Canterlot City was a peculiar place to visit.

It is the capital city of Equestria where Princess Celestia rules the land from her castle at the top of the city.

But what made it peculiar was the naming convention.

"Canterlot," it is most definitely a reference to the Arthurian capital of Camelot, where King Arthur held his seat of power.

And these peculiar naming conventions kept popping up whenever I looked, Phillydelphia, Appaloosa, Manehatten, even Saddle Arabia.

It would seem that the naming convention of this world is referencing places and locations, fictional and real, from my previous world.

Although the geographical placement of many of them does not fit, with Appaloosa being located in a region that should geographically be closer to where Texas or Arizona stand instead of the Appalachian mountains of my previous world, or how Equestria seems to be similar to the United States of America geographically but the capital is named after a fictional British town and is closer to Montana in its placement than to Washington DC.

It is simply peculiar, there doesn't seem to be any deeper meaning than that.

No need for further research.

Canterlot was a travesty of architecture.

Or would it be more appropriate to say a miracle?

Looper was still undecided.

As he flew above the city of Canterlot after his visit to the Immigration Office, he managed to get a better look at the capital of the nation.

A city built at the edge of a cliff, a single earthquake ready to collapse the entire city under the mountain it was built upon, be it by collapsing the city or collapsing the mountain overlooking it. There is definitely magic holding the entire thing together, it would have collapsed under its own weight long ago if there wasn't.

'Perhaps a tour of the city will explain how it keeps itself from falling,' He thought to himself as he continued to fly, his wings buzzing far above the sleeping citizens of the city.

"And while the architecture is interesting in its artistic design, it becomes an eyesore after a long enough look," Looper whispered out loud as he looked at the buildings, from afar they looked like spires and towers, bulbous roofs of purple and gold.

But on a closer look, all the buildings share the same color palette, there is no real expression. Even in the old world, in some of the most copy-paste cities there were, You could still find buildings that didn't look like cubes of concrete and steel.
But in Canterlot? Everything looked the same, sure some buildings were taller and some had flatter roofs, but the colors were the same everywhere he looked.

Deciding that he's seen enough, Looper started flying towards a nearby park he spotted. It had a grassy field and a walkway with benches surrounding a small lake connected to one of the many waterfalls coming into the city from further up the mountain it was built upon.

Landing on the pavement, Looper started walking. Being a changeling naturally meant that his eyesight was better than most, helping his species with their lives underneath the ground and flights during the night, and so, Looper spent an hour slowly walking around the lake of the park, his nocturnal senses picking up the buzzing of dragonflies and the croaking of frogs from deeper into the pond.

And as he walked slowly around the lake, simply catching the sounds of the few pieces of nature that lived in this artificial environment, The sun slowly started to rise. Soon the streets were moving with early risers getting ready for the day. From a baker that started his first batch of the day, to a teacher making her way to the school early so she would have the time to grade tests she didn't finish, to even a patrol of city guards wearing their iconic golden armor, resembling a golden praetorian.

And sitting on a bench looking at a mother duck swimming in the pond during the early morning, Looper let his mind wander to his plans of research.

First, he needed a way to supply himself with love, hopefully inside the city, It would be a hassle to fly back to the Buffalo tribe every week or two disguised as Blaze Glass just to take some of Little Strongheart's love, And if he is to be practicing his magic as much as he could, He would need resupplies way sooner than the average two weeks of fasting that a regular changeling can endure. He would need to create an Identity for this purpose if he would fail to do so as his regular self.

Second, He would need a place to stay. A place where he could sleep and experiment, somewhere to call his home where he would not be interrupted during his work. Any private place could work, even a sewer, although an actual house would be preferable.

Third, Money. He could easily make money by utilizing knowledge of his past life to create works of art and sell them here, under disguise of course. Converting The Hobbit to fit in with this world's creatures will be far easier thanks to its fantasy aspect than converting a more grounded story like Moby Dick or The Count of Monte Cristo.
Although he could also simply replace the humans with the Lycanthropes he saw, their build was similar enough to a human.

And Last but not least, He would need to actually learn Magic. This is likely the easiest but also the hardest thing on his list. He already has experience with Changeling Magic, able to transform his body better than most changelings do, his magical blast isn't as advanced as his transformation on account of how little he had to use it, but he has experience with magic at the very least. But that brings the question of "Does Changeling magic work differently than Pony magic, or more specifically Unicorn magic?".
Unicorns do not have the amount of instinctive magic that a Changeling has, they do not instinctively blast beams of energy from their horns nor do they transform their physical body.

The closest instinctive magic that Changelings share with Unicorns is the Changelings' Magic Grasp and the Unicorns' Telekinesis, that while similar, work in completely different ways to achieve the same basic outcome.

But, It should also not be that big of a problem with Canterlot housing not only The Grand Canterlot Library but also Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. One of which is the largest library in the nation and also the largest accumulated knowledge of the arcane arts in the known world.

The other is the premier magical academy in Equestria, hosting select courses open to the public on select days of the week, similar to a public university.

All he currently had to do was wait for his citizenship to be accepted and he could finally start his research for real.

And with a small smile on his face, Looper stood up from the bench he sat upon, scaring away a few birds who came close to him while he was sitting motionless, and began his walk out of the park and towards the library.

Might as well start his reading early.

Author's Note

Another slow chapter where nothing much happened, Next chapter we will be getting some library action.

Or at least as much action as a library can have.

But this chapter was more focused on Looper and his current thoughts, On the city as well as on his near future.

We don't haven't really gotten much of a window into how Looper is thinking outside of the reactions of those around him and the research notes at the beginning of chapters, so it's important to sit down every once in a while and just look at the ducks,
smell the flowers,
listen to the frogs,
and plan to plagiarize classical works of art and literature for your own personal financial gain.

For Science of course