Author's Note

Massive Rewrite on this chapter. It was blocking a good idea I had for the future, so it got replaced.

~Chapter Four - The Visit~

Twilight Zombie

A work of ...A zombie that wishes he took the blue pill, I guess. By a very Busyguy.

~Chapter Four - The Visit~

Twilight dreamed. She dreamed she was flying over Ponyville, very late at night. But something just didn't feel right about the scene below. The little town was far too quiet …far too still.

It was like there was nopony awake for miles around. Which wasn’t really unusual for a night in Ponyville by itself, really. It’s just ...she also had a distinctly strong feeling of being watched, which implied at least one pony was still up and about.

And so Twilight found herself trying to figure out where the odd feeling was coming from. There weren't any ponies in sight, nor were there any obvious eyes reflecting from behind the moonlit town’s many small and simply constructed windows. She opted to drop her altitude, casting a wavering moonlit shadow across the empty streets and abandoned stalls as she passed over the fully stocked marketplace below.

What exactly was going on here? The townsponies always made it a priority to clear the market of stalls and produce each and every evening, so why were so many stalls left out in the street with food and perishable goods on display?

Twilight swooped down and stumbled to an awkward stop as her hooves hit the cobbles of Mane Street. It seemed that she retained her borderline flying skills, even with all her feathers intact in her dreams.

The sense of being observed was much stronger on the ground, and she had much less trouble in following it. Her instincts guided her toward where Sugarcube Corner was nestled at the edge of the market square, with only its unique outline truly clear against the night sky. As she drew closer the windows began to brighten, and the sounds of a party in full swing steadily grew...

Well! Twilight certainly knew this dream well enough. This was the party dream! The first part of it had been a bit off, but this part of the dream was always the same. Any second now, Pinkie Pie would burst forth from the door and drag Twilight in by the forehooves. Twilight would then be assaulted with all manner of party favors and frills, followed by a round of her favorite games. Once the cake was gone - usually before she got seconds - the dream would end with a walk back toward her old Ponyville home: The long destroyed Golden Oaks library.

Twilight was about ten strides from the door to Sugarcube Corner when it suddenly bowed outward with a loud ~wump~. She then heard Pinkie’s voice screaming something about not being a banana sundae, followed by a loud crash as every window on the ground floor suddenly exploded as one and the lights flickered out.

Her heart rate skyrocketed as the door was slammed from inside the bakery again, and again, and again ...and the next moment found Twilight completely frozen in shock.

The sturdy wooden door had failed, breaking away from its hinges under the massive force it had been pitted against. As the splintered wood scattered across the street, a wave of familiar ponies began pushing forth from the depths of the bakery. She recognized all of them as residents of Ponyville, but found herself taking a step back when more details became visible...

Each pony had a cruel and jagged wound somewhere on their matted fur, and held her transfixed with eyes that were glazed over with an indifferent emptiness. There was no grace in their movements, nor was there any shine or brightness to their coats. But the worst thing by far was the sound. Twilight's ears couldn't even tell which voice belonged to which pony. It was all just one loud and steady drone of horrible sound, filling the streets with the combined voice of a thousand damaged vocal chords …and filling her heart with terror.

Bent and twitching forms began to emerge from other buildings and side roads, each turning slowly toward her and stumbling forward on stiffened or horribly broken legs. Twilight was quickly forced to back away from the growing crowd as they closed in on her in their masses...

And then her flank bumped up against something cold and shaggy, as if somepony had just come inside from a long winter walk and shoved their frozen body right up against her as a mean spirited joke. A low moan reached her ears, completely distinct and separate from the oppressive drone of the others.

Twilight felt a cold gust of breath brush across her back, and then pain sharply lanced into her side…

The dream convulsed, and the world fell away beneath her hooves. Twilight was left barrel-deep in a small bog of broken limbs and unmoving equine bodies; the latter arranged morbidly around the edge of the dark red pool as if they had been waiting for her arrival. Empty eyes stared out from sunken faces and maimed faces, watching her in silence. There was a moment of quiet anxiety …a gut wrenching period of time spent wondering what could possibly come next...

And then she was pulled violently under the surface, her lungs empty even before she lost sight of the blackened dreamscape's sky as she finally managed to start screaming.

~=====~

Twilight woke up. Something had her rear legs firmly in its grasp, and it was trying to pull her out from the safety of her bed. She struggled blindly, her eyes unable to guide her hooves in the unusually complete darkness that had claimed her. One rear hoof came free as she gave a powerful kick, but it only resulted in the other leg being wrapped up twice as securely. She lashed out with her freed hoof, and felt it connect with a solid blow. She hesitated when her attacker grunted in pain and let go of her completely, but was then crushed down into the soft bedding under her back when they opted to smother her instead of pulling her out into the open. She bit and bucked, twisted and kicked, trying to hold out until she could get a spell arranged that wouldn't tear everything around her apart. And with her situation being what it was, the required wakefulness didn’t take very long in coming.

As soon as she could feel her inner warmth respond in even a remotely healthy manner, Twilight pushed every single iota of sleep-addled power she had into action. She actually felt her horn warm up under the rapid but controlled influx of power, and the resulting flare of released energy blinded her and sent her attacker reeling away.

She scrabbled to her hooves, and quickly spun to defend herself more properly. But something slammed into her right side, and chaos once again took hold as her own horn was used to yank her down onto her side. The much more powerful blast of conscious magic she'd intended on unleashing collapsed back into her, and Twilight cried out as the magic was forced back into her core the harshest way possible. The collapse of that much power was impossible to ignore, racking her body with an incredible convulsion and leaving her nerves feeling flayed and unresponsive. It was all the advantage the unseen attacker needed to take full control of the struggle.

Twilight's lungs were forcefully emptied as she was pressed flat to the floor and quickly wrapped up in strong limbs, her forehooves trapped tightly up against her barrel. The grip on her horn was released a second later, only for her muzzle to be clamped shut by a familiar set of ...fingers?

"I said stop!" A rather pained voice hissed into her ear. "It's me for christ's sake ...you're fine! Now stop screaming and keep quiet!"

Twilight slowly halted her efforts to preserve herself, and managed to reduce her muffled and honest cries of fear to a rapid nasally pant. She didn't relax her tensed legs, which were still stubbornly trying to hold Chuck’s limbs well clear of her neck; but he must have felt the rest of her body relax to the floor, regardless. He let her forelegs go, and lifted his weight so she could breathe easier. But he still gave her muzzle an extra little squeeze to get his point across before he let it go free.

No spoken words could ever be as clear or loud as the message behind those strong digits and their little passing squeeze on her mouth.

‘Keep quiet, or else’

Or else what, Twilight didn't yet know. But her racing heart only beat harder when she realized that her nose was practically screaming at her to pay attention to it. Her flared nostrils would have to wait though, as her ears always took priority when it came to picking up on threats…

"raaarrruuuuuugh..." ~scritch-scritch ...thump~

Twilight felt herself stiffen right back up against the human laid out behind her, and her eyes flicked over to the nearby door. Any anger she felt at her waking nightmare was instantly forgotten, leaving only a much sounder fear and a growing soreness from the tussle she’d just endured. She felt a powerful need to get up and run as far away from the door as possible …and yet stay perfectly silent and still to avoid being noticed.

Chuck denied her the second option, pushing her away from his lightly clothed chest so he could slink off into the darkness. Twilight felt her tensed muscles start to shake the moment she was left alone and there was nothing to brace her legs against, and it was all she could do to get her hooves back underneath her in case she needed to stand. The very first thing she did was cast the least powerful light spell she could manage, filling a cone-shaped slice of the dusty room with a gently shaking violet light filled with motes of illuminated dust particles. The second thing she did was try to find out where Chuck had gone off to, and determine if she could just get up and leave.

With her light spell cutting through the inky darkness, she easily found the big human. He was creeping toward the door, crouched down on his open hands and the ends of his feet in a stance that made Twilight wonder just how many generations had passed since humans supposedly evolved from their claimed ape-like ancestors.

But Twilight could also see the expression Chuck was wearing as he closed in on the door between himself and the monster outside ...and it gave her pause from her immediate fears to focus on brand new ones.

She could clearly recount memories of humans experiencing fear and in anger while in the Mirror World. She'd seen them act concerned or show each other love, and even reveal a fair bit of genuine joy and happiness to her on a personal level. Only yesterday, she'd seen Chuck himself display a look of pure terror; a look she’d been responsible for making him show in the first place ...and an act for which she still felt pretty awful and no excuse for.

But the expression he was leveling at the door was something new to her. Twilight didn't think she'd ever seen anything like it on another sentient being before.

...And she never wanted to see it again, ever.

"Princess!" Chuck hissed at her, ending Twilight's dark thoughts and making her take a quick step back. "The dead are dumb, not blind! Turn off the head light thing before it shines through the cracks or something!"

Twilight felt herself nod, but still hesitated for a moment on bending to the request of snuffing her light spell. Being stuck in the dark with somepony that could wear that expression... It was a very scary thought. But she found the flow of her magic slowing to a stop anyway, and Chuck's form melted once more into the darkness.

It wasn’t that she’d actually thought her options through or anything. She had just ...trusted the advice of an older figure. A terrifying and likely deranged older figure, sure. But one with much more experience than she had in the situation she was involved in. It reminded Twilight of her early youth, blindly trusting Princess Celestia's every spoken word as she tripped and stumbled her way through the many challenges of being born with a horn that couldn't actually wield the power hiding in her tiny young body.

Twilight went ahead and tried to focus on the happier memories of her past for a moment. Mostly the challenges she'd faced, and the mistakes she'd learned to correct through error and her royal mentor's wise guidance. But her mind refused to shift from the dark room her physical body was in, and her heart continued to race in panic as the zombie outside scrabbled and moaned against the door.

The whole of her thoughts, fears, and her short lived jaunt through her memories had lasted just a scant few seconds. Likely due to an adrenal release, though Twilight noted that her abs hadn't locked up and she felt only mildly dizzy as her heart raced inside her chest.

...Laying down apparently helped counter a racing heart and a loss of core blood pressure. Or maybe she was still trying to not think about what was about to happen, as if not thinking about it would stop it from happening.

It didn't.

Twilight lay there on her belly, and listened as Chuck’s footfalls quietly padded away to do …whatever he was planning on doing. She wanted to ask him what she should do, or at least what the plan actually was. She knew it was ridiculous, but she was absolutely terrified that the man would open up the door and charge outside to fight that thing all by himself. It just felt like something a killer would do, and she no longer had a doubt in her mind that Chuck was exactly that …a killer. She had caught a clear glimpse of his dark side in the light of her magic, the expression on his face forever burned into her mind's eye.

Twilight found it odd that the question of Chuck ever turning that expression her way held such sway, even as a proper and real threat scratched and moaned for her flesh not twenty paces away.

And she found that she doubted her fears over Chuck ever looking at her like that - like she was an animal to be hunted down and gutted to be used for food - now that she was becoming settled enough for her mind to start thinking somewhat clearly. It was scary to know the man could display such a predatory aura, but his words from the afternoon before where still fresh in her mind …and she realized that Chuck wasn’t at all what she’d thought he was after all.

“We’ve all killed someone,” He’d said. And with the context of what Twilight now believed of the human's nature, the way he acted overall began to make a lot more sense.

Behind those bluish-green human eyes lived a being unlike anything she had ever encountered before. A predatory mind, but one built so differently from the predators in the Equestrian wilds that drawing any kind of comparison was futile. A Manticore - for example - would often hesitate long enough for a pony to escape if that pony were to beg for their life. But both Chuck and that hungry bear that had come after her seemed to have a way to get around such limitations. She was now convinced that the bear she'd encountered could take a life and then simply move on, without ever feeling the weight of its actions. Her human companion seemed to have the same terrifying ability, but in a much worse way than an animal seeking out food.

Chuck had control over it. He could turn his uncaring monster-self on and off at will. Combine that ability with anything approaching intelligence, and Twilight was very glad that Chuck’s species wasn’t present in Equestria.

But then, this was all the speculation of a frightened and currently blind mare. She was distracting herself out of fear, and the counter argument to her fear-driven guesswork was quick and easy to come up with anyway.

