Life Finds a Way

by LiveFreeOrDie

Chapter 9: Magic Experiments 2: MoD & TK

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Wednesday, September 3rd, 908 AB

After arriving home, Vines and Cure put away the groceries and whip up a small lunch. Vines’ plan for the afternoon is to get some house cleaning done, so Cure opts to get out of her way and plans to go outside and find a nice, shaded area to start reading. He grabs a pencil, his notebook, the anatomy book, the nutrition and dietary science book, and a nice book stand. They’re much more common in pony homes due to pony ergonomics.

Feeling a little cliché, he finds a nice maple tree in the backyard he gets to work.

Okay, so I have a number of things to test today. Let’s make a list so I can keep it organized.

Cure’s Magic Testing notes, round 2

  • MoD

    • What capabilities?
    • How much more efficient than normal?

  • Touch Telekinesis

    • Hooves only?
    • Strength
    • Can it increase with training?
    • Shaping
    • Try a hand, claws, other grasping appendages like a whip
    • Can it be focused into an edge, a point, etc.
    • Range
    • Touch only?
    • Target aspects
    • Does it surround the target
      • I.e. the “lifting a plane” problem
    • Apply different pressure at different points
    • Does it penetrate the surface at all
    • How does it work on multiple small objects?
      • Like a force field? A hand?
      • Attract / repel?
    • Force direction
    • Can it spin things?
    • Do forces have to go all one direction?
      • Obviously not or grabbing wouldn’t work
      • Can you twist parts of an object? Bend it?
      • Does this impact the force?
    • Can it push instead of pull
    • Impact on physics
    • Does it mitigate gravity, mass, etc. at all?
    • Can it “soak” into objects?
    • FATE reinforcement BS

  • Earth pony innate abilities (may be MoD related)

    • Plant
    • Growing
      • Tested, verified w/ Dam
    • Harvesting
      • Same
    • Modifying
      • Keep an eye on melon and other ‘enhanced’ plants
    • Buffs
    • Mitigate fatigue
      • Reduce need for sleep?
    • Need to quantify STR buff.
      • Additive to current strength or multiplicative?

    • Buff other qualities

      • END
      • Worked on run home from grocery
      • AGI? Maybe buff nerves?
      • Mental aspects?
      • Perception speed?
      • Dexterity? Aim w/ thrown objects maybe, or precision with strikes somehow?
      • Toughness / Reinforcement
      • Will volunteer dad for this one. Again.
      • Staying warm or cool
        • Need to research how body does this exactly already
        • Shivering = muscles firing off
        • Sweating
        • Dilation / contraction of blood vessels on skin surface
      • Healing
      • Ditto
      • Regrow or repair cilia?
      • Other body processes
      • Digestion?
      • Childbearing?
        • Sex / fertility?
        • Fetal development?
      • Enhance Senses
        • Hearing, smell, eyesight, etc.
      • Consider how to implement permanent changes without harm
      • Don’t forget to numb nerves!
      • Identify vestigial organs to replace? Appendix?
      • Attempt enhancements to redundant organs?
        • One lobe of a lung?
      • Copy patterns from nature

    • Automation

      • Program triggers?
      • Build subroutines?
      • Get Swol v1.0 seems to work
      • Modularize process
      • Where would this be “saved” ?

    • Keep constant flow? Long term health benefits?

Knowing there was more to do but unsure what else to add at the time, Cure decides he’s no longer willing to wait. With a quick thought to how BS like this works in shitty fanfics he runs inside the house to find his dam before starting.

“Hey, just so you know, I’m going to be out back under the maple for a while, possibly. I wanted to experiment with channeling magic through my mark, but I’ve read stories where people do stuff like that and kind of get “lost” in it. Can you come check on me in a little while and make sure I’m not totally vegging out?”

“Sure, honey. That’s a good idea. I’ll finish up my cleaning and come out to join you with my book in a little bit. Don’t try to do anything with your mark except for seeing yet, okay? You’re going to read that safety book before you do anything else with magic, young colt.” After a moment’s thought she adds, “And you kind of owe Mr. Binder an apology. He ended up being very helpful.”

“I never said he wasn’t helpful,” Cure points out. “He was helpful both times and I thanked him for that. My observation that he was being a prick was accurate, though. What kind of adult listens to a kid say they want to be a doctor someday and responds by saying “Work real hard and you’ll make a great nurse”? Adults should encourage children, not be tribalist bigots. I bet his tune would have been different if I had a horn.”

Clearly uncomfortable with the observation, Vines shifts her weight between her hooves. “Well… I can’t say you’re wrong. Still, young colts should not be calling names. Especially to helpful ponies.”

Nodding, Cure explains, “In general, I agree, but some ponies don’t realize that what they say to somepony else, especially a child, can have a real impact. Any other young earth pony might have accepted a unicorn’s word as that of an authority figure. They may take that to heart and figure they could never do better than a nurse,” he says, waving a forehoof about, “or whatever in their situation.” Softening his expression he continues, “I love you, dam, but if a situation like that were to happen to my brother or sister or, someday, my own foal I would have definitely said something to him right there on the spot. I think I couldn’t hold back calling him a prick because it was my way of completely dismissing his condescending attitude towards me.”

Cure pauses for a moment in thought. “Truthfully, if I was older and wouldn’t be immediately dismissed as a child I would probably actually speak up for anypony in that situation, family or not. The library is a place of learning. Him being patronizing is almost as bad as a teacher doing it.”

Tail and ears flagging, Vines can’t seem to muster a good reason to disagree with him. “I’m not so sure most earth ponies would listen to somepony just because they’re a unicorn. Why do you feel that way, honey?” she asks.

Dumbfounded by the obvious question, Cure asks, “What tribe do most of the nobles that run the country belong to, dam?”

Unable to face her son she turns away and mumbles, “Unicorns…”

“What’s the mayor of Baltimare?”

Vines grimaces, and turns away but answers, “A unicorn.”

“And what is the princess and near-deity ruler of this country?”

Shocked at her son’s question, she whips back to face him and immediately answers, “She’s not a unicorn! The princess is an alicorn, honey. You know that.”

“Do you have a picture of her? You brought that history book home, right? Are there any pictures of her in it?”

Vines had sat the book on the dining room table. Together they go to the table, open the book, and find a picture of the princess sitting on the throne at the bottom of the foreword.

“Yep… just as I thought.” He grabs the book and jumps up on the table. Holding the book up as far as he can, he is able to barely get it high enough that Vines has to look up at it. “Your princess sits before you, dam, looking down on you from her golden throne, what would you see? Look up at the princess and imagine her facing directly at you, dam.”

Confused, Vines pauses in thought. She looks up at the picture, which shows the princess turned slightly so her wings are visible, though still at a mostly forward-facing angle.

When a few seconds pass without a response Cure answers for her. “You would see the tallest unicorn with the biggest horn you’ve ever seen in your life with a fancy tiara sitting on her head, right? Take a look at that picture. I’m not sure how it is with ponies, but humans almost always look at eyes first. But aside from her eyes, what’s the first thing about her that you’re going to notice?” he asks as he gradually leans the book towards his dam.

Looking up at the picture again and imagining facing the princess, she can’t help but acknowledge her son’s point, much as she’d like to have a good argument.

