one of the plot points without it either getting completetly out of hand or being repressed into an oddly non-existent problem. And would you believe me, I'm actually delaying most of the problem onto the next chapter.

Which will come out.

One beautiful day.

Just kidding, it shouldn't take nearly as long as this one. After all, my first objective was to AT LEAST publish one chapter every week. I should write three other before sunday to keep up with my schedule.

Back to the business at hoof/hand/noodle, what did you think of this one? Please comment (and point out horrible errors that slipped through my corrections).
I hope you enjoyed.