Chuck had never actually tried to hurt her. Or at least, not without what he felt was a good reason. The few times he’d resorted to violence had been the result of a genuine fear he'd been dealing with, and even then he had responded with less force than she now knew he was capable of; his arrows striking her shield spell on the road when they'd first met being the one exception. She’d actually given him the perfect opportunity to do her serious harm just last night, and he’d done nothing but help her. He even seemed to take a decent amount of care in cleaning out her painful hooves, and had used his own resources to make sure she didn't get an infection without hesitation when she'd proven to have an open wound.

Twilight suspected that he either feared her magic too much to try anything, or simply lacked the desire to do her any harm in the first place. She was hoping for the second option: that he just didn’t want to hurt her. It provided the best chance to finally get the older human to relax his paranoia, and let her in...

If she still wanted in, anyway. She certainly had a lot to think about on her mental plate, and even if she still pursued a friendship with the violence-prone human she would be asking a lot of very specific questions before she committed to anything lasting.

...Right, that was enough distracting inner monologue. Chuck should have reached the door by now and she was stressing herself out with all her worried thoughts.

Twilight heard a quiet metallic click, followed by the sound of something heavy being slid across both stone and wood. Another long silence followed, and then she jumped as something tapped against the front of her chest. Her skin crawled as the point of sudden contact shifted up her chest and along her neck and throat, but she managed to limit her reaction to a fur-raising shiver. There was little doubt about what was touching her, and she forced herself to stay quiet as Chuck’s hand slid up her cheek and across her temple to loosely wrap itself into her mane. The frazzled hairs were gently tugged in a direction away from the door, and Twilight was more than happy to let herself be guided away from the door with the groaning zombie behind it. Her flank bumped into something unseen …and then her right wing bumped into something else …and then finally her forehooves bounced off the first step of the stairs to the main floor. As soon as the stairs were behind her, Twilight shook Chuck's hand off of her head to say, "Okay, I can see now …and I’m sorry about kicking you back there. You just really scared me and…"

"Shhh..." Chuck interrupted with an anxious glare. "You have to be quiet right now, Princess. If you really need to say something, just whisper it in my ear."

Twilight nodded to show she understood, then turned to keep an eye on the bottom of the stairs. She could still hear the infected human scrabbling away down there, and the perfect darkness at the bottom of the staircase gave her an odd sense of pride that she'd been in such a place at all without completely loosing her head. She gently tapped Chuck's leg to get his attention, and he crouched down to her level. His fleshy coil of an ear was just a bit above her mouth at his current height, so it was easy to ask the obvious questions...

"Okay, Chuck…" Twilight began, staying as quiet as she could. “First off ...What happened down there? Why did you try to wake me up by pulling me out of bed? I woke up thinking you were a monster trying to eat me, and then ...Oh no! Are you okay right now? I used a lot of free magic on that first spell and I kicked you really hard and I think I even bit you somewhere!”

Chuck rubbed his hands together nervously before leaning in to whisper, “Watch the volume, Princess. And we have bigger problems than all that stuff right now. Let's just focus on staying quiet and avoiding any more unwanted attention.”

“But I…” Twilight cut herself off, waiting while Chuck got his head repositioned. She then drew closer to his ear again and said, “I know we have bigger problems, Chuck. But I need to know what's going on. What are we going to do about that thing out there? Why is it even here? Can it get to us, or are we okay?”

Chuck just stared at her until she remembered to offer up her ear again. Apparently he didn't realize that she could likely hear him whisper from the other side of the room.

...Although he could clearly move around quietly enough to sneak up on her from the front even with her ears fully perked, so he did have that skill as a counter to her comparatively good hearing.

"We should be alright,” Chuck whispered, his massive beard tickling against her ear and cheek. “The downstairs door has a steel lock and some really strong leaf springs from an old truck bracing it in place. As for what happened, I was out getting firewood this morning while you were still asleep. I heard the dead-head coming in from the woods nearby, and came back to get things locked down. I tried to wake you up, but you were out cold. I had to get you up and moving, so I pinched you. I wasn't actually planning on you kicking my ass or screaming. ...I think you bruised a rib or something.” Chuck gave his lower chest a gentle pat as he continued with, “But don’t worry about that right now. We can just hang out in my safe room for a while. The zombie will leave on its own eventually ...so long as it’s just the one and we stay quiet."

Okay, so it was mostly good news then. But Twilight needed more than verbal reassurances at the moment. She put a hoof on Chuck's shoulder when he tried to stand up, forcing him back down...

"But what if there is more than one? And what happens if the one we already know about doesn't leave?" She asked.

Chuck smoothly spun his crouched frame to face her, and he whispered, "Then we do what we have to ...or I do it, anyway. You're not ready for that kind of thing, I don't think. Oh, and that reminds me. There's something important to show you before we hide. Now come on…"

The man didn't give her a chance to catch his shoulder again, rising quickly to his full height and gesturing for her to follow. She was surprised when their goal turned out to be the circular staircase to the third floor, and even more surprised at how stupidly difficult the narrow stairs were to not fall off of as she climbed them. Chuck didn’t seem to have the same problem, and quickly outpaced her. But Twilight's wings had taken a bit of a beating during their unfortunate scuffle with each other. Nothing serious, but the left one didn’t want to tuck in all the way. It kept getting caught up on every other rung for the hoof rail built into the stairs while her hooves threatened to slip off the polished wood steps with each upward venture she braved. These human sized stairs were NOT meant for ponies, and the whole process of climbing was nerve racking!

Twilight finally reached the top step, finding Chuck sitting on his own twisted-up legs and waiting in silence. His expression made it clear he had something to say, so she quickly sat herself down in front of his folded knees with her head kept at a bit of a distance. She wanted to give the human the idea that whispering directly into her ear was an uncomfortable and unnecessarily tickle-filled experience. But he just leaned in closer with his long bipedal spine to put his lips right up to her head…

"Look at the..." Chuck began, before taking an Alicorn-powered ear to the face. It wasn’t intentional by any means, but Twilight was not about to apologize for the natural reactions of her body. It wasn't her fault if somehuman ignored the obvious twitching and discomfort he had been causing her ears, after all. It was just self defense between two individual's body features.

"Pff-yglack!" Chuck spat as he jerked back, her ear’s message apparently having been received. He leaned even further back and whisper-shouted, "What the heck was that?" His tongue then poked out, his omnivorous teeth scraping across it a few times... "And why do I now have dirt and hair in my mouth?"

Twilight's eyes rolled completely against her will. She then sighed at having to explain what the man had just made perfectly obvious in his own question... "Your breath was tickling my ear," She impassively informed. And she wasn't at all surprised when Chuck's only response was an owlish blink. In fact, his eyelids moved with a slowness almost on par with Owlowiscious's large and slow-acting orbs...

"...Oh," Chuck finally said as he resumed trying to clean his tongue. "Well ...ah-pfft! ...Sorry about that, I guess. Maybe say something about it next time you're being bothered though, yeah? Anyway, go ahead and take a look at the center log on the staircase. I'm sure you can figure it out pretty fast without my explaining how it works."

Twilight gave the thick beam of wood that served as the circular stair's center support a glance, but there weren't any obvious flaws or anything of note to see. And there was more important happenings going on downstairs, anyway.

“It’s a very nice log, Chuck. The rest of the house is impressive, as well. But don’t you think we have more important things to worry about? Like maybe the dead thing that's trying to get in here and hurt us?”

Chuck just grunted and nodded his bushy head toward the beam, leaving no real choice but to humor him. Twilight sighed as despondently as possible, trying to ignore the spindly human foot that had taken it upon itself to uncoil itself and nudge her flank in the direction of the beam. She stood up to avoid the offending pedal extremity, and walked over to give the wooden support a more thorough examination.

She noticed right away that there was a spot that didn't look quite right in the grain of the center support for the staircase, and ...oh, it was a trap of some kind.

The main log going up the middle of the spiral staircase was made of two massive pieces of wood. They were keyed together near the last few steps, acting like one solid log even though they weren't.

...So long as they never twisted counter-clockwise, anyway. If she were to knock the peg out of the side of where the two logs came together and then twist the bottom log by pulling on the banister, the entire staircase would separate and go crashing down to the floor below.

Twiilght took another look around the largely open and entirely wooden home, her mind working to figure out the forces acting against each other throughout every single structural piece of wood. And a few seconds later, it all made perfect sense.

It would be fine to knock the stair's center log down. The trusses above had been designed to support the entire roof by themselves just on the strength of the interlocking walls, making the home's massive center beams little more than bulky examples of purposefully engineered redundancy. Each and every log the house's inner structure was made of had at least two others attached to it, while the outer walls were themselves locked into each other at the corners of the house's interlocked structure.

Her realization must have been plain to see, because Chuck quietly rose and walked over. He smiled and said, "Yep. It’s a trap one of my old friends came up with about twenty years ago, long before everything went downhill. I’ve made quite a few other changes to help make the place work even better as a safe house, but the easy-break staircase is my favorite, bar none," Twilight didn't know he had stood until he laid a hand across her lower neck, but she didn't even jump at the sudden contact. She barely even heard him when he continued with, "Look. If things go bad at some point, I want you to come up to this balcony here and make sure nothing can follow you. Pull the pin as you come up, and push the right railing outward. The whole staircase will fall right over, and that'll be that." His hand shifted as he moved away, and he added, "...Unless I'm right behind you, of coarse. Than I'd much prefer you wait for me before you knock out the stairs. Now come on, the safe room's over here," He said, making his way to the door on the left side of the balcony.

Chuck opened it with one hand, holding it for her as she tore her eyes off of the bare wood ceiling and made her way into the darkened room. Twilight could just make out a series of strange shapes hanging from the walls around her, and a table with a single chair in the middle of the room. It was still too dark to tell what she was seeing in the early morning light and on the dark side of the house, but there might have also been a bed and a closet further in on the right. She turned to Chuck - who had somehow taken a seat on the lonely chair - and asked, "Um ...Chuck? Is it okay if I cast a small light spell? It’s too dark to see anything, and I don't want to knock anything over and make noise."

The frizzy outline of Chuck’s head nodded, but instead of answering her request he stood to begin what was clearly a very well-practiced series of actions. He moved around the room in the dark, drawing a set of heavy curtains across the two small windows and locking the door closed. He then grabbed a roll of something and stuffed it down against the bottom of the doorway, blocking the tiny gap of barely perceptible light beneath the door.

Of course, this left Twilight just as blind as she'd been downstairs in the pseudo-basement with no windows at all. It was as if she were in some deep underground cave with the sun's rays blocked by miles of rock and soil. She assumed that Chuck was ready for her to cast the spell, and quickly went about doing so before the dark could upset her heart rate and encourage another long inner dialog with herself. A gentle pull on her magic, and the room lit up in a gentle and familiar glow.

...And then it almost went dark again.

The walls were covered in bows and elaborate arrowheads or fully complete arrows. Weapons of war, crafted with such obvious attention to detail that she doubted even a member of Celestia's personal guard would turn any one of them away. Many of the weapons had thin golden wire inlayed into the wood, flowing in ornate curling and sweeping patterns to create animals and highlights across the shape of the wood. Others had silver plates embedded into the thickest parts of their grip, engraved with hoof-carved scenes of nature. She even saw one with a deer drinking water from a stream carved into the polished metal, and the details of the stream overran the silver to continue on across the wood itself as if it was following the whims of gravity naturally. She didn’t even care that they were weapons, the level of artistic skill alone was ...amazing!

"Chuck..." Twilight breathed, no real effort being necessary to keep her voice quiet as she spoke. "What are...? How did you...?"

Chuck sat back down on his chair and spoke in a normal voice... "Yeah, so anyway... this is the safe room. I stuffed every little hole and space in the walls I could find with expanding foam, so there’s no need to whisper here. Just don't outright shout or anything, and we'll be fine …now what did you want to know?"

Twilight swallowed, and tried to speak normally, "The bows... Where did they all come from?"

Chuck smiled and said, "Oh, you know. Wherever the right piece of wood happened to be growing. Some of the rarer woods did come from overseas suppliers, though."

Twilight felt her flank hit the carpeted floor. She hadn’t even been planning to sit down. "You mean you ...made them? All of them?!"

"Yep," Chuck confirmed, his grin then fell a bit. "Bowyery was how I made a living before ...well, you know."

