“The Everfree, huh? You know last time me and you went on an outing here the world nearly ended. Technically the first time we were in these woods together the world was on the verge of ending then as well. Things don’t tend to go very well when we end up here, Moonie.”

“You know…I had never really realized it until now. Should we go somewhere else?” She actually looks pretty concerned.

“Nah I mean it is factually correct, but I was just fuckin around. I doubt anything will happen. What are we doing here?”

Nightmare just tilts her head signaling for me to follow her. We stumble upon a lake I’ve never seen before. Considering this is the Everfree the water is shockingly clear. “Has this place always been here?”

“No. It used to be a swamp, but mysteriously it was cleansed at some point.” When she says that I actually spot a large pile of bones that I recognize as the Hydra me and Luna killed out here forever ago.

“Alter Form.” My eyes instantly widen as I turn to my left to look at the voice who just said that. I find myself unable to breathe as an absolute stunner of a woman is in front of me. Her pale skin tone matches mine, likely a result of my form being the only reference she has. Cyan draconic eyes stare back at me.

Long hair the color of a deep purple falls over her shoulder and hangs down to her waist. The purple has silvery dots that remind me of stars all over. She seems to still have her horn, though. If she’s using the same Alter Form as me, which I think she is, then she can only assume a form with a maximum of two limbs less. She’s about a head taller than me and her face isn’t what I would describe as cute.

It’s hot. She exudes the presence of someone that stands above the rest. There’s a tight black strapless dress clinging to her chest that reaches down to almost her knee on one leg, but on the other leg stops just after her hip. She looks so similar yet so different than how I imagined her in that make believe dream I had during the Discord incident.

“Oh, I didn’t realize how short you are, dear consort.”

“I’ll have you know I am perfectly average for a human. You’re just tall.”

She closes the distance and forces me to lean my head back to maintain eye contact. “Does this perhaps hurt your pride as a man? I could make myself shorter if so, I wasn’t really considering my height when I configured this form so I suppose this is what my height would actually be if I was human.” Her tone is genuine, so I don’t feel mocked when she asks about my pride.

“Don’t you dare. Stay just like that.”

In response I feel a hand run through my hair before gently scratching my head. It takes everything I have to not melt on the spot. I haven’t been on the receiving end of this type of treatment my entire time here, so I plan to enjoy it for as long as she’s willing. Apparently my inner thoughts are written plainly on my face because Moonie comments on it.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your eyes flutter closed like that. You must be quite content right now.”

“...Very much so.” I’m unable to hide how suddenly tired I am from my voice.

“Oh don’t fall asleep on me yet. We’re only just getting started.” She snaps her fingers and a small square table appears with two simple wooden chairs. “Take a seat.”

As I sit down she snaps again and a tablecloth falls out of the air, covering the table. Then two plates appear and my eyes widen as I realize what’s on them. “Isn’t this illegal?”

“Where do you think I was all day? I got these fresh from the capital of the griffon lands. It might still be against the law to consume them here, but the cows were already dead and were going to die no matter what I did. So…I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.” I look at the sirloin sitting in front of me with the slightest bit of hesitation.

Inside of me there are two wolves. One questions the morality of eating a creature that could once talk and think like myself. The other really hasn’t had steak in a long time and would like to enjoy one again. I decide to cut into it, and when I see that it’s been cooked medium rare the last of my resistance crumbles. I instantly pop the piece of beef into my mouth and let an involuntary groan of satisfaction.

“This is amazing. I can’t believe you went so far out of your way to get all of this setup for us…for me?” Gazing at the food again before glancing over to the lake, staring at the reflection of the full moon on the water.

“Please, I’d go this far just to thank you for saving my life and freeing me. It’s still hard to believe I’m here. Really here with my own form and my full power. You said you’d free me and in hardly any time at all you made it reality. You should eat though before it gets cold.”

“True. I suppose we’ve got all night to talk.” We both start eating in earnest and the woman keeps catching me staring at her as she starts to get more and more embarrassed.

“Why do you insist on continuing to stare like that? Nopony wants to be stared at while they eat, it’s embarrassing.”

“If it was an unpleasant sight I don’t think I’d continue to look. Don’t feel obligated to stay in this form or use it more often after tonight by the way. It’s a pleasant surprise but you're perfect regardless of if you have two or four legs.”

