Us and Them

Chapter 10

Picking up Ponies

The next day, we departed for our first destination, Ponyville. There was no fanfare, no parades in our honor. Heck, we didn't even get a guard to escort us out of Canterlot. Just the seven of us.

The six hour trip felt like it took a day. Rainbow and Tycho were being their usual selves: flying, fighting, and arguing the entire way. Lyrica kept running ahead of us, running out of breath, falling behind, and running to catch back up with us.

I kept myself occupied by practicing my magic. I levitated a rock, and I would throw it from side to side, trying to catch it using magic before it hit the ground. It was pretty obvious I needed practice. By the time we reached Ponyville, I was able to "juggle" one rock at a time. Progress, nopony said it had to be fast.

Dusty and Rainbow volunteered to gather up the ponies, being the fastest ones in the group. The remainder of us went to the library to wait for them to arrive.

Within fifteen minutes, our group of five had grown to eleven ponies. Twilight pulled out the Elements of Harmony and passed them out to the others.

"I'll explain in a minute," She said as she handed them out, "But I don't know when we'll need these, so the sooner you get them, the better."

After the five ponies were wearing their stylish jewelry (Twilight wasn't wearing hers, just holding onto it. Can't say I blame her), I broke down the story of Epoch for them. They were all struck with disbelief (Can't anypony just trust me when I say something?). Fortunately, Luna and Twilight backed me up, which helped convince the others.

"So yer tryin' to tell us that there's some big mean pony who's tryin' to take over Equestria, and we have to stop him?" Applejack asked.

"That's the gist of it, yeah." I replied. "So Celestia wants us to go to the ruins where you fought Nightmare Moon, and capture or... well stop Epoch."

"I... I don't know if I want to go back there. It's scary in the Forest," Fluttershy timidly said.

"If we don't stop Epoch, there's no telling what he would do to you. Or your animals." Each pony had something they worried about. Fluttershy was pretty easy to handle.

"Oh my goodness, I don't want anything to happen to Angel! Oh alright, I guess I'll go." You didn't need a psychology degree to know she was still scared out of her adorable pony mind.

“Well we need everypony to beat him, so we either go there together, or go down together.” Everypony stayed silent after I said that, letting what I said sink in, as the realization that this could be life or death came up. “If you don’t want to go with us, the door’s right there, you can go ahead and live like this never happened,” I offered with a gesture towards the door.

The entire group said nothing, and nopony even looked at the door. Nopony except Tycho, who stared at it, scrunching his face. After a few seconds, he turned back to me, not saying a word. He knew he didn’t have to. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“Okay then. We spent most of the day actually getting here, so I think we should set out tomorrow. Let’s meet at Fluttershy’s cottage at ten tomorrow. Sound good to everpony?”

Everypony nodded silently. They were to anxious for words. “Alright then. Tomorrow we leave. Try and get a good night’s sleep everypony.” They slowly filed out of the library, leaving Twilight, Luna, Lyrica, and I still inside.

“It’s starting to get late, I’ll make some dinner and we can go to bed.” My stomach turned at the thought of forcing another bowl of hay down my throat. I had to find some way to stop her. Some way, any way.

“Ummm, how about I cook? I used to be a pretty good chef, I think I could work something out. Besides, I’m uh... I’m trying to, uh, work on levitating multiple things at once.” I threw in a smile for good measure, hoping to convince her that I wasn’t doing it to avoid traditional pony cuisine. Thankfully, she accepted and left me to cook at my leisure in the kitchen.

The kitchen was well stocked, for a library (I guess it still is a house). The hard part was making a meal without my favorite food group. Meat. Guess I’d just have to make do without anything I normally use as a main dish. Wonderful.

I elected to make a salad instead. I found some oil and vinegar (apparently, ponies stock everything but meat. I’m not complaining), threw in some herbs, and mixed up some Italian dressing. I found some bread and cheese too, so I decided to throw some bruschetta together too. I put it in the stove, and called Spike to light it. Within minutes, I had a beautiful side for a delicious-looking salad. Altogether, it took me forty-five minutes of toiling in the kitchen with no assistance (aside from my pilot light) to make a dinner I could consider edible.

“Dîner est servi,” I called as I brought the food to the table, calling upon the French I still remembered. It’s the fancy language, just ask Applejack!

“Oh, that salad looks delicious! But um... what’s that?” Twilight inquired as she pointed vaguely at the dishes I was levitating.

“What? This? It’s salad dressing. You put it on the salad to give it a different taste. This one’s Italian. It’s got a kind of sour, tangy taste. If you’re asking about this, bruschetta’s just bread with cheese and tomatoes on it. I drizzled a little of the dressing on for flavor though.”

“You ‘humans’ sure do have weird eating habits.” Twilight mused as I set the food down

“Hey, we don’t eat hay, so I wanted to make something I could eat. Don’t blame me if-”

“Both of you, stop this nonsense!” Luna interjected. “Finish this senseless bickering so we may eat.”

“Right. Sorry.” I apologized to nopony in particular before serving everypony there. I demonstrated the proper manner of applying salad dressing, since apparently Twilight thought you were supposed to drink it (It may be new to her, but you gotta think she’d know better). She actually thought that both the salad dressing and the bruschetta were good. Score one for the humans.

With dinner finished, we adjourned to our beds. Twilight and Luna went upstairs into the bedroom, and Lyrica and I returned to the cushions in the main room. I lay my head on the pillow, and within minutes heard heavy breathing. Lyrica was already asleep? Did she even realize we were going on a life or death mission tomorrow? Shouldn’t she be a little nervous and restless?

Jeez, that’s one pony I look up to for all the wrong reasons.