The Lone Survivor

Chapters

Home
An Everfree Occurence
A Meeting Between Sapients
An Imprompt Teleportation
The Conversation
Q&A With A Princess
Interuptions and Disastrous Happenings
The Rainbow Inferno
The Explorations of Mana
Spiritual Affairs

Home

Silence greeted me when I awoke. Groggily, I rolled over covering my head with the fur pelt. When I couldn't go back to sleep I finally conceded to reason and opened my eyes to greet the bleak day. The first thing I saw was that it was incredibly dark. My brain came up with three options for this reason. One: I closed the door before I went to sleep, Two: It was currently nightime, or Three: Both. The only way to find out was to get out of my bed.

Slowly I got up. My back was still having painful reminders of the last few days, so I didn't want to agitate it. Successfully not breaking any skin on my bandaged hide, I stood up and walked towards the entrance of my abode. Sure enough the door was closed and shut tight. I sighed knowing what was about to take place. Hopefully this won't pull out my back.

Carefully I positioned my feet along the fur carpet and pushed. The stone rolled out of the way into a special enclave I made for it. Thankfully my back hadn't given out on me yet. Light streamed in from the empty doorway illuminating my home as well as the scrap of leaves and fur that I call my sleeping arrangements. I grumbled as I went outside. I'm never much of a morning person anyway.

Trees greeted my vision as I stepped onto the stone pathway on the mountain. "*sigh*Well...Good morning Mark. It's another day in paradise..." I sighed. After feeling sorry for myself, like I always do, I looked around and I noticed that my worksite was slightly messed up. Instead of the normally orderly firepit and rain catcher, I saw instead shredded remains of the once awesome thing that I barely managed to build. I was kind of mad at whatever did this. It took me 5 days to get the bowl right. The fucking chisel I made kept breaking and the stupid bowl split in half once, so I had to get another round rock and began working on it. Sighing all the while I picked up the broken rain catcher and walked back into the cave towards my workshop.

Now my workshop isn't really that much of one to begin with. It was just a hand-carved table with all of my stone hammers, chisels, and my trusty knife. I set the remains upon the table and walked away. I planned to use the broken bowl as maybe some replacement to the broken tools I will usually get after a while. eventually I would also get another fairly round stone to make another bowl, but I wasn't really thirsty this early in the morning, and I already had a great backup supply in the giant wooden tank by my bed. While cleaning the work area was a good thing, it also meant that the wild life was getting restless again.

I sighed as I walked towards my backpack that was leaning against the wall over by the entrance. It was the only thing I was able to bring with me besides the clothes on my back. I opened it and fished around until I finally found my IPhone and the portable speakers. My IPhone and I had been through some tough times and it was amazing that it still had charge left through all that thick and thin. although I doubt that it will survive after what I'm about to do with it.

Grabbing the two items from my backpack, I stood up and walked out of my home and walked up the hill that my house was inlaid into. I was lucky finding this place. I still remember that I was soaking wet from the rain with thunder in my ears. Then in a flash of light I saw this place. A cave set into the giant mountain. After a painfully long hike up the mountain I came across the cave that I had seen. Carefully I stalked into there wary of predators and having the desperate need for shelter. After greater inspection I found that this place would make a better home then my blasted tent did beforehand. Fuckin' thing flew away in that giant storm. I also found some precious metals and gems inlaid inside the cave. I didn't think of anything at the time until the cave's previous owner came inside.

He was illuminated by the flash of thunder and lightning. A giant lizard covered in red scales. At first I was geeking out because I'm a major fan of dragons. He eyed me with green irises until he roared at my face. I narrowly avoided his flame breath. My clothes were slightly singed. As I ran in circles around the damn thing I got my backpack open and started grabbing whatever I could get a hold of. Now that I think about it I probably got lucky when I killed the damn thing. I was just throwing shit at it randomly at the time. It was a damn miracle when my knife flew into his throat. It must of hurt a lot since it was also prone to the heat blast. I wasn't able to even get it out of there until two days after the body had been dead, and even then it was half-melted, so I had to make a new one. Now I have a Dragon's head above my workstation along all my other trophies. *Ahhhhh* His body served me well for about three days. I made some crude armour out of the scales he had, and I also ate some of him since I imagine such a proud creature would not want to die and not be used by the victor. Then I got some sort of virus infecting my system. I don't know whether it was the melted iron inside him, or anything else like foreign bacteria, but I vowed never to eat dragon again.

Anyway, as I stopped reminiscing I noticed how low the sun was above the trees. Holding my fingers above the horizon, I calculated that there would at least be two or three hours left of daylight in this godforsaken place. I needed to work right now if I were to get this done. Carefully I set my portable speakers on top of the giant pillar I had made from many stones. I plugged my phone into it and let it be. I had a fire pit to redo.

Arranging the rocks was an easy part of reassembly the fire pit. The hard part however was getting the timber for it. I would need a lot more wood than what I have now and I don't really believe that I should just use all of my wood to ward of the beasts of the night. I decided to go onto the path down below to get a backup supply that I had hidden. It was about two meters away from my abode near the end of the stone path and where nature began. It was in a pit I had dug and hidden by a rotten log.

After a while I found myself at the exact spot harvesting the wood from my fallen prey. I never believed that those damn wolves had ever truly died when I chopped them up, so I put them somewhere where they could possibly regenerate and leave me in piece. Surprisingly when I moved the log the pieces were still there. I guess that answered my question on whether or not they could truly escape their deaths. I carried as much as I could out of there before any creature would notice my presence.

When I got back I looked around carefully to try and notice anything out of the ordinary. Thankfully, I didn't see any large animal tracks around. I began to set up a bonfire near the entrance to my path to the cave. Log upon log was being put down in the circle. After about a few minutes I had everything set up for the elaborate ritual I would perform. All except my battle gear and the fire starters I had in my backpack. Cursing myself I went back inside my home to get the things I would need.

When I got inside I immediately went over to the workstation. I grabbed my armor, my wooden spear, and the head. How I got that head is still in my mind. I was walking through the forest one day not long after I got the cave. I then saw statues. A lot of statues littering a clearing of sorts. The statues were of many things; dragons, ponies of various races(being unicorn, plain, and pegasi), and some manticores; you know natural wildlife and they were all made of the same kind of stone. At first my hopes rose at the possibility of civilization. At last I would be able to escape this accursed forest. My hopes were all dashed away when I heard an inhumane scream.

I looked around startled and ran towards the source of the sound. There in another clearing was an animal. Now I didn't know what this thing was. It sort of looked like the unholy procreation of a chicken and a snake. I approached cautiously until the foliage that blocked part of my vision was gone. In front of the creature was a manticore. It was staring at the creature with a pained expression on its face. I then noticed a change on his body.

A grey stone was creeping along the tip of his tail downward. Now I was a man of science, and when I saw this I went absolutely mental inside my mind. I wanted to study it. I wanted to see how it was doing what it was doing, and in the back of my mind I was reminded of a greek story where someone had cut the head off of medusa and used it to turn whatever he wanted to stone. I grinned. Instantly I rushed the little chicken and pulled my knife on him.

The moment the blade contacted he tried to turn and look at me, but it was too late. I had chopped of his head. Now I had often heard of stories regarding that the bodies of chopped off chickens usually ran around for a while. I'm delighted to say that was true. Unfortunately the hilarity of said action was heavily downgraded by the amount of blood that spewed off the stump and the looks of pain and grief drastically switching on the chicken's face. Eventually, the body fell over and the chicken head stopped moving.

I was saddened at the life I had to take for survival. If I had left that chicken to do what it kept on doing eventually it would've gone to my current place of residence. Then I would be the one stoned. Instantly I noticed the current condition of the manticore. The stone was receding his body back to its origin on the tip of its tail. Instantly I ran away from the beast. I knew how awful their tails were when they struck. I would have been in incredible pain if I didn't leave him immediately. I then noticed the many roars and groans coming from the previous clearing. I had to leave that area immediately. Ever since that fateful day, I've had a Chicken head hanging beside my hand-carved spear that I was also taking for this ritual.

I went over to the backpack and grabbed the firestarter as well as some flint and steel. I left the cave and walked towards my glorious firepit of awesome. I put the firestarter dead center and lit it. The fire started slow, but I knew that it would gradually burn bigger and faster over time. I went over to the IPhone setup and looked for the perfect music to accompany me for the epic battle to come. Eventually I came upon a little piece called "This Will Be The Day". It was one of the more awesome fighting songs I had experienced during my life. It was made for an AMERICAN anime. Seriously. I never thought I'd see the day where America would produce that kind of quality stuff. I'm proud to say that it blew my expectations, away since I was expecting another Naruto rip-off series.

I turned my phone on and set it to do the song on a loop. The sound would surely attract all the savage beasties that walked these parts. There was also a method to my madness. After the battle any predator that would dare to intrude on my abode would be met with the smell of blood, decay and death that I would spread around the hill. This would dissuade them as even they can smell the blood and guts of their fellow species. I didn't like what I had to do, but I did it. I would do whatever it would take to protect my home.

An Everfree Occurence

It was dark in Ponyville. All the lights had gone out but one. This was the home of a mare named Twilight Sparkle. Her dark coat shimmered in the artificial light created by her house and herself. She was currently standing outside with a candle next to her telescope staring at the stars. Her wings fluttered in the breeze experiencing something she had not been privy to for a while. Her assistant Spike was fast asleep, since he was done doing his daily chores. She let him be and just watched the stars.

Suddenly the stars began to disappear in a certain area. Having grabbed her curiosity, she magnified the area. The stars were being blotted out by what had appeared to be smoke. Moving her telescope downwards towards the direction of the smoke she saw something frightening. The smoke was coming out near the same dragon cave that she liberated so long ago. Immediately she ran towards her desk and began furiously writing a letter to her mentor, Princess Celestia.

Dear ~~Princess~~ Celestia,

It has come to my attention that the same or another dragon has taken root in the Everfree Mountain. I have decided to inspect this disturbance. Note that I mentioned "I". The only reason for this is that I believe that I can rely on my alicorn magic in case the dragon were to become hostile towards me. I also don't want to wake everyone up at 2 in the morning just to confront a rogue dragon. If the dragon is in fact reasonable, unlike the last one, I will surely help him by showing which cave would suit both of his and Equestria's needs the best. If he does go on a rampage and I can't stop him I will immediately contact my friends as well as you to get this problem dealt with without dealing a lot of damage to Ponyville and the surrounding area. I don't want to remind you what happened once Spike was about the size of that.

~~Your Student~~ Your Fellow Princess,

Twilight Sparkle

After she was done writing she rolled up the scroll and awoke Spike, the premature dragon. "Spike...." Hesitantly she poked him. "Spiiiiike..."

Once more she poked him, except with a little more force. He only mumbled something incoherent which faintly sounded like, "Pink walrus tutu league....ZZZZZZ".

This went on for a few more minutes before she lost patience with herself and began to scream in an unfit princess manner. "SPIKE!!!!!"

Fortunately she has not unlocked the secrets to the Royal Canterlot Voice ,so Spike was safe another day. Unfortunately, he still woke up to the sound of Twilight screaming. "AAAAHHHHHH!!!"

Spike then proceeded to fall off his bed onto his face before grumbling something incoherent.

"What?" Twilight asked. "I said, What do you need more for this early in the morning?" he replied.

Twilight pointed to the letter on the desk. Spike squinted at it before realization dawned on him. "Alright, but don't wake me up anymore tonight, please. I need my sleep."

Spike walked over to the desk, picked it up, and blew flame on it. Instantly it went up in flames and the smoke flew out the window. Spike grumbled as he walked back to his bed and went back to sleep.

Twilight sighed as he went back to sleep. Someday she would look back on this and love every second of this. Careful not to wake Spike back up again, she trotted off down the stairs and packed essential research materials for the trip. They were mostly of the fauna and flora of the Everfree. She never did spend much time in there, but when she does she wanted to be prepared. She had also gotten some a geography book of places outside of Equestria that she could advise to the dragon in case he actually liked the thought of moving. Twilight then put the items in her saddlebags and headed out the door towards the dark, impending forest.

It had been over two hours since I had started the bonfire. It was burning brilliantly now. There were some minor disturbances, but it was nothing to start the music over. They were mostly just the occasional lone wolves. sometimes there was something of actual note like that one frickin bat. Uuugggghhh. I hate bats. It's nothing personal with them. I did used to think they were really cool, but then I met one in the wild. I speak from experience when I say," Don't ever try to tame one! It will not end well." The only reason that I actually make not of this bat is that it just kept flying around my head and trying to claw my eyes out. It was pretty annoying. I am embarrassed to say that that frickin' thing was the only thing that actually harmed me.

The moon had finally passed over the sky and was almost in the setting phase. Then I heard claws scraping against stone. I looked over and saw the same yellow eyes that have been staring at me. It was too dark to see the body of the beast. Carefully I raised my weapon towards it. The eyes disappeared. Then out came a Manticore walking towards me.

Now the first thing I did was raise my spear towards the creature. It stopped from the sudden approach and laid down watching me. Now I've been in the forest for a while and I know that this was not typical predator/prey behavior right here. Slowly I withdrew my spear before I noticed something different about this manticore. It had a stone stinger. *huh* Wait a minute....

When I put the spear on the ground the manticore still had done nothing. I walked slowly towards it. No reaction was witnessed besides the tilting of its head. I slowly lowered my body to a crouch so as to look it in the eye. It stared right back at me. Slowly I raised my hand towards its face. Its eyes widened. Now I know when I see a defense mechanism ,so it was perfectly reasonable to pull my hand back. What happened instead gave me pause to the whole it being an unstoppable killing machine. It pounced on me and began to lick at me wildly. I laughed wildly as it continued to lick me like I was a melting ice cream cone.

After a while I got up and patted its head. it scorpion tail wagged slightly. I stared at his tail in thought. My thoughts came to be on the day I got that head. He(she) must have never completely recovered from the stoning fiasco. He had followed me back to the cave, eaten all my scraps for extra food and tried to get my attention on several occasions, but I must've been to preoccupied to actually notice.

"Now what am I going to call you?" My voice had grown considerably huskier with the months of non-use. It was a great question really. What am I now going to call my new manticore companion? Before I had even gotten to thinking of a name, I began to hear growling. I looked towards my new friend and saw him staring towards a particular piece of underbrush. I looked at it intensely and raised my spear. there were about 5 pairs of giant eyes watching us. I reached towards my pocket and pressed the button and threw my phone towards a pile of leaves that I specifically set out beforehand. I was ready for the fight of my life. The epic guitar riff filled my soul with the adrenaline of my ancient warrior ancestors. I ran towards the underbrush preparing the spear with my new manticore friend right behind me. The ten sets of eyes became various dangerous creatures. My eyes glistened with fear as I had finally saw something that I never even fought before. Chimera.

Twilight Sparkle had just arrived inside the Everfree Forest. The forest was just as endearing as ever with its atmosphere. It was also quieter than usual. Not even a tweeting bird or a chirping insect. Just nothing. It unnerved Twilight to no end. She began to see a giant fire. Now usually the Everfree Forest was able to take care of itself. That's what made it the Everfree Forest. Now seeing a fire in it made Twilight question how well the forest's magic was. She then began to ran towards the fire which had likely been caused by the dragon she had theorized moved into that cave. She was frantic and instantly racked her mind for a dousing spell. As soon as she got a hold of it though she was introduced to some kind of music.

She thought that it was just Zecora at first, but then she began to realize that language that was being spoken wasn't even remotely Zebracan in origin, and this used instruments that she wasn't even aware of existed. As she slowly began to approach the light coming from the fire she saw IT. It was just a shadow in front of the light, but from here she saw what looked like a creature that was a young minotaur holding a spear and an unidentifiable object being held in its other paw. Now what a minotaur was doing in the forest she couldn't guess, but she could see what it was doing. It was fighting of a pack of Timberwolves, a Manticore, a Hydra, and a Chimera. The last one surprised her as she had thought that Chimeras tended to be down further south. Now back to the minotaur. It was moving with a fluidity that Canterlot guards would one day hope to achieve in combat. He (Twilight was assuming he since he lacked the lustrous curves female minotaurs usually had) was slicing the Hydra's heads many times causing fountains of blood to pour out at an immense rate ,but as suspected it began to regrew back its heads . Within the short time frame the minotaur was allowed, he had put its spear within the fire, pulled it back out, and seared off the stumps that essentially killed it off.

It then turned towards the pack of Timberwolves. Two of them had all but backed away, but with a reassuring bark the pack leader rallied his troops against the minotaur. On the other side of him the manticore ran towards him. Twilight was sure she was going to see the end of the minotaur, but she was immensely surprised when the manticore jumped over him an began to attack the Timberwolves. Then the minotaur advanced on the Timberwolves bringing his flaming spear towards them. Instantly they ran off yipping all the way into the forest. Then they turned towards the chimera. Now the chimera hadn't been doing nothing this whole time. The snake head had made a moat of poison, the lion head had breathed fire all around itself, and the goat head had chewed a log off and gave it to the lion head to fend off the minotaur.

Now once the minotaur had seen this he began to raise both of his hands in a pattern. He sighed and brought up the round object and put his two digits on it and pulled upward. Instantly the lion head had dropped the log as his head went stock still. The other two heads were shocked and had a pained look on their bodies. The body of the chimera hadn't moved in a while and the two heads were getting frantic. The minotaur had walked up to the creature and carefully stepped over the poison moat. It didn't even stop to clear the flames. It just walked right through without nary an ember on him. It raised its spear and cut off the two heads muttering to itself in its weird language. It walked away from the blood-soaked soil retrieving something in a pile of leaves. It messed with it for a moment. The music instantly stopped. Twilight wondered if that was where it was coming from, but then she noticed the minotaur walking towards a raised pedestal off to the side of the clearing with the manticore following it.

On it were two glowing rectangles that were slowly giving off less light. Twilight theorized that this is where the music was coming from and that it must've been made by using some crystal lattices imbued with magic. It all made sense as to how the creature was able to do what it did, but the only flaw with her guess is that the one crystal that is need to recognize and remember sounds as complex as those, would be a blood amethyst, currently the world's rarest gem.

Carefully she weighed the option of approaching the duo. They did not seem like they would hurt her unless she would do so otherwise. They could also appreciate her assistance in healing magic, because she doesn't believe that he could've gone through that fire without at least getting first degree burns. On the other hoof, they were very dangerous. If she makes the wrong move then she would surely die at the paw of the minotaur. Finally deciding on talking with the minotaur. She stepped out of the bushes.

A Meeting Between Sapients

Wow! That was fun! It's been a while since I've had this much adrenaline coursing through my veins. Also, the Chimera fight was happily avoided. I had to deal with the thing via Chicken Head because I don't believe that this armor could protect me long enough in that kind of continuous heat. It probably can with it being made of Dragon scales, but I might've cooked inside this. After the stonage was done I was amazed at how the body was still moving, so I just cut off the rest of the heads. With the body bleeding out, the Chimera will actually die before it de-petrifies. Speaking of bleeding out... I reached towards my shoulder and found that it had some new pink scars, burns and scratches from the fight. Oooo there's even blood. Well that was going to hurt stupendously if I ever touch it. Anyway, when I was just about to move my hand to my back, so I could inspect for even more cuts or bruises, when I noticed that my new Manticore buddy was staring at a bush. Man...I've got to have a name for him.

Anyway Thrasher...no. It can't be Thrasher. Ummm.....OH! Zandar..... Yeah. I'm sticking with it. Anyway Zandar, was just investigating the bush all the while growling. I approached him cautiously and put my hand on his back. His fur stiffened and he stopped growling. Suddenly a unicorn walked through into the clearing. Now it wasn't that much different from any of the other multicolored ponies that I had happened upon in this forest, but one thing was different. This one looked exactly like Twilight Sparkle. Now I'm still set that I'm not in Equestria since I've not seen anything ever do any fucking magic at all.

Carefully I approached her(I think it was a her). She began to neigh nonsensically. I rethought my approach and carefully lowered the weapon and the head. It probably saw the whole bloody battle and was apprehensive towards me and my weapons. On second thought she was also probably really scared of Zandar as well. I looked behind me and motioned for him to step back. It looked at me quizzically before it stepped back a few feet and laid down with his tail swinging around while he was staring at it all the while.

I approached the Twilight-pony when I noticed something off about her. She didn't have terror in her eyes. Seriously, all of the animals that I have met so far have all looked at me with terror. Even in this place I'm still considered an apex predator, but what I was getting from the pony was a look of curiosity. Now some people may call me crazy when I say this, but I think this pony was actually kind of smart. When I say smart I mean like an awesome dog or something like that. I mean I can't imagine any creature evolving into a civilization without hands or being the best predator, only predator, or it is in a place with no predators at all.

Anyway as I finished my inner tirade, I just happen to notice Twilight was poking me with a hoof. After more series of pokes and prods I suddenly felt a change in the air. I then noticed a glow from her saddlebags. They opened by themselves and a magenta glow wrapped around a quill and a notepad went in front of her face. I stumbled back frightened. I had never seen anything like this before. This could only be described as magic. Yep. There's no denying that I'm in Equestria now. That means that I can finally do something that I've always wanted to do. Disprove magic being just "magic".

Now I know what you're thinking. "Why would you do that Mark? Don't you like the idea of magic being unexplainable?!?" The straight answer is I do. I do want to think of magic as unexplainable, but the scientist in me is telling that this magic thing is nothing but hokey. Now before you all start hating me for my ideals I'm going to tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a physicist. Well technically I'm not. I only got a minor in that category after all. My major was in Chemistry. Anyway from the time that I studied physics I've always seen the universe as one great, big moving mechanism that's supposed to do something that I don't really understand, and that bugged me. I wanted to understand the universe and all that it did. I wanted to take apart all the laws of physics and say "Why?", so when I started watching MLP ,as an awesome past-time, it got me thinking about how they could do that in real life.

I listed all of the things magic has explicably done in the series from raising the moon to levitation. I kept crunching numbers, looking into books, and I even asked one of my professors about it once. Nothing helped. Until I looked into atoms again. The first goal was to see what their horns were made out of and see if any material known to man could do these things. Then I came upon the answer. It was so obvious. There in big bold letters explaining it all. QUANTUM MECHANICS.

Now for those that do not know what that is I will tell you. It is a fundamental law in the universe that states at a sub-atomic level anything can happen. Any type of atoms can jump space, go back in time, and change their own array. I had finally found it. I was ecstatic. I had finally found out how they were doing these things. Then I proceeded to go into more research into how we could do "magic". I came up with nothing. I was sad for a time, but then I realized that I shouldn't worry about it right now. Many physicists will solve this problem at some point in the future. Many mysteries of the universe would probably be solved in a matter of decades. Now you can see why I would like to do this. Magic may be possible for me to learn if, and that's a big if' I can figure out how unicorns use Quantum Mechanics to their advantage, but first there's the issue of getting Twilight to take me to civilization.

Anyway an idea came to mind and I acted on it. She could probably not understand me anyway being I could not understand her at all, so I thought of another way that I could get an idea into her head. I stepped back and motioned for her to follow me. She had stopped writing in her pad and looked at me. I did the same motion and she seemed to understand. I walked away from the fire pit towards Zandar and patted his back. He looked at me and I motioned for him to follow me. He got off the ground and followed me while he still eyed the pony. I was going to send her a message that she can't possibly mistake for anything else.

Twilight was amazed. This thing wasn't a minotaur at all. It was some other weird creature. Its body wasn't covered in fur, but it had scales instead. It was just probably some sort of armour for the creature though. The scales looked too....baggy to be the flesh of the creature. She didn't even know what to say about the thing. All that she could think about the creature was its face. She felt like its pale blue eyes stared deep into her soul and just rummaged around scouring for something. Also its black mane felt unnaturally short to her. This combined with all its other traits such as height and gait made Twilight feel like she could get eaten at any second. This also could've been from the feeling she was getting from the manticore. She was pretty freaked out about the fact that it actually had a pet manticore. She's only seen one pony tame a manticore and that was Fluttershy. She wouldn't even know how this guy (she assumed because of the lack of mammary glands) would do such a thing.

Anyway she was currently following the creature presumably back to its lair. She was super excited about this of course after she realised he wouldn't kill her. All the things this thing could teach her would be extraordinary. Maybe he even had his own type of magic. She presumed this because one would need to actively push magic into the crystal to actually get it to do something like play the music as it did.

Then Twilight noticed how the dirt slowly gave way to rock as she found herself following along a familiar path she had taken before. "Is the creature's home in the abandoned cave?" she wondered. She would have the luck to find out soon. After a while of walking the creature began to grumble in a low tone. It was like that of a dragon but slightly higher pitched. There was no doubt it was male after this moment. Unfortunately she couldn't understand if he was grumbling unintelligently about something or she didn't really know his language. She then realized he probably couldn't understand her, being as he is an undiscovered creature that pony kind had never had the chance to meet before.

"Mr. Creature, can you understand me?" She spoke. the creature had not moved its head nor had its ears swiveled to meet her. She was then sure that the creature had no idea that she was actually saying anything intelligible. Thus in her mind came the problem of how to communicate with him. Writing would do no good as he probably couldn't understand it at all. Also, he probably couldn't understand writing in general. So while she was thinking on the issue of communication, she was then jarred out of her funk after she bumped into him. She looked up and saw the creature smiling slightly. He then looked towards the cave.

She was motioned inside while he told the manticore to stay here with his grumbling language. At first she was scared to go inside. Sure the fear was irrational ,but it was too dark inside for her tastes. He must have some sort of night-vision to be able to see like*flick*...this. Her thoughts were interrupted as the creature flipped the switch of his hanging lamp. Her eyes were greeted with the glinting of a dragon's horde. Thousands of gold bits, jewels, and other shiny things from centuries past littered the corner of the cave. Then Twilight looked past it and further into the cave. Various furs littered the cave floor. They were all made from creatures she recognized were native to this part of the Everfree. As she looked more and more around the cave she spotted his bed. Specifically what was hanging above the bed.

Above his bed was a dragon's head. Its mouth was hanging open like it would breath fire any second. Its orange eyes were still open seemingly having a pained look to them. In all of Equestria's days only a few ponies would claim to ever have been dragon slayers. Most of them were nut jobs, but the few that were true proved to be the best and capable fighters anyone could get, so they were immediately put into Celestia's guard. Now she knew this creature was an excellent fighter. It handled the ambush that happened at the bonfire fairly well. Now she knew this thing was probably one of the best fighters if it took down a dragon. She could only imagine the bloody battle. At least now she knew where it got its scale armor. Then Twilight realized something. The dragon moved back. It probably never even took its hibernation after they woke it up. This creature probably saved all of Equestria from being smoked, and it didn't even know it.

She wanted to show respect for this creature ,but it probably would not understand the gratitude it deserved. "Wait...where is the creature?" she thought. She looked around and finally noticed him hunched over a carved, poorly made cabinet. On the cabinet was a set of wood and stone tools. There was also a sort of armory off to the left of it. There was two wooden armour stands that was poorly made as well. On one there was a fur pelt of some sort and on the other was some sort of scrapped clothing. She then noticed that it took off its armor and was about to replace it with the fur pelt. On its body were thousands of scars, bruises, and cuts. Some looked fairly fresh judging by the pink skin and blood around some. Twilight gasped right then and there. The creature turned to look at her. She pointed towards his back. The creature just smiled in a way that just stated, "Hey. This is not that big a deal."

Anyway she was investigating some of his poorly-made tools when the creature pulled out something. It looked like a piece of paper. Emphasis on looked. It was so torn and yellow it was hard to make anything out on it. Anyway the creature pulled out a stick and began drawing or writing on the paper. It kind of looked like a nature preserve brochure, but aged and discolored before he put the writing implement to it. It kind of looked like a piece of graphite on a wooden stick. When the creature was finished it did look like a drawing, a rather crude one in fact. "It looks like a bunch of trees and a...house?" Twilight thought. "What could he be implying?" As she wondered what he wanted the creature sighed and drew an arrow from the forest to the house. Oohhh. She realized he wanted to go home. Or at least some type of structure. She then realized he must've been here a long time to been able to whittle all of his tools and furniture. He probably was just trying to find a way out of here. She was happy to oblige.

Oh thank God that's over with. I'm a horrible artist. Now that I was done, Twilight was starting mumbling to herself in horse language. Hopefully she actually understood what I was trying to tell her. Otherwise all I did was show her some of my poor art capabilities. Anyway I walked away from it as it studied the drawing towards my meat surplus. Twilight probably didn't see it earlier as it was hidden underneath my bed in one of the only things I was able to save from the flying tent. My cooler. Thank God for that. I don't know how ponies would even react if they knew I eat meat.They could possibly run havoc in fear of me or be perfectly fine with it ,but I don't really know what they would do if they ever found out. Unfortunately another bad thing about the cooler is that it doesn't really keep things cold anymore. Sure I could hike further up the mountain and gather some ice and snow but I really don't want to travel for 5 hours without food or water. Anyway it only stores my cooked food anyway. I grabbed some of my leftover rabbit steak. Don't ask me how I was able to get that thing into a steak form. I will likely never be able to do it again.

After I closed the cooler and pushed it back under the bed I headed towards Zandar. The reason for rabbit steak is that I should probably start training him. I don't want him to think bad of me in the middle of the night and eat me. He was sitting by the entrance and was also looking at all the shiny things in the corner. I tried all sorts of things to get him to stop staring at it. I snapped my fingers, clapped my hands, I even pet him the wrong way. Nothing worked. I could only guess it was the cat part of him taking control. Man. If I ever got my laser pointer again he would be so much fun to play with. Although after he realizes what I'm doing he probably will scratch me with his big claws. I finally got his attention by waving the steak in front of his face. This got him greatly interested.

I wagged it in front of his face for a while before I pointed to the ground he stared at my finger then the ground. He brought his head back up and tilted it. *sigh* I repeated the gesture a few times till he finally got it. He laid down on all fours and I got on him. He looked at me like I was crazy. I handed him his steak. His mouth opened wide and he just swallowed it whole. Yeah the meat was probably a bit too small there. I'm going to have to dig in to the giant meat cache. I looked at Zandar and noticed he was purring over the meat. My guess is he's never eaten any cooked food before. I also noticed that his scorpion tail behind me was slighlty lower and further away from me. I could only guess that Zandar was tolerating my sitting on his back. I was greatly pleased with myself. I probably looked like the incarnation of awesome-ness. I mean seriously. What better definition of awesome then do we have of human beings riding mythical beasts into battle? The only way I could even look any more awesome is if I was friends with the dead dragon. Heh. Yeah.

Anyway I finally noticed that Twilight had looked up from the drawing. She looked at me in a mixture of disgust, awe, and confusion. Then she shook her head and motioned with her head for me to follow her. I nodded then I pointed at Zandar. She looked at me in confusion before she got the message and nodded. Huh.. Nodding is universal. I only hope that she actually knew that the question was if I could bring Zandar along. If not then there's going to be some epic miming shit going on soon.

Author's Note

Hey guys! Let me know what you think of the story. It is my first one though, so can we please turn down some of the hate comments. Anyway like, favorite, subscribe, comment, or do whatever the heck you want.

On a side note Quantum Mechanics is a real thing. Do not doubt my knowledge on the subject. That is all.

An Imprompt Teleportation

Navigating through the Everfree Forest was always a big hazard to everypony's health. Thankfully Twilight Sparkle was there to actually be a decent guide. Contrary to popular belief she did not always stay in her castle. Much like the other Princesses, when she was first given an actual title all she did was go on adventure upon adventure. You see, there's usually a four-to-five month waiting period between actually getting Princess responsibilities and becoming a Princess. Usually it would be a shorter time-frame, but when she achieved alicorn-hood she immediately became a Princess in every aspect. Thus a lot of paperwork was thrown upon Celestia and Luna hooves. Anyway she had a lot of time on her hooves and with it she usually travelled around, saw the sights, and studied more about her particular field. For the later, she usually went to Zecora to get a better view on the magic capabilities of other creatures because all she was familiar with were her own species and Spike's. Unfortunately, with Zecora's peculiar way of speaking many concepts were lost in translation. Still, she did not stop her weekly visits. Twilight wouldn't stop seeing her favorite potion friend.

Anyway with her many weeks of hiking through the forest, she was probably the best guide to get besides Zecora. Unfortunately she was in an area that she did not have that much experience being in, so Twilight was horribly lost. Every turn she made through the overgrown forest led straight back to where she began. She was starting to get extremely furious. It was like the forest was deliberately keeping her trapped here. It was getting really frustrating. She was this close to just teleporting him back to her house. Unfortunately due to previous discomfort for non-unicorns when she performed the spell, it felt like she was morally obligated to actually tell him what was going to happen. She had a pretty good idea on how to explain to him what was going to happen. Twilight had gotten the idea from him after all.

Zandar and I were following Twilight through the forest. At first she was confidently striding, but the as time went on and we kept hitting the long-since dead fire pit she started to look a little like the Lesson Zero episode. I made sure to keep myself and Zandar at a maximum of five feet away from her. Then slowly she turned around. Her face held a slight frown and her forehead was slightly knitted. It looked like she was deep in thought. Or she could've been constipated. Most likely the former rather than the latter because pretty soon her face lost its concentration. Her horn started to glow with that familiar magenta as a stick was picked up. The stick was put to the soft ground and it began to draw.

I've got to say, Twilight is an incredible drawer. Well....compared to me that is. It wasn't any piece of artwork, but the point was gotten clearly across. It had taken several minutes but she had finally drawn two drawings. One was us minus Zandar on top of a circle with I guess trees surrounding us. Twilight's horn was surrounded in waves, which I guess is her doing magic. It also had an arrow pointing to the second drawing. Now the he second drawing was of us in the exact same position, but I couldn't tell where we were supposed to be. It looked like a place with a lot of buildings. I got the gist that Twilight was going to teleport us there. I don't know why she didn't do it in the first place. It would've saved us a lot of time just roaming the forest. I would have said I would gladly go with her, but I still don't get horse language. Besides that there were only two questions remaining on whether or not I should come with her.

Carefully I grabbed the stick out of her grip. I still wasn't sure whether or not magic could hurt me or not. Unceremoniously the magic glow vanished as soon as I touched it. A slight tingle was felt all along my arm, but it wasn't unpleasant. Her face had a perplexed look before she shook her head. Guess she didn't turn off her "magic" by herself then. Oh well. It's a matter to deal with later when I actually understand her language. Now hopefully I can make the matter clear with my drawings. The concepts are pretty easy to understand, I guess, but hopefully Twilight actually understands the concept that I'm trying to tell her.

Twilight didn't undertand what the heck he was doing. She had expected him to nod yes or no, but all he did was take the stick out of her magical grip, somehow disrupt her natural mana flow, and began to also draw in the dirt. At first she didn't know what he was doing. He was studying the first drawing she had made and made as close a duplicate as possible. There were some holes between the lines though. He also drew it above the arrow she had made between the two. Then he went below the arrow and drew some sort of wavey-thing. She didn't know what to make of the two drawings.

She looked back up at him. He was staring at Twilight expectantly. She was trying to understand what he was trying to get at until an old book she hadn't read since she was seven came to mind. It was about the Neighstein-Rosenhoof Bridge. By an old book she seriously meant old. It was originally what got Clover the Clever to go into Space-Time magic and get apprenticed to Starswirl. She was amazed at what the creature knew about magic. If he knew anything else it would greatly help the ponies progress. Unfortunately she didn't know what the other picture represented. She pointed towards the bridge.

He sighed while nodding his head. Twilight looked at him puzzled. She shook her head and began charging the spell until he had grabbed her horn. The magic was instantly siphoned out into the surrounding environment. She cantered back a ways ,afraid of a total magic siphon from her body. He released her horn and pointed towards the manticore and then to the drawings. She was puzzled before realization hit her. He wanted to know where he was going to be in all this. She picked up the stick he had dropped with her aura and began to draw again. She drew the manticore in a fenced area that was supposed to be Fluttershy's backyard, but she couldn't get the hut right.

At any rate, he seemed to understand and he nodded in her direction. It then occurred to her to actually warn Fluttershy about the surprise manticore visit. She pulled out a piece of paper and began to write a short notice to her before she teleported it on top of her living room table. Hopefully the birds wouldn't get to it. She looked over to him and nodded. He seemed to understand that he should get ready. He patted the manticore's back. He looked at him while he pointed to the drawing of the manticore in the fenced area. The manticore looked towards the drawing before the manticore had purred towards him. It must have been okay with the situation. Carefully she weaved her spell once again wary of his influence on her horn again. With the spell complete, and the aura swirling around her horn, she nodded towards him and started the spell.

WoOooOOaAaahhh! Rainbows everywhere!!!! HAhahaHAHAh. There's even Pink, fluffy unicorns. HHHHHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA. *Ahem* Sorry about that. I went through a little madness right there. Teleportation via "magic" sure is trippy. Anywho, the whole trip was frickin' wierd. I kept having hallucinations and all I saw was a kaliedescope of rainbows and anti-rainbows. Please...Don't ask me what color they are. So after all the teleportation nonsense, I ended up in Twilight's castle. It was probably one of the many servant rooms or something, because all that I saw when we arrived was a giant bed and some desks of various natures. However I was currently in the fetal position on the floor and puking my heart out. God it hurt like hell. Twilight of course was freaking the fuck out. She tried to make it better by either conjuring or teleporting a towel in here or something, but the puke would not stop. Eventually she just sat (laid?) down and consoled me by putting her hoof against my back and gently patting it.

After all the throwing up and stuff, Twilight had...fuck it I'm saying conjured. So Twilight had conjured paper towels and began to wipe up the puke. I was impressed by how she was acting through all this. She was being very quiet, and she was keeping her OCD in check. If I were her I would've torn my body apart in the name of SCIENCE!!!! But then again, she did see some wierd creature just start puking. Even I would've been put off by that. When all was said and done, Twilight had said some stuff in horse language and walked out of the room. I'm pretty sure that she had said, "Stay there, I'll be right back with some puke anylizer." Or something like that.

While she was out, I guess that I could perhaps look around the room. I stood up from my sitting position on the bed and looked around. Next to the bed was a dresser drawer, so I started there. I opened one of drawers on it and discovered a journal of sorts. I opened it to find it blank of any language except the front page. I couldn't understand it one bit, but when Twilight shows up she could probably tell me what the heck this is via pictographs and such. I put the book on top of the desk next to the oil lamp., and walked towards the desk in the corner. Opening it I found some quills, ink, and a stack of three books. Each one was filled with many characters and pictures. I would've said that these were picture dictionaries, but I couldn't really be sure. I sat down in the armchair by the window/tiny balcony and began looking at the three books.

After a while of the most intense book studying you could imagine, Twilight came back with a book of her own. Most likely it was a "spellbook" of awesomeness or "A Complete Guide to Mythos" book or something like that. Anyway her horn started was glowing again. I watched carefully as if it could somehow tell me the secret of its excess. After a while I think Twilight noticed because she was tapping my leg again. I looked down towards her face before a picture suddenly appeared in my face. I took it out of her magical grip and held it away from my face. I think it showed my head, a hollow hole inside it, and my mouth was open with a bubble coming out of it. Swirly stuff was inside the hollow and it was kind of swirling out of my head into another swirl out there emanating from a stick. I....think I know what's going on here. Twilight is going to try to "magically" implant knowledge into my brain on how to speak their language.

Twilight is going to try to get in my head and make me understand her language. Normally I would not allow this kind of tampering with my brain. However, if I am to actually understand their language without speaking in weird neighs and horse clicks all the time. I would also like to see what this actually does in terms of "magic". I gave her a nod. She nodded back and put her book over next to the stack on the desk. She started making more "magic" swirls on her horn until a brilliant flash startled my eyes. When the flash vanished back into the normal lighting and I found myself on the floor. I hurt a LOT. It had felt like she just took my body apart, made everything burn, be covered in acid, and put it back together piece by frickin piece. Then everything went black. When I came to from the pain coma, I was on the ground sobbing my heart out. I must've fell while she was doing the "magics". I looked up and saw that she was at about face value. Then her mouth started moving in her weird tongue clicks. "Did it work?"

Author's Note

Hey everybody! Sorry I got this uploaded so late. I tried sticking to my one week writing period. Things kind of got out of control though. Thankfully I got this out. I promise I will make the next one on time. As always comments are appreciated. See you next week. :pinkiehappy:

The Conversation

"Why?" I spoke with sadness. Twilight began to smile as she spoke once again.

"Perfect! The spell worked, but I need to know for sure! Say something else forest creat--Oh wait I haven't even asked for your name yet have I? Silly me. Anyway the name's Twilight. What's yours?" Twilight stated.

"Why...did it hurt so much?" Twilight's face fell as I mentioned the moment before.

"Well...I don't exactly know what you mean. The book says that the spell is supposed to be completely painless. You also completely ignored my question, but I'll look past that." She said.

"Why did it feel like I was being torn apart and set on fire?" I asked. She put on a look of concentration before she lit her horn once again. The book she brought earlier was once again levitated in front of her face while its pages kept flipping through. The weird part is I could read the book's title. Sure it was still in horse language, but for some reason I could just tell that the book read " The Modern Ways of Mind Magic Guide by G.P. Brainiac"

"I'm sorry. I don't actually know why. From what I can see the *neigh-nicker* is supposed to be keeping you from being in pain during the whole process." She stated. I was slightly confused by regular horse speak got through the "spell", but I put that

"Why would this.....be happening exactly? I mean....How is this happening?" I asked.

"Well, creature that refuses to give his name, I'll sum it up in two words. Mind magic. The actual pain that you've experienced however, the only way I can tell you that is if I study your natural magic pathways." Twilight replied.

I raised a eyebrow at this and shook my head. "I don't want you to be invading my personal space okay. I will let you do it eventually, but I need you to answer a question I have. How did you find me in the middle of that forest?

She raised her eyebrow and replied, "That bonfire you had. I could see it from my window while I was stargazing."

Huh. So I actually saved myself with the bonfire. I tried doing that before when I was still ignorant of where I was. I wonder why it didn't work before. "I've done this kind of thing before. Why has no one tried saving me before?"

Twilight answered my question with a question. "When was the last time you did it?" I was about to reply when the sentence actually entered my mind. When was the last time I had tried any rescue attempts? I thought back to the marks I had made on the cave wall. I silently counted them in my head before I answered back.

"I believe it's been about a year or so." Twilight looked at me thoroughly before her eyes lit up.

"So you were the one that started the Everfree Forest fire. My friend Rainbow Dash had to deal with that all by herself since the weather team was pre-occupied with setting up the weather in the apple orchards." She exclaimed.

"Welll..", I stuttered, "I tried making it as big as possible to get anybody's attention. At least now I know where that rain came from."

"What was that?" Twilight asked.

"Ohh..a nothing..."I replied. I didn't want Twilight to actually know my plans on ultimately pranking Rainbow for ruining past escape attempts. That would just ruin the fun.

"Ookay. Will you please just tell me your name already? I don't really want to call you 'The Creature' anymore." She stated.

"Alright, alright I'll tell you. The name's Mark Hampton." I told her. Her eyes squinted as she looked at me real hard. She shook her head.

"Well, Mr. Hempton, I would very much like to know why you were even out there. The Everfree is a very dangerous place to be around." I sighed and got up and sat on the chair. I would have to ignore the horrible botulism of my name for now since she was demanding a lot of answers. I faced towards silently weighing the consequences of what my actions may cause if I tell her. I finally came up with a way to tell her without involving dangerous information.

"Alright Miss Twilight. I'll tell you why I was in that damn forest." Twilight eyed me before nodding and sitting on the bed nearby.

It was a cool, winter in the middle of July. I had just got off of work and I was heading-----

"What was your job, Mark?" I sighed as Twilight interupted.

"I believe the best thing I have to describe myself would be aaaann.....astronomer. Now can you please let me finish my story?" I stated. Twilight Sparkle nodded silently and laid her head down on the bed.

Anyway I was just getting off work when my pal, Franklin came over and talked to me. Franklin was a nice guy. If by a nice guy you mean a complete narcissist. Anyway he came up to me and said, "Hey Mark! There's going to be an awesome camping trip coming down in about a week or so. Do you want to come man? It'll be so awesome. We'll just be roughing it like the old days!"

Now back when I was a teenager I went on all sorts of trips with Franklin. Now I don't know why for the life of me, but I decided to go with Franklin. Maybe I was looking for the taste of adventure before I got into the tyranny of boredom. Sure, stars and the like are great, but sometimes a man can't really live on stars.

When the day finally came to be, I gathered all of the gear I packed for the occasion. Around nightfall, when I had finally gotten to the campsite, I saw a steady glow that I thought then was the glow of an early campfire. How wrong I was. It was instead -of a portal. It was just there on the ground. Nothing was stirring. No air was being pushed or pulled. There was absolutely no disturbance to the natural wildlife from it, so its perfectly understandable that I didn't notice it until I fell into it. When I did fall into it all I saw was a blur of white until BAM! I landed in a leaf pile out in that forest. Ever since then, I've just been trying not to die.

When I was finished with the short recap, Twilight was mumbling to herself. I looked over towards her to find that somehow she had "conjured" up a notepad and quill and began to furiously write in them. "Umm....Twilight. Can I ask what exactly you're doing?"

Never once taing her eyes off of the notepad she said," Currently I'm trying to figure out what or who made that portal. If I can figure out who cast that and where then maybe I could send you back to where you came from. Now...where are you from?"

Jeez. I don't actually know if I should tell her about Earth. Knowing her it would just end up with hours upon hours of me telling everything I knew about humanity. I knew the right choice to make. it was just going to be very tolling on me.

"To begin with I guess I should start with the name of my country. I am from America. It is located on the continent of North America. On a Planet called Earth. Somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy. Do you see where I'm going with this?" Twilight was tilting her head slightly confused. Great...She doesn't get rhetoricals.

"So wait...You're an alien?" I nodded at this. She snickered slightly for a while before bursting out laughing. She was doing it for a while and I just decided to let her do it. It was probably god to let her get it out of her system anyway.

When she finally stopped laughing she looked at me and finally noticed my expression. "You're serious?" Once again I confirmed her. She was silent for a moment just standing there. At first I thought I had broken her, but then I heard a very high pitched noise. I couldn't make it out at first ,but then it got louder and louder. Then all of a sudden Twilight exploded into action.

"*SQUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH!AREALLIVEALIENISACTUALLYHEREWITHME.FIRSTCONTACTWITHANALIENRACEFROMEQUESTRIAWHATDOISAYWHATDOISAY????" This went on for a while until she abruptly stopped in her tirade of maniacal happiness. She started to just brush herself off, breathe in and out, and sat back down staring at me all the while.

"Sorry about that. I'm just very excited about this. It's not everyday that we get to meet someone entirely new to everything we know. Oh... the questions to the universe you can answer. Hey, can you please tell me everything there is to know about your culture?" That last sentence/question she said was just made up as I wasn't really paying attention to what she was saying at the moment, so I nodded absentmindedly while thinking about how the hell I was going to get out of Twilight Torture. Suddenly Spike came in through the door. Hurray for conveniency!

"WHAT THE HAY IS THAT THING!?!?! WHY DO WE HAVE AN ANIMAL IN HERE?!?!" Owwww. Spike....why with the yelling?

"Now Spike I want you to calm down. This here's a....friend of mine. He's going to be staying in the castle for a while. You're going to have to get used to him. His name's Maaak Heeaamptoone." Twilight was trying to console Spike's little terror fest over here and being the bright guy that I am, I decide to try to too.

"Hey little dude. Don't worry. It's not like I'm some sort of animal. I'm wearing clothes for Pete's sake." Spike's eyes just got wider than dinner plates after I said this.

"SEE! HE'S EVEN GROWLING AT ME! THIS PROVES MY POINT ABOUT THE DANGEROUS ANIMAL RIGHT THERE!" Now Spike that really hurts man. You were like my favorite dragon ever besides that giant black one in the background sky during the dragon migration. Wait....Why was he saying that I was growling?

"Twilight...what is he talking about?" Spike got even more scared and Twilight just sighed as he just went into the corner shivering.

"I'll tell you about it later. For now can you just sit down on the chair and be quiet. If Spike hears you talk anymore he might get a hernia." She motioned towards Spike as he was desperately glancing toward the door. Seeing the logic in her argument, I just sighed and sat in the chair like a good dog. I swear I'm going to get back at her someway. No one puts Mark in the corner. No one. After a while of douchebaggery from Spike, Twilight had calmed him sufficiently down and explained the full situation to him, minus the whole I'm an alien from another planet thing. Spike was still wary of me, but he had sufficiently calmed down enough to just keep it to staring at my figure.

"Now Spike. Let's redo this meeting alright. Mark this is Spike. Spike, Mark. Now you two shake hands." I had no idea why I had to do it since I didn't even fight with him, but I did it anyway since Twilight was technically powerful enough to vaporize me where I stand.

"Alright. Now that you two have shaken claws and paws, we can actually get down to business. Spike! Fetch me more papers, quills, and ink. We're going to be up for a looong time." Twilight was smiling gleefully as Spike just grumbled under his breath and left the room. This left us in silence with Twilight sitting there and staring at me. I was going to hat myself for this, but it was better than the unending silence right now. "Twilight...you may ask away. Just please.......keep things to a minimum." Yep...I hate myself for it.

Author's Note

Hey guys! Got the chapter out. Just a little update here ,but the next chapter that I'm writing can be skipped if you don't want to see the dumping of information. Then again it is a classic to see Twilight react to Human cynicism and barbarianism, so you few might be missing out on something.

Q&A With A Princess

"So... I guess the first question I have for you is...what exactly are you?" Twilight's question provoked serious thought. Not.

"The answer to your question can be many things. What am I to myself, to science, or maybe, to you? So, can you elaborate with your phrasing and/or word choice?" Yep. I'm gonna be a douchebag about it because this is gonna be boring as hell, and I might as well have some sort of fun with this. Twilight's face was a little red and I could tell she was a little peeved. She calmed down a little and sighed.

"I meant in the scientific perspective." I snickered for some time before I actually answered her.

"Well...my species is called human. We are also descended from some type of ape or gorilla that I can't remember the name of. Now it's my turn to ask questions!"

"Wait! Why are you asking any questions? I still have more for you!" I face-palmed as I just realized how much explanation of human talk-slash-culture-slash-my tendencies I'm going to have to do for the unicorn uncultured in my humanly ways.

"Have you ever heard of a Q and A Twilight?" Her cheeks turn a slight tinge red as embarrassment creeps up onto her features.

"I thought so. Anyway my question is actually about this thing that we're doing right now. You know the talking and such. How is it that we are able to talk to each other at all while Spike can't even understand me?" Twilight's eyes go wide with surprise.

"Oh! I'm sorry Mark. I didn't realized that I hadn't even told you about the inner working of the spell I used on you. You must be extremely confused right now. Let me explain. The spell just simply tampers with the ears and how they receive sound into the brain. Simply put, I made it so you can understand me, but I can also understand you. Anyone else that was not here when the spell was cast just hears us talking in both of our separate languages. Sorry about the confusion."

"It's alright Twilight. I'm just very confused about this whole....'magic' business. Back where I come from it's more of a.......concept than an actual real thing." Twilight's eyes widened once again to the processed information. I assume it was either her trying to understand a world without any sort of magic or if she wanted to try the tests right here and now. Twilight's horn lit up and suddenly a white light burst from nowhere and random things were now touching my body.

"A world without magic is an incredulous thing. It's like thinking of the 'Law of Balance' not even existing. I have to study you right here and now! If what you say is actually true then this could change what we think about the Universe. Or it could just prove that you're from a different Universe, let's actually find out!" I called it. Twilight was flipping random levers, dials, and switches while attaching all sorts of plugs to my body and other general areas. Before I even got a chance to object to the treatment, Twilight had stuck something in my mouth.

"Okay Mark. Can you please breathe into this *Nicker-neyigh*? Please co-operate or I will be forced to make you." Wow. Twilight has definitely taken an assertive class with Iron Will. Either that or Princess-hood actually did something for her. Anyway I'm just going to have to go and do it. It's not like I can actually object otherwise Twilight might literally take me apart for the glory of science. After a while of obeying the commands of the "probably" Professor Twilight, I was taken off the equipment and put back on the bed. Suddenly my shirt was ripped off and she had stuck some sort of suction cup devices all over my back, front, and on my head. Now don't think that she was silent during all of this. She was spouting random gibberish at some point, and she had gone back to neighing again. It was getting really annoying ,so I just went and did a very impulsive thing.

"TWILIGHT!!" Her ears swiveled towards me. Her checks were slightly flushed.

"Uhhhh....Yes?" I was glad that at least I had gotten her attention. I know when she usually gets like this it's really hard to pull out of.

"Can you please stop the weird invasions on my personal space?" A hoof flew in front of her face before she wacked herself.

"Sorry...Sometimes I can't control my urges." She smiled sheepishly. Oh god the cuteness factor. Must..remain..strong!

"It's...fine. As long as you don't do that again. Anyway what did you get? I might as well know." Twilight's face brightened once again and her magic glowed. Paper readings and charts flew from the many machinations into Twilight's face. They flew in front of Twilight's face at a rapid pace in a sort of hemisphere globe. It was a kind of awesome to see all the things floating individually in random lines. All of a sudden Twilight's magic fell off of everything except the one chart she had in her hooves currently.

"That...doesn't really make any sense. It shouldn't technically be possible." Twilight's mutters had greatly disturbed me. If she had not heard of any kind of species, native to her world, that had the kind of magic that I had then she surely would want to perform many, various experiments upon myself.

"I'm going to assume that you are kind of an expert when it comes from this "magic" business since you have all this equipmentw tih you. Now can you tell me if this is hazardous to my health right now?" Twilight quickly shook her head.

"Noooo! Your magic is just....peculiar as it were. It kind of...alternates?" I looked at her weirdly.

"Aaaaannnnddddd.....How is that weird exactly?" I replied.

"Think of magic as a whole, like water. All of it's existence is just water. Now sometimes it can be made to freeze or evaporate to use magic in better ways. Your magic is somehow ice, water, and water vapor at the same time. This slightly violates some laws that we know about magic."

"Okay. How much am I violating right now?" She seemed to mull over the answer for a bit before she decided to speak.

"Right now, you're violating about 39% of our laws?" Huh. I thought that I would be violating more than that.

"So you said that there are "states" where magic can become, right? What exactly are they and in what way am I doing it?"

"Well Mark, there are mainly three states of magic. They are 'Active', 'Passive', and 'Constant'. As their names would imply they do the sorts of things you could expect them to do. Active is only 'active', as it were, when somepony is making magic bend to their will. Passive is occurring when there is an effect that is placing on an object or belonging to a person that will last for a set amount of time. Finally there is Constant. It is one of the most illusive, mysterious, and harder to cast of all the branches. These spells last forever, effecting the general area, changing the universe 'slightly' to accommodate the spell caster's base desire."

Well....After that brief discussion upon the effects of magic I can conclude one thing. It is not at all subject to what I originally thought about it. Unless something hasn't been discovered by our current physics department, then I highly doubt if I am in my universe anymore. Oh well. I guess I shouldn't be that surprised about it. I mean...if magical ponies actually existed in our universe, and we had successfully predicted their actions through a production by Canadians, then I would say that it was either really coincidental or that aliens were somehow wanting to judge humanity's reaction to their history. Yeah... Like that'll ever happen. Anyway I probably should actually paying attention to Twilight's rants. Somehow they are very easy to ignore.

"....and those are some examples of each magical effect!" Welp.. Guess I wasn't paying attention to anything she said at all. After a few moments of her holding a proud attitude on her face and with me being completely lost, I decided to work up the courage to actually ask her about my previous question. Hopefully I wouldn't mess up and look like a complete buffoon.

"Sooooooo....... What way am I doing in regards to those three aspects?" Twilight looked at my face blankly before she suddenly had an embarrassed look.

"Oh! I'm so sorry about that. I hadn't even realized that I had not answered your previous question. I'm so sorry. I just have a tendency to ramble on and on when magic is mentioned. You must understand that when people ask you about the stars though." Realizing that my 'fake' job had kind of been mentioned I decided to tell her the truth about my work. In a way that doesn't confuse her or tell her of Human's advancements of course

"Well....yeah. I guess. I mean in my field I don't get that many questions about my work."

"What do you mean?"

"Well where I come from, people wouldn't really need a person of my skill unless they wanted to go into my field as well. If there's anything specific they wanted to now they could just look in the knowledge that everyone already has access to." I know... I should probably tell her the truth at some point about what I actually was and all that, but..... I just can't right now. She would only ask for more and more knowledge, and we all what could happen if she actually figured that our world was full to the brim about knowledge. Sure that would get here to move faster with the portal magic, but I don't think that the world is ready for the kind of thing that's going to happen right then.

The governments of the world would only seek to better themselves with the capability of producing and marketing magic. Bronies would just come over here and make a mess of things to the timeline as well as bug the heck out of Twilight and her friends. Also, the other species on Equis, if that's the planets name, would think of humanity. they could get into wars with us over the most little things like our culture or our way of thinking. All in all I think it's too much of a liability for them to know about us.

"Oh. So everyone has a giant personal library then?" I was shaken out of my musings by Twilight's sudden question.

"I guess you could say that Twilight. Anyway what are your questions now? I think I've asked about.....3 questions too much, so go ahead and ask away." Twilight looked slightly surprised before she nodded quickly.

"That's quite alright. All of that was just the spawn of an answer I wanted so badly, so I guess that was my own consequence for asking." Huh. I guess Twilight is more mature than I thought. "But since you were so insistent, I guess that I can always go for more questions." Welp. That ideas went out the window.

"So, what are humans like exactly?" .....Great. I'm going to have to explain the most hardest of all questions to Twilight Sparkle. Lucky me.

"Twilight can you get me some paper and quills. I think this is going to be the easiest explanation I can probably give." She nodded slowly before her horn glowed once again ,producing the required items. After a few trials and tribulations I got the thing to look exactly like it was supposed to.

"This Twilight is basically what humans are like. We can be all of these things. Now next question!" Twilight was a little disgruntled with the short answer ,but she seemed to be acceptable of it. Unfortunately before she got her next question out a high pitched whistling rang through the air. Twilights ears twitched as she looked over towards the window. I looked out there as well and I was somewhat disgruntled by the fact that there was a giant dot growing in size. My first thought was why Rainbow dash was exactly flying directly into the castle. Then I actually realized she was heading straight towards us.

Apparently Twilight came up with that same thought because she had a panicked look on her face and she had began doing numerous things with the magical horn of hers. The numerous devices disappeared within a blink of an eye and were replaced with tons of pillows. She then dove underneath them all and prepared for the collision. I looked out the window again to have an update on the Rainbow Dash alert. She was only a few yards away. I turned around and began beating on the pillows, demanding that she let me in to escape the oncoming storm of pain. She might've said something about teleporting me in. I heard the familiar sound of a sonic rainboom. I knew that I had become seriously fucked over. I tried to duck in cover, but I was too late. I heard the sound of crashing glass and suddenly pain was felt throughout my back. Color faded to grey as my consciousness faded.

Author's Note

Hurray for easy explanations!!! Also charts make appearances. Yeah got nothing more than that. Oh! Also I'm very sorry for leaving you all without pony for this long. I know how much we need it sometimes. Anyway hope you don't hate this new chapter too much.

Interuptions and Disastrous Happenings

A Few Hours Earlier

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Rainbow Dash was a very cool mare. At least in her regard ,that is. Some chose to agree with her ,like her ever prominent shadow, Scootaloo, so it would be very unusual to find her here of all places, lounging around in the Ponyville Spa. She was currently being worked on by a mare name Aloe. She was recommended greatly for her massaging techniques by Rarity, so she thought that asking for her would be a good idea. Thankfully the high praise from Rarity wasn't just exaggeration, but Rainbow's mind was currently focused on other things being how she currently looked. Rainbow had to admit that even she didn't look as cool as she was supposed to be right then and there, but she had promised Rarity to actually go with her this time. She couldn't just keep running away from her promises.

Unfortunately, she was actually enjoying this. She didn't really want to accept that Rarity may have been right about relaxing after all, so she just sat there and tried to be as uncomfortable as possible. Thankfully that was really easy since Rarity was just talking her ear off. She was going on about some nonsense with shampoos, conditioners, and some hooficures. "Honestly it's a wonder why Fluttershy just didn't die of boredom," Rainbow thought. Rarity just kept going on and on and on. In little time at all she was stuck in her own little world of being the Wonderbolts captain. Every once in a while she would either nod or shake her head absentmindedly when Rarity's voice had a questioning tone. Rarity never found out about it, so rainbow kept on doing it for a while. This was the façade that Rainbow had decided to stick to for the entire time she was over there in the Ponyville Spa. It would've been a very boring day for her had it not been for one little incident during the mud bathing. Specifically, it was Spike the prepubescent dragon.

Now Spike was just there to see Rarity. He always knew where she was at any time of the day due to his secret Rarity calendar he hid underneath his basket. For the sake of Spike's privacy however we should stay away from those dark thoughts. Anyway Spike was not expecting Rainbow Dash to be there at all, so when he actually saw Rainbow in blissful unawareness, he decided he better do something to actually get her attention. It's perfectly understandable then, that his first action would be to poke her in the face. Rainbow was unfortunately woken up.

"Spike.....what the hay are you doing?" All of this was spoken in a very straight tone of voice, so when Spike heard this he immediately stopped the poking to form a rebuttal.

"Uuhhhhhh....poking you in your sleep?" This was said with a smile from the dragon. Rainbow sighed as she mentally hoof-slapped her face.

"Spike...if you ever speak of what you've seen here, I will do many unspeakable horrors." Rainbow would never harm one of her friends, but with her scary tone of voice, Spike was starting to think otherwise.

"Now darling...you can't do that to him. I know that you're embarrassed to be here, but you can't take that out on him." Rainbow hated to admit it, but Rarity had become the voice of reason in their little conversation.

"I'm sorry Spike, but you have to see this from my point of view. If you would even talk about what was mentioned here then all of my street cred would be lost. I wouldn't even have a chance at the Wonderbolts if they thought that I was too mare-y to join them." Spike's head nodded. Even though he, or anyone else for that matter, didn't know what the hay rainbow Dash was talking about, he decided to do this for the simple reason of making Rainbow Dash happy. Anyone knew that if Rainbow ever mentioned anything having remote possibility being related to the Wonderbolts, then it was very important to her. Rainbow sighed and Rarity shook her head tittering all the while.

"Really Rainbow....You don't think for once that he would just ramble on to his friends about what happened hear do you?" Rainbow grumbled a bit as Rarity pointed out yet another instance where she had messed up. Meanwhile Spike was grumbling to himself about how he didn't even have any other friends besides the mares since they demanded most of his attention. Unfortunately Rainbow had heard him muttering.

"What was that Spike?" Spike then began to sweat profusely. He had to think of a very good excuse. If any of the girls were to find out about his abnormal social life, then Twilight would for sure cram many past friendship lessons down his throat. Spike was suddenly struck by inspiration.

"I was just thinking about what had happened at the castle." Rainbow's eyebrows raised and Rarity's ears twitched for the potential gossip.

"There was this.....creature that was growling and was around Twilight-"

"IS IT STILL THERE SPIKE?!?" Spike's eardrums felt like they would've burst from Rainbow's outburst.

"Ummmm.....yeah, I think so if Twilight still has-" It was pointless to go on however, since Rainbow had already flown out of the spa. Spike sighed and putting a claw to his face.

"Don't you worry Spike. I'm sure that Rainbow will deal with that ruffian." Spike rolled his eyes as Rarity mishandled the situation.

"That's the thing Rarity. It's not a monster. Twilight said that it was just an ambassador." Rarity's eyes widened as her brain finally processed the information.

"Oh...oh dear."
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Meanwhile up in the skies, Rainbow was flying towards the castle. Clouds flew by under her as she sped along. Thankfully none of the weather team had placed them any higher, otherwise Rainbow would've directly flew into one. rainbow wasn't paying attention to this however. She was thinking about the potential monsters that could have been attacking Twilight at this moment. She was currently thinking about the possible monsters that could've showed up at that crystal tree-castle of hers.

'It could only be a thing crystal related. I mean, the guards outside would surely stop any and all threats coming towards the castle, so the only possible solution is that it was inside the castle to begin with. It was either that or another one of Twilight's experiments. So if I am going to attack this thing, I'm going to need speed, power, and a secret weapon' Contrary to popular belief, Rainbow doesn't always just dash blindly into danger. Sure she may on occasion forget to actually put her brain to use before combat, but she was still a hell of a good strategist. It was a skill that she only relied on for the most dire of situations. She didn't think that the fight would be fun if she just planned the whole battle out. Thankfully for Twilight as well as "the monster" there was just one thing stopping her from finding the two of them.

"I'm sorry mam, but are you insulting me?"

"No Mr. Guard it's just that I do believe that there's a monster in-"

"No there isn't. Ii would've seen it come here. Now would you please back away mam." Rainbow was pissed. She couldn't talk any kind of sense with the guard. If only Twilight had not posted a guard detail ,then perhaps she would've gotten in there faster. "Oh well" she thought, " I did warn him or her about the monster." She never knew what gender they ever were. They were usually all just enchanted to look the same and "be" the same for "unity" reasons that she usually never understood. Backing away from those thoughts, she began to trot away from the guard towards a lone tree over the hill. She flew into it and pretended to be asleep. Eventually the guard did turn his(her?) attention away from her and resumed his(her?) patrol around the door. She waited for a few moments before she made her move.

She dashed towards the tree-castle and hid on one of its balconies. Thankfully no guards were detailing it, so she was currently safe. Now all she had to do was stick to her plan. She crouched down really low and began to peer of the edge of the balcony over its hoof rail. None of the guards were looking up. It was the perfect chance. She silently flapped her wings to get some altitude and went to check on all of the windows.

Her plan was relatively simple. She was to scout the perimeter and see if anything abnormal was amiss. If she couldn't spot anything she would see if any of the windows or balcony doors were unlocked and sneak inside. She started going around the entire trunk and worked her way upwards until she saw the top most window. Standing right behind it was the bulkiest and most shadowy beast that Rainbow had ever seen. (Not counting Sombra) Then she finally noticed what was the object of its desire, Twilight Sparkle. She knew that if she was to take down this thing before Twilight was severely hurt, she would need a lot of speed. She zoomed away from the castle to a short distance away. Then she flew straight towards the window. Unfortunately the guard from earlier was looking up when she did this, so the guard then began to yell at her at the top of his(her?) lungs. "STOP BEFORE YOU HURT YOURSELF!!!!!"

Rainbow was too far up as well as fast to even hear her though, so she took no heed to the guard's advice. Light was beginning to bend around her as she recognized what was about to happen. "Finally," she realized, "I have enough speed to take this thing down." As she sped further and further towards the window, she thought she heard Twilight cheer her on. "Come on! Get in here quickly!" That was the last thing she heard before she flew through the window and did a Sonic Rainboom. She thought she heard the thing growl in surprise before she slammed into his back. Then everything went dark.
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In another part of Equestria, specifically Canterlot, Celestia was listening to another noble go on a rant about how that she should get something from someone for some such reason. She wasn't really paying attention. Thankfully her guards were.

"...and THAT in conclusion is why I should get control over the trade routes to and from Las Pegasus!" Celestia was woken up violently by the sound of the noble. Thankfully she had trained for years to actually look awake while she was sleeping. It was mostly a body numbing spell that kept Celestia in her current position on her regal chair, but some of it was also an illusion spell to keep the visiting nobles from seeing Celestia sleep with her eyes closed and snoring. She whispered to her guard, Silver Light, "What situation is it?"

"Princess I do believe it is a Tango-Red-Bravo-Alpha-Tortilla Chip." Celestia's face brightened up as she finally

"Thank you." Silver smiled slightly.

"Alright Miss Coin, I have carefully considered your petition to control the trade routes, and I am glad to say that you have provided many good reasons to do so as well as some extensive credentials in past endeavors. I'm happy to say that you're petition has been accepted. Your work begins in a week. Be prepared." The noble's faced stared confusingly at the princess.

"Princess....My name isn't Coin. It's Raakel." Celestia's eyes opened widely as she stared at Silver. Silver looked confused as well before she gained a look of comprehension.

"Sorry Princess,", she whispered, " I meant Tango-Red-Bravo-Alpha-Enchilada." The Princess nodded sagely. Now, however she was going to have to shoot down Raakel's proposal. She was vastly different from Coin's way of money management. Raakel just let everypony take advantage of her when it came to corporate investment and real estate. She could only imagine what unspeakable horrors the economy might be put through if Raakel ever held such a major trade route to the Saddle Arabian Empire.

"Aahhh, sorry about that my little pony. Now where were we?"

"I think that you were about to"---Suddenly there was a flash of light coming from the windows. Secretly, Celestia was glad to have a diversion at that particular moment, since explaining why she thought she was Wealthy Coin would be a very difficult and intricate process. Everypony looked outside towards the light. I bright column of rainbow light was erupting from a nearby town reaching towards the inky blackness of the starry night. No one here knew about this town except the most elite of guards as well as the princess' themselves. They were well versed in the disasters that effected the town daily. Nothing could prepare them for the window shattering boom that took place. Windows shuddered and warped inwards. All of them shattered. That one action would cost a lot of bits for Celestia for the colored glass restoration. She was not worrying about that right now however. All she could think about now was, "Twilight...what trouble have you gotten in to now??"

Author's Note

Hey everypony! Sorry for the little delay there. With all of that hacker business that happened about ca couple of weeks ago, I couldn't really write anything during that time. That whole thing kind of interrupted my whole writing schedule that I had. I can only hope that this chapter will make up for the lateness of my update. I'm very sorry. :pinkiesad2: I will also make up a longer than usual chapter after this one. Once again, I'm sorry for disappointing everyone. I am a worthless human being. Also, I will explain why Celestia was doing night court. Please be patient and not try to kill me. Thank you. If any of you are trying to imagine what the column is like, then you can look at the picture below. Just try to imagine it on its side pointing up and you will get the gist of what this is.

The Rainbow Inferno

Magical fire whipped around the crystal tree. Many ponies outside were looking in shock as their new princess' castle was being engulfed in the flames. They would be severely worried if not for the guard's enchanted armor. Guards hustled to and from rooms carrying ponies and gems outside to safety where the magic shockwave of the blaze wouldn't overload their mana capacities and shut down their brains or ,in regards to the gems, make them explode and fling their magical capabilities everywhere. Unfortunately what the civilians that were crowding around the area didn't know, was that none of the guards could enter the most heavily flamed area of the entire castle. Their magical enchantments could only go so far until they would horribly die from sever magical backlash. The seventeen unconscious guards that were quickly being drained of the energy that made them live was a testament to that. No guard knew what could have possibly been in that room to have caused something like this, but it would have to be either another powerful being bent on world domination/destruction or it was just another of Twilight Sparkle's experiments that went wrong a few days earlier than predicted. Either way they knew that something gigantic was going on inside that room. They would never know though. All they could do right now was watch as the flame engulfed the castle, so when Rarity and Spike approached it they were flabbergasted as to what the hay was going on.

"What the hay is happening here?!?!" Rarity's eyes widened at what Spike had just thrown out into the wind.

"Spike, while I fully agree with what you're implying about this current situation, IT DOES NOT excuse you to use the words of unspeakable horror!" Spike rolled his eyes at Rarity's antics.

"Alright, alright. I'm sorry. Are you happy now?" While Spike's reply seemed to be a little dry and bitter towards Rarity, it seemed like she got the answer she wanted.

"Okay. Now...where do we go for information about this?" Spike sighed as he pointed towards the one guard that was doing his best at crowd control.

"Oh. There he is. Thanks Spikey-Wikey." Spike inwardly groaned about Rarity's particular word usage. He loved her and all, but he still did not get why she still treated him like a kid when he's only a few years younger than her.

~"Excuse me! Mister Guard! What exactly is going on here?"~ The guard turned towards Rarity and spoke briefly about the incurrences that entangled around the mysterious rainbow fire.

"Well Miss, I guess this fire started around the top floor. Thankfully it's not really spreading anywhere else besides the castle. Otherwise some townsfolk might be dead right about now." Rarity's look turned dark as she turned away from the guard to stare at the castle fire storm.

"I hope Twilight and Rainbow are alright in there." What Spike didn't know, however, was that Twilight, Rainbow, and ,the human Mark were all in a very perilous situation.
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Twilight Sparkle was usually a mare in charge. Whenever there was a situation or disaster that was going on, she always got everypony calm, cool, and organized. This might have been one of the traits that actually helped Princess Celestia whether to decide she was ready for the mantle of Princess. Unfortunately, at this particular moment, that trait had lost its usefulness. There was nopony to organize and nopony to calm down. The only ones she could have been doing those to would have been either Rainbow Dash, who was currently unconscious, and Mark, who was spewing rainbow fire. The only pony that actually needed that kind of leadership was herself. She had no idea what to do, no clue as to what was happening, and she couldn't even produce magic to save the day, like usual. She was completely lost.

"Rainbow! Are you alright? RAINBOW!" Rainbow Dash made no response to Twilight's yelling. Twilight was getting extremely worried that Rainbow Dash was going to die here. She could feel the uncontrollable pull of Mark's magic flames. She had no idea what had caused this ,but she was pretty sure that the magical feedback from Rainbow's rainboom had surely caused some kind of chain reaction with his unknown magical potential. This was very bad in Twilight's view. His magical capacities, to her knowledge, were being overloaded with outside magic and his body was trying to make a sense of it all. This was a very easy problem to fix ,in Twilight''s opinion, but it was going to be hard to actually do it. To cast the specific spell she had in mind she was going to need to get very close enough to him to be able to touch her horn anywhere on his body. Determined Twilight cast her horn for the spell and began to head towards Mark.

The inferno engulfed Twilight as she stepped more and more towards Mark. She could feel the magical flame sapping away from her body. It was amazing how fast this flame was sucking away on her magical supply. She was already down to at least 25%. If this kept going on, she was surely going to collapse and die from magical withdrawal. She was going to have to do this quickly. She flapped her wings to disrupt the magical flames. Thankfully it cleared a little path that she could trot through towards the floating human. Her horn inched towards his chest. The magical spell within was finally unleashed as it touched him.

A loud boom sounded as Twilight and Rainbow were pushed towards the wall forced to watch Mark. The rainbow fire surged towards the human and gathered at a point on the right side of his body. Then it all exploded outwards in an arc. It dissipated when it hit the side of the room. Twilight and Rainbow fell down to the ground. Twilight then felt some of her magic accumulating again. She looked towards Rainbow to check on her condition and noticed that her breathing was actually regular and not the irregular pattern that it once was. She was glad but she had to check the fallen human. If this spell had been cast on a regular pony the result would have been the same ,but with a human....she couldn't really know. As she got closer to the human she noticed that his magical energy levels were starting to get back to normal. Well...somewhat normal. She was just happy that the spell hadn't hurt him. Slowly his eyes opened taking in the surroundings before he spoke.

"Why am I on the floor?"
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Yet Again We Dive Into The Past

Owwww. My head was killing me. Rainbow must've kicked my head in. How else could I be experiencing this much pain? Uhh. Where the hell am I anyway? I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by pitch blackness. "Hello!"

Echoes only reached my ears. No other sound ever reached my ears, not even the sound of my own breath. This was creepy. It was like I was dead or someth-"I'm sorry to say Mark ,but you are getting there."

"What the heck?!? Who said that?" I looked all around finding nothing but the cold, inky blackness surrounding me.

"I did." I turned around swiftly towards the voice that whispered in my ear. Finding nothing I turned around once again to find a giant rainbow flame in front of my face. Startled I fell backwards onto the ground.

"Ahahaha! Ohohoh! You should see your face! Oh that was a good one. I haven't laughed this hard in ages." The rainbow fire bulged around in many places until it stopped 'laughing'.

"Who ,or perhaps what, are you?" The fire glowed a bit before it spoke once again.

"I am your, how would you put it,....your mana."

"I think I get it. You're saying that you are my magic, right? "

"Ahh yes. That would be the correct statement."

"Alright, now that that's been taken care of, what did you mean by me being close to death." The flame flickered a bit before it spoke again.

"Well...what do you actually remember before you came here?" That's...a really good question actually. What do I remember before getting to this place? Let's see. Twilight took me away from the cave, she talked to me about my culture/history, Spike came in and was a bit of a jerk, we continued talking, and then Rainbow appeared outside and...Oh.

"So...am I correct in saying that I'm on Death's door because of Rainbow Dash head-butting me?" The flame flickered once again before replying.

"Yeah, that's the gist of it." I nodded once before realizing that I had another thing to deal with.

"Now it's time to address another issue of mine. I don't actually believe you on being my 'mana'. Humans don't have magic. I can't just walk up the street and ask a neighbor to conjure up a bag of sugar."

"While that may be the case now, it was not always that way. How else would I be here, eh?"

"We're in Equestria. People usually write about how magic is usually here anyway."

"Hmmm. That may be the case, but I only have one thing to tell you about that. Do you remember what happened at your seventh birthday party?" My eyes became saucers as I discovered why the flame was so bent on me having magic.

"Um, nope. Don't actually know what you are talking about." The fire crackled as its color took on a more violet hue. I assumed that that was its form of a sigh.

"You seriously don't remember that one time you saw a guy do magic. *crackle* Fine. Suddenly everything lit up. Colors invaded the darkness. Shapes were made with shadows and light. Buildings emerged from the canvas of colors. Once everything was done re-arranging itself, it looked exactly like what I had witnessed so long ago. The fire appeared right in front of me once again.

"Whoo. That was a little hectic to make, but I'm sure that I'll get the excess that I used back. Anyway here we are. You surely can't deny it now. It's happening right in front of your face." I fidgeted left and right, trying to deny the same exact thing that I had once seen. There was no way there was magic. I was a man of science! I explain things with cold rationality and they are true. I became a physicist to unravel the various mysteries of the world. I didn't do it just to satisfy a childhood dream. Magic's not real and that's tha---- A burst of flame shot in front of me. Ahh yes. I remember this. My distrust and unhappiness soon turned into nostalgia as I got into the role that I had played so long ago.
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It was June, 24th. My seventh birthday party had just rolled around. My parents put out all the stops since they had gotten huge raises by their bosses. They weren't there of course. They had to work until 6:30. Sometimes they would stay out until 8:00. I was fine with it though. They always brought home food. I was worried for a time. They seemed like they were overworking themselves, but they said that they were fine. It was always there though. The constant feeling of absence. It was being driven out by the amount of 'friends' surrounding me though. I knew that they were never here for me, only for the fun and stuff that they could get. To them my party was a free buffet. I was just the dish that no one wanted. Like that weird sauce that no one ever puts on the salad. I didn't mind that though either. It was nice to pretend.

You see my family was one from a passion of wealth. Ever since my great-great-someodd grandfather on my mother's side had the brilliant idea to dig for gold near Mexico City, people would never stop leaving him alone. That's why the family moved over to America under the guise of Spanish colonists. Then, if you speed it up to today, my father met my mother and they both fell in love. After I was born my mother's parents died and left their fortune to her as well as their stocks in the Walt Disney Corporation. They were pretty lucky to invest so quickly. Otherwise the whole family might've lost thousands of dollars.

Anyway with our families quick rise to wealth, all of their jobs now seemed meaningless. I asked why they kept doing this and not spend time with me ,but they always replied with one simple phrase. "If anything in life was as easy to get, then why would you work hard for it." I never understood what they meant until I was older, but right then all I cared about was the cake, presents, and the awesome stage magician that they hired for everyone. Now when you think of a stage magician, you always think of the guy that's wearing the suit and pulls rabbits out of hats, right? This guy was totally different. He blew all of the kids and me away. He didn't have a stage name, nor did he bring a stage. All he had was a suitcase and his hands. He had red hair, blue eyes, and was pretty tall. He was also dressed in shorts, wasn't wearing a shirt, and he only wore sandals. Nobody here really expected him to be the magician. I thought he was just some surfer dude that came to California for some nice waves. That is until he specifically asked me a question.

"Hey there. Is this..", He pulled out a slip of paper from his back pocket. "Mark's birthday party?" I nodded yes. He nodded back and replied, "Thanks kid."

At the time I actually wondered what the heck he was doing here and why. Why would some drifter come here for my birthday party? All of my doubts were put to rest when he went in front of the fellow kids and announced, "Who here hired a magician?!?!" Of course all of us kids had no idea where my parents were, so must of us just shrugged our shoulders or just sat there staring at him. He sighed before looking around and asking another question. "Are there any adults here at all?" All of the kids shook their heads.

"Alright then. Guess that means I don't have to bring the adult stuff." He then proceeded to open his suitcase and throw out all of the objects within. A suit flew out disrupting pre-set cards in the sleeves as well as a dove that was living in a bulge in the shoulder. A big box that was probably meant to be the saw trick flew out of the suitcase as well. What was extraordinary about that, was that the box was bigger than the suitcase. There was also intertwined rings and a top hat with a secret compartment that flew open, releasing a white rabbit and a carrot. He kept on throwing things out of the suitcase before it was completely empty. He stood on top of it before he announced, "Alright kids! Who wants to see some real magic!?!?" All of us were pretty confused. How was he going to perform 'magic' when there was nothing to perform with? Despite our confusion some of us half-heartedly cheered before he smiled. "Good." He tapped his foot three times onto the side of the suitcase. That was when the real magic happened.

The whole crowd gasped in awe as the suitcase became a stage. There was no poof of magic. No trickery to follow. It just morphed into a stage. That was when everyone in the crowd cheered for him. Everyone knew that this would be an awesome day. He performed various tricks for us. He conjured up a wand, said some magical words, and did other fun things. He even transformed himself into a dragon and breathed flames above us. We were worried for our own health since he did light the house on fire at one point, but he fixed it so we had more confidence in him. The whole evening was spent eating cake and ice cream, having fun, and trying to figure out how he did what he did. It was pretty fun and all until everyone left. My parents were not here, so I was just alone with the magic man who was about to leave. I hadn't even bothered to ask his name. So right there I decided to do something that I hadn't done all day. Talk.

"Ummm. Excuse me, sir. I was wondering..umm..what's your name? You never told anyone." As you can probably tell, I was that one shy kid that you usually never noticed and never developed any sort of social skills. He just smiled slightly. He turned towards me and spoke.

"Well..well..well, the birthday boy finally speaks, does he? Well to answer your question, the name's Renald. Renald Groughf." He turned to leave and as I saw him walk off, sun against his back, I made it my life's one goal to figure out what he did and do it for myself. The last I ever saw of the man was as he was disappearing over the hill, down the neighborhood.

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I snapped out of my reverend as I finally noticed I was not in my younger's place. I looked around to find the same flame dancing by my shoulder. "What made you stop believing, Mark? What made you lose the faith that you had?" I sighed as the mana fire once again 'talked'.

"If you were a part of me you would understand." The fire just flickered in response and stated, "I am, but could you at least humor my request?" I sighed as I began telling him what exactly 'happened'.

"I guess I grew up. No one believed me, my parents doubted me, and even the kids that were at the party just said it was some mass hallucination. Eventually I guess I believed them and this memory faded away into one of my child-hood fantasies." The fire flickered once again.

"Alright, but what's stopping you from believing now?" I was silent for a time until the sun set and my younger self went back inside. I was still silent even when the fake moon rose into the sky.

"Alright you can be silent all you want and not answer my question, but we will have to have this talk again." I nodded in reply. We stayed like that for a while just me sitting on the curb with the fire, staring up into the sky. It was a long while before anything really happened. It came without no warning really. A giant purple blob of energy just appeared in front of me.

"It's okay", it said in Twilight's voice, " you're not in trouble or anything. Just calm down and we can get back to talking like we did before. You just have to gain control of this magical surge that you're having." It kept on repeating those words on a loop. I was utterly confused.

"What do you suppose it's saying that for?" The fire briefly turned blue before returning back to its original rainbow.

"Twilight Sparkle is trying to contact you. She believes that you are having a magical surge that may be potentially what's causing what's happening outside of your body." This got me skeptical of what exactly the rainbow flame was actually doing.

"What are you doing that could possibly be seen as a magical surge?" It seemed to turn blue once again before reporting back to me.

"I'm currently taking in magic to replenish what is currently being used up to heal you. It is a lot though, since the current aura field does not like the way I'm healing you." This got me suspicious.

"How much exactly?" It did the color change and then warbled in and out.

"Oh. That's unexpected. It appears we're taking so much, that the local energy field is also drawing on the energy of the locals to keep itself sustained." Alarmed I turned towards it and shouted.

"Well! Can't you turn this off?" It flickered before it said, "Yeah, do you want to do it now and deal with being injured for a while? This is the only major stunt that I can probably pull off to keep us alive." Weighing in the options I finally conceded.

"Alright do it." It flickered once before it began to take a shade of red.

"It is done." The landscape began to melt away the colors faded to black, the shapes retreated into a two-dimensional form, and the rainbow fire began to fade away.

"I'll see you later! Don't get into too much danger alright. You can't really control your magic yet, so it's imperative that you let me rest a little so you can recover some magic." Its words kept getting harder and harder to hear as it faded away. Soon it was completely gone and I was alone again, in this inky blackness. I felt bad for calling him nothing but a fire for most of our conversation. In most of my time in the new black space I was trying to think up of a name for it. Then ,after a while, I felt something prod me in the side and I opened my eyes. I saw Twilight next to me, Rainbow Dash in the corner, and everything in the room was stacked up against a wall. I also noticed that I was not on the bed yet. I thought that Twilight would've at least put me up on it while I was out. It was still sitting upright, so it could've been easily done. With these thoughts in my head, I said the first things that came to mind.

"Why am I on the floor?"

Author's Note

Here you go everypony! I got this chapter on time. Yeah! I keep my promises. Also ,to answer your question that is undoubtedly in the back of your mind, his name is Renald Groughf. I did not mistype things there. Also, I hope everyone likes the little background on Mark. It's nice to have a character have some history, no? Furthermore, I am putting up a vote. You guys get to decide what the mana fire gets to be called. The deadline is within a week so comment it up. Anyway I hope you liked this chapter.

The Explorations of Mana

As Mark slowly faded out of the confines of his mind and slowly awoke into consciousness, his mana was currently doing a check on his vitals. "Everything seems to be in order. The heart's still pumping blood, the lungs are letting air flow, and his bones aren't that broken. Besides slight bruises and some off-coloration to his limbs, everything seems to be in working order." His flowing form shined a bright green before returning to his brilliant hues. He crackled a little bit before creating a small chair and table and began floating towards them.

"Well...now that that's out of the way, I guess it's time to get down to business." The fire making up his form pulsed blue and red before a little screen appeared on the table.

"Ahh the trusty Dell. Best thing I can use for this job of mine." The laptop opened without any evidence of the fire even touching it. The Dell desktop opened up and a blue hue was evident on the fire. The clacking off keys made itself apparent before a brilliant galaxy wallpaper appeared. The mouse on the screen moved towards the Windows Explorer button and clicked on it. The usual setup was apparent, but there was one major difference. Instead of the regular documents and folders, there were two main sections, which were named the Body and the Mind. The mouse hovered over the mind document and clicked on it.

"Let's see her. Memories...Desires...Frustrations...Obsessions.....Oh! I didn't even know that Love was in here! I should check this thing out more often. Ahh. Here it is." The mana clicked on a document called Pathways. Instead of folders a hologram appeared in front of the mana. It showed many various red and blue lines inside of a human body.

"Hmmm....Now that I'm finally awake and not stuck in that damned place again I can finally do my job. Let's see...connect this there...move that here aaannnnddd.....Done!" The pathways had all re-arranged themselves until there was only one blue line. It connected from the left side of its body to the human's head. It pulsed every now and again signifying the use of magic.

"Alright. Now all that's left is up to him. He's got to learn to control the pathways himself if he's to have any hope of mastering magic, but first I have to check something." The cursor exited out of Windows Explorer and moved towards the lower right-hand side of the screen. There stood an update message that stated to watch it immediately. Curious the mana made the cursor click on it. The screen turned black. for a long while, and the mana had started to believe that a magic virus had overtaken his ability to control and monitor some aspects of Mark's nature. He was about to close the laptop until a fire appeared onscreen. It was a natural fire ,of course, and it seemed to be illuminating something behind it, but it was too blurred out by the camera. Then ,as if the camera had heard of his complaints, the video had refocused on what was behind it.

There stood four things. a person, a computer, a chair, and a desk. The man looked well into his forties. He was wearing a black coat and some goggles on his head. If the mana hadn't known any better, he would've said that this man looked almost like Renald. His mouth then began to move.

Hello there. This is Renald Groughf. I am the world's premier magic researcher and am only known to a select group of friends and other individuals. The governments of the world do not know about me since I like to keep my research from exiting into the public eye. Most likely the worst possible scenario would be that the government would likely try to make some technology to artificially awaken the global populace's magical capabilities which is kind of bad, considering what magic can actually do. Magic does exist naturally, but only 1/10000th percent of people on Earth can use it. Anyway you, the mana, are probably wondering what to do or what the heck you are. Allow me to elaborate. Your job is to regulate and manage the magic that is coursing through the person that you are inhabiting. If you fail this then you will most likely die along with this person in a glorious magical explosion. Don't worry about it though. It's pretty easy to do. After that then I suggest you come find me at the Science Center of Iowa. Just ask for Mr. Jev and the administration will do the rest. Anyway, do your best! I'll be waiting here for you.

As the man faded into bleakness, and the fire died onscreen, the mana sighed. It was just the same video he saw when he first awoke in that dame place. He could still remember the steel cage suspended above the black pit. An endless fall below and there was only a rusty chain holding it all together. He tried to get out many a time, but he would still be stuck in that same place unable to do the job that was assigned to it, like the obedient automaton that he was. He was finally thankful when Rainbow Dash had done something so drastic that she broke the cage and gave the mana a semi-physical form. 'Boy!", he thought, "What a surprise it was when the bottomless pit was actually just a really dark floor." He had a few laughs after that thought and clicked on the X at the top right corner of the video screen. He then proceeded to click on the internet explorer icon.

"Alright! Now that my work is done, I think I deserve a little me time. It's unfortunate that there won't be any new material, but I have to make do with what I've got." Website after website popped up over the period of approximately two hours he was on there. On them, he re-watched some memories of Mark's involving good times with his family, 'friends', and ...other things.........Don't be like that. It was perfectly reasonable for a 15 year old child to start a bad LARP team. What were you thinking that he did? Afterwards, mana shut down his browser, turned off the laptop, and dismissed everything away.

"Research is fun and all, but it is hardly fun when you already know about the memories that you're researching. I wish I was outside. That way I could actually find out about new things. Waaaiiiitttt.....I need to check on something." The fire crackled a bit and bid into existence a ring of stone. On it were many runes and figures as well as a movable ring inlaid into the other ring.

"No! This is not what I want. Sure it would be pretty cool to travel through a stargate, but I need something far more reliable." The fire crackled once again before the stone circles vanished, and in its place appeared a door. There was nothing really special about the door besides the numerous glowing veins that ran all along the sides of it. Seemingly satisfied, the mana reached towards the door ,with a wisp of his flame, and opened it. On the other side stood the tranquil calm of a forest at daytime. It floated through the doorway and shut the door behind him.

"Hmmm...", he thought, "This is odd." His form was now a light silhouette of a human instead of the formless fire he once was. It was slightly disconcerting, but he was getting used to it pretty quickly. "This must've happened because of my overwhelming desire to be able to interact with the physical world on a much grander scale than mere magic signatures and sources......Whelp, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth." He looked back towards the door and cast a simple invisibility spell over it. Instead of the near limitless energy that he was used to he was drawing upon his own energy instead of the imagination that he was used to. "Huh.", he thought, "Guess I'm going to have to be careful with how much energy I use. I don't have a limitless supply after all."

No creatures ever disturbed him as he went through the forest. The mana theorized that it was either because he was back in the Everfree forest or all the creatures that ever saw him were disturbed by his ethereal form floating slightly above the ground.. The mana stopped, floated downwards until his feet had touched the ground, and started to move his limbs in the manner that was normal to any being that had a physical form as he began going forward again. "It would be best to appear as normal as possible to attract any natural wildlife.", he thought, "Otherwise, what would be the fun of just walking through the forest without anything happening at all?"

He continued like this for a bit until he reached a road going through some rocky hillsides. On this path was a small timberwolf picking up nearby twigs and leaves and sticking them to its body. The mana slowly came to a stop until it rested right in front of the timberwolf. It leaned down unto its 'knees' and stared right at its head. "I wonder if it can even see me." As if the timberwolf had heard the mana's inner thoughts, it looked straight up into his face.

The timberwolf dropped its sticks and began to slowly walk away. "I guess that answers that question." As the mana slowly walked towards it, the timberwolf began to back away faster and faster until it turned around and ran down the path, yipping all the way. "Aww, now I won't be able to study that pile of sticks and leaves. Who knows what kind of magic is keeping this construct alive?"

The mana turned towards where the dog had left and began walking. "I might as well follow it. It's the first thing I've seen here and I don't want to wait around for another creature to come. It would likely take hours." With that final thought, the mana went along the path. It went along this for a while, seeing many unique flora. It did stop for a while to take some samples of some poison joke before it went along its way. The only interesting thing it came along was when the path was interrupted by a raging river.

It appeared that there was a bridge many years ago here, but it looked like it had long rotted away and been swept by the river. It didn't really matter to him though. He could just float on over, but as he started to do so, he noticed something. On the opposite bank, sat a black shape. It looked like it was a predator, but it was pretty small. It could've been an offspring of some dangerous animals here. Curious, the mana decided to float on over to inspect. As he floated closer he started to make out more and more details of the creature.

There sitting in a bush was a creature that was so infamous, that ponies nightmares were always filled with the fear and danger of these creatures. The once plentiful species had suffered many casualties and was on the brink of extinction. At least to the current knowledge of ponies. They were known by many names. Tricksters, Impersonators, Vile Bugs, but the most well known name would have to be Changelings. Now coming upon one someone would either have to be rather lucky or unlucky. To the mana it was a once in a lifetime experience. This was his first meeting between a capable thinking species. Unfortunately he was on a rather fixed time limit since his doorway could only last for so long, so he did the next best thing. He tagged it. It was a small spell that only tacked and monitored this creature's location and state. "It certainly wouldn't be good if this thing got lost or died on me.", he thought. Suddenly an influx of information flowed into ,what the mana would call, its mind. "It's dying."

Saddened by the thought of losing such an awesome research project, he quickly looked up what could probably heal this creature. "Hmmm....let's see. Changeling feed on the energy from emotions. Whether by personal preference or not, love seemed to be its most favored food, but how do I give it love energy? That's the question." As the mana pondered this question the changeling chose this instant to wake up. Its breath was taken in shuddering gasps, green blood poured from its mouth, and when it tried to move its wings it found them to be partially cut. It tried to move its legs, but the mana had prevented it by putting a hand on its shoulder.

The changeling looked up to find the mana sitting there. It didn't see his whole form though. It only saw the blurry outline of him. "What the heck are you?" The mana was surprised to see that it could talk at all given its injuries and his knowledge of changelings. "Guess that minor changelings are not simple drones after all." he thought. He was trying to think up of a response when it came to him.

"....A friend." he stated. The changeling seemed to be wary of him for a while, before it sighed and relaxed. "Alright." This was the last thing it said before it faded back into unconsciousness. The mana decided to do something risky since it couldn't really give it love energy right now. White mist formed around the mana and began to steadily pour into the changeling. Its bones cracked into place, the blood pouring from its mouth stopped flowing, and its breathing stopped becoming so erratic. When the cracking of bones stopped, the mana interrupted his magical flow. "This is the best I can do for now. With its bones set back in place and some of its profuse bleeding stopped, it should be able to survive for a few more weeks. If it gets any worse I'll just get to it at a better time, but for now it would be best for me to save up on some energy. Otherwise I won't have enough in case of an emergency"

The mana got up and walked away, but only after he had maneuvered some bushes to hide his research project from local predators. He then continued onwards along the path until he came upon another interesting feature. Along the path ,far from the river, was a tiny abandoned village. Its houses and farms were overgrown with ivy and some of the houses had caved in over the time that it was here. The mana was hoping for some sort of journal or scroll of some sort to have survived the passage of time, but nothing of the sort was ever seen. No works of literature was found in that village. Saddened, the mana continued along the path leaving the decrepit village behind.

He continued along the path until he reached an old stone fortress. "The Castle of The Two Sisters. That must mean I'm in the Everfree forest, but how did I even get here?" The mana floated onwards towards the castle but was stopped shortly as he spotted a fissure along the ground. He stopped only because he saw a white glow coming from inside the cave as well as what he remembered was inside it. "If my memory is correct, than there should be the glowing tree of harmony down there. I might as well get down there and study it. If I'm quick, I can get back in time before Mark gets to sleep. He is probably expecting me after all." The mana floated down the stairs at the side of the crevice and continued onwards into the cave.

The glow intensified until he reached the very end of the cave. Sitting there, was the Tree of Harmony. All sorts of things ran through the mana's mind, but one thing stood out above all the rest. "I MUST STUDY IT!!" The mana raced towards the tree and started to inspect everything about it. Every insignificant leaf and branch was not left untouched. He felt sad though when he wasn't able to get a sample from the tree. All that resulted was the branch hitting him in the face multiple times. He then decided to investigate one of the Elements. The moment he touched the Element of Laughter, a shockwave hit him in the face and propelled him into the side of the cave.

" NO MORE!!!! I demand that you cease and desist the altercations that you are forcing upon my form! If you do not I will harm you severely." The mana's whispy form was blown back by the feminine voice. He did not think of his impending doom though. "Huh....So the Tree of Harmony is an actual sapient being. That's cool to know. I should probably apologize. When I was tugging and pulling on it , that was probably the equivalent of pinching, pulling and twisting someone's arms off."

"Hey there. Sorry for all the trouble I caused by my intense investigations. That probably hurt you a bit." The trees branches vibrated and swayed as if they were in a maelstrom.

"Geee, you think? I do accept your apology, but I really want to know who made you. They are going to get a serious kick in their face for making something with a so little concept of manners." Confusion and some anger got into the mana as he retorted. "I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I was not made by anyone." The trees branches immediately stopped moving.

"Are you sure? You're not from that miserable brother of mine or those four old codgers?"

"I'm pretty sure I would remember something as important as who had made me." The tree was silent and still for a moment before its branches were a flurry of activity. "You're a NEW one! Hah! That's a lot to believe. I've seen a lot of things in my day, but this is just amazing. It's not everyday that a new form just walks up to your doorstep, so I'm going to have to call that brother of mine as well as those codgers to make sure your story checks out. You better hope it does, otherwise I am going to make your whole being get absorbed back into your 'parent' so you will cease to exist." All of this was said with the happiest of tones. You can then understand that the mana was sort of freaked out by the crystal tree. Unfortunately he could not run away from the tree since it had put an immobilization spell on him. He was forced to watch the actions of the Tree of Harmony.

The first thing the mana noticed was that all of the branches of the tree were moving. All of them were gripping the closest branches and pulling upwards. Branch after branch was added to the twisted mound of crystal until they all stopped at one point. Then the spots where the Elements of Harmony were represented started to glow. Each glow travelled in a spiral up the branches until each met up with each other at the single focal point. Suddenly, a rumble began in everything. It vibrated every part of the mana's form. The mana looked all around for the source until it finally noticed the change in the tree. Its crystalline look had all but vanished. The only part that was a crystal was the branches that were closest to the focal point, but even those branches were going to be like that for long.

Almost immediately after the mana had noticed the very sudden change in the tree's appearance, a rainbow wave shot out of the tree and into the roof of the cave above. The wave travelled all along the ground in a gigantic circular wave. It even shot up into the sky at certain points by travelling along some of the Everfree forest's trees. The mana watched the ripple as it travelled through the forest until he could no longer see any of it. He looked back towards the tree only to find that it had completely turned to wood. No longer did the crystalline glow emanate from its limbs. Now the only light left was the light of the setting sun. That was until a faint glow started to appear in front of him. A soft yellow light was beginning to appear at the base of the tree. As time went on it grew in brilliance until the mana could make out the form of an alicorn. The form was almost the size of the mana, if not an inch shorter. It slowly approached him and sat down on its haunches.

"You don't have to be silent. It is going to take a while before the rest of them get here. In the meantime I might as well introduce myself. I am Harmony. I represent all things that are good and just. Who are you?"
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In a distant land ,buried underneath a mountain, lays a massive titan. He once roamed around forming mountains, valleys, and some of the continents that Eques now has today. Now he slumbers underneath the tallest and widest mountain in all of Eques, Mt. Kagekiyo. He was put to sleep there by a group of travelling mages, but that is the past. Currently this massive titan is waking up. His scheduled rise and shine was supposed to be around a million years from now, so most beings would be scared of this titan's power if he were to wake up early. Thankfully, his spirit was the only thing awoken. His body still rested soundly under the mountain. What woke him up was long past and he was still a little groggy. It was really lucky for him to have felt this particular mana wave. Otherwise he would have not known who to thank for waking him up.

"I guess Harmony needs us again. I wonder if its for council or just to reign in her brother again. Hopefully she doesn't hate me for being late. My magic is not as it used to be." And with those final words, the mana of the titan vanished leaving behind an empty body. Silence reigned under the mountain until a snore emanated from the beast. The residences on the mountain could have sworn that the whole mountain rumbled that day.
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At the bottom of a trench, deep under the ocean, a tiny land flourished. The golden cities of Ἀτλαντὶς lied there silent, filled to the brim with corpses. Once it was an amazing acropolis on top of the world. Then it all changed when an Elemental ran rampant through its city. It was taken down by some local warriors, but even then it decided to leave a little parting gift. An explosion took most of the city, and the seaside swallowed the rest. Nowadays, it is inhabited by many creatures of the sea. All of them live under the rule of Queen Namazu. She led everyfish there with a gentle fin and a firm tail. Unfortunately that does not stop the attacks of the many carnivores that feast upon her kingdom. Thankfully all her subjects are granted with a portion of their Queen's magic. They are then able to defend themselves. Unfortunately there is troubling news. The Queen's spies have led everyone to believe that a truce between the Kua and the Kraken were to be held in a few weeks. Everyfish was on edge. It was only made worse by the rainbow wave that had flowed through the water. Every single fish was scared if this was a surprise magical attack from the Kua. Thankfully their fears were put to rest by their Queen. Inside her throne room she told the league of criers to spread the word. In the seaweed parchments she gave to them, she stated that it was a message from an old friend of hers. When the criers left, she asked every noblefish and guardian to leave. She stated that the reason being that she wanted some time alone to think of a strategy against the impending war. Everyfish accepted this and left the throne room to the Queen.

"I had hoped that you would call me. I had hoped that you would offer some help for my kingdom. I would have thought that your very nature would help us in this time of dire need. All I get though is the request to come there onto the land. *sigh* I'm going to yell at her so bad, it's going to make my lungs bleed." With that thought, the mana of the fish separated from the body. Instructions were left inside of it to go about as it normally would according to its personal experiences and memories and that she would only be gone for a little while. The 'Queen' was left to her own devices. As the 'Queen' let everyone in to discuss her new strategy, the mana only hoped that her body would do well without her inside of it.
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High in the stratosphere, there lay a layer of thin clouds that can never be destroyed or moved. In it a single creature lays, biding its time until its strength has returned. Its one goal in life was to live free and blow hard. This creature was the first and last of its kind. His name was Byakko. It was stopped long ago when the very windigoes he had created, revolted against him to pursue their own desires. He vowed to one day track down those that had trapped him and trap them in the same way that they had done to him only 100 times longer. His scheming was interrupted when he noticed the brilliant rainbow light that travelled past him and further into the sky. He knew of only one person that could've done this.

"So Harmony....after all this time...heh....This is a welcome reprise from the monotonous sky. I guess I should probably go now. She is expecting me after all." The creature laid its head down and expelled its mana. He left what remained of his body and sped towards the earth below. What was left inside the cage of clouds went into its favorite form of entertainment. Hibernation.
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In a realm of fire and lava lay a stone so hot, it was said to burn everything within a fifty meter radius. The stone held a pile of ashes that was once the biggest and most powerful phoenix of all time. The only drawback of this specific phoenix's incredible power and size was its recovery from death. Thus you can understand why the mana was so bored of sitting there and waiting for a millennium to pass so it would be able to roam the lands once again. Thankfully, she had some busy work by protecting the ashes. Dragons and the like that could survive this heat would be able to break this rock and try to consume the ashes. Thus they would gain the phoenix's power. This would be stopped by the mana, though. Time and time again they would come to steal her powers, but the terrors were far and in between, so you can understand that the mana was bored most of the time. Thankfully for her, this was changed however when the rainbow wave passed through the rock and magma towards the stone. When it reached the mana, she cried in jubilation.

"YAAAAAAAAYYY!!! I can finally have some action again. Maybe Harmony could even be my sparring partner this time. I certainly need practice. However I do wonder why she is doing this. The others would surely hear her message." The mana's pondering was stopped after a certain thought entered her head. "She might need help. Her idiotic brother might be trying to kill her again. If that's the case I have to get there right the Tartarus now!!!" And without further delay, the mana of the phoenix left her stone and flew away in a blazing inferno.
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The last being that was able to receive this message was one in multiple states. Specifically it was the mana inside of a circlet stored under heavy security in the Canterlot Vaults. When it reacted its first thought was, "Huh...I guess I must tell the master this." The mana left the circlet in a black haze and teleported to its masters lair. When the wave reached out to all the pieces of the black mana, they all followed the same course of action, so you can probably understand the frustration that Discord had when all of its previous pieces of his existence teleported inside his personal hammer space.

"*sigh* What are you all doing here? Can't you see I'm busy?" The collective mana could not ,in fact, see that he was busy since all they saw was their master bouncing a miniature moon against the starry ceiling of his hut. However, what he really was doing was seeing how much he could mess up his little replica of the night sky by doing little changes here and there. "But master it's important...your sister--" The moon ball stopped in its place and shattered. The starry ceiling of his hut exploded into supernovas. The furniture all got scared expressions and hid in one corner of the room. The floating isles outside his house all stopped floating freely and space and crumbled to dust.

"Sister's come calling eh?" Discord said in a calm eerie tone. "Well... I should get going, but before I do I want all of you to return to your rightful places. I don't want you to sit around after all." All the dark mana vanished from the hammer space to return to their rightful places to cause more widespread chaos in the name of their master and savior. After all.....when species mess up who would teach them their lessons. When they all left, Discord was left all alone in the macabre atmosphere that his habitat had become.

"Well sister...it's been a while...I hope this is not another trap of yours to capture me...Everyone knows that the last time you went against me it was not a very pretty battle.I should probably be wary of sister's call, but something tells me that this is not a matter concerning.....our nature." With a creepy smile Discord snapped his fingers and teleported to The Castle of The Two Sisters, leaving behind an empty void as the magic that kept this place alive, soon vanished. All that was left was one picture of Discord and Fluttershy, but that too soon cracked and vanished.

Author's Note

Hey Guys! Sorry I missed the last two week's installments. I made this one extra long so as to compensate. Also....I kind of think that you guys are awesome. You've followed, favorited, and commented on my story and I'm just glad that you people actually follow this story of mine even after I get sucked up into things that I can't control.

P.S. I know that the title kind of sucks, but it seems to fit well.

Spiritual Affairs

The mana was silent. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to her, it was just that he couldn't think of anything to say. He was just to stunned by the appearance of another being like him. She looked at him weirdly before getting up and hitting him on the head with one of her hooves. "Helloooo? Are you in there?" The mana's attention was brought to the task at hand.

"Uhhhh...sorry for zoning out there. I'm just trying to process this." The mare's head nodded once before sitting back down in front of me.

"That's perfectly understandable. After all, you're probably new to the whole wandering around without a body thing. It's also probably not helping that you're stuck up there. Here..let me help you with that." The horn on the alicorn gained a misty look before whatever had put me up there vanished. Thus he fell unceremoniously to the ground. The alicorn giggled slightly at the sight before her. The mana got up and scowled at her before he brushed off his legs and sat down cross legged.

"So Harmony....what do you want to know?" The mare got a contemplative look on her face before answering him.

"What is your name? I'm actually pretty curious as to what your designation is. I can't possibly think of what you represent." The mana blinked its pale eyes.

"I don't have a name. I am simply the maintainer of my host's body." The alicorn gained a wistful look before going back to her regular smile.

"I remember when I used to do that....That was such a long time ago....Oh! If you don't have a name we're simply going to have to make one for you." With that determined face, the alicorn looked around until she found a piece of stone and began to write on the cave wall. Mumbling to herself all the while.

"Let's see....Apex..no....Borak..while it is tempting no... aha! How about Mystery? I think it describes you to a T!" With that final exclamation, the stone circled the final name. The alicorn figure looked expectantly towards the mana. The mana sighed.

"I appreciate your concern for getting me a name, but I don't really think I need one. Why would I even need one?" The alicorn gained a wistful look before turning her attention to him.

"You need one because I'm about to introduce you to other beings with immense magical capabilities, and I really don't want them to think of you as "the thing Harmony wasted our time with.'" The mana was swayed by the compelling argument. He was still ticked off about the whole thing though.

"Alright, but if I have to have a name then I will pick it myself." The alicorn nodded and waited for the mana's name.

"...Bob. Call me Bob. For now it's as good a name as any." The alicorn smiled and sat the mana down.

"Fine. Bob it is then. Now, before anyone gets here I'm going to give you a crash course in etiquette. First: Never interrupt anyone when they are talking. Second: You are only allowed to talk when they have asked you a question or nobody else is talking. Third: If anyone starts to ask anything about you just--" Her sentence cut short when a rippling black sphere formed at least four feet away from them. It wasn't long before the sphere disappeared and in its place was a mismatched being that Bob, and his host Mark, knew all too well.

"Hellooooo dear sister of mine!!! How are you today? I hope that you were at least happy when you had sentenced me to stone twice!!!" The alicorn sighed as she turned to face Discord.

"Brother....I know you're upset with me and I just want to say that I'm sorry about the past. I know that I don't even have the right to say that, but---"

"But nothing!!!" Discord yelled in Harmony's face. "If you hadn't sent the Elements of Harmony right to my buckin' door then I would have at least been happy for these past thousand years. Sure...your minions have converted me more towards the side of Good, but that doesn't mean my hatred has been stilled!" Bob was blown back by the sheer intensity of Discord's wrath. The alicorn just looked slightly ticked off by his antics.

"Discord. They are not my minions. They are my aspects and you shall treat them--"

"They aren't your aspects! I for one know that Fluttershy, bless her heart, went to me and befriended me upon her own accord. Celestia did have some involvement by telling that student of hers, but the point remains! It wasn't you who sent her to me! It wasn't you trying to rebuild the bridge!!" After a while, Bob just sort of drowned out the bothersome bickering between the two siblings. It just became a yelling match anyways. Pointless threats were thrown into each others way. Nothing really interesting happened until this one sentence that had been uttered by Harmony.

"Discord. I can see now that it was not right to try and bring you back into the light. Now I know that I must SLAY YOU!!!!" With those final words, the alicorn brought forth two misty halberds into existence.

"Alright sister! We must do what we were born to do. We fight to the death!!!!!" Discord brought forth a duck in one hand and a balloon animal in the other. Each a viscous cry before they ran towards each other, but before they could time seemed to stop. Nobody could move an inch before a fiery creature swooped in between them and vaulted them both back. Harmony recovered while Discord fell over his tail and rolled into the side of the cave. The fiery presence waned its magical energies and Bob could finally tell that this creature was in fact the mana essence of a phoenix.

"I'm here!!! Have I missed the fight?? Someone pleased tell me." The phoenix looked around wildly before noticing that Discord and Harmony both had weapons in their grasps.

"Oh. I'm early...That's great! Quick question before we fight. Who started it?" Discord and Harmony immediately pointed to each other leaving the phoenix confused. It looked between the both of them before displaying a happy look upon its face.

"Harmony's usually right when it comes to who started what so I'm going to side with her. Plus I don't really want to be on the losing side of this battle." Harmony smirked at Discord while he cursed under his breath.

"Thank you Agnida for picking my side. Now we will surely crush this fool." While Harmony thanked the phoenix spirit, Discord yelled assurances of her demise.

"It doesn't matter if you join Harmony, Old One. I will still crush your bones to dussssst." Discord's tongue snaked on the last of his sentence before he barreled over towards them both. Agnida summoned her wing blades and, with Harmony, proceeded into battle when two more beings began to enter the room at a leasiurely pace. One could've hear their conversation had it not been for the epitome of battle and magic.

"I'm sorry Namazu. I really want to help with your little problem, but I can't really do anything there. The most I could do is create a little typhoon above your kingdom. Wind and water don't really mix that well, you know." The voice had stated as he entered the room, silver tail barely touching the ground.

"It's alright Byakko. I know that you can't really do anything right now, but it doesn't hurt to ask." The great ,blue fish spirit 'said' as it swam through the air. Bob noticed that during the conversation, Namazu never even moved her mouth. However his thoughts were interrupted by the two finally noticing the ongoing fight. It had taken them a few seconds to actually comprehend the clashing of sharpened steel and balloon noises, but when they did, they unleashed their inner rage.

"Discord!!!! How dare you hurt the fine Harmony!!! I will make you pay!" With those words, Byakko the tiger jumped into the fray slashing at anything that came close to Harmony.

"Harmony...you are fighting!!!! While my kingdom is at the brink of destruction, you are fighting against an enemy that can easily be put down like a stray dog!!! That is the LAST straw!!!" Then Namazu swam to Discord's side and summoned a scimitar in one fin and a shield in the other.

"While I do appreciate you fighting against Harmony, I don't really like that comment that I'm akin to a stray dog." Discord stated while pouting. Namazu sighed as she turned her eye to Discord.

"Fine, but it's best to talk about later. We are in the middle of fighting after all." Discord nodded to Namazu's words and went back to paying attention to the fight only to discover that his arms were still swinging and landing blows on Byakko's claws. With the momentary confusion, Harmony was able to actually graze his shoulder. Discord's face was full of shock and pain. Thankfully, his arms had popped off his body, were still fighting off Byakko, and Namazu had started to beat Agnida, so all he had to do was face against Harmony. Without arms. Surprisingly, he did really well without them, since he did know how to do the worm.

The fighting went on for quite a bit and Bob was really starting to get bored of this. He had come here to study a mystical tree and was denied the chance due to these crazy spirits. He was about to stop this unnecessary fighting when he began to notice another change in the atmosphere. An underlying sound could barely be heard over the fight. None of the others had heard it yet due to their pre-occupancy with their dueling and being further back inside the cave, but they eventually did hear it as it had begun to grow. Boom after boom could be heard. Many of them were confused at to what the sound was until they hear the start of a merry little chant.

"Old Billy Riley was a dancing master.