Silver lagged far behind Rainbow at first, but he could feel his power returning, and began fueling it directly into his wings. His speed began to pick up, rapidly increasing to match her, then going a little faster. His body shuddered with a turbulence-like force as he pushed past what he was skilled enough to handle, but he was getting closer.
Rainbow noticed his approach and redoubled her efforts, pulling ahead from him. "You're not worthy!"
Silver was not ready to accept that as an answer and every bit of energy he could produce went to the effort of catching her. He felt like he was being battered from all sides in the effort, going far too quickly with raw power. Just as Rainbow was almost in hooves' reach, Rainbow pushed past the one barrier she knew. Rainbows filled Silver's eyes as she penetrated whatever limit caused it, but the rainbows reacted oddly with the shell of tortured energy around Silver. Instead of clean circles, it became a chaotic swirl of colors, and both ponies were sent careening out of control.
They made a pair of ditches in the ground, crashing and throwing dirt everywhere as they slid to a stop.
Rainbow popped free of her dirt pile with a laugh. "Oh wow! That was amazing! What'd you do?" She pranced over to Silver's pile and poked at the dirt, but there was no response. "Hey, Hey Silver. Get up." Fearing he might be hurt, she dug into the pile to find an unconscious Silver, though pulling him free of the hole woke him up.
"Huh?!" Silver pulled himself the rest of the way free and shook his bruised body free of dirt. "What happened?"
Rainbow puffed out her chest. "My awesomeness interacted with your coolness and sent us both out of the sky."
Silver reached over and pulled Rainbow close. "Caught you."
Rainbow tensed, looking ready to argue the point a moment before she nestled against Silver, closing her eyes. "Guess you did."
Silver pushed Rainbow to the ground and nuzzled into her neck. "Now to take my prize."
Rainbow tensed, but didn't fight. Silver did not go to mount her, however, instead just cuddling with her. "I want you to be my friend as my prize."
Rainbow snorted. "You already had that, doofus." She kicked up at him weakly. "You won, do it."
Silver tilted his head. "Is that what you want? For real? If you spread your legs and invite me because you want it, not because of some contest, I will gladly be your stud, as a friend, and because I respect you. You are a better flyer than me, Rainbow, by far."
Rainbow frowned a little. "You are a total egghead. I can see why you get along with Twilight..." She ran a hoof over his barrel. "You... So was Big Mac right?"
"About?"
Rainbow shrugged. "Am I going to have a lunar foal?"
Silver nodded truthfully. "Probably a lunar unicorn, if you let me do it."
Rainbow snorted softly, her wings pumping twice against the ground. "There aren't many of those, like, none, I guess, since you're not really one anymore?"
Silver leaned in, rubbing her nose-to-nose. "Do it because you want it, or not. Your body is your own. I am not here to steal that agency from you. You're too awesome for that."
Claims of awesomeness never went badly with Rainbow, and she smiled a bit. "Do you think I'm pretty?"
Silver recoiled with surprise at the question. He tried to use his hard-earned view of how ponies see one another. "You have the sleek power of an athletic charm. You're strong sexy, not soft sexy."
Rainbow looked perplexed. "There are different kinds?"
Silver rolled a hoof. "Sure there are. I'm sure there are some stallions you think are cute because they're strong, and some that are funny, and some that are fast, right?"
This made sense to Rainbow, "Sure. You were geeky sexy before, but now..." She trailed a hoof over Silver' chest. "You kinda got big sexy, and you can plow like an earth pony, and fly almost as good as me." She crossed her forelegs. "Alicorns are cheating."
Silver kissed her cheek softly. "You're a game worth cheating at."
Rainbow went red. "Oh gosh, that was sooo corny. Look... let's talk with Applejack." She slipped out from under Silver and got to her hooves. "Like adults, right? The way I see it, you're alright. I have no problem with you being stud to either of us, but we should see what she says."
"Agreed." Silver felt relief flow through him. "It will be your foal, after all. I want you both to be happy."
They took flight and returned to the farm at a more sedate pace. Rainbow bumped into him mid-flight. "Hey, thanks for not being a jerk."
"Any time, Dash." Silver smiled gently. "We've been friends a while now. I'd rather be that, than 'your stud.'"
Rainbow seemed to grow thoughtful at that. "Huh... Sorry about that, I mean... I'd be pretty cheesed if Rarity suddenly needed me to be a surrogate mom or something and started treating me like a foal-maker instead of her friend. That would be super weird."
They came in for a landing beside Night and Fast. Fast grinned and looked Rainbow over a moment before looking Silver over. She saw no signs that they had engaged in wild foal-making activities. "So, did he lose?"
Rainbow waved a hoof. "We'll call it a draw. Do you know where Applejack is?"