“As long as you understand that as well. There’s no obligation for you to assume your old human form just for me. I’m typically quite pleased with how you look.”

It doesn’t take long to finish the meal and we find ourselves just enjoying each other's company. “Could I get your take on a certain topic I had an argument about earlier?” She nods and I briefly explain the argument I had with Luna about curing someone's blindness in the center of town so others can see it.

“It is very questionable of you as a person to have that as your sole motivator, but if we remove that from the equation and look at it as a transaction or a trade of sorts? Then I would agree with you, as long as you have their consent beforehand I don’t think it’s a problem to do that. The issue isn’t with the transaction though, it’s your mindset. When you say it the way you said it, it sounds like you only want to help creatures for a reward or gain of some sort.”

“Well of course not. I can only do it once per day, but if I could do it more than once then I’d be all over the place just helping everyone I could find. Speaking logically though, as a transaction, this is more than fair the party being cured. In my mind it’s moreso like “I’m already going to do this, why not just do it in a way that benefits me as well?” Is that really so slimy?”

“But if you happened across a pony in the dead of night with nopony around and for some reason if you didn’t cure them right then and there they’d be blind for the rest of their life no matter what. Would you just scoff and continue on your way because nopony is around to witness it?”

I recoil from how insulted I suddenly feel. “Of course not! I just don’t get the big deal, I guess. If I gain more followers then I’ll gain the power to help even more people. Why would I not just try and be efficient while I’m at it? I can help people, which I’m going to do anyways, but I can also do it while accomplishing my other goal of getting more followers. It just makes sense. I don’t think anyone has the right to ignore all of the good being done just because they find the motivation to be selfish. If the reason I wanted it to be seen in public was for some malicious reason like gaining the trust of the people so I can build power and overthrow the kingdom or something. I could see that as something worth judging. But for a vast majority of cases I think good deeds are good no matter why they were done.”

“It’s a true philosophical debacle then, isn’t it? Let me ask you a hypothetical then. If you were terminally ill and somepony walked in and said they could cure you. Then you found out that the pony is just using you for public exposure, would you still allows yourself to be cured?”

“Yes. Everyone is using everyone, Nightmare. It’s naive to think otherwise. Every request I hear I always consider what they stand to gain and as long as it’s nothing evil or heinous I don’t mind if it’s selfish. I don’t even really consider myself as “being used” I’m being offered a benefit and that just so happens to also benefit them. I don’t even have to do anything except be cured. If them being benefited were to also be detrimental to me, then I might have some issues with it. If it’s just a scenario where we both stand to gain something, why would I spit in the face of that offer just because they also gain a benefit? That sounds selfish to me. I’d want anyone who helps me to gain some type of benefit or payment for their trouble. I think most people are like that, that’s why they always try to offer some form of payment to not feel indebted.”

She hums in thought for a while. “I suppose your argument might have some merit to it. You’re right in the sense that whenever somepony does something for me or helps me in some way, I do often think about how I could repay them. You’re suggesting that what you want to do is the same thing as someone offering repayment, but you’d just be skipping the step where one party asks how to repay them and the other party tries to insist they don’t need to do anything.”

I can’t help but sigh. “No I’m not saying that. In that scenario it implies I don’t want repayment. The reason we often say we don’t want repayment is because we think that it’s wrong for us to feel that way. If it’s wrong then why does almost everyone hate receiving charity. Why do we always ask for some way to make things even, yet it’s apparently outlandish for someone to just do something kind because they stand to gain something. The repayment is already baked in, why do people instinctively feel revulsion at that idea? Is it because they want to be the one offering the repayment? I don’t know, but I think it’s silly.”

Nightmare furrows her brow for several seconds. “I…I think I actually agree with you. If someone were to do something for me I would want them to gain something. So why do I dislike the idea of a gift where they already stand to gain something?”

“Because offering that repayment makes you feel like a good person. It’s like being told to do something you’re already doing. You want to stop just because they told you to, it’s not as satisfying now because someone told you to do it. Except in this case you feel robbed because you don’t get to be the good person offering some way to also help them. That’s my theory anyways.”

“That’s dark. I didn’t know you were so…nihilistic.”

