Not all who wander...

Not All Who Wander
By TDR

Part 7, in which ~~Ukyo~~, Starlight Glimmer, realizes she had a bad idea.

Starlight Glimmer was not a happy pony.

This was something of a universal truth as Cutiemarks still existed after all.

Still she had a plan for that, her village was set up and she had managed to get a large number of ponies to stay here and make it work. And the best part was the spell she had created to affect cutiemarks worked perfectly.

The concept was simple, the spell would take whatever the cursed mark, oh that was a good name for them, did to lock a pony into a talent and spread it out to everyone else under the spell. This meant that if she got the best baker in the world , then while they would no longer be the best baker, everyone else in the spells effect would be a pretty good baker at least.

She called it the Talent Pool Spell.

And it was working wonderfully, a number of farmers had become a town of farmers which dealt with the food supply, and a builder had become a town of them, sure the houses were pretty basic, and the crops limited, but it was better than it could have been, and no one would have to rely on one pony who would get pulled away by some one else wanting their talents.

Then she got a hold of the strange stallion named Ryoga Hibiki.

He didn't seem to have any attachment to his cutiemark and seemed fine if she wanted to try something with it.

Adding his mark to the talent pool spell was amazing. Everyone got much stronger, the repair ponies needed to fix a number of doors and walls, plus the stallion had an insane amount of skills that seemed to be tied to his mark somehow. Sewing, dance, acrobatics, cooking, forestry, hunting, which was odd but okay, and ton of others. His admission to the Talent Pool Spell had brought no end of bonuses proving that she was correct and ponies didn't need only their cutie marks to function and succeed in life.

Then the problems started.

She had lost track of Ryoga for half a day some how, only for him to be found at dusk nearly crying in joy as he had found the house he had been assigned after only a few hours.

That had been something just written off as strange, until she started getting reports of ponies getting lost in their own homes, which was insane as the houses only had 3 rooms and a closest.

One of her followers had come to get her for something, taken a turn into her hall closet and vanished for three days claiming she had been up in Yakistan.

She even had the t-shirt and souvenir mug to prove it.

Then there was that rainstorm that blew in suddenly and caught most of her townsfolk outside.

AND THEY HAD ALL TURNED INTO PIGS!!

Ryoga had pointed out that hot water would fix it , and it had , but seriously what in Tartarus was this pony?

After a few more ponies went missing, and several farmers couldn't find their fields she decided to cut her losses and killed the spell.

Clearly The Talent Pool Spell was broken somehow.

Well she still had a back up spell that would take Cutiemarks fully.

Before she could implement the new spell however , Ryoga had vanished somewhere.

Good riddance.

She still had no idea why he kept calling her Ukyo.

Ryoga let out a small sigh as he looked over the group staring at him.

One was a purple unicorn pony he had met before when fighting the black snooty, the other was an very pink pony that was practically hopping up and down as she stared at him, he was pretty sure he remembered her name as Pinkie Pie. There was also a light blue unicorn pony with a white mane and a wizards hat who was staring into space. Then there were the kids. A fat dumpy one and a lanky tall one whose voice pissed him off to no end for some reason.

There was also a massive blue bear though it was currently floating in the air out of town as the purple unicorn was doing something probably what the blue one was staring at.

And a small purple dragon who was listing off what sounded like random things , or spells.

Ryoga had been walking through the forest when the two foals had run by being chased by the bear. He moved into to save them keeping the bear distracted while the townsfolk fled. Then the purple unicorn showed up and called him off and started to do something which put the bear to sleep and floated it out of town.

The damage looked minor, though the pink mare and the dragon had pointed out that the foals had lead the bear into town in order to prove the blue mare, who was a traveling showman, show mare? Show pony? Whatever, could beat it.

Ryoga was kinda curious what sort of martial arts the blue mare used to beat it before when even he was having a bit of trouble fending it off, though she admitted that the 'Ursa major' she had told the story about driving off had been what the locals named an annoying black bear that kept getting into their trash. She had just rigged up a trashcan with fireworks and scared the bear off to collect the bounty.

Ryoga figured that was fine. He had once met a man who's idea of a martial art was throwing dynamite around. And that sort of thing was half of Happosai's bag of tricks too.

Still the Showmare was going to leave with her cart in the morning, the stupid foals were going to be punished and he was in the town where his stuff was supposed to be. Maybe Pinkie Pie would know where it was.

She didn't seem like she was going to take her eyes off him after all.