"Fly By Night." Pt. 1.

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“Wha-huh?” Gale mumbled, waking to an alarm he forgot he set. Aw shit, time to go already? He sat up, groaning as he stretched. With a glance around the rather dingy motel room he grabbed a fresh set of clothes from one of his bags and proceeded to change.

While packing his belongings and muttering obscenities under his breath, he wondered aloud, “Would someone please remind me why I thought driving across the country was a good idea?”

Sighing, he stepped up to the room’s window and pulled open the blinds to reveal a rising half moon “And I have to cannonball it too . . . “ He turned around, huffing as he remembered just how much luggage he had with him.

A few minutes later, once he’d finished packing, Gale walked out of his motel room for the last time. Man, it feels wonderful tonight. Gale thought, strolling to his car and taking in the warm Missouri air.

As he opened the squeaky door with a grunt, he wondered aloud, “Shouldn’t take but a week and a half or so more. . . ” Sitting down he stole a glance at a photo of his fiance that he’d tossed into the passenger seat the night before.

Sighing, he started the car and took a minute to appreciate his personal slice of ‘70’s Americana.

Okay. Gale thought to himself. Just a few more days and a few more miles. Turning on the radio and driving out of the motel parking lot. A few more days ‘till the rest of our lives Jessy, I’m comin’ home.

After several minutes of fiddling with the cassette player, Gale switched to the radio with a huff. “I really need to get this darned thing fixed . . . “ He muttered.

He tuned into a radio station just in time to catch the last bars of a song, and hear a DJ come on the air. “And that ladies and gents was The Who’s, Won’t Get Fooled Again from their album Who’s Next, wrapping up our six o’clock roadblock. Remember to tune in tomorrow around noon so you can be caller number five and win a set of tickets to see AC/DC’s last tour.” the DJ commented.

That’s too bad, I’ll probably be out of signal range by morning. Gale thought, turning onto the interstate headed out of town. Maybe the show’s syndicated, his thoughts continued, making a mental note to try that station the next day as he turned off the radio. A good twenty minutes and several more miles passed, bleeding together as Gale drove on.

With only the loud, droning rumble of an old V8 as a backing track, his mind started to wonder, as it usually did this time of night, back to the cause of his journey.

'I don’t care what my wife said,’ The old man fumed, taking a threatening step forward. ‘you’re not marrying my daughter as long as I’m alive you little piece of shit! Now get out of my sight before I call the police!’ Even in memory, the words stung Gale as though he had been punched in the face which, in hindsight he realized, he very nearly had been.

Doing his best to drown out certain memories, his mind turned to the weather. “Huh, I didn’t think it was supposed to get overcast tonight.” He weakly mumbled, failing to repress his distress.

After a few minutes of musing about the weather, his mind wandered to a conversation he’d had a few months before.

‘If he doesn’t want us to be together, then fuck him. I don’t care if he’s my dad, he can’t tell me who I can and can’t marry!’ Slamming the door to his dorm room, Jessica sat on the couch fuming.

‘Look, I know you’re mad, Jess,’ Gale said while walking out of the kitchen, a can of soda in each hand. ‘but you can’t let your emotions get the better of you. Not now.’

‘How can you be so calm about this Gale? He’s trying to tell us we can’t be together!’ Jessica shouted, throwing her hands into the air.

‘I’m staying calm because getting mad is exactly the wrong thing to do.’ A hint of aggression seeping into his voice as he opened a can.

Eyes tearing, he tried his cassette player again. “Come on you piece of garbage! Why do you never work when I want you to?” He sobbed. When that didn’t work he eventually tried to distract himself with thoughts about his dad and the car he was driving.

‘Gale, can you come outside please? There’s something out here for you.’ His dad had called from outside an open window.

‘Dad, it’s seven-thirty A.M. on a Saturday. What could possibly be so important that you’re calling your twenty-one year old son out of bed? He’d yawned, stretching and sitting up.

‘For one, you’re twenty-one, you should be glad we still let you live here, and two you’ll find out when you get your lazy ass out of bed and come down here, now come on.’ His old man had quipped.

Thankfully for Gale, he was able to bury his sorrow under the memory of another, better argument he’d had.

Switching on the radio back on, an old song came on and Gale cracked a smile, for the first time in maybe three weeks, as he started singing along and remembered the second best day of his life: the day he started restoring Charlene.

Mind once again free from darker memories, Gale wheeled his car onto a westward road with a new vigor in his actions.

Two hours passed before Gale turned off the highway onto a what was supposed to be a shortcut to the next town.

A low rumble filled the sky, as he drove off the main road and onto a two laner that was in near desperate need of repair.

Ugh, it’s roads like this that are the reason leaf springs went out of use . . . He internally whined, feeling bad about the punishment he was putting Charlene’s, admittedly under-cared for, suspension under.

An hour or so later saw Gale navigating the back roads along a lakeside. At least it’s starting to clear up. Looking out the window, he noted the clouds dissipating. Turning back forward, he mused. Seems like it could be a go-

“Ah, crap!” He suddenly jerked the wheel to the left, attempting to save his suspension and avoid a bad pothole. Unfortunately for Gale, by missing one pothole he’d proceed to hit two that were worse, which violently jolted his car to the right with a bang.

Dammit, this is bad. Panicking, he desperately tried to regain control.

Yanking the wheel hard, Gale realized that he’d accidentally overcorrected and sent the car veering off the road toward the river on the left.

Not good. He thought, as his steering seemed to go out and the car went careening down the embankment, “Shit!” He yelled, eyes widening as he went skidding toward one of the dirt mounds that lined the lakefront. This is gonna hurt. he thought, feverishly hoping that his brakes would slow him down.

As his car ran up onto one of the dirt mounds, Gale’s life flashed before his eyes; but instead of crashing like he’d expected, the car ramped off the mound and flew out over the lake at about fifty miles an hour.

With a loud roar, the car soared up over the lake, reaching its zenith in a matter of seconds.

“Oh, fu-” he started as the car flew through the air, but before he could finished his expletive, a loud, but simultaneously, dull thud resounded from the roof along with a brilliant white flash.

“-ck!” he finished, cringing as he felt the car land hard onto a grassy field. It started sliding sideways for about 35 feet before rolling from momentum.

The car rolled five times, each more violent than the last. When it came to a stop it was on its side with the passenger’s door against the ground.

Oh dammit. What the-, what the hell just happened? Was Gale’s predominant thought until the adrenaline started to wear off, “Aagh, shit!” he hissed, now realizing the full extent of pain from his injuries.

In the minutes after the crash the world became eerily silent, but as Gale sat hanging from the driver’s seat someone, or rather somepony, sat about twenty five feet above the wreckage on a cloud: Rainbow Dash.

From her spot upon said cloud, Rainbow sat frozen. Her mind unable to think about anything other that what lay before her, a large metal object of orange and grey, with something black covering it’s upper section, that was now laying in a pile of steaming wreckage in the middle of one of Applejack’s fields.

Rainbow sat for another five minutes as her thoughts began to settle. As she stared at the wreckage it slowly dawned on her how much trouble she may have just caused. “Oh, buck.”

Without a second thought, she launched into the air and raced toward the library, hoping that her friend was still awake at such a late hour.

Twilight Sparkle, Ponyville’s resident librarian, was just climbing the stairs to bed when the door to her abode was flung open.

“Twilight, oh thank Luna you’re still awake!” The Rainbow Dash exclaimed. “You gotta help me. This-this thing just crashed out in one of Applejack’s fields. It’s completely wrecked and smoking badly!” She continued between gasps of breath.

