The One and Only Chapter.
“But you helped turn him to dust! Why do you want to snuggle with him?”
It had been such a nice, sunny day in Ponyville. A peaceful day, interrupted by the sounds of an argument as they reverberated off the castle walls. Or, rather, Shining Armor's voice did.
An oddly serene Twilight responded, “Because he promised he would spontaneously disintegrate again.”
Shining Armor had known his sister and her friends to perform miracles, given how they reformed Discord and Twilight had personally turned an evil dictator into her own little bastion of friendship, but even so...
Shining threw his hooves up and shouted, “That makes no sense! How can you just decide not to disintegrate?”
Sombra looked at him, slightly annoyed, and shrugged. Shining had decided, after waiting a few weeks, to visit his sister and check up on how Sombra’s reformation was going. He hadn’t expected this to happen.
Twilight, still smiling, stated, “because we know we can. I’ve personally tested him a few times to make sure.”
Suddenly, the door opened, and Applejack walked in, looking around, saying, “Hey Twi, I overheard some shouting from outside. What’s going on?”
Twilight smiled, “Oh, I’m just trying to help Shiny understand why I want to snuggle Sombra.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“He’s promised not to disintegrate anymore.”
Applejack grinned, “Well I’ll be. That is a cause to celebrate!”
Shining’s eyebrows went up, “What? Why are you… why are you acting like it’s just something that he could do?”
Applejack’s eyebrow failed matched his, “Ah’m sure Twi’s already told ya.”
“She said you could, but... how?”
“What do ya mean by ‘How?’”
“I mean that I don’t understand how it works!”
There was a polite knock on the door, drawing the attention of everyone gathered within. It opened, revealing a white unicorn.
“Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. In fact, I think the entire castle can’t help overhearing it.”
Shining, in response, shouted, “That’s because this doesn’t make any sense!”
Rarity flipped her hair, and actually calmly stated, “Given that I’ve only heard you from outside this room, I’d say you’re just not comprehending it.”
“I’m trying!”
Twilight chimed in, “Perhaps you need to see it yourself to understand. You didn’t understand how to be a father even with the 1200 page manual I gave to you.”
Shining facehooved, “Of course it didn’t help. I didn’t have time to read through it!”
Applejack then added, “Hey, it would still help ya understand it.”
“Gah… I know, I just still don’t get it!”
Sombra grunted, then spoke for the first time that day, “prgrphlrg.” He proceeded to go into a coughing fit, cleared his throat a couple of times, finally spoke the first coherent sentence that day, “Perhaps you should start by showing him how to disintegrate.”
They nodded in agreement, looking at each other. Rarity sighed, and said, “Alright, fine. Watch me carefully, sir Armor.” She then stepped into the middle of the room, closed her eyes, and promptly exploded into dust.
Shining jumped back, wide-eyed, and stared at the spot where she was.
Applejack rolled her eyes.
Twilight groaned, “Seriously, we’ve been talking about this for the past 7 and a quarter minutes. Why are you this surprised?”
“Because I didn’t expect it to be like that!”
Sombra snorted, “What, did you expect a massive buildup as cracks slowly formed across her skin before she disintegrated?”
“Isn’t that what happened to you?”
“... Yeah. So?”
Twilight interrupted, “so, I take it that you don’t fully understand what she did?”
“Of course I do. She closed her eyes and exploded. It’s a beautiful and clear method of demonstrating how she managed to actually do that.”
Twilight facehooved, “Of course…”
“Say, should we be worried? Rarity did just explode, and I am somewhat dubious as to the thought of that being good for her.”
“No, she disintegrated. Well, I suppose it can technically be classified as an explosion, but our official term is ‘disintegrated.’ Anyways, she’s fine. She’ll just take a while to reform her physical body.”
Shining Armor still obviously didn’t understand what was occuring. Sombra sighed, “He isn’t going to understand this with his puny brain. We should just stop trying.”
Shining simply shook his head in defiance of this claim.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter if you know how. You saw it, you know what it is, accept it.”
Shining Armor considered this. His face started to relax as he accepted the idea of just accepting— “Hold up, ya’ll can’t just quit now! If we quit now, when we can still teach ya, it’d be a travesty.”
Sombra groaned loudly, while Shining Armor stood up straight.
“You… no… he just needs to accept it.”
Twilight shook her head “No, I know how frustrating it can be to not understand.” She looked over to her right, and then pulled Pinkie out of a plant she had been hiding behind.
Normally, Shining would be shocked and ask how she got there. However, his new determination set him focused on their task at hand.
“Hey Twilight! How ya doing?”
They ignored her.
Standing tall and confident, Twilight proclaimed, “Unlike Pinkie, this can actually be explained, and we’re going to explain it to him!”
***
Twilight’s head flopped onto a table, as she let out a long, frustrated groan while Applejack was deep into her fifth mug of hard cider. Sombra, meanwhile, was laughing raucously, bowled over on the floor.
Shining was standing there, far more bamboozled than he had been four hours prior.
Sombra, between laughs, gasped out, “I… have never… seen her this defeated!” He then fell over backwards, laughing even harder.
“Ugh… how do can you be this dumb? We’ve tried every method possible, and you’re just standing there like a gaping fish!”
Pinkie, who was sitting right next to her, flourished her pen over a long detailed sketch of the pony anatomy, shouted, “I’ve got it!”
Twilight glanced over, and silently wondered what Pinkie’s idea is.
“Alrighty, Shining, if you examine closely you can see the thalamus. If you keep in mind the exact millisecond out of the second at which you breath in, and time it so that the millisecond of the second you breath out, this’ll go into overdrive, causing a cascade reaction within your magical reservoir. The rippling of this destabilizes your cells at a core level, causing them to explode. This would spell the end of most creatures, but pony magic has a special failsafe which creates an extra mind out of magic, connected to each individual atom the body made up. However, the magic can also be altered by extending the time before you breath out by a single millisecond, shielding each cell from being destabilized in the first place, completely preventing any and all disintegration.”
Silence filled the room.
“Oh, now I get it!” Shining armor grinned, a look of comprehension spreading across his face.
“WHAT?” Twilight shouted, her face contorting into a nightmare. “You failed to understand all those simple, clear explanations we gave, and yet the in-depth detailed description of what happens during the process is what you understand?”
He shrugged, calmly smiling. “Yeah.”
Applejack emptied her eighth mug, and shouted, “woo!” before she slammed her head on the table.
“So, why didn’t you try? You’ve always been one for the detailed explanation. You were often rambling about vast equations that fit with various magical theories, yet you don’t try now?”
“You never understood them! Why would you understand now?”
Shining simply facehooved.
Sombra starred. “Have you forgotten that ponies can change? That’s what we’re celebrating, my change, right?”
Twilight’s eye twitched, before she grabbed Applejack’s cider keg, drained it in one gulp, and promptly passed out on the table.
Shining Armor and Sombra looked at her, then at each other.
“Well… I don’t think she’s going to snuggle you.”
Sombra nodded.
Pinkie smiled. “I think I know the solution to this dilemma as well!”
The next day, the heavily hungover Twilight found the trio in the deepest, most intimate snuggle pile to ever exist.
Author's Note
This is the first story I've ever written. Probably competently written, though I doubt it's very good.
Surprisingly, this was actually the second draft. There was a first draft to this thing. That should lower any liking you had for this as you realize that this mediocre story is the revised version.