Night pointed with a wing at the Apple house. "Inside, with Twilight and her brother and grandmother. Twilight said they'd be out when they were ready."
They all settled down. Night looked to Rainbow with her large eyes, magnified by her glasses. "You look more relaxed now."
Rainbow shuffled. "We talked. I just need to, you know, touch bases with AJ about things."
Fast rolled a hoof. "I admit I thought there would be more, you know, studding, and less drama."
Silver snorted. "We don't always get what we want. They're our friends, they'll get the time they need to do this right."
Night extended a wing and wrapped it over Silver. "That's a mature thing to say... Just be safe, when you're away."
Rainbow perked an ear. "Away? Where're you going, champ?"
Silver wasn't sure what direction Anugypt was, so he just shrugged. "Anugypt, with Celestia. We're supposed to be calming down some kind of diplomatic situation that's gotten out of hand."
Rainbow nodded a little. "Huh, sounds boring and exciting at the same time. Good luck with that."
Fast added, "That's not for a few weeks anyway." She rose up and stretched wings she didn't have a moment ago. "Want a race?"
She and Rainbow took to the skies. Fast was clearly outmatched by the veteran flyer, but Fast was also having a good time of it, from the laughs that reached Night and Silver down on the ground.
Night nudged against Silver. "Did you catch up with her? She's acting as if you had."
Silver nodded. "Only because she let me. We both fell out of the sky and she dug me out of the hole I made. I grabbed her after that."
Night tilted her head. "So how did you get back here without rutting her, or her storming off in a huge fit?"
Silver tapped at his chin. "I asked her what she actually wanted, contest aside, and that I wanted to be her friend first, whether or not I served as her stud. This whole thing's gotten a bit more complicated than I want it to be."
Night raised a brow. "Are you backing out?"
"No." Silver shook his head. "I'm not running. I will be there for them, whichever way they decide on ultimately, but I do want to be a friend afterwards, not just a stud. I liked them back when we couldn't have foals together, and they were kind to me when I was a lost unicorn. Heck, without them, we wouldn't be with Twilight at all. I owe them a fair bit. This thing, today? It's nothing compared to that."
Night squeezed Silver close and wrapped her legs around him, nestling close. She seemed quietly pleased with the situation, or at least pleased with her company.
Big Mac emerged from the house and approached the two of them. "Rainbow Dash?"
Silver pointed up to where Fast and Rainbow circled around the property. As if noticing her name being mentioned, Rainbow quickly dived down, and soon they both landed beside Big Mac. "Yo, what's up?"
Big Mac gestured to the house, then turned and walked back to it. Rainbow nodded. "I'll be back." And off she went to join him.
Fast crashed beside her wives. "Everyone's invited but us. I see how it is." Her wings pulled back into her, reabsorbed. "I want to learn how you do the things you do." She pointed at Silver. "You're obviously doing something a bit odd, but it's also working. Spill it."
Silver gave the same basic explanation he had given before, about the way he gathered energy and sent it to where he knew there were 'exit points' in the pony body. "All tribes have magic, just as much of it, so far I can tell. The difference is where it can come out. As a unicorn, the horn's the spot, and they've gotten rather clever about it. Pegasi channel power to their wings, bones and lungs. Earth ponies share the lungs and bones, but also have points in their legs and hooves. Legs gives them power, hooves make plants grow, lungs gives endurance, bones for toughness, wings for speed... Get it?"
Fast shook her head. "Nope, but I like it..." She tapped her chin. "I'm going to see what I can do with that. If my shapeshifting makes those, uh, exit points, as you call them, I could be doing a lot more than I'm doing right now. You're going to have to show me how to 'direct' magic though. The only place I normally direct magic is my horn, or I guess when I change, I think about what I want to be."
Silver was quite content to try to do that. Since Night was there, he invited her to learn along with them, and was soon seated before the two mares with their eyes closed. "Imagine the magic in you like a flowing river, going round and round. You want it to flow faster, deeper, but don't let it spill. That energy is precious. You'll feel warmer if you're doing it right."
Fast perked an ear. "I've done magic channeling like that before, but I usually gather at the base of the horn."
"Then you have the basic idea, but use your torso. It's larger."
Night was a clever pony, and she worked diligently and quietly, warming her body with the circling energy. Silver reached out to feel each of them, nodding. "Good. You're definitely warmer. With practice, you can get really hot. I'm going to suggest you keep it easy with that, Night. I don't think your foal can be harmed, but why risk it? Keep it to the level you're at now until afterwards. OK, you have this stream, now just let it flow to one of your exit points, divert it like a sudden dam, with the only way out being where you want it to be.
Fast sprouted wings quickly, then took off into the sky. She jittered forward noticeably as she let the held energy flow wildly into her wings, and it threw off her flying badly. She came in for an awkward landing, but was laughing the entire time. "Woo! Did you see that?"