Taken aback by both her friends sudden appearance and shouting, Twilight took a minute before responding. “Sweet Celestia Dash, where’ve you been all day?”

Turning back toward the pegasus, Twilight’s face fell when she saw her friends expression. “Dash, are you okay?”

After catching her breath for a minute, Rainbow launched into telling Twilight what happened, occasionally pausing for breath.

“And I don’t know why or how they crashed, but I know what happened can’t have been intentional.”

“Okay Dash, slow down would you? Now, you said this thing was moving how fast, again?” Twilight asked, attempting to ascertain any details she could from her friend.

“Look Twilight, I don’t know okay? All I know.is. . . is . . . Oh horseapples!” Rainbow swore, quickly standing back up. “I can’t believe I left them!” She said, smacking her forehead with a hoof.

“Left who, Dash?” Twilight said, having not heard the end of Dash’s tale.

“Who or, or whatever was using that thing! I left them in the field by Applejack’s where we came back!”

“. . .You, you brought them back?” Twilight asked, in a state of shock from what she’d just heard.

“No time for that now, Twilight!” Dash huffed, looking her friend in the eye. “If my hunch is right, they’re gonna need help badly, especially after how they landed.” Dash said, biting her lip and turning away.

Hanging from his seat belt, Gale fought hard to control his breathing. Calm down dammit! It was just an accident, you’ve been through worse. Even as he thought this, his mind came to another conclusion. That - that can’t have been an ordinary accident, I’d’ve been fish food by now if it was; unless I’m already dead? At that thought he tried moving his arm, only to groan in pain. Okay, definitely not dead. So where the hell am I?

It was another ten minutes or so later before he heard another noise; the sound of approaching hooves of a few horses. “Rainbow what are you-” He’d heard someone start before the clip-clopping of hooves came to a sliding halt. “Dash what in Tartarus is that?”

Despite his confusion at their choice of wording, Gale tried to call out to them. Unfortunately, he was still feeling the shock from the accident and it came out more as a gasped. “Help me.”

To his relief, they seemed to hear his call for help, and with the shock finally overwhelming him, the last thing Gale heard before blacking out was. “Stand back, Dash! I’m gonna see if I can get them out of there.”

“Stand back, Dash! I’m gonna see if I can get them out of there.” Horn glowing, Twilight concentrated on the task at hand, while Rainbow stood stock still in fear.

“Rainbow, I need you to go to the hospital and get somepony who specializes in non-equine patients.” Twilight said in as calm a voice as she could muster. “Even if I can get them out there’s no telling what kind of shape they’ll be in.”

Twilight’s words snapped Rainbow from her stupor. “What?” She asked.

“I need you to fly to the hospital and have them prepare a room for a non-equine, Dash. And can you hurry?”

Anxious as she was, Rainbow agreed. “Okay. Got it, but be careful Twilight,” With a glance into the car she continued. “He might be dangerous.”

Several doctors stood around the door to a room in the I.C.U. of Ponyville medical. “Whatever it is, it isn’t equine.” one of them said.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything right now, Dr. Stable.” another pony, presumably one of the nurses, replied. “What matters is that we do what we can for them.”

“I didn’t mean it like that and you know it.” Stable countered. “What I meant was it’s been difficult to help something that we don’t know about.”

“Well. It looks like he’s waking up. I’ll go check on him, you three go inform those two mares that he’s awake, I think they wanted to see him.” Steady Hoof commented, stepping away from the door’s window.

“But Steady Hoof, isn’t that against policy?” the nurse from before asked.

“Mare, with how long I’ve been working here, I might as well have written the policy.”

When Gale woke up his first thoughts were the infamous, What happened last night? “Where am I?” Opening his eyes and wincing at the bright lights. “If this’s the end of the tunnel, then I’ve been screwed.” He muttered, groaning as he took in the sight of his cast and bandages.

Slowly, he started to get up. He’d managed to get into a sitting position about the time a knock rang against the door. “Are you awake?” an older sounding voice asked as the knob visibly turned. “Oh good, you are.” Dr. Steady Hoof finished, stepping into the room and closing the door with a soft kick. “I was hoping you’d be up by now.”

What . . . the hell? Gale wondered. I- is that a miniature horse? Okay, what kind of painkillers do they have me on?

“- and I assure you sir that we’ve done our best to ensure a speedy recovery, for here at Ponyville Medical it’s our job to be there for everypony.” The doctor said, snapping Gale out of his thoughts.

“Huh, what?” he asked, completely confused as to just what was going on. “Can you repeat that Mr.-” he continued, just managing to sit up, and rub his temple. “-I’m having a hard time trying to comprehend just how I ended up in a hospital room with a mini- horse, who’s apparently my doctor.” he finished with a second glance to confirm that the doctor was still, in fact, a mini-horse with a white coat, sized to fit, covering his front half, and for some bizarre reason a perfect image of a stethoscope on his backside.

Steady Hoof took a step back, pausing for a moment before introducing himself. “Well my name is Dr. Steady Hoof, and my team and I have been working for the past two days or so to make sure you didn’t end up either paralyzed or dead from some sort of magical incident that occurred.” he continued slowly, “You were brought in by one Twilight Sparkle and her friend Rainbow Dash, both of them said that you were involved in a crash landing of some large carriage as they described it.” At this point he stopped, looked at Gale and asked, “Would they be able to come in and check on you?”

It took Gale a couple of seconds to process the information he’d just been given. “Give me a minute.” He groaned, still getting over the fact that he was talking to a miniature horse who: One, could talk. Two, claimed to be a doctor and Three, was telling him that there were other miniature horses that wanted to see him. What the hell’s going on? he thought as he looked at Dr. Steady Hoof. I’m in some sort of dream . . . I have to be. “Before you let them in, do you have my stuff? I mean the gown’s good for my chest and all, but I’d like my jeans back if I could.” he said, startling the doctor with his response.

“Oh yes, there right over here.” Steady Hoof chuckled as he reached down and grabbed them. “In all honesty I have no idea how they survived that ordeal, based upon the shape you were in when we got you, I’m not sure much else would’ve”

Okay, definitely asking those two who brought me here what happened . . . Gale thought, standing up getting dressed with a grunt.

“Alright, give me a minute or two.” He huffed, struggling to put on his jeans. “Okay, let ‘em in.” He continued once he’d gotten them on.

The doctor walked over to the door, paused and turned back to Gale “Oh Celestia, where are my manners? What is your name, sir?” he asked.

“My name’s Gale, Gale Howard.” He replied, zipping his jeans and wondering just what in the world he’d gotten himself into. Of course he didn’t get to think about it for long as the doctor opened the door, said something about not needing guards to somebody on the other side, and stepped aside to let two more mini-horses into the room.

“Well Gale, I’d like to introduce you to Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle.” Steady Hoof said, turning back to face him and shutting the door, “These two brought you into the hospital about two and a half days ago and practically haven’t left the lobby since.” He said with a small chuckle.

A pegasus? Okaay, definitely dreaming. Gale thought as the two walked into to room. And a god-damned unicorn? What the actual fuck? Mind reeling, Gale found himself unable to focus on the rest of the conversation.

Steady Hoof cleared his throat before turning to the unicorn, Gale figured this was Twilight. “Now Miss Sparkle there is the problem of medical bills, you see I can’t necessarily charge Gale here as he has no means of payment, but I can’t just offer my services for free; no that would cause a scandal.”

Despite his best efforts, Gale’s thoughts were interrupted by the light blue pegasus that was standing in front of, and staring at him.

