The next five days, in short of better words, was very uneventful for Reaper. He was periodically visited by Fluttershy, AJ, and Twilight. Reaper was overjoyed to learn that equestrian words were the same as English, and he was interested in seeing the differences between pony literature and human writing. The main difference, barring the fact that when the main character was a Pegasus or a Unicorn, they flew or did magic, was that they always were so forgiving of others who did them fault. It was a carefree world, and it shone out in their works. Reaper found it degrading after a while, not having any type of strife, or having a sworn enemy to base the story off of, so he went on to read the big ol’ tomes of knowledge that Twilight seemed to be so partial to. This took up the rest of the week for Reaper. After ten books, about 10,000 pages, and learning about the magical abilities of unicorns, Pegasus, and the physics surrounding them, Reaper was able to move around with minimal amounts of sores, and being stiff at the joints. Twilight was interested in how he could affect magic being sent his way, whether it was neutral or if it was directed in a way to hurt him in a way. He agreed to try it out the next day. Applejack met-up with him the first day he went downstairs and promised to bring Rainbow Dash over the next time she met up with her. Reaper was barely ready for what was going to happen when he met up with Rainbow next. As AJ drug her through the doorway, Reaper was helping sort the library by the Dewey Decimal System, and he turned around when he heard a squeak behind him. He saw RD cowering in the corner, with her wings clamped to her sides, immobilized by fear. She had the thousand yard-stare. Reaper knew just what to do. He squatted down on his heels, and looked at RD until her shaking stopped, and he started to talk as softly and as like the purr of a diesel engine as he could.
“There is no need to be frightened of me, little one. There is no need to be angry at your self, either. I could have killed you when you attacked me, and I probably would have if I was a lesser man than what I am now. Don’t be afraid, be strong for knowing that you looked death n the eye and survived. Don’t be angry; be proud of your self for standing up to me when I threatened you and your friends.”
As Reaper allowed RD some time to think out what he said, he saw that she started to visibly relax, he felt good that he was able to make amends with another pony, even though he made enemies with two of them less than a week ago without even trying. RD’s eyes started to focus, and roam around the room, taking in Reapers countenance. He let Rainbow calm down more, and turned his head towards AJ, getting a small smile, and an approving nod towards his actions. Good, he had started to like knowing Applejack as a…Friend? Reaper didn’t really know what he would go categorizing them as. Awkward friendship? Friendly acquaintances? Bah, no time for this nonsense for now, need to keep on mentally patching-up RD.
“You know, if you wanted to take a few free shots at me, you could. I mean, if you wanted to.”
This proposition would’ve made Reaper jump at it like a rabid dog, and RD did as well. She completely perked-up, and she even had the ghost to the beginning of a smile upon her face. She said,
“You really mean it?”
Reaper stood up slowly, nodded, and spread out his arms. He laid out a few base rules first.
“As long as you don’t go for this area, you’re good.”
He gestured to his crotch. RD didn’t understand, but she got on her wings with a wicked smile, and zoomed over to Reaper, hitting him full blast to the chest. Reaper barely even felt a thing, and he thought that she must lay down the hurt like rain, but it has little momentum for it, unlike Big Mac’s. She flew around for a good fifteen minuets, wailing away at Reaper until she got tired. RD alighted on the ground in front of Reaper, panting. He looked down at her, and said,
“Done already? Applejack probably would’ve gone twice as long.”
RD’s eyes flared with challenge, and she took to the air again, and resumed pounding away. To reaper, he felt a light battering, like a massage. It felt good after being covered in bruises for the better part of a week. After roughly thirty minuets of beating this time, RD collapsed on the floor. Reaper started stretching and bouncing up and down, humming a nameless tune that everyone in Russia knew even if they didn’t know the lyrics. RD must’ve thought it was a great idea to take a nap on the floor right there and then, because she somehow found a way to do so. He once again turned to Applejack, getting another shrug. Reaper decided to just put her on one of the library’s chairs. He scooped up RD, and deposited her on the chair in question. Reaper and Applejack talked idly about what is going to happen when Reaper decides to walk about town in broad daylight. One Reaper brought up the discussion, AJ started out with,
“Ah would guess it would start like Zecora, doors being slammed shut, windows barred, the whole shindig.”
Reaper retorted with,
“But if I walked with at least you, Twilight, Pinkie, and perhaps Rainbow Dash, would they be more acceptant?”
AJ said,
“Well, some ponies might have tha’ gall tah waltz up tah us, and dehmand for certain things be done to yah, they’d think thaht you’were belongin to us.”
Reaper mulled the thought over, thinking that the public appearance would for him to walk into town from the outskirts, and meet up with five, or four in the town. However, he didn’t have too much time to think, because he got a flying RD to the back of the head. She said,
“So awesome! I can’t believe you are so cool!”
RD seemed to take a roost upon Reaper’s head, and settled there. She sniffed the fabric, prodded, poked, licked the Kevlar, and finally looked at Reaper’s face. She had an extremely cocky grin, and said,
“I forgive yah. I mean, no harm, no fowl, right? Even the fastest flyer in Equestria can have her off days. On any other day, you would’ve been smoked right then and there-KAPOW, right in the kisser!”
Reaper chuckled and shook his head. He picked up RD gingerly, and placed her on the chair he was sitting on after he got up. He said,
“Good to see that you forgive me, I couldn’t make amends with Rarity, I made a gesture that she found as ‘rude’ and she hasn’t wanted to talk to me since.”
RD just looks at AJ, and they both, comically shrug at the same time with the classic ‘she’ll come around sometime’ phrase. Reaper excuses himself from the room to meet Twilight, who was waiting for him by the outskirts of town, nearby the forest that he came to know as Everfree. He jogged off at a decent pace, getting there in about fifteen minuets. Twilight and Reaper went over what they were going to do that day, work with telekinesis, and working up to a few attack spells to see the reaction of Reaper when he actively tried to stop magic. As they started out with telekinesis, Reaper could feel the prickling of… something in the back of his head, and he tried desperately to grab a hold of it. It was illusive, and Twilight was able to play around with Reaper’s limbs like he was a ragdoll until he got a hold on what it was. Reaper realized that what he was holding was actually Twilight’s magic. All Twilight felt was a slow draining of power and that to move Reaper around was about twice as taxing as it was before. After a few exhausting minuets for Twilight, she released her magic. Reaper was slowly doing the Macarena, and stopped right before he grabbed his bottom. After a few minuets of rest, Twilight started to shoot small fireballs at Reaper. He felt the prickle in the back of his mind, and he could associate that prickle into an image of the fireballs, and could more effectively interact with the magic itself. The most he could do was deflect them, or by sending them on another direction, and even that was troublesome to do, only making contact every once in about twenty-five bolts. At the end of their training session, Reaper was getting very frustrated, and screamed at Twilight to send the largest fire bolt at him that she could conjure. Twilight had some apprehension towards doing it, but she knew Reaper long enough to know that he would have gone after her until he got what he wanted, or somehow killed himself by doing it. So naturally, she complied. Needless to say, it was humongous. As a fireball about the size of four eighteen wheelers came charging towards Reaper, he felt a raging twister engulf his mind, and he reached out towards it. Ad he did this mentally, he did it physically. A millisecond before the gout of fire would have impacted with Reaper, immolating him, he caught it. It pushed Reaper back a few hundred feet until its momentum was properly stopped. He raised it above his head, and sucked all of the energy into his body. Reaper picked up one of his hands and snapped, causing some sparks to erupt from his fingertips. He started to glow faintly orange, causing unnatural ambient light to emit from Reaper. Twilight thought that he acted like diamonds, they would suck in a large amount of magical power, and gain the ability to activate a spell that they had absorbed. In Reaper’s case, he probably was burning off excess magical power that either his body couldn’t absorb, or use for energy-consuming tasks, like mending bones. Reaper was gleefully setting small patches of fire ablaze with all of his energy, and Twilight told him that she was going home. What she didn’t tell him was that he was slowly making his own case that much harder to let slide. Reaper felt like he was 500 pounds lighter, and that he could rule over everything. However, the only thing he was interested in ruling over for now was the small ant hill slowly roasting underground. Reaper felt marginally guilty about his actions, until he remembered what they did to him for six months straight under his suit during a snatch and grab mission for enemy intelligence. He got stranded in the forest and slept on a mound of fire ants. While Reaper was musing over his past actions, he barely heard a snap of twigs behind him. He turned to see a certain blue unicorn mare with a face that portrayed nothing but arrogance and pride.
“Why hello there, magician-bitch.”
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Who wants to see a drunken chapter of this story? If I get enough PMs about it, I might post it up...