Night suddenly tackled Silver, and her teeth sank into him. He was flooded with a confusing mess of emotions. Love, jealousy, worry, pride. Everything Night felt broadcast in a brief moment of painful intensity. Silver shivered under her, legs kicking out weakly. "I... That was very impressive, Night."
Night drew back, licking her teeth clean. "That's what was missing... I let it go into my teeth and it just felt right." She frowned. "How many other lunar pegasi are there that could use this gift but just don't know how?" She slipped off of Silver, who rolled upright.
"I'm not sure we should share that... It can kill, remember?"
Night nodded lightly. "Some things are better off as secrets." She smiled. "But thank you."
While randomly changing genders (twice!) midsentence is well within Fast Change's established power set, I don't think that was intended to be going on here.
Should be "they both", and only one space after "landed".
Good chapter, and good to see Silver's approach handled maturely and working well.
Curious to see if the Chaos Rainboom ends up having a lasting impact on the story, aside from its role in opening the dialog between RD and Silver.
6006275 Fixes applied.
A "turbulence-like" force.
I suspect that should be "hooves' reach."
Shouldn't that be "coolness"?
There are two spaces between "you" and "want."
Change the period to a question mark.
That should probably be "Silver leaned in, rubbing her nose-to-nose."
Claims of awesomeness never "went" badly with Rainbow.
If Rarity treated her like a "foal-maker."
There are two spaces between "landed" and "beside."
Hmm... I'm not sure about the keeping the fang emotion sharing thing a secret. A magic reinforced hoof strike can kill. So can a horn. Even wings and lightning strikes can. The only time the bite killed was in the middle of a fight, when Silver was letting his magic flow after someone blocked his horn (her, at the time, I suppose.) Now, even ignoring the future possibilities of other lunar unicorns ending up in similar situations, Silver's magic flow lessons work for earth ponies and pegasi. What happens when a lunar pegasi is pushed against a wall and unconsciously taps that ability as Night just did? It might be better to teach the skill for the sake of prevention than hide it.
In other news:
Weeks. (Huzzah! My first typo hunt! I think...)
6006295 Fixes applied to make magic lessons easier to understand.
6006313 You gain 10 xp!
I haz all badassness I'm bout 20% more badass than silver stars
Another great chapter. I can't wait for the next one so keep up the good work.
Dragonfox
love the chapter it is a time for total truth between friends and it just works so good.
did Silver catch Rainbow yes but he was honest with her that it so much better then just putting a foal in her and have her hate hit latter.
now what is going on in Apple Jacks mind she is having a problem of some kind?????
Harts Fire
6006415
Her whole love life and future child bearing has been offered up as prizes in a string of contests which she is almost certainly not honestly okay with, despite her stated consent. And being the Element of Honesty she can't cope well with dishonesty, including with herself.
Also, probably surprises that David is cooking up for us!
I really like how Silver has learned to harness some of his pegasus and earth magics. Kinda curious if he will keep it to the passive skills or if he might learn related 'spells' in those fields?
Having read this chapter over a few times, I have largely mixed feelings on it. While the beginning and middle weren't bad, I felt like the end was missing a very salient point with regards to Night and Fast's magic.
But let's go over the interpersonal aspects of this chapter first. Silver managed to squeak out a win and catch Rainbow Dash - sort of - and earned the right to breed her. I'm still not entirely sure what to think of Rainbow's entire "win a contest and you can mount her/me" scheme. On the one hand, it does make sense, both in terms of Rainbow's highly competitive nature, and in more general terms (e.g. the animalistic idea of "only the best gets to mate"). Rainbow likes to think in terms of contests, and if we presume that there's any aspect of competition to reproduction - and there is - then it makes sense for her to judge Silver in that regard.
Where this falls down is in the presumption that that's all there is to RD, or even what's necessarily most important to her. At the end of the day, she abandoned her contest to pick the best pet, for instance, and I see this as being in the same vein. Rainbow isn't an animal, nor is she monomaniacal in her love of competition - she can recognize that there are circumstances that can't, and shouldn't, be resolved via a simple test of physical abilities.
What made this weird was that, in this chapter, she seemed to flip-flop back and forth between these two stances. She insisted on carrying out this competition, to the point of practically raising her tail at Silver when he won...but then a few minutes of (rather awkward, in all honesty) banter, she was saying that they should talk to Applejack, which is something that a more rational, self-aware adult would do, to the point of apparently repudiating how she'd treated Silver before. To put it another way, the chapter is doing a bad job of showing us Rainbow's mindset, and I ended up rather confused for it.
