• Published 21st Jun 2012
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Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me - DataPacRat



Not every human in equestria gets turned into a pony.

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Idyll

Life was... surprisingly, and pleasantly, dull, for the next while.

That willow tree became the center-point of my life. First, it was just a handy meeting-spot between the equines and canines, and the grass was comfortable enough. I had a trunk of books sent over, both to use as references for legal precedents and for my private reading. After a scheduled rain-shower put a damper on some proceedings, a tent was thrown up, quickly replaced by a sort of gazebo. Not to be out-done, the diamond dogs dug a nice, comfortable underground meeting room. I had to quickly put a stop to plans to try to continually one-up each other, managing to keep things down to a small, Greco-Romanesque villa, a sort of small reference library with some reclining couches, a good shelter-basement, and some secure document storage for the Dairy-based papers. Within a few days, somepony had planted flowers in front, and someone else had installed a bird-bath

I commuted to Cheerilee's house as we tried to patch up our differences - after a few days, we felt comfortable enough to start sleeping (and yes I do still mean sleeping) with each other again, now and then, but we were still very conscious about the differences in behavior and opinion we'd finally found.

I also supervised the expansion to turn Sweet Apple Acres into a backup for the Dairy should something happen to Canterlot, continued regularly visiting Canterlot itself, and even made a couple of trips to the diamond dogs' digs, to better familiarize myself with their assumptions.

I kept up with the exercises and katas Safe Guard assigned, reviewed the scientific reports sent by Micro Scope, and initialed almost anything Page Turner sent my way. I'd finally kicked the Dairy into good enough shape that it looked like it could keep on keeping on without my continual input. I still sent them any new ideas I came up with - for example, I finally recalled the encryption system that Bruce Schneier had come up with that allowed a harmless-appearing deck of cards to be used as the key - but, with a relief, I was able to hand over most of the mere bureaucratic administration to those ponies who excelled at and enjoyed that sort of thing.

While I'd been picked as a neutral arbitrator for any disputes between Ponyville and the pack, things were still early and hesitant enough that no such disputes had yet arisen - and I'd made it clear that I wouldn't be spending all my time in the area, and expected them to find some makeshift way to maintain the peace, some temporary solution to whatever problems they had while I was gone.

Which all meant that, finally, I'd cleared enough of my immediate responsibilities from my plate that I could finally spend time doing that which I enjoyed most: reading, hiking and thinking about what I'd read, and then reading some more.

The Pillar family had started sending copies of texts supplementing the Equinomicon - fragments of a book by the ancient unicorn sorcerer Eye Bon, a few pages from "Colts of Ghouls", even down to individual lines from "Mysteries of the Wyrm". A partial translation of the 'Ponyape Scripture' caught my attention due to references to Mu - which Athena had described as having been destroyed in a previous Game. My response to each item was, roughly, "Do you believe you could pass an honesty-check with Princess Luna, that you have offered fair compensation?". Since the texts kept coming, bit by bit, I assumed the answer was still 'no'.


I finally got back results from one of the research projects I'd farmed out to the Dairy - which, combined with some of the information I was puzzling out from the Pillars' books, was thought-provoking, if not immediately useful. A thousand years or so ago, it seemed there were four immense ley-lines across the face of Equestria, which all met at a single point - the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. Since that time, those lines had drifted, and now met at a different place. Depending on the accuracy of any individual source, then sometime between a hundred years previously and a hundred years from now, that intersection was located... in Ponyville.

I came up with the idea to take a quick field trip to the Castle's ruins - maybe an Earthly skeptical eye would be able to notice something that local archaeologists wouldn't have thought to look for. I mentioned this to Cheerilee...

... and before I really knew what was happening, an entire expedition had been arranged, including foals to be shown Equestrian history, guards to watch for dangerous wildlife, the Pegasus Express gaining a temporary spur to keep the paperwork flowing, a few engineers hauling carts with the materials to build at least one bridge, Amethyst bringing the pups, and for all that I could tell, Trixie and a traveling circus.