"That's …well that’s very impressive," Twilight admitted. How one single man could make so many fine weapons in just one partial lifetime was a mystery, but she believed him. There was just something about the design of the carving and the wire work that said ...'Chuck'.

...Or maybe Twilight was still thinking about being eaten, and was reading into things that weren't there. It's not like she knew much about weapons in general, much less archery or whatever this bowyery subject entailed.

"So how about it..." Chuck said with a smirk. "Which bow calls to you the loudest?"

Twilight didn't get what he meant at first. Bows didn't call. They were known to ‘twang’ or ‘slap’ when fired in the ancient stories, but...

And then it hit her.

"Chuck, no. I mean, I can't! I don't even know how to hold one, first of all. And even if I did, I'm an Alicorn! I can just shield myself or push anything dangerous away with my magic."

"Like you did with the bear?" Chuck calmly prodded. And Twilight felt her shoulders sag a bit. He did make a rather good point. Chuck noticed her reaction and said, "Sorry, Princess. That was uncalled for. But the reality that you're facing here is that you were eaten yesterday." He walked over and looked her in the eye, saying, "You say you can protect yourself with your magic. But you didn't do so, even with a set of giant teeth coming straight at your face." His eyes narrowed, making his few un-beard-covered facial features all the more menacing in the light of her horn. "You froze up, and then you fell over without even putting up a fight. You died like a little bleating lamb."

Twilight frowned and said, "I didn't expect it! If I had seen the thing coming, I would have had a shield bubble around it in half a second!"

"Shield bubble... Oh, right ...that floaty business with the ozone smell," Chuck said. He then deadpanned, and shook his head violently before continuing with, "Look, Princess. This is real life. Real life comes with real death. REAL death! Just look around the next time we go outside, and you'll see it for yourself in every damned cobweb and in every bird of prey over your head. Everything that draws breath has a set of rules it lives by in this world, and it will do anything it can to avoid breaking them. One of the most common is not stopping half way with things. It's cliche as hell, but it really is 'kill or be killed' out there." He glowered, and raised his voice to say, "Face it, Princess! Get it good and ingrained in that oddly round and fluffy head of yours! ...Unless you wake up in your own bed tomorrow morning, you are going to have to kill something at some point! It's either that, or you're going to get chomped by something that wants to live more than you do! ...I'm sorry, but you're too damned soft for any other outcome."

"That's ...no, Chuck! That's not right at all!" Twilight countered, caught up in Chuck's emotional outpouring and very much upset at what he'd said about her ability. "Killing is the worst possible course of action! It's a last resort! One you do everything you can think of to avoid until there's nothing left to try! That's why the world I come from is so diverse! You can't improve something once it's gone, so killing is nothing but a waste of potential." And then she thought of something important... "And why are we talking about this when one of those things is still downstairs trying to get in right now? We should be guarding the detachable stairs in case we need to use them!"

Chuck ignored her and lifted one of the simpler looking bows off the wall. He studied it for a moment, before he said, "Your world must be a real piece of work, if that's the way you and your fellow pony people think. It makes me wonder how your predators even survive. ...And it still doesn't change the fact that you're soft as lamb wool."

"I am not soft!" Twilight demanded, pointing a accusatory hoof. "I told you! My friends and I have saved the world! And not just once, either! We've done so multiple times!"

Chuck crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. "And yet you bleat like a little goat and curl up at the first sight of danger. So what the heck were you saving the world from? An army of fluffy pillows with kittens for shields and bananas for swords?"

Twilight balked. She then snorted angrily and said, "My friends and I are a part of Equestria's most powerful latent magic! The Elements of Harmony! It's our calling to protect our world from all kinds of evil or misguided beings that rise against Equestria! It gets violent sometimes and ...and I am not soft!"

"...Well alright then," Chuck allowed. "What kind of violence are we talking, here? I need pictures or it didn't happen. ...Or stories are good too, since we're gonna be up here for a little while longer." He suddenly slapped his forehead. "And you wouldn't have any pictures for obvious reasons, so just regale me with some of your toughest battles. I'll consider it proof enough that you're not a liability ...for the moment."

Twilight lifted herself almost completely upright, bringing her forehooves up to start counting off her many adventures: "My friends and I have prevented an eternal night... ~clop Saved the Alicorn who tried to create an eternal night borne up from her innermost nightmare... ~clop We've stopped an under-stimulated god of chaos from plunging the world into a thousand years of chaos out of boredom... ~clop We fought our way through an army of Changelings and nearly won the fight all by ourselves... ~clop We prevented a vengeful king of darkness from returning to power and enslaving a long lost empire... ~clop ...taptaptaptap~ ...Hmmmm, oh! And just last year I fought a sixty foot tall Centaurian Lord who ate most of the world's magic and tackled me through a mountain."

Twilight caught her breath for a moment, letting her adventures sink in for the currently rather slack-jawed human. And she did have to admit that - in hindsight, anyway - the past five years of her life were pretty hard to believe. She quickly tried to provide a bit more merit to her claims to make her life more palatable... "But that's really just the major events from my early twenties, you know? There are plenty of more sensible things going on in Ponyville most of the time that we've had to deal with. Like a dragon moving into a cave too close to town and covering the land in smoke, or a grumpy Ursa Minor tearing the roof off of town hall after it was woken up from its nap time ...bugbears showing up out of nowhere ...All kinds of things, really." And now Chuck's jaw was threatening to fall off... "Ugh! Look, Chuck! My world is clearly very different from yours. I'm not asking you to believe me, because I can hardly believe all the things I've been through myself. But that's exactly my point! I have seen and overcome a great deal of nasty and bad things! More than I ever would have expected from my humble beginnings, that's for sure." She sagged a bit into the carpet, and Chuck didn't poke fun at her this time. Although when she shined her horn's light on his face to check on why he was so quiet, he seemed perfectly calm...

So calm that he was either in deep thought or had fallen asleep.

"Chuck?"

"I'm alright..." Chuck dismissed. He then shrugged and said, "Well ...mostly alright. I think I smell copper inside by brain though, which means ...things." He fell silent, his white shirt's movement the only sign that he was alive. His eyes then lifted, meeting hers with a look Twilight couldn't quite place. His lips parted slightly, and he said, "I feel a need to explain something here ...mostly for myself, but also for you. Let me start by just saying that: I ...am a man. Through and through, for better or for worse, a man is what I am. Keep that in mind, or the rest of what I'm about to say won't make a lick of sense. And making sense is everything when it comes to being a man. Men like things that we can easily understand. Simple, sensible, and well understood things. But if something - or someone - fails to fit in with those core guidelines? Well then it's anyone's guess what might happen. There are plenty of men out there who will make the effort to understand things they haven't encountered before. Or at least they'll take it to the point of figuring out how far they can throw those things off a cliff or into either a blender or a barbecue pit. But for most of us men? The other options are a far more common choice. It's usually down to two different approaches when it comes to new things that break away from normalcy: The knee-jerk approach: usually involving the liberal application of fists or high explosives and firearms as we destroy the shit out of it until it stops moving or existing. Or the self-preservation approach ...Which is either a silent withdrawal from the field, or an exercise in the timeless human tradition of running away from scary shit while screaming bloody murder. And these days that last one usually doesn't stop until your shoes become little more than shredded ankle bracelets and a few leftover pieces of shoe lace stuck between your toes."

Chuck leaned in, and said. "That ...is a man. Me, in all my manly maleness. That was my life. I detected, decided, and reacted. I kept things simple, sensible, and safe. It was all I needed, and I was ...pretty darned content in my misery." He frowned. "And then you show up. Doe-eyed and standing in the road like you belonged there. You shouted at me to stop, and just like that ...my whole damned world view was suddenly in question. The fact that you even exist? It's a fucking laugh! A complete riot! An impossible and unstoppable object meeting an equally impossible and immovable wall! All of my beliefs in science and physics? Gone in a poof of freaking magic!! All of humanity's theories about space and time? Freakin magic has killed it for me! You ...you just killed it for me." He leaned in even closer, so close that she could pick out the individual lines of bright blue and green in his irises. His frown deepened, and he said, "So, princess... When you say that you fought a giant Centaur and survived going through a mountain? I now can just say, sure! And I can totally believe that happened, too! And when you say that you and your friends stood against a GOD and won the day? I can't find the will to doubt it for even one little second. ...And magic being real? Oh man! I couldn't even hope to tell you how willing I am to believe that shit right now!" Chuck retreated and pointed to his temple. "...But then my brain stops, takes a great big step back, and tells me that I've gone insane. And I actually find myself wanting to believe my brain is right and that I've lost it! I kinda trust it to be correct about shit, you know? I mean it hasn't failed me yet!" His smile fell. "But then you walk into the room, and you do anything other than sit there like a big stuffed toy full of pulled cotton balls and polyester; and the logical part of my brain just gives up and leaves me hanging. So I made a decision for my own mental health: I said, Screw it! Why not believe the pony? Just take the easy path, and trust whatever your eyes want to tell you for a while?" He leaned back, his frown relaxing completely. "So yeah, I'm just gonna cruise right on through this crazy ride, believing any little thing you have to say ...at least until it doesn't freak me out every time you so much as raise an eyebrow ...which it does, by the way ...so please stop doing it. Anyway, I seem to have forgotten what we were actually talking about here. So I guess I'll just shut up and stop trying to pinch myself awake from now on. ...Congratulations on being real, Princess."

Twilight had to force her eyebrows back down... "I... wow... Okay, so I have some questions for you about human culture after all of that. But to answer your current question and hopefully help you relax a little? ...I think we were talking about me not being soft?"

Chuck sat up. "Oh right, that shit. So did you win your fight against the big Centaur guy? I mean ...you're still here, so it's obvious who glory favored in the end. But I like to trade fight stories."

Okay, well at least Chuck did have one thing in common with one of her friends.

...Rainbow Dash liked to share her fight stories, too.

"Well I wouldn't really say I beat him, Chuck. Or at least not in the way you seem to be thinking of. There was a lot of raw magic being thrown back and forth, shields being blasted to little or no effect, dodging giant rocks and ...getting tackled through a mountain wasn't an exaggeration. In the end I couldn't beat him, but he couldn't beat me either. We probably would have fought for a long time. But he had captured my friends before the fight even started. He forced me to make a choice between fighting an endless battle, or saving them. There was no choice to be made, and I chose to save my friends by giving up. It actually worked out perfectly, and we unlocked a magical box that allowed us to become one with our Elements! We were so powerful after that Lord Tirek couldn't even put up any resistance. We sent him to Tartarus in the very same cage he used to capture my friends in the first place."

"That's ...wow," Chuck said. "And this 'Tartarus' place... Am I right to think it's your version of Hell?"

"I'm not sure," Twilight admitted, tilting her head as she tasted the unfamiliar word. And then she remembered the colorful language of the Mirror-World's Rainbow Dash. "Oh! Hell! I think I'm familiar with it, so ...yes? Tartarus would probably be a good analog for what little I heard about the human underworld."

"And you sent him there? You and your friends?"

"We did! He got so big that the ground shook when he walked, and he kept himself busy destroying a forest while we were off getting our Elements powered up. We came back, blasted him with the power of the elements, and ...well that was the end of it. Lord Tirek was sent to Tartarus where he belonged."

Chuck stared at her for a moment. He sniffed and wrung his hands out, then cracked his neck. Finally, he sat down on the chair again and said, "So then you've fought in a few good battles, and come out on top. That's not what I expected from what I've seen of you so far, but who am I to judge a book by its cover. Especially after my little speech. But it does beg the question: why did you get so bothered at the sight of a dead bear, if you've already seen death on the fields of war?"

Twilight balked. The fields of WHAT! What was wrong with these humans!? "We didn't kill Tirek, chuck!" Twilight exclaimed. "We banished him! My friends and I have never taken a life!" She had a short flashback, and realized that she had overlooked something ...something important.

Chuck was quick to pick up on her concern... "I see you're having yourself a bit of an inner monologue there ...remembering some distant battlefield, princess?"

Twilight nodded, slowly. "There was this one ...pony. He was actually the dark king I mentioned earlier. He fought us over control of a powerful artifact, and got caught up in the blast of positive energy when we won. The expanding field of emotionally charged magic just kind of ...broke him. ...Oh, and I think Queen Chrysalis may be dead at this point as well, but that wasn't the Element's direct fault or doing, either. She needs love to live, and she abandoned everything she had to escape us when we caught up to her in her hive."