Rainbow Dash wasn’t quite sure what to make of the creature in front of her. She’d seen a glimpse of him two days prior when she’d stopped his vehicle from going into a lake, and possibly drowning him. She’d seen him laying in bed almost all of the day prior, and she still couldn’t shake a feeling of unease when she looked at him. I don’t see why the mayor’s scared of him, He doesn’t seem real tough, hay I could take him on single hoofedly. she thought, not realizing she’d begun to stare at him.

Slowly, Gale looked up, glared at her and said as politely as possible, “Miss, if you could kindly stop staring at me? I’ve had one hell of a rough week and you're not helping.” His sudden statement caused Rainbow to backpedal a bit away from him and stare in fear. “Thank you, miss.” he said standing up to his, somewhat average, height of 5’10”. Okay mini-horses are definitely mini. he thought as he looked down at the now more demure pegasus. “Look, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Gale said, noticing that Twilight had ended her conversation and was about to step in. “but I just woke up from what I’ve been told has been a near three day stay in a hospital that I don’t recognize and is populated by what appear to be mini-horses.” He said trying to keep the fear and anger out of his voice, “So forgive me if I seem a little upset.”

Twilight, seemingly annoyed by his comment, decided right then that she’d have to educate him on Equestrian culture. “Mini-horses?” she asked, rather indignant, “We prefer the term ponies.” she said, walking over to the window. “As to where you are?” She continued, opening the blinds to reveal a nearly pastel colored landscape. “You’re in the land of Equestria, home to all ponies and ruled by the princesses Celestia and Luna.” She finished, frowning when she saw the expression on Gale’s face. “Is there something wrong?” she asked, before her brain started putting pieces back together.

Gale’s mind beat hers though, “The thing I remember, I was driving along the northern edge of a lake on the Western end of Missouri.” He stated, voice wavering as he continued, “It definitely wasn’t as pastel as wherever I am now, though.” He sat back down as he finished speaking, shrugging in defeat. After a few minutes he sighed and said, “Guess I’ll never win those concert tickets now . . . Dammit.”

"Fly By Night." Pt. 2

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“And the night started out so well,” Gale exclaimed from his position on the couch. “I was over forty miles out despite having just woken up.” He continued, ignoring the looks of confusion on the ponies’ faces. “Piece of shit pothole. Why hadn’t that road been fixed?” He grumbled to himself before lapsing back into silence

Her curiosity getting the better of her, Twilight took his lapse as a chance to ask a few questions. “So Gale,” She began, warily, “What is a car?”

“Yeah! What the hay are you talking about?” Rainbow joined in. “Is that what that thing is called?” She asked, completely ignoring Twilight’s look of disbelief and Gale’s annoyed expression.

After a long sigh Gale responded, “A car is what we humans use to go long distances since we don’t have either the speed or endurance necessary.” Well, most of us anyways. He added mentally.

A few minutes later, Twilight decided it was time to leave. “Come on Rainbow it’s time to go.” She began, walking toward the door.

“What do you mean ‘Time to go.’?” Rainbow asked, indignance written on her face. “It’s been like five minutes! How do we know he’s not dangerous?” She whispered the last line in an attempt to make sure Gale didn’t hear it.

“Dangerous?” Gale huffed. “About the only thing in danger here is my sleep schedule.” He commented dryly. “If you’re leaving can you turn the light off?” He said, walking back over to the bed. “I don’t know how it is for you ponies, but we humans can’t sleep either standing up or with lights on.” He finished, laying down carefully as to not bump his left arm, which happened to be in a cast.

A few hours later, while grocery shopping in the market, Twilight ran into the first of many, major, problems. “The mayor wants to see me?” She asked the stallion, he introduced himself as Windshear

“Yes. She was adamant that I get this to you right away.” he answered.

Unfolding the letter Twilight facehooved. What? At the stallion’s confusion she read aloud, although not too loud. “Ms. Sparkle I’ve requested a meeting to discuss the housing for your newest pet.” Looking directly at Windshear she continued. “If an agreement cannot be met, then the creature will be placed under the authority of the local guard regiment and you will be charged with negligence.”

After a minute of silence Twilight sighed. “This isn’t a joke is it?”

Windshear shook his head sheepishly, “Look, Ms. Sparkle I-I’m just doing what I’m told,” he stammered, ”The mayor needed somepony to deliver the letter and make sure you attend.” He said, doing his best not to look nervous.

Sighing Twilight asked. “So, I need to come with you then?”

“That would be correct.” He stated, a bit of his confidence returning.

“And you know nothing about this?” She ashed, eyebrow raised.

Windshear sighed and replied. “Again, ma’am, I’m just the messenger. I don’t know any more about this than you do.” he said as they approached the steps of town hall.

Walking in the door, Windshear nodded to the secretary and then turned to Twilight. “Okay, Ms Sparkle if you could kindly check in with Mrs. Flower Blossom, then she can inform the mayor and clear a time for your meeting,” He said, walking over the desk. “And I can go back to shopping for dinner tonight.” he said, patting Blossom on the back.

Ten minutes later found Twilight sitting in a chair opposite the mayor while in her office. “Ms. Sparkle you’ve done this town a lot of good by moving into the library and for that I’m grateful. That being said you’ve also done severe collateral damage to the town with some of your more violent experiments, and spells.” she said, twitching slightly at the last one.

I mess up one bucking spell . . . Twilight thought. “So what is this meeting really for, and why did you have to send somepony to retrieve me?” She asked, already thinking of several possible reasons, none of which were good.

The mayor sat there for a few minutes she sighed. “There was an incident a few days ago Ms. Sparkle. An incident reportedly because of an unknown spell effect, a pegasus, and a large metal object out on the edge of town,” She looked up at Twilight. “I was informed that you and another pony were seen carrying a large creature into the hospital not forty five minutes after said incident.” she said, her point still lost on Twilight. “I have it on good authority that you’ve paid for the medical bills to have this creature recuperated.”

How in Tartarus does she know that? Twilight wondered worriedly. Did one of the weather pegasi report Gale’s-

Twilight’s mind came to a screeching halt as Mayor Mare casually leaned over her desk and asked “So Twilight, tell me. Where are you planning on keeping your new pet?” She leaned back and continued. “Because there are several different laws against keeping large animals inside of town.” she sat, hooves crossed and grinning. I finally have a way of getting Sparkle sent back to Canterlot. She thought.

Twilight sat for about three minutes thinking, Oh ponyfeathers what’s Gale going to do when I tell him? It’s not as though- She suddenly leaned forward over the mayor’s desk. “Are you telling me that you’re attempting to call a sentient and fully sapient being a pet, Ms. Mayor?” she asked, standing up from her chair. “Because I’ll have you know that if you are, then by trying to force me into assuming responsibility for him, you would be in violation of several of Equestria’s race and species laws.” She continued with a smirk, “And I don’t think you’d want the princess to hear about that now would you?”

Horseapples! The mayor thought, turning to face the window, before an idea clicked in her head. But I’ve got here with this one. “So you’re saying an intelligent creature crashed outside of town?” She asked, filling her voice with fake curiosity.

Twilight slowly answered. “I guess so.”

She grinned like a mad mare. “That can be interpreted to mean many things Ms. Sparkle. One might even be convinced to believe that it was an attack.” she said, turning back to Twilight with a glint in her eye. “Yes an attack on our quiet little town by an invasive species which you’ve admitted to bringing here.”

Twilight, becoming very worried, took a step forward. “Now you listen here mayor. I haven’t said anything about how he got here.” she said, regretting her choice of words as soon as she’d said it.

