Grounder

by JustAnotherEarthPony

Rating: teen
Tags: Princess Celestia, Human, Princess Luna, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Spike, Comedy, Adventure, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 33764

Another 'Human turned pony in Equestria' story...where cliches are shoved to the side, lampshaded and abused while our protagonist tries to come to grips with the 'real' Equestria.

Almost every brony that has ever been in Fimfiction.net has seen a 'HiE as pony' story.

They usually are fairly predictable, with a few plot twists perhaps, but the general pattern is similar.

A mystical force/accident sends a completely unprepared human into the land of the ponies, and he must then undergo a journey of self discovery/destiny, as a human OR pony.

So what happens when a human is actually prepared with all the knowledge he'd need from the first two seasons of the show? And when Equestria isn't quite as predictable as he hoped?

This is that tale.

Writer: JustAnotherEarthPony
Editor: I'mMrNoobHeadFU1

Published 2017-03-15 18:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2021-10-11 02:16:50 UTC

Chapter Two: Light

A distant light. Like a star, shining brightly in the night sky. Steadily growing, until it became more than just a distant light, filling my vision like an exploding supernova going on right in front of my eyes.

Son of a bitch did it hurt though!

Apparently, being conscious during the first time you actually see anything outside your mother’s womb was not a pleasant experience!

After my eyes adjusted by blinking the pain away, I managed to start seeing fuzzy shapes along with bright white lights, similar to those white neon lights most school classrooms have.

I didn’t get much time to adjust to my new eyes and recovering eyesight, as my new unicorn mother decided that now was the time to speak up.

“What in the world is that thing?!” she shouted since apparently, she didn’t quite get the memo that giving birth to a foal would, in fact, result in her having a foal.

Astonishing, honestly.

Nevertheless, the doctors were quick to attempt to calm her down. According to them, most foals didn’t quite look like they should after coming out of the womb, so they assured her that after a quick clean up, I would look much better. I was then promptly grabbed and taken to a nice table, where I was rapidly scrubbed with some towels.

In most stories that I’d read involving becoming a foal, the general issue was that the human-turned-foal in question usually had difficulty containing their usual adult habits, which landed them in a very awkward position as ponies were not used to precocious foals and as such were weirded out by the ex-human’s attitude and ‘approach’ to problems.

Mainly swearing, like Gordon Ramsay during one of his better episodes.

Having known that Equestria might not be so nice as to give me the classic ‘Everfree Forest’ start-off point, I had tried to mentally prepare for the potential years of my life that I was going to have to spend at least trying to pretend to be a small child, or foal in this case. Looking back at it, my preparations were nowhere near thorough enough.

After being cleaned and finally put in front of a mirror, I examined my new body…

And mentally groaned in disbelief.

I was the most boring pony imaginable! Oh, sure, I wasn’t a brown stallion with brown hair, but I ended up being almost exactly the opposite of exciting! My new coat was grey, while my mane was a slightly darker grey. My eyes were, thankfully, not gray but rather a light blue, giving my new body some semblance of color. Now, I realize that I looked similar to the Discorded mane six did back in the second season premiere, but that didn’t come to me at the time.

After my brief examination of my coloring, I noticed that my hairstyle (mane style?) was a fairly standard stallion cut with bangs, similar to Big Mac’s mane style. To my dismay, I also noticed the lack of horn protruding from my forehead, but I quickly tried to stop thinking about it, as negativity wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Sadly, I failed my mental strength roll, so I still ended up thinking about how much my plans for my ‘Equestrian Life’ had been completely derailed by what seemed to be sheer dumb luck.

After the cleanup, I was taken back to the ‘loving’ embrace of my mother. By which I mean, well…

“What is this? Where is my foal!” She shouted while looking angrily at the doctors and nurses around her, as if desperately hoping one of them would clarify the mistake.

“Um, excuse me ma'am, but that IS your foal,” said a particularly brave stallion who, as far as I could tell, had probably helped her during the process of my birth.

“But, but this isn’t my filly! There has to be a mistake! I was shown the magical scans, this was supposed to be my beautiful little princess! Instead, I get...this?” She questioned, apparently deciding that I was so disgusting in her eyes that I didn’t actually deserve to be treated as a regular pony, but instead as an object. Talk about objectification, although I was sure it was supposed to go backwards…

“I am sorry for the magical scans’ failure ma'am, but I can assure you that this is a perfectly healthy young earth pony colt, and I’m sure that a small mistake such as this-” the doctor was interrupted by the sound of the door almost being blown off it’s hinges by a male unicorn with a crazed look in his eyes.

He was a strange one, to be sure. He actually looked fairly similar to Prince Blueblood, with his golden mane and white coat, but he had a mustache that would probably make Admiral Bobbery proud, and he also had not one but two golden monocles, as if he was so fancy that two were required. He also, strangely, had two watches on each of his forehooves.

“I have already been informed by the nurses, what happened to our filly dear?!” He shouted, apparently having been informed that something had gone wrong, but not the specifics.

“Oh, my dear Golden Watch, of all the worst things that could happen, this is the WORST! POSSIBLE! THING!” She exclaimed, apparently having decided that Rarity wasn’t the only one who got to use those lines. By this point, my slightly abused foal ears were starting to hurt.

“What happened? Did her horn get damaged during the procedure! Are her magical reserves too small! IS SHE NOT PINK?!” My pony father had strange priorities. He went ahead and started comforting her, apparently somehow ignoring the fact that I was still being held on by the very tip of her hooves as if she wanted to do nothing more than drop me, but had to keep up appearances to avoid a scene.

“NO, IT’S WORSE! It’s this...THING!” My apparently not so loving mother screamed. Only then did it seem to register in Golden Watch’s mind that he should probably see what it was she was holding. After a single glance at my not-so-pink-body his brain seemed to hold up the “Out to Dinner” sign, because he promptly collapsed in the middle of the room.

Half an hour later, my new father recovered from his ‘small’ fainting issue and was trying to understand the situation from one of the doctors, who ironically enough was a pegasus named Heart Monitor.

“So, let’s me see if I understand,” said Golden Watch, “my beautiful darling Silver Lining had a fantastic birth procedure, correct? There were no issues with both ends of that operation?”

“Yes, the procedure went exactly as planned and there were no issues with either the foal or his mother throughout,” explained Heart Monitor, making sure to keep his voice calm and steady in order to try to avoid having my father suffer another heart attack.

“And despite that, this was the end result?” He asked, staring at me while I tried to subtly listen in to their conversation. It was sort of difficult, since the nurse that was currently holding me was facing away from them, but I managed.

“Yes. We are still unsure as to why the magical scan was incorrect when scanning the foal, but he is a healthy young colt who is now under your care.”

“I see…” Golden Watch said. He seemed to be thinking about something. I couldn’t really tell since I was sort of being fed with a small pink milk bottle my parents had brought before coming, but there was definitely a long pause.

“Well, since there isn’t anything else to it, I suppose we will have to deal with this. We shall take this…’foal’ and be on our way then.” His voice sounded...different. Resolute perhaps, but also something more sinister. I couldn’t quite tell from my position.

“Wait! While we have applied most of the injections, the foal will need to avoid dangerous diseases; both him and your wife are not fit to travel at the moment!” The doctor was apparently not happy about my father’s seemingly out-of-nowhere decision to leave.

“Do not worry, we will leave on a carriage and I’ll be sure my wife doesn’t get jostled too much. She will have much bed rest at our mansion and I’ll be sure to order our maids to treat her delicately until her body recovers,” he assured the medical professional proudly, apparently happy to be able to flaunt his wealth in front of the stallion that he seemed to have a personal problem with. Perhaps he thought the doctor had failed to bring his filly to life?

“Well...If you’re sure. Just make sure the foal drinks plenty of milk as it is quite essential to his future growth. I should inform you though that as an earth pony, he should already have the muscles required for him to walk short distances as long as he’s not pushed too far. Give him a few weeks and he’ll be able to run as well as most other ponies!” The pegasus said, apparently trying to sell the fact I was an earth pony as a positive thing to my father, who as far as I could interpret from my...limited contact with him, didn’t seem too happy about it.

“Oh, don’t worry about him, he’ll be just fine,” the unicorn told him, finally able to cope with the fact he’d had a colt instead of a filly. I mean, I understood that the pony gender ratio had to be skewed from the evidence presented to us by the show, but surely it wasn’t that bad?

“Come on dear, we’re leaving,” my father told my mother, who was apparently recovered enough to stand up and, with a look that said, ‘why do I have to do this?’, levitate me along with her. This being the first time my entire body was levitated, I tried to get a feel for it, but it honestly just felt like I was floating in midair in defiance of gravity. I tried to move and realized that I could spin myself around if I wanted to, but not actually fall down.

Now that my eyesight was back to normal, for pony standards, I could actually use my new vantage point to see more of the hospital as we left. For one, there was my mother, a pink pony similar in coat color to Princess Cadence, but her mane was white with a silver streak going through it. If I had to compare her mane style to any other pony’s, I’d probably go with Lyra Heartstrings as she was called in the fandom, but even that wasn’t really it.

Aside from her, I could see the nurse and doctor ponies who strangely enough were wearing no sort of hoof covering. Did ponies not know about the sort of dangers that came with having their medical staff not use some sort of hoof glove while operating? Maybe ponies simply didn’t have infections? Magic? I resolved to ask sometime.

Of course as soon as I started spinning, my mother seemed to realize what I was doing and, with a small crease in her eyebrows, stopped me, basically forcing my body to stay still. This was something that caught my attention: while it was possible for her to easily levitate a small foal body like mine, she had to put in extra concentration if she wanted to completely paralyze me. I decided to store this bit of information for later, as it could prove useful.

As the carriage galloped down the streets of Canterlot, I took this as an opportunity to look around. It was raining quite heavily, which made it difficult to see, but I could tell that Canterlot was nothing like a human city at all…

First of all, it seemed like there were two different types of streets; simple pony streets and carriage streets. Unlike Earth back in the late 1800s however, there were more pony walking streets than carriage streets, so there wasn’t actually all that much traffic. Instead, I got to see the crowds of ponies trotting alongside each other, some going one way and others the opposite. Since it was raining out, most of them were unicorns levitating umbrellas above their heads.

A third of them had their noses sticking up, as if they couldn’t see the logic in looking in front of you while walking. I hoped that I never was forced to walk like that someday, imagine the neck pain from having to go around like that for hours! Not to mention the pain of inevitable collision. Maybe my new family could teach me how to walk without looking forward! Maybe once I became a professional, I could find a way to not hit ponies while my eyes were closed!

While I was having my small rant at the presumed neck pain of being a snotty Canterlot pony, my unicorn parents were having a discussion I would later really wish I’d listened to fully.

“...we can’t come back home like this!” I heard Silver Lining whisper to Golden Watch.

“Well dear, we’ll have to...it should be all right...it won’t be the first or...” he was clearly better at whispering than my pink colored mother, because I couldn’t quite catch everything he was saying.

“But dear, imagine what the neighbors will say! What about my parents?” She suddenly exclaimed, not seeming to realize that they had been whispering for a reason.

“It’ll be alright. Anything would be better than returning home without...“ he suddenly paused, deep in thought. “Hmm, I suppose we should give it a name, shouldn’t we? It IS tradition, and despite how unnecessary it will be in a few moments, my father did tell me that tradition was key to our family.

As you would imagine by this point, I was really confused. They seemed prepared to actually give me a pony name, although I imagined that would have happened in the hospital had the drama over me not being ‘pink’ been resolved quicker. I didn’t understand why he thought it didn’t matter though.

As far as my research into the subject went in canon, it seemed that pony cutie marks and special talents were somehow related to the name. Rainbow Dash has a cutie mark with a rainbow lightning bolt, Twilight Sparkle has a starburst, and even Fluttershy has a group of butterflies. Because of this, the only logical conclusion was that a pony’s name was somehow linked to that pony’s destiny. Maybe the ponies hadn’t realized this yet?

It was only after I had finished my thoughts on pony name importance that I noticed the carriage had stopped in the middle of a seemingly random street. Didn’t my new snobby parents brag about living in a mansion? Perhaps I had misheard, although I doubted it considering how many times Silver Lining complained about how they “hadn’t gotten to the mansion yet" since we climbed unto the carriage.

I felt myself being levitated by magic again, although this time it actually had a noticeable color to it: gold. Because of this, and the aura of magic around his horn, I intelligently deduced that I was being levitated by my father. His purple eyes then met my light blue ones, and he said:

“Goodbye, Lost Hope.”

I was then magically tossed upwards, out of the carriage and into the air like the tartarus spawn my parents thought I was.

As I soared through the cold rain towards the hard pavement below, I only really had time one thought:

‘Out of all names, why did you pick the edgiest one possible?!’

Then I hit the ground.

Author's Note

Any reviews, comments and suggestions are appreciated :pinkiehappy:

Chapter Three: Body

Water.

Known throughout human history, science and everything in between, it’s usually considered to be among the most essential components of what creates life as we know it.

As you’d imagine though, it doesn’t really feel that way when it’s pouring down and freezing your tail off.

I tried to open my eyes, but contrary to what video games might teach you, falling into a shallow pool of water doesn’t instantly negate all falling damage!

One of my eyes was directly against the pavement, so I couldn’t open that one, and I suspected that at the very least I had a black eye because the other one wouldn’t open at all and hurt like hell.

After spending a minute assessing the situation and trying to determine whether anything was broken, I decided that the best option was probably to try and stand up. It would give me a chance to see my surroundings with my one good eye, and hopefully give me some indication as to the amount of damage my body had just received.

I managed to get my head upright and open my good eye, which seemed to be on a bad mood because it wasn’t showing me much. It was the middle of the night, it was still raining and I could barely see a light post in the distance, which was the only source of light in my vicinity. I was sprawled out in the middle of the small alleyway, and I could see some trash bins close by.

Looking down at my forelegs, I noticed that while they looked bruised, they didn’t actually hurt as much as I had expected considering that the fall felt like it went on forever...Or that might have been just my own warped perspective, since at that time I was about 3 feet tall, give or take a couple of inches.

Although that did bring into question, considering how small ponies actually were compared to humans, how in the world do most HiE fics actually work? Even in the generous case in that the average adult pony was 4 feet tall, once again give or take, why did humans hang out with such a comparatively small species who have houses designed for their own heights? Wouldn’t hanging out with dragons make more logical sense, considering they were also sentient like the ponies and were closer to human height?

At the time, I obviously didn’t consider this since I was slightly preoccupied with the pounding headache, bruised forelegs and honestly the shitty birthday I’d had up to this point. I would start off a long story of horrible human birthdays where they weren’t celebrated by my abusive parents, but the truth is I’d had a fairly average human life, with a loving family and some ups and downs so this actually WAS my worst birthday ever!

I know, impressive.

Nevertheless, I managed to get my hooves under me despite the head pain as I tentatively tried to take a step forward. Amusingly enough, I didn’t instantly fail and fall down to the ground as many ponified humans tend to do. Instead, while my balance was slightly off, I actually managed a slow shuffle towards the light post that I had seen earlier.

As I walked, my mind was jumbled, confused and maybe even a little bit angry. I knew that my parents clearly didn’t like me as shown by their initial reactions, but outright abandoning me in the middle of the night? I had expected a few frosty years and maybe even having to sing a song after which they’d immediately become great parents, but I certainly didn’t expect such a drastic reaction! Maybe in the human world I would’ve seen the signs better, but this was Equestria! A paradise land of talking marshmallow mini-horses where almost every single problem gets resolved in less than 23 minutes and a place where all ponies live in harmony!

But, it seemed like this Equestria that didn’t have all of that. Here, I watched as a pegasus doctor’s advice got ignored by my asshole of a father. I saw disgust and shame on my mother's face as soon as she saw me for the first time, just because I didn’t meet her expectations. Hell, what had just happened was an act of parental abandonment and even discrimination against another pony phenotype!

For some reason, it was clear that this Equestria was different in some ways to the canon one. I decided that I would try and get to the bottom of this, to see where or when the differences began.

I finally arrived at the land post after what felt like one of those long laps around the field the sadistic PE teacher forces you to do in 4th grade. It was still raining buckets and by this point, I was shivering. My coat was completely drenched and all I really wanted was a roof over my head, so I could go to sleep and deal with all of this tomorrow.

No such luck though; the streets looked deserted and it seemed like the rain wasn’t stopping soon. The fact that I could already feel my tiny body tiring and asking to go to sleep was not helping. Every moment that passed I could feel my eyelids drooping and I had to force them open, otherwise I’d fall asleep.

Suddenly after a particularly strong bolt of lighting struck down nearby, I could see a house in the distance! It wasn’t much and I wouldn’t be able to open the door anyway, but at least I could sleep on the doorstep, which was thankfully not being hit by the rain.

Desperately, I forced my body to move and eventually managed to reach the door. As I dropped off to sleep, I hoped that at least the locals wouldn’t judge me too hard for looking like a hobo sleeping at their door…

I was awakened by the sound of a loud gasp and what sounded vaguely like a female voice saying, ‘oh my goodness’.

As I slowly woke up from my uncomfortable position on the doorstep, I noticed that the rain was gone and it was sunny outside. Lifting my head, I also noticed that my body hadn’t chosen any place on the doorstep to sleep in, but it was actually lying on top of the carpet!

Rapidly standing up, I turned around to see the pony whose home I had unintentionally violated.

She was a unicorn, something I was not surprised by in Canterlot. What did surprise me however, was the lack of any sort of jewelry or accessories on her body. She somehow felt like a simple pony, who enjoyed the little things in life. Maybe it was her cutie mark? It was a heart, and what looked like the silhouette of a small foal inside of it.

She had green eyes, but the rest of her colouring was strangely subdued, think Mayor Mare but younger and with a different mane style that is brown in color. The only reason I had the time to analyze her like this is because she appeared to be currently facehoofing herself.

“Why do ponies always do this? Is it that difficult to show up at the door to the orphanage and have some proper procedure?” She seemed to be talking to herself. Either that or she didn’t quite realize my age and expected a response, which I couldn’t give to her without completely blowing my cover.

She looked towards me sadly and sighed. “I know you might not understand what’s going on, my little pony. But, I’ll try to explain it as best as I can in simple terms,” she explained before continuing. “My name is Emerald Dream and I am the headmistress of ‘Princess Celestia’s Orphanage for Ponies in Need’. You may call me ‘Ms. Emerald’ or ‘Headmistress Emerald’ if you prefer.”

I immediately thought; ‘Of course it’s called “Celestia’s Orphanage for Ponies in Need”, what else would it be...’

“Usually when ponies show up at my doorstep, they either come with their parents or at least one authority figure. Why are you so alone, my little pony?” She asked.

My only response was shaking my head. Inwardly though, I was reeling. What were the odds of me finding the owner of an orphanage as soon as my parents left me to myself?

“Well… I suppose I understand. Sometimes ponies truly have nowhere else to go... Or no one to go with,” she said, looking sombre. In what I suspected was a move to try and brighten my mood though, she invited me inside and told me to sit next to her table for a few moments.