"Okay," Chuck began, looking utterly dubious and confused. "So two deaths, then. But only witnessed or likely, and neither were your own work. How the heck do you fight against an army of anything and not kill something?"

Twilight collected herself for a moment, and said, "Well my friends and I don't go around looking for fights. I think the worst fighting we've had to deal as a group with was the Changeling's invasion of Canterlot, and that was dealt with by my brother and his fiance before it got too bad. I don't know why I haven't seen more suffering in my life, but I know that I'm not disappointed that I haven't. Normal ponies don't like to kill things, Chuck! No normal sentient being does!"

"Huh," Chuck murmured, rubbing his beard. "That's a nice point of view to have, I guess. It sounds pleasant. ...It would never work here, though." He suddenly pointed one of his fingers at her. "And you said that Centaur guy went to Tartarus! As in Hell! That means you killed him! That's what sending someone to hell means!"

Twilight lowered her head in thought and said, "That just means Hell and Tartarus aren't the same concept. Our worst penalty in court is banishment, and Tartarus is the worst place a pony can be banished to. It's a place for those that refuse to change or be redeemed. It's not actually some kind of afterlife, like your hell seems to be. It's a physical place."

Chuck seemed to deflate a bit. "Ugh... I don't even care anymore. You clearly know more than I do, so I'll just except that your version of hell is a crazy pony Australia, and move on." He sagged in place, looking tired. "At least tell me that a few people didn't make it through the Changy-thing battle. I refuse to call to let it be called a battle unless someone died."

Twilight hesitantly nodded. "I did hear a few Guards mention that there were Changelings and guardsponies that got hurt, and that some didn't make it to the end of the fighting. My brother was Captain of the Royal Guard at the time. He knows about everything that happened, both during and after the attack ...except he won't talk about it, even to me. The most I've ever gotten out of him is that it was 'bad', and that he 'should have been much more careful with Cadence's magic amplifying his own when he reengaged his greater protection shielding spell. Chrysalis survived, but she was sent flying over the horizon. We had to deal with her again later on, and ...well she won't be coming back if she survived her second encounter ...not if she has any remaining brain cells in that ugly black shell she calls a cranium. Not after what she did to Princess Celestia! And what she did to my brother!? grrrRRR!"

Chuck lifted his hands to his eyes and said, "Um, Princess? Could you maybe turn it down a bit? I'm tan enough as it is..."

Twilight noticed that her light spell had gotten more than a bit out of hoof. She quickly brought her magic back down to normal levels, and said, "Sorry, it's just ...the changeling queen did some pretty terrible things to my brother. She brainwashed him into thinking she was actually his fiance. She directly targeted my family! And to be honest... If there's any one pony that I wouldn't mind seeing get her just deserts, it would be her." She sighed, calming herself before she continued with, "But I think I've made my opinions on killing pretty clear. That's why I got upset when you wanted me to take up a weapon. I just ...I don't want to kill anything, okay? You can clearly handle yourself well enough for the both of us if it comes to fighting anything. And hay, you could probably even take on those military riffle guys with bows this nice, right?

"The word is 'rifle', not 'riffle'," Chuck corrected. "And I seriously doubt it. The Bar J boys are a close knit family with military hardware to play with. They could own me without even trying. They're also the only thing keeping the roads around here clear of bandits and raiding parties, so it would be pretty stupid to get rid of them." He sighed heavily, dragging a hand down his beard. "Look ...Princess. I'm not trying to say that taking a life is a good thing here. My whole point is that it is going to happen, whether you want it to or not. A weapon just makes it less likely that you're the one doing the dying after the dust settles and the last shot's been fired. So if you think you can stop a threat with your magic stuff? You're welcome to try it. ...Just make sure that you actually try it. All that 'peaceful route' crap will do is either get you killed, or make you softer and softer until you ...well until you're soft enough to die."

Twilight snorted and said, "Why do you keep calling me soft? I told you what my friends and I have done! Do you even know what the definition of soft is? Because I know all five possible definitions." She held up a hoof, rubbing the nearly solid ring of matted fur that had once been a fetlock. "...and I don't think I currently fit a single one of them. Not even one."

Chuck smiled and said, "A word challenge, huh? Alright, I'll bite." He thought for a short moment and said, "Soft is an adjective, meaning ...squishy, easily deformed, or just ...you know, soft, like a rabbit's fur. The only other definition worth talking about is a little harder to explain. It's like ...someone who is unable to act under pressure. Or just someone being too nice, when it would make much more sense to kick some ass. The antonym is much easier to define though. It's being 'hard'. We call someone who can keep a cool head under pressure 'hardened'. I would say that - In your case - 'soft' would fit you perfectly well, with you being too nice for your own good and freezing under pressure."

Twilight scoffed. "Well so much for arguing verb confusion, then." She sighed deeply, sagging her shoulders. "Look ...Chuck. I don't want us to fight like this. Especially in our current situation. Could you just explain to me why you're so adamant about me becoming ...not soft? I've lived most of my life being soft without even knowing that's what I was, apparently. Isn't it good enough to know that I've survived everything I've been through so far? Why should I change for the worse, when what I already do works more than well enough?"

Chuck scoffed, and said, "First off, it doesn't work. You laid down and let the world's skinniest bear eat you alive, remember? And second; I'm basing all this crap I'm spouting off of people I know ...or knew. Most of the hardened ones are still around, while the nice folks were all zombies or headless and twice dead well before the end of the first year. I mean it's not like I'm just throwing random crap at you here. I'm speaking from a fair deal of real life experience! Heck, I even know what being soft is like! I was pretty soft myself when I was a kid."

"Oh really..." Twilight deadpanned. "I have a hard time believing that. You seem like the kind of human that was born hard."

Chuck choked, and then burst out laughing. Twilight flinched back as he toppled off his chair... "What? What are you laughing about?" And then she realized what she had said, and how it might have sounded to an immature colt of five years of age... "Oh for Celestia's sake! How old are you supposed to be? And quiet down! The zombie will hear you!" She tried.

Chuck slapped his hands over his mouth, managing to reign himself in a few moments later. He sat up, looked at her ...and then his face began to do ...things.

Twilight's lack of amusement grew with each pained and mirthful face the human made, and she soon decided to intervene, lest his face get stuck in one of the ridiculous poses his mirth was forming it into. Her light spell was quickly replaced with one used exclusively for lifting heavy objects, and she plucked Chuck up off the floor. She moved him over his chair, manually adjusting his limbs so they matched the rests and overall shape of the seat. Her actions had the desired effect, and she was left with a stiff-lipped and properly attentive human - who started complaining as soon as his jaw could once again move...

"Jeeze, Princess ...can't you take a joke? You know I don't like your spells. And I couldn't even move my arms that time! What exactly did you do?"

Twilight grinned happily at the question, saying, "That, was an altered version of a cargo manipulation spell! I developed it after seeing a group of unicorns drop a piano. They didn't lift evenly, and the load got out of control. The modifications I came up with allow for one unicorn to do all the work by themselves, by multiplying the applied force through a double-ratcheting levitation matrix." Chuck looked baffled. "...Right, sorry. I forgot you don't know that much about magic and casting. Just think of it like a block and tackle or a chain-fall; but with magic instead of ropes and chains. It can also apply force in any direction within the field, which is the reason you couldn't move your limbs. Two matrices for your arms, another two for your ...legs." Twilight felt her smile start to fall, and she also started to feel ...something odd. "...One matrix for your head and ...another three for your Cervical, Thoracic, and ...Lumbar spine." The feeling got stronger, and she felt compelled to keep talking... "It's ...not really meant for use with living things, due to the amount of force it can exert ...but I know the spell better than anypony! I spent weeks fine tuning the stability of the ratcheting action in the matrices! I can solve those small puzzle trinkets you see in magic shops with it ...tie knots in fine string without the string fraying ...even thread a needle without bending it! You were never in any danger at any point!"

Chuck frowned at her, and Twilight returned the expression. But she was frowning at the floor, instead. The feeling in her gut had grown to an unbearable level, and she was starting to think she'd felt it before...

And the answer wasn't long in coming, because she had felt it before. Or at least she had felt something close to it. She could never forget Princess Celestia's disappointment after she ruined everypony's day over a tardy letter, and the horrible feeling of knowing she'd been almost completely selfish in doing so. The awful feeling was much stronger this time though ...direct and raw, as if her body wanted her to suffer for what should have been a very obviously flawed idea.

And the strange guilt was further compounded by the outright confusion of not being able to find any good reason for her actions.

Why had she chosen to use that spell, instead of her usual go-to methods? A simple levitation field would have been much safer and several times more efficient. The day had only just begun, and she felt a bit woozy and tired, sure. But she had no excuse to give for her severe misuse of potentially dangerous magic, and worse than that...

Chuck didn't know the laws of magic. There was nopony here that could call her out on her mistake...

"Chuck ...I'm sorry. I don't know why I used that spell. I should have just used my mouth instead."

Chuck nodded quickly, and said, "I do usually like it when a gal uses her mouth."

Twilight was getting tired of deadpanning... "Chuck, just tell me what you were going to tell me! And no more jokes. I don't think I can handle much more of your ...humor."

"You could stop talking and pick out a bow!" Chuck fired back, giving up instantly on humor and going straight to yelling at her. "It's why I brought you up here, after all! But then you had to get all ...fili ...fillasofa ...damnit!"

"Philosophical," Twilight finished. "And we both know how I feel about weapons..." She trotted up closer to the man's suddenly grumpy face, and said, "But I will give you a chance, so long as you don't ask me to hurt anypony. I kind of have to go at least that far, after I used that magic on you. Just know that I can't promise I won't break something expensive."

Chuck's face instantly brightened. "That's my Princess! You don't have to use it as a weapon, anyway. There's a lot of rewards for getting good at hitting the center ring on a paper target."

"I'm sure there is ...now could you stop doing that? I'm not a dog..."

Chuck seemed to notice what he was doing, and quickly pulled his hands away from where they were petting her mane. "Heh ...sorry. It's a human and four legged furry things ...thing." He then stood and started to pace, his simple and undecorrated bow swinging loosely in his hand.

"Alright, Princess. I'm going to tell you now what I was going to tell you then, which is this: We all start out soft, a match to our brand new bodies. But then we harden up later on in life, usually once we experience our first case of true hardship or loss." He smoothly shifted his feet, drawing the bow much further than Twilight thought a piece of wood could bend without snapping. "…I was lucky enough to do most of my hardening early, hunting small game with my father. A squirrel or a rat is hardly intimidating, but the very first lesson I learned about hunting was that it didn't matter what the target was. If it had life, the emotions involved were always the same ...and they were damned strong, too. I missed every single shot on a game animal at first, even though I could hit a paper target easily. It was my hands, fighting me because I didn't want to hit the target. One look at a cute little squirrel, and my hands would be shaking all over the place. It took a lot of lost arrows, but I finally learned how to block the emotions out. I hardened myself, and the shaking stopped the very moment I figured out how it worked. Even better, I never froze up in fear again. And that's exactly what you're going to have to do, Princess. Harden yourself against the stresses of life ...and against the emotions of taking a life away. I would normally recommend facing whatever you fear most, but I don't think there are enough bears on my little mountain for that..."

Twilight shivered. "I wouldn't think so, no. And I won't be killing any bears ...or anything else, either."

Chuck smiled at her. "Then you're going to be a snack for something hungry, simple as that."

"Not if you're watching out for me, I won't!" Twilight countered. "Isn't that what humans do in dangerous situations? Keep an eye out for each another?" Chuck gave her a look, but said nothing. Twilight took it as license to keep going. "Well it's what ponies do. And we've done it for so long that we have an adage about it. It's an ancient Equestrian poem so old that we've forgotten the author's origins and name. It's that old!" She decided to provide a small sample, and put a hoof over her heart to say, "A thousand eyes against surprise gives dawn to foals grown old and wise." She let her hoof fall. "The poem has seventy six verses, but that one captures its full message. Memorizing the entire thing is actually a pre-screen requirement for joining Princess Celestia's Solar Guard - her personal protectors. Even my big brother used it on his new troops ...and of course he used it on me all the time when I was little."

