As I stare forward into the pair of pink eyes in front of me, I just couldn't help but notice all the things happening behind them. Almost like stars floating in the cosmos, different specks lighting up in different ways. Very beautiful, very spacious, very... empty.

"Ditz," I say curtly.

The eyes in front of me blink, stirring up the galaxies within them. Then suddenly, they pull back, their owner giggling.

"You know," Wild Berry coos, "it's really fun to be kinda out of it."

"Tell me about it," Swift Lightning murmurs behind us. "What I wouldn't give to be in my bunk right now, just staring off into space." He goes back to reading the copies of the reports the research ponies had put together last night. "You are a real anomaly, you know that Mav?"

Speaking of research ponies... Right now, I'm back in the Research Wing where I had the pleasure of meeting the well-mannered Breaking Ground and the goofy Wild Berry. Doctor Bytes is here as well; once I had arrived in his office for my daily check-up, he trotted out of the room, beckoning me and Swift to follow him. A short while later, Bytes barged into the room with me in tow saying that it would be easier to report back to Celestia if they were all taking the same note in the same room at the same time. The fact that Celestia had the three ponies in the room reporting every bit they could about me back to her made me feel... well, it gave me some mixed emotions. I was a bit irritated because it seemed that she didn't like my presence in the castle, but also content seeing as how she was making sure that I wasn't much of a threat. She seemed to be running a good kingdom.

The room was somewhat renovated after my first visit; some of the clutter was taken away, leaving a lot of room for the current five occupants of said room to move around in. At the moment, Wild Berry has me sitting on the floor, staring into her eyes as some sort of hidden game, as Breaking Ground examines my spine. My right foot is currently outstretched and my toes are being played with a blue hoof; Bytes got real excited at the sight of my new crystal on the top of my foot, and was taking full advantage of the transparent crystal to see how my muscles move when he flexed or forced my toes. I can't help but notice that when I have my ass planted on the ground, the ponies around here are slightly taller than I am. Even when they sit on their haunches, they're still taller. Oh well, can't beat them at everything. I still tower over them by just under two feet when standing.

"That's not what I mean, silly!" Wild Berry says as she waves a hoof at Swift, continuing her conversation. "I mean, if your head is empty—"

"Like hers," I interrupt, but it doesn't phase her.

"Yeah, like mine!" she says with a large grin that would make the Cheshire Cat jealous. "If it's empty, that means you can fit so much inside!" Swift snickers at this, and I groan.

"Geez, you're just as bad as your sister—Ouch!" I swivel around and glare at the green stallion behind me. "Be careful back there! If you paralyze me or something, I'll give Celestia a reason to put me back in the dungeon!" I turn back to Wild Berry, grumbling. My temper is kinda short right now, seeing as how the two stallions currently prodding my back and pulling my foot have hit a few sensitive spots once or twice or seven times.

"Awe," Wild Berry says in a soft tone, "is somepony grumpy?"

"Don't talk to me like I'm a kid."

"Speaking of which," Breaking says as he sticks his head over my shoulder, "there's another question we need to ask you. How old are you?"

"I'm seventeen. Eighteen in September."

"September?" All three ponies ask me.

"Yeah, September." I look at them all on at a time. "...The month after October." More studious looks. "Halloween? Carving pumpkins, trick-or-treaters? You know, giving candy to kids in costumes?"

Wild Berry smiles warmly. "You mean Nightmare Night?"

"Yeah, I guess." I look over at Wild Berry. "It's early spring here, and back home, it's the beginning of April. So... It's the fourth month here?"

"Yeah!" Berry squeals.

"Now, hold on there Berry," Bytes says in a bit of a professional tone. "Maybe where he's from things run a bit differently." He nods to himself, drops my foot, and then walks out of the room. Through the open doorway, I can see him walk across the research hall and open the door on the opposite side. He chats with the pony who had answered, then nods and waits.

I look over my shoulder at Breaking Ground. "What did he mean by that?"

Breaking ground gives me a blank expression. "Well, you said that Nightm—sorry. Hollow Wean, did you say?"

I nod. "Yeah. One word. Halloween."

"Right," he says. "Halloween happens during some period of time for you as well."

"October."

"Right," he says again. Breaking chews on his lip for a second. "Well—"

"You humans must have a different way of keeping time than we do here in Equus," Bytes interrupts loudly and happily as he waltzes back into the room. A fluid motion of his hoof sends a thin pad of paper over to me. "We use a calender to keep track of the cycles of the moon."

