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// Chapter 26: Through the Looking-Glass, and what Zenith saw there 
// Story: Destiny's Call: The tales of a foreigner in a familiar land 
// by Zenith Starwalker 
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	I always liked the idea of portals. Two points of unimaginable distances that could be crossed instantaneously with but a few steps through some flashy aperture? What wasn’t there to like about such a pragmatic concept? It would undoubtedly save on time that could be better spent doing something productive rather than wasting it on waiting in a vehicle between trips. What video games, science fiction stories, and fantasy movies don’t tell you about is how insalubrious it is on one’s… just about everything, really. I honestly believe that wearing one's entrails as their extrails would be a more pleasant experience. GLaDOS would never approve of my newfound opinion (and would probably try to kill me regardless), but it wasn’t even a second into the trip and I already felt nauseous enough to swear off portals forever.

The closest analog physical perception I could liken to the experience of traveling through the portal was like that of being teleported, only you could also tack onto the feeling of simultaneously going everywhere and nowhere with a gut wrenching impression of being stretched and compressed like a malleable glob of dough. My first belief that one lost their corporeal qualities upon entering whatever magical wormhole that was necessary for an instant conveyance between points was given a second opinion as I felt that same uncomfortable stretching and compressing sensation started to palpably affect my very being. The flesh in my legs began to deliquesce like wet clay and I could feel my bones begin to creak and crack as they underwent a warping. Fortunately, this was a painless process, but I could sense it crawling up my leg at an alarming pace like some kind of transmogrifying virus.

Reacting instinctively, and with more than a little panic, I hastily withdrew the smallest shard of Dichotomy from the upper folds of my robe where it was kept while I still was able to and pressed it against my palm. I gritted my teeth as I felt the razor sharp edge of the shard effortlessly slice into my flesh and draw blood, its special properties suppressing the magic within and in contact with my body. On the plus side though, I could physically discern that whatever arcane hold that was responsible for the transformation magic was retracting its grip on me and receding into the swirling ether, leaving behind an almost disappointed sentiment that I was surely convinced wasn’t my own. The horrible numbing sensation of the body parts that were doing a striking impersonation of mashed play dough chunks also faded, with my bodily extremities and the accompanying clothing returning to normal. Were I able to, I would have breathed a sigh of relief. The direct nullifying properties of the Arcanium metal functioned as I intended and shielded me against the magic that had tried to morph me into something different, which I found instinctively and inherently averse on a connate level. With the immediate danger having passed, I used that chance to observe my intangible surroundings.

The fathomless expanse in between portal points was like something out of a bad acid trip (Not that I would know). Swirling colors that I could recognize on an artist’s palette and those that lay beyond mortal comprehension pulsed and coalesced around me as they shifted hues and styles of emergence. Beyond the insanity of the infinite color wheel… I saw things, manifesting themselves in the infinite vacuity like flashes of memory in my mind’s eye. Some of the images I could make out with perfect clarity and there were some that were too muddled to make sense of, but most of them gave off a sinister vibe that forced me to turn away in order to preserve my mental stability. Watching all of this sensory nonsense happen was threatening to give me a migraine, so I shut my eyes and toughed it out as I careened towards wherever this Wonkian tunnel of psychedelic horrors was taking me.

My tumbling through the portal of lovecraftian petrifaction ended abruptly and rather unceremoniously as I felt myself roughly spat out onto a solid and coarse surface that could only have been concrete. Not wasting any time, I reinserted the shard piece that I used to protect my form back into my robes, sealed the bleeding cut on my hand with an accelerated healing spell (which actually stung a great deal more than the injury itself), and finally cast an active camouflage spell on myself partially fueled by the local environmental magic (I offhandedly noticed that the ambient magic here felt different for some inexplicable reason) before I stood to my feet to optically scour my new surroundings and check around for possible threats.

As far as I could tell, there were no signs of movement in my immediate vicinity. A yellow sun rose on the horizon and illuminated the sizable courtyard area that I found myself in. From its color and the fresh crispness in the air, I could deduce that it was an early time in the morning, perhaps seven or eight o’clock. Once I was certain that I was not in any kind of pressing danger, I devoted some more attention to study the courtyard I was located in. Walkways of flat concrete and grainy cobblestone were hemmed in with patches of trimmed grass, sparse copses of young larch trees, and their accompanying bushes to give the courtyard more of a temperate outdoor theme. The air was chilly, but not the breed of chill that one would associate with winter, belonging more to a fall climate. Looking up, I could see the path I was standing on led up to a three story building that was built mostly out of countless tiles of polished glass that were held up by steel girders and glinted in the warm rays of the sun. 

I could only barely see it from down here on the ground, but peeking over the roof of this building was a dome (also made of glass) with a clock tower that indicated that my earlier guess about the time was half correct, with the short hand pointing to a seven and the long hand pointing at the six. Other than coming off as one of those fancy looking modern buildings that were made almost exclusively out of glass panes, there wasn’t much else that made it interesting in design. The lone exception to this were the decorative crenellations of pearly white stone with heart shapes etched into them that adorned the edges of the roof and lent a more feminine impression to the building than an imposing one. Having gotten used to such un-masculine sights in the past, I deduced that wherever I was couldn’t have been much different than where I came from. 

Rudely interrupting my rumination, I felt a familiar whack against the backside of my skull, which disrupted my camo spell again. Spinning in place, I glared at the rebellious weapon that dragged me along on this inconvenient goose chase. The emblem on the wooden pommel of my Tantō no longer glowed this time around, but it still floated well out of my reach and was not responding to any of my attempts to magick it back into my grasp, whirling side to side in midair as if to continually spite me. Muscles in my legs coiled and tensed together as I got ready to spring forward and snatch it up, only for the unexpected to occur. 

The main body of the sheathed blade abruptly ceased its taunting and began to distort in image and waver before it took on a new appearance, one of a silver and ivory trophy with a metallic equine figure holding an electric guitar in its hooves and posing itself like a rocker on the topmost stand. I barely managed to read the engraving on the bottom plaque titled ‘CCHS RockFest Winners’ before the increasing luminosity of the Tantō turned trophy became too bright for it to be legible anymore. I gaped at what I saw in sheer incomprehension before covering my eyes against a blinding flare of light as my treasured possession disappeared into thin air before me.

‘Well that’s just dandy. Why do I have the feeling that I’m going to have to suffer unspeakable indignities before I get my stuff back?’ I groused, not enjoying this sojourn into the unknown at all so far.

Removing my forearms from my eyes, I blinked away the residual glare from the fading burst of luminescence. Once I felt that my vision had sufficiently recovered, I saw that the base of a statue had been revealed to me, something that I did not happen to notice while I was focusing on my renegade weapon. There were subtle rippling motions of the flat surface of the statue’s pedestal that clued me in that it was my entry point. Backing up to get a better look at it, I observed that it was your standard marble statue, only the two vaguely equine figures holding up what seemed to be a faceted valentine heart in their forehooves were anything but Hellenistic in style.

The sinking feeling in my gut that began with seeing the odd looking trophy steadily grew worse as I gazed upon the sculpture. Walking forward a few steps, I pressed a hand against the flat surface of the statue’s pedestal and frowned when it failed to pass through like it did with the mirror surface. It appeared to me that I was ‘locked in’ on this particular quest, so there was no backing out now. Taking a deep breath to clear my fraying mind, I contemplated what course of action to pursue. If the trophy shape my Tantō took on was any clue, I was going to have to participate in some kind of contest or event in order to win it back. With any luck, once I had it in my hands again it would revert to its previous form and allow me to take the portal back to the Krystal Kingdom’s citadel, where I could hopefully put all of this behind me. 

First however, I was going to have to do some comprehensive observation if I was going to learn about this new land and the dreadful premonition that I had about the inhabitants who lived here. Hearing the sounds of what had to have been footfalls not far off, I ducked into cover inside a bush beside one of the larch trees and cautiously watched in its direction. My fears were confirmed as I spotted a four legged creature amble its way down the sidewalk which lay beside a curiously paved asphalt road. A pair of unlatched saddlebags loaded with books were slung over its hindquarters (or flank I suppose I should call it) and it had on a violet blouse that reminded me of some of the frilly outfits that my great aunt liked to dress her yappy dogs in. From its swaying gait, the blouse, and the feminine way it gracefully bounded between its steps, I safely assumed that it was a female. 

Despite her quadrupedal body and the flowing tail trailing behind her, the creature looked nothing like an equine from home. Her nearly truncated muzzle was too round and her expressive, sapient eyes were far too large and forward facing. The back of her dark magenta, multiple striped mane was elegantly braided and banded, allowing the rest to fall freely around her neck in cascades, much like a woman’s would. On the side of her rear end was a blue fleur de lis symbol that struck me as being familiar for some reason. My breath hitched as I took note of this quadruped’s unique coloration, which scintillated and caught the light much like a diamond would. This odd property was dominant throughout the mare’s entire indigo hued body, lending her a crystalline appearance that I recognized all too well. As she drew nearer, I could hear that she was happily humming to a tune that I couldn’t place as she took the cobbled path that passed by where I was currently hiding.

I held my breath as she got closer and subconsciously pulled back into the bush, fearing that she might sense me and root out my presence. Even with the unmuted volume of her humming and the fact that she seemed relatively inattentive to her surroundings, I knew that those binaural, swiveling ears on her head could detect anything out of the ordinary and point it out to her in a moment’s notice. This might have been speculation on my part, but I was well learned enough to know that horses as a prey species could pick up on sounds that ordinary humans couldn’t and respond appropriately. 

As if to prove my point, a branch from the bush I was in rustled as I slowly shifted my weight to get a better vantage point, causing me to freeze and camo up as to mitigate the lapse in judgment. The diminutive mare stopped dead in her tracks as her ears stood straight up and her head swung questioningly in my direction. She uttered a distinctly feminine sounding ‘hmm?’ and tilted her neck sideways in curiosity, her eyes peering right into mine without her even realizing it. Any lingering doubts I might have had about her potential sapience were silenced once I saw the complex processes going on behind those blue colored irises of hers (I was momentarily taken aback by how the glints in them were polygonal shaped). Her ears flicked about even further as she attempted to determine what the cause of the noise was before she shrugged to herself at the withers, dismissed it aloud as a squirrel, and casually trotted off towards the steps leading into the building.

Have you ever seen a pony shrug to itself? Observing what essentially constituted as her shoulders lift up without her forelegs leaving the ground left me in a confused stupor. It was so anatomically uncanny that I reckon that those with fragile minds would get headaches thinking too hard about it. I elected to disregard this bizarre display of bodily elasticity and gather more information before making a move. 

The rolling sound of wheels on tarmac was the next oddity to grace my aural receptors as I spied a long, yellow boxy vehicle pull up to the curb diagonally across from my bush and adjust its suspension downward before two doors in the front pulled back and a stream of ponies much like the first one I saw flowed out of its confines. The conductor of this vehicle was somehow able to operate the bus much like a human would, with foot pedals for the gas, brakes for slowing, and a steering wheel for turning (Given his equine form though, the seat and pedal placement were made for that in mind). The crowd of what had to be school students strode into the courtyard, with some chatting amicably amongst themselves and others holding up tablet devices in one hoof (the few unicorns among them had the luxury of levitating them aloft in their magical field) and mindlessly gazing at the lit up screen much like if they were human teenagers who were checking their phones for notifications. It was this thought that had me formulating an ominous idea of where I had wound up. I held my knuckles to my mouth and bit my bottom lip as I processed this disturbing revelation.

‘The horror… the pure, unadulterated horror…’ I opined with dismay, a queasiness taking hold of my visceral faculties. This bastardization of my home actually made me yearn for the acclimatized oddities of Arcania.

It dawned on me that this shouldn’t have been terribly surprising in retrospect. All this time of roving about a human styled fantasy world where one would normally expect to see ponies, and now I’ve landed smack dab in its kooky counterpart. This was a modernized, technology flaunting land… which was still dominated by technicolor, magical ponies. If the crystalline sheen on each of these equines was any indication, it was also the modern day pony equivalent of the Krystal Kingdom. I wondered what they called it here. Crystal City? This merited further investigation. 

I waited until the coast was clear before activating my camo spell again and vacating my bush to briskly move to one that was nearer to the street and in close viewing range of where the students of this school would no doubt arrive in regular intervals. Utilizing a smidgen of acrobatics, I effortlessly vaulted over an obstructive stallion like he was a hurdle before sliding into my new cover. This understandably flustered him when he felt the air rush over him without seeing what caused it, but he was quick to pass it off as a draft of wind when he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary (Though he did pick up his pace out of exiguous nervousness). Mildly amusing reactions to my near invisible presence aside, it was here in this new spot that I would be able to make and compile mental notes on how I could best blend in with these eccentric creatures that made use of both magic and technology to enhance their lives. I crouched down in my makeshift hidey hole and bided my time as I observed the incoming quadrupeds in earnest.

These ponies were tiny little things from what I could tell, with the average mare’s head reaching no higher than three feet at the smallest to three and a half feet off the ground in average. The stallions were a tad larger, being up to four feet tall (add a few inches if you counted the stubby, rounded, nonthreatening horns on the unicorns). Even before I got a magical growth spurt by virtue of being a Trifect, I would tower over all these miniature equines if I were to stand next to them in comparison, which could make the task of blending into the background all the more difficult for me. I was no expert on horses by any means, but I was relatively certain that even ponies from back home were a good deal larger and beefier in build than these prancing equids. However, what they lacked in size, they more than made up for in sentient intelligence and character. It sparkled behind their eyes whenever they spoke to each other about something they did over the weekend (apparently it was a Monday here) or whenever they operated their tablet-phone devices to update their ‘Trotter’ profiles (A pony version of Twitter perhaps?). 

Curiously, each of them wore what were clearly upper garments that clothed their shoulders and extended halfway down their barrel, but left their hind regions alone. Perhaps this was because it might be considered taboo to cover up their Mana Ma-… I mean, Cutie marks (‘Bleh, just thinking it leaves a bad taste in the mouth’). They could operate vehicles that were like automobiles… only they were clunkier and had widened gull wing doors that made for easier disembarking of their four legged passengers. I couldn’t resist a small, slightly reminiscent grin from forming on my face once I heeded what had to be one young stallion’s mother giving her son a goodbye nuzzle and whisper-wishing him a pleasant day at school before he exited out the passenger side, grabbing his saddle-schoolbags in his teeth and flinging them over his flanks using his remarkably flexible neck. Humanlike as these ponies were, they still retained physical traits that they shared with their decidedly less charismatic equine cousins from home.

I hadn’t seen enough yet to fully justify my presumptions, but I figured that it was safe to say that this was going to be a society that I would find uncomfortably familiar and yet distantly alien at the same time. From what scant scraps of useful chatter I could pick up on from passing students; the glass building behind me was called Crystal City High School (‘Called it’), which was home to the Shimmering Hearts. The students who did speak about their school did so with a prideful tinge to their voices, which is more than I could say for my own opinions about my High School experience.

Many of them also expressed enthusiasm about a Battle of the Bands event that would take place on Friday night in the gymnasium, some of them wistfully wishing they could form a band of their own (the minimum was three members from what I heard) and sign up themselves. They suspiciously described in copious amounts of specific detail how awesome the first place trophy looked like (Which of course matched the description of my Tantō’s recently changed form on the nose). That foundering feeling in my gut bottomed out once I reached my ultimate realization. I was going to have to either sneak into this building and steal that trophy, which wouldn’t be an optimal plan starting out since I had no idea where they kept it, or… I was going to have to impersonate (‘Or is that imponiate? I’m unsure’) being a student here and find a way to win it back the semi-legal way before the end of the week.

‘Put up with High School again for a week? Freakin’ hell! I already went through four years of that bull shite, I’d rather not put up with a single day more just so I can get what’s mine back in my hands’ I mentally grumbled to myself, bad memories resurfacing in my head. It was either behave as a law abiding dimensional traveler and do things the hard way, or as a practical honor-less thief who despised every second that he languished in ponyland. These were some pretty tough choices for me to choose from at this outlandish junction of life.

I shook myself free of my brooding funk and stealthily relocated to a position behind the thick hedgerow that lined the edges of the school building, away from the right hand road traffic (at least these ponies drove like Americans) but nearby to the students who resorted to using the sidewalks to get to school. From there I focused on how I was going to successfully infiltrate this school and pose as a reasonably convincing pony high school student. I hadn’t fully solidified my decision on whether I wanted to go with the stealing option or winning back option, but it made little difference on what I would need to do at the moment. Amassing my inner pool of magic and bringing it to the fore in readiness, I cycled through various ideas for spell combinations in my mind that would allow me to hide my real form from these undoubtedly alien skittish ponies. 

This was going to be a very complex and rather draining spell for me to cast, as it would have to not only hold up under visual scrutiny, but physical as well; which would require a hard light spell mixed in with a triple layered illusion spell. The first layer would be the general form, or the semisolid outer shell, which would resemble that of a quadrupedal pony like the ones I was now surrounded by. The second layer would be more in depth, factoring in an overall coat color of my choosing, a Mana Mark (I’m not calling it a cutie mark… just no) emblem as my personal sigil (something that I already had a good idea in mind for), as well as other specific characteristics. The third and final layer would constitute an explanation for how I would be able to physically interact with objects that were out of the reach of my ‘hooves’, but not to my tactilely superior hands. This last one was easy, as I would simply have to make my illusion a unicorn so that I could pass it off as a levitation spell. 

There were still a few complications that threatened to smother my newly hatched plan while it was still in the crib that I needed to address. The first was that the illusion itself could only appear so tall before it garnered a dangerous amount of attention, so I would still need to cast a ‘mind me not’ perception filter charm on my actual self so that my real body could go unnoticed by the local populace. Utilizing a perception filter instead of a full on active camouflage spell was a bit of a risky gamble on my part, as having too many eyes fixed on me would make it even more taxing on my mana reserves to maintain than a camouflage spell. But then again, everything about my coerced trip to this weird world was taken on a gamble, so I dared to say that it wasn’t too much of a deviation from the standing norm.

Letting my own inherent magic wash over me like a warm, comforting breeze, I tested the metaphorical waters of how intensive this spell was going to be. While I grew substantially more adept with my ability to cast magic every week, the equivalent of casting and keeping such a high tier combination of complex spells like this and keeping it active for more than an hour of intermittent heavy usage was like taking a fully laden SUV on a road trip, turning the air conditioning on full blast, while also forgetting that the emergency break is pulled up, which in turn would force the engine to work harder against the resistance to keep the wheels rolling. 

In laymen’s terms, it was going to be an extremely draining experience for me to uphold this spell, so I knew beforehand that I would not be able to stay disguised all day. So I would need to scout out secluded areas where I could passively recharge my magic while additionally remaining out of sight and therefore out of mind. I had yet to spot any Pegasi amongst the ponies that were attending this school, so there was a chance that I could just sit tight on top of a random cloud without fear of having it bucked out from under me. I quietly theorized that I could link up my own magic to the ambient thaumic field that suffused the atmosphere around me like I did when I initially casted my camo spell, but it would only save me about a quarter of the energy required and would add that distracting greasy feeling that working with non-self metabolized magic entailed. 

I would have to endure it though, because I did not have nearly enough magic in the tank to avail me throughout the unknown duration of my stay here. Shivering to myself as I felt the arcane connection to the environment take hold and creep into my body, I envisioned what my pony doppelgänger was to look like, partially as a way to distract from the disconcerting ‘grease’ now slithering through my veins.

I wasn’t deadlocked on picking a flashy coat color since I didn’t want to stick out in any way, so I went with a blackish grey that stopped just shy of the hooves, which I gave white socks (Not those kind of socks, just that natural white fur coloring that extended just above some horses’ hooves). I went with this atypical coloration because it had stealthy qualities that instinctively appealed to me, and also because it was very slimming on anyone’s figure (Provided they weren’t too girthy). Given how the majority of the pony students here were clothed, I added a featureless red tee shirt over most of my ‘barrel’ since it was easier to replicate the feeling of a cotton tee shirt with hard light over that of an equine’s hairy coat, plus it made it simpler for my illusion to fit in with this alien society that saw fit to wear upper garments and nothing else. The mane would match my normal hair color, which was dark enough that it wouldn’t stand out from my ‘coat’ anyway. The iris color of the eyes would remain the same crimson red, no exceptions. I didn’t put too much deliberation into my tail, only enough that it would correspond to my motions accordingly. The height was trickier for me to get down, as I didn’t want my ponygänger (that’s a word now) to be so tall as to involuntarily invite attention, but also not so short as to require a lower extremity voice emulation spell to attach to my extensive list of spells I would need to cast. 

In the end, I settled for four and a half feet at the noggin (discounting the spiral grooved horn), which was a lofty height by these ponies’ standards, but not overbearing enough where I would instantly qualify for whatever constituted the local basketball team around here. I was no ventriloquist by any means, so I figured that I could ‘throw’ my voice downwards a foot or so with a minor tweak to the perception filter so that it would seem to come from my illusion’s ‘mouth’, but I would have to accept that it wouldn’t be perfect. There was also the matter of giving my ponygänger the appropriate materials for school, such as saddle-schoolbags brimming with books. Those would have to be a non-hard light structure, since I couldn’t remove the books inside and read them in class, now could I? Remembering my conversation with Minuette in her dental office, I emblazoned my personal idea for what my Mana mark could be on my ‘flanks’. I stylized it in the form of a Red Omega symbol with a golden pentacle star set inside to contrast against my blackish coat. Part of my mind kept drawing correlations between these Cutie marks and the idea of horse heraldry. With a great heave of magic, I enacted the sweeping set of spells in one go, giving off an unavoidable explosion of light that I hoped the hedgerow would keep concealed.

Turning around to face the slightly reflective glass panes of the High School, I appraised my work. I seemed to have gotten most of the crucial details down, with me making minute modifications where I saw them needed. My phantasmal (to my eyes anyhow), thin veneer of an illusion was an animated hard light magical projection that needed to feel moderately real, look unquestionably real, and act assuredly real. Every emotion that I even hinted at would have to be displayed through my illusion’s face, ears and tail, otherwise I would attract an unduly amount of suspicion… or perhaps I would just be dismissed as an emotionless husk. One could only postulate when infiltrating a society of ponies that wore their immediate emotions on their sleeves. Before revealing my false self to the populace, I would need to train my repertoire of expressions for effective interaction.