“I prefer to think it’s being realistic, but yeah I’ve been called that before. Everything everyone does is for an ulterior motive. I just think it’s silly to try and masquerade that with pointless and repetitive social interactions. “Oh no, after you.” “No after you I insist.” “Oh I’ll pay the bill, it was my idea to come here.” “Noo~ I couldn’t let myself mooch a free meal off of you.” All of those scenarios to me are just people trying to gain some type of benefit. It might be goodwill or a positive impression on a person, or they might just want the benefit of being normal and following the social status quo.”

After taking a sip of water I continue ranting. “I’m not trying to say I’m better than those people, either. I just find all of it to be exhausting. If someone holds the door and wants me to go in first, “yeah sure man thanks”, or if someone wants to pay for my half of the bill? Sure fuck it bro, thanks. I’m still perfectly fine to do something even if I do gain literally nothing for it, but if it’s possible for me to gain some sort of benefit that has no negative impact or effect on anyone else, why is it wrong for me to do so?”

I got a bit more worked up about this than I thought I would. “Sorry, supposed to be a fun date. I’ll just admit that maybe I have a strange way of viewing the world.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry. I haven’t had to think this much outside of a fight in centuries. I do think I’ve changed my mind as well. It’s not wrong for you to think like that, but I will caveat that. If you ask somepony to do the healing in public and they say no…”

“I’d heal them anyways. Of course.”

She nods and gives me a smile. “You do realize at some point you’re going to have an entirely different problem, right?”

“Hm?”

“You’re going to be stretched too thin. If you have this mindset of helping anypony you can, you're going to find yourself weighed down by the fact that in some cases you choose to help one pony and another pony loses their life without you. Ponies will turn on you as they think you’ve personally slighted them by choosing to help somepony else over them if they live, and if they don’t live you’ll have to continue on wondering if you made the right choice.”

“So what? I just shouldn’t help anyone because I’m unable to help everyone? For my own mental health you’re probably right. You’re also right that those same followers would turn on me at the drop of a hat if I’m constantly bending over backwards to help everyone the instant I’m unable to help them personally. Like when a problem sibling gets away with everything with a minor scolding and you resent them for doing whatever they want, so you do the same thing as them. But, since the expectation for you is to be the good kid, your punishment for the same offense is much more severe than the problem sibling.”

Nightmare gives me a single nod and gives me a sympathetic look. “I worry what will happen when that day comes.”

“I’ll just have to be everywhere at once.” She gives me a confused look. “I’ll just bless thousands of clerics, and scatter them across the continent. If I can’t be somewhere cause I’m in the middle of solving a crisis I can dispatch my followers to act as an extension of myself.”

“So you’ll just run yourself ragged and leave your devout followers to pick up the slack?”

“Pretty much, yeah. I think that’s better than being an indifferent God who sits in their own pocket dimension and observes everything wrong with the world while doing nothing to help or fix it. In that scenario she’s still leaving her devout followers to pick up the slack. The only difference is that there’s a fuck ton more slack to be picked up than in my scenario. I want to earn their worship. Not just sit in a cloud and offer lip service with a couple of miracles every hundred years or so.”

“Won’t that leave them too complacent? The mortals might get lazy and spoiled, sitting back and doing nothing in the face of any type of inconvenience or evil because they know you and your followers will fix it.”

I click my tongue in annoyance. “Tch, yeah. That probably would happen after a long enough period of time. Probably after two or three generations when the only people alive are people that have only ever known of a world where I solve their problems. This is annoying. There has to be an acceptable middle ground. Doing NOTHING cannot possibly be the right answer. I refuse to accept that.”

The beautiful woman looks at me with eyes full of pity. “I hope you’re right, but I worry about what the future will hold for you. It’s going to be a hard path to go down, Lucas.”

“Guess I’m glad I’ve got some really nice marefriends to be there for me.”

Please…please help me. I don’t wanna die!

“Be right back.” I don’t even get a chance to hear her response before popping out of existence and reappearing in some dark tunnel.

Looking down I can see some dark water and that’s when the stench hits me. I’m in the sewer. I hear voices just around the corner and stop to listen. “Your orders are to replace this maid, she works on the night shift at the castle. The queen wants the daily routine of the VIP Target and the Lunar Princess. She also expects information about the true extent of the VIPs capabilities. The rumors circulating seem outlandish, so we need to verify the veracity of the claims. The riskiest part of your mission will be this.”