I pick up the so-called calender and flip through it. It has thirteen pages, kinda like the ones back home, but each page is almost the same; thirty squares mark out the days showing when the moon will be wane, wax, gone, or full. All the pages have this, all but the last page, which just has five days. "Equus, you say? Never heard of the place." I hear the gang shuffle their weight. "...Must be in Africa or something. The explorers always seem to be finding new shit on that dried mass of a continent." I turn back to the last page of the calender. "What's with the last five days here?"

"Oh!" Wild Berry scooches in real close to my crotch and leans forward to look at the booklet in my hands. "That's the new year being born!" I look up at Wild Berry, but she's so close that when I do I get a face full of her mane. She backs up a smidge and continues. "When the twelve cycles of the year are done, Princess Luna keeps the moon full for the next five days!" In a quick motion, Wild Berry stands up and turns with enough force to whip my face with her tail in a painful manner. She then dashes over to the other side of the room and ducks her head under her desk, her tail wagging like an excited puppy. I feel my face flush as I catch glimpses of something I probably shouldn't behind her moving tail. Wild Berry then appears back in front of me with impressive speed, and a single gem clatters to the ground between my outstretched legs. A large ruby the size of a baseball, raw, jagged, cloudy, and uncut. "The oceans rise," Wild Berry resumes, "trying ever so hard to reach the moon, and renew their minerals from their sandy bottoms! The minerals are then absorbed into the shore and spread throughout the land, making new gems and crystals!" Wild Berry closes her eyes and cocks her head to the left. "And the dragons love the new year! Gems are a good part of their diet, so at the first cycle of the new year, there are always new mines being opened!"

I will my eyes back from their widened state. What the hell had she told me?

"...Princess Luna?" I ask.

"Yeah!" Wild Berry cheers. "She's Princess Celestia's little sister! She's also the mistress of the night, just like Princess Celestia is of the day! Luna raises the moon at night, and calms the dreams of the sleeping world, while Celestia raises the sun in the morning and tries her best to keep peace throughout Equestria!"

A sudden coldness springs to life in my chest. "Bullshit."

I feel four pairs of eyes lock onto me. I can even feel Breaking Ground's eyes on the back of my head.

"Earth orbits around the sun," I say when no one speaks up. "Celestia can't raise an entire star. Same with the moon, except it orbits around us."

"Nuh-uh!" Berry replies in a childish manner. "Their magic is the most powerful on Equus! Almost nothing can beat them!"

"Magic isn't real," I say bluntly. This causes the whole room to go silent. I roll my eyes. "A great man once said, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to those who do not understand it,' and I am no exception. Even though I don't see any conceivable way for any of you ponies to manipulate matter like you do, there is still a logical explanation behind every action and possibility that any of you can make or think of."

The ponies exchange glances with one another. Swift returns to the papers he was reading, Breaking Ground resumes prodding my back, Bytes lowers his head and starts messing with my foot again, and Wild Berry... just sits there.

Her red mane poofs up, almost like static electricity makes a human's. Her horn fizzles for a second, pink sparks falling onto the ruby between us. "...Magic is real, Maverick," she says slowly. I look her in the eyes, and see for the first time that her smile has completely abandoned her face. "It may not be strong where you're from, but it's there. It's everywhere."

I chew on my cheek for a moment. "...Believe what you want. The way I see it, magic is not real."

"Then explain this!" Berry says loudly. Her horn begins to glow and the ruby floats up from the floor. "How would I be able to do this without magic?"

My eyes lock onto the floating red stone for a long while. "...Behind every action, there is a probable explanation, be it logical in a sense of understanding or not. When I look at this stone, logic flies out the window, and the whole ordeal becomes fiction." I reach out and grab the ruby between my thumb and ring finger. "Your magic may be normal to you, but to someone like me who has never seen anything like it... I'm not sure. But my brain refuses to believe that a false notion, after all the time we humans have spent making things happen for ourselves with technology, is real." My head cocks to the right, and my eyes meet Wild Berry's. "Only unicorns and alicorns can actively control magic, right? Then maybe you evolved beyond the normal sense of comprehension. Perhaps you have unlocked the complete structure of your brain, allowing you to utilize telekinetic powers thought to be gifts from the gods themselves." I close my fist around the ruby. "The pegasi, from what I've read and have been told, are able to manipulate weather. They can actually stand on clouds, which are nothing but condensed water vapor floating around in the breeze. Perhaps they too possess this gift.