“Ah, here we go. I suppose you don’t mind milk?” I didn’t. “Then here you go, my little pony.”
She gave me a warm piece of toast and a milk bottle. Don’t ask how I was supposed to grab the milk bottle, it’s embarrassing.

After that, absolutely nothing happened. No, really.

Oh sure, I was entered into Ms. Emerald’s orphanage. It was fairly simple as far as living arrangements go, but food and a semi-comfortable bed was all I truly needed, particularly as a newborn foal. Of course, let me tell you something; having to pretend to be a toddler for two years was excruciatingly painful. The reason I say nothing happened is that no pony will ever give toddlers/foals any homework or even books until they’re at least age 3, so I had nothing to do!

After sneaking my way into the small orphanage library one boring night and being discovered with one of their books hidden under my pillow, I was finally allowed to attend to the small reading/writing classes they usually reserved for ponies who were over the age of three, but weren’t old enough to actually go to school. I tried to make sure my handwriting was scrawled at first, but it still got praised regardless. And finally after what felt like forever, I was allowed books on equestrian history, even if they thought I wouldn’t understand them.

This allowed me to check my place in the timeline. I had my suspicions, considering how there were no references to Luna as a Princess at all, but this confirmed it; I had travelled to Equestria about 980 years after Nightmare Moon’s confrontation with Princess Celestia, which meant that I would be an adult by the time she came back.

This was incredibly suspicious.

If there was any doubt that some external influence had made sure that events aligned in my favor in such a way that I would be there during the Summer Sun Celebration, this pretty much removed it. Sure, I didn’t get to be transported to Equestria in the adult unicorn body I’d expected, but this was incredibly common in most ponification fanfictions.

After all, how else would the main character possibly contribute to the plot if they weren’t an Element of Harmony that discovered it at the last minute in the middle of Nightmare Moon’s defeat, who also happened to be the same age as the Mane six and the opposite sex!

After checking out the equestrian history books, I asked one of the multiple caretakers from the orphanage whether there was any place in which I could read about magic. She told me that magic books weren’t found anywhere in the orphanage library because young unicorns might accidentally end up casting a spell wrong and seriously hurting themselves or others, albeit rather expeditiously, so they were only found in schools where unicorn teachers were there in case anything went wrong.

Considering the fact that most of the unicorn foals that lived in the orphanage with me were already more prone to accidental magic than your average Hogwarts student, I got her point.

Later that day, an idea suddenly struck me. I asked one of the few earth pony caretakers where I could learn about earth pony magic. He then struck a strange face and told me that he had no idea what I was talking about. Apparently, earth ponies had no magic and their only trait was being very physically strong. When I then asked how we were considered such good farmers if there was no magic involved, he simply informed me that it had nothing to do with magic at all, but simply patience.

Your average unicorn might have patience to learn new spells and slowly try them out, but they had no such thing for ‘mundane’ things, like farming. Usually a unicorn would get impatient, force the plant to grow with magic and have it tire itself out very quickly, which in the long run would end up killing the plant faster and also having it produce less fruit.

It was even worse with the pegasi; while they might have the ability to ensure the plant they’re trying to grow has perfect weather on top of it, they were very ignorant on the nutrients and different elements inside the earth that allowed food to grow. This would usually result in them forgetting to water the corps, giving them the necessary nutrients, or even having them take too much sunlight through constant ‘perfect weather’, which ends up killing the crops.

Shocked by his logic and astounded at the fact that I’d never thought of it that way, I thanked him for the lesson and went on my way…

And that’s when another realization hit me, but this wasn’t a good one: in this version of Equestria, earth ponies, possibly excluding Pinkie Pie, had no magic. There were unicorn adults willing to abandon their children because they were born earth ponies. And while there were a few unicorn foals here and there, there were generally more pegasi and earth ponies in the orphanage. Did that mean that this Equestria had a class system, as the fandom had theorized for years? Are the earth ponies here the ‘working class’? Or is it all a big coincidence?

That was the point in which I realized that I wasn’t willing to play nice anymore. As much as it may end up causing my future knowledge to eventually become useless, I wasn’t going to sit around and let the canon events play out.

I had to figure out a way to contribute, to change this world for the better so that no pony had to go by the horrible name “Lost Hope” ever again, if only because it was so incredibly edgy that it was really starting to bother me.

And the only way to make a change was to take a risk.

I wasn’t going to sit idly by. I needed to talk to Princess Celestia...

On second thought, talking to Celestia might take a while...

First, I needed to find a way to counter magic.

Author's Note

As always, any reviews, comments and suggestions are appreciated :raritywink:

Chapter Four: Magic

Oh boy, Magic.

As far as most magical universes were concerned, there was no reason for magic to follow any logic or structure. After all, in fiction, it’s just “sufficiently advanced technology”, right? Most fiction works, even among the MLP crowd, simply didn’t care to truly attempt to explain magic, as hand waving it is a lot easier.

Hasbro was no different in that respect. While Twilight had talked about “magical thingamajigs” and other vague, non-committal statements that could easily be retracted or ignored later in the show, the simple fact was that the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic script writers didn’t care about how Equestria’s magic worked, but only that it did.

That didn’t stop the fans from trying of course.

It had been quite a while since I’d learned the truth about earth pony magic, or lack thereof. So after a few more boring sessions at foal school, in which they realized I was clearly far past their curriculum, I was provisionally allowed into Canterlot’s only public school at the young age of five, just as long as I had good behavior and kept steady grades.

Do not ask what the name was... No, really, don’t. It’s worse than the orphanage name, which is already more than I should be saying.

Regardless, this mattered little to me. After having exhausted all of the history books in the orphanage and quickly realizing that math used by ponies wasn’t much different than the math used back on Earth, I knew that I wasn’t going to be learning anything too exciting in actual school…Except for magical theory, which I could now finally study.

I hadn’t mentioned all that many other ponies thus far because they were simply not that interesting. Sure, I could talk about the other orphan ponies and their tragic tales, or recount the stories of how I earned their friendship…but this is Equestria. Get real.

From the statistical evidence provided to me, about 99% of ponies were both incredibly naïve and really easy to befriend. Any kind of positive encouragement and suddenly they’d take you to their rooms, show you their toys, and even occasionally introduce you to your soon-to-be new circle of friends.

Luckily, this only made the occasionally somewhat friendly ponies only more interesting, not that there were any of those at the orphanage. Although, one did have to wonder how the high-class Canterlot ponies ended up so unfriendly when ORPHANS were better at friendship than them.

So it was that I arrived at the first day of class with my meager beholding of a notebook, a quill and determination to get through the boring classes until I reached “Introduction to Magical Theory”... in four hours.

All of that instantly went crashing down as soon as I saw that purple filly on her desk, gazing straight ahead, ignoring most of the looks of her classmates as she levitated her notebook, lists and quills out of her bag, which she put in the back of the classroom neatly.

I was in the same class as Twilight Sparkle.

I panicked, quickly grabbed the desk nearest to me, and rapidly put all of my stuff below it, trying to keep a cool head.

So, this changed things. First and foremost, it confirmed the fan theory of Twilight moving faster through school/high school than most other unicorns, as I knew I was at least a year ahead of where I should be and I was somewhere around her age.

What I hadn’t expected was that her parents (who had always given the impression of being well off) would put her in a public school. Normally I’d call it Celestia’s influence, but most of the students in the class were unmarked, meaning that she most likely hadn’t reached faithful student status yet.

This left me in a conundrum though. I could go all “Future Family” mode to try and preserve the timeline as much as possible by simply ignoring her, carrying on with my day while pretending that I never saw the purple pony of preparedness. I had previously decided to not be constrained by the timeline, since there clearly was need for change in Equestria, but I also knew that as soon as I started changing things, my foreknowledge would become increasingly useless.

In the end, I decided to wait and see if a good opportunity presented itself while trying to convince myself I wasn’t just hesitating to take a big decision out of fear of the consequences. Same old, same old.

“Math 1” was as boring as any of the other math classes I had back in the orphanage. I did note that Ms. Sparkle answered most of the questions that the teacher asked the class, and that she was already receiving both looks of excitement from the teacher and small glances of envy, maybe even some spite from the other students, who seemed to instantly classify her as ‘teacher’s pet’, ‘nerd’ and ‘group work partner’ all at once.

In that respect, I suppose Equestria wasn’t too different from Earth after all.

After a million years and thirty minutes into the future, the class ended and I went straight to the library to ask about magic books.

Hey, just because I hadn’t even had my first magic theory class didn’t mean that I couldn’t ask about the books, right? Surely they would have some introductory-level stuff.

The fact I saw a certain lavender filly also go straight towards library with what I assumed was the same question had nothing to do with it.

Making a snap-decision, I decided to simply walk (canter?) behind Twilight as she entered the library, making sure to be able to overhear her conversation with the librarian.

“Excuse me?” said the filly to the bored looking pony on the counter, “could you please tell me where I can find the introductory books on magical theory? Of course I already read the ones at home and triple checked them before coming here in case there was a test but-”

“Third shelve, left to right, 2nd Row. ‘Magical Theory 101’”

“Um, thank you.”

The excited little filly practically flew over to the indicated shelf and started looking through all the titles.

By now, the librarian had turned to me uninterestedly. I noticed she was a fairly old unicorn that had a closed book with a bookmark on it for a cutie mark.

She also apparently disliked me as soon as I walked in.

“What do you want?” she said in a business-like manner, informing me in that small sentence that I was only permitted onto her establishment due to the school rules and that any misbehavior would have me instantly kicked out, like a young Padawan asking Yoda for a snickers.

“Well, the same as her actually. Just wanted to know where to find the introductory level magical theory books,” I said warily, knowing about as much about how to deal with hate-at-first-sight as I did with it’s love variant.

She looked towards the direction the filly had gone, inclining her head, then gave me a stern gaze that showed no patience for youthful antics.

I gulped and went on my way, quickly reconsidering how many visits to the library I was going to make...

I couldn’t believe it. After all that time, how could I have not seen it!

Thousands of hours analyzing, studying the show relentlessly trying to understand and somehow I had completely missed it. So much time wasted on such affairs, and yet I had never made the connection...

An RPG. Equestrian combat and magic worked exactly like you’d expect an RPG about multicolored tiny horses to work.

Although saying it that way makes it more confusing than it really is. Let me go into detail.

First, you might be slightly confused as to why earth ponies and pegasi were forced to study Magical Theory along with the unicorns at all, considering that the flying ponies had no need to understand the innate magic that allowed them to fly and ‘grounders’ obviously had no magic.

The explanation was simple; during our first year the teachers wanted the whole class to get to know one another, so they made it to where we shared all of our classes together, no matter the phenotype. Later on, the unicorns would have their own class for Spells and such, but at the beginner level this wasn’t necessary.

The reason it wasn’t necessary is the fact that Equestria was a goddamn RPG, hiding behind a facade of a ‘normal’ pony-world.

Certain spells could only be performed when a certain amount of study and practice was put into them, while others they were born with and later developed. This explained Sweetie Bell's ability to levitate small objects, but not large ones as she had not yet developed the basic innate unicorn levitation spell.

That was their lingo. I just called it levels for simplicity. Trust me, you have no idea how much technical jargon you have to wade through to get to these basic explanations, but hopefully you get a good understanding of what I’m dealing with...

Level 0: Ability to levitate small objects. The larger the object, the harder it becomes. Apparently, precision also improves with experience and age.

Level 1: A basic light spell that might as well be called ‘Lumos’, and a cutie mark spell for some, depending on the specific talent. Perhaps Rarity’s designing spells?

Level 2: Where we start getting into the actual learning. Consider this minor light shows ala Trixie, and the animation of objects so that they move on their own.

Level 3: The basic requirements for entrance into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns; a basic laser beam (I know it’s a energy beam but laser reminds me of Star Wars ok?), and perhaps hatching a dragon egg…

Level 4: For the studious ponies! This is where the stuff starts getting scary. At this point, unicorns can lift up other ponies and animals and lock them in place with their magic. It also includes teleportation, which becomes more extenuating the farther away you’re going.

Level 5: Impressive stuff. Barriers and forcefields, Death Star style but nowhere near as large unless some serious power was being expended.

Level 6: Thankfully very few ponies reach this level, otherwise Equestria might be completely different… This includes time magic and gravity manipulation on a small scale.

Level 7: According to the book, at this point all but the most gifted unicorns hit their peak. This is hitting on the low, low end of Alicorn power though. Memory charms, summoning objects out of thin air and even controlling the bodies of multiples ponies.

Level 8: Only the strongest unicorns in history reach this level. Supposedly, Starswirl was the last to reach this point, but there’s some sort of crossed out name that starts with S alongside his. Regardless, at this point you can use limited age altering spells, advanced dark magic, creation of new magic and *shudder* gender-altering spells.

Level 9: Celestia-only, according to the book. Although I suspect that Luna could reach this too. Raising the sun/moon, teleportation to alternate magic planes (I need to investigate that…) and supposedly magic transfer, although I’d never seen that in the show.

That’s as far as the ‘official’ book goes, although some of the more obscure books I’d find later would mention a 10th level of power...Only reachable by the legendary Elements of Harmony and in the most hidden books, a being of Chaos who went unnamed but was obviously Discord.

Now that might not SEEM too bad, but oh boy is that wrong, because as soon as I started looking into the more detailed library history books, particularly the events and battles had before Hearth's’ Warming, I realized that equestrian combat actually worked like an RPG...To an extent.

See, anyone who’s played Skyrim will instantly tell you that going sneaky-assassin is the easiest way to save time and resources on healing potions, better armor and anything that isn’t a good dagger + stealth skills. However, nothing stops you from playing the barbarian two handed heavy-armor Nord who simply cut everything in his way to pieces, or even playing the wise wizard who simply obliterated anything in his path with gigantic Destruction spells, quicksaving the game afterwards to continue of course.

Equestria was the same, but for the phenotypes. In war, the pegasi are the assassins, the earth ponies are barbarians and the unicorns are mages. Ironically enough, considering her silent nature, Fluttershy would be a better assassin over the boisterous Rainbow Dash, speed or not.

Rock, paper, scissors.

Earth, unicorn, pegasi.

Pegasi blitz unicorns with raw speed before they get enough concentration to cast any defensive or offensive spells.

Unicorns simply annihilate earth ponies with area of effect attacks from long range or, if one-on-one, can hold them perfectly still using magic.

Earth ponies beat Pegasi because they have the endurance to take repeated hits, and all it took for them to win was to land a single solid blow.

This was the general case, of course. Exceptions were always there.

A particularly talented unicorn might be able to teleport away from a pegasus, or gather enough concentration to hold them in place with their magic.

An incredibly fast pegasus might simply never be hit by an earth pony, no matter how many blows they have to land to put them down…

But an incredibly strong earth pony couldn’t make any difference against a unicorn, specially one-on-one, and a pegasus did always have the option of escaping a fight with an earth pony by flying out of range. It seemed I got the short end of the stick. Again.

Well, at least it was lucky that Equestria doesn’t see much combat or any sort of apocalyptic event every other week, otherwise that might have been an issue!

I was doomed…

Author's Note

Sorry for the delay everyone! Been quite busy with college pushing me around, hopefully I get more time to write more soon! Just don't lose hope! :raritywink:

An important note: I did not come up with the idea for Unicorn magic being based on levels, that credit goes to AmberDust on the MLP Forums! Give it a check!
https://mlpforums.com/topic/118345-unicorn-magic/

Finally as always, any reviews, comments and suggestions are appreciated!

Chapter Six: Showtime! (Part 1)

Ah, showtime.

A phrase as old as the theaters, it is usually only appropriate when used by someone who is perfectly calm and confident in the shows success, even before it begins.

Magic, the human kind that is, is all about certainty and calm. It is exceedingly easy to convince another person that whatever you’re saying is true if you say it in an absolutely convincing manner, even if that confidence is completely fake. On the flipside, show even the smallest smidgen of doubt and the whole thing goes kaput.

That applies to job interviews, leaderships over businesses and of course, everything a magician does.

An illusion can only be maintained if you appear to be absolutely certain of the ultimate result. If you ask any magician worth their salt, they’ll tell you half the trick relies on the audience’s expectation that they’ll be awed. So even if something goes wrong, it is very easy for the magician to bluff and say it was all planned from the beginning.

So it was that I walked into the School for Gifted Unicorns with absolute confidence and wasn’t even questioned by the guards at the door. After all, when someone walks in like they belong somewhere and have something to do in that place, the common reaction is for most people to do nothing. As the saying goes, there is a great strength in ‘acting like you belong’.

It was only once I talked to the receptionist that I got some sort of response… Although it wasn’t much of one.

“Excuse me, could you tell me where I’m supposed to deliver my sign-up papers?”

“Third floor, door to the left” she said, busy writing down on some parchment on her desk. For a receptionist, she sure wasn’t all that welcoming.

“Thank you.” I said, then climbed up the stairs. A difficult task in four hooves; trust me when I say your dog makes it look a lot easier than it is...

Walking up to the door, I managed to turn the doorknob by standing up on my two back hooves. Let it be known, a pony back was not made for bipedal standing, and it hurt quite a bit to attempt to do so. I suppose being short is one of the main disadvantages of being a foal, but it was still annoying.

I moved forwards, ignoring the twinges from my back, and sat down in the chair in front of a desk. Behind that desk was a unicorn wearing a suit over his top half with a bowtie at the end. He had a dark gray mane with some lighter gray hairs throughout. His coat color was a dark brown, but his eyes were the same dark gray as his mane, and he looked composed.

“Ah, you must be young Lost Hope, correct?” he asked in a polite-to the point-manner.

“I see that my reputation precedes me.” I answered with a smirk.

I had to act in a self-assured manner. The show had already begun.

“Yes, quite. Well, I must say I was most interested in your application. It is not common that an earth pony applies to our institution, but you do know that you will be tested fairly and as such will receive the same tests as the next pony?” he said in an official-sounding voice, as if reading a script.

Message received.

‘You will be tested on magic and if this ends up being a joke, consider your life over.’

“Thank you.” I said on the outside, while on the inside I was grinning. Same as the next pony, huh?

That was the first piece of the Millennium Puzzle.

“Alright. With that note, your application has been accepted. Please come in three days for your examinations. Just so you understand, there will first be a theoretical test, then a practical one. Your first test shall be in classroom 203, while your practical will be held in the practice room on the second floor. Remember to bring a guardian with you.” he told me once again in his official-script voice.

“Thank you very much.” I said, bowing out of the room. Finally, after two consecutive days of battling the bureaucracy that was the official sign-up papers, I had my shot at the school… And Mr. SeriousFace had just dropped a hint that I was going to exploit to the fullest.

I had my stage, and I had my show date.

All that was left was to prepare the script, ready the actors and be ready for the big reveal by Act 3.

Almost all magic shows rely on the spectator's position. There’s many variants, of course. While the most well known magic is stage magic, where the magician is below or above a seated crowd, there are many lesser known variants. From close-up magic to street magic, it usually depends on the relative distance between spectator and magician. Some tricks can only be pulled off when you’re facing one person close to you, while others are more applicable for a far-off crowd.