Using Remote Sense on the follower I’m able to see an extremely small gem get passed from one changeling to the other. “You will need to plant this gem and two others in the bedrooms of both Princesses and the VIP. These cannot be discovered under any circumstances. Every week you’ll extract everything in the gems into this gem and bring it down here when you make your report. If our magic specialist is to be believed this will record and store audio from around itself. You are to take no actions against any of the castle staff, royalty, or the target. After one month of reports we will reevaluate and update your orders.”

I didn’t realize they were this sophisticated with their intelligence gathering. Sentiment has been missing for weeks now, and I’m starting to think this is what happened to the poor therapist as well. I wonder if I ever even met the real doctor. Well, it’s already been two minutes and I’ve got a beautiful woman waiting on me.

Turning the corner I silently leap forward towards the two changelings. One of them has their back to me and I watch as the other one starts to look alarmed and wide eyed. It starts to open its mouth to yell out something, but it’s too late. I've already reached the subordinate. One quick slash of the Moonblade with a level two smite instantly snuffs the bug from existence.

“H-How can this be….how did… how did you find us?!” I just grab it by the horn, lift it into the air, and punch it in the gut. After one minute of muttering incantations I cast Geas on the changeling.

“While staying undisguised, you will go from here straight to the front gate of Canterlot castle and turn yourself into the guards for ponynapping. You will offer no resistance to what happens after that and you will make no attempts to contact the hive or escape the dungeons.”

I watch as the changeling goes limp and its blue eyes seem to lose their color. I drop the changeling on the ground and it starts to walk away from me in robotic fashion. I look down at the maid who looks scared out of her mind. “I can’t teleport anyone else when I teleport, do you want me to carry you out of here? I was going to ask you to accompany the changeling to the castle, and offer me another prayer if something happens. I understand if you’re too shaken up to do that though.”

“N-n-n-n…no. I can do that. Thank you so much.” There’s a deep level of gratitude in her eyes, so I offer her a cast of Cure Wounds for her scrapes and bruises and watch as she catches up to the mind controlled changeling.

Alright, back to Nightmare. Greater Teleport.

“It’s quite rude to just abandon a lady in the middle of your date, you know?” She has a somewhat playful tone, but I can tell she is actually a little annoyed at the situation.

“Sorry, one of the castle maids sent a prayer begging for help, she feared for her life. Rightfully so, she was about to be taken to the changeling hive. Chrysalis apparently wanted the drone to replace the maid and gather a bunch of information about us. It was specifically a maid from the night shift.”

“Wait..what? You were only gone for… no longer than five minutes, though?”

“Yeah I killed the subordinate, took his magic gems, and then placed the changeling that seemed to be in charge under a Geas. He’s turning himself in to the front gate of the castle while being escorted by the maid he tried to kidnap as we speak.” Now she looks moderately impressed.

“Wow, you are efficient. Hopefully this kind of thing doesn’t happen too often though. If we were having a more…intimate moment I think I’d be quite frustrated. It’s matters of life and death though, so I suppose I should be less selfish.”

“No, you'd be totally justified to be annoyed. You didn’t sign up for this, and it’s not really fair to you. That’s another reason why I want to expand my follower base as quickly as possible. That situation could’ve been handled by two or three clerics, easily. They were planning to put these gems into our bedrooms.”

I lay out the three small gems and the slightly larger gem on the table. “These three would’ve sat in the rooms and apparently recorded all of our conversations. Then the drone was told to use this larger gem to extract the information and they were to turn in this larger gem every week when they made a report. You ever heard of magic items that can do that?”

“Nay, but I imagine the concept isn’t too complicated. You could repurpose a Sending spell to just capture the audio whenever it detects speech, but instead of sending it somewhere just store it into the mana of the gem. It’s deceptively simple and brilliant. Can we examine them after tonight, though?”

I give her a sheepish grin. “Right, yeah let’s do that. Sorry, haha. What did you have planned next?”

“Well when I was looking for ideas there was one suggestion that came up a few times, and I figured it was worth checking out. Apparently it’s not done very often at night, so this should be interesting. This time slot was their last one for the evening and it’s the reason why we had to do this so early into the night. We’re going to see the Wonderbolts Air Show.”