“I’m betting it wouldn’t be the tiara. That’s probably just a piece of jewelry, though I would assume it has some enchantments on it for preservation and to keep it shiny, at least. No, what you would notice if you were looking up, bowed before her is her height, her huge horn, then after those maybe her tiara or her billowing mane, then maybe you’d eventually make note of the wings. Ponies associate a horn with authority, whether they mean to or not,” tapping on the picture with his other hoof he continues, “and the biggest horn is the highest authority. We’ve been conditioned to mentally associate the two for a millennium, dam.”

He sets the book down and hugs Vines around the neck, nuzzling into her mane. “Don’t feel bad about it, okay? It’s a purely subconscious thing. It isn’t yours or anypony else’s fault.” Releasing the hug he gives her a quick peck on her cheek and jumps off the table. As he starts walking away he calls over his withers, “I bet even the princess herself doesn’t think about it. She probably never even considered that putting the sign of rulership behind her horn could lead to conditioning her ponies.” Pausing in thought for a moment he adds, “It probably wouldn’t have mattered if the tiara went around her horn instead. That would end up with her horn being the center of the tiara… so I guess there’s just no winning that. She probably just put it where it was most comfortable and never gave it another thought. Maybe if she had just stuck with the regalia as her sign of authority a millennium ago it wouldn’t be as prominent. See ya in a bit, dam.” With that, Cure heads out the door back to his tree.

Now confident he won’t fall into some stupid cliche “you were sitting there for six hours” meditative state, he gets comfortable and lays his head down like he’s taking a nap.

So flipping the switch to “visualize magic” is definitely getting easier. That makes sense, anything you do repeatedly will get easier over time. Still, I’m amazed how natural this feels. I never felt shit when I meditated as a human aside from the whole calming aspects, or maybe a fart slipping out while stretching, but to actually have an entire new sensorium is trippy. The fact that it comes so naturally solidifies my belief that humanity simply has zero capacity for magic, at least of the same flavor as ponies. We probably would have just killed ourselves with it anyhow, I suppose.

Enough distractions and ADD asides, let’s see what I can see in normal mode, first.

With the magic flowing through his body Cure is able to easily picture himself as a model. He moves the “camera” around effortlessly just by willing it so.

Even more intuitive than Minority Report. Neat GUI, wish my Oculus was this easy. Whoever the developer is probably has a bit more experience. Huh… that’s an interesting thought. If this is a system it was built. I wonder if the collective will of the planet birthed some kind of magic intelligence. Of course then you run into the whole chicken and egg thing.

Argh! C’mon, focus dude. Stay on target. Gold Five is so disappointed in me.

Alrighty, so… well, not sure what to say here. “Hey there, good lookin? Why the long face?” Dunno, I seem like a perfectly healthy colt, which is good, I suppose. What kind of resolution can I get here?

Mentally zooming in on his eye, Cure’s focus zeroes in until his right eyeball occupies the entirety of his “view”.

I’m looking at my eye. For my next trick, I’m going to lick my elbow. That aside, this whole “rotate, slice, zoom” functionality is ridiculous. My own special ability makes a multimillion dollar imaging machine redundant. No wonder technology has stagnated if any rando could do things like this. We don’t need to invest ten billion dollars in R&D, just call the right pony. Until he or she dies of old age, I guess.

So, I can zoom in and out to a pretty ridiculous level of detail. I can will away intervening layers. What about changing view modes? Contrast and b… oh, wow!

As he was thinking, so did his magic provide. With just another thought Cure found that altering color schemes, adjusting light levels, or making other changes to the way he was viewing his eyeball took no real effort whatsoever. Just visualize what he wants and his magic complies.

Well, I’m not really LOOKING at the eyeball, just perceiving it, presumably in a way that my brain is able to interpret, which is visually, of course. It’s not like I’m using my eyes, so it’s logical that the normal limitations of an eyeball wouldn’t apply… while I’m looking at my eyeball.

What happens when I blink? Welp, there it goes. A blink. Let’s replay that in slow motion… and done… eventually. Pause, rotate. ENHANCE! Well, not everything will work, I guess.

Okay, so I can easily zoom down to the point where nerves, tiny blood vessels, and everything else is clearly visible. I can see everything in basically any way I want. I’m not going to fuck with my eyeball, though, so let’s look somewhere else. Heart is right out, not messing with my digestive tract, especially while I’m sitting outside in public. Brain is a no-go, even if most people I met never used theirs. I’ve already done some basic work on my muscles once on the way home and I don’t want to bulk myself up a bunch before puberty even starts or who knows what kind of freak I’ll look like.

Definitely not messing with the crotch area… save that for puberty too. Hey ladies… pardon me while I whip this out… FWOMP

Ok, so let’s get a good look at the lungs.

Hmm… so, it never really occurred to me before that the left lung has to be a bit smaller because the heart is over there. I guess pony hearts are more centered than human ones, though. That’s weird because I thought hunters targeted the left side specifically for a kill shot. Was I just assuming that? Meh, different world, who knows what all is applicable here.

So, there’s a huge-ass set of lungs. If I recall correctly, there’s little cavities on the side where blood yoinks oxygen out of the air and deposits carbon dioxide. Wait… I AM breathing oxygen, aren’t I? Ponies aren’t some kind of silicon based life form breathing something weird, are we? No… that can’t be. We have lamps and candles and shit. Fire is oxygenation. Then again, other shit burns too, right? Fuck it, for now I’m going to assume a similar 80/20 nitrogen, oxygen mix, ignoring that 1% “other shit” until I find out what that is. Damn, maybe I do need science class again.

Coming out of his meditation for a moment, Cure notices his dam is now laying beside him reading. “Oh, hey, perfect. Have I been out of it long?” he asks as he sits up.

Turning to smile down at him she replies, “No, honey, you’ve only been out here for a little while. I just finished cleaning a few minutes ago.”

“Cool. Hey when you had science class in school did they go into chemistry much? Earth’s air was like 80% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and there were a few other things,” he explains as he waves a hoof in the air. “I assumed it’s the same here but I just had an errant thought about respiration and figured I should ask.”

Nodding, she answers, “They did talk about the air we breathe in science class when talking about how important plants and nature are, though I never took any chemistry classes. That’s something you could learn more about at a university. Still, I remember them saying only about a quarter of “air” is what our bodies actually use.”

“Good deal. Thanks, dam,” he says as he lays back down.

Okay, where was I? Left lung, zoomed in. The lung inflates as air comes in. Big tube goes to branches, branches get smaller, and there’s the little sack-things at the end where the blood must be trading the CO2 for O2. Yep, lots of blood vessels right on the other side of that bit of tissue. And lookie there, the ones coming out… arteries? Or Veins? Well, they’re going TO the heart, so… veins I guess. Anyhow, they’re much brighter red than the ones going in. That’s neat. I guess it’s not so squicky when you can just kinda see it without blood shooting everywhere. The body is just a machine, Cure. An insidiously complex machine that, if you fuck up, will kill you.

Okay, enough dithering, let’s fire up the mark.

Slowly channeling his magic into his mark, he feels like another layer of detail is loading on top of the interface.