Another key difference between the different magic styles was resources. In general, a street magician could only do so many tricks before they run out of material to work with, after which they’d usually pull out their hat and ask for coins. On the opposite side of the spectrum, a stage magician could pull off an innumerable number of tricks because their whole environment was a gigantic resource. The chair over there? Planned for this trick. That desk? He can disappear below it. The curtains? Part of the grand finale.

So when I was told the exact room I’d do my practical on, I decided that the best way to pull off this particular stunt was to learn about it. According from what I could remember from the show, there sadly wasn’t much to work with. Twilight was standing in front of a blackboard, with the teachers behind a row of seats. Then they roll the egg in… I assumed that wasn’t the only way to get into the school, but it was the only one I knew about. So, the obvious answer was to do some digging.

Canterlot public library didn’t have anywhere near the amount of academic books that the school for Gifted Unicorns had. But, it did have most records of pony activities inside it, so I hoped to find some sort of idea as to what kind of tests were done for applying unicorns in the past.

Sadly, it seemed pony librarians had their own secret society were they decided who was allowed to walk in undisturbed and who was… well…

“Excuse me ma’m, do you know where I can find the records of ‘Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns’ practical tests?” I asked, trying to sound as official as I could while inwardly cringing at the look the mare was giving me.

“And why would you need the records for an only unicorn school, young colt?” she asked in a suspicious voice, apparently not happy with my looks.

“Well… my sister is applying! And she wanted to know what they were testing with in the past!” I lied lamely, feeling like I was being x-rayed by her narrowed gaze.

Funny how you could do that considering how large pony eyes were though…

“... I suppose, in that case. They can be found on the second floor, fifth shelf to the left.” she told me, leaving it in no uncertain terms that she did not believe me.

I managed to barely get away from another librarian who didn’t like me. Was it my dashing good looks?

Regardless, I happened to find the records book and sat down by a nearby empty desk to read it…

And soon, I realized that this was going to be difficult.

Apparently, there were two ways to pass the practical exam. Number one, you can perform the specific tests the teachers at the time will tell you to do; usually level 3. This is how Twilight did it, since she was asked to hatch open Spike’s egg. The fact that they did it non-verbally is also part of the test, because as long as you can figure out some way of achieving what is depicted in the picture they give you, you pass.

For example, Twilight managed to hatch Spike’s egg with her magic, which allowed her to pass. However, the picture depicted the egg broken in half, with a dragon in the middle. So if she had managed to perform an aging spell and caused the egg to hatch naturally, that would also count as a pass. Technically, I suppose if she had managed to summon a dragon on top of the egg and have it break the egg, that would also pass. But at her age, that was rather unlikely.

On the other hand, the other way of getting in is a show of magical prowess beyond the norm. If the unicorn that is trying to get in can perform any magic that is level 4 or above, they can pass automatically. If I had to guess, that would be one way for someone like Shining Armor to pass. His cutie mark is all about shields, which are level 5 magic.

As soon as I read that, I quickly concluded that there was no way I was getting in unless I choosed the second option. The fact that there was no consistency on what sort of spell I would be asked to perform meant that the examiners could, no, would pick something that would be impossible for me to perform. I can’t really fake an energy beam, and there was no way they were giving me something lesser than level 3.

Alright. So how was I going to emulate magic that practically warped reality and broke all human laws of physics…

Ah. Of course.

Well, let’s just say it was a good thing I’d been saving up my allowance...

“Hope?” I heard being called as soon as I entered the waiting room.

“Huh?” I looked around, then spotted a certain lavender filly next to her parents.

“Oh, hey Twilight, how’s it going?” I asked casually, trying to ignore the increasing sense of dread.

I sat down in the chair next to her, about two chairs away from where her parents were sitting while waiting for the practical to begin.

“I think I made a mistake! Question 2b was about levitation, but my answer was only half a page long! Do you think I could ask to retake the test?” she asked me desperately, somehow not happy with the theory test we had just finished doing.

“Uh, well if I remember correctly, my response was about two lines.” I grinned sheepishly, hoping to whoever is up there that this would not lead to more questions about what I thought I got right.

“Oh. Well, you were probably more detailed and concise anyway.” she said, apparently trying to reassure me while bringing herself down. Typical Twilight.

“Hey, don’t worry about it ‘kay? I’m sure you’ll do fine. I think we should just worry about the practice exam now.” I smiled at her, trying to get her mind off anything but what laid ahead.

“THAT’S RIGHT! How are you going to pass it? You never told me!” she all but screamed, apparently having recalled our conversation at the library. Her parents looked up and started trotting our way, probably with the intention of telling Twilight not to scream and cause a scene.

Of course as soon as she said that, almost everyone in the room turned to me. I saw several widen their eyes as they looked at my forehead, some even facehoofed at my apparent stupidity.

“Excuse me, do you know Twilight?” Twilight’s father said as he and his wife walked over to our seats.

“Oh. Uh, yeah sure. We went to school together. I don’t suppose she mentioned me?” I asked, actually curious about Twilight’s opinion of me.

“Well, she didn’t really talk about school much aside from what she was learning. But now that you mention it, she did talk about a strange gray earth pony she met on her first day. Would that be you?” Twilight’s mother asked. At the time, I wished I knew their names. As far as the canon up to where I saw it went, they were never officially named.

“I imagine that would be me, yeah. Lost Hope, at your service.”

“Twilight Velvet.”

“Night Light.”

Huh. So fanon names then. Just one more suspicious coincidence to add to the pile.

Immediately afterwards, a door opened and an exhausted Emerald Dream walked into the room.

“Whew...I made it!” she gasped, trying to recover her breath. “Hello Hope…”

“Hello, Ms. Emerald. You’re just in time. Thanks a lot for coming over; this would be impossible without you.”

She glanced at the ponies looking at me, then at Twilight and her parents.

“Uh, excuse me Ms. Emerald, but are you perhaps Hope’s guardian?” I heard Twilight Velvet ask nervously.

“Yes…”

“Well, I hope you don’t mind if I ask why is he trying to enter this particular school? I have nothing against a change in policy, but this is a unicorn only school…” she trailed off, apparently recognizing Emerald’s upraised hoof as a ‘stop’ sign.

“He asked for it. He said it was his calling and as a headmistress and caretaker of many young foals, I will support him in reaching his dream.” she said with conviction, the loud conversation from about a week ago forgotten. I also realized that I had probably hit some sort of chord within her, considering her name was Emerald Dream.

I was saved from having to hear the response to that statement by the bell ringing and a security pony opening the door to the practice room.

“Lost Hope?”

“I’m here!” I said loudly, trying to draw the attention of the stallion, despite my low stature.

“You’re up. Please come in with your guardian.” he said in a bored tone.

I quickly grabbed Emerald’s hoof and pulled her away from the conversation and onto the stage.

Showtime.

Author's Note

Sorry for the two-parter guys, but the chapter just went on and on!
(Don't worry, part 2 will be uploaded immediately after this one)

Who would've thought it, a magic show needs lots of build-up...

As always, any reviews, comments and suggestions are appreciated! :twilightblush:

Chapter Six: Showtime! (Part 2)

As I walked into the room, I noticed that everything was still in place; the four teachers in the back behind the rows of seats, the blackboard behind me with complicated math equations, even the door where the stallion who brought Spike’s egg came in from.

There was absolute silence, except for the teachers at the back, taking one look at me and scratching at their quills.

The door abruptly opened and an earth pony walked in with a cart loaded with…

A joke.

It was just a piece of paper with a picture of a horn glowing. A light charm. Literally the first magic taught to unicorns, mostly because it was the easiest. Lumos, basically.

Looking over at the teachers, I saw some smug smirks and even a sneer. I think one of them was trying not to laugh.

“I’d like to attempt the test of magical prowess.” I said in a clear voice, trying to pretend I wasn’t offended by their mockery of a first test.

This stunned some of them and I took particular glee in noticing the one sniggering suddenly choke.

The one in the center, who appeared to be the leader, was not amused or impressed. Maybe he thought that I would try something like this?

“Very well then. Please perform a spell that is Level 4 or above.” he said in a bored tone, probably from the many failures to get in through magical prowess he had seen before. As far as the records of the school were concerned, it was very unusual to not be able to perform the first test and still get in through a spell of even more difficulty.

“I’ll do you better. I’ll perform three spells.” I said with a smirk on my face. It widened when I saw three of them widen their eyes and suddenly paid quite a bit more attention.

“First, I’ll perform a teleportation spell.” As I said this, I concentrated upon the small necklace I was wearing, willing it to activate its stored teleportation spell. You see, it is possible to store magic inside inanimate objects for later use… The problem being that all magic stored this way would become weak and ineffective over a short period of time. For most ponies, it just wasn’t very practical, especially when you could just get a unicorn friend to do the same thing for better effect and waste less energy.

As for me, I was just glad that the lack of demand made them affordable.

The world vanished for a dizzying moment. Then after a flare of light, I appeared about a meter from where I had been standing previously.

Two of the teachers gasped, while the leader was fixing me with a suspicious glare and the pony next to him seemed to…

Ah. There it was.

The smirk. A magician's’ worst nightmare. That self-satisfied smirk that said ‘I’ve figured out your trick and I’m about to ruin it for everyone to see’. I had suffered many a time because of that smirk and it was not pleasant to see.

He spoke up “Please, take off your necklace and perform the spell again.” he said in a self-satisfied tone, having figured out my plan. Sadly for him, I was a big fan of Magician Rule #5.

I promptly took off my necklace, concentrated my will again and teleported right back to the spot I was standing in originally.

This time the unicorn that challenged me gasped and all three of his companions turned wide-eyed looks my way.

As long as you can get a friendly unicorn to do it, you can enchant any object. As long as the object is touching you, the effect of a spell applies to you. That’s why these spells were almost useless, because even in combat where you would want to have weak spells that can be performed quickly, an offensive spell would hit you instead of your opponent.

However, it did mean that even the invisible string I had tied around my neck counted as an object and as such it’s effect, namely teleportation, applied to me.

(Before you ask, invisible string isn’t that hard to get. Awkwardly buy some panty hoses for your ‘mother’, make a hole in them, and you get an almost infinite amount of invisible string to abuse!)

Magician Rule Number #5: Always have a backup.

Before they asked me to teleport again, which would be impossible since the magic in the necklace and string were gone, I moved on to my next trick.

“Next, I’ll perform mind magic. However, for obvious reasons, I need at least one of you to come closer to demonstrate it.” I said in an innocent manner, as if I was a young foal who didn’t quite realize that earth ponies couldn’t teleport on their own.

They looked at each other and eventually, the mare most to my left, the one with a yellow coat and cloud-like purple mane, stepped down from behind the rows of seats and stood in front of me. You know, this trick was a lot easier to perform when you were eye-to-eye with the other pony…

“Well?” she asked impatiently, apparently having recovered from her shock of my earlier teleportation. She had three diamonds for a cutie mark and was wearing a silver watch. Her eyes were the same color as her mane…

I decided to start with a classic shotgun question. I faked a look of deep concentration while staring into her horn, trying to hide the fact I was actually looking into her eyes while I said:

“I can tell you’re feeling some sort of tension with a friend or relative at the moment.” in that Yoda-tone that implies you’re saying something that has some sort of ‘deep wisdom’ attached to it.

Her eyes widened, telling me I had a hit somewhere in there.

“Now that I look closer, I believe it’s a friend, yes? A misunderstanding…”

Now, she looked scared. It seemed her magical mind defenses were no use against cold reading, a technique invented by humans to appear as if you know a lot of specific details about a stranger when in fact your statement applies to a wide amount of people or problems. The fact ponies have a mark of their true selves right on their flank kind of makes it feel like cheating though.

“Yes, in fact I believe your attitude with other ponies, that impatience you feel is born out of a deep desire to apologize to your friend…” I gambled, hoping that this wouldn’t fall flat on my face. This sort of trick loses most of its effect if you mess up because you have to backpedal away from the incorrect guesses and that starts looking suspicious.

“I...I’ve been told that I’ve been different ever since...I hadn’t realized…” she said in an uncertain voice. That was the power of cold reading. Despite the fact that I actually had no idea where her impatience came from, her mind directly related my general statement to her own personal issues.

“I recommend that when all the tests are over, you go over and apologize, Diamond.” I told her, making a quick guess at her name from her triple diamond cutie mark.

“I… I will. Thank you.” she seemed sincere. I tossed out a quick smile, then glanced over at the other teachers.

Most of them looked gobsmacked, while the leader with the blue coat and white mane was looking interested.

“Please, perform your last spell Mr. Hope.” he said with what actually seemed like excitement. Had I managed to convince him?

“Very well then. Diamond, you can go back up there if you want. I’m not very good at this spell yet, so I’ll use a small weight.” I pulled out a bit from my borrowed saddlebags, then showed it to them.

“For my grand finale, I will perform an anti-gravity spell.” I said, holding up the bit for them to see while subtly taking three steps forwards, putting me right under the tiny ‘X’ mark on the floor tiles

You see, when you give a magician a time and a show stage, you can’t expect him to not visit it beforehand. Since ponies had yet to develop the oh-so-handy human technique of lockpicking, it usually meant that in their eyes, locked places were perfectly safe; this allowed me to get inside easily by using what little lockpicking I knew.

I held up my bit upwards, then pretended to take a deep breath and concentrate. I wished I could will sweat drops to form upon my brow to sell the effect but not even magicians had figured out a way to do that yet.

Suddenly, I let go of the bit I was holding in my hoofs ‘soft’ state and it shot upwards into the ceiling!

This time, there was no skepticism left to temper their reaction. All of them gasped, probably more impressed by the fact that this was the highest level of magic I’d shown. What they didn’t need to know was that it was also about as high as I could get in terms of faking it.

Pony money reminds me of Skyrim money. It’s all in the actual metal. A bit is made of gold, which is non-magnetic… Which is why I had convinced a local smith that for some coin he’d craft me a metal toy-bit, just to play around with. Then, all I had to do was install a small magnet on the ceiling on top of me, using a ladder the day before and the setup for anti-gravity was complete.

I sat there, waiting for them to recover while contemplating about how unusual equestrian technology was. You had electric lighting, steam trains, magnets and even electronic speakers. But, you couldn’t give the guards better weapons than lances and spears? What about carriages, why did ponies not have at least basic cars by now? Was it all intentional?

The teachers seemed to have recovered their composure during my small mental rant at the inconsistencies of equestrian technology. The leader spoke.

“Mr. Hope, I think we’ve seen enough. Let me be the first to congratulate you on being the first earth pony in recorded history to have magic, and also the first earth pony to be accepted into ‘Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns’. You may go.” he said with an amused look on his face, as if he never expected to have to say those words.

I didn’t have to fake my excited “YES!” at my efforts finally giving me fruits. I turned around and stared at Emerald Dream who had been watching the whole time, but I had completely ignored her until then in order to make sure I tricked the teachers.

“That was incredible Hope! I don’t know how you did any of that!” she said in a proud voice.

“Thank you! It wasn’t easy to learn!” I said, deciding that a half-truth would fly better than a straight-up lie.

“This is a historical event! The first earth pony to have magic! We have to tell everyone!” she exclaimed, too excited to see my look of dawning horror.

“Emerald, wait!”

...

Oh, crap baskets.

Author's Note

And there we have it. Hopefully it was worth the wait! :twilightblush:

Special thanks goes to my editor, ImMrNoobHeadFU1, for being extra-awesome in helping me edit the mistakes out of this extra-long chapter.

Comments, reviews and suggestions are always appreciated! :pinkiehappy:

Chapter Seven: Secrets

Sometimes, knowledge is dangerous. Hell, most of the time knowledge is dangerous!

Some may say that it’s only the way knowledge is used that is dangerous and there may be a point there, but you have to remember that un-knowing something is impossible, even in magical colorful pony land.

Dangerous knowledge is the reason secrets exist. Secrets are hidden knowledge, to be known by the few because they have some sort of power.

Some say that humans keep too many secrets. Others say we don’t keep enough.

Ponies however are terrible at them… with a few very important exceptions.

Emerald Dream was not one of those exceptions.

I managed to catch up to her as she was running through the corridor that lead to the exit. I thanked my lucky stars that it was empty, probably because there were no classes at the moment.

“Emerald, wait!” I yelled out, trying to catch up to the excitable mare.

“Huh? What is it Hope?” she responded, stopping right in front of the exit door as if teetering over an edge with my life on one end and failure in the other...

“You can’t tell other ponies,” I told her in a low voice, trying to subtly shift in front of her so that she couldn’t rush through the door before I was done talking to her.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

“But why not? Just imagine their reaction! You’d become famous Hope! The first earth pony in history to perform magic!” Her eyes were full of stars, then she looked over my head towards the door as if she could see the future unfolding before her…

“Would I be? Let’s think about this clearly, Ms. Emerald. You graduated from the School for Gifted Unicorns, correct?”

“Yes…”

“And you know how things function around here. Now, tell me which of these is more likely; the school publicly admits that a magical earth pony has been admitted, thus encouraging thousands of other earth ponies who think they have my ‘gift’ to attempt the exams themselves, wasting everyone’s time unless another magical earth pony is found...Or they simply gloss over the fact I’m an earth pony in the records and never mention it to anyone outside the school circle, allowing everything to continue exactly as it always has?” I explained to her, having already been informed numerous times how much ‘tradition’ was valued by the school’s administration when I was trying to get admitted into it.

“So what you’re saying is that even if I went outside and told everyone that you can do magic…” She began seeing the implications.

“None of the teachers that were in the classroom are going to back you up…”

“... Meaning that most ponies won’t believe me because the word of one mare against the entirety of pony history is terrible odds,” she concluded smartly.

I’d give her full points. But I was helping her along, so she gets an 8.8/10.

“But wait, Hope! You can just show them some magic, then they’ll believe me!”

As you’d imagine, my thought process in that instant was something along the lines of:

Oh shit I didn’t think of that

quick an excuse

anything?

anything!

alright here goes!

“Uh s-sorry Emerald, I can’t! My magic is very different from a unicorn’s! It takes a looong time to recharge!” I had almost managed to say that without showing any hint that I was lying, but my stuttering luckily slipped by her.

“Oh… That’s a shame. When will you be charged back up?” she asked curiously, probably still hoping that she’d be able to tell everypony soon enough.

“I uh, don’t know! It just comes and goes! I think an earth pony body just isn’t able to handle magic, so I can’t really build it up inside me the way a unicorn does. Honestly, I’m just glad that I happened to have some at the right moment today!” I bullshitted, still trying to find a way out of this line of questioning before my lies grew thin.

“I see… Well, I suppose we shall just have to keep it a secret between us until a good opportunity presents itself,” she said, looking thoughtful.

“Y-yeah!” I said, thinking rapidly over how many lies I was gonna end up having to tell before it all came crashing down around me.

First day at a new school. A fiction classic!

From Hogwarts to the Jedi Academy, it seems like most famous stories always end up having some sort of first day to school, even if it’s only mentioned briefly. Maybe it’s because everyone can relate to it?

