The Standard and Normal Human: Three : Me, Myself And the Elements

The Standard and Normal Human Three

2

I remember how boring school was, text books, lectures, there was barely any practical lessons to keep you interested. I mean part of the learning experience was to be the one in control, to be able to control what happens yourself. All lessons should be capable of being practical right? Well, Maths you might struggle unless you make it fun. But if you go through the lessons you had there should be a way to make it practical, so… How do you make Magic practical when you can’t use it?

It’s a good question really, but after my laughing fit I was asked to take a seat, this is when I got formal. I had the feeling that I wasn’t just here to ask for help, I felt more like I was forcefully being educated…

We sat on the floor, after Twi had cleaned up that is. It didn’t take her long, I mean every book had a place on the shelf. But with a weird glow of purple she picked them up and moved them up to the shelf one by one, with magic don’t-cha know. Spike brought us some tea and we had our little chat…

It started off quite badly…

“So” Twilight began, levitating the cup and blowing it to cool it down “Where are you from?”

“Uh… That’s not an easy question to answer” I countered, trying to figure out how to proceed. “Well, Earth I guess”

Quick fire round Go!

“Ok then, so, where is Earth?” Twi

“Where it’s always been?” Me

“Which is where?” Twi

“Relative to what?” Me

“What do you mean?” Twi

“I arrived through a portal, I don’t know if I’m still on earth” Me

“I see, can’t you just use magic to get back? Twi

“No, of course not” Me

“What? Why?” Twi

“Because there isn’t any magic there to begin with…” Me

And with that statement, I sealed my fate.

“What?!” Twilight yelled, followed by the swift slamming of her hooves onto the table. “Impossible! Magic is everywhere!”

“No, no its not” I replied calmly leaning on the table with my forearms, “I Wanted to believe that it existed, but unfortunately the closest thing we have to it is technology”

Twilights ears perked up, “Technology?”

“Yes” I replied, taking my phone out of my pocket and placing it on the table. “Technology”

With a purple glow she picked it up, hovering left and right to get a better look at it from different angles. With an unimpressed look she asked, “What… is this?”

“It’s a phone… or… it was…” I began, I grasped it out of the air and my hand was briefly enveloped in a purple haze which dissipated soon after. “Discord decided to pour milk over me and it fried the battery, I just bought it as well and it wasn’t cheap”

A phone, a Battery, the concept of money. These things fed into Twi’s head and she started deconstructing the ideals in her head, she knew nothing about it but she was quick on the uptake.

“So… This… Phone, when liquid comes into contact with it, causes the… battery to cease to work?”

For once? Bull’s eye!

I was shocked, “Uh… yeah… hold on” I then took the phone apart, screen case, battery, simcard, the lot. I laid them apart to explain, sort of, how it worked. But before I started throwing around words she wouldn’t understand, I stopped. Words without meaning don’t help you learn, so suddenly I felt like I was the teacher… “Ok… So, Technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, just like magic, it’s everywhere”

Twilight nodded, she was happily listening. Heck she even started taking notes, I was kind of impressed.

“While this is known specifically as a phone, most pieces of technology like this are called a Device.” I carried on going into detail, “Its use depends entirely on what it was made to do, and phones are typically used to contact other phones”

Twilight stopped writing, she had a realization. “Wait, there are more of these?”

“Of course, pretty much everyone has a phone on them” I replied, I should have lied…

“Everyone?” Twi

“Well… I think, it depends on whether or not people have enough money… ” I also mumbled about radio towers and such but she didn’t hear me.

“Ok then so how many humans could there be?” Twi

“Uh… lots” Me

“Best guess?” Twi

“… around… seven… billion?” Me

Her quill stopped, “… How big is earth?” She asked, I’m not a math guy… so…

“”Big enough to have over seven billion humans on it, I don’t know…” I shrugged my shoulders, “But like I was saying, not everyone has devices like this”

“Because of money?” Twilight probed, levitating a new quill to use.

“Well that and geographical location, but explaining how all of that comes into it would take years... Plus I know next to nothing on the subject…” I really didn’t, just the basics, but to her it sounded like I was an expert or something. “Look, the next time I come here, how’s about I bring you all manner of books for you to read?”

“Really?” Twilight’s interest peaked.

“Yeah, I have a few books at home but I could always buy some more” I took a sip of tea and enjoyed every moment of it, and for good reason too.

I mean if you hadn’t guessed already, I’m English. That’s why I don’t drop a ‘u’ in colour, but I’m also the traditional example of the stereotype Englishman who likes to drink Tea and eat crumpets. Heck if you don’t like crumpets or you haven’t tried them before then by gosh you are missing out… kind of derailed there, apologies.

What I wanted to comment on was the tea, it was natural, sweet and refreshing. Spike is a dab hand when it comes to this kind of stuff, I mean I never did check whether it was in a bag or not but it didn’t matter.

It was time to be serious, “So, this ‘Other me’ that everyone keeps talking about, is he really that bad?”

Twi took a sip from her cup using her maaaaaaaaaaagic powers right in my face, before replying “Well I haven’t seen him for myself, but apparently he’s a problem”

“So you can stop him with the elements right?” I asked, praying that this was the case.

“Who… told you about those?” Twi asked in confusion.

“Celestia, she said that they might work” I replied, as I started saying it however Twi’s face looked displeased. “… What?”

“Princess”, she began, “It’s Princess Celestia, not Celestia, Princess Celestia”

I was puzzled, “It’s… the same thing?”

“NO! No it’s not!” She yelled, “You should show some respect!”

“Relax, Twi we have bigger problems than how to address royalty” I replied, this time she looked confused.