Okay, so this is a lot crisper. I can see… everything? Yep, I can zoom in to the cellular level. I remember doing that with leaves in school. It takes a REALLY good microscope to get this level of magnification. That is potentially useful, I suppose. I can’t picture how off the top of my head, but it is fascinating at least. Okay, so what will this actually let me do that I couldn’t do anyhow? If I could already see as well as needed to guide body functions then what could I do with this high of resolution that I couldn’t before?

I can see smaller things. I bet I could see shit that’s not supposed to be there. I guess I could also see, in real time, what effects changing things would have at a cellular level… not sure that would be useful, though. Again, there’s potential but how do I take advantage of it? It’s not like I can just start making changes to my body without potentially killing myself, how the hell would I know how something is supposed to work until I see it?

Wait… until I SEE it! I could use this to copy physical aspects. Oh wow… I can steal nature’s designs. Can I apply them then? I changed a plant, but that’s not … well, not TOTALLY dissimilar from any other living being, I guess. Where’s the line? Is there one? It’s a totally different cell structure, obviously, but I think plant and animal cell structures are stupidly close to each other, like 90% or something. I remember some dumb blurb about a human and a banana sharing like half of the same DNA and how all humans are 99.9% the same.

I definitely don’t have that level of detail, so no Panacea bullshit for now. Hmm, actually…

Grabbing a blade of grass, Cure delves right back in. Vines looks over at the movement, but seeing her son staring at a piece of grass she just goes back to reading.

I made a plant change colors. There’s no way that wasn’t a genetic change. Let’s do some mad science here. Cackling optional.

Focusing on his magic and drawing from his mark he pushes into the blade of grass. Targeting the entire structure of the blade of grass he focuses specifically on the chlorophyll. Using his own blood as a template, he pours his magic into the small piece of grass and demands the chlorophyll change to match. He observes as the magic saturates the blade from bottom to top, slowly changing as it progresses. Once complete he takes a moment to look it over, then opens his eyes.

“Oh my God, it worked…” escapes his lips. Held in his hoof is the same blade of grass, now blood red from base to tip.

Glancing over casually, Vines looks back at her book before doing a double take, then focusing on her son’s hoof. “Honey? Why’d you change the color of that grass?” she asks, bewildered. “Wait… that doesn’t look right.” Leaning over she sniffs at the grass. Jumping up, she turns to fully face him. With a wide-eyed stare she asks, “What did you do, Cure? That piece of grass smells like blood!” she quietly exclaimed.

“Uhh… changed the stuff that makes plants green into blood? Don’t worry, it’s not like it’s MY blood,” he pauses, “Well, it is in a way. I’d really like to know where the iron came from… anyhow, I used my blood as a basis and pushed magic into the plant to change the chlorophyll into it.” He lets out a big yawn and mumbles, “Whew, I’m tired though. That took a bit out of me. Don’t worry, though,” waving away her concern he continues, “I’m not cut or anything like that, I just changed a plant in a different way, dam.”

“Don’t worry? You made a bloody piece of grass, Cure! That’s something a parent should definitely worry about.” Stopping for a moment she looks around to ensure nopony is near her. Thankfully, there’s not a soul anywhere nearby.

“Well think about it this way. Somepony gets cut really bad, okay? Let’s say a training accident in the guard. If they lost enough blood you could get a donor to give them some, right?” he asks. At her wary nod he continues, “Well instead of getting it from another pony you could just get it from a plant… maybe. Obviously this needs to be tested, but there’s nothing malicious going on here. I just used blood because blood in animals and chlorophyll in plants serve similar purposes. You know, kind of a rough equivalent?”

“I don’t know, honey. You’re doing magic… with blood. Isn’t blood magic banned?”

“Blood magic is a thing? What does it do?” he asks, now curious. “No, never mind that,” shaking the thought away he explains, “No, I’m not doing blood magic. I’m doing, if anything, medical magic here. Maybe some kind of transmutation that fits within the scope of my mark? If somepony had an infection and I cleaned it out with magic then I’m not doing,” making air quotes he says, “blood magic, am I?”

“No… I guess not.”

“Right, big difference. Saying this is blood magic is like saying… oh I don’t know… That Celestia raising the sun is the same as throwing a fireball? Technically, she is moving a ball of fire. Technically, I’m doing magic and creating blood. I’m not using blood as some kind of active ingredient to cast a curse on a target, am I? No, this is definitely not “blood magic” whatever that is. Just what is blood magic, anyhow? I didn’t even know there was such a thing,” he finishes with a shrug.

“I have no idea, Cure. I don’t know anything about magic other than what I’ve learned with you the last few days and the common sense stuff… you know, unicorns levitating things, whatever. Sorry if I jumped to conclusions, but I don’t think most ponies would react well to surprise blood when their colt is learning magic, you know.”

“That’s fair. I won’t do anything else for now. Umm…” looking at the grass unsure what to do with it he looks around for an idea. “I think I’m going to just… uhh… can we burn this or something?” he asks, offering her the grass. Vines takes a step back like it’s going to bite her. “It’s not bleeding, dam. The blood is all in the grass just like the liquid would be otherwise. I’m sure the blade of grass itself is dead since, you know, it doesn’t have “plant” blood anymore. Maybe if you mushed it up or something you could get actual blood out of it.”

“Go run it in the house and set it in the sink. We’ll get rid of it later. You better not get blood everywhere in the kitchen!”

Cure starts heading to the door. He calls over his withers, “Again, it’s not bleeding. Just think of it as a red piece of grass. That’s all it really is.”

Parents freak out at unexpected blood while their colt practices magic. More at 11. That was probably not a wise decision on my part. At least I don’t have some ridiculous conflict drive, but I do wonder if ponies are compelled to act on their mark in some way. Everyone wants to do what they’re good at, though. Especially if it’s unique to them. Good lord are there like… drug dealer marks? Prostitution marks? I’d be torn between horrified and proud if the planet itself essentially designated me the best lay in existence. “Hey dam, look what I’m good at!”

Cure opens the door and heads in. He sets the single blade of grass in the sink and starts heading back out to the tree. Shoulda just ate the damn thing and been done with it. Then again, that’s how zombie plagues start. It is just my blood, though.

Anyhow, I bet I could do some fucked up shit with this. I could build a redundant heart or a third lung or something. We only have what we have for a reason, though. Evolution already spent a million years figuring out what works best.

Well, then again some of the stressors guiding evolution are kind of no longer valid in a civilization, aren’t they? Atrophy, for example, is the body’s way of reducing the expenditure of maintaining muscle that isn’t being used. I bet I could make it so I just never lose muscle mass unless I want to. I’ll… I’ll always be in perfect health, once I get an image of what “perfect health” looks like. Holy shit, I need to start collecting living specimens from animals and shit. Without the whole “that was inefficient because the specimen couldn’t get enough food to survive having that” problem I bet I could be like… I don’t even know. Some kind of ridiculous uber pony.

Returning to his dam’s side, Cure sits back down and, distractedly, begins poking around in the anatomy book while zoning out.

So realistically how can I approach this? It’s not like I can run out into the Everfree and find a hydra to analyze how its regeneration works, if they even have that here. Where can I find animals that I can scan that will let me without nomming a leg off? I can honestly say I never expected to have the thought “I sure wish Fluttershy were here”.