Ironic how ‘My Little Pony’ skipped most of Twilight’s school years… Although, I suppose watching a bookish unicorn with no friends learn about magic would have been boring compared to her quest to save the world, huh… Then again, considering how well Harry Potter sold, I sometimes wondered if the writers hadn’t missed an opportunity for a good flashback episode.

Regardless of my wonderings over the possibility for better ‘horse show’ episodes, I had finally managed to arrive to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, which now that I think of it, I really need an abbreviation for.

‘CSGU’ seems alright I suppose, but it reminds me too much of a certain video game…

Regardless, I thought I was prepared for every eventuality. After all, it was just a school. What’s the worst that could happen…?

I hadn’t bothered to take into account how big the school was. Sure, I had looked at it from outside numerous times and obviously I was inside it during the tests, but it hadn’t registered until that moment that I was actually walking into a fairly big place.

Like most of Canterlot, it was designed with the castle in the background in mind. It had two big spires jutting out of the ceiling on each side, with a centre one slightly hidden behind the inverted V formed by the entrance to the building. Mostly purple in color, it also was accentuated with suspiciously Twilight-mane pink decorations, almost like the building itself was based on the mare’s color scheme. I suppose it did only physically appear for one episode, but seriously?

At the entrance to the building, I saw two teachers standing in front of the school doors. I assumed they must be waiting for someone important, as they just ignored me when I walked by them. Strange. Was Twilight going to arrive soon or something? Did the teachers know that she was Celestia’s personal student by this point?

Trying to ignore the questions going through my mind, I walked up the stairs and past the main doors. I saw quite a lot of unicorns just minding their own business, while some of them seemed to be claiming lockers for themselves. Some groups, surely formed from years of knowing each other, were already talking amongst themselves.

Now you might think that I’d be immediately recognized as an earth pony and probably either kicked out on principle or at least asked why I was there, but you’d be wrong.

Remember, I’m a pretty young earth pony raised on an orphanage. The fact is, Canterlot or not, orphanages just didn’t have all that much food to spare. I’d heard more than once how tough it was for Emerald to manage the place while keeping everyone fed, and it showed.

Sure, I wasn’t malnourished or anything, but I was pretty small and thin for an earth pony.

Combine that with the young age of six and honestly it’s no wonder no one noticed me walking to what I thought would be a nice, out of the way locker for me to use. Having gone through both middle and high school before, I knew that the only way to avoid having every single one of your schoolbooks gone by the end of the year is to buy yourself a lock early on and never give anyone your combination even if it’s “pretty please with a cherry and cake on top just this once”.

Not that I had all that many schoolbooks, just the bare necessities. Being dirt-poor sucked.

Having finished putting everything I thought I wouldn’t need for my first class, History, I closed my locker and put in the lock, making sure before I left that it opened when I put in the correct combination. No “lock getting stuck in a critical moment” for me, thank you very much.

Hopefully, the class wouldn’t be taught by a ghost…

It began during roll call.

“Lost Hope?” the old unicorn said, looking up from her list of names. She seemed nice enough once you looked past the cranky exterior, with her pale blue coat and graying mane. The inkwell for a cutie mark was nice too.

I lifted a hoof, trying not to notice quite a number of other ponies staring at my back. I had decided that I’d sit in front during my first class because I knew that this was probably gonna have to be one of my best subjects, like it or not. You might wonder what I mean when I say that… Well.

I had looked at my schedule once and realized that it wasn’t going to be a good year for student Lost Hope. From best to worst. (Do note that because I transferred from another school, I was technically a second year and thus skipped the elementary literature and maths class I was told were taught in first year.)

PE. Funny how unicorn school has this, specially when my previous one didn’t.
Should do better than average, if I can start feeding myself better.

Math. Same old, same old. Not sure how this could change, to be honest.

History. I don’t think I need to explain why this doesn’t seem to have much to do with actually USING magic.

Magical Theory. Here’s when it starts getting tricky. While the theory itself isn’t a problem, there could be some actual spellcrafting involved here, which obviously I wouldn’t be able to perform…

Spell Progression 1. Crap. Unless I literally pull some rabbits out of my hat, not much I can do about this one.

Rune Magic. I don’t think there’s any way I could even attempt to fake this one… Although, just knowing the theory as to how these worked would be worth it. Are runes the source of Equestrian technology? Do you need them to enchant objects like the ones I used in my test? I couldn’t wait to fail this class.

Which meant that I only had 3 passes out of 6 courses, with Magical Theory being the clincher. I had to be perfect in the courses I could do if I wanted to move on to third year.

The teacher saw me with my hoof down and wrote down a check on her clipboard, then seemed to realize something and looked back up again.

“Mr...Hope. Are you an earth pony or is my sight already failing me?” she asked in a weezy, old mare voice. I could tell that there wasn’t any malice when she asked though.

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered respectfully, inwardly getting ready for either a traditionalist tirade about youngsters’ and their new ideas or a quiet sort of dislike that would haunt me throughout my school career.

Luckily, I got neither of those.

“Very well then. Holly Dash?” she asked, looking back at her clipboard again, apparently not at all concerned about having an earth pony in class. ‘Holly Dash’ showed herself to be present and roll call carried on.

Eventually, roll call ended with the whole class being present. It was the first day after all. The teacher began with a small lecture over the importance of history, which I noticed wasn’t too different from what my history teacher back at my old school had taught us.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad…

Was my thought before the first wad of paper hit the back of my head.

Chapter Eight: Time

Time. The ever going stream. A branching tree, with infinite possibilities, allowing for true beauty in a world full of decisions.

It’s also a huge pain in the ass.

Why did you fail the test? Ran out of study time. Why did you fail to meet your goals? Didn’t dedicate enough time to them. Why does your life suck? Because your time is limited, so every moment you don’t enjoy is a waste.

Time is always in demand, regardless of what you’re doing. It goes forward and hardly ever goes back, even in magic pony land.

And as I would realize a week into my term in Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, time can be as fickle as destiny, and three times as much of a bitch.

A bell rings.

I managed to make it back from the library in time for our first Rune Magic class, but I’m too slow to beat most of my classmates in. So, I had to avoid the stares whenever I walked anywhere on the school grounds.

The rumor had spread rapidly during the first day. And while I had tried to ignore it, by Wednesday I’m pretty sure the entire school knew that an earth pony was attending CSGU. From what little I heard, apparently some parents had complained to the school, but had been told that since I passed the school entrance exam fairly, the teachers couldn’t really kick me out unless I misbehaved or did horribly in class.

I found that response quite funny until I learned that one of the parents had actually withdrawn their foal because I might ‘influence them’ or ‘contaminate their magic’ somehow. And while none of the other parents followed the crazy mare, I don’t think many of them approved of the school’s decision to keep me around.

This disapproval was expressed quite clearly by their foals.

It’s not like any of them started hitting me or anything -this is Equestria after all. But whenever I walked down the halls, they tended to move out of the way, either staring at me coldly or just pretending I didn’t exist. Some of the meaner ones started calling me some unoriginal names and the local bullies would usually try and throw paper wads or even spit at me in rare cases during class.

Ah, yes. The local bullies… Following their leader, Prince Blueblood.

I should’ve expected it, really. Where else would Blueblood have developed his prejudice against ‘commoners’ but the super-exclusive unicorn only school?

I’d seen a couple of stories in which Blueblood redeemed himself and ended up not being as spoiled and pretentious as he was in the Grand Galloping Gala. But sadly, this didn’t seem to be one of them. For example, upon delivering our first math homework assignment, he was called to the front.

“Mr. Blueblood, what is this?” the teacher had said, holding up a small note with a scrawl of what looked like really bad handwriting.

“My homework assignment, Professor.” He somehow managed to make the profession as a whole sound like an insult.

“This has none of your work done in it!” She exclaimed, having apparently resisted Blueblood’s persuasion roll. “It just says that you ‘did the work perfectly’ without showing any proof of it!”

“But teacher, my parents wrote that! You dare doubt the word of royalty!?” He seemed to be getting mad at not getting his way. As I’d learn later, this was his usual response to frustration.

“I shall report this to the principal when class is over. She will issue out a proper punishment,” The mare said, her eyes narrowed to the small prince. For a brief moment I wondered who the principal was, then decided that it probably wasn’t too important.

“Yes ma’am.” Wow, twice in a row! He had a true talent for twisting the spirit of cordiality.

Later, I would learn from the rumor mill that he had to publicly and formally apologize to the teacher for his inappropriate attitude and promise it wouldn’t happen again. When I heard that, I thought the principal must be a softie when it came to punishments. But in hindsight, having to apologize probably hurt Blueblood more than any physical punishment would have.

Finally, I managed to find a seat at the right corner of the classroom, opposite to Blueblood’s corner. As usual no one sat next to me, but at least I wouldn’t be distracted from our Rune Magic class. Whoever made our schedules didn’t think second years should learn much about runes apparently, since we only had the class for two hours at the very end of Friday’s schedule. In other words, every colt was already making their weekend plan and just waiting for the class to end.

Not that I could afford that.

As I had predicted when I looked at my schedule, I was struggling to keep my grades up. It was the first week and I’d already failed the first Spell Progression homework, which had been all about learning the switching spell to swap a simple wooden box on the teacher's desk with an apple that was sitting on my desk. I did manage to impress the teacher by making the apple ‘disappear’. But since I didn’t properly switch it with the box, I only got half the points. Still, those small victories were what I needed to ensure I passed the year.

Sometimes, I thought about why the teachers didn’t offer me alternative, non-magical homework. I suspected that it had something to do with the parental complaints at my enrollment into the school. In fact for the most part, every teacher simply pretended that their entire class were unicorns and completely ignored me unless I had my hoof raised to answer a question. And with the exception of History and Math, all of them had looked at me skeptically while I did it.

During my ruminations on the unfairness of being pony Ruby Bridges, the runes teacher arrived. He was a bespeckled stallion with what I thought was a nordic rune for a cutie mark and a very Flitwick-esque excitement at giving class. Because Equestria needed more Harry Potter comparisons.

“Welcome --fillies and gentlecolts-- to Rune Magic. My name is Written Scroll, but you may refer to me as Professor Rune. I’d like to begin today with a brief recap on the history of runes…” By this point, most of the class was drifting off. That was because as far as I could tell from my week of studying in CSGU, the average unicorn colt was only slightly more attentive than the average kid in the human world.

Eventually, the teacher finished the long and boring history of how runes were made and got to the interesting part: the applications.

“... Which brings us to today. Now, do any of you know the most common uses for runes in our times?”

I saw a couple of hoofs rise up from my spot on the back of the classroom and the teacher picked one of them.

“Runes are used for enchanting, professor.”

“Aha! That is a common misconception. Yes, runes are utilized during the enchanting process, but not directly. The truth is that spells are utilized while enchanting objects, but runes such as Naudiz or Ehwaz are utilized to ensure the spell remains on the object after it is enchanted. Sadly during this process, the effect of the spells are either greatly reduced or simply impossible for the rune to tie to the object. This is why only weak spells are found in enchanted objects and what removes most of their utility.”

Finally! After six days of searching in the school’s expansive library, I had an answer to how my teleportation trick actually worked! (And also why it cost so much…)

“Now class, I’d like to introduce you to your new alphabet!” As he proclaimed that horrifying statement, his horn lit up and I could see the board light up as twenty-four symbols, each representing a Nordic rune, appeared next to their basic meaning.

“Yes indeed, this is your first assignment! I want all of you to learn how to draw each of these symbols and their specific meaning. This is incredibly important for our later work… But first, a small demonstration.” He went over to his desk and pulled out a scroll, held in his magic.

“This is a basic rune scroll.” He paused, opening the scroll and showing the class the blank middle of the scroll surrounded by a circle of symbols. “In it, anypony can practice drawing runes and utilizing their effects without hurting anypony else. This is very important!”

He turned to the board and wrote down in big, underlined letters:

NEVER DRAW A RUNE OUTSIDE A RUNIC CIRCLE!
NEVER EXPERIMENT WITH RUNES!

“... Until you’re finished with your studies and have a degree anyways.” He paused and then placed the scroll on one of my classmate’s desk. “Please pay attention; I will be drawing a rune known as Kauno. It means torch, fire and enlightenment. However, despite it’s very positive meaning, it can be used for destruction and pain just the same. Observe.”

The teacher then wrote down the rune on the middle of the scroll.

Nothing seemed to happen.

Almost immediately, Blueblood began jeering.

“Oh what a joke! Watch out for the dangers of the fire ru-”

He was cut off by a tunnel of fire suddenly erupting from the scroll, roaring upwards like a pillar made entirely of flames. At the same time, the runic circle activated, sending up a wall of pale blue light around the column of fire and locking it in so that it wouldn't spread.

Gasps and startled cries sounded around the room, and more than one jaw had to be scraped off the ground.

“Mr. Blueblood, the reason that the rune did not activate immediately was because I had to charge it with magic after drawing it. Otherwise, it would have had no effect.” He seemed annoyed at Blueblood’s outburst. Perhaps the teachers had warned each other about his disrespectful attitude?

This was also the moment I realized that I wasn’t going to do well on this course.

Well, as long as I get to see Blueblood make an ass out of himself, I suppose it won’t be that bad.

A bell rings.

Class was over. The week was done! I could finally take a much-needed bre-

“Wait wait, class! Stop!” Professor Rune gasped out. “I had forgotten! The principal has informed us teachers that today there will be a special beginning of term speech welcoming all new students to the school. I know you are second years, but the entire school will be there! Anyone found missing will receive a detention!”

He said that last part sternly, as if he knew from years of dealing with foals that without the threat of punishment, most of them wouldn’t go. Smart stallion, that one.

A couple minutes later, the entire second year class was seated at the second closest row to the base of the amphitheater with the upper years behind us and the first years in front and below. It was quite a nice place, all in all. The bright stage lights hitting the wooden platform, the beautiful marble walls and comfortable seats, Princess Celestia walking in and standing behind the podium…

wait what

“Hello, my little ponies. Welcome to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns! As most of you know, I am Princess Celestia. But while on school grounds, I’d prefer you called me Principal Celestia…” she said this with a calm, practiced smile of reassurance. She seemed to be mostly directing her speech towards the first year students who were no doubt awed in her presence.

Just like I was.

She was tall for one, as in more than twice as tall as every single pony until the sixth years, who were around ten years old. Beyond her height, her not-quite-white coat and ethereal rainbow mane made her impossible to miss. But, the most overwhelming aspect of her physique were her eyes. The old saying about ‘the window to the soul’ was in full effect here. Celestia’s magenta-colored eyes were full of compassion and love for her little ponies, but behind that was a razor-sharp intelligence and the weight of knowledge gained from an eternal life.

She was both the most amazing and most terrifying being I’d ever met.

I was so stunned that I missed the entirety of her speech and only snapped out of it when everypony started stamping their hooves in a show of applause. I hurried to do the same, hoping I wouldn’t stand out. I was not ready to gain the attention of the nation’s ruler just yet.

“Thank you. Now before you leave, I’d like all of you to meet somepony very special. She requested that I give her a few words in the opening ceremony, and I was glad to agree. She is my personal student so I hope you can all become good friends in the future.”

wait
why does Twilight want a few words?
this is her first week…

But, it wasn’t Twilight who walked onto the stage. A light amber filly, probably two or three years older than myself, stepped up to the podium. Her wavy mane was very similar to a yellow and red fire, flickers of both colors were visible all across her mane in equal proportions. From my seat at the left of the platform, I could see her cutie mark resembled a sun flare, with one yellow side and the other being red.

It started with a few innocent questions.

who is this?
why haven’t I ever heard of this pony?

“Hello everypony, my name is Sunset Shimmer…”

Then more important questions.

why does Celestia have another personal student?
why haven’t I heard of other protégées before?

“You have all passed your tests to enter the best magic school in our kingdom, where the most powerful unicorns are taught…”

Then the realization hits like a thunderstrike.

Twilight Sparkle isn’t Celestia’s personal student.
The timeline has already been changed.

“I encourage all of you to seek to fully develop your potential and not to waste any of your time with… unimportant matters.”

Followed by panic.

The butterfly effect…

I’ve already ruined everything.

Author's Note

I'm finally done with college finals, so I should get a little more time to write this story!

As always, any reviews, comments and suggestions are appreciated. :twilightsmile:

Arc Two: The Elements of Harmony

Magic.

In our world, magic is fantasy. It’s an excuse used to explain what is unexplainable and beyond the limits of our current reality. As the saying goes, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

In the pony world, magic is commonplace. Need a book but don’t have a ladder? Ask a friendly unicorn to pass it along. Salt on the table too far away? No problem. If he’s feeling particularly fancy, the unicorn can even swap it with the nearby pepper and make it seem like it was in your reach to begin with!

So in a world where magic is everywhere, what does it mean to be the Element of Magic?

After the beginning of term speech, I’d like to say I reacted appropriately to the situation I’d brought upon myself.

By which I mean that the instant we were allowed to leave I was running back to the orphanage, locking myself up in a vacant room without greeting anypony and starting to think.

‘Twilight Sparkle is the main protagonist of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and is known throughout Equestria as both Princess Celestia’s protege and the Element of Magic.’

… Is what I wanted to think.

The main problem with that line of thought was that not only had none of that happened yet, but it also wasn’t going to happen because I had somehow permanently changed the timeline of events shown in the show.

… Probably.

The source of my uncertainty was the issue that came with time travel, of any kind. Because I knew the events of a possible future, I had tried my best to stick to everything I knew about the MLP: FiM canon up to the latest season I’d seen, so as to not make that future knowledge useless…

But considering the fact that an entirely new pony that also happened to be Celestia’s personal student had suddenly appeared as if from thin air, in my mind it had become obvious that somewhere along the way, I’d done goofed.

There was no point in trying to preserve the timeline anymore.

So it was that in a vacant room inside of ‘Celestia’s Orphanage for Ponies in Need’ the human-turned-pony known as Lost Hope made a decision that would change the rest of pony history forever.

It was time to make a change.

During the weekend that would follow, I analyzed the results of my decision and what I would have to do because of it.

The main problem that came with ditching the show’s original storyline was that certain events were still likely going to happen, regardless of whatever changes I had already made.

First, Nightmare Moon was going to come back. That had a thousand year old prophecy backing it, I wasn’t lucky enough for it not to happen.

Second, Celestia was going to try to get the Elements of Harmony ready in time to fight Nightmare Moon. While I knew very little about what Celestia had done to achieve it, the fact that the five ponies that came about to represent the other Elements happened to live in Ponyville, which also occurred to be the place that the Summer Sun celebration that Celestia’s student had to organize exactly 1000 years after Luna’s banishment couldn’t be a coincidence.

Third, Nightmare Moon would only be defeated by six ponies using the Elements of Harmony to purify the evil from Luna. If she could be forced to surrender, surely Celestia would have done it 1000 years ago when she had the Elements at her disposal to threaten Nightmare Moon with?