Chuck nodded along limply, looking annoyingly disinterested. He then waved a hand and said, "That's nice, Princess . It's not how we do things anymore, though. Modern humans do work together, but it's the exception rather than the rule. A mark of the weak, really." And then he brightened back up a bit. "But enough of this talking crap. Pick out a damn bow already!"

Twilight scoffed. "Really, Chuck? We're just going to ignore everything we just talked about?"

"Glad to hear you're okay with letting things go," Chuck answered. "Because now that I think about it, nothing I have here is going to fit you. I have to figure out a way for you to hold a bow properly, or any training will be pointless."

"Chuck."

"I know you can do stuff with those hooves of yours that make me question my sanity though, so I’m pretty sure you can draw a bow just fine. I'll just make you a custom hoof-friendly riser of some kind to hold onto …maybe take a few days to walk around and see if the right piece of wood and the right shape decides to land in my lap..."

"Chuck, I don't..."

"I mean, I have racks and racks of Yew and Osage Orange staves ready to be worked into fine bows, but finding the right one for something like this? I imagine it’ll be at least two-thirds luck and one third fortune. ...Ha! Frankly, I'm excited!"

Twilight ignored the fact that luck and fortune were exactly the same thing when used in that context, and said, "...Right, Chuck. Just don't work too hard on my behalf, alright? ...And can we please check on things downstairs now? It’s been long enough for that thing to go away now, don't you think?"

"With the way you smell, I doubt it..." Chuck grumbled under his breath. He still didn't seem to realize just how good her hearing was. He then patted her on the head like he hadn't just insulted her and said, "Alright, nooby. You just stay up here, and I'll give things a quick check and come right back."

"Nooby?" Twilight questioned. "First I'm soft, and now I'm a nooby?"

"Yup," Was Chuck's only response as he kicked the ...OH SWEET LUNA’S THIGH-HIGH SOCKS WHAT IS THAT!

Twilight leapt up on the chair and flared her horn, aiming at the absolutely enormous snake she’d noticed staring up at her from the bottom of the doorway. A snort came from Chuck as he …calmly kicked the reptile out of the way of the door and opened it. Twilight could then do nothing but watch as a grown human male leapt onto the banister of the dubiously sturdy staircase like a foal and slid out of sight. He even giggled as he went down the railing on his flank.

The whole experience left her frozen, staring in shock at the empty doorway. She then tried to come to terms with everything she'd just witnessed, and see if any of it made any sense.

A nervous second look revealed the snake wasn't anything to worry about, its eyes being made of glossy black buttons and it's body of aged looking cotton fabric; but she could deal with that tidbit of information in the next moment. Chuck’s actions were actually much more pressing. She couldn’t wrap her mind around why he’d seemingly changed his personality so suddenly and so drastically, becoming a wild risk taker after they'd talked instead of the harsh and quiet neurotic and killer she'd had him pegged as. She could certainly understand a bit of happiness if the man was running away from danger ...maybe. But she had no idea what to make of his careless manner while heading downstairs and back toward it. That was just ...excessively crazy! Had he lost whatever sanity he'd had left during her misguided use of magic? Had he been hiding a much greater problem she simply hadn't noticed? …Or did he perhaps have a flawless plan that she didn’t know of, and thus had nothing to fear from the zombie outside?

And with that messy bunch of thinking out of the way ...Who the hay owns a giant stuffed snake!? Snakes aren't cute! You're only supposed to have stuffed animals because they're cute and hugable! It was completely illogical to try to make something so obviously not cute as a snake look like a foal’s snuggle toy!

"...STOP STARING AT ME!" Twilight cried as she tossed the stuffed menace out of sight behind the table. She then began angrily pacing the floor, trying to think of a way to convince Chuck that making a pony of any subspecies a bow and arrow to shoot was a waste of his time. If this whole archery thing was all about achieving some kind of elevated state of ...hardness, then it should be taught with the mightiest weapon of all; which of course was the mind itself. And to that end, she could just use her magic as her weapon! No deadly projectiles or unnecessary risk-taking needed!

Twilight Sparkle made up her mind then and there. If a zombie ever came at her again and she couldn't simply run away, she would pick it right up and throw it over the horizon with her magic ...or maybe even teleport it up into space. That would both prove her point about not being a big softy, and also keep her from seeing the squishy and upsetting results of her actions. It wasn’t like an already deceased body could feel anything, so it wasn't immoral if she was only doing it to defend herself from dire harm. She wouldn't be a bad pony if she was just trying to not get hurt and possibly prove an important point to a dubious alien ally, right?

…Right?

A big part of her doubted it. In Equestria, almost anything that could move had the right to live, regardless of its nature. Even if that movement was due to a nervous system that had been taken over by a hard to believe virus-infested bacterial colony, it would still have the same right to exist as any other organism. That was the law, as it had been laid out for all of recorded equine history.

She didn't know when, but at some point Twilight had stopped pacing. The stuffed snake lay crumpled on the floor nearby, staring up at her with its big black glossy eyes. From this angle it actually looked ...a little bit sad. And the feeling was apparently contagious, as she let herself slump slowly down to the floor to rest her head on her hooves. She pouted at the fuzzy reptile for a while, and then gave it a hateful cheek-poofing scowl...

"Oh what are you so sad about," She asked the tube of lifeless fabric. "At least you're in your own world, with no worries or moral dilemmas or ...any problems of any kind! At all!"

She reached out with her magic, grabbing the stupid thing to send it slowly flying around the room above her head. She had to roll onto her back to keep an eye on it, lest she overdo things and knock one of the expensive looking bows off the wall.

Twilight spent a few minutes just like that, foaling around and making the long bodied stuffed animal chase its own tail within the cone of light from her horn. It made her feel better somehow …like she was still in control of her life.

It also made her think of Discord without arms or legs, and then she had to take a moment to wonder just where exactly that particular thought had come from...

The answer came to her without effort, and her cheeks puffed out even more before the air pressure overcame her lips in a loud bilabial fricative. "Ppppbt!" She was just feeling the effects of missing her home more than she ever had before, even the parts she didn't particularly enjoy. Not that she really minded helping the town balance its budget or orchestrating the occasional charity event; that was just a part of who she was as a Princess of Equestria. She just missed it …all of it.

Even Discord, and his oddly Chuck-like sense of humor.

Twilight was just starting to tie the giant snake into a loose knot when the door shot open with a loud bang. She had half a second to realize something had gone wrong above her head before the first puff of white cotton landed on her muzzle, slowly rolled off, and drifted to the floor. It was quickly followed by more, and then the rest of the stuffed snake thumped against the carpet when she released it from her grip with a sharp gasp...

"Oh my gosh! Chuck! I am so sorry! You ...you surprised me and my magic slipped and ...I can fix it! I promise I can!"

Chuck quickly rushed into the room, gathering the ruined stuffed animal up in his arms as he lifted his head up toward the ceiling. "NOOOOOOO!", he cried as he held out some cotton puffs toward her and said, "You killed Reggie!" He then slowly leveled a hateful glare full of bared teeth at her, causing Twilight to quickly rise to her hooves. She wasn't too sure about being in a room filled to the brim with Chuck's weapon of choice at the moment...

"How could you ...I only just named him!" Chuck growled. He then choked, snorted, and burst into laughter ...again.

Once the confusion wore off, Twilight’s reward human for his stupidity was half of a stuffed snake at around thirty miles per hour …right to the only place Twilight felt such a lightweight projectile could actually hurt.

While Chuck was busy trying to laugh and groan at the same time from his fetal position on the floor; Twilight was busy stuffing puffballs of stuffing into a dead stuffed snake ...who had apparently just been named Reggie for some Celestia-only-knows reason. She was also trying not to stuff a few of them into somepony else, if they didn't calm down and start making some proper sense in the next few moments...

"Really, Chuck," Twilight chastised as she stomped a hoof on the knappy carpet. "I don't understand you. One second you're locking doors and telling me to be quiet because we'll die horribly if I make noise, and the next you're sliding down the staircase like a foal on Hearth's Warming morning and slamming doors!” Another stomp brought her closer to the downed human, and she increased her volume to say, “Explanations ..now! Is the zombie gone? Are we safe?"

"Safe?" Chuck wheezed from the floor, still holding his crotch. He then splayed out on his back and said, "Well it depends on what you consider safe I suppose. I mean, I couldn't get a solid count from the deck, but I think there's somewhere around ...thirty or so zombies out there, now."

"What!" Twilight exclaimed. She then galloped out of the room, intent on destroying the staircase and putting up a few shields for good measure. She didn't make it past Chuck, who somehow managed to grab both her rear hooves and bring her crashing to the ground.

"Woah! Easy there, princess. Let me explain before you go do something stupid!" The man shouted. He then began to explain himself in a way she wouldn't have seen coming if it was half a hoof away and on fire at midnight...

"A dead man knocking at your door

Does little but send word to more

You can leave him to stew

Or play 'Miserlou’

And make sure that his friends come for more"

Chuck let her rear hooves go, and Twilight whirled around to get right in his face. "What the hay is that supposed to mean!" She growled as she straightened her legs to fully stand.

Chuck groaned as he rolled to his stomach, bracing himself up on his elbows to say, "It's a rhyme we tell kids to keep them quiet while dead-heads are around. You know, so they don’t call in more of them."

Twilight felt her eye twitch a little. She shuddered as her emotions fought to break free. It was all she could do to keep from yelling. "…That was a limerick you …bearded cave troll! Five lines in that pattern is always a limerick! ...And thirty!? How in the flaming hay are we going to get out of here with thirty of them out there waiting for us?!"

"Okay, first off? …I ain’t no damned troll,” Chuck groused. “And we aren't going to be doing a damned thing. I am going to take care of it, while you sit up here and watch the staircase for anything that isn't me. And also if you wouldn't mind fixing Reggie while I take care of crowd control, that'd be great. He's pretty much the only thing I have to keep my scent locked in this little room …which is kind of important while you're waiting for zombies to lose interest in you. Oh, and as for why there are more now, it’s just like the limer-thingy said. That first walker heard and smelled us fighting earlier, and called the others in with all the sound it was making scratching and banging against the door. They attract each other with noise like that ...we think. It's actually a good thing if you look at it the right way. Every walker on the mountain is probably here right now, so once they're all dealt with it'll be much safer to move around outside for the next few days. We could even go out and find that one special tree with your new custom made bow hiding in it!"

Twilight felt her eye start twitching so badly that she had to sit down and put her hooves to her temples to keep her eyelid attached, desperately trying to rub away the migraine she currently felt coming on. And Chuck hadn't even answered all of her questions yet! "And why ...on Equus …and on Earth ...are you so happy about all of this?"

"Because!" Chuck chirped. "Thirty is my lucky number!" He then grabbed a handful of arrows from a nearby basket and left in the same manner as before, his flanks and free hand squealing as they slid down the banister and out of sight.

"..."

Twilight dropped to her stomach and simply let herself roll onto her side with a groan. Chuck was starting to remind her way too much of a certain pink-coated baker she happened to call a close friend. She couldn't seem to figure him out, and had the feeling that she didn't really want to. Chuck was happy when he should be scared, angry or sad when he should be happy …and almost terrifying to be around the rest of the time. Well, okay. She hadn't actually confirmed that middle part yet. But she wouldn't be surprised if it were true! He was crazy! He was insane!

"And Celestia help me ...he's all I have."

Twilight dragged herself slowly across the carpet until she could see the tattered and broken remains of Reggie the first, soon to hopefully become Reggie the second. Her headache was slowly abating now that Chuck had left - regardless of his potentially neck-breaking choice of traveling down staircases - and she had little doubt he would be back safe and sound. Anypony that crazy couldn't be hurt ...not ever. It was like ...well it was like Pinkie Pie. There was just some unwritten rule of the universe about crazy ponies not getting hurt, and apparently the rule wasn't just applicable to her own world. Pinkie Pie could walk through the most chaotic and catastrophic event in all of Equus and come out cheery and unscathed on the other side of things, and there was little doubt that Chuck would come back just in time to make her rip Reggie in half again.

...She would just have to make sure she finished fixing the snake well before that happened.