“Now Twilight, that’s the second time you’ve mentioned a him, but I’ve never asked about its gender.” The mayor said, smirking now that she believed she’d won.

Oh buck me! Twilight though, watching a grin spread across the mayor’s face. The mayor spent the next few minutes causally explaining how impossible it was for her to get out of this situation before something clicked in Twilight’s mind.

Twilight walked out of town hall with her head hung relatively low. Although she was able to convince her that Gale wasn’t a mindless creature, the mayor had twisted that to mean that he was now her pet, and it would take weeks for her backup plan to take effect. I hope he isn’t too mad with me.

As she walked into the library she almost immediately ran into Spike. “Twilight, you got a letter from Canterlot earlier today and I’ve been wondering where you were.” The drake said, relief evident in his voice.

“Sorry, Spike. I’ve been very busy today taking care of a few things.” She replied, hoping he wouldn’t ask about them.

Spike, perhaps catching the hint, decided not to pry, instead asking. “So have you seen Applejack today? She came by earlier talking about some guards blocking her from getting to a field, or something like that.”

“No I haven’t actually, but I’ll see about finding her later. Right now I need to look at this-” Levitating the scroll from him, she walked up to her room. “- in private.” She continued as Spike started to follow her.

“Aw come one. You always let me read stuff between you and the princess.” He countered.

“I know Spike, but this is something she’s asked me to share with nopony.” Twilight finished, walking up the stairs toward her room.

“Twilight Sparkle,”-The unicorn in question read- ”at first I didn’t know what to think when you’d told me that your friend had accidentally brought a creature from another world into ours, but after reviewing the spell you sent me, along with some digging in the archives, I’ve come to a conclusion on the matter. This creature is definitely not from Equestria. That being said, I think what you’ve done is probably the best course of action.” Oh thank goodness she isn’t upset with me. Twilight thought before continuing. “I, of course, ask you to proceed with caution, but if you can, I would request you gain some information about our guest. It would be useful in making them more comfortable while we, yes I feel I should assist, find a way to send them back to their rightful home.”

Upon reading the letter from Celestia, Twilight went back downstairs and began packing some stuff into her saddlebags.

“Let’s see. Quills? Check. Ink bottle? Check. Several sheets of paper? Check,” Walking to the door she yelled back into the library. “I’ll be back in a little bit Spike, I’ve got some more stuff to take care of.”

“Okay, just be careful.” He responded, while reshelving books.

The rest of Gale’s day had been rather uneventful. Other than a few more conversations with Steady Hoof about his condition, Gale hadn’t had much to do. He was laying on his bed, humming an old tune, when Twilight came back around noon. “Welcome back,” he said, getting up. “I’d thought you were gonna have your friend with you again.” He continued, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice.

Twilight chose to ignore the obviously negative connotations his tone suggested and instead took a stack of paper, a few quills, and an ink bottle out of her saddle bags; which had been placed by the door when she walked in. “So Gale, do you mind if I . . . Um . . . ask you a few questions about your home?” She asked, the nervousness in her voice almost palpable.

Gale sighed. “That figures, there’s someone wanting to study me here too.” He rolled his eyes at her look and continued, “I’ve currently got nothing better to do, so sure. But on one condition.” He added, noting the look on her face.

“What would that be?” She asked worriedly. Hoping word hadn’t gotten back to him about the mayor yet, she didn’t want to tell him too soon lest he become depressed.

“For every question of yours I answer, you have to answer one of mine.” He stated, hoping that would discourage her from actually asking him anything too embarrassing. “I mean it seems only fair that I gain some knowledge of the wherever the hell I am.”

Twilight pondered his condition for a total of half a minute before agreeing. “Yeah, I guess that seems fair.” She said, nodding her consent before asking, “Shall I begin?”

After about three hours of constant questions, Gale was rather happy for Steady Hoof to come in and inform Twilight that visiting hours were over.

“Are they? Wow how time flies.” Walking to the door. ”I guess I’d better get going then.”

As soon as the door shut, Gale turned to Steady Hoof. “You cannot believe how happy I am to see you right now.” At the doctor’s look of confusion he added. “She kept asking questions about every. little. thing.”

“Ah, yes. Ms. Sparkle’s quite the curious one, but seeing that she’s the town’s librarian I guess she has a right to be.” Steady Hoof responded. “Oh right, I was coming in here to ask you about dinner.”

Gale snorted at his comment. “I hope you mean what I can eat and not as in a date.”

With a roll of his eyes Steady Hoof responded. “Of course I meant food. It came to mind a few minutes ago that we don’t exactly know what your species eats.”

After a minute, Gale replied. “Well, humans are omnivores by nature, but most, myself included, lean more to the carnivorous side.” At the doctor’s worried look Gale continued angrily. “Oh come on, just cause I eat meat doesn’t mean I want to take a bite out of everything that moves.”

Steady Hoof laughed for a minute before responding. “Oh, no that’s not what’s got me worried.” He said. “I’m more concerned that we might not have anything for you right now. We haven’t had any griffon patients recently, and we really only keep enough stocked up when one comes through.”

Griffons? Why the hell not I guess, and at least they aren’t afraid of me for eating meat. Gale thought as Steady Hoof paced the room.

“The question is, though.” The doctor asked. “What else can you eat?”

After a good ten minutes of discussion, Steady Hoof left to go have a salad made for Gale’s dinner, while the human in question prepared to go to bed. Salads aren’t that bad . . . I suppose, although if griffons are a thing, then maybe I can get some pork chops somewhere.

Around noon the next day found Gale laying down and humming an old tune when the door opened and Twilight peeked in. “Jeez, didn’t anyone ever tell you to knock?” Gale asked, voice full of mock disgust.

Twilight froze, both surprised and embarrassed, by his comment. “I um, I’m sorry Gale it’s just that I have some news, both good and bad, to give you.” She said

Gales sighed. “Well come on in, it's not like I’m doing anything,” He commented as he got up. “Okay whatcha got for me Ms. Sparkle?” He asked, taking a seat on the couch.

He is going to hate me for this. Twilight thought. “Okay good news first: I convinced Steady Hoof to let me use a high strength healing spell on you, if you agree of course. The spell should mend any broken bones and reduces all cuts to superficial ones,” She continued, knowing that he’d hate her for what came next. “The bad news is . . . “ she started, unsure how he would handle it. “That you’re going to have to move out of the hospital by next week.” She finished, glancing over to see Gale staring at the wall opposite them.

“Okay,” He stated, while looking off to the left. “Now what else is there?” He asked startling Twilight by turning back to her.

“Um, what do you mean?” She asked, afraid of where the conversation was going.

“If the bad news was that I need to be out of the hospital by next week then you’d have said it first.” He said, almost no emotion present in his voice. “I’m assuming the bad news is something that you believe I won't particularly like, and don’t want to tell me for fear I’d get mad, right?” He concluded, standing and heading back to the bed.

Oh horseapples, he’s right. She thought, standing up. “Gale the bad news is -” She was interrupted by Dr. Steady Hoof, who chose that moment to open the door and walk in.

“Oh Twilight, I didn’t know you’d be back so soon.” Steady Hoof said as he walked in. “I was just coming in to check on Gale.” He said turning toward the human.

“So . . . What’s up doc?” Gale asked, smirking at a joke that only he knew. “I didn’t expect to see you back yet.” he continued, taking a seat on the edge of the bed.

“Nothing that would interest you too terribly, Gale. Now, how’re you feeling today?” he asked, walking over to a desk and grabbing a clipboard in his hoof. “Any unnatural bouts of dizziness or fatigue?” he asked before picking up a quill in his mouth and writing something down.