Fourth, at some point if Equestria was still standing after Nightmare Moon, Discord would come back. The simple fact I was here, thanks to ‘Discord.Inc’, already showed that despite his current stony disposition, his powers were obviously returning.

Finally, I didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to avoid a Changeling invasion even if I managed to warn the ponies before it happened.

After assessing everything I thought was practically guaranteed to happen, I decided to plan out my next course of action.

1: Identify the Element of Magic.
2: Befriend them, to the point were they’d warn you if they suddenly had to leave for Ponyville.
3: Go to Ponyville.
4: ???
5: Profit.

Throughout my life I have had my share of bad ideas, bad plans and bad projects. So let’s just say that this one would break all sorts of records…

Subject 1: Twilight Sparkle

Even after making friends in Ponyville, Twilight was never the most social of ponies. You could tell because she worked in a library and generally only interacted on screen with the mane six. In fact, if you consider her reaction to Pinkie Pie’s welcome party in the first episode, one could probably make an argument for anti-social.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that Twilight Sparkle had friends in CSGU.

I began my recon mission that very Monday, right after History. It was difficult to concentrate with the occasional wad of paper hitting my head from the very back of the classroom, but I managed to make it through the class while taking notes of the most important details the professor said.

While I would usually write down everything back in human school, it was very difficult to do so in CSGU because most teachers expected a literally magical writing speed and wouldn’t slow down their dictation just for me. They did repeat something when I asked them to do so, but it led to some groans coming from the jocks in the back and glares to be thrown at me from the brainier folk who didn’t want to be delayed because of the grounder.

I had recently learned that ponies actually had slang! While it wasn’t commonly used simply because ponies generally liked each other and made friends easily, ‘insults’ for each of the pony phenotypes did actually exist: ‘grounders’ for earth ponies, ‘flumpers’ for pegasi and ‘kretins’ for unicorns.

I suppose I should have been insulted, but honestly compared to actual insults thrown around in high school this, was almost pitifully tame. Still, gotta applaud them on the creativity I suppose.

Twilight wasn’t hard to find when you weren’t actively trying to avoid her. During most break periods she rushed off to the library, usually looking for information on whatever the teacher had mentioned would be the topic of the next class.

What was much, much more surprising was the fact she wasn’t alone.

Walking next to her was another unicorn filly that was practically a recolor of Twilight in terms of looks, to the point where it was almost creepy. Her skin was a very pale yellow, while her mane was mostly red with a purple stripe in the middle were Twilight’s pink stripe was. I couldn’t see her eyes from behind, but I would later learn they were exactly the same as Twilight’s.

It was while I was *cough* analysing *cough* this new filly that it occurred to me that Twilight had gotten her cutie mark, most likely meaning that Spike had been hatched after her magic went crazy. No idea about the personal student business though, considering Sunset Shimmer seemingly popped out of thin air. The other filly’s cutie mark was a crescent moon with small sparkles around it, very similar to Twilight’s own sparkles.

You could almost say they were sisters, but Twilight had only mentioned her brother back in our public school…

They didn’t talk much while heading to the library, but it was obvious that they were going together and not just happening to move in the same direction.

Along the way to the library, they even met up with three other fillies and had a brief talk before moving on. I think one of them was in my class, Lemon something.

Regardless, it was obvious that while not exactly a social accolite, Twilight had friends before moving to Ponyville… despite the fact that in the show she said she hadn’t had any friends in Canterlot?

More timeline discrepancies?

Once they arrived at the library, they greeted the suspiciously friendly ~~and probably evil~~ librarian. She smiled and pointed them over to an empty table. The way she did it implied to me that it wasn’t the first time they’d visited.

I had learned my lesson though. This time, instead of trying to sneak by or ignore the librarian, I would instead politely ask-

“What do you want?” she said in a suddenly irritated voice that left no doubt that she had not only already made her first impression of me, but also wasn’t going to change it regardless of what I did.

Celestia dammit

“Just needed to do some homework ma’am!” I said quickly, knowing that even if she apparently didn’t like me if I quickly got out of her mane surely-

“I don’t believe you.”

Huh?

“This is the library of the most prominent magical institution in Equestria. Why would an Earth pony such as yourself be required to come here to do homework?” She said ‘homework’ in a mocking imitation of my voice.

“But this is an assignment for History-”

“Magical Historybelongs to unicorns. There is no need for you or any other earth pony to learn it, as it does not concern-”

“Ms. Bookends, wait!” Hearing a concerned voice intervene, both of us turned to see Twilight and her friend from before standing next to the librarian’s desk.

“Excuse me, but Hope here was going to help me on my assignment on Starswirl’s 200 spells. That’s why he needed to come in.” As she finished her lie, Twilight shot me a look to go along.

“Y-yeah! Twilight knew that she and her friend were gonna have trouble looking up all 200 spells, so I decided to lend her a helping hoof!” I smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of my head with my left hoof.

She briefly frowned at that, then her eyes widened and she smirked at Twilight.

“But Miss Sparkle, your friend Moon Dancer is already here helping you. Why would you require his assistance?”

Twilight’s eyes widened in surprise, then she shot a look at Moon Dancer and then one at me. I subtly moved my hoof in a circle.

go on…

“Ah… Well, you see Ms. Bookends, I already know Hope from before, and he has exactly the skills required for him to help us with this project!” Twilight brightly finished, apparently very happy with her quick thinking.

The librarian didn’t seem so convinced though.

“If that is the case, then pray tell, why haven’t I seen the two of you together before? And what skills could an earth pony like him possibly have to help you on a magical project?” She sneered at that last part, as if the very idea was ludicrous.

“I met Hope back in my old school, which I was still attending until this year. We studied Magical Theory together, and he’s very good at it!” It looked like Twilight was getting incensed at the old unicorn’s insinuations and had decided to defend me. I’ll admit to being slightly touched.

While it looked like the unicorn mare wanted to argue the matter further, when she looked at the clock hanging on the wall in front of her desk, all of the fight seemed to drop out of her and she just sighed deeply.

“Very well, I can see that there is no way I can convince you Twilight, but I urge you to be careful. While you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, you also have to remember that covers are the key to it getting sold in the first place.”

After that misguided attempt at advice and a last glare sent my way, Ms. Bookends went back to whatever work she was doing.

We quickly sat down in the table the fillies had been using, with Twilight staring at me like I was crazy and Moon Dancer staring at Twilight in exactly the same manner.

I decided to break the awkward silence.

“Thanks Twilight, you really saved me there. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t stepped in,” I told her softly, making sure to keep my voice down before I got kicked out of the library for lightly sneezing. Again.

“Hope, what were you thinking!?” She almost shouted this aloud, then seemed to remember we weren’t in the best place for that, toning it down. “You know that most Canterlot unicorns don’t like earth ponies, you’ve even complained to me about it before, so why did you come here on your own? Why didn’t you bring a friend or two to back you up in case something like that happened?”

I couldn’t exactly answer that one without being either very pitiful or very awkward.

“Uh… Well… You see...”

Luckily, Moon Dancer came to my rescue… sort of.

“Twilight… I don’t think he has any friends here…” she said silently while looking down at the book she had gotten off a library shelf while Twilight interrogated me.

It was obvious from the get-go that she wasn’t the most… social of ponies.

After hearing that, Twilight’s eyes widened and she turned her head back to me.

I nodded sadly.

“I see… Well, I guess I can introduce you to my friends then?” she offered, prompting a hopeful smile.

“Sure!” I said with enthusiasm, mentally high-fiving myself for another well-executed performance.

“Well then… I suppose I should start off with Moon Dancer here!” Twilight exclaimed, having quickly forgotten we were in a library. It was then that suddenly, defying all logic, about 11 unicorn heads of varying ages appeared out of nowhere around our tables and collectively lifted a hoof to their lips.

“Shhh!” They shhhd in unison.

“Oh… Sorry,” Twilight said in a passable ‘Fluttershy’ imitation.

“Maybe we should take this somewhere else…?” I suggested, hoping that getting out of the library might help preserve some of my rapidly decaying sanity.

It was then of course, that the bell signalling the end of recess rang.

Author's Note

Oh my Dende's name it's been forever since I've uploaded on this site!

And it wasn't even due to lack of time either, as I said on my last Author's Note, I've been on vacation! The main difficulty with getting this chapter out however came from a classic case of Writer's Block and then having to plan out the course for this arc.

But it's finally out and we can get this show on the road! :raritywink:

As a side-note, to those who are following this story, I'd recommend you also follow my blog. I'll be trying my best to post updates in-between uploads over there, in order to ensure that there isn't another huge hiatus with basically no news from me.

Thanks for reading! :twilightsmile:

Chapter Nine: Balance (Part 2)

Author's Note

Hello, everybody! It is I, JustAnotherEarthPony posting after a year of no updates!

This is the first time I put the Author's Notes at the top of a chapter, and I am doing that because it truly has been a long while since I was last on this site. The truth is, the draft for this chapter was written months ago. The issue I faced was that I couldn't post it immediately after writting it down due to several personal issues taking up my time. Moving countries can do that.

Then I fell into what has to be one of the worst fanfic writer traps ever: Guilt-tripping yourself into trying to 'make up' for the time you didn't post by making an extra long chapter, eventually getting writer's block and thus never actually finishing it! Then the time between posts gets longer, and the 'make up' has to be bigger, until everything falls apart.:twilightsheepish:

So, I am forcing myself to simply upload something, with no promises as to when I will upload again, so as to hopefully avoid falling into the same trap.

On that note, since it has been a while, a brief summary: Lost Hope is a human who only watched the first two seasons of MLP before being send to Equestria. This means he lacks knowledge on Sunset Shimmer, !good Discord, or anything past A Canterlot Wedding. Despite being reborn as an Earth pony and being swiftly ditched by his parents, he managed to make it into Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns and managed to befriend Twilight and her group of pre-Ponyville friends. Now, he has managed to catch the attention of one Sunset Shimmer, how will he get out of this one?!

Find out next time on Dragon Bal- gak

(Remember, never lose hope.)

Chapter Nine: Balance (Part 2)

Subject 3: Sunset Shimmer

As I desperately tried to keep up with Sunset’s much longer and more frantic hoofsteps, I considered what l was going to do next. The first part of my impulsive plan to get the Sun Princess’ protege to notice me in some way had worked, but I had no idea what to follow it up with.

I knew that once we reached wherever Sunset was taking me, it was likely she’d try to intimidate me into keeping silent about the notes on her book. Her anger was about as subtle as a battering ram was to an unfriendly door.

Not that I blamed her. If I was a powerful unicorn and some earth pony two years my junior read my notes on dark magic spells that no pony outside of the restricted section of the library should be allowed to read, I’d be pissed too.

I considered all that I knew about Sunset Shimmer.

She was a unicorn powerful enough for Celestia to take notice, during her introduction speech she had spoken passionately about how CSGU was the school where the most powerful unicorns were taught and she was apparently secretly studying powerful dark magic concerning mirrors.

But what sort of power could I offer…

…

Bingo.

As soon as we had arrived at an empty history classroom and Sunset turned around, I deliberately allowed my expression to change.

In an instant, gone was the lost little earth pony following the Sun’s chosen. Replacing him was an earth pony made of stone, hardened by a lifetime of experience in a much different, much more ruthless world.

Hard sapphire met teal blue.

Her face, which had only contained anger seconds before, quickly changed to surprise. Her back hoof moved backwards a few millimeters in response in a very well concealed flinch.

I gave her a frigid smile as I gently closed the door behind me and began the performance.

“I see you have been dabbling in rather dangerous magic, Miss Shimmer,” I began, making it a point to address her formally while making my very best attempt at a Hugo Weaving impression. (As with all attempts at imitating his brilliant performances though, I couldn’t capture the real thing)

“Wh-What?” She said, stumbling over her words. “What do you mean dangerous? And more importantly, how would you know what magic is dangerous anyway?!”

“Hmm… let me answer your question with another question, Miss Shimmer. Why do you study magic?”

“Huh?” She seemed surprised, as if she had never actually asked herself such a silly question.

“Why do you study magic? Why do you get up every morning to go to this school? What would motivate you to risk your student career and apprenticeship under Princess Celestia to study dark magic about mirrors of all things?”

She stumbled for a moment, then seemed to gather herself and threw her head back in a haughty manner.

“To become an even more powerful unicorn, of course!” She exclaimed.

“And do you believe that you need that power for something? Can you tell me what that is? Do you even know?”

Stunned silence. It didn’t really surprise me to know that Sunset hadn’t actually thought that far ahead, simply trying to become more powerful for power’s sake.

“Could it be perhaps that you will try to generously use your power for the benefit of the common pony? Spread kindness and laughter throughout Equestria? Prove your loyalty to Celestia? Come now Ms. Shimmer… be honest with me.”

It took a few moments, but eventually Sunset’s eyes widened in realization.

“Wait… You… You’re talking about that old pony’s tale. The Mare in the Moon?”

“Yes, The Mare in the Moon!” I exclaimed loudly, making a big show of looking angry at the mere mention of the name of the story.

“Someone with your memory surely remembers that tale? How Princess Celestia, through the use of the Elements of Harmony, conquered the evil ‘powerful pony’ and then went on to rule Equestria through 1000 years of peace?”

“Of course I remember, the Elements of Harmony are only the most powerful magical magic known to ponydom! To be able to harness that power…” A strange look came upon her face, before she performed the classic Canterlot Unicorn scoff (TM). “Not that you’d know anything about that, of course.”

I gave a small chuckle.

“Ah! Yes, about that! Sunset Shimmer, it is very nice to meet you.” I extended my hoof over in Sunset’s direction, intending for her to shake it. “My name is Lost Hope, master illusionist, at your service.”

After a few awkward seconds in which Sunset stared at my outstretched hoof like it was the strangest thing she had ever seen, she regained enough of her wits to ask the obvious question.

“What in the hay is an ‘illusionist’?”

“I thought you’d never ask!” I exclaimed, ignoring her eye roll. “An Illusionist is someone who practices Illusion Magic, of course.”

“... That doesn’t tell me anything…” Her eyes had narrowed and she shot a glance at the door behind me, as if just now noticing that I had effectively blocked the only exit.

“Then allow me to explain.”

I gave her a small smile, then adopted a very deliberate ‘lecturing’ tone.

“Illusion Magic is a very secretive and powerful branch of magic that relies on misdirection. It is the art of convincing others that what you know to be fake, an illusion if you may, is actually real. A true master illusionist can make others fight their battles for them, make enemies destroy themselves, and have entire countries fall under their rule without anypony being aware.”

It’s also more commonly known as the art of Bullshittery and can be used to convince arrogant unicorns that they are learning a super secret dark branch of magic.

There was a brief pause in which Sunset Shimmer considered my words, but eventually she finally asked the question I had been waiting for her to make since I first mentioned Illusion Magic.

“Let’s say I believe you. What sort of illusions can you do?” She asked with skeptical eyes and a barely discernible smirk.

I responded with a full-blown shiteating grin, of course.

“Why, the most important illusion of all, Miss Shimmer.”

“I am a unicorn.”

Subject 4: ???

It didn’t take too long after that.

Barely a week had passed since Sunset Shimmer had begun her so called ‘apprenticeship’ under me, after I had explained to her that it had taken me literal years to be able to design an illusion intricate enough to completely erase my horn from all five pony senses and that no I wasn’t going to dispel it just so she could see how it looked like.

She also wasn’t entirely convinced by my unicorn story, mostly because she thought it didn’t make any sense. After all, why would a unicorn pretend to be an earth pony at a magical school? Which, admittedly, was a good point.

In response, I gave her the classic spiel about ‘true wolves hiding among the sheep’ and how everypony underestimated me simply because I looked like an earth pony.

Then I pulled a bit out of her ear. She was asking for lessons a few seconds later.

When I told her that her first test would be befriending Twilight Sparkle, she may or may not have made several coughing noises that sounded vaguely like celestia and magic of friendship bullcrap. Then I told her that a true illusionist was one that managed not only to sell other ponies on an illusion, but also themselves if the case needed it. All Sunset had to do was convince Twilight to be her friend (Easy) and then convince herself that she wanted to be Twilight’s friend. (Much, much harder)

And if she does actually end up becoming friends with Twilight by convincing herself to do it, well, all the better. ‘Fake it ‘till you make it’, as they say.

I had been in the middle of planning out her first ‘evaluation’ during the last few minutes of a boring Thursday Math class when the teacher tried to get my attention.

“Mr. Hope?” She asked, staring at my unfocused eyes as I gazed directly at the blackboard without really seeing it.

“Uh… Excuse me?” She waved a hoof in front of my face, but I was still in plan-land.

I wonder if I can setup a reunion between all of the potential Elements of Magic? Then again, it’s very likely Celestia would notice that, wouldn’t want to-

“Lost Hope!” The teacher said again, this time much louder, bringing me right out of my own head.

I snapped to attention in my desk and looked around, trying to remember what exactly I was supposed to be doing.

There were quite a few snickers across the classroom.

“Mr. Hope” The teacher said after giving the ceiling a look of sheer exhaustion, as if asking the heavens to grant her strength. “The principal would like to see you in her office after this period finishes.”

There was the usual “ooohhh somepony’s in truuubuuuuull!” along with a few laughs and even a “finally!” from the back of the classroom. Considering it was the last period of the day, it wasn’t unwarranted either.

On the outside I remained expressionless, simply nodding at my teacher as an answer, but on the inside there were two different warring factions, logic vs emotion.

OH GOD HOW DID SHE FIND OUT SO FAST WE’RE ALL GONNA DIIE-

Hmm… The probability of this meeting being coincidentally a week after we first contacted Sunset is extremely low…

WE TRUSTED HER! CONVINCED HER NOT TO TELL ANYONE, WHY-

Ah. Our first task for her. I believe it is quite probable that Celestia noticed Sunset’s changed attitude towards her friendship teachings… Could she have noticed her try to approach Twilight? Or perhaps this just has to do with what occurred a week ago…?

WAIT. DOES THIS MEAN WE GET TO USE IT?

Yes. We knew we would be talking to the principal soon enough, it was only a matter of time considering how we got into CSGU. Time to execute.

With the argument inside my head settled, I could finally move on to the contingency plan I had prepared for just this opportunity.

I was going to assasinate Princess Celestia.

Update

Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.

Chapter Nine: Balance (Part 3)

Target: Princess Celestia

The timing had to be perfect.

My math teacher (who’s name I’d never bothered to remember) had called me up to Principal Celestia’s office. How someone managed to both rule a kingdom and find time to be the principal of a school of magic was beyond me, but Celestia certainly had the power and influence to pull it off.

It was a confrontation I had been waiting for since I’d snuck into her magic school as an earth pony. Based on what little info of the show I could remember about Twilight’s school days, Celestia was always out on the lookout for talent, although the specifics about *why* were never clear. Did she secretly prefer unicorns?

In any case, this encounter had been unavoidable from the very beginning. It had taken a couple weeks, but Celestia had finally made her move.

My contingency plan required me to be suitably prepared though. To go in empty-hoofed into the enemy territory would be foolish, particularly an enemy as powerful as this one.