With a flash of her horn we’re suddenly standing in a private balcony seat in some stadium. I have to shield my eyes as they adjust to the new level of brightness. They’ve positioned several clouds far up in the sky and seem to have planted very bright gems containing the Light spell into the bottom of the clouds. They’re acting like spotlights illuminating the field of grass in the center of the stadium and all of the air in between. One downside is that suddenly the night sky has far less stars in it.

“I guess that explains how they’re able to do this kind of thing at night. I was wondering how they’d perform air stunts without crashing into each other if they were doing it at night.” I point at the obvious as my eyes finally adjust to the bright lights.

“I’m more surprised by how many ponies are here. It looks like it’s a sold out show…such a stark difference from the nights 1,000 years ago.” Ah there is a slight bit of pain in that voice.

“A good kind of different?” She nods with a soft smile. “So uh are you sure us being in an isolate balcony, of which there are only like 10, where everyone can see us, is a good idea while you’re in that form and I’m in this form? I’m not sure how ponies will react to two more lanky bipedal creatures that look nothing like Ignis.”

Her mouth forms a small “o” before turning a bit sheepish. “I hadn’t considered that. Should we switch back?”

“Up to you, I don’t frankly give a fuck, I was just wondering if you had considered it. I suppose it’s probably for the best that we do revert to our original forms.” Another short nod and suddenly the pair of humans are now a tall elf God and Nightmare Moon. “Another thing I was curious about, how did you figure out how to change your form like me?”

“Luna seemed to just assume you were special and wrote off being able to do any of those abilities herself, but some of these things you described are literally exact descriptions of what Harmony does. That made me think perhaps I can do all of those things as well. So ever since then I’ve done nothing but experimentation. The reason we instinctively feel that we can’t accomplish those things is because our divinity is stored in our celestial bodies. If I take in some of the divinity and don’t immediately convert it into power or mana, but instead circulate it through my mana pool. It’s a bit uncomfortable but I was able to find just the right amount of divinity for it to not actually harm me, it stops at being uncomfortable. Once I figured that out and had the divinity circulating for a while it worked almost the exact same as my horn. In the sense that I just knew what I could do with it. I’ve got some other tricks as well, but I want them to be a surprise so I’m not spoiling it.”

“Well shit, that’s actually super cool. I’m excited to see what else you can do now, especially if it’s different from what I can do. Did you and Luna ever settle your Head Mare disagreement? I know that was ongoing when suddenly we all thought I was going to die. Ever since then you two have gone back to talking to each other.”

“Indeed. All three of us had a meeting and Luna suggested that we just don’t have a head mare.” Hey that was my idea and she told me it was dumb! “Force brought up quite a good point though. Luna is head mare regardless of what happens because you swore your soul and entire being to her in your oath. By default that kinda puts her ahead of us.” That’s quite a bittersweet tone.

“I wouldn’t say she’s ahead of you two. But, I get what you mean. That does kinda make sense, I suppose. When does this thing start?” We teleported here so I assumed it was almost time, but we’ve been sat here for like 10 minutes now.

“It should be soon. Oh! There they are, look up there.” I follow her hoof and sure enough I see six ponies in familiar flight suits dive bombing towards the center of the arena. All six of them are in a single file line until about half way down they do something that’s rather pretty. Aside from the pony in front, they all break formation at the same time and split off into different directions. They also start leaving smoke trails through the sky when they break off, and they all fly in such a way that while looking straight up the smoke forms a circle around the lead pony with a spiral pattern starting from the center until it reaches the outer circle.

I can feel the entire balcony platform start to vibrate from the thunderous applause as they approach closer and closer to the stadium. The five that broke off and formed the circle with the spiral continue to fly outwards and for a second I’m confused. It’s only when they curve back towards the center that I realize they’ve drawn a rose in the sky.

The smoke making up the rose suddenly ignites and for a brief second there’s a beautiful fiery rose in the night sky, until a single pony crashes through the center of it. Spitfire knows how to make an entrance for sure. I think that was her name, anyway. If I recall correctly we actually had a bit of a staredown at the gala but nothing ever came from it. I couldn’t tell if she was actually hostile or if she was just sizing me up to see if I’d be a fun fight.

I’d love to see her think she could put up a decent fight as I am now. I watch as she flies down and hovers in the air in the middle of the stadium at around the height of the middle row of seats. “Fillies and colts, mares and stallions, are you ready to witness the greatest fliers in Equestria?!”