“How do you know my name?” She asked, I thought that much was obvious…

I had to think back as far as I could, Celestia mentioned her as her student but not by name…

“The little green and purple dragon dude, he said it before running inside leaving me on my own” I made sure to say the last part slightly louder so he could hear, but he didn’t so meh…

Twi’s head launched back in shock as she gasped, “I never even asked you for your name” she then pointed towards herself, “Well as you might know I’m Twilight Sparkle, Princess Celestia’s student”

Then little green poked his head around the corner, “And I’m Spike, I’m a dragon”

“A baby dragon…” I quipped, “Well I’m Nick, I’m… nothing special I guess”

“I see, and what should we call the ‘Other You’?” Twi asked me, luckily I had an answer.

“Well when I was a kid and I did something bad, my parents would call me Nicholas” I explained, I mean it’s my full name after all.

“… What? Why would they call you that?” She asked, confused as to why.

“Well my real name is Nicholas, but I prefer the shorter version, Nick” I never understood why anyone would use the full name, formality maybe? Whatever, I wasn’t a fan of it my name or formalities.

“I see” she replied, “So do you think you can stop him?”

I laughed, “I have no idea, like I said I can’t use magic so I’m unsure as to how I’m supposed to proceed with any of this…”

Twilight took a moment to think, and then she worded her thoughts out loud. “Then perhaps we should gather my friends” She then looked towards Spike. “Spike, could you bring Rarity here? I need to find Fluttershy so that we can contact Rainbow Dash”

Then she looked towards me…

“Uh, if you’re going to ask me to find anybody then you’re out of luck” I told her, “I think I’m just going to explore the surroundings for a while, try and learn the town’s layout”

“Well ok, just try not to go to get lost” then she and Spike left the house, leaving me on my lonesome.

Now I could have looked around but it wasn’t my place so I decided to bolt, I closed the door after I got out and just wandered around for a while. It was still quiet, I could see Spike and Twi in the distance and was puzzled as to why no one else was around. Then I heard noises, scuffling, something moving around, then silence again. I felt as if the Jaw’s theme music should have been playing, someone was watching me but I didn’t know who or where from.

“Hello?” I shouted but no reply. I spun around in a 360 degree manner to check the surroundings, I figured by this point that the party crazed earth pony was the one behind it. Nevertheless I carried onwards, passing the Quills and Sofa’s shop and towards the fountain at Sugarcube corner I finally managed to get a nice bit of space.

The smell of cakes and sugar was strong, I mean I work at a bakery myself so I know what that smell is like. After a while though you forget it’s there, I walked to the fountain and looked down into it, the water was clean, clear, and somehow spouting through the top. You know, with magic. I understand it more when it’s pluming but magic does whatever the heck it wants, it’s irritating.

Now, what was more irritating was seeing myself look so angry just thinking about magic. My reflection looked mad, which was odd because I didn’t think I was mad, in fact I was pretty chilled out up until that point. The freaky part was the fact that my reflection has weird glowing orange eyes, ever seen Persona 4? I can’t think of a better example, heck it wouldn’t surprise me if Discord made him like that on purpose.

By this point I knew something was up, because not only was my reflection laughing, but I could actually hear it. I was about to step backwards but I didn’t get much of a chance, the reflection of myself appeared on the surface and grabbed my face. Finally he emerged with a body of his own, it was bizarre. I could just see through the gaps of his fingers as his hand was still latched onto my face, he was greyscale. Even weirder were these black streaks under his eyes… my… eyes… this is going to get confusing. However, the conversation I had with him… me… whatever, that is what really took the cake…

He threw me backwards onto the ground and laughed for a while, the dude was all over the place. Almost like he was drunk, considering he managed to pick me up just by grabbing my face I made the guess that he was drunk on power, this annoyed me.

I spat out the dirt that managed to get into my mouth and dragged myself to my feet, and then I got a good look at him. It kind of freaked me out…

“… What the heck…” I said to myself out loud, “Who or what are you”

Queue the confusion…

“I’m you”

“No, no you’re not”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m me”

“Then Who am I?”

“You’re you”

“I Am You”

“No, I’m me, you’re you”

“But I am You!”

Then out of nowhere… “Oooo! This sounds like fun!” the happy voice said from nowhere, and then the voice took a deep breath and said the following without a pause or stopping for a breath. To clarify, it was Pinkie of course, pretty obvious though. She was standing on top of the fountain, “This is like the time I cloned myself with the mirror pond except it’s only the one clone and this one isn’t very nice!”

I was so busy looking up at Pinkie that I didn’t see Nicholas vanish into thin air, I looked around and he was gone.

“Bah! Where did he go!?” I asked Pinkie in a panic, “Did you see him!?”

“Oh Yeah! I saw him!” She replied happily, “He hopped back into the fountain, but now there’s another one of him!”

“What?” I was confused, “There isn’t another of him, there is only him”

“Then who am I talking to now silly?

“Me! You’re talking to me!”

“But wasn’t he You?

“NO! He was another version of me!”

“So he ‘is’ you!”

“No! I am me! No one else is me!”

“Then who was that?”

“He was Him!”

She took a moment to think to herself, stroking her chin with her free hoof. The conclusion she came to was astounding…

“Oooo! Did Discord create ‘Another’ version of you to mess with whilst you were away? Ooo! BUT THEN! Discord reformed and now your negative you is out and about trying to harm your credibility by doing bad deeds in your name!?”

I was speechless… Just… How… How Does She Function?!

In my self-meditative state as I tried to figure how she knew, Twilight had returned with her friends. I knew she was trying to get my attention, but I was distracted, flabbergasted, utterly confused.

Eventually I would wake up thanks to the swift addition of an apple to the back of the head, those hurt by the way…