The door to the balcony was left open, and she could distantly hear Chuck out on the deck. He was calling taunts and slapping his hands together, and every once in a while she would hear the muffled 'thwack' of an arrow finding its mark. Twilight winced each and every time that particular sound reached her ears, but kept count of each occurrence in the back of her mind. She wanted to know when it was safe again, and she only had twenty eight more winces to endure after the first two reached her ears...

~Thwack~ …Three arrows fired so far, and she'd managed to get most of the stuffing back in Reggie’s disturbingly long body.

~Thwack~ …Six arrows, and she now had the first of three seams pulling themselves through the soft fabric. Only two more big seams to go...

~Thwack!~ …Thirteen, and she was mostly done. Now if only she could remember how Rarity said to hide a knot so it didn't show...

~Thwack~ …And done!

Rarity would probably tell her she'd used the wrong stitch, but Twilight had copied the way the rest of the stuffed animal was sewn and it looked more or less fine. The more important thing was that her headache was mostly gone. Her mind was likewise free of unwanted thoughts. And Reggie the snake even looked a bit less sad then he had before she got started. She'd taken that small liberty of her own accord of course, not that she actually liked the thing. She just didn't think a stuffed animal should look sad, and had taken the artistic liberty of correcting the original designer's error.

Time passed in silence, and no more shots from Chuck's bow were heard. Twilight stayed in place, patiently guarding the staircase from the doorway. She waited around ten minutes, before a small hint of worry began to settle in in the pit of her tummy.

Why was it so quiet? Chuck had said he would come back when he was done with …taking care of things. But she felt like he was late, and she'd only heard twenty or so arrows leave his bow.

He was probably just trying to make her worry, given his shifting personality and clear mental unsoundness.

A quick look behind her revealed the edges of each curtained window, and the light was starting to shine through into the room. It was hard to judge, but Twilight guessed the time at around seven thirty in the morning.

…Ugh. Why did she have to think about the passage of time?! Now she had to pee...

Fortunately, she knew right were the little filly's room was. A quick trot next door found her in a typical human-style bathroom and...

Well, she had problems.

Long story short, Twilight sat like Lyra Heartstrings did when the musical mare played her favorite instrument in the park ...or just felt like being her usual un-usual self. She also discovered that the water swirled the opposite direction here on Earth. But that wasn't the important part. What was important, was that she'd managed to keep her balance without falling off or spilling so much as one single drop.

Why this worthlessly miniscule and highly private detail was making her feel like she'd taken on the entire world and actually won, Twilight had no idea ...but it did.

As she trotted back out onto the indoor balcony of the partial third floor, Twilight realized that there were a lot of rooms she had yet to investigate in Chuck’s home. Her inner foal was feeling frisky at the moment for whatever reason, so she did a little turn on the balcony toward the room on the right. The door squeaked open in her magic, and she immediately felt her stomach grumble.

First it was bows lining the walls, and now it was cans. Cans stacked nearly right up to the ceiling. At any random flick of her eyes, Twilight found a multitudinous plethora of food-stuffs to eat with her eyes. Canned beans, canned corn, canned carrots, giant glass jars of pickled beets and pickled cucumbers... Everything a hungry pony willing to eat out of a metal can could ever wish for was present and accounted for.

She actually shook with the effort of closing that door without her still being inside the room, as it was just so tempting to start reading the labels on the cans to see what the nutritional information could tell her. Supper last night had stretched her stomach nearly to capacity, but she was coming off of a two day fast. She needed breakfast. And breakfast - it seemed - would be in a can. But Twilight knew far better than to just take what she wanted from somepony with anger issues. She had to find a certain bipedal can opener named Chuck, and ask for his permission before she partook of his great can'ed larder. It was only proper behavior for a guest, after all.

She just hoped he was being completely silent on purpose…

Maybe it was the thoughts of stuffing herself with food again. Or maybe it was concern over a potential friend being in trouble. …Or maybe she just wasn’t thinking at all anymore to keep from freaking out. But Twilight decided to lean over the railing and call out loudly into the silent house below…

"Hey Chuck? Are you done doing …that thing you were doing yet?"

Good grief, that came out sounding just silly! She never did put words together very well on an empty stomach, but that? Bad Twilight, using bad grammar like that was bad! She just hoped Chuck didn't come to see it as a defining trait of hers, as her lapses in mental ability seemed to be occurring an awful lot lately. Twilight would much rather he see her for the intellectual she was, not just a 'grumbly tummy' and a general lack of worth...

Not hearing a response to her call, Twilight sighed out a less than calming breath. It seemed a more direct approach was going to be necessary, no matter her desires to the contrary. She trotted over to where the balcony's railing gave way to the stairs leading almost straight down, and gave the first step a wary eye. It had been a real problem just getting up the stupidly designed thing, and she had little doubt going down would be just as awkward.

She briefly considered just jumping off the balcony and gliding down through the massive and open living area below, but her feathers were now in even worse condition than when she'd tried to fly after Chuck on her second day here on Earth. She’d not had a chance or any reason to preen in days, what with the crazy human always being nearby or her wing's condition stuck in the back of her mind. And her wings were now so badly maintained that she didn't want to put them anywhere her mouth. Combine that lack of proper wing maintenance with three large and missing outer primaries, and she was a living recipe for disaster if she dared leave the ground. Twilight could only guess at this point, but it was safe to assume she currently had the same glide ratio of the average brick. An image of her broken body on the floor below suddenly forced itself into her head, and she quickly abandoned any remaining ideas of jumping. It was the stairs, then. Stairs were good!

Good and slippery…

Twilight took way too long to get a hoof planted on the first step, and even longer to get the pattern down as she got started in her decent. It was left front hoof down, lean her neck on the banister for support, both rear hooves down a step one at a time, and then her right front hoof would start the pattern over for the next stair. It worked well enough, but now her right wing was causing her problems. The stupid thing was getting hung up between the rungs, and it caught her off guard almost every single time it happened. If she wasn’t so worried about what had happened to Chuck, she would probably be very glad he wasn’t here to see her having such a hard time with a simple stupid set of-HUP - "GAAAAAAAAAH!"

Twilight chattered down the steps at a frightening pace, her right side slung up against the banister by the centrifugal force of the spiraling wood. Her hooves smashed past stair after stair as if the wooden planks were made of smooth ice, rattling her shoulders and setting her cheeks - all four of them - to bouncing like she'd been tossed into a running rock tumbler. It felt like it would never end ...until of course it ended.

The last stair came and went, and Twilight found herself launched out across the main room at a terrifyingly desperate gallop. She stumbled a good distance before getting a lucky step under her body and spreading her hooves out to slide to a shuddering stop.

...And then she went right ahead and laid down on the floor, hanging onto the long-stranded carpet as if she was worried gravity was about to reverse itself and she'd float off the ground if she didn't hang on tightly enough.

It was a good long while before Twilight realized she had been holding the same breath for too long, and she forced herself to gasp in a fresh batch of air. She slowly calmed down enough to get her brain going again, and found she’d gone nearly halfway across the large main room. It was a miracle she hadn’t plowed through the sitting area and smashed into a couch or the table in front of the fireplace, which had been made of ...oversized deer antlers and a thick round section of perfectly clear glass, from what she could tell.

That would have been loud, and probably also a bit painful.

Twilight closed her eyes and took one more deep and calming breath. Her hooves were tingling badly, but she was otherwise okay. She hadn’t had a ride like that since her efforts to save the Crystal Empire from King Sombra …but then she also hadn’t come down here to lay on her belly and shake like a scared foal. She had an insane potential friend to check on! ...Or a potentially insane friend to check on.

It depended on Chuck's mood which order the descriptive adjectives went in, and on her mood too if she thought it over.

Twilight stood up on her tingling hooves and looked out through the massive windows, trying to see where Chuck currently was. And then she had to force herself to breath yet again. She couldn’t see the sun itself, but she could see the colors it was casting across the trees past the porch's railing. And the view was ...well it was breathtaking. She could only imagine what it would be like to grow up in a place like this. It would probably ruin the rest of the world for a young human.

…They would likely never find a more beautiful view in all their lives.

The mountain range in the distance lanced up into the sky, so high that she could picture Rainbow Dash herself having a hard time reaching it. And a mare like Rainbow could probably do well over a thousand tricks before having to even flap her wings at all, should she throw herself from the tallest peak and just start performing. The tallest summit was so ridiculously tall that the entire upper third was covered in snow, even though it was clearly summer and the temperatures outside were hot enough to make her sweat without so much as lifting a hoof...

Twilight was still staring across the plains below when Chuck casually walked into view on the deck outside, wearing his brown jacket and carrying his preferred simply bow hooked over his shoulder. He had his quiver tied loosely to his belt, and there were only a few wooden shafts left sticking out of it. He stared at her through the glass for a moment, and then suddenly smirked in a very peculiar manner. He pointed toward the distant peaks, and then ...cupped his chest muscles in his hands while making a kissy face and ...wiggling his hips back and forth.

Twilight watched in rather horrified amazement, as a being fifteen years her senior made a complete foal of himself. His insane and highly uncharacteristic antics were so out of left field that she found herself simply standing there, unable to tear her eyes away from the mind-breaking spectacle. Chuck kept cupping his chest and pointing at the mountains for a while before he finally seemed to figure out that he wasn't going to get the reaction he wanted, and then simply shrugged before turning to lean on the deck's tall railing. It left Twilight's mind free to think again, but it still took a moment to get her hooves to actually move. She picked herself up, and made her way to the door that led to the deck.

She wanted to see what was going on, even if it meant having to brave the smell outside ...and a very mentally questionable and yet dangerously armed human.

The smell that hit her nose when Twilight opened that door was the worst yet by far, but she stubbornly moved forward across the wooden deck boards anyway. It wasn’t nearly as scary when she was well above the ground and under the protection of an insane bow-wielding killer human.

She did limit herself to breathing through her mouth, though. Especially as she was passing the clearly well-used grill sitting half way around the deck along the side of the house. Chuck came into view just as she passed the glass table and painted metal chairs. He was still leaning casually on the same spot of railing at the very front of the deck, staring blankly off into the distance at the amazing view.

Twilight opened her mouth, but of course Chuck had heard her loud hooves approaching and was talking before she could get a word in...

"You know what those mountains are called?" He asked, nodding at the distant peaks.

No, she didn't. And as pretty as they were, she didn't really care right now, either. Chuck was clearly alive and physically in one piece. His mind was much less intact, but she was not going to be hungry and out in the stinky air when she could be inside and filling her belly. "No, Chuck. I don't know anything other than what you’ve told me so far …but let's go back inside and have some breakfast first. You can tell me all about the mountains while we eat, okay? This smell is awful and the view was just as pretty from inside."

Chuck grumbled something about ruining the moment, but he fell silent when Twilight - very gently and with a normal and perfectly safe levitation field - lifted him in her magic. He was never more than a foot off the deck, but his tensed-up frame and nervous expression as she carried him along made it obvious that he still didn't trust her talent in spell-work one bit. She should probably come up with some sort of trust exercise or something to fix that... Maybe make a game of him shooting targets while she moved them around in her magic? Or would it be better to move him around while he tried to hit stationary targets? She could combine the two, but that much movement might make the big man sick and they were still even on making each other vomit. She really didn't want to upset the score on that end of things, if she could help it...

"Princess..." Chuck tried, his voice much higher than usual. She cut him off...

"Twilight Sparkle, Please." Twilight corrected as she maneuvered the man's stiff frame through the door. "Or just Twilight. Nopony really calls me by my title unless I'm performing my duties. And even then, I prefer just Twilight."

"Oh," Chuck said as his feet returned to the carpeted floor. He wobbled a bit as he regained his balance and said, "You know, I really hate it when you do that ...and you jumped the gun anyway. There's one more moving around down under the deck. I couldn’t get a shot and ran out of my good arrows trying to get lucky through the gaps in the decking. I just need to grab another handful of broadheads and take care of the last one. Cleanup has to happen after that, and then we can have some breakfast. I'd say about ...forty five minutes for cleanup, and another fifteen for cooking. That too long for you, Princess?"

"Where and what are broadheads? I can get them for you," Twilight quickly offered. She would deal with all the crazy new questions in her head later; right now it was time for food. She didn’t mind helping Chuck get things done, so long as it got a can of nice crunchy carrots on the table and didn't involve actively seeking out conflict …or have anything to do with dead things of any kind.