“No, not really doc.” Gale said with a small smirk. “Just a bit hungry, but I can deal.” He continued “I’m more nervous about this ‘spell’ you’re having performed on me.”

The next few minutes consisted of Steady Hoof running Gale threw the spell and what it did before he agreed to it.

After checking all of Gale’s vital, Steady Hoof sighed. “Okay Ms. Sparkle I see your point from earlier, but it will take up to two hours before I have a room properly prepped for this.” He said, turning away and walking towards the door.

Two and a half hours later found Gale standing - broken bones, casts, and all- in the middle of a rune covered circle of chalk on the floor of a hospital room in a, currently unused, emergency room.

“Are you sure about this, Twilight?” He asked, his voice betraying his nervousness. “This seems a little dangerous,” he continued. “Not that I’m complaining of course, especially if it works, but I’d rather not end up with an extra limb or anything. I’d just-” He would have kept rambling if not for Twilight’s magic holding his mouth shut.

“Sorry Gale, but I need to concentrate for this to work.” She apologized, releasing his mouth from its restraints. She then began chanting in a tongue that Gale didn’t understand, to him it sounded a bit like if the Spanish and Germanic languages had a kid. A few minutes passed before Twilight’s horn started to glow. It emitted a soft light at first, but then it rapidly got brighter. Wisps of magic seemed to come out of the floor and surround Gale.

“Um, Twili-” He started, before he became completely enclosed in an orb of purple energy. The room was silent for all of three minutes before Gale screamed in agony. He could feel all of his broken bones slowly healing and putting themselves back in the right places.

The pain was almost unbearable as he felt his leg crack and his arm snap out of its sling, and back into place at his side. He could feel his heart rate spiking at random intervals and his vision blurred, as he momentarily went deaf.

Mercifully for Gale, it was over almost as soon as it began. He fell from the orb and hit the ground on his hands and knees with a soft thud. He slowly stood up, breathing heavily, glared at Twilight and panted, “Fuck, you.” before his legs gave out and he fell forward, out like a light.

"Strange Days."

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The last thing Gale remembered before passing out was an intense pain. That being said, it should be no surprise that his first thoughts upon waking up in yet another hospital bed were, Twilight, you bitch. You knew that was gonna happen. Of course, he never got a chance to verbalize those thoughts as a tan pony suddenly appeared in his face.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” He said before walking away from the bed. “I’ll let the staff know you’re ready for breakfast.” He said before turning to the door and making his way out of it.

“Who are you?” Gale asked, unsure what this pony was doing in his room. “Are you one of the nurses?” He asked.

“Oh, um, yes definitely. I’m definitely a nurse.” The pony said before slamming the door shut.

Okay what the . . . ya know what? Nevermind. Gale wondered, sitting up and moving to the edge of the bed. As he stood up it suddenly occurred to him that the bandages that covered him for the past few days were nowhere to be seen. Twilight, you are now slightly less of a bitch. He thought, taking off his ruined shirt as he began stretching his arms, popping his joints, and just generally moving about as normal.

Twenty minutes later, a bright flash erupted from the corner of Gale's room. Guessing what this meant, he quickly reached for his shirt just as the light faded to reveal Twilight. “Does it ever occur to you to, ya know, knock?” He asked, ever thankful that his clothes had managed to survive the past few days relatively in tact. “Because I don’t know about you ponies, but back home it’s considered rude to just walk in on someone when they’re getting dressed.” He said to a blushing Twilight as he threw his shirt back on.

“Oh, sorry,” Twilight said, her blush dying down. “It’s just that we don’t normally wear anything and I guess I didn’t think you’d mind?” She semi-asked, shrugging off her saddlebags while walking over to the window. “Its such a beautiful day out don’t you think?” Twilight asked, opening the blinds and turning back to Gale. “It’s the perfect day to get out and just, I don’t know, do things.” She finished, looking at Gale expectantly.

Is . . . Is she trying to be subtle? Gale wondered as he looked at the pony in front of him. She can’t be . . . There’s no way. “I guess it is, too bad I don’t have a bike or anything.” He stated nostalgically.

“Well I don’t really know what a bike is, but we could always go for a trot around town.” She said, going over to the couch and sitting down. “That is of course, if you’re okay to walk.” She finished, looking at Gale questioningly.

Smooth, Ms. Sparkle, smooth. Gale thought, chuckling at Twilight’s failed attempts to be subtle. “So . . . I’m cleared to go somewhere else I presume?” He asked. “I mean I’m definitely able to walk now, and I don’t think you want to pay room and board for me at a hospital, do you?” He continued. “So where am I go-” He was cut off as the door opened and Steady Hoof walked in, carrying a tray of french toast.

“Okay Gale, I know we don’t ha-” He started, walking into the room. “Oh darnit! Am I interrupting something?” He sheepishly said after noticing Twilight. “Oh Ms. Sparkle are you here to check Gale out?” Steady hoof asked, setting the tray on one of the side tables. “Not to sound rude, but I do hope so. You’re definitely cleared as far as I’m concerned.” He said, directing the last half at Gale.

“Thanks for ruining it doc.” Twilight muttered, turning back Steady Hoof to Gale. “That’s what I came by for actually. You see now that you’re healed you’re going to have to live somewhere, and not to be rude, but you don’t own a house.” Trotting over to the couch, she continued. “Anyways, I’ve managed to clear a room for you, but you’re probably not gonna like where it is.”

Gale chuckled. “Oh no problem, and I kinda figured that you’d found somewhere for me to stay.” He said, chuckling even more at her confused look. “Quite frankly, you fail at being subtle. It was obvious the second you went over to the window.” He said taking a step forward and patting her head. “Not that it isn’t appreciated though.”

“Yeah, well remember that, then because you’re moving in with me in the town library,” She said, her irritation clear in her voice. “As my pet . . .” She continued, turning back to see Gale smile quickly turn into a scowl. “Before you get mad at me,” She started, taking a step back in concern. “I want you to know that it was the mayor’s idea. She’s been mad at me ever since I moved into town and she probably thinks that this is a way to get back at me, not to mention she’s a bit of a specist.” Twilight added, hoping to redirect, if not calm, Gale’s anger.

Fucking hell . . . Gale thought as he walked over to the door. “Well,” He sighed. “Let’s go, then. It seems I’ve got my work cut out for me,” Then he stopped, turned around and said. “Oh, Steady Hoof, thank you for doing what you could for me. It’s really appreciated.”

Twilight, floating her saddlebags off the ground and over to her, asked, “Can you, uh, help me get these on? They’re kind of heavy.”

“Seriously?” Gale asked, incredulously. “Okay fine.” He huffed, before helping to put her saddle bags on.

“Thanks by the way. They’re a pain to put on, even with magic.” Twilight commented, before walking toward the door.

Before she could open the door, Steady Hoof spoke up. “Actually Gale, Twilight. It would probably be a better idea for me to get your paperwork and bring it back here.” Steady Hoof began, stepping over to Gale and patting his back. “The staff might freak out if you just walked down to the lobby,” He continued. “This way I can let them know that you’re out and about as well as leaving.” He finished, opening the door, and stepping through it. “I’ll be right back.” He said stepping out the door.

“By the way,“ Gale started as Steady Hoof left the room. “I thought you said that spell of your was supposed to be almost painless.”

Looking at him curiously, Twilight replied. “What do you mean almost painless? It’s normally completely pain free.”

“Yeah, well it hurt like a bitch when you did that last night.”