After exhaustively practicing a wide variety of facial expressions and adjusting the illusion’s overinflated mirrored response to be more or less in coordination with my own (for example, a slight grin would somehow multiply itself to pseudo-Cheshire levels of white, toothy beaming on my ponygänger. I only wanted it to be marginally above the threshold of my own expressions to avoid looking like an utter moron), I mentally prepared myself for the inevitable interaction that would be necessary for this gambit attempt at subterfuge. This was where my adaptable acting skills would auspiciously come in handy. Since I didn’t make my coat sparkle or shine with the same gemlike luster that matched that of the locals and therefore stood out from the usual population, I could portray myself as a recently moved student starting his first day of school today to anyone who is nosy enough to ask. I doubted very much that these ponies were gullible enough to buy it without question (especially any school faculty, who I would need to watch out for, lest I be apprehended by whatever acted as the constabulary before I even had time to say ‘Whoops!’), but I could keep my story ambiguous enough to scrape by with minimal chariness from my potential temporary compatriots. Once the novelty of having an extra pair of legs (and a tail! Complete with realistic swishing action!) behind me wore off, I decided to get this metaphorical show on the road.

Emerging from the hedgerows, I pretended to round about the corner of the building with a confused expression, as if I was new here. This was not difficult for me to imitate, since it was my default expression whenever I had to search for my university classrooms every new quarter in that rat-maze of a campus. Pretending with uplifted eyebrows to notice the flow of ponies heading towards the school, I inconspicuously joined them. I drew a few stares from the others due to my not so shiny coat, but was ultimately disregarded as a ‘clueless new guy’, provoking me to gnash my teeth together in disappointment. Heck, it wasn’t even the first few minutes and I was already being subjected to the ‘shun the outsider’ treatment by my fellow schoolmates. 

In the distance, I absently noted the presence of what looked to be a large radio tower that vaguely resembled a shorter, glassy version of the Tokyo Skytree looming on the horizon. Surrounding it were more glass buildings that couldn’t be classified as ‘big city’ in size and were few enough that this Crystal City was closer to a suburban town than a genuine concrete jungle city. Despite its name, Crystal City lacked the same crystalline structures that dominated its counterpart across the portal, seemingly deriving its name from the overabundance of sparkling glass used in the majority of the architecture here. Again, I hadn’t seen nearly enough to be certain, but the residential area appeared to make up the majority of this midget city. Snow capped mountains could also be seen poking over the horizon, but the weather suggested that the city was located in a more temperate region of the world. 

Walking with a four legged gait that made legitimate, soft clopping sounds against the pavement, I stopped just short of the same statue that doubled as an entry point between worlds and gazed up at it with an ostensibly unreadable expression. Truthfully, I curtailed the complex spell matrix that governed my ponygänger’s facial expressions so that I could express my own without consequence. I never imagined that I would proclaim this to myself, but I missed Arcania dearly. Not as much as I missed my home of course, but enough that I couldn’t help but think about the people that I so expeditiously and expediently left behind in pursuit of something that I could realistically make do without. I speculated on what their reactions would be once they discovered that I had disappeared practically without a trace. 

Would they try searching for me? If so, how? I didn’t know if the properties of that mirror were known to Cadence or anyone else, or if my Tantō temporarily turned it into more than just a mirror for its own unexplained purposes. What would they do once they realized that they couldn’t find me? I never worked much with that brand of magic, but I wasn’t under the impression that a scrying spell’s area of effectiveness transcended the cosmic veil between realms. My absence would probably have more of a repercussion on the lives that I personally touched. People that I had an intimate relationship with like Fluttershy and Rarity might worry themselves to pieces over where I could be or my personal safety, while the Princesses would do everything in their considerable power to find me. 

I remembered my last confab with Twilight, and how I came off as greatly upset due to my irrevocably compromised identity as a Trifect to the public at large. I risked it heavily enough to the spectating inhabitants of Magiville when I flashed my wings during the duels, but now that the cat was out of the bag for all of Arcania to see, there was no longer any chance for me to return to a period of relative normalcy. Cynically speaking, I had little doubt that Twilight had the propensity to mistakenly perceive my sudden disappearance as me running away from my responsibilities as an unofficially inducted member of Royalty. 

Perhaps I wasn’t giving her enough credit, but Twilight had proven in the past to being predisposed to going about conundrums involving myself in ways that sorely needed some improvement. More objectively, the bookworm’s mind deferred to Occam’s razor just the same as mine did when faced with limited facts to work with. Assuming that they didn’t discover the mirror, or if it was still active or not if they did, Twilight might make mention to how averse I was to being recognized as the first Trifect prince. Celestia, being able to confirm that with first hand experience (I acknowledge that I often whined to her about it during many of our discussions), might be tentatively inclined to agree with that hypothesis, however unlikely it was. Though with Luna’s adeptness in the field of oneiromancy, they would only need to wait about a day or so to confirm that I no longer dreamed in that world. In which case, they would either know that I was no longer within the boundaries of Arcania… or they would morbidly assume the worst about my state of health. With all that in mind, I determined to myself that I was to get my Tantō back by any means possible. I would not chance putting the people that I cared about through that kind of heartache all for my sake.

I let out a mirthless snigger. Despite how distraught these negative nancy thoughts were making me… I found it was morbidly funny in a way. Not so long ago, I’d never believe that anyone outside of my family would even notice or care that I was gone. I’ve done such an impeccable job of staying silent and shrouding myself from the world’s eyes that the unexpected transition to another one was relatively easy. Now that I’ve been whisked away across distances beyond distance a second time, I find myself unable to do anything else but reflect on how this sequence of translocation has been affecting me inside. I was no longer sure if the homesick feeling tugging at my heart was actually yearning for home… or for Arcania, and everyone there who galvanized me in ways that I was far too stubborn to openly admit.

“Hey champ, I get that it’s a nicely carved statue and all… but you’ve been standing there for an awfully lengthy amount of time now” Came an oddly familiar, masculine sounding voice to my bottom left, yanking me from my brooding.

I turned my head to regard the small being that spoke to me and examined him in detail (My ponygänger doing the same). He was an Earth pony of average size with a silvery mane that exhibited a dignified sheen and pristine white coat that scintillated in the sunlight like all the other ponies I was surrounded by. He wore a plain white cotton tee shirt that blended into his coat so well that it was a mystery why he bothered wearing it in the first place. He didn’t use saddlebags to carry his things, instead relying on a satchel like bag with straps that conformed to his back. An image of a one handed sword inserted between a partially ringed golden laurel wreath adorned his flanks. His eyes (which were a feature that I never really took into account before, but was unable to ignore now that they were so enlarged on his face) were a deep, rich brown, like mine used to be before I woke up in another world. There was also this enigmatic upward curl to his lips, like he was expecting me somehow.

I kept my countenance inexpressive as I engaged him in conversation, “I was lost in thought, I suppose. I’ve just been dealing with an onset of baffling changes in scenery lately” I murmured, forgetting to put the extra physical effort into projecting my voice downwards. 

His ears angled slightly skywards, but otherwise he showed no sign of noticing anything amiss, “I’ll bet!” He exclaimed with a lighthearted chuckle, as if he perfectly understood the nature of my dilemma.

He smiled cordially at me and extended his furry appendage towards what was veritably my kneecap, “My name’s Silver Sword. I’m a part of the student council here at this school, and I’m also on the fencing team! But that’s neither here nor there at the moment” He introduced himself as he offered me his… hoof, which I intuitively made my ponygänger bump with a minimum of awkwardness by moving my knee forward to meet the flat portion of his limb.

His smile grew once I reciprocated the gesture, “I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that you must be that foreign student that some of us were informed would transfer here all the way from Flankfurt, Germaneigh. Ja?” He tried emulating the word, slaughtering the correct pronunciation. He enunciated it more like Zhah, instead of Yah, and I was nitpicky about that sort of thing.

Then the location he mentioned finally registered in my brain, ‘Oh god, the PUNS’ I mentally anguished. 

Bad puns were the bane of my existence, and something told me that I’ve only just begun to despise this place for it. On the bright side though, this was potentially some good news for me though, since I could take advantage of this apparent opening and masquerade as this foreign study student, at least until the real one shows up. I would have to take on the appearance of a foreigner in that manner however, which ironically, I was indeed just that.

I quickly scraped together what rudimentary know-how I commanded of one of my ancestral languages and spoke gutturally, “Err... Ja. Ich bin neu hier, und ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch. Aber ich bin eigentlich ein Amerikaner” I slowly answered in my best accent (I figured that it was atrocious enough to make some of my ancestors roll restlessly in their graves. I wasn’t the most outstanding polyglot by any measure), still processing the positively bizarre happenstance that I was speaking to a ponified version of Silver Sword in German. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; my life was just weird sometimes.

He held out one hoof in a rapid stopping motion, “Woah, woah, hold on new guy! That fierce, guttural language of yours might make you popular with the mares here, but try to stick to using the King’s Equish around these parts, alright? I don’t know many ponies that are multilingual, but I’d stake my reputation on most of them being in the overachievers club” He suggested in a way that implied that he was looking out for my greater interests.

“Other than that, I welcome you on behalf of Crystal City High School!” He declared with a bow of his neck and a bending of his forelegs.

I accepted the gesture neutrally with a nod, “I feel most welcomed then. I’m Zenith, for your information” I disclosed in the flat, accent-less English that I excelled at.

He blinked at how easily I switched between tongues before chortling to himself, “I can tell that you’re going to be a very interesting pony to get to know, Zenith”

‘He doesn’t know the half of it’ I mused to myself in self amusement.

I shrugged, my ponified image copying the gesture in a strange horse like motion of the withers, “Genau! I’d say that you’re half right” I replied absently, mixing in some German to add to the impression of a foreign born student still adjusting to communicating using another language.

Braaang! A loud buzzing noise that I could only assume was the first bell for the ten minute interval before the start of classes, which were common in many high schools, rang over the speaker system.

“That’s the ten minute bell” Silver confirmed for me as his ears automatically flicked in the direction of the buzzing noise, “C’mon! I’ll show you the way to the principal’s office so you can nab your schedule and hopefully aren’t too late for your first class” He helpfully offered me his assistance, “Who knows… maybe we’ll share one or two!” He buoyantly spouted, “Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

His charm was preternaturally infectious; making me reminisce about Pinkie’s constant attempts to get me to smile and really mean it, “That would make my day twenty percent cooler” I reciprocated his cheer, sneaking in one of Dash’s favorite sayings while I was at it.

He gave the school an aside glance before looking back at me and motioning with his stout, square muzzle for me to follow him. I was reluctantly forced to do so in order to keep up the image, but recalled that my chances for infiltration just skyrocketed with this unforeseen opportunity, assuming I could handle whatever awaited me in the Principal’s office. Furthermore, I had to do my damnedest to ignore the churning feeling in my gut at the idea of putting up with another minute in a high school setting.

“So Zenith, what’s your Cutie Mark supposed to mean? The odd shaped horseshoe kind of makes sense, but why is there a star inside?” He idly asked me along the way, sounding legitimately curious about its meaning.

My molars involuntarily ground together at hearing the effeminate title applied to my prospective Mana mark, “That is not a horseshoe, it’s an Omega symbol. And I prefer the term ‘Stud Stamp’, thank you very much” I uttered with minor aggravation.

He hastily waved a hoof in the air in a placatory fashion while maintaining locomotion, “I meant no disrespect! And is that what they call them in Germaneigh? Pretty raunchy… I mean neat!” He hastily corrected with a flimsily constructed simper, flashing me his shiny horse teeth. Goodness, was the Silver Sword I knew as socially goofy as a teenager?

“Don’t sweat it” I brushed his faux pas aside, “So why do I get the feeling that this is a matriarchal society?” I remarked aloud to no one in particular as a large gaggle of chattering mares surpassed us.

Silver chuckled again as we climbed the short set of stairs before the school’s main entrance, “Probably because it is. Fillies consistently outnumber Colts by a hefty three to one margin in this town, so it’s naturally expected that they take on the majority of important roles while us guys get relegated to the side for anything besides family oriented matters. Not that I’m complaining, and I’m sure that you won’t either, if you catch my drift” He cracked a somewhat lecherous grin and waggled his eyebrows in emphasis. The meaning behind it was not lost on me, and had I not blocked my ponygänger’s facial response, I’m sure it would have taken on a disgusted green tint to reflect my disdain for the concept of getting freaky with the quadrupedal locals.

I gave him a flat unamused stare, “I’m not a tail chaser” 

‘Funny how literal that expression is here’ I commented in my mind.

He shook his head with that same unrepentant grin, “I don’t judge! In fact I even respect your chastity! Though it’s only fair, seeing that Mares influence what a Stallion’s station in life is like nine times out of ten” He reasoned.

‘Wow, I wonder if that makes him a masculinist? Is that even a word?’ I was inventing all sorts of terms today, it seemed.

“Pfft! That’s because they being wimpy conformists and letting the mare keep them down” I retorted on cue as we walke- I mean, trotted into… shudder, High School. I tried to be cautiously optimistic and delude myself into thinking that it would be better than the first time around, but the fact that I was hiding away from the public’s eye even more so here kind of made that a moot point. 

Pushing past the swiveling entry doors, we made our way inside the building, where a scene of activity was playing out before and after our ingress.

The main entrance hall of the school was visually impressive to behold for the first time, to say the least. The layout was organized and kept the flow of foot… or should I say hoof traffic, from piling up via an uncomplicated setup where there were multiple hallways splitting off from a round snowflake symbol that was embossed onto the smooth, polished ground. My eyes picked up on the fact that it contained the words ‘Brilliant Minds, Crystal Hearts’, which must have been the aptly termed school’s motto. Majestic banners hung from guardrails and proudly displayed their school colors for all to see. Students bustled to and from the hallways and picked up or deposited personal items in rectangular shaped lockers that held their stuff (Turns out that rotating combination locks did not favor hands over hooves, since the ones I saw in usage here remained virtually unchanged from the ones I’ve seen at my own high school). 

Sliding glass cabinets showcased trophies and awards for various sports teams that had reached certain levels in interschool championships within whatever unified school district here that governed overall management. From what I could tell, there was even school recognition for national level stuff, so it was predominantly clear that this ‘CCHS’ was no laughable backwater institution. Hanging from a mural like painted ceiling was a massive chandelier that had little dangling heart sculpted crystals to reflect both the light streaming in from outside and the school’s identity. A meager flicker of jealously ignited in my chest. My high school never dressed itself up nearly as resplendently. Inhaling deeply to calm myself, I snuffed out the flicker before it could spark a fire of envy that I would have of these spoiled equines.

I diligently followed Silver Sword as we shunted our way through the crowds, who hesitantly parted around us like water diverted about an unyielding rock. It was your typical scene before classes started, with the academically invested students hurriedly making their way towards their classes. While the less enthusiastic students stayed to the side of the hallways with their friends and milked whatever was left of the ten minute free period they had to chat before a proctor would undoubtedly herd them (‘Heh, such fitting terminology’) to where they were bidden to be. 

Wherever the principal’s office was, it must have been located centrally in the school, as we had to traverse our way into the depths of the school and make a series of twisting turns that I meticulously memorized and reversed in my head in the pessimistic case that I needed to beat a hasty retreat. Silver Sword was uncharacteristically quiet as he escorted me through the hallways and past open classroom doorways that offered a sneak peak into the scholastic services provided by this establishment. His silence elicited a spike of worry in my chest, engendering me to wonder if he knew that something was amiss. It was an unspoken question that would likely be answered soon, as Silver finally angled himself towards a door with cloudy, opaque glass that rendered seeing whatever lay in wait inside impossible through conventional means. The golden lettering on it spelled out ‘Office of the Preeminent Principal Director’, which felt a tad overinflated a title to me, but some people… or ponies in this case, needed to feel distinguished I guess.

“We’re here” Silver broke the quietude, “Principal Cadence should be right inside. I’ll go in first and notify her that you’ve arrived a few days early so that she can fish out whatever paperwork she needs to expedite the enrolling process, but it really shouldn’t be a problem” He said, confidently shaking his head.

‘A few days early? How much time does that give me before the real student I’m replacing shows up then?’ I asked myself as I processed this information. My best guestimate told me that I had a few days at the very least, which should provide me with enough time to find my disguised Tantō, nab it, and hightail it back to the portal with no one the wiser.

Silver turned away from me and rapped a hoof against the door a couple of times to announce his presence as a courtesy before biting at the handle with his teeth (‘Yeuck! That cannot possibly be hygienic’) and twisting his head to pull the unlocked latch downwards, pushing the door open with a nudge of his nose. Peeking his head all the way inside, I heard him murmur something to someone on the other side and receive and equally muted droning response. His tail swished and flicked as he murmured again, this time sounding slightly agitated. The answering voice kept its unapologetic tone and I saw Silver Sword’s body sag in what seemed to be defeated disappointment.

He backed up and returned his attention to me, “Sorry pal, it looks like she’s in a meeting with somepony else at the moment. Secretary Sassy says that you can wait inside until the Principal is ready to see you though. But I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep you company until then, since I’ve got class and all. So this is where we part ways… for now” His usual smile wavered at the end, as if disheartened that he was forced to leave me on my own.

‘Is that her actual name?’ I tried to resist the urge to grin at the conjured mental image but failed. I covered it up by pretending to feel touched by Silver’s friendliness, “It’s perfectly fine Silver. I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing each other around before long”

He smiled at me and lifted his hoof again, realizing that he wanted another hoof bump, I obliged him, “I can’t wait. Perhaps after school is over for today I can show you around town a little? There’s probably a lot that you haven’t gotten the chance to see since you’ve moved here”

“A kind offer” I bowed my head in gratitude, “One that I may just take you up on” I winked at him.

His smile grew (emitting an ‘squeeing’ sound effect that I promptly decided to ignore, since vocal chords were not supposed to mimic squeaky toys!) at the opportunity to make a new friend, “Sweet. Bye Zenith!” He bid me farewell as he galloped past me, disappearing around a corner in great haste. This led me to surmise that his first class of the morning was located somewhere secluded from the general area of the Principal’s office. 

‘What a considerate ma- er… stallion he is. It’s going to take me a while to adjust to the local vernacular without instinctively humanizing it’

I twisted in place and made my way inside the room, carefully avoiding grabbing the saliva coated door handle and pushing it open with a quick application of magic. So far my internal mana pool was holding up without complications, but I calculated that I only had roughly an hour and a half before I needed to take a figurative breather. Past the doorway of the Principal’s office was a kind of waiting room that was illuminated by a skylight and a few lighting strips in the ceiling. The Principal’s office was one of those offices within a bigger office that continued the frustrating opaque, inscrutable window trend. 

To my left was a desk with a tall computer monitor that shielded the face of a mare from view, with only the topmost portion of her mane visible and some large framed glasses that had strings attached to the ends to keep them from falling off her muzzle. Further examination as I made my way farther into the room revealed that this mare was currently clacking away at an actual keyboard as she composed a curtailed, digital memorandum to the faculty, only slowing down to glance at the written message that she was copying from. The keyboard itself had noticeably thicker buttons than its human manufactured cousins back home, but the mare retained an impressive writing pace none the less, despite only being able to poke at the buttons once with each of her forehoof tips (I was assuming that she wasn’t a unicorn. Magic would help abundantly so with that task). I was a proud peck typer myself, so I was hardly in any position to criticize her only applicable method for carrying out her duties.

“You going to stand there and watch me work all day? Or are you going to plop your flank down on one of the pillow seats over there until the Principal can see you?” The mare asked in a nasally voice that was only compounded by the wad of gum that she was chewing on in protracted intervals, occasionally stopping her mastication to blow a tiny bubble that popped with a louder noise than its diminutive size should have entitled it.

“Sorry ma’am, I’m the kind that likes to take their surroundings into account. You see, an observing guy like myse-” She cut me off before I could finish.

“Well, you can observe just fine… from over there” She interrupted as she swatted a hoof in the direction of the tasseled seats, “There’s no reason for you to be blocking the doorway with your unsightly, spindly frame” She abrasively remarked to me, not even giving me the courtesy of looking me in the eyes as she did so. 

I took a breath and was about to retort when her last words registered with me and gave me pause. Her description was cause for slight concern, as both of those terms could reasonably apply to my human form instead of my illusion’s. However, with the complete lack of regard that she was showing me, it was unlikely that she was using anything beyond her peripherals to see me, which the perception filter still took into account and altered.

‘Sassy? Bitchy is more like it’ I mentally grumbled, inscribing this rude secretary down on my petty shit list.

“Again, my sincerest apologies” I spoke through gritted teeth, biting down the nigh overwhelming urge to snark back at this sharp tongued mare. 

I turned to where she pointed out the pillowed seats against the opposite wall and hunkered down on the unexpectedly plush cushions, which my posterior lethargically sank into. My illusion copied my motions by planting its lower half down on the seat while keeping the upper half standing… because horse physiology. I suppose when there’s no back support offered for a species whose spines are parallel to the ground, they might as well make sure that the seat cushions ensure that your tush is at least comfortable. A period of silence passed for about five or so minutes, punctuated only by the steady noise of the secretary’s hooves against the keyboard, a wo-… mare who never once looked at me or engaged in conversation. Not that I really minded, accustomed to being taciturn as I was.

Once the five minutes were up, the door to the actual principal’s office swung open and a student came sauntering out with a chewed out looking scowl on his face. Even though he was evidently unhappy about something, there was a certain… facetiousness in his movements, as if he was a justified rebel without a justifiable cause. He was a slimly built colt with an orange coat (ceaselessly scintillating as always) and a short trimmed, light blue mane. His eyes were currently hazy and unfocused, but gave off the impression that they could display a lethal precision at a moment’s notice. On his flank was a slanted picture of a crystalline arrow striking a bull’s-eye target dead center and piercing all the way through, illustrating his immense skill as an archer. 

“Have we reached an understanding, Piercing Arrow?” Came a feminine voice that I recognized as belonging to Cadence, though it had a far more professional, detached tone to it than I remembered.

“Yeah, yeah. Heard you the first time” Pierce’s tail swayed and flapped once in agitation during his flippant reply.

“That is not the answer that I am expecting from you, Arrow. Perhaps I did not make myself understood during our discussion” Cadence firmly replied without missing a beat. Her eyes narrowed as she stood by the doorway, “If I hear so much as one more harassment complaint from any female students minding their own business… you’ll be bounced from this school so fast that your hooves won’t even touch the ground. Is that resolutely clear?” She projected with an absolute authority that befitted her Royal counterpart across the portal, and I supposed it fit this four legged iteration of the woman as well.

I examined this odd creature who shared the same name as the first Princess I ever met. She was roughly the same size as my illusion was, albeit she sported a much longer horn than mine (Not that I was jealous or anything!). She was dressed in a dark pink business suit that contrasted with her light pink coat and lent her the airs of a corporate lawyer. There was a special cutaway in the outfit that allowed a free range of movement for her feathery, non ethereal wings, which were no less beautiful or elegant in physical form, in contrast to my more wavy, flashy ones. An article of half moon glasses not unlike the kind that Rarity sometimes donned that sat perched atop her muzzle only accentuated my opinion on that. Interesting to note was that her fur did not exhibit the gemlike shimmering trait unlike everyone around her, something that intrigued my inner scholar. 