If I thought it was thunderous before it’s nothing compared to now. Apparently ponies are very easy to hype up, I can barely hear myself think. Spitfire continues on and announces the names of the other five Wonderbolts one by one and they all make their own dramatic entrance. As one who also has a flare for dramatics I can appreciate the showmanship.

After that a bunch of hoops and obstacles are brought into the air attached to tiny clouds. That’s not quite what I expected from an air show, but I suppose it’s still entertaining. As we watch the first pony absolutely blitz through the obstacle course I tap Nightmare on the back of her neck.

She doesn’t turn towards me but I can see her eyes glance in my direction in acknowledgement. “You know I’m sure this is impressive and cool, but compared to going toe to toe with ancient dragons and corrupted alicorns I’m not sure if this can really stand up to snuff.”

“It is a bit mundane, isn’t it? I wasn’t going to say anything because it sounds horrible, but I was kinda hoping one of them would crash and liven things up a bit.”

“Yeah that does sound bad. Do you know what else they have planned for this thing? I was expecting to see things like tight formations and performing intense maneuvers while being just inches away from the rest of the other ponies in flight.”

“I’m sure they have that as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if this their warm up exercises and they’ve just turned it into a display.” That’s true. “Do you want to leave?”

“Nah you’re probably right I’ll give 'em like 20 minutes or something, but if this is all then yeah I’m gunna be pretty bored.”

Turns out that exact phrase would be the thing I regret saying most from tonight.

“Woah woah Soarin’ time out!” The last pony flying through comes to a stop and looks at Spitfire confused. “Apparently we got somepony who thinks this is boring. What do you think we should do with ‘em?” I snort as a chorus of boo’s ring out throughout the stadium. Looks like I fucked up.

This Soarin’ fella doesn’t seem to have whatever enchantment is letting us here Spitfire so most of the crowd probably can’t hear him, but me and Nightmare definitely can. “Seriously? It’s been a while since we had one of those. Wanna just have him race you through the course we use as the Final Exam for the maneuvering classes?”

“Well that’s the thing Soarin, this pony can’t fly. In fact it’s not even a pony!” The boo’s turn into a sea of murmurs of confusion.

“You know what, yeah Nightmare let’s get outta here.”

Before Nightmare can respond I get an eyeful of fiery mane. “Woah there, Sir Knight! You can’t just disrespect us like that and then turn tail and run! What right do you have to judge how we fly when you aren’t even capable of it yourself?”

“I wasn’t judging your flying skills, I was just saying that when you’ve been through the shit we’ve been through in the last two months this isn’t really enough to get me excited. I have no doubt it takes a lot of skill and you all have worked hard and trained relentlessly to put together this show. I just don’t think it’s for me. Also, I can totally fly.”

I thought my little response was good enough to defuse the situation, but as soon as I mentioned being able to fly I saw a fire ignite in the mare's eyes. “In that case, if the things you’ve done make this seem mundane then you shouldn’t have a problem doing it yourself, right? I’ll even let you race me.”

The audience makes a bunch of oooo and woah noises and I just pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh. “That’s not a question I need answered. I promise you that you will win. It’d probably take me like five times as long to go through that course.”

“Wow, and here I thought the “God of Canterlot” would have the spine to back up his words.” Spitfire flies a bit to my left and addresses my date. “So tall, dark, and mysterious what do you think about your stallion backing down from my challenge? Why don’t you come watch from the Captain’s cloud? Best seat in the house.”

Alright well, I tried. Instantly the wonderbolt goes quiet and her eyes widen in shock. This entire section of the stadium falls silent as my Divine Aura expands outwards to its full 40ft. I hear Nightmare speak up next to me and she sounds cool as a cucumber. “You made the wrong choice, little pegasus. Every single member of this herd has a mean streak of jealousy, so you really should not have done that.”

The pegasus slowly looks over at me to find me glaring daggers at her. “Setup the fucking course. I’m going to destroy you.”

She flies away without a word and I watch as the hoops and poles are rearranged into a much tighter setup. The thing is packed with tight angled turns one after another with obstacles forcing you to weave through and around things in the way as you make the turns.

“You know I’d never agree to something like that right? We don’t have to do this, Ignis. We can just leave.” Nightmare tries to get me to back out of this.

“Absolutely not. You believe in me right?”