She was still a pony at heart, after all.

"I got it, so don't worry yourself ...Twilight Sparkle." Chuck grumbled as he went downstairs. He came back a moment later with his quiver stuffed full of arrow shafts, and went out on the deck again. The regal tone - and the hardly subtle waist-deep bow he'd given as he used her full name - was clearly an attempt to rile her. He’d all but kissed her hoof like an old-timey romantic, for Luna's sake! But she was just too hungry at the moment to do much about it.

Chuck walked out the second floor's side door and back into view out on the deck again, his bow loaded with an arrow and ready in his hands. He leaned out over the railing with his weapon, trying to get a shot at the enemy below. But he didn't fire for a few solid minutes, and was clearly getting frustrated. He seemed to get tired of waiting, and shot his arrow into a tree across the driveway; probably hoping to tempt the last zombie into investigating the sound. But another full minute passed without another arrow being fired, and Chuck went back to simply glaring down over the railing.

Twilight's stomach growled particularly loudly, and she considered other options. On one hoof, she could try to help Chuck in some manner, and hopefully make breakfast start sooner to aid her quickly degrading stomach. On the other hoof, she wanted absolutely nothing to do with anything her brain had just come up with.

…Then her stomach growled once more, and she realized she was thinking about both food and death at the same time.

...And she was doing so without noticing or getting sick about it.

What the hay was going on here? She should have lost her appetite the moment the smell of death hit her nose out there on the deck. But here she was: hungry enough to eat a whole watermelon by herself until her belly pudged out in an obtuse little sphere.

Dear Celestia... Was she getting accustomed to this place? Was it already changing her that much, that she wasn't sickened by the smell of death and decay?

Twilight really hoped not. Even if it would make things a little easier on her for the time being, she didn't want to get home to Equestria any different than she'd left. Especially if she came home being able to be eat while death was anywhere nearby. Nopony that could do something like that would be considered mentally stable. Not in Equestrian society.

~rrrrr... ...gurgle~

Ugh, shoot... She would just have to visit a therapist or something when she got home. It was currently bite the bit and help the human, cheat and steal the human's cans, or be too hungry to get anything done today in the first place. She didn't have much choice, if she wanted to be worth half of a rusty horseshoe when she got working on the tasks she was hoping to get done today...

Twilight sighed, and forced herself to head back out on the deck. It was strange to actually want to feel fear, and not be able to. The lack of self-preservation or worry in her gut just seemed wrong. It put a lump in her throat, and drove her right back into worrying for her own mind's well being...

What was the root cause of her mental health taking a sudden dive like this? Was it Chuck's sudden and jarring change in behavior? Had she been so affected by his lack of fear that she no longer felt a need to feel it herself? Was she becoming hardened, just like Chuck had wanted? She didn't think there had been enough time for any of these things to affect her, so she chalked it all up to some kind of placebo effect her crazy morning had brought on. And any additional thoughts would have to wait, as Chuck had just noticed her coming...

"Hey Pri ...Twilight. Welcome back. You looking to stretch those little wings of yours? You know I haven't seen you use them since we met."

The smug grin on the human's face hit her in completely the wrong way, and Twilight felt the pieces of a puzzle she'd not even known she was working on start to move around in her head for where they might fit in with other pieces.

"I would like to take a morning flight," Twilight said, her brain chugging away like a reciprocating steam engine. "…But I haven’t had a chance to preen in a while and I’m missing a few primary feathers. It probably wouldn't be a very good idea to try flying with our ...visitor, being where he is at the moment."

"Pretty sure it's a blond chick growling at us down there …but yeah, I'd have to agree," Chuck said as he scratched his chin beneath his beard. "You'd be in trouble if you took a fall off the deck right …hang on a second. Can’t you just float me out there a bit so I have a shot?"

Twilight smiled, but Chuck was freaking out before she could even get him wrapped in her magic...

"Wait! I was just asking! Don't actually do it!"

Twilight would have chuckled, if she wasn't so much more interested in getting answers at the moment. More and more pieces were falling into place as she watched Chuck fidget under - or rather over - her gaze, and she dispersed her magic to say, "Sorry, Chuck. I was only trying to speed things up a bit earlier because I'm feeling hungry. But the answer to your question should be obvious... I’ve held you in my magic a few times now, and I’m sure you’ve noticed how steady I can be. I could definitely help you get a shot from past the deck railing. But if you're not comfortable with it yet, than I’d actually like to ask you something important. I’ve got this crazy idea stuck in my head, you see ...that you’re acting funny this morning because you’re..."

Chuck cut her off with an obviously fake yawn and said, "Yeah, whatever, Sparkle. Look, I'm tired of you picking me up without asking first, alright? So please don't. It still freaks me out that something your size can even get me off the ground. Doing it with nothing but some funky looking sparkly-smoke, though? You can count me right the hell out. That said, this is a good opportunity! You should grab that dead blonde under our feet and toss her out over the mountainside. Think of it as your first lesson in the art of the deadly projectile. ...Get it? Deadly projectile? Cause I'm going to train you to shoot at some point and ...oh, come on with the frowny face. You know that was funny..."

Twilight let her flanks sink to the deck as Chuck spoke, her face twisting into a deadpan glare. He was obviously trying to change the subject for some reason; and she felt a few more pieces of the puzzle fall into place even if she couldn't really define them clearly. She was starting to see things for what they were though, and a picture was coming together… "Chuck. I know you don't seem to like talking about yourself. But I need you to help me understand what’s going on with you this morning. I won't stop worrying about it until I at least understand it," She explained, her glare falling to a more concerned frown as Chuck seemed to wither under her gaze. "Please …can't you talk to me? At least tell me why you're acting so ...different. I don’t know who you are right now, and I think your hardened and soft speech is starting to affect me in a way I'm not okay with. I need to understand why it's happening, Chuck. …Please?”

Chuck pursed his lips and said, “We only just met me a couple of days ago. Two days of knowing someone is hardly enough time to claim that their putting on an act or changing who you are as a person. You’re just stressed out, and rightfully so. Now go back inside and relax while I…”

“NO!” Twilight shouted, another large piece having fallen into place. She'd also scared herself with the volume of her own voice, having intended to just speak loudly and not at all to shout. But since she'd started and it felt good to do... "I am NOT walking away from this, Chuck! I know I’m stressed, and you aren’t helping me by avoiding the issue! Now stop trying to change the subject and tell me why you’re acting so different from yesterday! Is it because you don't want me to leave at some point in the future? Are you trying to protect me? I know the thought is in your head, because there’s no way that 'thirty is my lucky number' is a real excuse for rushing off to do ...this! I'm sorry, but I need to understand! Please ...don't make me sit here all day and ask for answers when you have them ready to share."

Chuck's features had steadily dropped as she spoke, and he was looking far older and more tired by the time she'd finished her admittedly rather angry rant. He turned away from her and went back to watching the ground below as he said, "You know what, Twilight? I think you're a bit too perceptive for your own good. And it's bullshit, frankly. You're not even human, and I can't read you body language for shit."

Twilight's ears were locked forward, waiting for any little detail that could help her put the final few pieces of the puzzle together. But Chuck remained stoically silent long enough that she knew he needed another push before he would finally talk.

"I didn't exactly need to be very perceptive to tell you weren't yourself this morning, Chuck," Twilight said, trying to hide her slowly growing regret for starting this anger-filled conversation. "...And I'm not exactly a pony that's well known for reading other pony's emotions. If I can tell something is wrong, then it’s a safe bet that it's serious. Just tell me. Let me help you if I can. And then we can both move on like nothing ever even happened. You have my word as a Princess of Equestria; your secrets will be kept exactly as they are …yours. I won’t share a single word you say with another living soul."

Chuck snorted, his small nose flaring slightly. He let his large frame sag against the railing and said, "I just… I mean are we really doing this right now? It's not exactly the time for this emotional shit, is it?"

Twilight nodded and said, "I realize that it's not good timing. But I'm doing this right now because ...well to be honest it's mostly because I’m having some mental troubles of my own, and I think the way you started acting this morning made my problems get worse.” Chuck scoffed, but said nothing to contradict her. Twilight continued, “…But then I also feel like there wouldn't be a good time for talking this sort of thing out, ever. I learned a while ago that it’s best to take care of your problems early, before they have a chance to grow and become other pony's problems as well.”

Twilight stood up and slowly worked her way over to stand by Chuck’s side. She was pleasantly surprised when he didn't react beyond leaning away a bit. She even managed to gently pat his hip as she said, “I know you seem to think I’m too innocent to understand your problems, Chuck. But I honestly think you’d be surprised. When I became a Princess, I lost the luxury of trotting away from other pony’s problems. I've seen what happens to ponies that ignore the things that hurt them for too long." She sighed, resting her chin on the top of the railing. “There was a mare that hid herself away because she had a condition that made her heat flare up out of sync with the rest of the town. She had to be admitted after she showed up in the market one day and started shouting about …well I won’t go into specifics, but it got pretty scary and we had to force her to accept help. Anyway, it only happened because she refused to seek help for her problems in the first place.” Twilight looked up and locked eyes with Chuck. His eyes flicked down to match hers, but it felt like he was trying to set her mane on fire with them. Clearly he didn’t like her pushing this subject, and Twilight had to break her gaze away as she said, "Chuck, please. For both of our sakes. Just let me try to figure this out. It's what I'm supposed to do as a Princess ...okay?"

Chuck remained silent for a moment. She watched as he sighed a few times, but there wasn't much sound to go with the deep movements of his chest. Twilight noted that it was remarkably similar to the breathing exercises Cadence had taught her when she was young. He then turned his head slightly and narrowed his blue-green eyes, looking down at her as if she were a foal caught cheating on a final exam. He crossed his arms on the railing and gave the deck a light kick with his sturdy boots before his voice came forth in a reserved monotone…

"You don't know what you're getting into here, I can tell. But fine. You want to play at being a psychologist and get yourself all freaked out to the point you need one yourself, it’s not my problem to deal with. I’ll bear my soul, but only because I get the feeling you won’t drop this stupid concern of yours until I do..." He then leaned sideways on the railing, his face held firmly in a scowl. "I suppose I'll start with the obvious... It’s been over ten years since the outbreak, and I've killed so many of these damned dead people I could probably turn the entire mountain white with just their teeth and knee caps. So many faces shaped roughly the same shape as my own, and I killed them all without so much as a second thought."

Twilight took half a step back and let her body return to a natural position, letting Chuck continue uninterrupted...

"Or at least that’s how it started out, I guess. But then the only constant you can ever count on being true is ...things change,” Chuck's gaze left her in favor of the horizon, his voice low and even. “I started to remember them …see them alive and happy in my dreams. I started to miss easy shots and ...the shake came back to my hands. I tried to block the emotions out again, but that's just not how these kinds of things work. I had to stop for a while, rest my bow until the dreams stopped. And it all turned into this great big cycle of life and death. I would hunt them down without mercy until the dreams came and my hands shook, then hide myself away until I was well enough to start up wiping them out again. Each time I would come back with twice the hatred for the disease as before ...and often times the body count to match the hatred." He let out a little chuckle, breaking the trance Twilight hadn't notice herself slip into. "Except each time I went back out there, it got a little bit harder to get back home in one piece.” His eyes found her once more, and Twilight felt her heart lurch. The anger he’d had was no longer present, and he looked nearly ready to fall over as he continued. “I'm afraid I’m getting old before my time, Princess. And there's only one way that sort of story ends out here. I guess your nosy nature picked up on it, though I doubt you expected the answer to be as simple as old age and shaking hands."

Chuck turned back to the railing and sneered down at the ground below, still on the lookout for the last target. His sneer grew enough to show a few slightly yellowed teeth as he ran a hand over the railing and said, "...But It's not age itself that I’m really worried about. I know better than to think I'll make it that long. The real threat is getting tired and slow, or worse ...soft." He renewed his failing smirk. "The best survivors? Those rare people that figured out how to carve themselves a decent living out of this place? They never die to old age, and I'm no different. I even know exactly how it's going to happen, too. I'll start to hunt the dead again someday soon out of boredom or to save the living, but I’ll be too damned old to run from the next set of dreams anymore. I'll have no choice but to keep killing until ...well, until the end. I'll lose it ...get myself cornered ...take the wrong trail or take a risk in a town to save someone's kid. And then I’ll get chomped in the neck by the one I didn't see coming. It’s just like I told you last night; about fearing the unknown. Welcoming that fear into your life is one of the core rules for survival out here. If you get too senile or too crazy to heed the warnings of your own fear? You get weeded out right there on the spot. That's just the way nature here handles things, and keeps the balance..."