Thus began stage 1.

Every other foal had filed out of the classroom, with more than a few ribs thrown my way about how ‘in trouble’ I was. I had more important things to be worried about however, such as how to get to my weapon. It was too conspicuous to carry it around in my saddlebags, and if it ever fell out of them then rumors might spread and the jig would be up. I couldn’t afford to give Celestia the slightest hint of what was coming.

The teacher had stayed at the front of the room, probably waiting for me to stand up from my desk to escort me to the principal’s office. I spoke up before she could get a word in though.

“Excuse me teacher, can I go get my locker first?” I threw in the best puppy-dog eyes I could make considering I was a horse. “There’s something I want to show the Princess, I’m very proud of it!”

The best lies always have a hint of truth in them.

“The principal’s time is very limited Mr. Hope…” The tired teacher began, but then seemed to realize that I’d just given her the perfect excuse to not have to escort me up to the principal’s office. Since we’d just finished our last class of the day, that meant she could leave. “...On the other hand, the chance to show something so precious to the Princess doesn’t come every day and should be done in private, yes? I trust you can find her office by yourself?” She raised an eyebrow at me, but I could see the hint of desperation in her eyes.

“Of course! It’s on the highest tower, with that huge window right?” I left unsaid that it was a window facing the castle, allowing the princess to go back to the castle quickly if it was ever needed.

“Yes, if you climb to the top of the stairs you won’t miss it.” The teacher turned to leave then turned her head towards me, “I would advise you not to keep the Principal waiting Mr. Hope. To have our Princess at this school is a privilege, one that everypony should be thankful for.”

With that she left, her step noticeably lighter than anytime she’d been in the classroom.

I could only smile. The setup for the climax of the third act had been completed. All side characters had been removed. It was time for the final confrontation between the hero and the villain.

The only question remaining was, which one was I?

…Okay, maybe not every side character had been removed.

Everything was going just fine, I’d intentionally walked to my locker at a moderate pace in order to make sure I avoided almost everyone rushing out of school now that classes were over.

I’d just completely failed to account for the whirlwind of chaos that was an excited Twilight Sparkle along with her other unicorn friends.

“OHMYGOODNESSHopeIcan’tbelieveitLemonHearttoldmeyouwerecalledtotheprincipal’sofficebutthatcan’tberightbecauseyou’reagoodstudentandyoucan’tbeintroublebutyougottomeettheprincessandit’sPRINCESSCELESTIAbutyou’reintroubleandmrrhfhrmhr” I cut off Twilight’s increasingly more erratic ramble with my hoof.

The fact Twilight’s exciting journey into incoherence only got a laugh from Minuette, a jiggle from Lemon Heart, a bright smile from Twinkleshine and small hints of redness in Moon Dancer’s cheeks told me all I needed to know about their friendship.

“Twilight. It's alright. I don’t think I’m in any trouble, it’s more likely that Celestia just wants to meet her first earth pony student.” I quickly reassured, removing my hoof from her mouth while looking around quickly.

If these four are here, then surely…

“Oh? So the Princess called for you and you haven’t answered yet? Awfully bold to keep her waiting, you know.” And sure enough, standing next to my locker and behind Twilight and her friends, my ‘pupil’ Sunset Shimmer.

...Crap.

I had to be careful here. The week before, I’d entrusted Sunset Shimmer with the task of befriending Twilight Sparkle as her first step as an ‘illusionist’. I had been meaning to ask how she was doing on that front, but I could see quite clearly now what had happened.

Sunset Shimmer did not have the faintest idea how to make a friend, even if it was just pretending to do so in order for me to teach her more things that she saw as ‘powerful’.

I could practically see it in my head. Bright, talented Sunset Shimmer probably hadn’t had to try to make a friend in her entire life. Any pony who admired her for her intelligence and status as Celestia’s personal student already kissed the ground she walked on and anyone who wasn’t attracted to those traits was discarded as either ‘useless’ or ‘tool to obtain more power’ and exploited.

The pride of the school, Princess Celestia’s personal student and impossibly gifted magical student Sunset Shimmer didn’t have the slightest clue how to befriend magic-obsessed, Celestia-worshipping and overall total nerd Twilight Sparkle. Will wonders never cease.

I was so busy thinking about Sunset’s total social ineptitude that I hadn’t realized the effect her words would have on Twilight.

“YOU HAVEN’T GONE TO THE PRINCESS YEMMrhrhffh-” This time, it was Lemon Hearts’ hoof that prevented Twilight from breaking every glass pane in the school. While holding her hoof to Twilight’s still mumbling mouth though, she turned to me.

“Uhm, maybe I wouldn’t put it as loudly as Twilight, but she does have a point. Ignoring the Princess is a little crazy.” Both her and Lemon Hearts seemed a little apprehensive about the idea. Colg-I mean Minuette immediately interrupted though.

“Nah, I kinda dig it! I mean, in a you’re-totally-gonna-get-in-trouble kinda way, you know?” With a smile and a wink, she then raised a hoof to her face and stage-whispered, “How do you know the princess’ student, anyway Hope? We haven’t even seen her since she gave that introductory speech, but she seems pretty familiar with you.”

Chance!

I lifted my hoof up to my neck and pretended to rub my shoulder bashfully. “Would you believe me if I said we just bumped into each other by chance? I was reading this book- Actually, let me show you!”

I speed-walked past Twilight, her friends and Summer and opened up my locker.

Have to be subtle. First, grab their attention with one hoof…

I took out my magical theory book, then turned around with my back still facing the locker. “You see, I was actually reading this page on my way to a different class…”

And now with the other hoof, behind the back…

Being subtle while using hooves was difficult, but with my still opened locker door and my book as cover, I felt around my locker for the object I needed…

*squeak*

Got it! Now, just gotta make a quick distraction.

“...Actually Summer, I’m sure you can explain this way better than I can!” I turned so I faced Summer directly while hiding half my body from the others, then shoved my still opened book at Summer’s hooves. “You’re older than us, I’m sure you’ve seen this stuff a million times over.”

She looked down at the book in my hooves, then picked it up with her magic. “Hmm… Yes, I’ve covered this a while ago, and you were reading it when we met…” As she talked, I used my hidden left hoof to put my weapon inside my saddlebags. Twilight and the others couldn’t see it, but Sunset probably could. She frowned. “But why-”

I interrupted her. “-It’s settled then! You can stay here with our friends and tell them all about that story!” A one-eyed wink, all but invisible to the others. “Maybe you can even teach them a little of your magic? From what I remember, Moon Dancer is a huge fan.” I took a step back.

The shy unicorn, who had been silent until now, predictably blushed and stammered out, “Well… I would love to learn some of the things you know about magic… I-If you’d be willing, that is!” Another step back, almost there...

“Hmph, of course. Something as simple as this is no trouble for me… Wait, where are you going Hope?” Was the last thing I heard, as I turned tail and ran.

“See you gals later, Princesses to meet!” I said behind my shoulder as I escaped towards Celestia’s office.

There may have been a couple of loud noises in my wake but I was sure they’d get along just fine. With the ice broken between them, Sunset should have no trouble making connections with Twilight’s group, if only through shared frustration with me and a mutual love for magic.

I quickly put them out of my mind however. Stage 2 was done. It took more time and work than I’d expected, but I’d finally managed to get my weapon.

Now it all came down to execution.

The principal’s office was spartan.

A big desk in front of a large window, with a couple scrolled up papers and an inkpot on top. The only signs of any personal touches were the general plushness of the seat behind the desk and a hanging bird cage which was empty.

Of course, the room could’ve been as decorated as Dumbledore’s infamous office and it still would have been impossible to ignore the pony sitting behind the desk.

Princess Celestia stood taller than any other pony I’d met so far, even while sitting down. To claim that she dwarfed my foal body would be an understatement. Standing on my hooves, my head barely came up to her shiny chest piece. If she were to stand up, I probably wouldn’t have been able to reach past her legs.

This is going to be difficult…

Celestia hardly paid attention to me coming in, she seemed completely absorbed by the scroll she was reading. I had no doubt she heard me coming in, but I decided to start our interaction by ignoring the chair in front of the desk and bowing as well as a horse could. Hind legs extended, one front leg forward, the other across my chest. This left my hoof conspicuously close to my saddlebag.

That got a reaction. “Oh please, Hope, there’s no-”

Time slowed down.

The critical element to any assassination was the element of surprise. A direct confrontation between me and the Princess would only end one way, to compare our respective strengths was ridiculous. Tomato to nuclear warhead.

The only chance I had was to take her completely off-guard. Celestia should have numerous ponies bow down to her every single day, what’s another nervous foal meeting her for the first time?

My saddlebag was already open and it took only the slightest of movements from my bowing position to grasp my weapon. The next moment I had already jumped on top of Celestia’s desk, scattering papers everywhere.

“DIE CELESTIA!!!”

I thrust my weapon forward, tip first. The next second would decide everything.

The average pony would have been hit with ease. An attack made with lethal intent is something they would hardly even consider a possibility, as they are almost entirely pacifistic. It’s even possible they would have considered it a mistake, or a joke.

The royal guards I’d occasionally seen in town would likely fare better. A trained unicorn might be able to get their spears in the way of my attack using magic, although they would still be hit by it. I could see the pegasi being able to react fast enough to flap their wings and push me away. If his use of barriers during the changeling invasion was any indication, Shining Armor may have been capable of producing a shield between me and him before my attack hit.

The main characters of the show would do even better than the guards. Having seen their fair amount of combat, I was certain they’d be able to react in time to avoid any damage.

Twilight might be able to teleport out of the way, but more likely she would try to immobilize me with her magic, or if she was truly caught off guard simply blast me with a magic beam in a panicked burst. Rainbow Dash was more than fast enough to simply dodge out of the way and counter-attack. Applejack was so strong that she could stop the momentum of my whole body by grabbing my hoof, then hit me through a wall if she wanted to.

Princess Celestia was an alicorn that had been alive for at least one thousand years. I didn’t know anything about alicorns as the show was particularly stingy about them and the local library hadn’t been any help either. The most I got was a small description about how Celestia had ‘attributes’ from all three species and had enough magical power to lift both the sun and the moon into the sky every day. Odds were, she could probably do all of the above and more.

The odds of success were infinitesimal. I was putting my life on the line, but I had to know.

As my attack approached Celestia’s neck, I internally braced for pain… But nothing happened.

My attack had connected. Celestia hadn’t moved at all.

For a moment, nothing but the sound of papers hitting the floor could be heard.

“Heh. Was I too slow? When did you see through me?”

I dropped my weapon, which was still pressed against Celestia’s neck. Gravity took effect, making it land against Celestia’s hooves and then the floor with a squeak.

A bright yellow rubber duck with an orange beak sat on the floor of Celestia’s office.

“Well, to be completely honest with you Hope, most of my little ponies simply forget to bow at your age. They are simply too excited to meet me to think about it!” As I looked up at her face, I could see a warm smile. “You certainly know how to make a unique introduction though! In all my years, I have to admit you are the first pony to do something this brazen in our first meeting. Would you please step off my desk? I did have some important work there, you know.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” I awkwardly jumped off her desk and sat in the chair in front of it. I then got a first seat show of Celestia’s magic as she levitated everything back on top of her desk. Fallen scrolls re-rolled themselves, a fallen inkpot righted itself and even the spilled ink flowed back inside it.

“As amusing as that was however, I have to ask, what motivated you to do that Hope?” Her smile didn’t completely fade, but it lost some of its warmth. Those eyes of hers, two magenta pools of endless time, were serious. “Your actions may have resulted in you being injured if I had less restraint.”

Time to come clean I guess…

“Princess Celestia. You are the ruler of our nation and simultaneously the only pony responsible for lifting both the Sun and the Moon into the sky every day. That makes you an obvious target for anypony looking to destabilize Equestria, as long as they are willing to deal with an endless day or night.” I met her eyes, expression solemn. This was a security concern that came to mind the very first time I had watched the show. If there was only a single pony who lifted the sun and moon for a thousand years, what would happen if that pony wasn’t there?

“A pony as young as you are shouldn’t be worrying about such things, Hope” Her smile was completely gone now.

“I disagree. Age can be faked. My teachers have probably told you all about my supposed magic, yet you didn’t have a single guard here on our first meeting? What if I was a changeling? It would certainly be easier for them to fake magic than it is for an earth pony to do it.”

“A changeling… Why, Hope, have you been reading texts that you shouldn’t?” I resisted the urge to lower my gaze. There was a moment of silence, and then she continued, “I suppose I won’t fault a young colt for having an interest in history… But changelings have not been seen in 1000 years! Besides, I suspect that even changeling magic is incapable of replicating the incredible moment a young pony obtains his Cutie Mark.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t have a…”

I took a cursory glance at my flanks.

Oh God no

Contrasting brightly with my light blue coloring, a yellow duck with an orange beak surrounded by sparkles could be seen. I had obtained my Cutie Mark, but at what cost?

“Please tell me my special talent is not being a rubber duck in somepony’s bath” I begged the ruler of Equestria, praying to every god I didn’t believe in she’d give me a negative answer.

“Well, I suspect you’d be quite good at that, but no.” A wave of relief passed through my entire body and I almost slumped into the chair I was sitting on. “Instead, I think your talent lies in your unique and very special form of magic. You were trying to trick me, correct?” And the tension was back immediately! I never seemed to catch a break with this pony.

“In a way... I needed to know that the pony with so many important duties on her shoulders would be able to defend herself, so I pulled out all the stops in trying to convince you.”

Maybe that’s why it only revealed itself now. I knew that the only way to make it convincing was if I convinced myself I was going to do it and I tried so hard to believe a lie that it manifested itself into this pony body of mine… But what does that mean? Am I so good at lying to people that it’s my special talent? Or is it just supposed to represent doing magic tricks?”

“Duties… Yes, somepony such as me has many duties to fulfill…” Then suddenly Celestia’s eyes widened and she seemed to light up. Her smile returned, and I almost felt as if I’d seen a beautiful sunrise. “But you spoke of one of my duties in particular, did you not? The Sun and the Moon are what have you concerned, enough to attempt something as reckless as what you did today. Lost Hope, your true worry lies in your friends, does it not?”

That’s the first time she’s called me by my full name.

“Well, I’m concerned for the rest of the kingdom too but I won’t deny that.”

“Then it is decided.” That smile still hadn’t left her face as she inclined her head in question.

“Lost Hope, would you like to become my own very special student?”

what

It probably took me at least a minute to fully reboot to try to respond to her question. I went with the immediate concern.

“Don’t you already have one of those? Sunset S-something, she was part of the introduction right?” Even in my disoriented brain state, I managed to not fully give myself away, although it was a close call.

“Sunset Shimmer, yes. She is one of my special students, along with your friend Twilight Sparkle. She has told me much about you which is part of what I wanted to talk to you about today before you so thoroughly distracted me!” She lightly giggled at that, looking very entertained, but I wasn’t paying attention.

I was too busy realizing the weight of my colossal failure.

Celestia can have two special students. This whole time I thought Sunset being her student was because I’d changed the timeline already, that I’d somehow prevented Twilight from demonstrating her magic for Celestia when we met before her Cutie Mark came around… But Celestia must’ve offered Twilight anyways and she simply never told me in fear I’d get jealous. So because I thought the story was already changed, I encouraged Twilight to make friends and effectively made her not a loner who only studies and has to learn the Magic of Friendship… Effectively changing the story.

Who’s going to stop Nightmare Moon?

“Well Hope? Are you going to accept my offer? I hope you don’t feel obligated to agree because it’s me asking, I promise that your stay at this school or the orphanage are not in question here. I would simply have you join alongside Twilight in some of her lessons and occasionally have you work on individual projects.”

Why, when you put it like that, it sounds easy!

If I’d learned anything at all from this first meeting, it was to never meet Celestia on the other side of a poker table. She had managed to pinpoint my motivations while I hadn’t even begun to understand her own, even with outside knowledge. My only choice was to go fishing.

“But why me? I don’t have anything to offer you. I’m pretty sure if you so much as say the word any pony will fall over themselves trying to satisfy whatever you desire.”

“Which makes it all the more interesting that you don’t. I have made similar offers countless times in the past, but you’re the first to take this long to either accept or deny it. You don’t have to worry so much Hope, I promise I won’t be offended.”

“No, it’s not that it’s just-” I’m a creature from another dimension who potentially ruined your utopia. “-Why have you been calling me that? I’m pretty sure most principals don’t call students by their nicknames when they first meet?”

Celestia raised an eyebrow, acknowledging the fact I switched topics, but let me off the hook and sighed, “Sometimes I wish ruling didn’t make me give off such an aloof image to my little ponies…I never wished to be unapproachable. Even in this minor role as a principal it seems I am followed by my crown. The truth is Hope that I’ve called you by that name because it’s what Twilight told me you prefer your friends call you as.”

A crack in the mask. Her eyes reveal a small hint of sadness with a wistful smile. “In time, I’d hoped that we too would become friends, beyond our role as teacher and student.”

...You’re making it really hard to say no, you know?

Ultimately, there was only one choice.

“Princess… No, Celestia.” I gave her my best smile, knowing this would be a new beginning.

“I accept your offer.”

This is the best chance I’ll get to make up for my mistake. All I have to do is convince Celestia that Twilight is the correct pony to send to Ponyville when the time for Luna’s return comes, then make sure she befriends the other Bearers.

All of that happened in the original timeline without any of my intervention. How hard could it be with me pushing things along?

It had been an exceedingly long day for the Princess of Equestria.

From courtroom drama to legislation all the way to attempted assassination, it had been an eventful and tiring day, but an important one.

After almost 1000 years of doing the same thing, one might expect that lifting the moon would’ve grown to become a simple task, part of the routine… And yet every single time it seemed a little bit heavier. In fact, her little ponies might not notice but occasionally she’d extend the daytime an hour or two, both because it gave her an opportunity to clear some of her overloaded schedule but also because the very idea of raising the moon again was exhausting.

As her sister’s celestial object finally rose to the star covered skies and she let it go from her magical grip, gasping and almost falling to her knees, she wondered if the reason for it’s apparent increase in weight was her sister’s slowly growing influence or whether her magic was being affected by the growing worry of the seal breaking.

Regardless, her most physically exhausting duty done, Celestia turned around from her skyview platform into her bedroom. Thankfully, she had managed to establish several centuries before the sanctity of the raising of the sun and the moon, so none of her little ponies were aware of her growing struggle. Hopefully it would only be a couple of years until she could share the burden.

In order for that to happen though…

Celestia walked over to her favorite cushion and sat down. As tired as she was, she would push on using sheer willpower for this. It was too close to her heart not to.

With a small moment of concentration and the feeling of drawing water from an almost empty well, four different scrolls appeared. Within each one of these scrolls lay potential unrealized, and the tiniest spark of hope.