Needless to say, with all those other ponies running around, and me introducing some of the less-Daring-Do aspects of archaeology (drawn mainly from all the episodes of "Time Team" I'd watched), I barely had enough free space to even look at the castle's architecture, let alone do any serious searching for hints and clues about anything important. (And I didn't want the Crusaders anywhere near the Warden whistle, so I kept that locked in a box in my luggage.) I seemed to be the only one who was unhappy with the trip, though, so I tried not to let my disappointment show. Cheerilee wasn't fooled at all; when we settled down together in a tent for the night, she ignored my initiation protestation that nothing was wrong, so I finally sighed, and explained how I'd been hoping to learn something about magical geography, such as by looking for any surviving alignments... but that now I'd probably have to fob the full investigation and mapping off on yet another sub-project manager. She hmed, and looked thoughtful, and we settled in for the night.

The next morning, over breakfast, Cheerilee showed the students what it was like to take a one-square-yard area, and really start investigating it properly, inch by inch, brushing every rock carefully to see if it was actually a piece of an artifact... and before very long at all, the whole class was more than happy to head back to Ponyville. She gave me a wink as they started packing up, and I gave her a short hug I didn't care who saw.


At lunchtime, I saw Amethyst bite into her namesake, we got to talking a bit about crystals, and how they tasted to diamond dogs, and how easy it was for them to chomp them. I mentioned that the best I'd been able to do was break them into pieces. She seemed curious, so I dug out some wire, attached it to my horns, stuck a spare piece of blue quartz between them - and in a few moments, noticed Amethyst looking at me, and the sparkly gravel, oddly.

"What?" I asked.

"You. Did. Not. See?"

"See what?"

She appeared to consider her words, before finally picking one: "Sparkly."

I shrugged. "I don't see much, when I'm using my horns."

"Ever. Stop. Half. Way?"

"You mean - half way before the crystal breaks?" She nodded, so I shook my head. "Haven't tried it. Be a bit tricky - maybe you could pull one of the wires for me, at the right time?" She nodded again, so we gave it another try with a fresh piece of blue quarts... and this time, instead of a broken, shattered, or powered crystal, we were looking at a crystal that practically shone from within.

Before I could say much, she tossed it into her maw, and gave a few crunches. She seemed pleased with the results, commenting only, "Tastier."

I supposed that if nothing else worked out, I could try getting a job as a chef for diamond dogs.


Now that I didn't have to rush around to make sure the Crusaders weren't about to knock down a precariously-perilous remnant of a tower, and suchlike, I was able to simply walk around the ruins and grounds. I had a map pointing to the nearest other sites I believed were, or once were, on ley lines; and surveying gear to check anything that seemed to closely line up with them - though knowing where the sun was, I didn't even need a compass, for this much.

What I kept coming back to was the big display pedestal in the entrance hall - the one with six arms, which had held at least five of the orbs containing the previous Elements of Harmony. If I wasn't mistaken, some of those arms lined up with the original ley lines - and if so, then the directions the other two pointed in might be worth investigating.

But there was also... if those five or six orbs had held the Elements of Harmony... then what was that larger, pearl-like orb, still in the center of the structure, currently draped with moss? Was it just a decoration, or a marker, or something simple like a magic light-bulb, or... what? What would it take to find out? I wasn't a unicorn like Twilight Sparkle, who could levitate things and had the 'spark of magic' - the closest thing I seemed to be able to do was be a battery, refilling crystals or whatnot that I... touched with my... horns.

Hunh.

The engineers were investigating a distant piece of the ruin to see if it could be shored up, the remaining guardsponies were patrolling the edge of the clearing outside the castle, and Amethyst was curled around the pups as they all took a nap out front... so none of them were close enough to be in any real danger. And I'd put as many things into motion as I'd been able to think of - so I could, now that I thought about it, put myself into danger without worrying that doing so would necessarily put all of Equestria at risk... if there was some reason to.

And what better reason was there then to find out something new, something which might help everyone in Equestria from Cheerilee and the pups to the most distant zebra?

My curiosity becoming irresistible, I put my hooves up on the pedestal, leaned my head in, and touched the tips of my horns to that orb.

It started glowing. Brighter, and brighter, and brighter...


I opened my eyes. I was on my back, looking up through the castle's missing roof at the blue sky. Amethyst leaned into my field of vision. "Still. Alive?" She poked my in the side with one claw, and I winced. "Good," she stated. Then she tilted her head. "Where. Get. Necklace?"

I blinked, and twisted my neck - and there, indeed, was a golden circlet around my throat, with some curlicue decoration; in the very front of which was something as round and unfaceted as a pearl - but instead of being pure white, was blue, and green, with a scattering of white streaks here and there.

"Hunh."

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