But I can deal with that. What bothered me more was Silver's magic lesson...I was initially pretty unhappy with how it went. The reason for that was because it seemed like Silver was teaching Night and Fast lessons that there was no plausible reason for them not to have learned already. Ponies have always had inherent magic; it's essentially a bodily function for them. For any pony not to know how to use their own magic to its fullest - especially when their society is millenia old, meaning that they should long have stumbled onto every possible way of using their natural abilities (note that spellcasting is different, since that's an artificial, complex process that requires each individual to study it for years). The idea that Night and Fast had no idea that they could utilize their own natural magic to various effects was more than my suspension of disbelief could handle. That's the equivalent of a human saying that they had no idea that they could jump, having thought that they could only walk and run.
But then one thing occurred to me, and it all made sense: Night and Fast aren't normal ponies, they're special exceptions.
Seriously, Night Watch isn't the same pony she used to be. She underwent the blood-ritual with Luna, just like Silver did. That granted her a power that she didn't have before, the same way it did for Silver (and, come to think of it, First Stars). Likewise, Fast Change is probably the single greatest shape-shifter in Equestria. She literally was a changeling queen, and came back from that. Hence, the normal rules for shape-shifting don't apply to her.
That's something that the chapter really needed to call out, but didn't. They're not two ponies that haven't learned the obvious lessons; they're essentially comic book superheroes, learning about their super powers. So Night doesn't need to worry about other lunar pegasi having emotion-sharing bites - there aren't any, First Stars notwithstanding. Luna even mentioned that that ability has long since been lost due to watery blood among her brood.
Once I realized that, I liked this chapter a lot more, but I wish it hadn't made me play detective to figure that out.
6007416 I really dislike spelling out characters. Ambiguity in actions? To me that's pretty much the hallmark of most stories worth reading. You keep pressing on the point but skipping past it. Rainbow is not challenging Silver to contests because she's dead set on the idea that contests are the end-all be-all. She likes Silver, but is having a hard time letting it go to that level. Elevating from friend friends to raise-your-tail friends is not an easy task, and for Rainbow less so than others. The contest is a coping mechanism, a comfort tool. If he beats her, then she can hide behind it, pretending the contest 'forced' her to do what she wanted to do anyway. If she didn't like Silver, there would be no contest, because there isn't a contest big enough to make her lift tail for a pony she doesn't like, and she'd sooner start sending ponies to the hospital than be raped. This is Rainbow F'ng Dash. She is practically the definition of the empowered female, but she's also a bit of an emotional wreck. It almost boils down to a little kid punching another little kid because they like them.
Phew, that came out a bit more angrily than I think it should have. I hope it's received in a positive light, because I still love having your opinions around. :)
As for your observation on magic, you, again, touch on the point, then kind of slide past it. Focusing magic where you know to focus it is something all ponies know how to do, and they do it intuitively. Silver's technique is useless to show Fast how to use her horn better, for example. She said she knows how to focus there. She said it! This wasn't meant to be a huge mystery. A pony learns how to focus as they grow up with the right bodyparts. Silver's technique is a tool to let a pony use magic with bodyparts they didn't have a childhood to master on an instinctive level.
Because this isn't taught that way, it does mean that some ponies who are not shapeshifters could still benefit somewhat from it. For instance, a city-raised earth pony who becomes an accountant may never fully develop the ability to channel into any of their parts, because it never came up.
I hope this makes sense.
6007456 I know you're dead-set on not narrating insight into what your characters are thinking/feeling, and I maintain that that's a weakness in your writing style. It's like you're so worried about adding too much icing to a cake that you end up adding none at all - yes, too much icing will ruin the cake, but having none isn't exactly doing you any favors either.
Ambiguity is taken to be a hallmark of good writing because it's understood to create multiple interpretations that are all plausible. But when ambiguity becomes uncertainty, or even confusion, then it's gone too far. What you said about Rainbow Dash makes sense, but I'm trying to tell you that that's not coming through in the story itself (not to me, at least). The idea that this is Rainbow's way of saying "I like you, and I think I might want to be more than just friends" without having to actually say that plays perfectly into her character, but what's written in this chapter isn't communicating your idea clearly - believe it or not, there's a middle ground between "stick purely to what could be seen and heard if the reader were there" and "narrate it directly without any subtlety whatsoever," and it's a pretty big space that you're not playing in.
Your interpretation of the character is good, but I wish you'd allude towards that a little more strongly, is all.
approach
Is this the word you intended or did your spellchecker do an auto-correct on you, "I am not here to steal that away from you." would make a better sounding statement.
6934458 Fixed, and yes, agency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy)
I know someone already mentioned the spelling error, I feel your word usage at the end of this sentence is a bit awkward. I feel as if the word away would work better in place of ahead.
7416052 Typo fixed
Cute!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SZdVWKM1ILs