"But what of the ponies without horns nor wings?" I half-look over my left shoulder at Breaking Ground. His calm composure is utterly shattered, leaving a wide-eyes stallion behind me. "What about your race, Breaking? Have the earth ponies any powers? Sure, you are stronger than the others when it comes to brute strength, but what else?"

"They can grow." I turn back towards the voice. Swift Lightning is on his hooves and walking closer. "They are the farmers of Equus. Maybe not the whole planet, but earth ponies are a strong and proud race. Without them, there would be little vegetation. Little food for the herbivous species. They harness the magic of every living thing on the planet and use that to bring life to the surface." Swift stands within arm's reach, ready to spring. "Magic has impacted our way of life since the dawn of time. It is real to us. And that is all that matters."

I lean back a bit and scratch at my collar. "...Huh."

Swift notices my hand. "And if magic isn't real, then why are the princesses forcing you to wear that inhibiting collar?"

"Because they don't understand this power they think I possess," I say before thinking.

"And what power do they think you have?" Swift asks coldly.

I turn my head slightly upwards. "...Something they aren't used to."

"And what is that?"

My face contorts into a small smile. "...Change."

I rise to my feet, knocking Breaking Ground back on his haunches. "Swift, take me back to my room. We're done here for today." With that, I walk to the door and open it, startling the guard posted outside. Swift quickly takes lead and slips in front of me, and we begin our long walk back to my room. He looks back at me with a blank face, and I can't tell if he's thinking about what I had just said or how to explain that I may be wrong. Maybe both.

We walk in silence. The only sound we hear are Swift's hoofguards softly clinking when they hit the floor and the faint slap of my feet as they do the same. I shiver every so often, the coldness of the floor seeping into my being. Or perhaps it's the fact that I'm walking around a stone castle in nothing but my boxers.

Eventually, the silence is broken.

"Care to explain what in Tarturas just happened back there?" Swift asks in a very faint voice.

I keep my head facing forward as we walk. "Nothing happened."

"Something happened," he says. "What did you say back there?"

"You heard it all," I reply. "I was merely stating my thoughts about this place. About you ponies."

"That's not what I sounded like to me."

This time I stop and look down at the pegasus. "I merely said what I thought. I gave my view of this world words and spread them. Magic is not real, not to me. I cannot accept it."

"Why not?" Swift asks me. His voice has softened a bit.

"Why?" I repeat. "Because magic is nothing more than a fairy tale." I begin walking again, and Swift follows suit. "We humans do not use magic. There was a dark time in our history where people did believe in magic. They were naive, weak, and stupid." I cough into my hand. "We humans fear what we do not understand. It is our nature. Back then, we had little technology. We had to work by hand, walk everywhere. Now, we have machines that can do the work of a hundred humans in a fraction of the time. These machines can travel across land at a hundred miles an hour, even more. We have broken the sound barrier with machines, and we have walked on the moon because of our machines. Technology is a part of the human race's life as magic is to yours. So, when unexplainable things began happening back then, like a very long drought or a sickness that killed many, what do you think happened?

"We sought explanations. We latched onto whatever we could, and hoped that it was right. And magic was an easy concept to latch onto. A thing of myth with the ability to do anything, yes, it was very easy to believe that. It was an evil thing, they said, and they would blame completely innocent people for actions completely out of anyone's control." I stop walking again and turn to my guard. "The people of old wanted to purge that evil, so do you know what they did?"

I lean down and whisper, "They would capture any so-called 'magic users' and kill them." Swift's eyes widen dramatically at this, but I continue. "Thought to be the children of the devil himself, the 'magic users' were killed. Decapitation, dismemberment, locked away and forced to starve to death. The innocents were drowned, they were stoned, and much more commonly... they were burned alive."

I bring up my hand and show Swift the ruby I had enclosed in my fist. "We humans fear what we do not understand. And more times than not..." With strength I never knew I had, I close my hand and crush the stone in my grip. "...We kill what we fear."

I open my hand and let the shattered red gem fall to the ground. Shards and sharp edges cut the inside of my palm, leaving thin lines of blood that seep between my fingers. I bring my hand to my mouth and run my tongue across my wounds, letting the metallic taste fill my mouth. "This mind is human, Swift. This body is human. And both fears you. Fears Celestia. Fears this world... This is not a threat, Swift Lightning. This is fact." I let my hand fall and straighten up. "But even with this fear, I will not kill you. I will not kill anyone. I would never forgive myself for taking the life of another intelligent being." I turn away from my guard and resume walking. "I do not wish to cause harm. I do not wish to cause trouble. I only want to go home... and forget this ever happened."