Stumped, Twilight mused aloud. “I wonder if it’s because you’re not a native Equestrian . . . “

They left about an hour later and made it down to the second floor before running into a pair of guards. “Hold it right there!” One of the guards yelled, holding a spear in their path. “Don’t worry miss, you’re free to go, but this one’s got to go back to his room ‘till the mayor figures out where to put him.”

Well screw you too, buddy. Gale thought. With a roll of his eyes, he decided it better to stand back and let Twilight handle the situation.

For the next few minutes he stood quietly while Twilight tried to convince the pair -who seemed either extremely intolerant or just plain ignorant- that Gale was able to leave the premises. He would have continued to stay quiet, too, until the other guard piped up. "Why are you even bothering anyways, Sparkle? It‘s not like it'll care where it lives."

That set him off.

“Where it lives, huh?” Gale calmly asked, surprising both the guards and Twilight. “Where it lives, huh?” He continued. “Does it ever occur to you that it is intelligent and can understand what you’re saying?”

Taking a step forward he continued, starting to lose his cool. “You two should really be glad we’re not back home, because if we were you’d have just lost your job.”

Before Twilight could stop him the first guard was standing right in front of Gale. “And just who in Tartarus do you think you are, huh? Some hairless ape who wrecked a local farm!” He practically spat the words as he stood there, attempting to bully Gale with his stature.

Hairless ape? Oh, you did not just say that. “Twilight?” He calmly asked. “Do you mind if I take out some of my current anger on this prick?” He growled, cracking his knuckles and taking a step forward.

Luckily, for all parties involved, Twilight stepped between them. “Would everypony please calm down?”

“Everypony? Do I look like a damn pony to you?” Gale stammered, incredulously.

“Gale, shut up!” Twilight snapped before turning back to the guards. “I’ll have you two know that I’ve got release papers from both the mayor’s office and the hospital staff. So as far as you’re concerned he’s able to leave, got that?” Taking step forward, she leaned closer and whispered something so Gale didn’t hear it.

Both guards stood silent, dumbfounded at what had just occurred.

She walked past the two guards, who made no move to stop her. When she was at the door, she turned back when she found Gale hadn’t followed her. “Aren’t you coming?” She asked, sweetly.

“I’m sorry about that, Twilight. I really am,” Gale started as they walked out the hospital doors, “But the way that guard was talking, it... it just rubbed me the wrong way, I guess.” He continued, walking out of the hospital. “Why’d they listen to you any- oof” Gales sentence was cut off by a pink pony who came running out of nowhere.

“Hi, Twilight! Who’s your new friend?” She asked, barely pausing enough to realize she’d bowled him over. “Oooh, is this that stallion you and Rainbow took to the hospital a few days ago? It’s good to see that him out and about.”

“Not, a stallion.” Gale grunted, getting back on his feet.

After pausing for half a second, she rounded on Gale and carried on, “Hi! You must be Twilight’s new friend. I mean you’d have to be because I know everypony in Ponyville, but I don’t know you!” She suddenly stopped and gasped. “Do you like parties? ‘Cause I’m gonna throw you the best ‘Welcome to Equestria slash Ponyville party and it’ll be superific.” Pinkie went on to describe just how superific it would be while Gale tried, and subsequently failed, to walk away.

“Look miss, thanks for the offer but-” Gale began, taking a step toward Twilight.

“Oh, my name’s Pinkie Pie!” She responded cheerfully.

Well okay then . . . Gale thought, taking another step away from Pinkie.

Twilight trotted on this whole time, not realizing that Pinkie had cornered Gale. Looking back she saw him standing stock still and grimacing at the pony who was hopping around him at the time.

Walking over to the two, she asked. “Hey, Pinkie?”

“Yeah, Twilight?” The, now prancing in place, pink pony responded.

“Could you give Gale a little space? He’s been having a hard time adjusting to all this.” Twilight continued.

“But Twilight, I just want to let him know about his party!” The bouncing pony responded.

“That’s all well and good Ms. Pie, but I’d rather not have a party thrown for me.” Gale interjected, hoping she’d understand why.

“Okie dokie then.” And just like that, she took off, galloping toward the other end of town.

Turning to Twilight, Gale asked. “Is this gonna keep happening? Because if it is, then we’re gonna have a problem.” He said flatly, crossing his arms and glancing back toward the, now leaving, pony in question.

Twilight sighed. ”This should be the only time Pinkie tries to throw you a party, yes. But she may do something else just as equally random.”

“I’d rather her not throw me a party, especially if what you said about the mayor is true. But if she’s gonna, then I hope she keeps it small . . . “ Gale finished.

“Anyways,” Twilight continued, ignoring the stares from the townsponies. “This is Ponyville’s farmer’s market. We have all the local vendors and a few from farther out.” She would have continued, if not for Gale’s snickering.

Good lord did they really name the place Ponyville? He thought, trying his best to control his laughter. “I’m sorry, Twilight. It’s just that, well, that’s one of the most ridiculous names I’ve ever heard, and this is coming from someone who’s driven through Humansville, Missouri. Granted, it was the founder’s last name, but my point still stands.” He started, laughing a little more before returning to his normal quiet slouch. Dammit now they’re staring at me, aren’t they? He thought while looking around the town’s semi-busy street.

“Okay everypony nothing to see here, move along.” Twilight hollered, dispersing the growing crowd of confused ponies before turning back to Gale. “I’m so sorry about that. I mean, I don’t know what those ponies are thinking.”

“‘That’ll be the last time it happens,‘ You said,” Gale started, kicking a rock with his foot. “‘No-pony else should do anything,’ You said.” He continued, looking at the ground. “I guess that’s a bust then isn’t it?” He angrily muttered while staring at the ground

Another several minutes, and quite a few uncomfortable stares later, they reached the front steps of the Golden Oaks Library.

Gale, perhaps sensing something was amiss, asked Twilight if the lights were normally off.

“No. They normally aren’t.” She said, pausing before she would’ve opened the door. “What in Tartarus, Pinkie!” she groaned, turning back to Gale.

“It seems your friend doesn’t know how to take a hint, does she?” He annoyedly asked, moving away from the door. Ugh she’s one of those types isn’t she? He thought, looking back over to Twilight.

“She’s normally pretty good about that kind of thing, but I guess she really wants to throw you a party.” Twilight said, moving near Gale to stand by the sign.

Gale slowly stood up from against the sign, looked at the Library and asked, “How bad are her ‘parties’?” Moving over next to twilight, he continued, “It’s not like she’s gotten the whole town in there, has she?”

At Twilight’s look of dread, he grew worried.

After five minutes or so of standing and wondering what to do, Gale commented. “I suppose you’re gonna have me go in there anyways?”

“I’ll be honest if you were just another new pony, then yes I would. Of course it’s pretty obvious that you’re not ‘just another pony’.” She said, noting Gale’s sullen features.

“Do you know anywhere else I can stay for the night? Because I’d rather not have to deal with an entire party full of peo- ponies, who may or may not think I’m just another animal.”

“Let me think . . . “ Twilight said, before tapping her hoof to the ground and muttering. “No no can’t take you there because she’d freak out. I can’t talk to her right now, she’s mad at me. I definitely can’t take you Rainbow’s place. “ She continued, “I can only think of one other place, but chances are that it might not work.“

Fifteen minutes later found the two walking out of town toward a rather large farmhouse. “And you’re sure this is a good idea, Twilight?’ Gale asked, nervously following the mare in question.