At the top of each page, they read:

Subject 1: Twilight Sparkle

Subject 2: Moon Dancer

Subject 3: Sunset Shimmer

Subject 4: Lost Hope

She hated it. The dispassionate naming, the cold analysis of personality traits, talents, friendships, backgrounds…

It was the only way she could think of though. Her sister would arrive somewhere within a decade or two and she had to be ready for every eventuality. There was a small possibility, if she was lucky, that 1000 years of imprisonment had removed the taint of Nightmare Moon from her sweet Luna… But any faith in luck or destiny had been lost a thousand years before.

She knew she could not use the Elements of Harmony against Nightmare Moon again. When she and Luna had used them against Discord they had each represented half of them, but when she later attempted to channel their cleansing power against Luna they had failed. The Elements turned into stone after being used against another wielder and instead of ridding her sister of the corruption there was only enough power for a stopgap solution. Now that stopgap had almost run its course and she had to figure out what to do.

Perhaps if her niece Cadence were older and more experienced she could have wielded the Elements alongside her… But she didn’t think it would work. The Elements had already rejected her once after her misuse of them. To risk them doing so again, this time possibly without vanishing Nightmare Moon would be foolish. She had decided that the best course of action was for her to be as far away from the Elements as possible whenever they were in use.

The only solution then was to have six of her little ponies each wield an Element. Honesty, Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Loyalty and Magic. In order to find each wielder, she had established a tradition of registering name, Cutie Mark and an approximation of the special talent along with personality whenever somepony finally obtained their Cutie Mark. Young colts and fillies would happily tell their parents their unique talent and shortly after a congratulatory party, said parents would go over to their local registry and add it to the child’s record. Should anything particularly relevant to the Elements stand out, numerous past students had enchanted the registry books so that the name and talent would be added to one of her scrolls, which she checked every three months. She despised the breach of her little ponies’ privacy but she was growing desperate, in fact she still worried it wouldn’t be enough.

In the many years while the Elements recharged from their improper usage, a number of names had been added to the scroll, but she knew that the Elements would not choose new bearers until they were almost fully charged. This meant that her system would probably be able to detect the new bearers, but that other ponies could also have talents that were similar enough to get added to her list. Magic in particular became an issue, as her scrolls became full of talented unicorns who could push their unique power in unexplored ways.

Ultimately she had decided to remove Magic from the equation by scouting them out herself. It had taken the work of the last century, but her school had been established within Canterlot, the heart of her kingdom, and she had tried her best to send out as many scholarships and offers to every corner of Equestria to give herself the best chance of the Element of Magic being one of her students.

There had been many talented students since then, all of which she had found pleasure teaching. But it was these four that stood out among the crop of students from this generation, the ones she would have fight her battles for her, as much as she might wish otherwise.

Sunset, as the oldest, had been the first. Bright, ambitious and talented it had been inevitable that she would catch Celestia’s attention. But there was a reason that she was only added to this specific group third. The Element of Magic would undoubtedly be a powerful magic user… but that was not enough qualification alone. The only way for the Elements to properly function was for there to be true friendship between the wielders, as otherwise their true power would be locked away.

This was the one area Sunset failed at. Despite Celestia’s many attempts to instill the value of the magic of friendship onto her oldest student, she could tell that her words were being ignored as Sunset only seemed concerned with gaining more power or influence over others. She never seemed to learn to form friendships, rather she seemed to prefer to have others follow her lead out of admiration for her strength.

But something had changed.

During their latest lessons on friendship, Celestia had noticed that her student was paying much more attention than usual. She actively asked questions about making new friendships and seemed to take her teachings as seriously as her magical studies rather than as a chore forced on her that could only barely be tolerated, so Celestia had decided to dig a little deeper into her and added her to this select group of candidates… Even though something still felt off. The change had been too sudden, and she had a feeling that somehow Sunset was being oddly self-serving about it. Hopefully the additional scrutiny would reveal the truth.

Twilight Sparkle and Moon Dancer had come next. Both were probably as talented as Sunset Shimmer if not more and yet because of their disposition they would never show it. They would never attempt to overshadow somepony else, they were too shy and embarrassed by attention to do so. It was because of those traits that Celestia had decided against publicly revealing Twilight as her personal student, as she had done for Sunset. But here was something special about Twilight that she had only glimpsed when she unlocked her Cutie Mark, something no other unicorn she had ever met could do.

The ability to do the impossible.

The magical egg test had been done many times in the past. A panel of judges set up in a back row for safety, each bearing frightful expressions. Impatient and cross, they were to encourage the prospective students of her academy to shake a dragon egg on top of the cart, which had a small picture at the bottom of the egg hatching. Of course, no student had ever hatched the egg as otherwise there would be a dozen unicorns walking around with pet dragons!

The test was meant to encourage the students creativity under pressure. A dragon egg was an extremely dense object, so being able to move it at all required extreme magical might. Other students were passed if they used creative methods to move the egg, such as growing a plant underneath it, changing the size of the carts wheels so it fell over, among other solutions.

Twilight Sparkle had done something extraordinary. She had not only managed to hatch the egg through sheer magical might and force of will, but also cause the dragon inside to grow to full maturity in an instant, turn her own parents into plants and levitate the instructors despite their attempts to break free. It had only been sheer luck that Celestia had been nearby in order to distract Twilight and get her magic back under control.

Such a display of magic could not be ignored so she had immediately offered Twilight her place as her second personal student. Moon Dancer had not been given the same opportunity yet, but she made sure to encourage Twilight to tell her friend about her lessons privately to see if she was interested. So far, Moon Dancer had been more receptive towards theoretical practical knowledge rather than it’s practical uses, which is why she was only Celestia’s second candidate. The ability to do something that should have been impossible put Twilight as the first.

But that very day she had found a fourth. Somepony who his teachers claimed was able to do the impossible as well, who had managed to get into a school that should have disqualified him by default. Somepony who that very day had done something as extreme as pretending to kill her just to gauge her reaction. He was Twilight’s friend before she met Celestia and had an attitude that didn’t fit his background at all.

Lost Hope was a mystery.

The princess didn’t claim to have a perfect kingdom. No matter what laws she approved or the general peaceful disposition of most ponies, injustices happened every day. She had met many ponies in circumstances similar to Hope’s, usually asking for her help, and they had very different concerns. Food, health, a desire for parental love and a general distrust in adult figures were just a few examples, yet this colt seemed to be worried about things far beyond himself.

Changelings, her kingdom and ultimately the effect both of those would have on his friends. Magical theory that shouldn’t concern him. Stories that almost no pony alive still believed in. His special talent required him to know things other ponies didn’t in order to succeed. Most important of all though, even having met him only once she could tell, he was dangerous.

No pony born within the last one thousand years had seen war. Her control over the sun and the moon along with ponykind’s general pacifistic views had kept any conflict from her lands. It would take a truly desperate situation for any pony to resort to violence, yet it had been his first choice. He didn’t bother asking her what security measures she had in place, didn’t stop to consider whether or not he would offend her with his act.

He was so distrusting of her that he would risk everything in order to gain a small glimpse of her true self. There was no doubt that Lost Hope thought in a way alien to most ponies.

But perhaps that would be the solution. Celestia and everypony around her had failed to stop her sister when she first became that monster. No matter their attempts to reason with her or force her into submission, Nightmare Moon had been too powerful and full of hate to be stopped by any means beyond the most desperate. Maybe, if someone more unorthodox had been there, someone who didn’t blindly follow her lead…

She would have to be careful. An extended background check into this mysterious earth pony was a priority. She knew the orphanage he went to as she was one of the founders, but she didn’t know the ponies that currently worked there. She hoped his inclinations towards violence hadn’t been founded there, although she struggled to think of where else they could’ve come from. His parentage would also have to be investigated, a name such as Lost Hope didn’t come from nowhere…

If his proclivity towards violence could be curved and his unorthodox approach to magic developed further… If his main concern was to stay with his friends and not himself…

It was the type of dramatic irony that her teacher would have loved. Whoever heard of the Element of Magic who can’t use magic?

It was probably insane. But Celestia’s world had shattered a millenia ago, and she was finally getting a chance to make it right. Even if she was wrong, she couldn’t afford not to teach him because…

For her sister, her kingdom and the Balance of Harmony, she would do anything.

Author's Note

A few short weeks my ass, more like months!

But finally it's here, and it's done. This chapter concludes what one might call the prologue of Grounder. Afterwards I would surely have done a timeskip following the further adventures of Hope and his friends, and some repercussions of his actions (hint Summer's mirror hint).

Hopefully I tied up things in enough of a bow for anybody to feel satisfied if this is the end, but not so much that there's nothing left to explore going forward if for some reason someone wishes to pick this story up.

To me, the most important idea going into the story was creating an isekai'd protag with limited knowledge. Hope essentially gets transported to the world of MLP with only the knowledge from the first two seasons and nothing else, so everything new that was clarified in backstories catches him completely off guard. He doesn't know about Twilicorn, doesn't know the Elements get replaced, doesn't know practically anything beyond A Canterlot Wedding and he especially doesn't know about Sunset Shimmer. This has consequences. I also wanted to explore an earth pony protagonist as they were exceedingly rare (or maybe I didn't search far enough, s/o to Forgiveness Pending though, amazing fic.)

If this chapter seems rougher than the others, it's because this is unbeta'd. In the end, I'll die like a man!

Hopefully anyone who read this story in the past and was disappointed by it's inconclusiveness will be glad to have a sort-of ending to Grounder. Personally? I'm just happy my first fic didn't die in a ditch, even if it took forever. Hopefully now I won't have an itch in my brain telling me to finish what I started!

Thanks for all the likes! See you all on the flipside. :twilightsmile:

From now, Grounder is officially up for adoption. (Although a sequel following it is a possibility too, just not from me as I'm extremely inconsistent in terms of my schedule, obviously. No need to message me either, if you feel inspired just go for it!)

(Also sorry if anyone feels trolled because they thought I'd kill Celestia for two years :applecry:)

Chapter One: Darkness (Re-Write!)

Darkness. The absence of light.

But what in the world does that even mean?

Light is ‘something that makes things visible or affords illumination’.

But illumination just means that it has light, and everything we interact with is visible!

Is space ‘invisible’ and thus lightless? But light travels through space!

...These were my thoughts when, on a bored whim, I had decided to look up the definitions of Darkness and Light on Google.

It was a typical night for me. I was googling whatever came to mind in order to avoid thinking about all the job applications that I had done the night before, and how inevitable my failure was. Sure, I was not an overweighttwenty something with little social life, a computer addiction and little to no talents. But surely, that didn’t mean I couldn’t get a job to save my life!

As expected, at exactly twenty-four hours since I had send my previous job interviews, I got about five emails in quick succession. Anyone who’s hunted for a job before knows what that means.

God damn denial bots and their key-word searches.

Looking at my impressive display of failures just made me feel depressed, so I quickly changed the tab back to YouTube in order to re-hear ‘This Day Aria’, the best song My Little Pony had produced throughout it’s two-season runtime.

I had been watching the show ever since the band-wagon started rolling around the mid 2010s and hadn’t hopped off since. I mean come on, magic horses! What’s cooler?

As fate would have it, I wouldn’t get to relisten to my favorite MLP song because of another email arriving at that exact moment.

A brief surge of concentrated Hope, hastily squashed down by well-trained pessimism.

It was… not what I hoped. Instead of a request to meet for a job interview, it was an email with no subject line, sent by what had to be a joke of a username.

“D1SC0RD@ChaosInc.com” I murmured softly to myself, trying to make heads-or-tails of the strange message.

Opening it yielded no results. No text, just a link to the official MLP website.

My first thought was advertising. Perhaps Hasbro noticed my email linked to my fimfiction account? That would imply that they know about the fan website and were using it for advertising though…

An alarm bell rang through the back of my mind.

You know… if I was in one of those HiE fanfics… this would be the exact moment where everything went wrong.

This would be that instant, that magical moment when the protagonist isn't paying attention to what they are doing and clicks a suspicious link, or falls down a hole, or gets murdered. This would be the moment they'd be sent to Equestria.

I calmed myself. That was impossible. Equestria didn’t exist, humans never went there and it was all wish-fulfillment in the end, right?

I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a magical or flying creature?

Still, I had nothing to do. And as I was taught from much movie watching and book reading, being genre-savvy is the best way to success. You never know when a new opportunity is flying by, waiting for you to reach for the stars and grasp it… not that I’d ever seen proof of that old verse.

Thinking about it now, maybe the pessimism didn’t help my job applications much...

So I decided to go the extra mile, marathoning the entire show. Sure, it was a little crazy but honestly I had been looking for an excuse to do it for a long time and it seemed like the perfect opportunity. If it was fake, I got to rewatch my favorite show. If it was somehow real…

Well, win/win one way or another, no?

Despite my attempts at remaining properly pessimistic, I seemed to be unable to stop thinking about the possibility of this being the start of something different. An adventure, finally the chance to realize my dreams!

I only managed to stop myself after I had already thought about all the magic I could learn as Luna’s personal student. Or perhaps as Twilight’s library assistant? The possibilities were endless!

Finally managing to lower myself back to reality, I added that being a pegasus wouldn’t be that bad as an afterthought. It’s not that I hated pegasi (pegasuses?) or anything, but from what I’d seen all they cared about was overall speed. And unless I was some godlike Marty Stu (which would be boring as hell), I was never going to beat Rainbow Dash in a straight race.

Once I was done, I turned back to my mail and contemplated the innocent looking link once more. I tried to remember other HiE possibilities. Would I be soulbound to another pony? Ghost-like? Remain a simple human and be experimented on? Or, god forbid, would I become an Alicorn?

I suppose now would be a good time to mention that it was five in the morning. I was practically delusional by that point and I was falling asleep on my own chair. Deciding to finally bite the bullet and preparing for fierce disappointment, I clicked the link.

Suddenly… nothing.

No, really. I clicked the link and not only did my computer disappear, but I was stuck in a very small, very dark confinement.

It wasn’t pitch black though. I couldn’t really move my head much, but I could see the reddish hue of a bright light obscured by whatever was trapping me. If I had to compare it to anything, I’d say it was like closing your eyes while looking directly at the sun. My eyelids block the harmful glare, but I can still see the light shining through.

None of that explained how I even fit in such a small confinement, much less how I got there.

I was floating in liquid. I could tell as much the first time I opened my eyes, and it hurt. I slowly got used to it though. It wasn’t harmful liquid, very reminiscent to water honestly, yet I felt no urge to breathe. After breathing your entire life, it’s a really weird sensation when you suddenly feel no need to.

I decided to try and see if there was a way out of this place. As comfortable as floating in breathable liquid was, I had my doubts as to how much time had passed since I clicked that link…

Wait

The link!

BY DE LANCIE’S VOICE!

I’M IN EQUESTRIA!

After… that… I decided to examine my body and see exactly what I’d turned into. I mean, human was clearly out, considering how small my confinement was. Still, Equestria was full of possibilities! Dragon, griffin, timberwolf, mantincore…

Nope. According to my hooves, just a pony.

Not to say I was disappointed, I had wanted to be a pony. I mean, being a griffin would’ve been cool, but come on! magic!

It was only after I’d checked my newly acquired equine body that I noticed noise coming from outside. Apparently my mind simply didn’t register what my ears were hearing since I hadn’t realized they were on top of my head.

“Doctor… I don’t suppose… when our daughter… born?” The noise was garbled, probably because I was listening to it while underwater. I thought it might have been masculine though.

Well… the magical scan showed… probably a few days… unicorn filly…” This was a different male voice, probably the doctor. Were as the first voice was impatient, this one was nervous. He also seemed to be pausing periodically, perhaps checking his notes?

Suddenly, a voice sounded out, much louder than the rest of them. It was feminine and quite plummy, almost haughty.

“Oh please doctor, I’m sure it’ll be fine. After all, we’ve already bought all of her new toys and decorations! I hope that she’ll end up at least a little pink, so that it all matches!”

Panic.

I had read way too many FiMFiction stories to know where this was heading. I would have to struggle with my sex change, be constantly mocked for my stallion-like attitude and be forced to wear mare’s clothing…

My panicked check of my private bits revealed that it was not to be. Everything was where it was supposed to be if a bit… reduced by my small size.

I considered what the doctor had said. Apparently, a magical scan had been done on this body’s embryo, and determined it was going to be a mare… Had my arrival in this pony’s mind had somehow knocked things off course? For that matter, where was the unborn filly’s mind? My body? That would’ve at least made for a funny image, if it wasn’t so depressing.

I decided that there was nothing I could do about it, one way or another. It was better to focus on what I was going to do now that I’d arrived to Equestria… after a fashion.

Like lighting, the realization the doctor had also mentioned me being a unicorn filly came to mind. I had ignored it during my panic, but now it occurred to me that if the scan had been wrong about me being a filly, I might not be…

It was difficult bringing a hoof up to my forehead in the confined state, but I managed it eventually.

Nothing.

My small foal brain didn’t know how to deal with mental shock and thus decided the best course of action was to pass out.

Darkness…

Author's Note

Alright, I decided that perhaps my first attempt at a FiMfiction chapter needed a little bit of a checkup, since to be honest with you it was pretty clear that I wasn't very experienced at writing when I made it.

Nevertheless, should any of you be fans of the original version of chapter one, I will be posting a 'new' story called Grounder: Deleted Scenes, in which I'll put in deleted chapters, bloopers writing this story and any other details I feel don't fit the flow of the main work.

Any comments, suggestions and reviews are appreciated! :twilightsmile:

Chapter Five: Illusion

There’s a few key details that separate magicians from wizards.

For one, wizards do actual magic while magicians give the illusion of doing so.

For two, wizards tend to be willing to explain how their magic works while a magician would never reveal their best trick.

Unicorns are wizards. They can have pointy hats, can somehow grow beards and know all sorts of things about magical theory that they are willing to explain to anyone curious enough to ask. This being Equestria, that meant something as simple as ‘What are you reading?’ could lead to an incredibly lengthy explanation provided by studious purple fillies.

However, there is one unicorn who isn’t a wizard, at least when it comes to her cutie mark: Trixie Lulamoon.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Trixie is a unicorn, she can still perform magic like any other. But unlike other unicorns, her cutie mark is for magician tricks, not wizarding powers. This means she can do fireworks, displays of lighting and control ropes to perform tricks.

Humans are magicians. Of course, we don’t have actual magic, but that doesn’t stop us from pulling off all sorts of impossible things. From dramatic escapes while chained to simple hand tricks that are more difficult than you really think, the amount of things that we could pull off without actual magic was always pretty impressive to me.

Back when I was a human, I was a magician aficionado. I did all sorts of things from card pulls to fake shuffles and everything inbetween. The obvious reason that I didn’t ever go for a magician career is that I was no Houdini. I wasn’t going to pull a fast one over anyone who’d seen my tricks after the first time and I certainly wasn’t going to make a career out of it.

But in Equestria...Magic was real. Any strange phenomena was simply explained as ‘magic’, and that was that. No one would wonder if one could accomplish the same effect with no magic at all…

That was my realization in the middle of another boring History class about Discord’s ultimate defeat. Suddenly wide awake, I immediately lifted my hooves into the air and screamed,

“EUREKA!”