Not surprisingly, she was an Alicorn (though for all I knew they might have called her a Unisus or Pegacorn) in this world. A majestic creature that was blessed with a lengthy spiral grooved horn, enhanced musculature, and a graceful pair of wings that occasionally quivered at her sides with what I assumed to be annoyance at the unruly attitude of Piercing Arrow. While I had no idea what that meant as far as her status in society, what it immediately spoke to me was that she was an important figure, at the very least within the boundaries of this school. She wore a hard line across her lips, though there were the faintest hints of a positive expression within them. It carried a benevolently caring aura that I recalled as being vaguely familiar to me despite the arrant discrepancies between faces. It was hard for me to accurately describe, but I could chalk it up as her being a stern, but fair overseer of the school. On a side note, the similarities between the respective worlds were as equally fascinating as the differences. It’s a darn shame that it did absolutely nothing to deter my desire to get the heck out of here.

The effect of her inexorable authority was visibly felt, and Pierce lost some of his arrogant swagger as his ears splayed back against his head, “Err… Yes, Missus Cadence. I’ll do my best to hold myself back the next time I spot a shapely flank-… I mean face! Heh heh…” He fake laughed nervously as he corrected himself. His defeated tone sounded mostly truthful, but from the weary way that the Principal was regarding him, it seemed to me that Pierce was a repeat harassment offender on a very short leash.

Cadence sighed, her wings drooping somewhat with the exhalation, “I suppose that’s the most I can ask of you at this point. Be sure to not deprive our archery team of your skill before Wednesday’s interschool competition comes around, Piercing Arrow. You’re half the reason why they’ve been doing so well as a whole”

A hint of a smile came to Pierce’s lips as he chuckled, “Ha… don’t I know it! Hope your talk with her isn’t as much of a drag as mine was pal” He conspiratorially muttered to me in passing as he brushed by me and towards the exit.

Cadence sadly swiveled her head side to side before focusing on the mare at the desk, “Secretary Sassy, I believe you pinged my office earlier? Do I have another appointment with a student?” The Principal directed towards her personal secretary.

“Unless it’s with some other pony who also happens to hail from Germaneigh, I dare say that you do Caddy” Sassy wisecracked, never once diverting her attention from her precious keyboard.

Principal Cadence brought a hoof to her face and rubbed it in vexation, “Must you be so casual with me in front of the students? I swear, if it wasn’t for the fact that your efficient secretarial skills redeem your flaws in professional etiquette, I’d have found a new secretary a long time ago” She moaned, though her partially jesting tone suggested that she wasn’t entirely serious about replacing her. 

“You know you love me!” Sassy remarked with the first hint of a smile I had seen on her (glib as it was), which vanished the moment she saw me staring, “Anywho… tall, dark, and lanky over here is that foreign born student we were told last month would be arriving sometime this month. That time is today, by the way” She pushed her glasses back up her muzzle with a hoof and idly gesticulated to me in indication, her eyes never leaving her computer screen, as was the norm.

Cadence squinted her eyes and finally noticed me sitting on the side before blinking in surprise, “Oh! I hardly noticed him sitting there with how quiet he was. Please come in, come in!” She ushered me inside of her office with a curling gesture of her hoof, which I obeyed, getting to my feet and walking to her.

“Perhaps you’re starting to develop cataracts” Sassy snidely speculated, “Would you like me to schedule your next appointment with the closest ophthalmologist?” She offered in a tone that made it hard to tell if she was being genuinely deliberate about it or not.

“That will be all for now. Thank you Secretary Sassy” Cadence kindly replied with a winsome flashing of teeth and the patience of a saint as I shuffled past her. 

Once I was inside, she punctually closed the door behind us with the bright luminescence of her magic, the latch of the door clicking with the bolt fleetingly echoing throughout the office. A darker portion of my mind likened it to the reverberating slamming of an asylum door, which chipped away at some of my bravery. So that this unease wouldn’t show up straightaway on my acutely sensitive ponygänger’s face, I put my fretfulness to the side by occupying myself with taking in the sights of Cadence’s more modern variation of the citadel’s throne room.

The office of the Principal was relatively spartan compared to what I had initially expected of the primly dressed over-mare. The air smelled faintly of dried paper and raspberries, which incidentally reminded me of the way my high school principal’s office smelled. The room was furnished with a large rosewood desk adorned with a diagonally placed computer screen, a logo-less coffee mug, a thick pile of papers, a chrome file cabinet, and what appeared to a be a picture frame whose contents I couldn’t see from this angle. Oddly enough, there was a tiny ink well with a feather quill stuffed into it sitting next to the paper pile, which contrasted heavily with all the other modern implements that were common here. There was also an inviting guest chair that had physical spine support for me for the first time since I arrived, though it was crafted at an awkward angle that would require me to lean forward a little once I graced it with my magic infused, illusory posterior.

“Before we begin, I’d like to dispel any false notions that my secretary’s actions may have engendered in you. Secretary Sassy is allowed to make her grating remarks to me to her jagged heart’s content with a minimum of negative consequences, but here in this school we undeviatingly respect the chain of command, all right?” I nodded my agreement like the picture perfect student I was pretending to be.

Gladdened by my acquiescence, she went on, “I figure that the rules are basically the same in institutions of learning even across countries, yes? So there shouldn’t be much for you to adjust to in that regard” She said to me as we both sat in chairs that offered some real back support for a change.

She dipped her head to me in official greeting, “Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Mi Amore Cadenza, which is Istallion for something long winded that I rarely ever use these days. However, you may call me Principal Cadence” She then stared at me funny, perhaps she was off put by my buttoned up attitude, “Is your Equish sufficient enough to fully understand me, or do I need to call upon the services of a translator?” She asked, crooking her head at my prolonged vocal silence.

I wagged a hand in the air, “That won’t be necessary madam Cadence. I assure you that I am most proficient with your language” I enunciated crisply with pride. I wasn’t one to brag, but my English scores were always superlative.

She raised an eyebrow at first, but made no comment on my accent-less voice, “Very well. Allow me to retrieve your file and we can truly get you squared away” She spun in her fancy desk chair and pulled at one of the drawers of her file cabinet.

I internally began to sweat, ‘Hoo… boy, this might not end well. Once she sees that my profile doesn’t match the image they might have on hand, I’m basically screwed!’ I instantly regretted coming to this meeting as I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I inconspicuously and invisibly tensed up as I readied myself to run.

Cadence rifled through the contents of her shiny metal cabinet, using the bottom part of her right hoof to browse her way up each of the tabs before she found the one she was looking for and pulled it out. Either she had adhesives applied to her hoof or I was missing out on something important concerning pony anatomy, because the file folder stuck to her flat appendage as if it was glued on. While I was distracted with the sheer implications behind such a trivially enacted yet improbable action, the Alicorn Principal slapped the folder down on the desk and casually flipped it open, either ignoring or unaware of my increasing state of agitation. She inhaled sharply and her face twisted in dismay as she spotted something amiss on the file’s pages, causing the blood in my veins to chill.

“Oh… drat! When did I spill ink on these!? Fiddlesticks! Your photo is completely ruined!” She clicked her tongue a few times in self directed disappointment before salvaging the situation and looking over the rest of the documents that were unaffected by her apparent slip up. I forced a stream of breath from my mouth as I felt as though I had just dodged a bullet with this propitious happenstance.

“Ah… here you are, Z. Buckenheimer. A self admitted quirky foreign student hailing from Germaneigh. Specifically from the river town of Zweibücken, yes?” She questioned distractedly, shuffling the papers in her hooves and creasing her brow as she scanned what was still legible.

I withheld a pained wince. Even the town names of far away places were ponified.

“Err… Ja, vielleicht bin ich” I responded, taking a moment to shift from an English mindset to a German one. 

“Equish, please” The smartly dressed principal reminded me in a polite voice.

I pretended to look sheepish as I rubbed a hand against my the back of my head, “Indeed I am, ma’am. And while I miss it very much, I also want to keep my outlook positive and hope that I will come to see this land as a sort of home someday” I poured on the wistful emotion, requesting to myself that my serious side to take a backseat for now.

‘Ha! Fat chance of that happening. This ranks among the most brain-dead things we’ve ever had to do’ It sarcastically remarked to me, and I couldn’t really argue against it.

It was strange (more so than what was routine so far) to me that the first letter of this foreign student’s name matched the one I had adopted. Was it possible that the pers-… pony I was impersonating, was like me? In the crudely similar way that this world’s Silver Sword was like the other Silver Sword? I dismissed the notion pretty quickly; as I didn’t have nearly enough German ancestry in me that any potential counterparts would ever hail straight from a region bearing a mockery of the country’s name.

“How is Germaneigh this time of year, might I ask?” Cadence wanted to know as she focused on me, “My husband and I are planning on having our second honeymoon sometime soon and I’ve been entertaining the idea of traveling someplace I’ve never been to before… someplace romantic” For the first time, Cadence adopted a euphoric smile that was indicative of a happy marriage as she cradled the picture frame in her hoof. 

She held it in such a way that I could just barely manage to see what was on it. Within the frame was an image of an off duty Cadence supporting her upper body over the back of a ponified Shining Armor with her two forelegs hanging over his side as the sun was setting in the background. It was a moment frozen in time as she was caught laughing joyously at the camera while he was looking aside in grinning curiosity to see what she was doing. Just gazing at the picture brought forth an unbidden heartwarming fuzziness in my chest. Some things would never change. Even on opposite ends of the mirror it seemed.

I blinked away the sappy sensation and thought up a believable answer, “Umm… well, I can’t offer an unbiased view of it, seeing as it served as my home for the better portion of my life…” I obfuscated some more sheepishness before ditching it and getting down to the nitty gritty, “But if you do decide to travel to my homeland, avoid the overused tourist spots, they charge too much and are far too crowded for you and your husband to really get the most out of them. My sincere advice to you is that you go out of your way to ask the locals where the real destination spots are located and I’m sure that they’ll be willing to oblige you” I smiled back at her.

She nodded in gratitude as she set the photo frame back on the desk, “I see… Well I shall certainly take your advice into account once we finalize our decision. So what does the Z in your name stand for?” Cadence followed up, her eyes tracing lines across the second page in the documents, “I can’t have ponies simply calling you by your family name, after all” 

“Zenith, ma’am” I averted my eyes throughout most of the conversation as a ostensible gesture of submissive respect to authority, even if I boiling inside about this whole ‘repeat of high school’ thing.

“Hmm… interesting name” Cadence complimented me as her eyes stopped at one detail on the file and lingered there, “So it says here on your file that you and your family were not slated to arrive until the beginning of next week. Care to explain why you’re a week early for me?” Her tone wasn’t accusatory, but I could detect the reasonable suspicion behind it.

“Gladly. You see… my family, like me, was dreading the idea of having to move so far away from the familiar embrace of our homeland, nay… our heartland. But in the course of our rapidly fraying nerves, I was able to persuade them that the sooner we got it over with, the less painful the transition would be overall due to our self inflicted nai- hoof biting. And to be candid with you, I didn’t spend so much time thoroughly practicing my… Equish for nothing, you know?” Cadence repeated her reaction of raising an askance eyebrow but making no comment on the matter.

I sought to conclude my monologue on an eager note, “I looked forward and am still looking forward, mind you, to seeing just how proficient I am with it in this new setting of mine” I explicated, being sure to inject some homesick emotion into my voice during the appropriate parts. Doing so was a lot easier for me than I expected, given how much I missed Arcania already at this point.

She hummed in thought as her eyebrow arched, “Impressively so, I’d say. And the statement here saying that you scored top marks in your Equish classes back home backs it up. You saw fit to replicate this success in your math courses as well. So much so in fact, that it isn’t technically necessary for you to repeat them over here for this year” She informed me, sounding legitimately astounded at ‘my’ reported academic excellence.

‘That clinches it. This guy is definitely nothing like me. But at least it means I don’t have to put up with ghastly maths’ I mentally rolled my eyes, feeling equal quantities of jealousy and gratefulness towards my unwitting, academically skillful ‘proxy’.

“May I see what’s on my schedule for this school then? Equish and Math were always present on everyb-… pony’s schedule back home” I briefly stuttered, tripping over a word I had to watch out for in order to avoid arousing undue questions about my true nature. 

The Principal gave me a frustratingly unreadable poker face, her lips a thin line that were neither smiling nor frowning, “Of course you may” Her hoof flipped the page and she pulled out a slip of laminated paper that she proceeded to slide towards me on the desk surface. I reached out to it with my magic and levitated it towards me before taking it in my hand-hooves and perusing through its contents. 

I was not remotely surprised that I was late for the first ten minutes of my first hour long period class starting at eight on the dot. The class itself was some kind of inventive innovation crafting workshop that probably involved putting things together and exercising the creative muscle of the brain. Someone named Peabody, which didn’t sound like the kind of name that garnered fear or respect to put it mildly, ran this classroom. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about it, so I decided to look more into the others.

“I need to be creative so early in the morning? What else awaits me at this school I wonder?” I muttered to no one in particular as I scanned the other three classes listed.

The class after the workshop was a culinary arts course that apparently was taught by a Miss Daisy. Interesting to note was that it specifically referred to her as a bovine instructor on the slip next to her name (‘Go figure. A cow teaching a cooking class’). The class after that was a standard dramatic acting course taught by a Mister Ham (‘Why isn’t he the one teaching the cooking class?’). And last but not least, the final course of the school day was a generalized world history unit that I actually anticipated attending, if only to see more of the simil-differences between this world and Arcania. The instructor’s name for this one caught my eye though, indexed as Missus C. Clear.

‘It couldn’t be… could it?’ I shook my head, passing it off as being purely coincidental.

Cadence decided to chime in as I wrestled with the viable alternate identities of my history instructor, “Ensure that you do not lose that, as it runs the risk of your account being suspended due to somepony else misusing it in your name. In case you did not have such a system in your old school, you can use that barcode on the back as your lunch ticket in the cafeteria. You just need to have one of the cafeteria staff scan it before you go partaking of our award winning health oriented selection of organic lunch foods” She came off as quite proud of this recognition for something I’ve never given two hoots about.

She continued elaborating on the benefits of my schedule slash food coupon card, “It additionally functions as your student identification in that regard, so you can utilize it to sign up for whatever you please during your stay here. Sports games, competitions, shows, whichever catches your fancy. Your locker serial number and combination code are also written on the back, be sure that you don’t share that with anypony you don’t know either” The Principal advised me, peering at me with eyes that were a good deal more scrutinizing than before.

I pretended to stuff the slip into my saddle-schoolbags when in reality I was stuffing it into a sewn in pocket in my robes, “My thanks. I suppose I ought to leave for my first class before I’m even more late to it, huh?” I made to stand up from my seat, but the Alicorn stopped me before I could escape her clutches.

“Before you do… would you mind answering one last question of mine?” Cadence entreated of me with a deceptively curious tone and an almost playful batting of her eyelashes.

“Feel free” I replied, not seeing any other choice in the matter.

“Why did you cast a ‘mind me not’ charm on yourself?” Her tender eyes hardened as she attempted to see through it, “I must confess that you have a singular adeptness for inscrutable spells, I only just noticed it a few minutes ago! Have you something to hide about yourself, mister Buckenheimer?” 

‘Uh oh, I better answer this one quick before she lifts it with her own magic or does some other thing to that effect’ Her almost mocking smile overcame my fear of being discovered and replaced it with a low cunning as I thought of a way to weasel my way out of telling the truth.

My shoulders slumped as I deflated in my seat, “I’m ashamed to admit this to you, Principal Cadence, but I can be shy in social settings to a degree of near anxiety filled debilitation at most times. So I often cast charms like that on myself in order to avoid any kind of socialization outside of the classroom setting” I failed to meet her eyes, as if this was a sensitive topic for me to concede to.

“And yet you’ve participated in several rather sociable extra curricular clubs at your old school?” She tilted her head slightly in confusion. Cadence clearly didn’t believe me, but I was thankfully provided a solution to counteract her logical skepticism.

“Why do you think there’s an acting elective on my schedule when it could have been anything else if I so chose?” I shot back as politely as I could, “It’s so that I can be sure my acting skills can cover up that unspoken social deficit sufficiently enough that other ponies won’t notice that I’m putting on an act for them when necessary. I’m not proud of throwing up a screen to hide behind like that instead of being naturally gregarious and outgoing, but I’d much prefer to preserve as much of my reserved dignity as possible” I explained with a grain of truth behind the blatant lie.

She mulled my explanation for the perception filter over in her head before shaking it in tentative acceptance, “You don’t have to fear ostracism for being yourself in this school, Zenith. We accept all kinds of ponies and even non-ponies openly here. And should your fellow students disagree with this well known policy and treat you poorly, then you should come to me with these concerns and I will do my duty as your Principal and correct them appropriately” She laid a hoof against her breast, as though she was making a solemn vow to me.

‘A Principal with principles, eh? It’s comforting to know that I can still rely on Cadence even when she’s in a totally different form’ The small upward curl on my lips that her promise elicited would help me misdirect her further.

I bowed my head to her in gratitude, “I thank you for this reassurance Principal Cadence, though I must insist on keeping the ‘mind me not’ charm active until I feel adequately ready to mesh with the student body here in a friendly context” I refused to budge on this. They might tolerate non ponies here, but I very much doubted that their philanthropic clemency held up when applied to nonstudents.

She sighed forbearingly, “Very well. I cannot force you to socialize with your peer group, Zenith. But I think that if you give ponies here a chance, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how accommodating they can be”

“I do not doubt your words, Missus Cadence. It’s just that we… Germane ponies prefer to find these things out in our own time. May I leave now? I don’t think Mister Peabody would want any of his students to be truant, even if they are technically a week early” I said with a chuckle, legitimately amused by how unobstructed my deception was going for me so far.

She hoofed me a freshly dipped ink quill and indicated towards a signature line at the very bottom of the last page of my file, which I signed off on, making doubly sure that there wasn’t an umlaut in Buckenheimer.

Making a grunt of affirmation once she examined my less than flawless signature, she spoke, “Yes, you are excused from my office. Run along to your classes now” She waved me off, motioning towards the door before folding the file closed and placing it back in the silvery cabinet, “And tell Mister Peabody that the day his students manage to invent a time machine of all things is the day I’ll eat my own horn!” She humorously requested as I was halfway out the door.

“Will do” I acceded with a two finger valedictory salute without looking back to her (Not that she’d be able to see it through my illusion’s bland hoof gesture).

As I walked out of the Principal’s office and into the waiting room, the mare at the computer verbally saw me off, “Welcome to CCHS, young stallion. I’m sure you’ll have a sublime time here” Came Secretary Sassy’s last pseudo disingenuous quip to me of the morning.

“I intend to” I replied rather curtly as I shut the lobby door behind me with a back swing of my boot-hoof.





I was deep in introspective thought as I traversed the offsettingly quiet, ever winding hallways of the labyrinthine high school, my footfalls making soft clopping noises that echoed in the enclosed passages. My thoughts were nothing terribly relevant, mostly concerning how easily I had been allowed to infiltrate this school in my quest to get my stuff back. My cynical side warned me as always that infiltrating the school was only half the work, the rest would be fitting in with the student body while also finding out where I could locate my trophy-fied Tantō somehow. Passing by rows upon rows of generic, green lockers, I noiselessly made my way to my first class. Navigation was made much easier for me once I happened across a directory panel that enlightened me to the crisscrossed layout of the building. It reminded me of battleship in a way, with vertical columns of the grid being assigned a number while the horizontal columns were given a letter. Crystal City High School was larger than it appeared on the outside, since the letters went all the way down to J.

Not a single soul beside myself was presently roaming the halls, which would have been unnerving had I not considered a lack of company to be a desirable thing. Seriously, you would have expected at least one or two students ambling down the corridors after excusing themselves to the restrooms to relieve themselves, but such was not the case. Crystal City students were far too diligent for such profligate luxuries like bathroom breaks, it seemed. But my mental tangents aside, I was quite worried about my short term future. I could feel my mana reserves depleting faster than I initially estimated, with me only having enough mojo to get myself through my first period class if I stayed mostly inactive and didn’t use any kind of magic whatsoever. As one might expect, this was not a feasible plan to rely on. Somehow I would need to find a way to replenish my reserves of magic between classes so that my disguise would not inconveniently fail when I was in the middle of something potentially important.

The answer to my little dilemma would be literally stumbled upon, as I wasn’t fully watching where I was going during my musings and found myself bumping into a drink machine as I was absently running my fingers along a random locker row.

I contemplated disregarding the device as being just another literal roadblock on my quest to retrieve my Tantō and take the portal back to Arcania, but thought better of it and devoted some time to examine the machine. It was built with ponies in mind, so the top of the button panel for inputting numbers was about level with my lower midsection while I could see over the top of the machine without difficulty. The machine emitted a low, humming thrum as what I presumed to be an electric compressor cycled gases through a loop and separated them to create a temperature gradient that would cool the contents inside. One refrigerated drink brand in particular snatched up my attention as my eyes scoured the racks. It was titled Red Pegasus, with the cylindrical can sporting an emblem of two completely red pegasi flying against a yellow sun-like circle. It was spun about enough that my keen vision could make out a warning label written with bold lettering on the back.

‘Warning, do not drink in excess of three cans per day if you are a unicorn, as Red Pegasus can cause migraines as well as sudden, uncontrollable surges in magic. The Red Pegasus brewing company will not be held accountable for any adverse health effects to the drinker or anypony nearby should this warning be ignored’ I read in my head.

I brought a hand to my chin and stroked it in consideration. I never was a big fan of taking energy drinks back home, as they made me feel too tense afterwards for my tastes. But I had no qualms about setting my opinions aside if need be for the sake of maintaining my magic hungry disguise. I made to reach into the munny pouch that was concealed within my robes and withdraw a coin when I noticed that there was no slot to insert it. Instead the drink machine had an automatic bill insertion device that read ‘Insert bucks here’.

“Oh of fracking course…” I grumbled, my typically handy gold coins had no usable value in this situation, “I have half a mind to give this machine a few bucks of a different variety” I muttered bitterly.

“Forgot to convert to using bucks, huh? Need me to spare you?” Came Silver’s helpful sounding voice from behind me.