“Honestly? No. I’m not,” Twilight started as they walked up the long path to the house. ”But Applejack’s been a friend of mine for awhile now and I’m sure I can convince her to loan us a room for the night.” She said.

“I hope you meant let us each have a room,” Gale dryly commented as they reached the porch. “‘Cause no offense, but I’m not about to sleep in the same room, let alone bed as a pony.”

However, before she could reply the front door opened and a yellow coated filly with a red mane walked out.

“Well howdy Twilight what are ya-,” She froze mid step when she saw Gale standing behind the purple mare.

That has got to be the most adorable little thing I have ever seen. Gale thought as he stood, behind Twilight, and listened as she tried her best to convince the little pony that he wasn’t a threat.

“Heh-hmm,” he coughed, causing Twilight to look at him and startling the little one, her name apparently being Apple Bloom. “If I may Twilight?” He said with a glance at his unicorn companion. Upon her hesitant nod he crouched down and slowly began. “Hey, little one? Are you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you,” He started, voice almost a whisper. “I don’t wanna get anyone mad at me, or scared, “ He continued,. “I was just wondering if your family has any room in one of the barns, so that I have somewhere to sleep for now.”

Slowly the little one lifted her head. “Twilight, is- is he telling the truth? He ain’t gonna hurt nopony, is he?” She asked apprehensively.

“No Apple Bloom, he won’t hurt anypony. It’s a long story but he’s telling the truth, and he’s not staying at the Library because right now Pinkie’s filled it with everypony in town and we-” She motioned between herself and Gale. “-don’t think it’s too good of an idea for them all to meet him just yet.” She finished, taking a small step forward. “Can you go get Applejack?”

It took a minute before she slowly replied. “Yes, Twilight I’ll go get her.”

Walking back into the house Apple Bloom, thought about what Twilight had said. We don’t think it’s too good of an idea for them all to meet him just yet. Her mind replayed the words for the third time as she walked into the main sitting room.

“Hey Big Mac, have you seen Applejack anywhere? Twilight wants to talk to her about something to do with a new friend of hers.” She asked her brother, a rather large earth pony stallion with a red coat and blonde mane.

He replied. “Eeyup. She’s up in ‘er room, said somethin’ about goin’ into town for a party later on.” He got up and walked out of the room before she could ask him what he meant by party.

I guess I’d better go get Applejack then. She really needs to see this. She thought quickly trotting up the stairs.

She got to her sister’s room a second after she’d opened the door. “Hey Applejack, Twilight’s here to see you,” She began, lightly panting from her quick run upstairs. “She’s got a weird friend with her and he wants to know about borrowin’ a barn for a night or two. Said somethin’ ‘bout not wanting to go into town for a few days.”

Huh. It ain’t normal for Twi’ to bring anypony out here, ‘specially at this time in the afternoon. Applejack mused.

“Okay Sugarcube, tell ‘em I’ll be down in a minute.” She said, walking across the hall to the bathroom. “I just gotta finish gettin’ ready for Pinkie’s party. I know I’m runnin’ late, but she sprung it on me.” She said to her sisters look of disbelief.

Apple Bloom took the hint and went back down stairs. I hope Applejack ain’t gonna be mad that I left out a detail or two. She thought to herself, clearing the landing and walking to the front door. “She said she’ll be down in a minute Twilight,” she started, opening the door and stepping back onto the porch.

“Thank you very much Apple Bloom” Twilight stated. “I guess my friend here should introduce himself.” She said, nudging Gale in the ribs.

“Ow. That hurts ya know.” Gale chuckled. “Anyways. My name’s Gale and let’s just say how I got here is a long story, but I’ve been resting up in the hospital for a few days now,” He started.

The filly stood enraptured as he told his small tale.

“Earlier today Twilight came by to check me out and take me back to the Library where I’m supposed to stay,” He stopped talking as he heard the door opening.

I wonder what’s got ‘Bloom so worked up. Applejack thought to herself as she descended the stairs of her family’s country home. Maybe it’s this friend of Twi’s, she continued mentally. Maybe he’s a bit odder than most and she’s a little nervous. Yeah that’s it. Her mental debate stopped dead as she opened the door and beheld a rather large hairless creature, akin to a minotaur, who was quietly talking to her, less scared looking, little sister. All the while Twilight stood behind him looking between the two.

What in tarnation . . . Deciding it best to just roll with it for now she greeted them. “Howdy Twi’, little ‘Bloom here was tellin’ me that you and yer buddy need to borrow a barn for awhile.” She said with a chuckle. “I hope you meant for some science experiment because she’s a little too young for that.” She said in what Gale quickly decided was an almost stereotypical southern drawl.

“See?” He told a slightly confused Twilight. “I told you that you were wording it wrong!” He said before turning his attention back to the orange mare, who looked more confused than her little sister had been. “I’m sorry, miss. Where are my manners? I’m Twilight’s friend, Gale.” He said offering a hand before he could stop himself.

Before he could pull his hand back, Applejack took it in her hoof and shook vigorously up and down. “It’s a pleasure to meet ya Gale.” She said with a grin, before continuing. “Now what’s this I hear about you wantin’ to borrow one of my family’s barns?”

“Eh, heh, heh, well you see, Twilight’s got this friend of her’s-” He started.

“Let me guess, Pinkie Pie?” Applejack interjected.

“Yes.” Twilight and Gale answered simultaneously.

“Anyways, Pinkie’s got it into her head that I have to have some sort of massive introduction party.” He continued.

“Let me guess, you don’t rightly want to go to it now. Do you?” Applejack asked.

“Yeah, but not for the reason you’re probably thinking.” Twilight added. “It’s a bit of a complicated issue AJ.”

“Well if’n y’all need to, the North barn’s probably clean enough for you. If not, well I reckon I can get you something and you can sleep out under a tree if you’d want.”

“Thanks Applejack, this means a lot to me.” Gale commented.

About ten minutes later, while walking back from barn, Applejack stopped.

“Ya know I just remembered somthin’.” She said, turning to Twilight. “Do you know why the mayor’s called for about a dozen guards out in the south fields? ‘Cause they won’t let me or Big Mac through and we need to get to our harvestin’ barrels.”

Gale looked at Twilight only to find her looking at him before they both turned to Applejack.

“Applejack, can we step inside your house for a minute? I think I might know what they’re doing there.”

"For What It's Worth."

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Applejack took a step back, motioning for them to enter. “Well, come on in I s’pose.” She said, as they cleared the porch. “It’s probably a good thing that Granny’s already in bed an’ ‘Bloom’s just left for Pinkie’s party.” She said over her shoulder, noting Gale’s flinch at the mention of the party mare.

“That woman doesn’t know how to take a hint.” He muttered as Twilight took Applejack aside.

Quietly she whispered, “He’s had a very rough week and Pinkie’s decided that throwing him a party would help, AJ.” She began, looking over her shoulder to see Gale resting. “So we both thought it better for him not to attend and instead get acclimated to town in a bit more of a relaxed fashion,” She continued, knowing full well that Gale was listening in. “And Pinkie bowling him over in the middle of town probably didn’t help his impression of her.” She would have continued if not for Gale getting up and walking over.

“There’s also the fact that I know what those guards are probably doing,” He said as he walked up. “And if it’s what I think it is then things are looking up for me.” He said turning to Twilight. “You said my car crashed into a field on the edge of town right?” And turning to Applejack he continued. “And a group of guards won’t let you onto one of your fields right?” He finished.

Surprisingly, Applejack beat Twilight to the punch. “So you’re sayin’ that your ‘car’, whatever the hay that is, is what they’re guarding out in my family’s field?” The farm mare asked, stepping over to a table and picking up her hat.