Zoos! I need to go to a zoo! Do ponies have zoos? Are they like… petting zoos? Animals are kind of intelligent, at least in the show, so maybe a zoo is like a vacation spot for wild animals. “Hey there Mr. Lion, how bout you come live here for a bit. We’ll feed you and you can just kinda take it easy, but don’t eat any of the foals, okay?”

I guess I could also probably copy templates from ponies. If I’m going into medicine I’ll have plenty of opportunities to meet different individuals. Nopony has the strongest everything, but if I met the Wonderbolts, for example, that would probably get me templates for a super healthy heart, lungs, etc. If I can find some Big Mac kinda fucker that’ll tell me what a huge ol stronk earth pony should look like. Maybe their muscles would literally be evolutionarily superior.

There’s clearly only one valid solution here. Kidnap Princess Celestia and do the Copy & Paste move on her. I’m sure that would go REALLY well. I wonder if alicorns ever lose a feather. Hmm. Maybe I can Jurassic Park her ass. Let a bunch of mosquitos out in the castle garden then catch them all later and analyze the results. They’d probably burst into flames trying to bite her.

I dunno, these ideas feel like they may be just a teeny bit on the unethical side. Would Princess Celestia get off her ass to fry a dude if Twilight isn’t around yet to run her errands? Survey says, “You’re on fire!”

Okay, so the plan with my “special talent” is basically, “Grow up, be a good doctor, and identify superior specimens as they become available.” Maybe add “Go to a zoo” onto that. Oh, also “Don’t be a colossal idiot and end up the Villain of the Week”.

Coming out of his trance again, Cure sits up and looks around. Still feeling a bit worn out he rolls over and flops against Vines’ side.

“So I did learn at least a couple things about my special talent, other than “can turn things into blood”, which should be a hit on Nightmare Night. It turns out that I can basically see… well, everything about my body with it. It’s the same thing I did when I looked at dad’s shoulder, just with the ability to get much higher detail, and quite a bit less traumatizing,” he says with a shudder. “Also, I can obviously guide my magic to make actual changes like healing or making a muscle grow stronger, but I wasn’t willing to do that to myself, hence blood grass,” he explains as if this is just a thing ponies have to learn to live with.

Vines lets out a huge sigh, apparently still a little freaked out over the prospect of disposing of a single bloody piece of grass. “While I’m glad you had the foresight not to experiment on yourself, I would very much prefer you not make a habit of turning plants into bloody experiments, honey. I imagine I would get quite a bit more than just complaints if I accidentally sold the wrong fruit at the market.” Pausing to think for a moment, she adds, “You should really let your body do what it’s supposed to do anyhow. Things are the way they are for a reason.”

“Yeah, for most things I agree, but there’s some things the body does because it made sense to do that ten thousand years ago, even if it doesn’t apply to the situation here and now. Like fat, for example. We do need some fat, that’s true, but if a pony eats too much their body says, “Oh hey I should store this extra energy because I may need it later.” Of course, nopony likes to be fat, so the pony would say “Wow I sure wish I could lose this fat without running” or whatever. Well, I could use my magic to basically just go in and have the body break down the fat itself and expel it through their urine like you would do with excess vitamins your body doesn’t need. Probably not too much at once, but a few ounces per day would still chip away at it.”

“You can make ponies lose weight? That’s incredible, Cure! Famous ponies like models would just throw money at you for that alone.”

“Yeah, but I was just using that as an example of something the body does naturally that isn’t really what you would want to happen nowadays. It’s like… it was a survival tool at the time, but now with plenty of available food we don’t have to eat a bunch to survive winter. There’s other examples I thought of like… earlier I was thinking about atrophy of the muscles. When a pony is recovering from something and they can’t move, their muscles deteriorate. I could basically use my magic and tell their body, “Hey, don’t use up that muscle. They still need that. They’re not starving to death, so keep the muscle around even if they’re not using it right now.” I’m sure there’s a million other uses I’ll pick up as I learn. I really have no clue what the limit could be here, so I need a way to safely experiment.”

Cure isn’t sure how his dam will react to the idea, but he feels compelled to ask. “When humans are doing medical experiments - and again, I feel like I need to remind you that animals are not even close to sentient on Earth - once we get past the theoretical stage and actually start testing a treatment we typically use lab mice or rats. They’re genetically surprisingly close to humans and all their organs work the same way, so we can get an idea of how a human will react to treatment. Of course, if everything goes well there they do small clinical trials on humans that agree to test the drug or whatever. How do ponies test medicine?”

“Oh that’s actually very similar here, honey. We test medicine and treatments on mice and rats the same way, it sounds like. Not all animals are sentient, sweetie. Many are just as much an animal as fish are. A few animals have that extra spark, though, and we treat them appropriately… as long as they’re not trying to eat us, that is.”

“Cool. What about zoos? What are those like? I guess I’m just not clear on how to differentiate between animals like on Earth and the more sentient ones here. In those stories I keep referencing it seemed like most animals had a level of intelligence almost like a very young child would have.”

“That’s surprising,” she paused to hold up the book she was reading, “most of what you’ve said about the world’s history and the princess seems like it matches up very well with the world. It’s a little scary, honestly, to think that beings from a whole different universe could get so much stuff right when we have no clue that they even exist. I did find one reference to a very obscure myth about a visitor from another realm helping the very earliest of ponies, but this mysterious being wasn’t described at all. Only that she had otherworldly knowledge and guided ponies towards civilization. That was thousands of years ago, though, way before the Age of Chaos even.”

“Weird. You said she was a visitor, though. I don’t think anyone would describe my situation that way. I’m pretty sure I’m not just stopping by for a visit, huh dam?” he laughed as he leaned into her fur.

“You better not be!” she growled while poking him. “My colt’s not going anywhere without his dam!” she cries out while pouncing on him. Wrapping him in her forelegs and rolling onto her back she continues, “You’re right, though. It sounded like she didn’t stay here. Maybe she had some way to come and go at will. It doesn’t sound like humans have that ability from what you’ve said.”

“No, definitely not,” he replied, snuggling down into her fur. “I suppose at some point humanity could possibly develop a technology to reach across the multiverse, but I think it’s more likely for ponykind to find them first. There may already be a portal, actualHURK,” he stops mid-sentence as the life is almost squeezed out of him.

“WHAT? Don’t even think about it!” Vines cries before he can even respond. Looking upwards he can tell she’s already starting to turn on the waterworks.

“Settle down, dam! Need air!”

When Vines eases back enough he can get enough air Cure continues, “One of the stories had a mirror portal that went from Equestria to a parallel Earth, but it wasn’t my Earth at all. I guess it’s possible it could be, but the princess will have that mirror locked away in her castle somewhere. There are humans on the other side, but they’re very different from the humans on my Earth. Besides, I’m eight years old. Even if I could magically go to the right Earth tomorrow I’ve been dead there for almost a decade… and I’d be a kid there again, presumably. No, that life is over. I wouldn’t mind snagging a few pieces of tech, though… and maybe sending a letter or two. That may just cause more pain, though.”

“I swear you’re trying to give your dam a heart attack today, Cure. I can’t take any more! Have some mercy on your dam, colt!” Vines fake-cries.