I nearly jumped as I did a double take (my ponygänger even whinnied in shock), “Mein Gott im Himmel! Silver Sword? You really must stop sneaking up on me like this” I half chided him, nervous about how I was so absorbed by this machine that I couldn’t even hear his unmuted hoof steps creeping up on me, “What’re doing out here anyway? Didn’t you say that you had class?”

One of his eyebrows climbed upward, “Uh… I needed a restroom break?” He spoke slowly, as though confused that he would need to explain his presence in the first place.

‘Not as diligent as I thought’ I amended my earlier assumption about the student’s ability to self inspire scholastic efficacy and shy away from their distracting bodily urges to excrete.

“Oh… ” I pathetically murmured, “That makes sense”

“Nah, I’m actually ditching class and was just dodging the proctors when I found you” He grinned as he found an excuse to humor himself.

I gave him a disapproving half lidded stare, “Truancy is never an acceptable thing, Silver. Education is the greatest blessing that any civilized society can confer upon its denizens, and I pity those who do not see the importance of this” I waxed my philosophical ideology.

His ears laid flat on his head and he recoiled with a wince at my less than amused response, “You’re right… I shouldn’t even joke about stuff like that” He distractedly scraped a hoof against the floor, “Still want me to help you out with that machine? You look pretty thirsty” He offered again, patting the satchel bag on his back using one of his ludicrously flexible walking appendages.

I bowed my head for the third occasion that day, “I would greatly appreciate your assistance once again, Silver. I promise to repay you the first opportunity that I can” I pledged, debating internally how I was going to do so without resorting to not so savory methods of money accumulation.

He shook his head, “There’s no need, Zenith. I’m always happy to help out a friend” He twisted his neck in such a way that his satchel slid around his neck so that he could reach into it, “Which drink do you want?” He questioned me, fiddling with a silvery wallet composed wholly out of duct tape, which I found somewhat cute.

“That can of Red Pegasus, please?” I asked politely, pointing with a hand-hoof towards the third row where the drink was.

“An energy drink huh?” Silver face contorted in badly hidden disgust, “Personally I think that stuff is too gnarly to enjoy, but I’ve heard that it does a fine job of keeping you wide eyed and alert for the remainder of the day”

“I need it for my mana reserves to be honest. They’re getting a bit too low for my liking” I admitted with a forthright shrug.

“Your magic’s still in the process of waking up huh? Red Pegasus will definitely kick start your magic for you then. Isn’t it ironic? A drink brand invented by a solely Pegasi owned corporation works best for their unicorn customers” Silver found this fact to be funny, evidenced by a wry cracking of his lips.

“Well… it wouldn’t be true capitalism if they only pandered to a specific customer base and excluded all others, now would it?” I countered, not seeing where he was trying to go with that remark.

“We’re learning about something like that in my econ class actually” Silver casually conversed with me as he inserted what looked like a yellow, ponified version of the dollar bill into the slot, with made an electronic winding noise as it eagerly devoured the banknote. 

Silver was then able to input the item number for the refreshment onto the clunky button panel, which resulted in the screw mechanism rolling a couple of helixes until the can tumbled down into the bin below. Silver pushed his hoof past the cover of the retrieval bin before taking the can in the recess behind his scrunched up pastern and tossing it over to me, which I deftly caught in my magic. I wordlessly marveled at how eerily similar this place was to home during times like these.

I pulled at the exceedingly large aluminum metal tab with my fingers and popped the lid open. With that accomplished, I held it up to Silver Sword in a gesture of salute, “Zum Wohl!” I toasted him, before I leaned down to the level of my illusion’s head, titled the can back, and took a deep swig.

It took a significant amount of willpower not to immediately retch and spit it back out as the foul liquid tormented my taste buds with its grassy, vile aftertaste. If the taste was bad, the miasmatic stench that it left in my mouth was ten times worse, clogging my sinuses with an overbearing scent that was not at all pleasant to put up with. If someone could manufacture a carbonated form of wheatgrass mixed with motor oil and sell it to the public, I imagine that this drink would be the closest analogy to it. Silver shamelessly snickered at the nauseated expression on my illusion’s cheeks (it actually took on a green hue!), to which I balefully glared at him for. 

He ceased his delighted chortles and held up a hoof in placation, “Hey now, there’s no need to be so cross! I did tell you that stuff was gnarly didn’t I?” 

As much as I wanted to vehemently disagree in my disgruntled state, I couldn’t deny the validity of that statement. On the plus side, I could already feel the invigorating effect that the drink had on my magic. The alerting mental pull that signaled to me that my mana reserves were gradually depleting began to fade away as I begrudgingly took more gulps of the potion like energy drink and swallowed them down with a hacking cough. The magic restoring properties of the brew were as potent as its flavor, and before long I felt close to the level I was at when I crossed over the portal.

My shoulders fell as I wiped a forearm against my mouth to dry it, “Whatever… it did what I needed it to do. Where’s the recycle bin?” I inquired, waving the painstakingly emptied can in the air emphatically, “I’d like to dispose of this rubbish and put this unpalatable memory far behind me” I bemoaned with a queasy tone.

Silver quirked a brow and snorted a very horse like snort, “Recycle bin? Never heard of anything of that sort. But I can take that for you, if you wish” He offered instead, “I was just on my way to the bathroom, remember? I can just toss it in one of the regular trash cans on my way in”

‘These ponies don’t practice recycling? I’m going to have to knock a few points off their modern society score’ I thought disapprovingly as Silver graciously took the hollow can from my grasp.

“We should get to where we need to be” Silver stated while rubbernecking both directions of the hallway, as if someone could happen upon us at any moment, “My joke about the proctors wasn’t entirely without its merit. Those uptight mares don’t take kindly to anything they might perceive as us ‘playing hooky’ in the halls. I’m not fond of the idea of marring my record and endangering my good standing on the student council” He told me with air quotes, clearly not thinking too highly of ponies who were just doing their job. Though I could have been making unwarranted assumptions without proof again.

“Right. I’ll see you later, okay Silver? I’ve got to make it to Peabody’s class before I miss out on the whole period” We proceeded to go our separate ways when a small detail in my words rang a bell in Silver’s head.

The colt ground to a halt and turned back to me, “You’re in Peabody’s class? Hey, wait a sec, do you mind delivering a message for me to one of the other students in there?” He suddenly requested, a hint of suppressed, desperate urgency in his voice.

“Of course Silver! You’ve been nothing but a boon to me, so I see no reason why I can’t return the favor” I responded with genuine appreciation.

He took a breath and clacked his teeth together; ruminating about what he was going to say, “Tell a big colt there named Ardent Bastion that I’m sorry for starting that petty argument last week, in front of his fillyfriend no less! And that I’m a real dunce for ever doubting his ability to carry our chess team to victory against Vanhoover High. I screwed up bad… and I don’t want it to sour things between us for the rest of the semester” Silver apologetically bid me to speak to his alienated friend.

‘Side objective added. Mend the apparently strained relationship between friends’ I updated the quest list in my head. It was convenient that the objective marker was already on the way.

“Ardent Bastion. Got it” I said with a nod, “How will I know what he looks like?” I asked in follow up, partly because I couldn’t give away that I already had a preformed idea in my head and partly because it didn’t hurt to know these things for certain.

“It’s kind of hard to miss him, really. He’s light brown, bulky, has a mussy, sandy mop of a mane on his head, and has also got this Cutie Mark of a pointy looking fortification with a towering rook chess piece in the background” Silver filled me in, using the hoof with my emptied can in it to make all kinds of exaggerated gestures at portions of his body that I’m sure would have made perfect sense if I had an equine’s brain.

“Alright, I’ll keep an eye out for him. See ya later Silver!” I waved farewell to him before rounding the corner and disappearing from view.

Occasionally referring to the grid maps posted in every hallway, I made decent time getting to Peabody’s classroom. Calling it a classroom may not have been the most accurate description in the strictest sense though, for as I expended a miniscule amount of magic to open the door (I couldn’t risk touching any saliva coated door handles after all), a room of substantial depth and open aired, unenclosed space was revealed to me. The interior of the workshop was like a cross between a mechanic’s garage and a warehouse, with dozens of opened crates containing all kinds of solid material such as gears, electric motors, wheels, and other hardware items arrayed for direct access by the students. The walls were painted a woody brown that somehow accentuated the glassy white linoleum tiles that reminded me of the old IPod cases. Skylights lining the ceiling allowed for streams of natural sunlight to shine on the floor of the workshop, where ponies roved to and from while collecting items and bringing them back to their ‘desks’ for assembly. They were closer to full fledged workbenches in reality, with screw lever vises, illuminating lamps, and toolboxes. 

“What’s this? A wayward visitor to my domain?” Came a flustered voice to my left. I turned my head accordingly to see an immaculately white pony professor of both hide and mane examining me from his desk chair. 

His apparel consisted of a checkered shirt and a red bow tie. He had on rounded and thickly framed black rimmed glasses. His face, which was worn by age and showed the signs of obtaining early permanent wrinkles, regarded me with a heavy scowl, “Speak! Thou apparition!” He demanded in a slightly North Atlantic accent that was much more convincing than Rarity’s. Not that I would ever tell her that I was aware of her minor deception.

I felt obligated to correct the instructor even though I knew he didn’t mean it literally, “I’m a little more tangible than your average phantasm. By the way, is your roster kept up to date? Because I’m the new colt in school” I announced, feeling the most inexplicable urge to put on shades for an entrance introduction which wasn’t even that catchy. At worst, I was slowly but surely adapting to using the equid vernacular, even if it was species-centric.

“Ah… a quick witted one, eh?” The instructor bobbed his head as though he understood me exactly, unveiling a pair of green eyes that his glasses once again hid with the reflection of sunlight from above, “Might I see your schedule first? The memo told me I’d be receiving new blood in my workshop for next week” He held out his hoof and made a ‘gimme’ motion expectantly.

“Certainly!” I produced the schedule slip and handed it to him, “Is it really so bad that I’m early though?”

He shook his head, his eyes reading the slip at the same time, “Not at all! In fact I quite encourage punctuality in all areas of life! At least until I get all of the kinks worked out of that chronosphere machine… then I wouldn’t care less about it” He mumbled to himself. I surreptitiously reversed a few steps awkwardly in case this guy’s strain of eccentricity was contagious.

Satisfied, he hummed to himself in confirmation and hoofed the slip back to me, “I must apologize to you, as I haven’t yet set up an assembly table for you since you’re a tad early… but I’m sure that one of your fellow students would be more than willing to accommodate you with theirs” He washed his hooves of me, taking a marker and inscribing my name down on what must have been the roll call.

When he still saw me standing there, he spoke, “Well? Are you just going to stand there and dawdle? Or are you going to exercise some of that famous Germane engineering prowess I’ve heard so much about in passing? The first unrestricted idea project is due by this Thursday for your information, and I can be a rather finicky grader since I’m being so lenient with the innovation criteria. So the sooner you can begin, the better off you’ll be” He informed me in a vaguely patronizing voice.

“As soon as I discover the best place to set up, I assure you that I will, Mister Peabody” I retorted to him evenly, searching for Ardent Bastion somewhere among the teeming throngs of ponies experimenting with all manners of slapdash contrivances. It was a larger class population than I would have thought, easily numbering in the sixties. Even with my height advantage, I’d be hard pressed to spot him just from the inordinate number of students crowding the room alone.

“You may call me Hector, if you wish. I never cared much for stiff necked propriety… or my last name, for that matter” He sighed, removing his glasses and rubbing tiredly at his bright green eyes with a foreleg. It was possible that he had made this request several times in the past, “Should you be doing anything involving soldering, there are face shields in the material closet behind me…” He indicated with a pointing motion of his hoof, “…right next to the blowtorches. Cognate materials are sorted jointly in this class, so it shouldn’t prove too difficult for you to find what you need”

“Thank you for apprising me, Hector” I replied warmly.

A ghost of a smile appeared on his face before vanishing just as fast, “Yes, yes. Now off with you old boy!” He dismissed me, growing tired of my presence.

I obliged and troubled him no longer, relocating into the interior of the workshop. I took in each of the student’s works as I zigzagged around several workbenches with cluttered pieces and parts scattered on top of their surfaces. Some of them actually looked promising, such as a micro scale windmill machine that incorporated solar panels as fan blades and cranked an equally micronized generator that was hooked up to the internal main shaft. I noted that the juxtaposition of a non recycling society that knew about harnessing renewable energy and had the technology to show for it was charmingly quaint. The execrable results of multiple failed projects lay huddled into heaped piles by the side like a compacted monument to aborted failures. 

As I searched around in the sea of faces for the telltale signs of Ardent Bastion, I could faintly hear a low, vocalized humming in the background, like that of a depressed church choir doing warm up practice. Before long, the singing of voices began to grace my ears. I furtively glanced about in confusion before I realized that the whole class was in the early stages of singing in unison.

“The project deadline’s buzzing in my skull~” Sang one worried appearing colt, who was anxiously tapping his hooves against his temples as he sat at his desk and fretted over what he should do before that date snuck up on him.

“Will it let us be? We cannot say…~” Came a unanimous chorus in support.

“There are so many issues I cannot grasp. When I think I’ve solved them, and then at last… through my bony hoof-tips it doth slip. Like a soap-bar in an oily grip!~” Another colt lamented frustratingly, swiping his foreleg across his desk like a broom, scattering his menagerie of sloppily sketched on papers all over the linoleum.

“Something’s here we’re not quite getting. Though we try, we keep forgetting. Like a memory long since passed. It’s here in an instant, but gone in a flash. How can this be, how can this be!?~” The chorus angrily demanded.

“In this crate of bric-a-brac, are secrets waiting to be cracked~” Sang a chartreuse maned mare as she rifled through the contents of one of the boxes filled with materials, “These cogs and gears confuse me so. Confound it all! I love it though~” She sighed acceptingly, tossing said items back into the box and skulking into the shadows of a supply closet in search of something she could make use of.

“I’ve read these schematic books so many times. I know the vectors, and I know the lines! I’ve have each instruction memorized, all by heart~” Bragged one conservatively dressed boffin of a mare, garnering her the jealous glares of her nearby compatriots. She was working on what had to be some kind of self operating vacuum cleaner with floor scanning optics. It wasn’t half as sleek as a Roomba though.

“My head’s so full it’s tearing me apart!~” Sang one mare with goggles as she dramatically held a foreleg to her noggin and pretended to faint backwards onto her messy setup table.

Each pony in the room took on the equine equivalent of a ‘thinker’ pose, “Perhaps it’s not as hopeless as we’ve been led to think. What’s a little risk if our grades could vanish in a blink? Are we trying much too hard? Just because we lack the key, doesn’t make failure a guarantee!~” They wailingly chorused in conjunction, as if endeavoring to reassure themselves.

The singing died down from there as every student wisely decided to focus on his or her own individual project instead of complaining about it in impeccable tune. Whatever magical mind virus possessed them to sing their woes in the first place subsided as the regular intermittent noises of the workshop took its place. Unlike the Harmonious Synchronization events back in Arcania, I couldn’t detect any trace of the coercive singsong magic in the air as a nonparticipating observer, which mystified me more than it should have.

‘Da fuq did I just witness? Was that was a High School musical was? If so… then I’m very glad that I never got roped into that downright silly nonsense’ I scoffed mentally. The strident sound of a bolt being driven into a sheet of metal grabbed my attention, and lucky it did, for I finally found the stallion I was looking for.

To be honest… Ardent Bastion’s pony counterpart was almost exactly like how I had pictured him. By and large, he was bigger than the other colts on average, both in size and in mass. His general demeanor exuded an energetic kind of strength as he eagerly hammered away at the nails that conjoined a metal sheet of medium thickness to one of two double wheeled, upside down V shaped supporting ‘legs’. Whatever Ardent was innovating, it was on the simple, if not rugged, side of things. There were no complex parts, bells, or whistles like with many of the other projects I saw, only pieces of an uncomplicated, yet sturdy puzzle waiting to be put together through the sweat of one’s brow. For Ardent it was just a straightforward drawing board to construction phase. I had a hunch that he and the Apple family had that trait in common, or perhaps all Agrarians had a natural inclination to keep their labors as free from convolution as circumstances permitted.

I approached in an obvious manner so that he would see me coming, “Hello there. I’m new to the class…” He stopped what he was doing to see who was interrupting him, “…mind if we cooperatively share a workstation?” I entreated him with my best ‘friendly’ voice, which incidentally was minimally less monotonous than my regular voice. I dispelled the saddle-schoolbags beforehand my illusion had to take them off, which it couldn’t realistically do without adding an even more taxing drain on my replenished magic reserves to create an unattached hard light projection.

Ardent dropped the hammer he was holding onto the table and climbed down from a three paneled stepladder as his eyes appraised me. I could see a hint of surprise in them when he became conscious to the fact that my ponygänger could meet him at eye level with some inches in height to spare, “Aye… I figure you could. It’s of no benefit to me anyway” He graciously indulged me, moving aside a few steps so I could move in to his workspace.

He then extended a hoof to me, which I carefully bumped with my fist this time, “What would your name be?” He inquired as he bent his head to the side.

I put a hand-hoof on my chest in introduction, “I’m Zenith. You must be Ardent Bastion, correct?”

“You speak truth” He gruffly nodded, “Though I can’t recall ever giving my name to somepony like you before” He remarked with dubiety.

“That’s because another student who knows you told me your name” I clarified for him.

His eyebrows rose, suspicious at what I meant, “And who told you?” He asked before suddenly holding up a hold, “No, wait! I get the impression that it was that dullard Silver Sword, wasn’t it?” He guessed accurately, before scowling moodily, “What did he want? And why would he send you in his stead to speak to me?” Ardent all but demanded, standing stiffly in place and attempting to stare down at me. It dawned on me that he was trying to intimidate the answers out of me. I’d overlook it this time, since I would probably react similarly had our positions been reversed.

“I’ll work backwards on those questions” I reflexively held up a duo of fingers that Ardent couldn’t perceive, “Firstly, Silver couldn’t speak to you because he obviously doesn’t share this class period with you”

Ardent snorted skeptically, “And he couldn’t come and speak to me afterwards during the interclass period, or in the second period that we do share? Or does he really think himself so high above me that he sends others to do his bidding?” He criticized both Silver and myself in the same faulty inference.

My jaw set firmly in place at what he was implying, “I’m no one’s lackey. I accepted his request purely out of a desire to reflect the goodwill that he had shown me as a new student to this school” I reproached him, “And I think the explanation to that would be blatantly obvious if you were able to look beyond the haze of your current distaste for him. Don’t you understand? He’s too ashamed of what he’s done to throw himself at your fee-, hooves… and beg your forgiveness” I amended at the end, diluting the potency of my words. Damn this horse centric vernacular! It was going to give me an aneurism at this rate.

“Did he even tell you how he earned my ‘current distaste’ for him?” Ardent cut in after an interval of silence, his facial expression remaining static.

“Something about starting an argument and doubting your ability at playing chess in front of your fillyfriend, to that effect?” I said with a shrug.

Ardent rolled his eyes, “Something to that effect” He sarcastically agreed, “He conveniently forgot to mention that he not only lambasted me… but he also had the gall to call my precious Strawberry Quartz a fool for associating herself with me” His eyes hardened, “He defiled both the honor of my fillyfriend and myself, trampled roughshod over our friendship… all because he valued maintaining the prestige of our school’s competitive record more than his faith in me. I have half a mind to denounce him in front of his admirers at the next fencing event as payback for what he did, but Strawberry, bless her kind heart, wants me to be the better stallion and turn the other cheek”

“If you really believe yourself to be the better stallion in this situation, then why don’t you seek him out afterwards and verify the authenticity of Silver’s penitence for yourself?” I reasoned with him, “Surely yours is a friendship worth rekindling?”

A low growl emanated from Ardent’s throat, “Tartarus will freeze over before I let that honor sullying, foil swinger have the pleasure of my friendship again without proving himself worthy of forgiveness” He stubbornly refused to take Silver merely at his word.

I shrugged, having at least delivered Silver’s message, “Suit yourself…” My eyes moved on to the pony sized project that Ardent was working on, “What’s this supposed to be? A mobile barrier of some sort?” I evaluated his work, changing the subject at the same time.

Ardent smiled, more than happy to get his mind off of the previous subject, “Close… It’s my take on a medieval era mantlet. Though unlike the crude historical constructions I researched to draw inspiration from,” He motioned with a hoof to an open binder with black and white sketches of old styled medieval arrow shields made from a wicker material, “This is made from a thinner sheet of iron that saves on weight while still retaining a fair degree of protection from incoming projectiles… not that I’d ever be foolish enough to try testing that for myself, nor do I have to” He whickered, finding amusement in his own sense of humor. My brow furrowed in response to the horse like noise, finding them inherently unsettling.

He leaned in and spoke in a conspiratorial voice, “Between you and me, I hear that Mister Peabody is real big on history, so I’m banking on that to improve my score”

“Clever…” I complimented him for his sycophantic thinking, “if it pays off, that is” I laconically opined in afterthought, though if he heard me, he didn’t show it.

I examined the wheels of this modern mantlet that was roughly halfway to its completion. They were more than just flat, rubberized metal rollers from I could tell. It was impressive that Ardent had the skills to incorporate a suspension system that utilized coiled springs as shock absorbers for better terrain resistance. The un-sloped armor shield needed revision though, in my opinion. But I couldn’t fault Ardent for not being aware of the dynamics of projectile deflection or effective use of angling for increased armor protection. Offhandedly, this served to remind me that I needed to inform Gizmo and the other technicians back in the capital city to be mindful of these things.

“You’re a regular engineer aren’t you? Forgive me when I say this, but I didn’t think you’d have it in you Ardent” I commented, harboring a newfound respect for both the man and the pony sharing the name.

Ardent grinned, “You’re not the first pony to underestimate my character based on a first glance. Most of them tend to assume that I’m just some meat headed jocktard whose only real use is on the hoofball field, but I like to think of myself as being more refined than that. Besides… it looks better on my records for Canterlot University if I have something other than ‘played lots of sports’ listed. Distinguishes me from the rest, you know?” He turned back to his work, picking up a screwdriver in his crooked foreleg (‘Seriously, how can these ponies bend their limbs like that so effortlessly!?’) and tightening the screws on a junction point attaching the wheel legs to the main body of the mantlet.

I figured that I might as well keep myself occupied and join in on building some haphazard object from scratch. Since Ardent’s project was too ungainly to be assembled right on top of the table, it left a lot of space open for me to use it for my own gains. Facing the wall, I browsed the labeled crates without a coherent idea of what I’d do with their contents in mind. Creativity wise I wasn’t the next Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla when it came to innovation (or electrical engineering), but given the right materials and a lingering, formless thought in the back of my concious with the potential to become more, I could make some pretty interesting things when I put my mind to it. 