I was saved from detention by my rapid explanation of the ancient mathematician Archemanedes, who discovered that the volume of water that rose when he inserted his hoof into his bathtub was the same as the volume of his own hoof, and who upon discovering this screamed out the famous phrase.

Luckily for me, this somehow was historically accurate in Equestria, so it ended up with the teacher only reprimanding me for going completely off-topic before getting back on subject.

It might be a bit difficult to understand how I could do magicians tricks without any hands, but it has to do with the way hooves work.

That was one of my first questions when I arrived at Equestria, because from the very beginning, I noticed that other ponies had no difficulties using hooves to open doors, hold teapots and even play chess, which from the point of view of someone who has touched a hoof on Earth is completely ridiculous.

In one particularly insane occasion, I had seen a pegasus ‘grab’ an earth pony's hoof and pull them up into the air as if they were Wall-E and Eve blasting off into space!

If I had to compare the way hooves work to anything on Earth, I’d say the closest thing is a marshmallow. You might think that is incredibly ironic considering some common fan nicknames for Rarity, and you’d be entirely correct. There’s two ‘states’ for a hoof. It’s normal, decently solid form in which you can walk on it, buck things and break doors...And then there’s the soft, marshmallow-like form in which the hoof seems to gain the ability to hold objects by touching them lightly. It’s almost like how a hand can grab things with it’s opposite thumb, except there is no opposite thumb which just makes the whole experience bizarre.

Nevertheless, the only important thing to note is that I can hold cards using my hooves, I can hold different attention-attracting objects with my hooves and I can move my hooves very, very fast if given enough concentration. Back when I was a human, this was one of my few actual abilities; like any semi-successful magician, I could move my hand faster than the eye can process images, which is what allows for the best tricks and illusions.

But all of this talk about illusion leads to a single, overarching question: why?

Why was I so enthusiastic when I figured out I could do magic tricks in Equestria?

Why did I feel I had to go in this long ramble about the difference between a wizard and a magician?

Simple: Knowledge.

Unicorns, despite ponykinds best intentions, have a lot more information on spells, the rules and even the fundamental principles in which magic is build on than the average pegasus or earth pony does. What this meant was that Nightmare Moon understood how magic worked. Queen Chrysalis had that same knowledge too. Even Discord probably knew the limits of unicorn and alicorn magic, perhaps even his own. All of my future enemies, the threats to this world had a much deeper understanding of magic than I did.

The only way for me to even have a shot at facing any of those, Elements or no, was to get on the same level as them and find a weakness that they had overlooked, something that would make magic not the insurmountable wall that separated those born lucky from those who were not, but rather a challenge to be overcome by the few willing to undertake it.

And sadly, there was only one place in Canterlot where one could learn a deeper level of magic...

It had been quite a boring year, if I was going to be honest. Oh sure, I learned a little more at history and of course Magical Theory was about as fun as Hogwarts Charms class, but at the same time I knew that the teachers were already preparing the unicorns for their own classes in later years. The most obvious example was Twilight Sparkle, who had become a sort of not-friend study partner of mine when it came to Magical Theory. Apparently, I was the only pony she knew who came even close to keeping up with her, and that was only because of my own personal interest mind you!

So about a week until the end of the school year, I noticed that said filly seemed a tad more excited than usual, even by her standards. I decided to visit her at the library despite the potential risk of the librarian hearing us because it seemed to be the place she was most comfortable inside the school. Since this is Equestria, the smallest question as to what was up led to her telling me the whole story.

“Well… you see, Hope…” she hesitated, then squealed out. “My parents told me that based on my recent grades on Magical Theory, they enrolled me into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns!” she told me in an excited whisper, seemingly not wanting to invoke the wrath of the bookkeeper, which I more than understood.

“Really? That’s not too surprising if you ask me, you’re the best in our class! I’m sure you’ll fit right in.” I said, attempting to not look like it I knew it was a foregone conclusion while still being encouraging.

She blushed lightly at the praise then said, “I can’t say I won’t miss this place though. The teachers are nice and I’ve learned a lot here, I almost wish I could stay here longer just to read all the books!” I did notice how she avoided mention of having made friends at school, which made sense considering this moment in the timeline.

“Well, at least you won’t miss me, right?” I said, winking at her in a teasing manner.

She narrowed her eyes at my words, then said “What do you mean?” in a tone that seemed more curious than irritated at my brashness.

“This is a little secret of mine at the moment, so I would appreciate it if you didn’t spread it around…” I warned.

She nodded, curiosity plastered on her face.

“I’m going to Celestia’s School.” I told her with quiet confidence in that tone of voice used by every movie actor ever trying to get their one-liner to be the next “Clever girl”.

For a moment her eyes widened, then she seemed to break through her shock and go straight into worry.

“What do you mean you’re going to Celestia’s School?!” she almost shouted, then quickly became silent from embarrassment.

“You heard me. I’m going to the school for truly gifted unicorns to learn more about magic.”

“But it’s a school only for unicorns, they’ll never let you in! It’s against the rules!” She whispered desperately trying to persuade me not to go through with my crazy plan.

“Hey Twilight, don’t worry about it, m’kay? Worse case scenario, I don’t make it in and come back right back here, right?” I tried to reassure her, knowing how much she valued the rules established by teachers and other authority figures.

“But, I still don’t understand. How could you possibly get in Hope? I know that you could do the written exam, considering how well you do in our Magical Theory class, but there’s a practical examination too! How are you going to pass a magic test when you don’t have any magic?” she seemed to be getting to the crux of the problem, the main reason why she thought my plan wouldn’t work.

For a moment, I considered telling her what my plan was...But then I realized that there was no way that she’d believe I could pull it off...Or even worse, perhaps she’d think I was “cheating” because I wasn’t actually going to do any magic…

“I’m sorry Twilight, but you’ll just have to trust me on this one. I can assure you this, if everything goes to plan, we’ll see eachother at your new school.” I started to walk away, giving her a wave before making my escape, trying not to feel the librarian’s cold gaze on my back as I ran out of her establishment.

I hoped that would be the last time I ever saw or heard from that mare...

So you might think that it was smooth sailing from there. Just a quick little sign-up to fill, a few written exams and I’m done and good for school, right?

God no!

The bureaucrats for the school were, excuse my french, complete assholes!

Apparently, I couldn’t sign up for CSGU without a certificate to prove my ‘guardians’ were both able to pay the school fees and allow me to attend the school. Alongside that, I needed identification documents, proof of my magical capability OR potential, and finally, it was also necessary for some guardian of some kind to be present during the practical test.

All of that not only took way too long to set up, but also required me to make all sorts of trips around the city to get to the proper offices to get my papers, since being abandoned at birth does all sorts of fun things to your status as ‘citizen’. At least the papers were easy, since as soon as you mention the word ‘abandoned’ and ‘orphan’ together, all sorts of pity doors and windows suddenly swing wide open.

The guardian part… well, let’s just say I had a very educated, level-headed argument with a certain headmistress…

“Absolutely not! Are you insane? I understand that you are talented Hope, and I know that your grades are sufficient to meet the requirements, but you have to understand that Celestia’s School is for gifted UNICORNS!” she screamed in such a way that I was sure that half the orphanage heard her.

“I know that. I also know that it’s probably the best school in Equestria, a place where I can utilize my full potential without being held back by other ponies around me.” While I had been trying not to think about it, the fact was that I was being held back by the other colts and fillies. It wasn’t their fault really, I just had years more education than they did, so any group project that was challenging to them was not difficult for me. Same for any difficult class or concept, which made school hours go by agonizingly slow.

Who knew being a genius sucked? Wait, no, half the movies about geniuses talked about how they all wished to be normal. Huh.

Not that she would know that. Luckily, ‘child genius’ has been a good excuse to have children be story protagonists since Matilda did it.

“You shouldn’t be so isolated from your peers Hope. These are the early years of your life, it should be the time you learn about the magic of friendship and form powerful bonds that can last a lifetime…” she trailed off, apparently having seen something in my face that I hadn’t managed to hide.

She wasn’t entirely wrong. Sure, making friends was the easiest thing ever in Equestria, but that didn’t mean I spend a lot of time with them. I played hoofball every once in a while, since that sport is timeless once you learn how to kick the ball with hooves, but in general I kept to myself and mostly interacted with my purple study partner.

That wasn’t because the other ponies were bad colts and fillies of course...But rather the fact that they were mentally probably a decade younger than me. Simply put, we had very different interests. Twilight, being the prodigy she was, acted more grown-up than all of them combined, which helped me relate to her better.

“I know that. The problem is that I’m too smart.” She appeared taken aback, lifting her eyebrows at my unexpected answer. “Other foals, they like playing silly little games and the fillies will not stop messing with their manes and I’m just...not interested in any of that. I like reading books, and learning more about Equestria!”

I decided that this was the moment to play my trump card.

“Please Ms. Emerald… this is my calling.”

She sighed at that. Then, she nodded.

“I see that I cannot dissuade you. But I want you to make sure you understand what you’re getting into Hope. I studied at Celestia’s School. Unless you manage to truly impress the examiners, there is no possible way they’ll let an earth pony into the school.” she paused for a moment, judging my expression to see if this convinced me to give up...

I scowled at that, then nodded.

“And…” she seemed to hesitate, then continued, “you have to understand Hope; all of the students and staff are unicorns. In such a closed space with only other unicorns to judge them… certain political positions are more prone to appear… I don’t think that it would be the safest place for an earth pony to walk around in on their own.” Now she looked really worried, apparently torn between her desire to not show the ugly truth of the world to a child and warning me about the potential dangers ahead.

“Don’t worry about me, Headmistress Emerald. I can handle myself.” I tried to reassure her then continued. “Besides, a friend of mine is already going to be attending at the school, so I’ll have a friendly face alongside me!” I flashed her a quick smile.

A brief moment of silence, then a sigh.

“Alright Hope, you win. I’ll be your guardian for the practical test… which I still have no idea how you plan on passing. Surely, you thought about that before making all of these preparations?” she inquired, maybe curious or maybe hoping for me to realize the difficulty of the challenge ahead so that I’d give up early.

“Oh, come on Ms. Emerald. Surely you know me better by now?” I told her, a lopsided smile on my face. “I can’t tell you the end of the play before it begins! Where’s the fun in that?”

I couldn’t tell her the truth.

After all, if I told her right then and there that I had no idea, she probably wouldn’t have let me give it a shot!

Author's Note

As always, any reviews, comments or suggestions are appreciated! :rainbowdetermined2:

Chapter Nine: Balance (Part 1)

A common theme throughout Human history seems to be that conflict occurs due to an imbalance of some kind.

One group doesn’t have enough of one thing, be it money, food, territory or bragging rights and they strive to take it away from another group who does have whatever it is.

Pony history is quite different, however. Be it due to their beliefs in the power of Harmony or because of lessons learned through events such as Hearth's’ Warming Eve, it seems that ponies have learned to accept what they don’t have and work around this problem together in order to avoid conflict.

Many bronies, looking at Equestria through our television screens, have considered Equestria to be a Utopia, a place where everything is in perfect harmony.

Unfortunately, such a perfectly balanced scale is quite difficult to keep in place. All it takes is the smallest grain of sand in one direction to send everything spinning out of control.

Subject 2: Moon Dancer

Having unicorn friends was awesome.

… Scratch that, having friends in general was awesome!

It had been about a month since my first encounter with Ms. Bookends and Twilight’s timely save, and Twilight’s friends had made that time fly by faster than I expected.

Colga- I mean Minuette, yes totally not Colgate what with the whole blue and white mane, lighter blue body and blue eyes what could have possibly given you that idea - was a very excitable pony. I remembered back when we were introduced by Twilight, I had known her for all of five seconds before she pulled out a camera and instantly took a picture of the ‘new addition to the gang!’. Let’s just say that it wasn’t my best picture.

Twinkleshine, the white filly with pink curly mane, was the more collected of the two. She usually let her hyper blue friend do the talking, but occasionally she’d pipe in and give her opinion on whatever subject was at hand. While she didn’t have the enthusiasm of Minuette, I quite liked her more grounded personality.

Lemon Heart was essentially the Fluttershy of the group. While obviously not quite *that* bad since her name didn’t literally have shy in it, the bright yellow filly with the cerulean mane was soft-spoken. Despite that though, she had a friendly personality that made her approachable and she laughed just as much as her other two friends. If only she wasn’t so clumsy. Honestly, how do you get your head stuck in a beaker?!

And then there was Moon Dancer. Out of all of Twilight’s friends, she was the one who spend the most time with Twilight herself. The two seemed to be the kind of friends that would compete with each other to see who could give out the right answer to a question fastest, or score higher in a test, and yet they were also commonly bouncing interesting ideas off each other in order to polish them into workable projects.

Besides Twilight herself, she was clearly the most intellectual in our group, but she was also the most closed-off. Sometimes it honestly felt like if Twilight wasn’t there, Moon Dancer wouldn’t interact with any of Twilight’s other friends.

Including a new addition like myself, of course.

And yet, despite her clear attempts to avoid interaction with me, I knew that I had to get her to open up.

Why?

Because out of all the unicorns I’d interacted with besides Twilight, she had the most potential to be the Element of Magic.

In terms of magical power she and Twilight rivaled each other, with Twilight being perhaps a shade more skillful. She more than made up for it with her sheer knowledge though. Were as Twilight could perform extremely magically intensive spells, Moon Dancer had the advantage of knowing a more obscure spell that was less power-intensive but achieved the same purpose.

So did having more magical knowledge enable a unicorn to become the Element of Magic? Or was it based on pure magical power? Was Twilight even the most powerful unicorn in Equestria during the first season premiere?

The fact I couldn’t answer these questions meant that I couldn’t discard the possibility of my changes to the timeline making Moon Dancer the new Element of Magic.

Which meant I had to befriend her.

‘...This isn’t going to be easy is it…’

Subject 3: Sunset Shimmer

Sunset Shimmer wasn’t a happy pony.

Now, you wouldn’t know this just from looking at her. To the outside world, Sunset Shimmer took great care to appear perfect.

She got perfect scores, the ‘coolest’ ponies on campus always invited her to hang out and she could easily cast spells that other ponies would never be able to achieve on the spot. As far as the rest of CSGU knew, Sunset was the best possible choice for Celestia’s personal student.

I wasn’t so convinced though.

Call it an instinct from having watched too many high school movies, but even back when I first saw her during her speech, I felt something off about her… Although that might have been the panic too.

Pony faces were quite simple to read. The fact their eyes were so large made it so you could usually identify what a pony was feeling at a glance, unless they had a lot of practice hiding it.

Sunset Shimmer was not easy to read.

Her face was usually carefully blank when doing anything not magic related, seeming to hide whatever her true thoughts were behind a mask. When she was doing magic though…

When Sunset Shimmer did magic, her mask slipped. A cocky smile would surface, sometimes she would even close her eyes and whistle as if to appear nonchalant. Usually by the end of the ‘show’, she’d look at the spectators’ look of awe and smirk arrogantly before she ‘humbly’ accepted their praise.

Now, you may be wondering how I could possibly have access to all of this information. After all, not only was Sunset Shimmer two years my senior, but surely I couldn’t sneak into her classes in order to witness her casting magic!

That’s all true.

However, none of those restrictions could stop a creative thinker.

On that particular day, we had a Spell Progression 1 test that involved freezing water contained in the water bottles given to us the week before. We had been given the whole week to figure out any sort of spell that caused water to solidify, whether it be ice or not. By this point, the teacher had gotten used to me pulling some sort of trick in class, and made explicitly sure that before the start of the test, my water was not only liquid but at room temperature.

If that had happened the month before, I would have had to resign myself to failing the test and improving my grade later on the ‘make an object invisible’ test I knew was coming up.

Luckily for me though, having friends was awesome!

Minuette had warned me about the exam the day before, since her schedule had her taking it a day early. Because of that, I asked Lemon Heart to do me a favor.

When the teacher’s back was turned, Lemon Heart magically swapped our water bottles. As soon as Minuette had warned me, I had asked her to take my water bottle home and put it inside her magical freezer for exactly one hour and a half, at exactly -18 degrees celsius. Then I had given her very strict instructions when it came to carrying the water to the classroom. She was to carry it through magic only and make certain not to shake it.

In exchange for the seemingly ridiculous request, I taught her all the theory behind the water-to-mercury spell and had Twilight test her on actually casting it. Obviously, this was done so she’d get bonus marks.

When my turn came around and the teacher skeptically looked at my face, I made absolutely sure to maintain a calm demeanor as I stared into my recently-exchanged water bottle…

And whacked it with my hoof!

Instantly, as if by magic, the water underneath my hoof became ice, quickly followed by the rest of the liquid inside the bottle.

The teacher’s eyes widened noticeably for an instant, before he quickly closed them and brought a hoof to his head. He then sighed.

“Mr. Hope, I had hoped that you would’ve stopped trying to pull tricks in my class. Everypony here knows that isn’t a true spell-”

“Can you prove that it wasn’t, sir?” I quickly asked, knowing that if I didn’t I’d likely get my grade lowered.

“... No.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

He shook his head and walked past my desk. He didn’t even seem angry, just tired of my bullshit ‘ruining’ his class. I kinda pitied him, but at the same time he was trying to fail me so…

It was only after class that I noticed an opportunity.

Walking out of the classroom next to my own, surrounded on all sides by a group of older ponies was Princess Celestia’s orange personal student: Sunset Shimmer. She was ignoring everything around her to put her focus on the book held in front of her by her magic, which was a light blue, like her eyes.
… That is until I ‘accidentally’ bumped into her, of course.

It wasn’t difficult to fake. Just had to pretend I was walking on two hooves for a couple of steps, head stuck in my magical theory book. Page 76, to be exact.

‘OOF-’

We both went sprawling on the floor, books falling on their respective pages. Everypony trotting out of Sunset’s classroom suddenly stopped to watch as they realized the ‘grounder’ had knocked down Celestia’s personal student!

“Hey! What’s the big deal?” Sunset said from on top of me. Two years of growth really did make a difference when it comes to size for ponies. She was… Well, not light.

“Oh! I’m sorry! I… uh… didn’t see where I was going!” I stammered out, for once thanking my gray coloring as it allowed me to fake a blush fairly easily.

Sunset managed to stand up and get a good look at me.

“Oh. You’re the earth pony.” She said with a bored tone, as if just seeing my hornless-ness had drained what little interest I had. “Tch. Whatever, let me go back to my-”

“Oh, this is so interesting!” I said in an excited voice, holding Sunset’s book in front of my face, blocking everypony else’s view of the page. “Look at all of these cool notes! You have scribbles all over the pages! Although I’ve never seen any of these spells on the libr-” My intentionally loud exclamation was cut off by an orange hoof in my mouth.

I looked up and was met with two light blue gateways into doom.

“You.” She pointed her hoof at me. “Come with me.”

She didn’t have to add ‘if you want to live’. It was implied.

Author's Note

Long time, no see everybody.

Sorry for the brief respite on uploads, college and moving caught me way off guard.

In other news, I had to split this chapter into two in order to be able to get all the points I wanted to get across out of the way. Be on the lookout for part two! :raritywink: