//------------------------------//
// Introductions Are In Order 
// Story: Lightning Strikes Equestria 
// by Tardy the Man Pony 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 2

Sometime later when it was dark out and nobody was in the streets Shadow had learned a couple of interesting facts. Like how cows and pigs could talk after he had asked Applejack when he would get his five star steak dinner. “Uh, did I say something wrong?”
Applejack just stood there for a couple seconds, a horrified look plastered on her face, “Yur jokin’ right? Please tell me yur jokin’.”
Shadow realized that he just screwed up, big time. ‘Oh shit, are the cows and pigs like sacred animals or something?’ “So, no eating cows, or pigs, or any sort of meat I’m guessing?”
“Uh no. Do you do that where yur from?” Applejack had a seriously worried tone in her voice which Shadow found a little funny.
“Why yes we do. What’s so wrong with it here?” Shadow asked incredulously.
“Well here in Equestria the animals‘re intelligent, they can talk just like me and you.” Applejack said as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Shadow just stared at her with a look of dumbfounded horror slowly drawing on his face, realizing what he just said. ‘Oh shit, they think I’m like a cannibal or something! Not to different from earlier except I’m serious.’ Shadow was starting to become worried himself, “Oh well where I’m from animals don’t really think or feel. Will I be chased out of the town with pitchforks now?” Shadow said while giving a slight nervous laugh.
Applejack obviously didn’t get the joke, “Uh, no. Why would ya be? And don’t tell Fluttershy about that.”
“It’s nothing, just a joke back where I’m from. Oh and what’s a Fluttershy?” Shadow said while walking along with the creamsicle colored mare.
Applejack just gave another weird glance, “That’s a pretty weird joke, and Fluttershy is another pony. She’s a real good friend of mine.”

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A couple minutes later they found themselves at what appeared to be a hollowed out tree. To Shadow it looked kinda like a weird tree house. Like a literal “tree house” It looked like no tree he had seen before though. Not even those he saw on his short tour with Applejack. There were also balconies sprouting haphazardly all over, some didn’t even look like you could get to them unless you could fly. “This here’s Twilight Sparkle’s house! She’s one of the most powerful unicorns in all of Equestria.”
“Unicorns? What do you mean by that exactly? And why are the balconies all retarded?” Shadow asked while Applejack knocked on Twilight’s door.
“All unicorns are magicians she’s a very powerful one, I don’t really know about the library, it was built when my grandma was just a little girl.” Shadow kinda looked at Applejack with a stupid look on his face.
“Magician?” that single word literally forced out of Shadow’s mouth.
“Don’t ya’ll have any unicorns where yur from?” Shadow’s face was still looking a little dumbstruck.
“Uh n...no. I mean some of the stuff I can do is like magic but still, magic.” Shadow said in a revered voice.
“We don’t even have magic on our world, that’s how crazy this is to me!” Shadow tried to convey his awe to Applejack.
“How does yur world work without magic? Actually wait until answerin’ that.” Applejack really wanted to know but she figured Twilight would too.
                Right when Applejack was done talking a two to three foot purple and green scaly thing answered the door. “Is that Twilight? ‘Cause if so that looks more like an alligator than a unicorn.” Shadow whispered to Applejack.
“No! That’s Spike, Twilight’s assistant. He’s a baby dragon.” Applejack replied, obviously annoyed by Shadow’s stupid question.
Shadow stared at Spike in awe, the small dragon returned with a gaze of his own. Spike then turned and called into the library, “Uh, Twilight! Applejacks here with a guest!”
Spike invited the both of them in prompting Shadow to look around at his surroundings. While Shadow was looking around five ponies started coming down the stairs. One was a lavender unicorn with a dark blue mane that had pink and purple stripes down it. Then there was a white unicorn with a purple styled mane? After that there was a bright pink pony with a slightly darker puffy pink mane. Then there were two pegasi, one a cyan color with a rainbow mane and the other a light yellow with a pink mane. The yellow pegasus seemed to be trying to hide behind the lavender unicorn. ‘DEM WINGS!!’ Shadow couldn’t help but mentally shout at himself.
“Oh it’s awake! Applejack you should have told me!” Shadow just kinda stared at the horn on the two unicorns.
“Aw shucks hun, he wanted to look around and learn a little bit about Equestria.” Shadow was wondering how all these ponies knew he was here.
“Uh hey, I’m Shadow Elements.” The ponies looked a little shocked to see him talk, he didn’t think they actually heard his name and they were instead just trying to get over him talking.
         “Uh well everypony this is Shadow. Shadow that’s Twilight Sparkle, that’s Rainbow Dash, that there’s Pinkie Pie, the prissy one is Rarity and the pony hiding behind Twilight is Fluttershy.” Applejack pointed at each pony as she said their names and when the hoof was pointed to Fluttershy a small “Eep!” could be heard.
“It’s ok to come out you know, I won’t bite.” Shadow said the sarcasm not even sounding in his voice.
Everypony’s eyes were glued to the scene when the yellow pegasus came out slowly and saw Shadow smiling warmly, “H...he..ll..o, I..I’m Fl..u..t..ter...sh..y.” this came out as a barely audible whisper but with Shadow’s enhanced senses he was able to hear her quite easily.
“Well hello Fluttershy, it’s very nice to meet you. In fact it’s nice to meet all of you.” Shadow still carrying that same smile, it was so convincing nobody except his brothers would’ve thought it was fake.
“Anyway Applejack we were just having some tea, would you care to join us? Shadow you’re welcome too.” Shadow hadn’t had tea in a while; his brothers were more the soda and Monster type.
“Sounds great Ms. Sparkle.” Shadow said while starting to follow the six ponies up the stairs.
“Well, I actually have some questions for you. And Twilight’s fine.” she said with a slight blush.
Before Shadow was even fully up the stairs he was bombarded with questions. Most of them being what you would expect, “What are you exactly?”
“I’m a human being, we’re descended from apes. The process that gives you me took millions of years though.”
“Hmm interesting, so you’re saying you’re related to monkeys? Lyra never said anything about that.”
“Yeah our DNA is something like ninety percent the same. And who’s Lyra?”
“Never mind about that, uh where are you from?”
“Planet Earth, the United States of America, Atlanta Georgia.”
“Do you have a princess?” Twilight asked all these questions with barely controlled excitement evident in her voice.
                Shadow started laughing while the assembled ponies glared at him. Not even feeling the effects of their gazes he calmed himself and answered, “Why no, we haven’t had kings or queens for thousands of years. Except for England and Canada, I don’t really know what they do though. I think they’re really just there for tradition.”
                The gathered party was shocked at how casually Shadow talked about kings and queens, like they were nothing. He acted like he didn’t even care about the queen of “England” or whatever it was called. Rarity was the first to break the dumbfounded silence, “Do you not even care about these kings or queens though? How can you be a proper gentlecolt without having a king or queen to honor?”
                Shadow sighed and prepared to give the ponies a history lesson, “Well actually my country is democratic, we fought for independence from a corrupt system of kings and queens. You see King George wanted to tax us when we barely had enough money to even support ourselves. Basically he was a dick so we killed his soldiers until they surrendered and we became our own country.”
                The ponies stared at Shadow in shock and awe. Not just from the fact that Shadow was completely emotionless telling the story but that he said that these humans were killing each other. Everypony in the room was surprised when the pale yellow pegasus spoke up, “That’s just terrible, I couldn’t think of a reason something would want to kill something else.”
                Shadow gave a grim sigh, “In my world that’s the only way to survive, there’s bad people who just hate everyone else and want to cause them pain. I don’t like it at all, I personally think that my world is shit.”
                Everyone except Applejack cringed at the language, her having gotten used to it after being around Shadow most of the day. Everypony just decided to ignore it though and continue to question Shadow. “Are all humans exactly like you?” asked Pinkie Pie.
                Shadow found the question slightly amusing, smiling as he answered, “No, humans come in all different colors and sizes. I’m actually more different than most humans though, I have special powers that were given to me from my father.”
                Twilight perked up at the mention of special powers, “What kind of special powers are you talking about, do you mean like me and magic?”
                Shadow grew slightly nervous, Twilight’s questioning making him feel kinda like a freak. “Well my brothers and I are called the Elements, we were each born with the ability to control a certain element from the Earth, hence the name. All our powers were given to us by our Dad, he wanted us to join him and rule the world but we rebelled. The things he did were too terrible for us to even consider joining him.”
                Twilight wouldn’t be satisfied with an answer like that and asked, “So Shadow what element do you control?”
                Shadow sighed and nonchalantly said, “My father gave me the element of weather, lightning being my specialty.”
“No way! Only a pegasus can control the weather!” Rainbow Dash shouted at Shadow.
“Is that a challenge?” Shadow asked with a sly grin.
“You can bet your hooves it is!” Dash replied with anger in her voice.
“I don’t have hooves, I’m a human. I got hands.” Shadow wiggled his fingers about to emphasize his point.
“Doesn’t matter, you’re challenging Rainbow Dash here! The fastest flyer in all of Equestria!” Shadow just laughed at her cockiness.
“Alright let’s go outside then.” Shadow said with practiced ease.
After some time, the other weathermares had managed to gather up some clouds. The two challengers got prepared for the contest. Rainbow Dash turned to Shadow, “Ready to get creamed Shadow?”
“No, I’m more ready to be winning. Heh, Charlie Sheen.” a grin coming to Shadow’s face thinking about the crazy old bastard.
“Alright,” the referee called. “Get ready. Get set. GO!”
Rainbow Dash took off; hitting every single cloud she came near. She took a glance at her friends and their amazed faces told her that she was winning. That is until she had two more clouds left and the ref shouted, “TIME!”
She looked over at Shadow and saw all his clouds were gone, she hadn’t even seen him move! Dash just sat there and stared at him with an open mouth while Shadow grinned at her. He wasn’t one to talk about his powers but displaying them was a different thing altogether. “Wow Dash, you’re real fast. Almost as fast as me.”
Dash was still staring disbelievingly at the human when suddenly she flew off as fast as she could towards her house, tears streaming behind her. She was already too far to hear her friends calling to her. “Did I do something wrong?” Shadow asked the assembled group, feeling more than a little guilty.
“No she’s just too competitive for her own good.” Rarity said, judging from her tone she still partially blamed Shadow.
“Well I’m going after her, I feel too damn guilty.” Shadow said while staring after the cyan blue figure.
         Just as Shadow was about to take off Rarity called to him, “But darling you can’t fly, I mean you don’t have wings.”
Shadow looked back at the ponies and prepared to jump into the air. He left the group simply stating, “You don’t always need wings to fly.”
        As Shadow flew through the air a white pegasus could be heard yelling in the distance, “YEEEAAAAHHH!!!”