Ten minutes of scrounging later and I was still no closer to formulating an idea of what to make. Nothing I pulled out of the crates that I sifted through made any mental combinations that I felt made any sense. While I did not necessarily need to worry about meeting the due date for this class or any of my other ones, I didn’t want the genuine Buckenheimer’s grade to suffer just because I was too lazy to pick up the slack for him. That would be in bad form. As an afterthought, I thought about the Battle of the Bands competition that would take place on Friday, which in turn made me think back to the last concert I had participated in. It was then that it finally clicked in my mind that the band members I rocked out alongside shared almost exactly the same names as the members of the Crescendolls! I got to perform with the human versions of Daft Punk legends!

I kept myself from geeking out just long enough for my mental tangent to take a constructive detour, and that formless idea I mentioned earlier sparked itself and ignited into something resembling a plan. I jogged around the workshop, juking around unwary ponies who were too distracted to watch where they were going on an errand to search for a crate or number of creates carrying the robotic parts that I’d need. With how short most of them were, it was entirely possible for me to clear them by stepping over them like they were diminutive obstacles, but I figured that my illusion wouldn’t be able to come up with a convincing explanation for how I was able to ‘float’ over them. So I settled for the old fashion way of walking around them, occasionally ducking below crates that unicorn students held aloft in their spell fields. 

For how organized everything was in this classroom, it proved more difficult for me to find what I wanted than I would have liked. On top of that, the crates for robotic parts were nearly scavenged into oblivion, with me only being able to appropriate a flash drive shaped device that acted as a voice modulator slash vocalizer, a leg that would need to be connected to a power source, a set of mechanical teeth that could easily be keyed to synchronize its movements to the vocalizer, and a main body in the shape of an equine that was compatible with the leg. 

I brought the bountiful batch of wiry parts back to the table that Ardent and I were sharing, the former was still busy with ensuring that the bolts were properly anchoring the mantlet and its supporting wheels together. Since he hadn’t finalized fastening the parts connecting the metal shield to both legs, I decided to input my opinion regarding his current design’s state of efficiency.

“It might not be exclusively historically accurate to suggest this, but the mantlet could do with having the shield portion not facing its opposition flat on” I initiated a new conversation, setting the robotic parts down on my half of the table. 

“Hmm…?” He spoke up, coming out of a toiling mindset for discussion, “Why is that?” 

“Mantlets work best when the projectiles they’re supposed to block against strike them at an angle, rather than head on. Why not try rotating the shield back a little in its moorings?” I advised, doing a bang up job of sounding like I was in on an erudite secret that he could benefit from.

“But then I would have to rework the viewing slits to sit lower on the shield. And that would take more time than it might be worth, I may as well just toss out the old shield and begin anew!” He countered, none the less he seemed concerned that I knew something about his mantlet that he himself hadn’t thought of to start with.

“You should just rework the shield design altogether” I concurred with one of his points, “If you angle it sixty degrees precisely, you effectively double the amount of armor that a projectile would have to go through in order to penetrate. You could even save on weight by making the metal sheet thinner in those sloped places. Craft out the new shield in three segments, the angled upper portion, a rounded middle bumper, and a flattish lower glacis” I perorated at length.

I reached for Ardent’s notebook, and indicated towards it with a finger-hoof, pending approval from Ardent, who granted it with a bob of his head. I tore out a sheet of paper and took his pencil to quickly graph the layout for the new mantlet design, being extra careful to include the same joints for the wheel legs to be bolted onto. Once I was finished, I held it out to Ardent for his viewing pleasure. I was no artist, but my muscle memory based magic improved my ability to faithfully write down mental images by hand immensely. The optimal thing about that kind of magic was with enough usage over time, it would no longer be mandatory to engage it so I could receive the same results. In fact, one of the reasons I was not that worried about winning my Tantō back the licit way was because I already had the skills necessary to dominate any concert stage I came across. The real challenge would be imparting that same quality upon others. I couldn’t be a one man band after all… not without getting really involved with my telekinetic spells anyway, doing so and upholding my disguise would be quite simply not worth it. Not to mention damn near close to impossible for a Trifect just coming into his potential to do breathtaking things.

“Not the greatest artistic depiction, if you ask me” Ardent murmured after a few seconds of mulling over the redesign, prompting an eye roll from me, “But I can tell from this that you have a good mind for this sort of thing, Zenith” He praised me.

“Germane engineering, baby. können wir große rüstungen machen” I winked at him, getting a laugh out of the big lug at my use of a foreign tongue to boast.

“You’re a foreign student!?” He exclaimed, taken aback by this, “Your Equish is incredible! I would assume that you must’ve spoken it your entire life to be so proficient with it today”

“I am, and I have” I admitted via enumeration, “I often think using that language as well, which is a sign of fluency” I shook my head, “However, this is irrelevant to the here and now. Tell you what, Ardent. If you go through with my idea, I’ll even help you assemble it!” I offered my assistance. 

“That’s a mighty nice proposal of you to extend to me, Zenith. But what about you, and your own project? The due date is within a few days and we’ll need all the in class time we can get to finalize our work” Ardent expressed his concerns.

I waved it off dismissively, “I couldn’t even find half the parts I’d need to put it together. I figured I would wait until the crates are restocked before commencing on it myself. Besides, it’s smaller than what you’re doing… in size anyway” I kept quiet that what I was planning on making was much more ambitious than a maladroit mantlet.

He rubbed at the back of his head with a foreleg, humming in cogitation, “Hmm… It’s certainly a tempting design you’ve copied down, and your magic would be a big help with some of the more intricate parts” He planted all four hooves down on the linoleum as he made his decision, “All right! You’ve convinced me” He stuck out his hoof, though not for a bump like with earlier.

“This will be mutually satisfactory for the both of us” I guaranteed, taking care to avoid grasping Ardent’s hoof with my hand, alternatively bending my wrist to curl around his so we could shake on it. 

My ulterior motive had been fulfilled with this gesture of collaboration. This slight ploy served as a means for getting chummy with Ardent to help with negotiating a collaboration of a very different breed while also allowing me to spend time with someone whose counterpart I fought a feral snow dragon alongside with. A person whose life I only got the briefest of insights into before fate pulled me away on a journey I was only just beginning to plumb the depths of. The secondary objective was accomplished throughout the duration of the class’s remaining time.  We dismantled the first shield and rummaged around the workshop for sheets of iron to make the second version. Unlike with my robot components, flat slabs of metal were much easier to find, bend with a hydraulic presser, and fashion into segmented plates that we could weld together with blowtorches (Pony welding helmets were not made for the human skull in mind, so I had to expend some magic to polarize my vision and prevent myself from incurring photokeratitis or ‘arc eye’ while I held the welding tool away from me with my magic to avoid the particulate matter that ejected from heavy duty soldering. Ardent accepted the made up explanation that welding helmets made me feel claustrophobic and restricted my breathing without further pesky questions).

The normally reserved Ardent Bastion was rather talkative once I found the right topics to bring up, such as his fillyfriend (whom he felt he didn’t deserve and really heaped a lot of accolades on for her virtuousness), his cantankerous uncle (whom he lived with, since his parents were deceased by the time he was a foal), and his dedication to being both academically and athletically active. Most intriguing to me was that Ardent had some experience with playing an instrument himself, taking a diverse music appreciation class where he got to practice bass guitar while also hanging out with his fillyfriend (Who would take on the stage name of DJ Cry2tal Sh1ne. She apparently excelled at mixing it up with her ‘instrument’ the turntables). He also begrudgingly mentioned that he took it to hang out with Silver Sword, who dabbled in guitar and the keyboard synthesizer. I filed this tidbit of information away to be called upon later once I found enough ponies to form a band with. I now knew that both Silver and Ardent had the potential for helping me win my Tantō back (even if I could never envision their counterparts even knowing how to hold those instruments, let alone play them. Modern instruments were only imported to the Krystal Kingdom a short while ago in fact), but I would need to find a drummer or this plan would fall apart before it even got off the ground.

Ardent wanted to know more about me himself over the course of our conversation, and posed many specific questions about my background as a foreign born student and my experience of moving here, so I had to call upon my pragmatically deceitful nature to mold a story that would fit in with my yarn to Cadence. I went with the same tale that my family was immigrating to a new land and subsequently a new life. And that they were nervous about residing in a strange place and being surrounded by strange ponies that spoke another language not their own, had customs that were not their own, and overall had an almost alien culture that was not their own. 

It wasn’t wholly deceptive though, as I only had to relate my grandparents’ own experiences when they migrated to America in order to make it believable (So many stories to draw upon there. I was essentially covered in that department). Besides… everyone knows that the most effective kind of lies are those mixed in with the truth. Just like his counterpart, Ardent was an exceptionally attentive listener, occasionally nodding and inserting his thoughts on what that must have been like for me while we multitasked on constructing the frame of his reworked medieval mantlet.

By the end of the class period, Ardent and I managed to meld together enough plates that the upper half of the mantlet shield was done and ready to be joined with the other two portions. The segmentation gave it a more… menacing air to it, but also that of durability. It was larger than the initial version as well, perhaps because I subconsciously felt that a pony sized mantlet was too puny to take seriously. One thing I didn’t count on was the amount of attention we were garnering from curious onlookers who wondered just what the heck we were putting together, mumbling amongst themselves about it either being a poor choice for a stringent grader like Peabody or how jealous they were that we were making such expeditious progress while they lagged behind. Ardent might not have minded the extra eyes on us, but it put an unnecessary strain on my perception filter, so I shooed them off with a withering glare, my naturally piercing eyes were only reinforced by the emotionless mask reflected on my ponygänger’s face, and our audience wisely backed off to tend to their own business.

Ardent and I cordially parted ways once the bell rang, leaving our stuff behind at the worktables, which acted as assigned seating and doubled as storage slots. I rematerialized my saddle-schoolbags when no one was looking and egressed out of the workshop’s confines. Pouring out into the hallways, the students of CCHS became a crowd of sparkling colors as they meshed into one indistinguishable mass. I had to get a little pushy just so I could refer to the directory without being swept away by the flow of traffic. I always hated that about my high school experience, and this was just reopening old wounds to toss salt in the tear.

My griping about bitter pet peeves aside, my culinary arts class was adjacent to the main cafeteria of the school, presumably because it made use of the same facilities such as ovens, stovetops, and etcetera. The class was already three quarters of the way full by the time I got there, and I observed that the vast majority of the students taking the course were overwhelmingly female, and that the two males I could see who were present weren’t the most masculine looking of stallions. 

‘Again with the kitchen stereotypes? Last time I checked, the prestigious position of Chef was traditionally a male role’ I wasn’t sure what it was about this that got me so steamed up, but to me the kitchen should be an androgynous learning environment. Seeing so many mares outnumbering the guys made me feel as if I was in for a less than epic mealtime.

I approached the desk of the hefty instructor, a white furred and black spotted heifer named after a flower with big, blue irises, and introduced myself, “Good morning, ma’am, I’m Zenith”

“Why hello there!” She happily greeted me with an unmistakably Midwestern accent, “Are you the new student I was recently told would be joining our herd today?” Her high pitched voice inquired.

My right eye twitched at the second to last word, “Sure am” Was my clipped response, fighting the urge to slap myself on the face and clear up my aggravation.

If Daisy noticed my vexation, she refrained from making any comment on it, “Well… that’s wonderful, dearie. Come!” She beckoned me closer before whispering, “I’m going to assign you to work with some colts your age so you can acquaint yourself with your peers more comfortably. I know it can mortifying enough when you’re brave enough to be one of four other colts in the class, don’t cha know?” She winked at me. Man, her accent was thick.

I nodded in fake gratitude, “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate you looking out for my interests”

She swatted at the air with a cloven hoof, “Think nothing of it, dearie” She then clapped them together excitedly, “You have some fine timing, Zenith. Today we’re going to be making something gourmet! Sweetbread à la Neighstou!” She was positively quaking with joy. And while I absolutely hated her accent, she was the kind of instructor whose passion for teaching was admirable enough to let me overlook that.

“Sounds tasty” I said, imagining what that would look like.

‘Isn’t sweetbread the gland of an animal?’ I thought in confusion. How in the worlds did they make that here?

I took my seat at one of the tables, dispelled my illusory schoolbags, and forwent the niceties of conversing with the other colts, who were too absorbed with their debate over the finer points of Weremare versus Vampstallion to listen to anything I had to say anyway. The door to the class swung open and in pranced the familiar orangey shape of Piercing Arrow, who whipped his head back to dramatically displace his mane while smiling toothily to the class at large like a member of royalty had just arrived. I could practically hear the collective eye roll his exaggerated actions earned him as the rest of the class cumulatively ignored him. He frowned at the lack of recognition, and made like he was going to say something, but the teacher caught his attention first.

“Remember, Piercing Arrow. No more funny business with the mares that has no place in the classroom or this school, m’kay?” Daisy dictated in an abnormally serious voice, “Be courteous to your fellow students and behave” She placed extra emphasis on the latter half of the command.

“Don’t you worry about me, Miss Daisy. I’ll be a perfectly model example of an exemplary student” Pierce assured her with a mildly condescending tone before he spotted me. He reacted with surprise as his ears shot upwards and his eyes widened, before he broke out into a wide grin and took the open seat right next to me without invitation. I wasn’t sure whether to feel annoyed or flattered that he wanted to speak to me as much as I secretly needed to speak with him.

“Hey, hey! If it isn’t that lanky looking new guy I saw awaiting the wrath of the Principal! What are you doing here in this drag of a course?” He pondered aloud, before hijacking the rest of the one sided discourse, “Don’t tell me it’s to rub elbows with the ladies like I do! Trust me, half of ‘em are too uptight to give somepony like me the time of day, let alone their phone number. Though you’re obviously an out of towner, so maybe some of the less prudish fillies will find you interesting enough” 

He craned his neck to the side, “Say…Can you do a comrade colt a solid and share any contact information you score with me?” He sleazily requested of me, laying a foreleg around my illusion’s shoulder and upping the energy drain on my spell. His behavior made me wonder if his counterpart was this desperate for some female company. Given how loose lipped and luckless with love Pierce drunkenly confessed he could be after imbibing with him at the Gemmed Tankard, I couldn’t help but assume it to be so. 

“You… have me grievously mistaken, pal” I echoed his designation to me from earlier, “Flirting with the mares is an activity that one does outside of school campus, and not even then should one be so frank with it” I brushed off his foreleg with the dual purposes of saving power and sending him the message that we were not buddy-buddy yet.

My reaction caused him to scowl, “Geez… you’re just as tight-flanked as everypony else in this establishment. Why… I’d bet that if the whole lot of you were to sit on a lump of coal, you’d spit out a diamond!” He denigrated me, comparing me to everyone else who reasonably shut him down for being an overbearing ass.

I scoffed at the funny mental image his suggestion conjured up, “That’s not anatomically or fundamentally possible, but I’m glad that constant rejection by the fairer sex hasn’t addled your sense of humor” I riposted.

He grinned a bit, this bantering trade of barbs being more to his liking, “Just you and those scornful mares wait… one of these days I’m going to be somepony important. And all those years of spurning poor old Piercy will come back to bite them in their fat flanks!” He declared with confidence. 

I stared long and scrupulously at him. This guy had a serious case of insecurity issues, which was probably why he was seeking attention so badly. But the self inflated way he was going about it was just having the opposite reception. I would have to break this to him slowly and with care, in case his was the fragile sort of insecure. This train of thought brought me back to my own experiences struggling with negative attention, at least until I determined for myself that I couldn’t care less what other people opined about me behind my back instead of to my face. Still, I wish that I had someone who didn’t judge me for being ruggedly individualistic like that, in that bygone era when I was in high school. But alas, being a loner by nature had its drawbacks, and a deficiency of moral support was one of them.

I was dubious to his statement, “And how do you intend to go about accomplishing this goal of justly deserved recognition?” I questioned, enacting step one of Pierce’s social reformation.

“W-what?” Pierce stuttered in bewilderment, evidently having never been asked that before, “I-I uh… I dunno. Wait! I’ll dominate the scoreboards at the next archery championship this week” He sank back in his chair and rubbed a foreleg abashedly against the other, “I’ve gotten a bit lax in my standards lately, so my aim wasn’t right on target for the last one. But I’ve gotten my rear in gear, so that shouldn’t happen again!”

My noggin swayed from side to side, “It’s not me you need to convince” I rotated a hand in the general area around us, “It’s them. I’m rooting for you if you intend to prove yourself to the student body… but it blooms at the individual level initially, like the first grain of sand in an hourglass that soon becomes a sand hill” I waxed poetic.

I poked him in his chest with a closed fist, “Lose the braggadocio and be more tactful. Mares don’t want to just hear how physically attractive they are… at least not in the blunt way that you describe it to their faces” I amended.

“And what do you suggest I do then, oh wise Casanova?” He snidely countered.

“Okay first off, I’m of Germane heritage… not Istallion. Secondly, what you should be… is genuine when interacting with the ladies. Perhaps eventually one of them will take an interest in the real Piercing Arrow, and not this… false screen that you’ve been putting up” I indicated with a twirl of a finger in his direction, which translated gauchely as a hoof from the ponygänger. I couldn’t fault my disguise for doing its job, but the body language of sentient equines just didn’t sit right with me.

“Huh… Silver Sword said something similar to me once. He also sucker punched me in the barrel… but I maybe… sorta deserved it” He conceded.

“You know Silver Sword?” I feigned shock.

“Sure do!” He chirped, “I see him at the recreation center almost every weekend training with all sorts of dueling swords. He and I struck up a friendship on the common ground of being sports oriented. We would both practice our respective sports to improve the overall skill we could contribute to our teams, and talk to each other during water breaks”

“So what did you do to get him to sucker punch you?” I prodded him to spill the beans.

His brow creased at how prying I was, “I may have… attempted to put the moves on a potential fillyfriend of his once when incidentally running into him at the mall” He divulged.

“I sense that there is more to this sordid tale of degeneracy” I observed in a sage like tone, like a wiseass too.

He looked away from me, “And I may have also… scared her off while consequentially making an idiotic impression of both myself and Silver. She never did speak to either of us again, a-and it took Silver a full month to acknowledge me as a friend again” He croaked, audibly choking up at his mistake.

My jaw fell, “Dude… you cock-blocked Silver Sword on his date? That’s in strict violation of the Bro Code of Bro-ethics!” I reprimanded him sternly, despite not having studied the bro code devoutly enough to make such a claim with authority. I assume that’s something bros would chastise though.

He recoiled, very much ashamed of himself, “In my defense, I didn’t know that they were palling around! Or that wet floor signs meant business even when the surface looks dry! How was I supposed to predict that one minor misstep would lead to her finding us in a compromising position and questioning both of our orientations?” His cheeks lit up a bright red that contrasted nicely with his orange coat. Damn, these ponies were hyper expressive!

I fit the clues together and winced, ‘Yikes… that would be extremely embarrassing’

“I tried to repair the mess I made by assuring her that I was irrevocably into mares… but all that did was earn me a slap on the cheek and a face full of pepper spray” His eyelids tensed as he squinted at the painful memory, “My eyes were on fire for hours afterwards… but at least I haven’t a single restraining order to my name yet!” He asserted with a groan, remaining cautiously optimistic, which I could respect. I was going to have to dock him some points for that last conditional, however.

The shrill screech of the bell signaling the start of class interrupted our tête-à-tête and we had to be quiet so that we wouldn’t get into trouble with Miss Daisy, who took to the floor in front of a blackboard to begin her lecture. Her udders jiggled with every step the well fed cow took, and I found myself oddly compelled by their hypnotizing movements. I shook myself out of it though, resolving to take an ice cold shower later.

“Alrighty students! I wish that your Monday morning has been as delightful as mine has so far. Last week I mentioned to you all that we were going to be crafting something different from the haycakes and peppered oat patties that we’ve been doing so far. Do any of you remember what that is?”

She called upon one student who had raised her hoof first, “Yes, Black Boron?”

“Sweetbread!” The pitch colored student answered.

“That’s correct!” Daisy beamed, “But not just any sweetbread. We’re making Sweetbread à la Neighstou! You remember Neighstou from our textbooks, oui? Owner and proprietor of one of the most prestigious restaurants in all of Mareis? And of a relatively mediocre commercial food brand on the side” She included with markedly less exuberance, “Paying the rent on that Prench plot of property can’t be cheap don’t cha know?”

“And it sells microwavable burritos! Millions and millions of burritos!” Interjected another filly for the sake of being a contrarian comedian.

“I’m well aware of the profits Chef Neighstou makes at the sacrifice of food quality” Daisy waggishly responded, “But here in this culinary arts classroom we must each of us strive to at least reach the level of cuisine that rises above the caliber of common cardboard carted cookery. A good Chef knows how to produce dishes that has their customers crawling back for more. But don’t take my word for it!” She opened a closet door and yanked out a projector hidden within by using her teeth (‘I really hope they at least sanitize what they drool over later’), “Let’s listen to the divine wisdom of one of the greatest Chefs of our age!”

After pulling a projector screen down using a hooked stick that she also was required to grip with her teeth, Miss Daisy gave the projector a good whack with her hindleg and the film reel began rolling. The olden machine projected its light onto the screen and expanded, revealing a sepia toned countdown sequence with numbers commencing at three. Much like the film projectors in Arcania, this machine had speakers built into its casing that emitted a crisp yet resonant vibration of air molecules that most professional surround sound selling companies would be envious of. Even in an entire world apart, I could never escape the mind boggling anachronisms that pestered me with their sheer haphazardness. 

The countdown expired and after a short flowery speech about the time honored tradition of cooking by a narrator, it launched into Neighstou’s self success story from his origins as an unassuming busser to the head of an immensely popular gourmet restaurant. It was told mainly from the viewpoint of the portly Chef himself, via interviewing scenes between Neighstou and a mare asking him questions in regards to his meteoric claim to fame and how few hooves he had to step upon in order to get there. He was unnaturally large and jovial for an Earth pony, and not in a way that connoted unending strength. I dare say that he would even put Miss Daisy to shame had he been standing next to her in real life, a fact that Piercing Arrow was not above joking to me with a whisper and prompting an unbidden chuckle out of the depths of my gut. 

“Pay attention please, Zenith. And tone down on the speaking while the video is playing, Arrow” Daisy lightly scolded us from behind, effectively shutting the both of us up.

When the video was concluded, Daisy vacated the spot she was looming over us from and addressed the class, “With that inspirational spiel in mind, let’s get to cooking!”

From there each table of students went to their assigned stations, where all of the materials were set up for us. Pots, pans, cutlery, and silverware were all in their designated drawers and cabinets (I would need to stoop a tad to reach inside them and take what we needed. Though I could just delegate it to someone else as there were four of us). On an angled book holder located in a nonessential cooking free spot was our tome of recipes. Upon vocal cueing from the instructor, we flipped open the cover and skimmed the pages until we had reached the right number. I read aloud from the ingredients list since my ‘adoptive compatriots’ were unwilling to take the lead. I resisted the urge to make a derisive remark about their masculinity, but held off long enough to stay focused on our task.

“Sweetbread à la Neighstou, an exotic dish that its creator spontaneously invented after a trip to the equally exotic island of Boarneo” I said as my eyes scanned the column below, “Each portion requires three shoots of asparagus, a splash of Dog rose purée, one geoduck egg, a sprinkle of diced dried white fungus, the sweetbread itself and…” My eyebrows furrowed in dismay, “…anchovy licorice sauce? That’s disgusting!”

“I’ll say!” Agreed one of the two colts whose names they had never bothered to tell me, “I literally cannot stomach anything that’s fish based or I’ll spray chunks all over the place” 

Daisy overheard this and input her advice, “One of the marks of an aspiring Chef is improvising when the situation calls for it… create another sauce to dress it with!” She advised. With her peace said, she wandered off to observe the other teams who already had a decent head start on us.

“Well… what do you guys think? White Marinara… or red?” I polled my kitchen teammates.

“I’ll be honest with you here, Zenith. I only took this course so I could eat and flirt to my heart’s content” Pierce came clean about his culinary usefulness aloud. 

“Same”

“Ditto”

The other two mirrored his standpoint, it seemed. I planted a palm against my face and sighed deeply. The sooner I got my hands on my Tantō again, the better the chances I could leave this corner of the multiverse without strangling some poor sod to alleviate my mounting frustration.

“Whatever” I groaned, “I’ve got plenty of cooking experience. I’ll bear the brunt of the workload this time, I guess. You guys can just… pretend that you’re not freeloading entirely by gathering the listed ingredients for me. I’ll prepare the sauces and solid aliments” I took command of my little kitchen troop, which they accepted without hesitation.

“Righty-O!”

“You’re the boss, pal!”

“Remember… no anchovies” The colt warned me with a nicker, making an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture with his hoof.

The remainder of my culinary arts class was nothing special. I followed the instructions on the recipe cookbook to the letter, with me only needing to improvise between picking a marinara or going with a truffle oil that accentuated the other flavors instead of strong arming your taste buds with its own. Like with Ardent, I got plenty of opportunities to learn about Piercing Arrow while our food was being prepared, though I never took my eyes away from what I was doing, especially while holding a knife. The sweetbread ingredient wasn’t meat like I had originally suspected, but was some kind of tofu-esque substitute that tasted like meat, but was bereft of having the origin of a living creature without roots in the earth. For once I didn’t care that my food lacked meat, after expending so much magic in such a short period and straining my body in metaphysical ways, I was hungry enough that it didn’t make a noticeable difference to me. So my inner carnivore was suppressed at the moment, albeit I vowed that I would chow down on a nice, juicy steak as soon as I got back to Arcania, and I wasn’t just saying that because Miss Daisy’s plumpness looked especially appetizing (What kind of overly sensitive bleeding heart do you take me for? Just because I met a free thinking cow with scarily mesmerizing udders, doesn’t mean I’ll stop loving scrumptious beef altogether).

Before we could sit down and enjoy the fruits of my labor however, Miss Daisy appraised each of the teams’ works and verbally pointed out what was wrong with the dish or what needed improvement for next time. To the relief of my fellow teammates, my mostly unknown talents with meal preparation availed us, and our dish was given one of the higher ratings, much to the surprise of many of the mares present. From their chattering gossip, they expressed how a team comprised solely of boys rarely if ever scored that well on a moderately challenging dish, and it didn’t take them long to attribute this success to the new arrival. I quickly became rather uncomfortable with some of the admiring gazes I was receiving from the ladies, and worried that Piercing Arrow would become jealous for being even more ignored in favor of myself. To my soothed nerves, Piercing made no comment about it, nor did his expressive countenance betray his thoughts, which pretty much meant that he thought nothing of it.

“Hey Pierce?” I spoke up in between bites of tangy sweetbread.

“Hmm…?” He replied with his mouth full. He chewed and swallowed, “What is it, pal?” He smiled at me, gladdened that he didn’t have to do any work whatsoever, or maybe he enjoyed my company. I needed to reevaluate my worldview, I should only be cynical with due reason to suspect others of treachery.

‘These ponies… so swift are they to declare friendship and mean it’ I mused, though unsurprisingly, the Arcanians I knew shared this same aspect.

It was the moment of truth for me, if Pierce was devoid of drumming talent, I would be forced to resort to locating and stealing my Tantō unlawfully. While I was willing to do many things that strayed into a moral gray zone to meet my objectives, I preferred a light sided alignment.

“Do you by chance have any kind of rock band experience?”

His pupils changed size and he nearly choked on his next bite, “Are you kidding me!? I’m huge on rock! Yeah I’ve got experience!” He exclaimed.

I nearly exhaled in consoled contentment, “Really…” I breathed in suspense, “What kind of instrument do you specialize in, perchance?”

‘Oh please be drums, please be drums, please be drums’ I supplicated my mantra to a higher power.

Pierce took the silverware he somehow was gripping in his hooves and proceeded to bang them on an imaginary drum set, vocalizing beats as he did so. It took a great degree of effort not to jump out of my seat and heel-click, but I ascetically managed to repress the ‘improper impulse to soil one’s reputation’ as Rarity often referred to it. Speaking of which, I’ll never understand how women like her could complain about dirt on multiple occasions and yet partake in mud baths at the spa without issue. Female logic… the only mystery I don’t want to solve.

“Ever since I heard the announcement over the intercom, I’ve been wanting to form a band so I could participate and be seen in that Battle of the Bands event this Friday for weeks now. But I only know that Silver Sword has some background foundation with guitar and synth board… and I can’t recall anypony with strong bass skills that isn’t already in a band of their own” Pierce explained, desiring to do something other than archery to get recognized, “Are you the pony for that job?”

“No, I’m familiar with both electric and acoustic guitar with some piano on the side” I leaned towards him and whispered, “Look, I know a guy who could potentially fulfill that role for us, provided I can mend the fractured relationship that he has with Silver Sword”

“You’re talking about Ardent Bastion aren’t you?” Pierce correctly deduced, “I know him as well, aaannnd lets just say that he doesn’t care much for me and leave it at that”

I leveled him an unamused half lidded stare, “Let me guess… a bad encounter with his fillyfriend?”

He gave me a stiff nod in confirmation, “A very bad encounter” He concurred.

“Scheiße!” I mutedly cursed, “That makes two relationships I need to superglue back together. This day keeps getting better and better” I bitterly bemoaned my rotten, nonexistent luck.

“Sorry for being such a monumental screw up, pal” Pierce remarked sarcastically, not appreciating the vote of no confidence.

“It’s not a big deal” I said placatingly, “We just need to collaborate with Silver so that you can both make peace with Ardent, put the past behind you, and look toward the future as friends. I just need to think of how we can go about doing that” I massaged by temples as I ran through several ideas and rated their feasibility. I suddenly snapped my fingers, before realizing that I should not have done so.

“What was that snapping noise?” Pierce asked me, his ears swiveling like mad to pinpoint where it came from.

I brushed his inquiry aside, “Never you mind. I’ve thought of what we can do to get both you and Silver back on Ardent’s good graces”

Pierce gave up on locating the source of the noise to reply, “Oh yeah? What do you got?”

“Gifts” Was my monosyllabic answer. 

I interrupted him before he could open his mouth and attempt to poke holes in the plan, “Hear me out before getting testy!” I implored him before he could protest, “Think about it. Gifts are always given out as tokens of apology and or propitiatory gestures. You and Silver can make nice with Ardent by verbally apologizing and then guaranteeing that your words are authentic with a conveniently misdirecting present! Ardent would have to compromise his sacred sense of honor if he refused to acknowledge such ‘conviction’ on both of your parts, and he doesn’t strike me as the type to do so” I explicated, covering both the means and the possible roadblock.

His shoulders sagged, “I suppose that could work, but I’m not the gift bearing type, and I wouldn’t know what to get the trundling lug even if I was. All he ever talks about whenever I see him around is how wonderful his fillyfriend is to him” Pierce snorted, “That’s total Minotaur crap, by the way. She was even harsher to me than Silver’s mace happy mall date! I mean… bucking me in the stallionhood? That was literally a low blow” He clopped a hoof against the table indignantly.

“You have my profound sympathies for your damaged goodies, Pierce, and I want to make it right somehow” I commiserated, “So don’t worry about getting the gift yourself. You just need to suggest a couple things that Ardent would appreciate and get him to hop on board with us”

“Oh…” Pierce held a hoof against his chin as he cogitated, “Well… he once told me that his bass guitar could do with some replacement, but the replacement he had in mind, a Bohoovian I believe, would set him back a few hundred bucks… which no parent in their right mind would just fork out to their foal, let alone Ardent’s stingy, sheep shearer of an uncle”

“Anything else?” I pressed him for further details, “That’s only one idea for a gift” I reminded him.

“With how frequently he speaks of his fillyfriend, we could make some kind of necklace for her to wear, with her namesake as the centerpiece! Mares dig that, right? Besides, the gemstones for that are really inexpensive and available at any jewelers. We could both pony up to pay for it” He generously offered to chip in. 

“I can handle the monetary expenses myself” I stood firm as I settled the matter, a hand migrating subconsciously to my munny pouch while a devious idea formed in my head, “Say… do you know what the value of gold is going for on the market today?” I inquired of him, banking on a single fact that my modern home must have shared with this one.

Pierce shrugged indifferently, “I haven’t a clue… it’s likely a lot of bucks though. I’m always hearing on the Tele about the value of anything golden consistently skyrocketing in the past year itself”

‘If that’s true, then I’ve got some coins that ought to fetch a good price at a local pawnshop. I’ll need to fabricate an explanation for how I got them however’

“Then we should be substantially subsidized on that front” I leaned back in my chair.

“Oh ho ho!” The colt chortled, “You’re from one of those wealthy, well to do families aren’t you? Tell me you’re pulling my leg!” Pierce balked, unbelieving as to how cocksure I was about what I was implying.

“Not as spoiled as you think, but I’m not exactly strapped for cash (‘Disregarding the here and now’). Anyhow, if all of this does work and we put the band together… do you mind if I choose the name we take the stage with?” I pleaded with the puppy dog eyes, which were even more effective when they took up more than a third of your facial features.

“Only if it works…” He echoingly stipulated, “Otherwise we pressgang somepony else with a bass to join us and go on with the title ‘The Sexy Bastards’ alright?” He grinned to me, in addition to flashing me his well maintained teeth. I couldn’t believe that the fillies would find him physically unattractive, with the slim toned and lithe form he was in. It was that obnoxious demeanor of his that seemed to be his only real fault as a person and as a pony.

“Fair enough…” I agreed to the terms, “…but ‘The Star Cabal’ is more to my tastes” I pettily sniped as we went back to eating our vegetarian friendly food.





The culinary arts class ended with the ring of a bell and the cycle of relocation began anew. Pierce and I solidified our agreement to join the Battle of the Bands event with a mutual spit laced hoof shake, which I immediately washed off in one of the kitchen sinks after. He laughed at my antics, joked about my squeamishness, and galloped off to PE class after promising to stay in touch. I contemplatively watched him go. He was still the same old Piercy, except that he was younger in this incarnation and played the drums despite the physical handicap that his flat grip of his hooves should have afforded him. I guess physics was even more of a suggestion here than it was back in Arcania!

My latest class was acting in the school theater chamber, and it was there that I finally figured out why the instructor was named Ham. Like his name on the schedule should have more overtly implied, the mustard yellow, goatee sporting (facial hair on top of facial hair. I have so many questions!) stallion was hammy as all get-out, randomly changing vocal pitches and accents at the drop of a hat, quoting plays and passages from satires whenever he considered it apt, and dressing up in a mishmash of clothes that would have Discord weep tears of ecstasy and Rarity weep tears of blood had they seen his chaotic ensemble. I was in for a pleasant bolt from the blue however, as Silver Sword shared this class period with me.

“Silver Sword!” I greeted him, sitting down in the pillowed cushion next to his, “Fancy seeing you here”

“Sup Zenith?” He returned the greeting, keeping his gaze fixed ahead of him like a smart student.

“I delivered your message to Ardent. He… remains stubborn about his position towards you” I suspired with fake disappointment, “Sorry”

He laid a hoof on my ‘shoulder’ forgivingly, “You did as I requested, and for that I will never hold it against you. He and I spoke during the previous interclass period” He apprised me of the situation, “He wants me to prove that I meant what I said, not with words, but with actions”

I hummed thoughtfully, “This is beneficial news then. I’ve worked out a plan with an acquaintance of yours to reconcile your standing with him”

He broke his gaze away from the instructor’s monologue, “Acquaintance?” He uttered in befuddlement.

My eyes flicked from side to side, “Piercing Arrow…?” I ventured a guess, worried that Pierce may have lied to me about his relationship to the fencing colt.

“Oh…” He made an ‘O’ shape with his mouth, “…him. Pierce is more to me than a mere acquaintance, Zenith. He’s a friend, like you. Granted, he’s a bit of a blockhead when it comes to socially accepted standards, but he’s a good guy to have at your back. Even if the best kind of support he can lend is better kept at a distance” He chuckled, wittily tying in the archer’s skills with a bow into his figurative language.

“You need to apologize to more than just Ardent, Silver” I declared, like it was a simple statement of fact.

Silver instantly looked away shamefacedly the moment I brought that up, “He told you about that too huh?”

I continued, “I don’t know what possessed you to badmouth his ladyfriend that way, but it was a major slip up that you need to rectify sooner rather than later” I recommended to him.

“I know, Zenith. I know… it’s just-… I’m stumped as to how I’m going to do that. I know Ardent well enough that I can appeal to his desire to keep ourselves on minimally cordial terms with each other, but his fillyfriend?” He shook his head, “I have no idea how to navigate that mine field… one wrong step, stallion… one misstep and I’m toast”

“Luckily, I have a plan for buttering the two of them up so you can reach an accord” I rubbed my thumb against my first two fingers, even though Silver couldn’t see it and my ponygänger just made this weird trembling motion with its hoof, “It starts with m and rhymes with honey”

Silver’s forehead creased as he effortlessly determined the rhyming word, “You want me to bribe them with cash?” He was incredulous, visibly opposed to that idea.

“No…! Well, kind of” I conceded, “But I realistically want you to initiate a tribute of sorts, as a token gesture of penitence you se-”

“Ahem!” A stern voice cut into our discourse, “Are you two gentlecolts quite finished?” Mister Ham rhetorically asked us from his pulpit on the platform, narrowing his eyes at us.

We both muttered an apology and remained quiet, “Wait one cotton pickin’ secon’!” Mister Ham shouted in an outrageously southern accent that even Applejack would cringe upon hearing, “Are you the Germane pony I was told would be gracing us with his presence?”

“What gave it away?” I snarked, letting my regard for authority wane.

“You’ve yet to take on the natural coloration of a Crystal City inhabitant, which suggests to me that you’re fresh off the plane” Mister Ham obliged me anyway, “I must say… your Equish is leagues ahead of any native speaker’s I’ve ever heard. Say something Germane for the class!”

I was more than happy to, “Deine Mutter ist ein Hamster und Ihr Vater roch nach Holunderbeeren!” I gutturally insulted his lineage, though not so badly that he would punish me if he happened to know his German.

“Fascinating…” Ham fawned over me, ignorantly unaware, “Tell me true… what is your favorite historical composer of classical art?”

“Beethooven” I answered automatically.

“Everypony with a single cultured bone in their bodies loves him” Mister Ham retorted in a flat tone that was similar to my own. He was either subtly mocking me, or that may have been his real voice, “What other composers catch your ear beyond the blatantly obvious?”

“Well… I do enjoy listening to some of the piano pieces composed by Marezart, in addition to the motif centered works of Haydn” I listed from my actual musical preference, risking what I thought the ponified names were.

“My my… aren’t you a veritable Reneighssance Stallion?” Mister Ham spoke admiringly, even though I wanted to roll my eyes with how horrific the puns were getting.

“I try” I shrugged apathetically.

“And since you’re so capable… you surely won’t mind demonstrating for the rest of us how you’d market one of any products I have in the back with some pizazz” He made it clear that he was not giving me much of a choice; and the crooning way he placed emphasis on that last word was downright creepy.

“I’m game” I accepted his challenge as I got up from my seat and hopped onto the stage, to the collective, curious murmuring of the theater room’s inhabitants. I had no fear for this. One skill I knew I possessed in spades was acting whenever the situation demanded it. Hell’s bells, I was doing it right now.

Mister Ham ushered me backstage where a large dressing room combined with a prop station was located. Next to a rack of myriad clothing that included diaphanous fabric was a long table with random objects lined up side by side. Blenders, computer monitors, and even a rubber chicken were part of the supply. 

The wacky teacher thumped a hoof on the table to grab my attention, “Pick one of these objects and think of how you’d find a catchy way to market it. You’re free to use whatever else is in this room to support your pitch. Your grade for the week will depend on how impressed I am by the presentation”

I nodded in understanding before I set about sifting through the contents on the table for something that fit in with my ‘marketing’ style. I threw aside the rubber chicken in favor of a tall glass with a wide brim that was shaped like a boot. Smiling to myself, I raided the clothing racks to find an outfit for my ponygänger to temporarily don. Even if it would add an unwanted drain on my magic (which was dipping again, to my dismay), I wanted my presentation to have the maximum impact on its audience. Scrounging up some worthy articles of clothing, I slipped them on the hard light projections of my ‘body’ with my hands. There was a staff container filled with drinks that I appropriated from a fridge and set down on the floor by the item table. Rifling through the box, I pulled out some soda bottles with light brown colored fluid in them (‘Pepneigh and Colta Cola? No… just no!’) and even another can of that mixed blessing Red Pegasus, which I refrained from drinking until the time was right.

“Do you mind if there’s music during the presentation?” I inquired of my eccentric teacher, who was watching my actions from his locality by the curtain with silent bemusement.

“If you know a spell that will permit it, then I’ll welcome that! Fitting music makes everything easier to swallow, don’t you agree?” His lips curled in wry amusement, “Are you almost ready to go?”

I pulled out a pair of hipster like, shutter shades and placed them on my illusion’s muzzle, “I am ready, instructor Ham” I announced, carrying my materials in my magic. I was decked out in lederhosen and wearing an alpine hat with a feather stiched into it. It was brazenly offensive and very much stereotypical, but that was kind of the point.

“Atta boy, get out there and knock ‘em dead! Just… not in the bad way, alright?” Without warning, he pulled at a curtain rope with his teeth (‘Again, yuck’) and the velvety material fell away, unveiling me from the theater class’s eyes.

Thinking fast, I conjured my sound sphere and had it play a peppy tune on repeat that I heard on the Internet once and never forgot. Pulling up a tray from the back, with a burst of magic, I opened it and set it down in front of me like I was about to place a top hat on it and pull out Angel bunny (Not that I reckon he would appreciate that). Popping a bottle of pop, I poured the fluid held inside into an ordinary looking glass, before glaring at it in boredom and tossing it into a garbage can on the far side of the room.

“I drink ze beer from ze glass, but das boring” I yawned into a fist before holding up the boot shaped glass, “Das Boot?” I smiled like a Cheshire Cat that had just caught a München Mouse, “Ooo ja. That’s more like it, keep pouring” I filled it to the top and magicked it so it would froth and become nice and foamy, “I have ze Germane accent, so of course I love beer” I shrugged like it was a foregone conclusion, “But how much can ze boot hold? Eins, Zwei, Drei? Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier?” I flash copied ghostly images of the boot so that it would appear to multiply in accordance with the lyrics. 

From there the sound sphere initiated a chorus that I proceeded to jive along to, spinning and dancing in tune with the beat, with my ponygänger joining in on the fun. With my peripherals, I evaluated the initial reception I was receiving from the class. Many of them were at a lost for words as their jaws scraped the floor, but the majority of them, mainly mares, were cheering and hooting in glee like it was the greatest thing they ever saw. Silver’s face was the funniest to look at though, his eyes twitching violently, gaping openly at what he was utterly trying and failing to comprehend. It made me laugh, and probably set of Pinkie’s sixth sense on the other side of the portal while I was at it.

I picked up the boot and held it out to the class, “I have ze beer and so I need a light snack” I conjured up another hard light projection and held it aloft, “A giant pretzel? Totally perfect, cheese goes nicely with that” A magical pitcher of melted cheese emptied onto the pretzel and much of my illusion’s muzzle as I pretended to eat it. 

I noticed my poor state of cleanliness and pointed it out to the class, “Now I’m all dirty and tired and probably needs a shower” An illusory storm cloud appeared above me and drenched me with a sudden downpour of water, making me immaculate again. I stooped down, drank from the beer boot, and set it down on the stand before taking the Red Pegasus and refilling it with that, “Energy drinks should do, I just need more than five hours”

Gulping it down and feeling the rush of power it provided, I bounced about the stage with boundless energy instead of collapsing on the floor from a heart attack. I was moving so swiftly that I was reasonably sure there was a blurring effect attached to my limbs. I couldn’t recall the first can of Red Pegasus I drank doing that to me, but I supposed that I had attracted the attention of some causality determining entity that was both with me and against me at the same time. Once the chorus was done, I returned to the stand area and laid my head against it, resting it just above my arm-forelegs and fibbing being asleep until the very next line.

“I vake up early and I hunger for breakfast” I said, putting my shutter shades back on like a boss, “Butter milk pancakes, sausage, eggs, bacon 
sugar and cinnamon” I listed off, conjuring floating, semi-solid images of each aliment.

“And for lunch I vant ze wiener…” I deliberately and dramatically paused. Every mare in the audience gasped, and some of them even began tearing up, “…schnitzel. Ooo ja!” I winked at the visibly relieved females, strangely enjoying the amount of fun I was having with them. Screwing with these ponies was just too easy sometimes. 

“Gotta have surf with my turf and vash it down with some butter. Then for dinner it’s simple, I always eat ze same thing. Sauerbraten, Goulash, Bratwurst, Spätzle, Hasenpfeffer, and Mayo” I conjured one last image of a cake and held it with my hands, “And to top it all off, I think zhis cake looks amazing. There’s just one thing I’d change, I think it goes without saying” I stuffed the fake cake into the empty beer boot and danced with it until I called for the sound sphere to shut down.

I closed my eyes and bowed to my audience, while my ponygänger dropped onto its two front knees. While the raucous reverberation of hooves being stomped against the floor as an equine form of applause gladdened me, inside I was more concerned about how much magic I had just burnt through in order to replicate the things I did during that presentation. I scratched at my temples as I remembered the warning on the Red Pegasus can about not drinking more than three servings per day. My brain was already feeling that faint pulsing sensation that preceded a hell of a migraine. I had to be careful with my magic expenditure, or all would be for naught.

“Bravo, bravo! You’ve successfully passed my test” Called out Mister Ham from my right as he came closer, “If it weren’t for the fact that I already own that beer boot, I would head out and buy one right away! Aren’t you a bit young to drink alcohol though?” He surmised, taking the boot and other items from my clutches to put in the back.

“Legal drinking age in Germaneigh is late teens… and that’s the only thing I really regret about moving here” I jested with a small grin, “May I take my seat again?” I took off the outfit and lobbed it backstage with my magic.

He frowned at how callous I was with his stage clothes, but made no criticisms, “Of course you may, though I haven’t the foggiest idea how anypony else is going to follow an act like that. You’ve set the bar pretty high for the rest of us, Zenith my lad” He called me by name as he disappeared behind the second curtain, even though I hadn’t shown him my schedule slip. Meh, he was probably informed via the services of Secretary Sassy.

I returned to Silver’s side, the dumbfounded colt staring at me like I had a second head… which I technically did, so that analogy falls short, “Now… where were we?” I attempted to resume our conversation where it had left off, idly watching Mister Ham call on the next sap to convince us to buy something using his or her marketable acting skills.

“How can you act so casually after blowing everypony’s mind like that!?” He exclaimed, “I knew I predicted that you’d be an interesting pony to get to know Zenith, but you have gone above and beyond my expectations in the last three minutes. You can sing. You can dance. And you can effortlessly adopt an expression that just screams to the world that the depths of your indifference heed no boundaries after doing both!” He pounded his right foreleg against his left as he enumerated his points.

“Swell of you to say” I dryly replied, “Seriously now, what was I telling you before Mister Ham shushed us?”

“I-…” He sighed in defeat, knowing how pointless it was to take this up with me, “I dunno… some plan with me presenting a gift to Strawberry Quartz so that Ardent won’t be as ticked off at me?”

“Right… are you feeling up to that?” I questioned his resolve.

“If it gets me my friendship with Ardent back, I’m down for anything. What kind of gift are we getting her?” He wanted to know, with resolution clear in his voice.

“As I told Pierce, I’ll handle the gift buying task, you just need to mentally prepare yourself for the gift giving part. Perhaps a pre-written apologetic speech would be optimal?” I helpfully suggested.

He dismissed it, “Nah, I’m more of a ‘in the moment’ type of guy. Why are we working with Pierce again?”

“He has to make amends with Ardent as well. He tried to unknowingly charm his fillyfriend and paid the price for it” I grimaced at the mental picture, “Think of a very sensitive area unique to us dudes getting brutalized by an irate female”

He chortled briefly, “Heh. Yeah, that sounds like the kind of trouble Pierce would get himself into all right. His arrow is far too straight for his own good!”

“That’s terrible” I gently chided him with a shaky voice for Pierce’s sake, “And you’re distracting me, so quit it! So I saw it fitting to notify you that Pierce and I additionally want to form up a band to participate in the Battle of the Bands event this Friday. We would like you to become our backup guitarist and primary keyboardist, if you’re willing” I officially extended an invitation to him.

“And Ardent plays the bass… so you need to get him onboard too” Silver deduced our ulterior motive, “Since I know that’s not the primary reason why Pierce is apologizing to Ardent, I’ll give it some thought. Are you going to be the frontcolt of this band?”

“Primary lyricist and lead guitar… you don’t need to have any reservations about the effectiveness of my station, I assure you” I patted my chest with confidence.

“Hmm…” He hummed before snorting and extruded a hoof, “What the hay. Count me in! It’s not like I have anything better to do this Friday anyhow”

I bumped his hoof with a fist, “Welcome to the proto form of the Star Cabal” I formally received him.

His eyebrows rose and his face contorted like he didn’t know what to make of that, “Is that the name we’re going with?”

“Yeah…?”

He bobbed his noggin, “It sounds… completely radical. As long as Pierce doesn’t insist on coming up with the title of our gathering, I won’t have any regrets joining this endeavor”

“Then you better ensure that your spontaneous apology speech to Strawberry is sweeter than maple syrup” I metaphorically forewarned him.

He crooked his neck laterally, “You’re not referring to that cute, bashful mare who always sits in the back of my econ class are you?”

“Wha? No! I meant the actual ‘drench your pancakes with’ maple syrup!” I muffled a shout in exasperation, pinching at the bridge of my nose. I despised this about societies that named their kids after syntactical devices. It made the recurrence of these incidences much more frequent than they should be.

“Heh. My apologies…” He rubbed at the base of the back of his neck where his spine was, “It’s just that I’ve been thinking about her for the past two weeks now. I haven’t seen her in a relationship with anypony and she’s always so quiet, so I thought that I might approach her sometime and offer to get her a coffee… or something charming like that” He admitted sheepishly.

“Well if you work up the courage to tell her that, know that I’ll be there to support you, in spirit of course” I buoyed him up.

“Thanks Zenith” He smiled, “Are we still on for exploring the city later? I’ve got my own ride and license!” He proffered to me.

“If you’re willing to make a stop at a local pawnshop. I’d gladly accompany you for an afternoon out on the town” I gingerly accepted for certain.

“A pawnshop? Why would you want to see one of those places?” He asked in puzzlement, “They only have old dilapidated junk that nopony really cares about” 

“I’ll ignore the wrongness of that statement. But do you remember how you had to spare me for that can of Red Pegasus earlier?” I levitated a golden bit out of my coin purse and showed it to Silver, “That’s because I haven’t converted this into bucks yet”

He whinnied in awed shock, “Holy Cow pie! Is that real gold!?”

“It better be. Otherwise I’m going to have a very long and unpleasant talk with my bank” I pseudo joked, being partially serious about that.

He snatched it out of the air and scrutinized it thoroughly, “Where’d the hay did you get this? Only the preppiest ponies at this school wear anything that has gold in it, but none of them carry it around in coins like this! A few of these coins would be worth thousands of bucks!” He blurted, holding onto the coin like it could dissipate at any moment.

“Keep it down, please” I requested as I plucked the coin out of his hooves and inserted it back in my pouch, “My family has a long standing tradition dating way back, where every colt receives an allotment of coins like these when he comes of age and becomes a stallion”

“It’s not like… birthday money, or anything like that?” Silver seemed convinced that I was some ultra rich kid. Was gold really worth that much around here?

“No Silver… its not. And even if we did have a boatload of these coins in our coffers, we absolutely abhor inspiring any kind of greed. In fact my family would likely frown on me for spending one of my coins like this unless I had no other choice” I explained to him, and realistically I didn’t have a plethora of choice here.

“What are you going to do with the money you get from pawning these coins?” He pried curiously.

“Purchase a new bass guitar for Pierce to give to Ardent, and a strawberry quartz necklace for you to give to his fillfriend. The ladies love a good gift, you know. Especially one given authentically” And maybe I would buy some other things for myself, discounting living necessities.

“Silver Sword! What are you waiting for, my boy? Get the lead out and get up here!” Mister Ham commanded my companion to get his rear in gear.

“Yes instructor Ham!” Silver obediently did as he was directed, “We’ll talk more later… during lunch, alright?” He whispered back when the teacher wasn’t busy glowering at him.

The last ten minutes of the class were spent watching Silver attempt to market the rubber chicken without a catchy tune or attention seizing method and fail miserably. Since I was by my lonesome and therefore ‘open to approach’, several mares who acutely enjoyed my ‘performance’ earlier saw fit to scotch closer and solicit me for information regarding myself or if I was available for the dating scene. I gave the majority of them blank stares and slowly shook my head, sending them off in dejection and making them wonder aloud what was wrong with them. It really did pain me to shut peop-… ponies down like that so remorselessly, but I couldn’t afford to fool around with something of that ilk. I wordlessly cursed and raged at fate for making me the one to worsen other’s insecurity issues this time around, but bore with it for the sake of coming home with as clean a conscious as possible. 

With the unchanging ring of the intercom school bell, we shuffled out of the theater and into the hallways. Not bothering with the directory system, I determined that the main flow of students were those heading for the cafeteria and followed them. My hunch paid off and soon I beheld the room where every hungry equine settled in for some chow. It was well lit, with a massive skylight in the shape of a snowflake dominating the ceiling above. Each of the roughly L shaped chairs had that same emblem on their backs as well. I inhaled deeply and hummed hungrily at the smell of greasy, battered and deep fried vittles. I would need to carefully select my food to ensure that nothing indigestible found its way onto my plate, as I didn’t fancy biting into aliments that were hay based or anything.

Swiping an odd, collared tray from a stack, I got in line with the others and waited my turn. I learned that the collars were so the Earth ponies and the few Pegasi who weren’t using their wings to hold up the trays could carry their food while also keeping an eye fixed on it. It was in times like these that I was thankful that I chose a Unicorn to represent my form, freeing up the capacity for holding things. Having opposable thumbs with dexterous fingers were the best kind of magic, in my opinion. Getting closer in proximity to the food, I scanned what they had on offer. Hidden behind plastic face shields were multiple items of comestibles that ranged from fried straws of hay to key lime pie. Not surprisingly, they had the single largest salad selection I ever did see, which most of the ponies in front of me went for. But the most eye opening sight in the cafeteria by far though had to be the dromedary camel with the white food service uniform. The single hump on his back poked out of the cloth of his uniform whenever he shifted in place, reminding me of a hunchbacked horse.

‘And I thought I looked out of place’ I drily opined, too hungry to pay any mind to the horror show of inedible food in front of me.

I piled on a platter of seasoned and oiled hay strings that looked suspiciously like broken onion rings, a bowl of tempura-esque fried vegetables, and a plain whole wheat sandwich with sliced cucumbers and peanut butter jelly acting as the primary filling. I pulled out my schedule slip and gave it to the dromedary (whose nametag read Paul), who scanned it using some kind of barcode reader before wishing me a good day in a completely native born sounding voice. Mentally readjusting my standards for juxtaposition, I found a nice secluded table squeezed between two supporting pillars and sat down to eat.

Popping a fried carrot into my mouth, I sampled my free lunch on someone else’s dime. It was all right flavor wise, needed some ketchup was all. I caught a passing group of ponies stop and stare at me as I munched on my food, whispering and muttering to themselves so loudly that I didn’t need my keen hearing to make out what they were saying.

“Why is he eating alone? That’s so weird!” Pondered a filly who was on the chubby side, and I wasn’t claiming that just because she was unduly speaking ill about my habits.

“Isn’t that the colt that the drama club fillies were raving about? Can’t see why. He looks about as animated as a boulder to me” Shrugged another filly with eyes so silvery they almost blended in with the whites of her sclera.

‘Word spreads fast in this school’ I observed, content to ignore their nosiness.

“He has dreamy eyes though, so mysterious” One of them randomly remarked, inducing me to nearly hack up my last stalk of fried veggie. And to my shivering disgust, it was a colt who uttered that line.  

I gave them a fairly irritated glare, “Do you mind? I’m busy masticating here” I snapped at them, making them jump two feet in the air and whinny in shock.

The dumbfounded looks on their muzzles were temptingly hilarious, but I stifled the urge to laugh and continued glowering at them. They got the hint and left me in peace, much to my relief… only for Silver to come to my side not three moments later, much to my never-ending dismay. 

He stared at the ponies hightailing it to the opposite end of the cafeteria and then at me for a few seconds before speaking, “I don’t get you… one moment you’re the coolest colt in the room, and the next moment you transform into some hermit who hates company! What are you, schizophrenic?”

I scowled at him for a second before swallowing, “I lunch alone, alright?”

He shook his head and plopped his flank right down next to mine, “No. That’s not all right. Nopony should be all alone by themselves. It’s just so... lonely” He asserted in a depressed fashion.

‘Speak for yourself’ I silently sniped at him.

“I disagree… vehemently” I coolly regarded him. I liked human Silver Sword a lot better in this aspect. He was far less nosy (or would that be snouty here?) than his furry, trans-world counterpart.

“Well I’m going to sit here and keep you company until you open up like a normal pony should!” He insisted like a stubborn mule.

I narrowed my eyes at him, ‘I can out stubborn you, little horse’ I heard a snapping sound as my illusion whipped its tail, likely in annoyance. Equine body language was never my specialty; so I neglected to program my magic to specifically do attentive things like that. It’s incredible just how much magic can fill in the blanks.

“Suit yourself” I said with a shrug, and resumed munching down on my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I glanced about at everyone else using their hooves to hold their eating utensils in the air or by their sides like it was a perfectly normal thing and not a blatant violation of physics. Good lord that bothered me so freaking much.

‘Roll with it, just roll with it. You’ve learned not to question things too hard by now’ I resorted to jaded acceptance as a defense mechanism.

“Dude, I’m glad I’m not you. Always alone whenever I see him around school. First with the statue, then in the hallways” Silver listed pityingly, trying to make me seem like I was forever alone guy.

“And I’m glad that you’re not me. There can be only one loner in this school!” I retorted, brushing off the pathetic attempt to guilt me into changing my natural ways.

“What’s the deal, Zenith?” Silver demanded to know, fed up with my aloofness. “If you’re going to be like this consistently, then I’m having second thoughts about joining the band” He subtly threatened, knowing the one thing he had to say to get me to bend.

I frowned at him, “I’m not always like this for your information, Silver. I’ve still got some emotional baggage left over from my other high school experience, is all. Me seeking out my own space away from others is just as a means of safeguarding myself from teenage persecution”

He shook his head again in sympathy, “I’m so sorry to hear that, Zenith. But shutting ponies out is not the right answer… it’s just turning a blind eye to a problem that needs to be solved”

My brows rose in disbelief, “So I’m a problem now? Is that it?”

He slammed his hooves down on the table, causing his prune juice container to spill over, “Darn it, Zenith! Don’t twist my words like that when you know better! You aren’t the problem…” He poked a hoof in my direction, “…your inability to proactively hang out around with others without them coming to you first is a severe handicap, and you need to see that for what it is. I’m your friend, Zenith. Don’t you trust me?” He asked me, sounding hurt by my apparent lack of faith.

“With my life” I responded without thinking, looking him unflinchingly in his eyes. 

My admission made him recoil in surprise. I hadn’t a clue myself why I admitted that so candidly. Was it because we fought together against that scaly beast roaming the frozen wastes of the icy North? Most likely. Few bonds are stronger than those forged in the flames of combat.

He whickered in affectedness, “Wow… that’s more trust than anypony’s ever given me. But if that’s true, then surely listening to me when I say that you need to liven up isn’t too much to ask, is it?” He reasoned.

“No… I suppose it isn’t” I exhaled, finishing off the last of my PBJ sandwich was a hearty bite.

“Glad to hear that, Zenith my friend. Prove it to me this afternoon and over the next few days, okay? Please?” He humbly requested of me, to which I noiselessly agreed to with a nod.

Silver made to speak some more, but was cut off by the ringing of the bell signaling another interclass period, “Drat. Lunch never was long enough for my tastes” He mumbled sourly, “My last class is on the second floor and on the other end of the building, so I got to go. I’ll meet you by the flagpole in the back entrance parking lot. Think about what I said until then, okay Zenith?” He collected his remaining uneaten food and ditched it in a nearby rubbish bin before booking off. 

I bit into a handful of the seasoned hay strings and gagged at the gritty texture before spitting them out onto my plate. I muttered several dark expletives about the one thing here being exactly what it was named instead of a poorly made pun and trashed the rest of my tray, along with my appetite. I could have been angrier about it, but I choose to chillax, given how sated my hunger was for the most part. Conjuring another set of saddle-schoolbags for my illusion to carry, I joined the moving herd of students in migrating to the last class of the school day.

“Attention! My little ponies! Attention!” The public announcement speakers squawked as I was two thirds of the way to my history class. The aforementioned ponies in question stopped in the hall and shushed each other like the obedient tools that they were. I narrowed my eyes and grit my teeth at the brazen title drop and the implication that I was one of them, my avatar copying the gesture with equal indignation.

“Just a public reminder,” The buzzy voice of what may have been Cadence addressed the school, “there are only a few days left to sign up in the Principal’s office for the Battle of the Bands event if you or any of your friends are interested in participating onstage. Stage equipment is provided for the venue, but you’ll want to bring your own instruments. A panel of mystery judges who you’ll find familiar will be presiding over the scores. From what we’ve seen so far the prospective competition is looking pretty fierce! So far we have: The Whinnies, The Galloping Galloways, The Salt Lickers, The Hay-Babies, and The Night-Mares! All of them are rearing for a chance to get their hooves on the first place trophy, as well as the minor scholarship grants that come with them! But don’t feel alarmed, for you have the potential to win it all in one!” The voice singled the listener out, “Ta for now my precious Crystal Ponies, but before I sign off… Brilliant Minds!” The announcer called out.

“Crystal Hearts!” The congregation finished, reciting the school’s motto. With that out of the way, the PA system clicked off and everyone resumed what they were doing. I minimized the significance of this in my head and continued on my way.

I didn’t recognize anyone from any of my previous classes in the history class, but the instructor appeared to recognize me, her eyes watching me like a hawk the moment I crossed the threshold. As I feared, my history class was taught by none other than the counterpart of the woman who acted as a second mother to me, Crystal Clear. Her equine form carried over all of her aged beauty, with the same gleam of kindness that was reflected in her gentle eyes. The only difference I noticed was that she had on a single golden earring on her left ear, which must have been an Earth pony wedding band. 

My Crystal Clear kept hers in a glass container in the living room that she would often put aside time for just to caress it with a sad, but serene expression on her countenance. I once observed that her wedding band had an inscription on the inner ring that was made out to her by her husband, and I never did ask her about what it read. It was… hallowed to her, and that was all I needed to know. Just like her deceased son’s room, the same one she had the selflessness to host me in when I materialized one day out of the blue. Damn it… reminiscing about all of this made me want to return to the Krystal Kingdom solely to give her a comforting hug.

Crystal Clear was a better history instructor than I would have accredited to her. The class was a fairly condensed course and she had a knack for summarizing important events around the world in a way that made it both fun to learn and easy to memorize. Of course it was a groan worthy time of puns for me as well, what with all the mentions of the battle of Mareathon, Shakespony’s poetry affecting even the Queen, the independence of Amareica, and the Minotaur Civil War first erupting into violence at Bull Run as the Blue Vest Union fought against the South-Horn Confederacy over a period of four bloody years. It’s a wonder I didn’t create a crater in my desk from introducing my face to it so many times. Crystal Clear also kept sneaking glances at me during the duration of her lecture, and I knew that she knew something was up. When the bell rung and the class concluded, she motioned for me to stay put and speak with her after class. Ignoring the jeers of students who thought I was somehow in trouble, I patiently waited for everybody to file out. 

Once we were alone, Crystal stopped by my desk and took a seat by my side. After studying me for a few moments, she spoke, “Forgive me for broaching upon this… but are you some kind of shaved Minotaur? I can’t say I’ve ever seen one before, let alone taught the finer points of Geoponitics to” She remarked, perplexed by my true form, which visibly struggled to fit into the desk space.

‘As I predicted… my disguising magic is no match for her clairvoyant Mana mark’ I groused.

I snickered briefly at my envisioning of what a shaved Minotaur might look like, “No ma’am, I am most definitely not a hairless minotaur” 

She waved a hoof forbearingly in the air, “You can call me Crystal, dear. I was never one for formalities when it came to a private talk between two ponies… or between one pony and whatever you might be, as it were” She corrected herself, netting herself some appreciative points from me for not being pony-centric, “But the memo informed me that you would be a unicorn pony specifically… but clearly you aren’t, so can you elucidate for me why that is the case? I won’t judge you… I promise”

“Well the jig is up. So I don’t have much reason to keep it a secret, now do I?” I dropped my disguise magic and sighed in respite as I felt the steady drain cease its assault upon my reserves.

“If it would make you comfortable… I could keep the subject matter of this conversation strictly between us” She courteously extended.

“Why are you being so understanding?” I incredulously questioned with some caution, “Most would be reasonably off put by someone who wasn’t what they appeared to be”

“I’m… not entirely sure” She replied while absently gazing up at the ceiling, also confused by the way she was acting, “But something in my heart is telling me that you can be trusted. It’s like somepony who knows me as well as myself is whispering in my ear that you are of noble character… and in dire need of a shoulder to lean on, even if you won’t admit it to yourself” She hit the nail on the head with a faint grin, like that of a frustrated but always loving parent who knew that their child was the culprit behind a robbery of the cookie jar in spite of their refusal to own up to their actions.

‘She really does peer into the true nature of people the instant she’s in contact with them’ I mused, feeling a fair amount of years younger than I should have. How Crystal earned her Mana mark for her most profound empathy was a story I should have her asked her about when I had the chance.

“Noble?” I stubbornly scoffed through my nostrils, “If you knew what I was like on the inside, you wouldn’t be so quick to presume that”

“I don’t presume… I know. Crazy as that is, I know” She laughed, a melodic sound that lifted the mood by several layers.

I meshed my fingers together and leaned onto my desk in cogitation, “Well… it’s a bit of a complicated story. But I’ll sum it up as best I can”

I started from the beginning, how I was in a citadel far from this place and minding my own business when one of my belongings began acting up and egging me into chasing it through a magical mirror where I wound up here. I told her how my possession magically altered itself into becoming the first place trophy for Friday’s event. How shortly after that I came up with an ingenuous disguise that wasn’t restrictive in my movements so I could possibly find it on my own, being befriended by Silver in front of the statue, exploiting an opening to replace a student who wasn’t due to arrive until the following week, and everything else that I experienced on my first wacky Monday at Crystal City High School. Not once did Crystal interrupt or appeared disbelieving to anything I related to her.

“But if the replicated trophy is yours, then I could simply petition the Principal to give it to you so that you can take this ‘portal’ back and go home” She logically expressed. I couldn’t help but wince at how she unwittingly referred to Arcania as my home, and how the automatic reaction to declare that it wasn’t my home was gradually eroding into fretful indecision.

“I don’t want to obtain it that way, Crystal” I made it succinct that doing so was not a viable option for me, “Besides, I have… other reasons why I want to go into that Battle of the Bands event with my friends. Assuming that I can successfully get Ardent to join us” I mumbled to myself.

“You want to see the mending of their friendships with your own eyes don’t you?” It wasn’t a question, “And yet you still don’t believe yourself to be noble…” She suspired in nigh indiscernible vexation, “Very well… despite my membership on the panel, I reserve the right to act according to my conscious and guide you toward the best way to win the other judges’ hearts” She affirmed, motioning for me not to contradict her like she instinctively knew I would. 

She held up a hoof, “First and foremost… Lemon Rocks and Glimmer Gem are huge into eighties era music, so I would make half of the six songs you’ll be required to perform callbacks to that time period. Trust me, it’ll earn you some major points in your favor in case your band mates cannot compete with the other contenders” She assured me.

“I think they’ll be up to snuff” I confidently articulated, “What about the other half?” I followed up on her train of thought.

“Modern rock music innovated by your own band, of course!” She responded, “Any more than three eighties songs and the other judges will start to peg your group as being unoriginal copycats, which you do not want” 

She gasped as though she realized something important, “Where are you staying in the meantime? The event is near the end of the week!” She shouted fearfully.

I hadn’t considered that, to be brutally honest.

It must have showed on my face, because Crystal frowned heavily, “Ooh…” She whined, “I’m pushing my authority as it is by giving you inside information, but…” She reached into her suit vest pocket and extracted a keycard that she tossed to me, “This spare keycard of mine is for instances when one of the staff needs access to the school afterhours to pick up something they left behind or for meetings that happen outside of regular school hours. There’s a special spot that I sometimes retire to in order to escape the noise of life and just read. It’s in the library and nopony knows about it except for myself…” She pointed to herself before turning the hoof to me, “…and now you” 

She explained to me its exact location, which was sequestered in the space on top of two bookshelves in an alcove that would now double as a hidey hole for me. I glanced at the clock and remembered that Silver Sword was waiting for me in the parking lot. I thanked Crystal profusely for being a wonderful person and reactivated my disguise. Running through the halls and out through the back entrance of the school. I identified the flagpole that Silver spoke of and caught sight of his Prius like car parked along the curb with a disgruntled looking pony at the wheel. His defeated expression cheered up once he saw me. He then pressed something on his dashboard, triggering the passenger door to his car to swing open as I drew nearer.

“Hey Zenith!” He called out to me in relief, “I was worried that something might have happened to make you late. What kept you?”

“Delayed” I tersely answered as I clambered inside the awkwardly designed vehicle, “My history teacher wanted to have a few words with me after class” I elaborated further after Silver gave me a look indicating that he needed a tad more to go on than that.

“Uh oh… Do I have a rebel in my car?” He jested in a singsong voice with a beam.

“You do” I playfully countered, “But that’s not the reason she wanted to speak with me”

“That’s not for me to know then” Silver accepted with grace before cracking a smile that would make Pinkie jealous, “You ready to see Crystal City up close?” He inquired of me. When I answered in the affirmative, he pressed down on the gas pedal and we rocketed out of the empty parking lot and onto the main road.

The avenues of Crystal City were very beautiful. Tall and thick evergreen trees stood side by side like a line of bearded Ents waiting to march on Isengard and tear shit up as we drove down the wide road listening to the radio. Pony cars were eerily similar to human driven ones in every respect except for the minor differences in seat shapes, and the position of the pedal and wheel placement to accommodate a pony’s four legged form. There was also something baffling about what I found concerning particular music stations on the pony radio. All the music from the eighties was aesthetically the same save for the modified lyrics. The announcers for the eighties station (Named Beatbox and New Wave) even poked fun at recent generations for their music not holding a candle to the tunes they listened to when they were young.

“Hey Beatbox, you remember the days when we used to listen to Hay & Oats and music was actually music?” New Wave posed a question to his partner.

“You bet I do!” A grizzled voice responded before singing to one of their tracks in his head aloud, “Woah here he comes! Watch out girl, he’ll chew you up! Woah here he comes! He’s a mare-eater!~”

“The young ones these days can’t even dance to our music right! Remember that one filly we saw the other day with the crazy looking mane? The one who was pirouetting and prancing about to the tune of Mane-iac while dressed in spandex? Utterly ridiculous! If this is what the next generation is becoming, then I worry for the future” You could practically hear New Wave shaking his head as asserted his vote of no confidence against Silver’s generation.

“I don’t want to listen to that old fogey talk trash about our generation like that” He deactivated the radio with the press of a button. And that was the end of that… but it did give me some ideas to work with when it came to planning what music we would need to practice for this Friday.

As we made out way into the bowels of the cityscape, I contented myself to watching the myriad of sights passing by in the window. Albeit this may have been a mistake, because those sights turned into a parade of puns as I saw several places that were knock offs of commercial establishments back home, just with animal-esque names or things related to animals. For instance, everyone that needed to purchase a metric ton of groceries only had to drive down the street to their local Cowsco, which was a flagrant perversion of Costco. Wal-Mart became Mare-mart, Macy’s became Marecies, Domino’s Pizzeria became Flamingo’s Pizzaria, and my precious Dick’s sporting goods became Chick’s sporting goods… No wait, that one actually remained unchanged. I was half worried that Petco would become Humanco or something, but those fears were ultimately unfounded, as no such place existed on Silver’s GPS address finder.

“What is that awful noise?” Silver Sword spoke up in concerned curiosity, his ears flicking about, “It sounds like something… grinding against itself”  

I instantly stopped sliding my teeth on top of each other as we passed by a Neighdstrom Rack… God, it’s like they weren’t even trying anymore! Heck, I’d bet all the coins in my munny pouch that the mannequins on display in the window were actually called something silly like equinnequins or ponyquins.

‘These incessant horse related puns are really getting on my nerves’ I internally growled to myself.

Our first stop was at a pawnshop like the type I had mentioned to Silver from before. It took thirty minutes for the owner to legalize and appropriate the paperwork necessary for a pony without official documentation beyond his school identification slip, but shop policies were far more relaxed in ponyland than they were back home. He was incredulous that a young colt like me would have so much wealth to his name thanks to his patrons, though the way he said it told me that he didn’t think highly of ponies who didn’t earn their wealth the hard way. As much as I wanted to explain to him how difficult it was to bring over historical designs into worlds that didn’t have them based solely on what schematics were available online (I had to fill in a lot of details using my own brain), that would have been telling, and on top of that I couldn’t care less what he thought of me, he just had to shut up and pay me money. Soon enough I walked out of that store with a few thousand bucks spending cash to my name, after the pawnshop owner bought my story about the coins and poured enough nitric acid on them to confirm their elemental pureness of course. 

After that, Silver was considerate enough to ferry me to a music shop and a jeweler’s to pick up the items we needed to commence with our plans of bringing Ardent into the fold of our nascent band. I loaded the bass guitar, a portable but professional keyboard, and an expensive Minotaur imported Keytar (an instrument that the owner of the shop claimed I would need to be extraordinarily talented or have fingers to play it. I just smiled toothily at the old stallion and paid him for it) into Silver’s car trunk before we spent the rest of the day doing activities like visiting the arcade, stuffing myself with vegetarian style pizza, and easing that cucumber calzone down with digestion facilitating yogurt. Another mind blower for me was the discovery that pony toilets were no different than human ones, with the exception that they sat lower to the floor. I had expected restroom facilities like the ones in Asia where the loo is just a glorified hole in the ground that you squat onto and do your business. I expended a lot of both time and money with Silver that afternoon, who tried his hardest to convert me into somebody outgoing in the course of a single outing. He couldn’t accomplish such a feat if he had a million afternoons like this, but I couldn’t fault him for admirable persistence in the face of inevitable failure.

When all was said and done and the sun was beginning to set in the sky, I directed Silver to drop me off near the school grounds with the well engineered excuse that I took a bus line near there to get back to my home and that I didn’t want him to burn any more of his gasoline on little ol’ me. I told him he could hold onto the instruments and the necklace for me and sent him off. The keycard that Crystal graciously lent to me proved itself handy by letting me into the school again, which was dimly lit now the sun was no longer shining its light through the windows. There were a few light strips in the ceiling that were active though, so I wasn’t like I had to stumble about in the dark trying to find that library. Speaking of which, the library of CCHS was on the creepy side when the level of illumination was poor. Despite jumping at a few harmless shadows that I was sure that the library ghost sent to torment me for accidentally knocking over a small shelf while navigated through a narrow inlet, I eventually found the secluded place that Crystal told me about, finding a tiny bed that would be a tight fit for a person half my size, a pile of books with an unlit candle holder on top of the covers, and a recently written note from Crystal Clear wishing me a good night’s rest. I gave off a tired chuckle before straightening out my body in a yawn (my illusion stretched like a cat), settling in for the evening, and collapsing on the tiny bed without complaint so I could take the express train to dreamland.


⁂


I’ll summarize the main events for the rest of the week I spent hidden in plain sight amongst the ponies. Silver and Pierce coordinated their movements during interclass period so that they could isolate Ardent and his ladyfriend and apologize to them for their abrasive actions separately, without either of the couple influencing the other’s decision. I went with Silver Sword as backup (who brought a flower to go with the necklace bearing Strawberry Quartz’ namesake, which confused the heck out of me) in case Strawberry wasn’t in a forgiving mood. The aforementioned filly was attractive by equine standards I guess, with long red curls in her mane that were accentuated by her white coat. She expressed surprise that Silver would get her such a thoughtful gift as a form of apology and sniffed at the additional flower before chomping down on it and making a pleased noise of satisfaction, because women here eat the flowers you give them, I guess? 

Anyhow, because they were in touch with their emotions, bleeding heart ponies, both Ardent and his fillyfriend’s resolve to stay indignant about the slights against them by both parties crumbled quickly. Ardent agreed to join the band and was exceedingly happy about having the chance to practice with his new bass. Along that same vein, he apprised us that we could practice together as a band at his uncle’s place since neither Silver nor Pierce’s parents would tolerate any kind of racket in their garage. As the frontcolt of the band, they deferred to me when it came to what we were going to be practicing when it came to the actual music. 

This worked quite well into my plans, and I communicated to them that I would have the tablature ready for each of their respective instruments by that Tuesday afternoon. I skipped out on lunch that day (though not on routine cans of Red Pegasus to refill my magic) to make use of the library’s computers to confirm that eighties songs were unchanged in musical structure and copied down their tabs from online sources (The pony internet was actually better organized than the internet and knew and was lukewarm about). What I thought was really cool was that most ponies forwent using the clunky keyboards that Secretary Sassy was so fond of and used a voice recognition software instead. Being old fashioned though, I stuck to using the keyboard and a scroll wheel shaped like a ball that also doubled as a mouse. As for the modern music that we would perform, I engaged a memory scouring spell to transcribe the collective tablature that I looked up on my laptop in anticipation for the athletic games, all that time spent rocking out in my personal music chambers back in my cloud home having unexpectedly paid off.

I stayed after at the ending of every history class so that I could speak with Crystal, who gave me what she thought were useful tips on how to impress the other judges, like what kinds of behavior they wanted from the performers and their performance methods. It wasn’t anything specific enough that the other bands wouldn’t normally emulate, but I appreciated her attempts to help me beyond what she had already kindly permitted. Ardent and I got his mantlet finished on time for the due date and Peabody liked it, though he expressed more affection for my robot in the form of an equine. I had it sing ‘Technologic’ as demo, and every student was freaked out by the way its eyes and lips moved in conjunction with the song. Often I would need to excuse myself to the bathroom during class to buy a can of Red Pegasus, using the excuse that I had urge incontinence and therefore my bladder hated my guts. When one colt who asked me about it remarked that my condition sucked, I wittily replied that it leaked. 

Beyond band practice at Ardent’s uncle’s place (think rural farmhouse with a lone garage distinct from the building), I also attended several after school competitions that all three of my band mates were contenders in, and they in turn attended each other’s events to cheer the other on with me. I never went to school events like that back when I was in high school, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. As individual players, my friends were average musicians at best, but stick them together in a group? Somehow there was a magnifying effect on skill that more collaborative ponies were, and our practice sessions could have put in studio albums themselves with negligible disparity between the original song and ours.

Friday evening rolled around sooner than I would have preferred, but I knew that ‘The Star Cabal’ was up to the challenge (Even if my attempt at harnessing the power of montage music were met with disappointment). The opposing bands and the ponies who came to see some rock and roll clustered inside of the high school gym, where a simplistic platform stage with plug in speakers stood opposite of the stands where the audience would sit. The panel of judges was all female, as one might expect of a matriarchal society, and each of them were Crystal’s age or likely older. My group was set to go last since we were the last band to sign up for the event, which was weird because there were quite a few ponies in the crowd who would be watching us perform, you’d think they’re be more than just six groups competing in the event.

Speaking of the bands… our competition wasn’t too shabby. The Whinnies had a sort of seventies pop style with a healthy amount of soul mixed in. The Galloping Galloways were contemporary in style but lacked that spark that made them distinct from the mainstream. The Salt Lickers were onto something with their eighties like punk rock and wooed the judges visibly, fomenting me to some concern. I knew that Crystal would take my band’s side no matter what, but we’d need to win over at least one of the other judges if we were to prevail over the other groups. As if fate was sensing my discomfort, The Hay-Babies were average to mediocre at best, their coordination was off, their key was off, and their incompetent demeanors were off. They actually garnered some disconcerting boos from the audience and headshakes from the judges, resulting in them arguing among themselves before being shooed of the stage to make way for the penultimate band, The Night-Mares. 

These darkly dressed and mascara adorned fillies were openly analogous to gothic rock bands, and they were alarmingly good at what they did. Their music was mysterious and almost arousing in its siren like quality, the lyrics of the songs made the listener think about the existential meaning of their lives, and they could manipulate their instruments like they were born to the stage. Offhand, it was hilarious to see an equine rear up on their hind hooves so that they could operate their instruments properly (I learned not to look too deep into how they could play them without fingers), but they could balance with an admirable level of capability, with very minimal sway on their part. This was because Unicorn magic was designated as against the rules, since a skilled mage could play their instruments automatically and flawlessly with a spell, performing by hoof allowed for mistakes to be made which gave the competition an equal chance. That would be under ideal circumstance though, because one of the three judges was already in favor of us, and that same judge gave us hints on how to stand out from the other contenders.

Finally, it came our turn to shine. I gave a short but hopefully inspiring pregame speech intended to lift their combined morale out of the gutter after witnessing the last band dominate the judges score cards (Even Crystal gave them high marks, and they legitimately earned them). I reminded them that we had all trained very hard for this moment and even reconciled our strained friendships. I assured them that even if we didn’t win, not a prize in the world could beat that. I admit that I was laying it on thick, but I’ve found that the cheesier something is, the more these ponies eat it up. I’m not sure if it worked, but my companions steeled themselves after I made an all for one gesture where we stacked hooves on top of the other in a symbol of camaraderie, and we walked out onto the stage in a single file procession with myself at the head. I was taking a monumental gamble with my magic, given how many eyes were going to be focusing on us and specifically me, but I overcharged myself with the recommended maximum of three cans of Red Pegasus (Shame it wasn’t Rockstar energy. That would have been so fitting right then). So I felt relatively safe that I was in no danger of my disguise failing.

We started off our performance with the Police’s ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’, which the ladies on the panel immediately fell in love. Pierce rocked the drums, Ardent provided the backbone his bass, Silver supplied the synth with his keyboard, and I used a Stratocaster like guitar that was lent to me by the school while imitating Sting’s vocal style. I saw Crystal gushing over this one song in particular, leaning onto the panel table with a goofy grin on her face as she reminisced about memories that passed long ago. 

From there, I charmed the audience with my usage of the Germane language on our next hit, ‘Ninety nine Luftballons’. It was strange for me to be singing this one, since a woman originally sang this song. But here in ponyland, much of the eighties music sung by girls or about girls was reversed to substitute them with guys. It was bizarre, but nothing out of the ordinary considering where I was. The panel was eating out of our palms (or frogs I suppose) by this point, and we received consistent scores that were very generous, especially the perfect tens given out by Crystal. 

The crowd was getting rowdy though, and they wanted to hear something original that their parents didn’t listen to when they were their age. I anticipated this by painstakingly transcribing the tablature to a song beforehand that was more eighties than the eighties itself, called ‘Pop! Goes my Heart’. It was actually from a movie that parodied a has been pop star in the modern day, but that’s neither here nor there. It was a blast to sing this one alongside Silver, who found the lyrics during some lines to be quite fitting himself during our practice sessions. To my slight shock, surprising the judges with a song that was both familiar sounding and yet never heard of before had netted us some originality points that frankly, weren’t needed.

I readdressed the excited four legged audience with great fervor, bending down to exchange my current instrument for a Keytar and so that my head would be even with the microphone (I wasn’t hunched over though, since my ponygänger was technically standing up tall enough that it wasn’t a debilitating issue). With a tapping motion of my boot against the flooring of the stage, Ardent detected the cue and began slapping at his bass guitar as we demonstrated our rendition of Muse’s ‘Undisclosed Desires’. The Keytar was an interesting device, and the chords for this song were easy enough that I didn’t need to sweat it. Slap bass sounded even groovier when one had solid hoof-tips to resonate the strings with. I had to refrain from snapping my fingers along to the beat, since those effects had to be synthesized by Silver. The crowd absolutely loved this song, and their cheering was almost stentorian enough to drown out the music itself. 

We took a momentary water break after the song concluded to rest and recover, since rocking out was more exhausting than it looked. While I was sitting down with a bottle of water in my heads, I caught sight of one of the gothic fillies from earlier in my peripherals grinning mischievously behind the stage as her horn lit up with an aura like the most obscuring shade of black. I wanted to call her out on it and discover the meaning of whatever she was tampering with, but was called away by my band mates, who felt refreshed and were ready to take to the stage once more to power through our last two songs. 

Suspicious of foul play (Or would that be foal play? Great. Those evil puns have ultimately infected me), I kept an eye out for trouble as we proceeded to play one of my favorite songs by Muse, ‘Hysteria’. Ardent’s hooves moved like lightning as he nailed every note to the kickass bass line that made this song so amazing. Pierce proved his worth as well, keeping that fat beat in line with his drums. Silver took a bit of a vacation on this one, only adjusting the extra synthetic sounds to give my voice some simultaneous background echoing that gave the impression that I really was hysterical. I adored this song, and playing it for myself on that platform was an unspoken dream come true. Each instrument performed its role in collaboration so well that I sometimes suspected that the spirit of rock and roll itself possessed the composer. 

Everything was peaches as Ardent, Pierce and I monopolized both the stage and the hearts of our audience, but something inexplicable happened by the time it came for the epic guitar solo portion. Black smoke began pouring out from the back of the stage and accumulating into a silhouette that looked very much like the shadow of that Blizzard Beast that made me so introspective after I had planted my blade into its skull with my band mate’s human counterparts. Its glowing yellow eyes had a menacing shade of red to them that gave it the impression that it was bloodthirsty and crazy. It growled loudly, despite not possessing tangible vocal chords, and dived at us. It’s billowy form broke up into a wave of smoke the swept the stage and over us, filling myself and presumably my band mates with a reasonless fear of failing the competition. 

With how resistant I was to mental suggestion, I shook off the feeling and shredded at my guitar defiantly. Nothing was going to stop me from performing that guitar solo, damn it. Streams of multi-chromatic light began to stream from the main body of my guitar as the solo built up, its rays perforating the fog of darkness that surrounded us and eliciting a roar of angered pain from the shadow beast. By the end of my solo, the light had become too overwhelming for the shadowy creature to handle and with a final furious roar; it dissipated into the nothingness from whence it came. The ignorant crowd, oblivious to what the shadow beast was and likely believing it to be a part of the show, hollered and hurrahed after the beast was slain a second time. 

I glanced behind me to see Ardent and Pierce shaking off the residual mental suggestion magic and stare questioningly at me. I gave them a shrug that basically said ‘Hell if I know’ and motioned for them to keep the song going. We finished strong and earn a solid row of tens from the judge’s panel, who were oddly uncaring about the dirty trickery that I was sure those gothic chicks were responsible for. Further cementing this theory was the fact that most of them were absent from the bleachers where the other band members were bidden to wait; with only the filly whose horn I saw glowing earlier remaining, a severe scowl written on her face. Because I was too high on my rock and roll spree, I simply winked at her and blew a sloppy kiss her way. She flustered bright red and expeditiously made herself scarce, making me laugh at her reaction.

For our last performance of the night, Silver had acquired a mandolin from his father’s personal study for our final performance. I tuned my guitar to the twelve string like sound of BDDDDD tuning, hushed the audience with a backwards glance to my band mates, and used the plectrum in my fingers to delve into the Goo Goo Doll’s ‘Iris’. My fingers danced along the narrow fretboard as I sang this last but certainly not least in magnitude of significance, melody. I was able to inject some genuine emotion into the lyrics of this song. After all, I had just spent the better half of a week hiding myself away from every being I came into contact with except Crystal Clear, whose eyes were tearing up as she watched me pour my tumultuous heart out to my audience. 

As the notes from Silver’s mandolin faded into the air, we received virtually unanimous zeal from our audience, all of whom were chanting the name of our band. The mares in the crowd trilled and swooned as they fantasized about dating a rock star. Crystal and her fellow judges shared a glance at each other and nodded as an unspoken agreement passed between them. Crystal took a microphone and announced the winners of the Battle of the Bands event, which was The Star Cabal. The Principal was waiting with the trophy nearby and approached us with it. She congratulated us before hoofing over the prize for each of us to marvel at. The instant that Silver Sword held it in his hooves as he sat back on his haunches, it emitted an explosion of luminescence that enveloped everyone present and stunned them momentarily. I sensed that my illusion had been stripped away from me, exposing me before everybody in the gym. As you might suspect, they gawked at me in sheer incomprehension.

“Oooh… nuts” I euphemized a curse aloud, “Umm… hi?” I wiggled my fingers at the countless stupefied eyes staring unblinkingly at me. 

A skittish filly in the crowd screamed in fright, signaling the rest of them to panic and start galloping all over the place as the room erupted into disorganized chaos. Realizing that now was probably a good time to leave, I turned to my pony companions and snatched the Tantō from Silver’s grip, which he was too occupied being dumbfounded to maintain as he stared up at my imposing frame. 

“Yoink!” I facetiously flipped the handle of my weapon in my hands, “It’s been loads of fun guys, but I got to go. Keep your friendship alive, alright?” I spread my wings, and using them for extra thrust, booked it through an open door leading out into the hallways. It may have been a tad rude of me to leave them to pick up the pieces, but I filed it under ‘Not my problem’.

‘I need to have a serious talk with whoever or whatever made this’ I grumbled in thought as I soared through the corridors and out the main entrance. As if hearing me, I felt my Tantō emit a faint pulse in my clutches and the reopened portal at the base of the statue changed its tint as I flew into it, desperately praying that it would take me back to my home.