“So you’re telling me you wouldn’t lose in a one on one race through an intense obstacle course against the captain of the most rigorous and prestigious flight squad in Equestria?” I can’t help but smirk as she sets me up to say the iconic line.

“Nah, I’d win.”

I alter my form and give myself a pair of wings and watch as the system updates to add a flying speed of 60ft to my status. Luckily there is some very specific wording in the description of Alter Form that is going to work out for me here. It says if the new form has wings I gain a flying speed equal to my walking speed.

When you use something like the Fly spell or a potion of flight you usually just get a flat flying speed of 30 or 60ft. In cases like that it’s basically impossible to use any spells or buffs to increase your speed. However, because this says I gain a flying speed equal to my walking speed, all of my buffs will apply here.

We line up at the start of the course and Spitfire still hasn’t said a single word to me since I flared my Aura on accident earlier. Using my sixth level spell slot I upcast Ashardalon’s Stride using my Mystic Arcanum feature so I can cast it silently and without hand movements. That adds 35ft to my speed. Then I activate my normal, plain ole Bladesong and that adds another 10ft. Lastly I touch the handle of the Moonblade and activate the Haste spell stored inside.

My flying speed is 105ft as Haste activates and doubles it to 210ft. Then right as we start I manually use the Dash action. That means I can cover 420ft in 6 seconds. That’s close to 50mph. That won’t be enough though, will it? Wait, I’m hasted so I have two actions. I can Dash again.

That brings it up to 630ft. A little faster than 70mph. That’ll have to be enough.

“GO!”

With one mighty flap of my wings I’m instantly up to top speed. Time slows down as I tuck my wings in and shoot through the first hoop. Spitfire is only inches ahead of me and I can see the shock on her face as she glances back.

As soon as I go through the hoop I have to immediately turn 90 degrees and start flying straight up. I’ve never had to maneuver like this the few times I’ve flown so it’s a bit sloppy and costs me even more distance as Spitfire surges ahead.

While flying straight up there’s a series of poles in a straight line that require you to go from left to right as you zigzag around them and continue up. After the first weave I’m delighted to find that I can kick outwards with a decent amount of force as I tuck in one wing to start turning and it’ll make me snap in that direction instead of slowly turning.

Acrobatics Check

11 + 12 = 23.

Everything blurs and I feel myself starting to get dizzy as I rapidly shift from left to right to left over and over again. When I exit the poles I can’t help but smirk as I notice the distance between me and Spitfire has closed again. We go through another hoop and turn 90 degrees so that we’re now flying horizontal again.

The next obstacles look like randomly placed hoops that come in pairs of two. I’m a bit confused when I see the first pair until I watch Spitfire go through the hoop on the right before snap turning 180 degrees and flying through the hoop on the left. I have to do multiple rapid u-turns in a row?! This is ridiculous!

I just barely manage to contort myself through the several u-turns and while the gap between me and Spitfire didn’t grow it also didn’t shrink. After the u-turns however the cheering and booing crowd seems to have gone quiet. They must be surprised that I’m able to keep up even this much. Hell I’m surprised I can keep up this much. I’m putting all of my focus on maintaining my top speed, but I can almost guarantee this isn’t her actual top speed. This is just her top speed while turning like this. If we were racing in a straight line I’d be doomed for sure.

The next obstacle is around 12 hoops in a row that are moving left and right at insane speeds. I’ll have to calculate its trajectory and aim for where it’s going to be, I’m not fast enough to follow it and react. I manage to go through the first hoop but the next hoop is off to the far right and close enough that I essentially need to do a 90 degree turn followed by a 90 degree turn through the hoop moving at unreasonable speeds.

It’s at this moment I remember my attempt to fly like Iron Man and using mana for propulsion. It’s unstable as hell but I don’t need all four limbs this time, I can just point my palm in the opposite direction and use it to force me in the direction I want to go.

Activating my divinity in bursts for a fraction of a second to assist in turning ends up being the right call. By the eighth hoop I’ve completely caught up to Spitfire, and I’m faster than her. The only problem is that the hoops are too small for both of us to go through at the same time, so I’ll need to pass her after the last hoop. As we approach the 12th hoop I can see the finish line and I realize whatever obstacle is after these hoops is the last one.