Twilight listened raptly; her attention not wavering for even a moment. She got a bit worried when Chuck turned around and slid his back down the railing to a proper seated position, but Chuck seemed happy to just rest and talk.

"...I've seen it happen a few times, you know? Hardened people losing it and turning into even bigger monsters than the dead? There was one just last year. A really bad bit of business. Some old guy vanished from his house near the airport for a whole month, not a word given as to where he was going or why. He shows up again butt naked and covered in scratches …nothing but a Remington seven millimeter magnum in his hands. He started shooting at anybody in range, and two of the Bar-J boys were hit before he ran out of ammo and used his last spare bullet to take the easy way out."

Okay, Twilight was starting to feel a bit more uncomfortable with Chuck's story. She didn't really understand every term he had used so far, but she could certainly follow along with the context of the words she did understand. She had seen her own share of action and risk, but Chuck had seen something more alike to ...well pain, more than anything else. He seemed to have been through so much of it! More than she thought anypony in all of Equestria had been through. Maybe even all the pain in Equestrian history put together! She didn't get a chance to going through the actual numbers before Chuck kept going though, which was probably a good thing...

"I could easily become something like that instead of just dying, Twilight. A monster without morals, no purpose left in life but taking the lives of others for some backwards reason like sparing them all the crap I've seen and been through? I can feel those kinds of thoughts in the back of my head sometimes, like there’s another me back there just waiting for me to finally snap so it can take over. It makes me think about human nature, and if we don't all just have a dark side waiting in us; like some kind of mental trap laid out for the people we care about and love. ...Anyway, I guess that's just about all of it ...Hope you're happy you got me talking about nothing for a bit."

Twilight bit her lip in thought. She had definitely gotten what she’d wanted, though Chuck’s problems were much worse than she’d been expecting and she wasn't sure she could help him enough to garner a working friendship between them. It was like he’d been forced to put on an act for ten whole years, with nopony around to even act as an audience. He'd been stuck on an emotional ride so harsh that it had left him fearful of his very own nature. It was a genuinely horrible thing to think about, but it also gave her a lot of insight into his seemingly random attitude towards her presence in his home and in his life. He had initially taken her unique form and magic with nothing more than an understandable amount of fear, and she now felt his quick acceptance was due to simply having much bigger problems already present in his head to deal with. She was fairly sure she’d gotten all the pieces of the puzzle now, as well. A mostly complete but piecemeal image of the human named Chuck. All that was left was to stick the bigger chunks together to fit her own little patchwork puzzle with her own wavering image. And she wanted nothing less than to use the only glue she felt had a chance of sticking, and hope he was open to it.

...She was talking about friendship, of course. And no, she didn't know why she was comparing friendship to glue. Or actually she did understand it, but only in hindsight.

Goddesses, Twilight was hungry...

"Chuck? Look at me, please..." The man didn't turn his sprawled form, but his head and eyes lifted just enough to find her face. Twilight cleared her throat and spoke slowly, trying to pick her words as carefully as possible... "I know that you’re scared about what will happen if you don’t block out the painful things in your life." She raise a hoof when he frowned. "And yes, I do realize that life here is a bit …well actually, it's a lot worse than what anypony back in Equestria would consider normal. But I know for a fact that you can overcome it …rise above your perceived shortcomings and see them for what they really are.”

“And what might that be?” Chuck asked with a sullen grunt. “...And don’t say that they're nothing, because I’ll toss you right off this deck.”

And just like that, the last piece of a very gluey and messed up puzzle landed square in Twilight's hooves.

Twilight rose, undeterred by the empty threat of violence. She trotted right up to the big human’s side and laid a comforting hoof over his shoulder. He gave a surprised grunt and jerked back, but she held on and made sure to look him right in the eyes as she said, “I know they aren't nothing, Chuck. Our problems exist because we exist. They can never be 'nothing', no matter how much we might want them to be. But I think I know what your problem is now, and it's a lot simpler than suppressed emotions or fears about an unknown future.” Chuck tried to look away, and Twilight surprised herself when she reached across his chest to grab his chin and make him look back at her. It was a much bolder move than she expected of herself, but she wanted to see his face when she said these next words. They wouldn't hold anywhere near the same weight without eye contact… “You see, Chuck. Your problem isn't external. It isn't something the world has done to you or an inherent flaw in human nature. It’s something you did to yourself a long time ago …a mental wound you took on when you made the decision to stop making friends.”

Chuck's face didn't change as he pushed her hoof away, causing her to fall back to her hooves. He rose to his feet and began aggressively pacing the deck, his hands clenched tightly at his sides. Twilight followed every angry step with her eyes, softly continuing to deliver another dose of her clearly unwanted logic...

“Chuck... You can get angry if you want to. You can posture and threaten and run for as long as you like. But the pain you're in isn’t going to go away until you stop and face it. You need to have a friend, and …I’ll admit the thought is a daunting one with the ...quality of the people I've met here so far. But I’m convinced you can do it! You've obviously done it before, so you can do it again!" She put a hoof to her chest. "And you have me! I'm your friend! That has to at least give you some confidence in yourself …doesn't it?”

Chuck stopped, his hands clenched even more tightly than before. He slightly turned his head and said, “We are not ...friends.” He then wheeled around and stomped toward her, and Twilight had to fight an alarmingly powerful urge to take a step back as he closed the distance. He leaned over her, practically growling out his next words, “…And you want to know how I know it?” Twilight opened her mouth to answer, but Chuck beat her to it, “It's because of you, Princess Sparkle! The fact that you’re still alive is proof enough! Friends die! And that’s all they fucking do! Every single one, right down to my last desire to make any more of them! They stab you in the back ...get torn to shreds by a pack of wolves or get too sick to walk and then some ass-hat leaves them all alone to starve in a fucking mineshaft! ...Or hell! Sometimes they just don't listen to sense and wind up cornering themselves and get torn to pieces in a fucking city trying to find some STUPID FUCKING RADIO TRANSMITTER!"

Twilight stood in stunned silence, not even wiping the speck of Human spittle she had felt land on her face. Chuck huffed and puffed above her, his rage slowly fading away to an indifferent and tired look. His bunched shoulders slowly returned to normal as he straightened the rest of his posture and said, "I’m sorry Princess, but that’s what friends are good for ...dying in a bloody mess and taking a little bit of your hope with them each and every time they do. I don’t have much hope left to spare, so you’ll just have to settle for us being …acquaintances, I guess.”

Chuck’s hands swung limply at his sides, and his entire form sagged in on itself as he leaned on the railing to continue with, “I know you think you can help me out in some way ...and believe me, you're a much better person than most for even making the effort. But I'm done with letting other people get close. I'm not interested, so long as this Mang Jeishu bullshit keeps going. And let's face it. That might as well mean forever to a man my age.”

Twilight carefully and slowly sat herself down again, watching Chuck’s half-hidden features carefully as she said, “I understand why you might feel that way, Chuck. Or at least, I think I do. But you don’t seem to understand what I meant...” She could see Chuck start to grimace, as if he already knew what she was going to say. She swallowed the growing lump in her throat and pressed onward, believing in her logic and the puzzle she'd put together in her head. “I’ve been your friend ever since last night, when you forgave me after I angered you during dinner. I decided then and there to be the best possible friend I could be for you. And you’re a great friend, Chuck. You are! I would be glad to take you back to Equestria with me, assuming I figure out how to leave the virus here first ...and you were willing.” She paused. This next moment would make or break her standing with her human companion. Either he would accept her offer and start to heal ...or he might actually kick her over the railing in a fit of rage. "...And I’ve also made a bit of a decision, or actually ...a rather big one. I've decided that I'm not leaving this planet. Not until I’m a hundred percent sure that you’re going to be okay without me. And that’s a promise I won't be backing down from, no matter what.”

A long moment of silence washed across the deck, interrupted only by the occasional muffled moan or shuffle from below. Twilight could do nothing but wait for Chuck to decide his (and her own) fate.

“You’re a fool,” Chuck finally whispered, his face unreadable. “…A wonderfully adorable, innocent little fool.” He then seemed to age a hundred years right before her eyes as he slowly lifted his head to the sky and said, “You’re going to die here …you know that’s the only possible end if you stay any longer than you have to. You’re just not built for a place like this. No one is.”

"I know," Twilight whispered back. "...But I can try to look out for the both of us if I have to. Aand until you let yourself change so you can have help that isn't me, that's just what I'll do.”

Chuck's expression shifted into a hateful scowl. He turned it directly on her and said, "If you're that strong that you can look out for both of us, then you can fend for just yourself even better without me around! I'm not about to risk you dying after I get stupid and start to like you, so I guess I’d better just save myself the trouble and kick you out before that happens ...that sound about right?"

Twilight tensed. He was bluffing, right? He had to be! She'd figured out his problem! He was supposed to accept her friendship and then start to get better now! What the hay had gone wrong that he wanted her to leave!?

And worse ...this was the end of her ideas. It didn't match up to the puzzle she'd formulated. She couldn't think of anything else to do! No golden words she could say to make somepony like Chuck reconsider his stance on friendship came to mind, and no action that could save her from the clutches of this place once she was on her own again were apparent. She was trapped in the deep end of a mental cesspool!

Twilight looked deep into Chuck's glaring eyes and felt ...something strange, deep inside of herself. A massive wall of emotions and thoughts that confounded and yet soothed her breaking spirit better than any medicine ever could.

And she found herself smiling, then laughing at the very thought of heading back into the barren woods by herself. She wouldn't let Chuck do it to her. Not now, and not ever.

And so Twilight acted on the very first idea that popped into her head, even though she hadn't planned it out past the first step. She was dimly aware that she was laughing like a madpony as she got to her hooves, bolted toward the railing...

And leapt over it.

Chuck had been busy staring at her in horror for some reason, and had barely gotten out a single syllable before she was over the railing and on a very unstable glide to the ground below. And the use of the term ‘glide’ was more or less due to the fact that she didn’t simply fall from the sky. There was a bit of forward momentum that she’d started with though, and she managed to keep most of it until she crumpled into the loose gravel driveway laid out under the deck above. She wound up far to the right of where she'd intended, but it didn't matter. She was right were she needed to be ...up Screwball Creek and straight on into the wide and deep oceans of insanity, just like good old Chuck.

And why was she there? ...Because when somepony denies you victory through a default, the only option left is obvious! You join them and then work the problem from within! Chuck was clearly crazy, so she'd turned the battle into one based on his craziness! It was pure genius! All she had to do was play a few mind games, and then make him worry himself nearly to death! Then she could swoop in and save the day! Boom! Instant friendship through mutual insanity! And even better, mind games were fun! Her teacher had taught her every little trick in the book when it came to playing them!

He had no chance! No chance at all! Heheh!

The plan got strained a bit - however - when Twilight found herself laying right next to the lifeless form of a man in a muddy pair of overalls. The smell was instantly bad enough to turn her cheery grin into a grimace, but the arrow shaft sticking out the back of his head was even worse.

It made her stop what she was doing and actually think about what she doing...

She didn’t have time to think for long though, as the sounds of Chuck shouting at her from above brought her attention back to the task at hoof …which she'd actually somehow forgotten for some reason.

“What the hell was that!” Chuck yelled as he swept the current arrow from his bow and pulled a much more wicked looking one from his quiver. “Seriously! What the HELL are you thinking!?” He then leaned out over the railing, his bow drawn back all the way to his ear with one of his legs shoved through a gap in the rail to lock him in place. Twilight's eyes flicked across the gravel to where he was aiming, and she immediately took a step back.

One, Chuck had said. Just one dead human to deal with, and then some kind of cleanup, and breakfast.

But there was far more than just one single lumbering form in the darkness beneath the deck, and they were all currently looking directly at her.

And oddly enough, Twilight had never felt sanity take hold of her so quickly and firmly as it did in that one short moment. The moment wherein she realized that she'd lost her mind for sure...