"Do you mean that?"

I stop walking. Slowly, I turn on my heels and look back at Swift Lightning. He hasn't moved from his spot, still looking at the broken ruby on the floor.

"Do I mean that?" I ask him back. "...Yes."

"How do I know you aren't lying?"

The side of my face curves upward in a half smile. "Because if I wanted to kill anyone," I say in a deep, unfamiliar voice, "then that would mean that I would feel nothing about taking a life. And if that was true..." I look over to one of the many windows overlooking the vast ground below. "...I would have killed myself the first day I was here." My bloody hand lifts itself in front of my eyes. "...It was hard, Swift Lightning. It was very hard being taken from my home and thrust into this place. Given a shell that I do not know how to control, having my form altered," I say as I drag my palm over the crystal on my other forearm, leaving a crimson trail on its surface. "It was very hard, and it still is. I wish to return home. That is all."

"And what if you had to kill somepony?" Swift shoots at me. "What if you had to kill me to get home? Or Wild Berry, or anypony else? Even with your fear and your unwillingness, would you?"

I look him directly in the eyes. Even with this slight distance between us, I can see him tense for the answer.

"...If I had to kill you to get home?" My gaze breaks from his eyes and returns to my injured hand. "...Then I'd have to find another way back."

"What if it was the only way?" Swift asks. "Would you kill somepony then?"

"Would you?" I ask back. He doesn't answer, but I already know the answer. "I will not kill anyone or anypony. I will fight if my life is in danger, but that is it. All I wish is to return home and live my eternal life in peace."

"What?"

I wave a hand at him. "Nothing. Come, let us return to my room."

Once again I begin walking. A moment later, Swift Lightning begins walking along side me. He looks up at me. "...You frighten me, Maverick. Yesterday, you were a completely different pon—person. I didn't see this side of you when we were talking yesterday."

"You talk as if I am not me," I state curtly.

"You aren't the guy I was smoking with yesterday. This is different... It scares me."

"Good." I turn my head and crack my neck loudly. "Embrace the fear, Swift. Emotions are present within every living thing, intelligent or not. But what separates you from a frog is not what you feel, but understanding how you feel." My neck cracks again, and the coldness in my chest suddenly vanishes. "Besides," I say as I look down at the pegasus with a friendly smile, "fear is the same as courage in all but one way."

"What's that?" Swift asks me, completely lost.

My smile shrinks a bit. "Fear can make you do stupid things, just like courage. But courage can make you do the right things, stupid or not."

Swift Lightning holds my gaze for a short while, then purses his lips and nods. He looks forward once more and says two words. "We're here."

I look ahead of us and notice that stationed outside my door are the same two guards from day one, but also two more. Night guards at that. Dark gray coats under violet-blue armor and piercing yellow eyes. The night guards look as though they could be twins. At the moment, the guards in gold armor are standing on their hind legs positioning some some kind of lamp on each side of the double doors. The lamps are made of a dark metal, so dark it's almost black. Four panes of glass keep an orange flame bellowing inside them from escaping, and they're capped off with a cone of dark metal. The guards finish their job at hand and return to their posts.

I casually walk past the guards and give them a wave, which all four of them return with a nod of their heads. I open the door and Swift slips inside before I do. I give the lamps a final look. The flames flicker and extinguish when I do. Shrugging, I return to my room and shut the door behind me.

Swift is on his bed with another one of his calming smokes in his mouth and is trying to light it. His lighter won't hold a flame.

I smile. "Having trouble there?"

"I need to have the thing refilled," he answers.

"Maybe it's a sign for you to cut back."

"These aren't bad for you," he replies. "All they are is flower fragrances and soothing chemicals."

"Whatever floats your—" I pause and clutch my left eye, trying to steady myself as a fit of lightheadedness comes over me. "Ooohh, that sucks."

"You okay?" Swift asks me. He rises to his feet and walks over to my side. "Hey, Mav, you okay?"

I look down at him, blackness smearing the edges of my vision. "I'm fine, just a little woozy."

I try to give him a smile, but it falters and falls. I reach up and rub my chest as a coldness sets back in, but it lasts just a second before a roaring fire ignites behind my heart. My vision flashes black, and the next thing I know I'm falling. Swift jumps into my line of sight, talking at me, but I can't really make out anything he says. I smile and close my eyes, feeling oddly happy and sad at the same time. And then the darkness takes me.

Author's Note

We need more drama. Here it is.
I'm off to start then next chapter! Till then!