“Pfft, please. You silly ponies just overreact to everything,” he says as he pats her on the shoulder. “I’ll try to hold off on any more big reveals until tomorrow, though. Wouldn’t want ya keeling over before dinner’s ready, after all.”

“You little snot!” she rolls over on top of him and pins him down, poking and tickling him all over.

“Ahh! Child abuse! Somepony help me!”

“Grr! More like parental abuse! I work and slave all day long,” she moans, “and my only beloved son is trying to give me a heart attack! So cruel!”

Finally he wiggles away and runs to the other side of the tree. “Slave all day long my tail. You’re sitting under a tree reading a book!”

Vines points a hoof at him and shouts, “I get my union breaks too!”

“What union?”

“Shut yer trap, that’s what union!”

Snickering, he waves her down. “Fine, fine, I’ll be good.” He walks back over to his notebook and writes some notes about his MoD ideas.

"Hey, you never answered the zoo question. How do they work and what's the story with animal sentience?

"Oh right. Zoos have smarter animals only. Or at least, a smarter animal acts as a go-between for others of their kind, so if there’s a pride of lions at least one of them will be intelligent and they are almost always the pride leader, even if it’s not the male. You were pretty close, actually. The animals are compensated with food, lodging, safety, and medical care. Their trainers basically work with them like talent agents. If they don't want to stay they're released back in their habitat. It's safer for everycreature that way. I understand several take advantage when they lose a mate or are injured."

“That sounds like a way better system than what they have on Earth. I guess I'll need to add zoos to the list of things that I need to look into."

Cure takes a few minutes to write some notes and read over experiments he wanted to get to. "Okay, dam, I have another round of experiments that I could use a hoof with, if you’re interested.”

“No blood?”

“Not if we do it right.”

At her scowl he holds up his hooves, “Joking. No blood.”

“Sure, what are you up to now?”

Flipping to the list he made earlier, Cure shows her his notes about touch telekinesis.

“So is there a technical term for whatever is happening when you pick things up with your hooves? It’s called touch telekinesis when we refer to that ability on Earth. It’s not something we actually have; it exists in fantasy stories or comic books… hence my need to experiment with it.”

“I’ve never heard it called anything. We just… you know, grab things.”

“Right. Do you have to think about it at all? I’ve noticed it’s just automatic for me.”

“No, like I said… just grab.” She holds up the book she was reading to demonstrate.

“When you do that, what exactly are you visualizing?”

“That it’s sticking to my hoof?” she answers hesitantly.

“Which part of it?”

“Uhh… the whole thing?”

Raising an eyebrow he points out, “You don’t seem very sure about that.”

“I was until you asked,” she glares at him.

“Think about it… Instead of holding the book out to me, hold it like you’re going to set it on the ground face-down. Just don’t set it down… hold it like that.”

Vines nods and holds the book as requested.

“What part are you grabbing?”

“Uhh…”

“You must be holding the whole book because it’s not falling open like it would if your hoof was just stuck to the back.”

The book immediately falls open. Vines shoots him a glare. “You broke it!”

“What? I didn’t do anything!”

“You made me think about it!”

“Well stop thinking. Maybe we can get dad to show you how.”

“HAH! Don’t be mean to your father. He means well.”

“He likes it. It’s a stallion thing. It’s how we show love.”

Vines rolls her eyes at him.

“Turn the book back over again and grab it like you did the first time. Just don’t think about the fact that you’re magically somehow grabbing onto something without fingers and that you have no clue how you’re doing it.”

The book falls completely off her hoof. Both ponies just stare at it for a moment.

Looking aghast at her hoof she whips her head to look at Cure. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”

“Uhh. Seriously?”

“FIX MY HOOF!” she yells as she holds it out to him.

“Your hoof is fine!” Cure looks around warily. “Stop yelling or the neighbors are going to come see what’s going on!”

“Cure! You’re doing something, aren’t you? Is this a prank?”

Starting to panic a little himself, he quickly answers, “No, dam. I think maybe you just never even thought about it. Try your other hoof.”

She tries to pick up the book. Nothing happens at all. Vines starts becoming frantic while alternating trying her left and right hooves, getting nowhere. From a distance, Cure notes, it probably looks like she’s trying to stamp out a fire.

Stopping she turns to him with the saddest pony look ever. “How am I going to cook dinner now, Cure?” she whines. Like a switch is flipped she suddenly glares at him again and points a hoof at him. “You’re in so much trouble, mister! Just wait until your sire gets home!”

“Wait…what? You're worried about cooking dinner? I'd be more worried about wiping my… wait a second…” he scowls at her, “you’re messing with me!"

Vines freezes for a second… then busts out laughing, pounding the ground with her foreleg, “Your face! HAHAHA!”

“Okay, fair. I deserved that one,” he waves at the book, “Just to be clear, you CAN pick it up, right?”

Giggling a few more times, she sits up on her haunches and picks up the book, all while giving him her biggest shit eating grin.

“Whew. Good. Between blood grass and breaking my dam dad and mom would have killed me. Okay, so… now that you’ve got THAT out of your system,” she giggles again, “... I hope… tell me what you’re picturing.”

“I just imagine a bubble wrapping around the book and it being held in place by that.”

“So do you get sensation in this bubble? Can you feel through it?”

“Not really. I can tell when I’m touching something and how much force I’m using.”

“Weird… that’s exactly how I’ve always done it too. I’m curious if we can do more, though. One sec…” Cure picks up another piece of grass and stares at it intently. He hears a low “you’d better not be…” from Vines, but he rolls his eyes as he ignores her, imagining a bubble around his hoof. Taking a peek with his mark he observes everything going on in his hoof. There’s… not really anything special at all. There’s no glands, no special cells, nothing that strikes him as out of place. There’s just a field projecting an inch or so off his hoof in a bubble. The frog of his hoof has thicker skin than elsewhere, obviously, but otherwise is completely unremarkable. The hoof itself is… just a hoof.

“I don’t see anything special about our hooves, dam. There’s no physical structure in the hoof that I can determine is responsible for this telekinetic field. I noticed ponies carrying stuff on their backs at the store today. Nopony dropped a single thing.”

“Okay… it’s just good balance. You'll get there.”

Stopping himself just shy of saying something, instead Cure grabs his notebook. “Do you mind doing a quick speed test, dam? I want to see how fast you can run for a short distance and just how good your balance is.”

“Umm, okay.” The abrupt subject change throws her off. “I’m not much of a runner, though.”

“That’s something we’re going to work on as a family, if you are all up for it.”

“Oh. Poo.”

“Now, now, dam,” he gently chides, “You want to be around to see all the grandfoals I’m going to give you some day, right? Gotta take good care of yourself.”

“You just said you can make me thin and healthy though,” she says pouting.

“Yeah, I also didn’t say that what we are going to work on as a family is going to be difficult at all. I think we’ll have fun. Exercising sucks when you’re not seeing the results. Trust me, you’ll see results.”

Pout vanquished, Vines thinks for a second and smiles bright. “Sounds good son! So… what do you want me to do?”

“Put this on your back and don’t drop it.” He hoofs her his notebook. She takes it and tosses it right behind her withers like nothing. “Okay, now this is just a quick test, so minimal distance involved. I want you to start at the tree,” he points to the maple tree they're standing by, “then run to the garden and do a loop around it… try your best to get to full speed for at least a few seconds, then run past the tree and stop, okay?”

“Okay. It’s been a minute since I actually ran. No making fun!” she points a hoof accusingly.

“Nope, no joking around or anything. This is a serious test, dam. Take off whenever you’re ready. Remember; try to get to full speed, make a nice, loop around the garden, come back, run past the tree. Okay?”

“Got it.” She assumes a runner’s squat, which actually looks remarkably like how a human would, just her rear legs are almost fully bent like she’s sitting on her haunches. “Give me a three count, Cure.”

He rolls his eyes but complies. “Three. Two. One. GO!”

HOLY SHIT! She’s gotta be subconsciously channeling magic. She just went from like zero to twenty in about two body lengths. Ponies are bullshit.

Getting up to a speed that beggars belief, Vines zips around the garden, loops back, and runs towards the tree. Before Cure even has a moment to think she’s slamming on the brakes and skids to a stop a few body lengths past him. He notices a few things right away. First, she’s not breathing hard at all… in fact, she’s barely breathing faster than normal. Second, he glances back and forth at the garden a few times to be sure, but she just ran about two hundred feet in less than eight seconds. From a standstill. With a turn. He doesn’t do the math, but that sounds like an olympic athlete off the top of his head. Third, the notebook is still on her back. It hasn’t even moved, at all. It’s still laying at the same angle that it was when she went from zero to twenty mph in about a second.

“That… was impressive. Did you ever run, like in a competition, or is that what an average adult earth pony can do?”

“No, I didn’t play sports growing up. That’s probably about normal. Your sire is definitely a bit quicker though.”

Cure takes a breath to ask if they had run to stay in shape or something, but the bright red hue of her ears and flick of her tail makes him pause with the question not quite escaping his lips.

“Be that as it may,” he starts, shaking his head to push the thoughts away, “look over your withers at the notebook.”

Vines twists around and looks at the book, then turns back to Cure and shrugs. “Like I said, good balance.”

“Dam… you took off like a shot arrow, ran in a loop, and stopped on a bit. That book didn’t move at all the entire time. It’s still turned the same as when you were hunched over ready to take off. I know, I checked its position when you were hunched low for your takeoff.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, you’re subconsciously holding stuff on your back.” He pauses, “I was going to suddenly yell for you to stop to, ya know, surprise you and see if the book stayed on, but when you shot off like that I knew there was no point… you had already proved my theory. Here, take a seat, catch your breath, and watch… I hadn’t thought of this before. Dunno why,” he pauses to scratch at his chin, “I guess the whole running thing wasn’t really necessary. My bad,” he shrugs.

Vines sits on her haunches and watches Cure. He picks up his pencil in his hoof, holds it straight out, then scrunches his muzzle in concentration. For a minute or so nothing happens. Finally the pencil slowly moves over the edge of his hoof. It pauses there for a moment, then rotates and starts moving up his leg, which is still being held out horizontally. As it moves up his withers he puts his right hoof down and holds his left leg out. The pencil crawls over his withers, down his left leg, and into his hoof, where he grabs it and holds it up to show her.

Vines does the only thing she can think to do. She claps her hooves. “Ooh. Neat trick!”

Cure looks at her for a second before scowling. “I’m not falling for the whole playing dumb thing again.”

She pouts at him. Bottom lip sticking out and all.

“I swear… silly ponies. Ugh.” Cure sighs. “Okay, so, we have a telekinetic field around us, or at least we can, and it doesn’t just extend from our hooves. I already established that we can control the direction. Force…” Cure points his hoof at the tree. The pencil launches down his leg and hits the tree, bouncing off and landing on the grass.

“What was that?” Vines asks.

“I just threw the pencil.”

“Your leg didn’t move.”

“You still have my notebook on your back. While sitting almost straight up,” he replies.

Vines’ eyes widen and a “plot” noise is heard behind her. Cure just facehoofs keeps it there while holding the other hoof out in a beckoning motion. She reaches behind herself, picks up the notebook, and smiles at him as she hoofs it over.

“I did it with my field. It didn’t go very fast. I wonder if that can be trained up. I need to get some marbles or rocks or something. Rocks would be better, like slightly larger than gravel.”

“We could just buy a bag of stones at the store if you need a lot. Or dig a bit and you’ll end up with a few rocks here and there. We have good soil around here, but we’ll probably still find some when we’re working on the garden this weekend.”

“That’ll work for now. I’d want a few dozen in different sizes and weights if possible, though. I bet that’s just another thing you can train up.”

“Why would you want to?” she asks.

“Who knows, it may be useful to run up a tree or something. Climb a wall, deflect a thrown object, who knows.”

“You can’t walk up a wall…” she says slowly, “it’s not strong enough.” She ponders for a moment before mumbling, “I think.”

“That’s why you train it.” Cure walks over to the tree and presses his hoof against it. Mentally grabbing as hard as he can he leans pulls away. At first he’s latched on, but once he tries he can pretty easily break the field. He tries again, this time with both front hooves at shoulder width apart. He leans against the tree, then visualizes the two bonding all the way down to the atomic level. He pictures the keratin in his hooves being absolutely fused with the wood and slowly leans back. It takes a bit more force, but he’s still able to pull himself free. He tries again, and instead of putting his hooves at chest height, puts them as high up on the tree as he can reach while standing on his back hooves. This time instead of trying to pull away, he imagines himself being pulled up. He can feel the weight on his forelegs and there’s a decrease in weight on his back legs, but he still can’t quite pull himself off the ground before they come loose.

“Would you mind spotting me?”

“What?”

“I want to see if I can latch onto the tree. Can you kind of hold me up so I can put all four hooves on and see if I can stick?”

“Umm… okay.” Vines moves over, sits on her haunches, wraps her forelegs around her son, and lifts him so he’s facing the tree. “I’m going to have to put a little weight on you, sweetie, so I don’t fall face-first into the tree.”

“That’s fine, dam, I’m going to be focusing. Do me a favor and, when I say okay slowly let me take on my own weight. Maybe put one hoof against the tree as you let go so you can balance yourself?” he suggests.

With a small amount of his dam’s weight on his back for balance and her right foreleg wrapped around his barrel, Cure finds himself pressed against the tree. “Okay, now don’t tell me when you’re letting me take my own weight on. Just gradually cut back how much you’re holding up so that I am slowly taking on my own weight, but don’t say anything. I’m going to be focusing.”

Now with all four hooves pressed against the tree, Cure focuses on anchoring himself again. He feels his dam slowly release his weight, but isn’t paying attention to that. Instead, all focus is directed towards his hooves. Not opening an eye at all and not paying attention to anything else, he softly asks, “Are you holding me?”

“Umm… no. You’re just standing on the tree. How are you standing on the tree, sweetie?”

Cure slowly opens his eyes, all the while maintaining his focus. As soon as he’s able to see he falls right off the tree and lands on his rear with a squawk.

Vines looks down at him with a strained smile, raises an eyebrow, and barely holding in a laugh, asks, “Are you ok, sweetie?”

“Peachy.” he flatly replies. “Good spotting, dam.”

Smiling brightly at her son, Vines replies, “Thanks, son!” She pauses, looking him over with a serious expression for a second, “You’re not hurt are you? You only fell a couple hooves.”

“No, I barely weigh anything, so I’m fine. My butt broke my fall.”

“That’s good,” she nods.

“Uh huh. Well, I don’t know what I weigh, exactly.” Pausing, he looks at Vines for a moment.

She looks back.

“Umm, dam.”

She quickly answers his unasked question. “You weigh about fifty kilograms, maybe a little less.”

“I was going to ask how much you weigh, actually,” he says while waving at her.

“You weigh about fifty kilograms, maybe less,” She says in a clipped response.

“Got it,” he says. After a few moments of quiet he looks at her. She looks back. He stares for another moment, then scowls, “Really, dam? Weight? That’s where we draw the line? I can accidentally see all of dad’s business and it’s laughed off, but you’re too embarrassed to tell me how much you weigh? What… are you like two hundred kilograms?” He immediately has to duck under her hoof, even though she clearly wasn’t trying to actually hit him.

“I’ll have you know I’ve never weighed over a hundred and sixty kilograms in my entire life, little mister!”

Cure looks her up and down slowly, from her hooves to the top of her head and back. Then he leans slightly to the side and slowly looks her over again from front to back. The entire time her scowl is deepening. Finally, he stops and looks at her right in the eyes and slowly raises a single eyebrow.

“Uhhh… huhhhh… riiiiiight.” *cough*

“Colt…”

“So, one six zero kg,” he says, then mutters “roughly” under his breath, “ and I weigh a little under fifty. Well, I don’t think I am going to try holding you against the tree for you to try standing on it…”

“Probably for the best.”

“... but I guess for now we can estimate my … adhesion strength?... to be about thirteen KG per hoof.” He stops. “Actually, probably a bit more than that given my body’s distance from the tree would have acted as a lever.” He sighs again. “I should have laid flat against the tree. More surface area, less leverage against me. I could have just basically hugged it until I got situated then crawled up and wouldn’t have needed you to hold me at all.”

“You can always ask for a hug, honey. You don’t have to come up with overly complicated experiments just to get your dam to hug you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He pauses. Thinking for a moment he looks at his dam, gives her the puppy dog eyes, and spreads his forelegs wide. She smiles beautifully at him, lifts him up, and gives him a big hug and a smooch between the ears, then sets him down. He continues, “I think there’s just so many ideas floating through my head that I think of something, then come up with an immediate way to test it and just roll with that before thinking of a better way. I can’t help but wonder if it’s the whole child brain thing. Kids aren’t the best at planning, after all, and memories or not I am still a little colt.”

Cure finds himself leaning into his dam’s comforting hoof on his withers. Seconds later he’s leaning against her in a side-hug.

“It just occurred to me that we’re heavy.”

“Thanks, son.”

“Not what I mean. What I mean is that, compared to a human, we’re waaaay heavier. We must have way, way more muscle mass. I guess I should have realized when I was scanning dad and myself. I was just focusing on specific things and never just said, “Hey how much muscle is here?” even though I did note how much bigger our lungs are than a human’s. It makes me wonder if wood is different on this planet.” He stops and stares at the tree for a moment. “It looks like a normal maple tree to me. Could the ambient magic levels have made trees more sturdy somehow? My bedframe is only a little thicker than the one Cyndi and I slept in and, between the two of us, we weighed… almost exactly what you do, actually.”

He pauses to hold up his hooves in surrender at her glare. “It’s true. Humans are typically one and a half to a little under two meters tall… but they’re strength comes in tool use, not raw power. In my prime I was pretty far above average for a human and the most I could ever deadlift, which is a specific kind of lifting exercise where you mostly use legs and only go waist high, was about two hundred kg. Ponies are just a lot heavier than humans. We probably needed the muscle at one point… you know, an evolutionary thing from before we could grip stuff with our hooves. Raw power instead of fine manipulation. We just got to keep both somehow.”

Cure writes a few notes down, reminding himself to get a physics book and pay attention to the construction of the house, stairs in particular when he gets home. If his dam weighs about three hundred and fifty pounds then his sire could easily be pushing four hundred. There’s just no way a normal bed could stand up to over a half ton of ponies rolling around in it. Hell, his sire should punch straight through the steps… probably. Quadrupedal motion does spread the weight a bit.

“I’m going to work off the assumption that gravity is roughly the same here as on Earth. We’re about the same size and weight roughly as much as a pony does on Earth. At least, some breeds I think. I never had one. I don’t have a way of checking, either. Have you ever heard of nine point eight meters per second squared?” he asks.

Vines shakes her head in confusion. “It’s so weird to hear you talk out loud about ponies like that.”

“Think of them as animals. It’s what they are. I can call them something else if you want me to. Anyhow, that is the acceleration of an object due to gravity in an atmosphere… which I’m going to, again, have to assume is the same as Earth if I ever try to put hard numbers to any of this mess. Should have gotten a physics book earlier… so many assumptions.”

“I’ve never heard gravity’s pull measured before… but I never had a physics class either.”

“Well, different body so I can’t be sure, but I’ve not noticed any obvious gravity shenanigans other than what flyers do, and I’m not sure if that’s gravity, weight, or some form of air manipulation.” Pausing for a moment, he looks around. “Meh, moving on.” Moving to the base of the tree, Cure looks around in the grass for a moment. Finding what he’s looking for, he picks up a twig just a bit bigger than his hoof and holds it out. He focuses on the two ends of the stick and tries to pull the ends together. It works, the twig bows outwards and snaps as he pinches the ends together, but the force involved is not impressive at all, just barely enough to break the small twig.

Next, he grabs a larger stick about half his body length. He does the pencil trick to hold it to his side and focuses. Holding the two ends, he once again bends them together, but instead of having the bend go outwards away from his body he forces it upwards towards his back while putting pressure on the bend. With more surface area he’s able to easily snap the stick. Repeating the performance with smaller pieces he breaks the stick pieces into half twice more before he can’t go further.

“That… was different.” Vines comments.

“I know, right? Who needs a horn anyhow?” He smiles back at her. Picking up another stick, Cure holds it in his hoof. He imagines his TK field moving down the stick and enveloping it. It… doesn’t work at all. He can extend it a few inches from his body and that’s about it. Answering his own question, he explains, “Well, apparently anypony that wants to use TK without touching something, that’s who. I couldn’t extend my field down the branch, so I guess projecting it doesn’t work. At least, not while using some random stick as a medium. Kind of makes me wonder exactly how a horn works. Hey dam?”

“Hmm?”

“Think we can go foalnap Mr. Binder? I need to borrow his horn to test stuff out.”

“If you’re good, maybe when we go to turn the books back in, honey.”

“Okay. Cool.” Cure looks around a bit to see what materials he has available. “So… I’m curious whether or not I can use the TK field on something in a container, without using it on the container itself. That one may have to wait until we go inside. I’ve never really paid attention while you or Title cook… Do we have a whisk?”

Vines is, once again, bewildered at the sudden apparent subject change. “A whisk?” she asks. “Yes. Your mom used it while making your breakfast bread.”

“French Toast.”

“It wasn’t toasted. It was pan-fried.”

“Argh! Whatever. Watch.” Cure holds out his pencil again while Vines pays attention. Slowly, at first, the pencil begins twirling. As the seconds tick by, the speed increases to the point where, while it’s not a blur or anything, the pencil is spinning faster than he could ever hope to do with fingers. After a few seconds of spinning Cure quickly slows, then stops the pencil and looks at Vines expectantly.

Thinking for a second she hesitantly ask, “So… we can quickly rotate things in our field like a whisk without actually moving our foreleg at all.”

“No. Well, yes, we can, but we may not need to. You use the whisk because it’s faster, easier, and cleaner than using your hoof, but why not just stir or mix with your TK field directly? Hold the mixing bowl with your hooves and extend your field through to the batter, then mix away. Maybe we can make some cookies to try it out. The batter gets pretty dense as you add flour but starts off runny when it’s just the liquid ingredients at the start, so we’ll get a variety of thicknesses.”

“That sounds like a good experiment, son,” she says, smiling at the thought.

“Okay, I think… I only have one other thing on my list of TK tests to try out. I could use a hoof here, too.”

“Okay! What do you want me to do?”

Cure stands in front of his dam and holds his right hoof out to her. “We’ve established that we can pull and move things laterally, now I just want to get some data about pushing. I know we can do it, just kind of dotting i’s and crossing t’s at this point. Put your hoof against mine and use your field to push mine away.”

Vines holds her hoof up and taps it to her son’s. She imagines the bubble growing out of her hoof and pushing his hoof away.

Cure feels the pushing sensation. He tries countering it by pulling her hoof towards him, but it doesn’t seem to help. “Your TK field appears to be stronger than mine. Maybe when mom and dad get home we can see if it's based on anything physical like strength or if it’s just that you’re an adult and it’s based on physical maturity or something. Can you push less hard? I want to see if we can estimate relative strength.”

“Sure thing, sweetie.”

“Very slowly push less until we find the point where we kind of even out, okay?”

Cure continues trying to push into her field, but makes no progress for about a minute. Suddenly, her field gives out completely and they hoof-bump each other.

“I couldn’t really push less… you only got through when I stopped completely,” she answers his unasked question.

“Ah… I bet your TK field extends further than mine. You basically out-range me, so I couldn’t grab your hoof because mine never got close enough for my field to grab on. Okay, so… implications.”

“They don’t cancel each other out?” Vines ask-answers.

“They don’t, do they? Or they didn’t. That’s odd, I would expect them to. They’re opposing forces. They should.”

“We weren’t both pushing, though. You were pulling, but you had nothing to pull on. Did you try to grab my field?” she asks.

“That’s… a really good point. I didn’t even think to try to cancel out your field, I was just trying to grab your hoof. Try again?”

Vines holds out her hoof. “How hard should I push?”

“Start off at full again, if I can touch it I would assume having it at max power would make it the most obvious.”

Pushing again with all her might, Vines waits while Cure holds his hoof out and starts testing their interaction.

“Okay, are you visualizing my field? I am yours and, now that I am, I can definitely “feel” it.”

“Yep, I’m going to wrap my field around yours a little and give it a squeeze instead of just pushing, okay?”

“Sure dam, I’ll let you know what I feel.” He waits while she does so. With her hoof being twice the size of his it’s easy for her to surround his hoof and his TK field with her own and, gently, squeeze his tighter. “Okay, I can feel that. It’s an odd sensation because I can tell you’re applying pressure, but there’s no pain like you’d associate with your leg getting squeezed. Well, there’s not any nerves there, so it makes sense. Can you squeeze tighter so you’re pushing against my fur? You know, without squishing me, preferably?”

“I’ll try.”

Cure can feel his TK field getting squeezed down until, after a few seconds, the pressure is on his leg itself. “Okay, stop there. You’ve completely neutralized my TK field and I can feel a little pressure on my leg. Was that difficult for you at all?”

“Not really, no. I had to squeeze a lot harder but I still feel like that was maybe only about half as hard as I could, give or take.”

“Hmm… I’d like to see just how hard you can go but I don’t want to ask you to potentially hurt me and I’d rather not risk the injury, even if I could probably heal it in a moment anyhow.”

Seeing how visibly uncomfortable with the suggestion Vines is he immediately dismisses the idea. Deed will probably be less squeamish about it, but that doesn’t help right now either way.

Cure waves the idea away with a foreleg. “Yeah, let’s skip that. We don’t have a way to measure grip strength right now anyhow, aside from my shoddy tree experiment. I’d like to get a set of weights and have all of us try to lift objects purely with our TK field both to measure output and to see if it can be trained up through repetition.” Thinking out loud, Cure continues, “It seems strange that I can see other magical auras but I can’t see this TK field at all. Different “frequency” or whatever? Or maybe it’s a completely different mechanic from whatever “magic” is… which, again, would be the same as a different frequency energy field, I suppose.” Sitting and tapping his chin for a moment, he finally says, “Well I think that’s all I have for experiments. Is there anything you can think of?”

“We didn’t test this one on your list,” she says, pointing her hoof to the Shaping bullet.

“Ah… duh. Can we use the field to emulate tools? I would have paid good money to always have a knife and screwdriver on hand. In fact, I did… several times. Those stupid multitools always disappear. I swear Josh was taking them.” Grabbing a leaf off the ground he holds it in his field and focuses. Imagining a hole punch poking a circle in the leaf doesn’t work, it just pushes a hole in the leaf. Visualizing a knife cutting a slice off doesn’t work either. The leaf tears, but it’s not a razor-sharp edge cutting it. “Hmm. It’s almost like it may be possible, but I don’t have the super fine control needed. Ultimately what I feel like I’m doing is just very, very fine manipulation and either I lack the practice or the control or whatever is missing in order to adjust the field in a way to do what I’m trying to. That’s probably a good thing. If bad ponies learned how to do that they’d basically be able to use their TK field like a weapon. A pretty scary weapon when you think about it.”

Vines nods and says, “That would be a little concerning, wouldn’t it? I like to think the best of ponies but somepony would definitely do something bad with that if they could. From seeing your ideas with cutie marks, though, I bet somepony out there can do that if they have a mark for it.”

“Yeah, that’s a thought. I’m glad nopony covers those up and it’s socially acceptable to look at them. Still, that’s something to keep in mind if you ever see somepony with a bladed weapon cutie mark or maybe even a cooking knife or something. Hmm. Any other ideas, dam?”

“What about heating or cooling something?” she asks.

“Huh, I didn’t have that on my list. That’s a really good idea. It might be easier to test at home, though. I assume we do have thermometers at home, right?”

“Of course, sweetie. That’s all I can think of, though.”

“Okay, let me add some notes in and then, how ‘bout we have some snuggle-read time before mom and dad get home?” he asks, smiling up at her.

“That sounds wonderful to me!”

Author's Note

Pacing will continue to be very slow until we get into a routine. This is intentional. Also, I'm expecting a lot of "seriously? wtf?" complaints. Here. 100% super honest, I see a mechanic and I can only think, "How can I turn that up to 11 and abuse the hell out of it?". This is the result. I'm not opposed to exploring other suggestions too, as long as they're reasonable.

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