As soon as I’m half way through the last hoop I tilt my body just a bit and activate my magic propulsion on both hands to instantly accelerate and shoot past the Wonderbolt. I hear her gasp and then yelp in surprise as I blow past her and my eyes widen as I realize the last obstacle is multiple sets of hoops three wide.

I have to do two high speed u-turns and then keep going in the original direction into the next set of three. I have to do this four times and then it’s the finish line. Time slows down as I go through the first hoop and I’m able to use my kicking motion while contorting my body to do the first u-turn, but after going through the next hoop the position of my body is way too fucked up to do the same motion to complete another u-turn.

So I activate the thrusters again and time slows down as I calculate the entire rest of my path.

Acrobatics Check

14 + 12 = 26.

I can barely even see as I get whiplash from performing several high speed u-turns back to back to back, and I’m so dizzy that I don’t even notice the finish line slamming into my face.

As soon as my vision is blocked the crowd goes crazy with applause, but I start to panic as I can’t see and I’m dizzy. I don’t know which way is up or down. The next thing I know my wings are locked up, and I realize the finish line wrapped around my wings somehow and has tied them together.

Completely out of options my brain short circuits as I start to lose my forward momentum and drop out of the sky. I could activate my propulsion, but I’m not even sure if it'll launch me up or down. I could use telekinesis to try and get this paper unwrapped but I don’t even know if I have enough time. Think. Think. Think! My haste runs out and I can feel my entire body lock up, so now I couldn’t do anything even if I figured something out. This is gunna hurt isn’t it?

That’s when I feel myself come to a stop and I’m surrounded by a familiar warmth and softness.

“I gotcha. You reckless idiot. What were you thinking, huh?”

“Would you believe me if I said I did this on purpose cause I wanted you to catch me?”

I still can’t see, but I can just tell that she rolled her eyes in response. “No, I wouldn’t believe you. Stubborn stallion.”

Finally the fabric material used for the finish line is pulled away from me and I can see again. “I won, right?” I ask Nightmare as she stares into my eyes.

“Yeah you won. I’d argue that whatever magic you were doing to push yourself forward and around with your hands and feet is probably cheating. But, technically when a pegasus does high speed turns like that we’re not actually using just our physical wings either. Part of our inherent magic let’s us somewhat mold the air around us using the mana in the air. We pull in the air on one side and it acts as an external force that turns us in a similar way. So, I can’t really be mad. All I can say is that was some good flying. Sorry for trying to steal your date.” Spitfire answers me instead of Nightmare and I can feel the scowl return to my face as I turn my gaze towards her.

“You do it again and next time it won’t be settled with a race. It’ll be settled with a fight, and I promise you I’ll win that in a more brutal fashion. C’mon Moonie let’s get the fuck outta here.”

She ignites her horn and I find myself on a canoe in the middle of the same lake in the Everfree we were at earlier. On the other side is Nightmare who has returned to her human form. I follow suit and change my appearance back to Lucas. She holds her arms open and tells me to come here.

I’m a bit confused because the way she’s sitting it’ll be awkward for me to position myself for a hug. When I approach her though I yelp as she suddenly grabs me and turns me around so my back is facing her. Then she pulls me backwards and I feel my neck nestle between two soft pillows and I feel a chin rest on top of my head. Two wings the shade of her normal wings come into my field of vision as they wrap around me and I feel her arms wrapped around my chest squeeze tighter, bringing me even closer.

So Nightmare is sitting up straight with her legs flat and pressed up against both sides of the canoe. I’m sitting between her legs, getting pulled against her by her arms while her wings cover my nose down to my stomach. “I am so comfortable and so content right now that I’m pretty sure I could die and I’d be happy that I was like this in my final moments.”

“It is quite an intimate position isn’t it? If I was in my pony form this would be much more awkward and it likely just wouldn’t work at all. I am surprised how quickly being like this has calmed me down. It’s likely because I can feel your heartbeat resonating through my chest from how close you are. You might be doomed, Ignis. As things stand I’m not sure if I could be convinced to let you go.”

“Shit, you won’t hear me trying to convince you. I wouldn’t mind staying like this forever.”

Author's Note

Well uh. I said this was probably going to be two or three chapters, but that was with the intention of each chapter being 2-3k words long. This one is long enough that this is essentially the entire date. Next chapter is going to be another skippable NSFW chapter (and one of the last ones for a long while) then we move on :D

Thanks for reading! <3