“Well . . . I think so, yeah,” Gale answered. “It makes sense, and I don’t know the area well enough to think of anything else.” He finished as she put the hat on and walked to the door.

Before Applejack could leave, Twilight walked between the two and said, “So you’re just going to walk up to a team of guards and tell them that they should leave so that you can get to your shed?” She asked her friend, who was opening the door. “Because that’s a good way to get arrested,” She continued, walking over to her saddlebags. “At least, if I’m not with you it is.” She said putting them on and stepping toward the door. “Gale, are you coming?” She asked, looking back at him as he stood in the hallway.

“So, Gale,“ Applejack began as they walked out the door. “What exactly is a ‘car’?” She asked, drawing a chuckle from the man beside her.

“Heh, well, basically it’s what we humans use for transportation.” He replied. “Think of it as a wagon that doesn’t need a pony to pull it,” He continued upon seeing her flat stare. “And boy can they move.” He sighed.

“How far apart are your cities then?” Twilight asked, increasing pace to match his stride.

“The major cities are several hundred miles apart on average, while most towns are only about twenty or thirty,” Gale answered. “What about here?” He asked.

“Well I know for sure that Fillydelphia’s ‘bout a hundred or so miles.“ Applejack said, moving closer to them.

“And Canterlot’s a full day by train, which can do about sixtymiles an hour or so, so yeah it’s a ways off, but it’s also up the side of a mountain.” Twilight added as they walked on.

Over the course of their walk, the topic shifted from city distances to what the various ones are like. “Name a city that you’d never want to raise a ‘foal’ in?” Gale rhetorically asked. “Chicago. I would never raise a kid in that hell-hole of a city,” He continued. “Especially since I lived there.”

Applejack, picking up on his tone, inquired. “It ain’t that bad, is it, sugarcube?”

Chuckling at her question Gale responded. “There was a joke going around for awhile when I was growing up. It went something along the lines of: Chicago, come for the food and stay ‘cause you got murdered.” He picked Applejack’s hat off of her head. “And wearing one of these would get you killed all the more quickly.”

“Sounds like Detrot.” Twilight quipped.

“Hold on, did you just say Detrot?” Gale turned to face her incredulously.

“Yeah, it’s one of the major manufacturing cities on the northern coast.” she responded.

“Okay. Fillydelphia I can see, it’s a nice play on words, but Detrot? There is no way that’s only a coincidence.”

“What’d you mean, Sugarcube?” Applejack asked. “What’s a coincidence?”

“You have a city named Fillydelphia and there’s a Philadelphia back home, although they’re probably spelled differently. Detrot on the other hand, I’m pretty sure is only one letter shy of Detroit.” He continued.

“That, is definitely strange, Gale.” Twilight commented, as they rounded another corner and came upon about a dozen royal guard surrounding both the wreckage and a chariot.

“Applejack when you said guards I assumed you meant the local regiment,” She said slowing her pace. “What are nearly two dozen royal day guards doing out here?”

Before Applejack could answer Princess Celestia stepped into view. “A very good question Twilight,” She started, walking over toward the trio.

Twilight quickly dropped into a bow and pulling Gale with her after a few seconds. Applejack followed suit, even removing her hat in reverence. “Princess Celestia! I didn't expect you’d be here,” Twilight stammered, slowly rising.

“It’s okay, Twilight,” She said, taking another step forward. “Quite frankly I didn’t expect to be here, but a scroll was delivered to me this morning stating that there had been an incident outside of town that would require royal intervention,” She continued. “And I suppose you’re wondering who I am?” She asked Gale.

Standing up from his forced bow Gale replied. “You’re Princess Celestia of Equestria,”he said with a snicker,”You, along with your sister, Princess Luna rule over the nation and protect it’s peoples- I mean, ponies.” Standing back at his full height he continued. “No offense meant toward you, your highness. I just find the country’s name a little, funny.” He added, noting her stare.

While she listened to him, Twilight realized something. “Not to interrupt, Princess, but may I ask who sent you that scroll?” She asked with a glance back at Gale. “Because if it’s who I believe it to be you may want to come into town.”

Her comment caused the princess to stop and think for a few minutes before answering. “I believe it was a mare named Ivory Scroll.” She said.

Twilight’s eyes narrowed as soon as she heard the name. “The mayor, then?” She asked, the venom in her voice starling everyone save for Gale.

“Looks like your friend doesn’t know when to keep her nose out of other people’s business.” He dryly commented, catching Celestia’s interest.

“Has Ms. Scroll been causing problems as of late?” She asked, surprising Gale with genuine concern.

“She’s better known in town as Mayor Mare,” Twilight started. “And I’ll admit she runs the town smoothly enough, but she’s always got some hidden scheme she’s working on.”

After Twilight had said her piece, Gale decided to chime in, saying, "Oh, no. I wouldn't say she's been trouble, not really." He waved his hand in dismissal, "You know, unless you count declaring me as Twilight's pet and then sending guards to keep me restricted to the hospital until she decided otherwise." He said, with about as much enthusiasm as a rock. "She's just the best."

Gale’s comment had left Celestia speechless. She’d known that some of her ponies were rather specist at times, but this was crossing the line. Twice even.

Applejack took the opportunity to break the tension with a question she’d had since they walked up. “If I may, Princess?” She began, finally putting her hat back on. “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but can you have your guards let me and my brother back into our shed? We kinda need to get started on harvestin’.” She said in as polite a voice as physically possible.

Celestia cracked a small grin. ”Of course, dear,” She said before turning back to her guards and saying. “Sgt. Lemon Squeeze,” She called out.

A minute later and a crisp white coated stallion walked up. “Yes, Princess?” He said, saluting. ”What is your command?”

Celestia turned to the soldier, "Sergeant, I do believe this is a few too many guards for this particular assignment." She said, walking over to the field's gates, "You may dismiss most of them, but keep at least six guarding the wreckage at all times." She then motioned over to Applejack and continued, "One more thing, the Apple family should be allowed access to their shed as they do need it."

Applejack took her hat off again and said. “Thank you kindly, Princess, now that we can get to harvestin’ we should be able to prepare for Nightmare Night next year.” She blushed slightly, “I don’t want a repeat of the fair from a few years back.”

After a few more minutes of discussion between Celestia and herself, Twilight walked back to Gale. “Well there’s good news and bad news. Which first?”

Sighing he said. “Might as well get the bad first, it’ll make the good seem better.”

That’s an, interesting view on things. Twilight thought before telling him. “After speaking with the Princess, it was decided that you’re going to live at the library for month or so,” Grinning, she continued “She said it was a good window for her and her sister to enact a few laws, and begin enforcing them.” Twilight finished.

A politician who actually gives a damn about their subordinates? Gale thought, fighting to keep the grin off his face. “Well, that’s great, but what about the mayor?” He said.

Celestia chuckled as she walked over. “I think it’s time for Ponyville’s next election,” She said, horn lighting up. “But for now? There’s a room in a library with your name on it.”

As soon as she finished her sentence the three -Applejack had left beforehand- all found themselves in Twilight’s second floor room in the Library.

As soon as the flash faded, Gale nearly collapsed. “Woah, boy. That’s not good on the stomach-,” He said grabbing onto a desk to steady himself. “-Or the head either, I guess.” He said slowly sitting down, back against a wall.

“Gale!” Twilight ran over to him. “Are you okay?” She hurriedly asked.

Slowly standing back up Gale replied. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just, do me a favor and warn me next time would you?” Grabbing his stomach, he continued. “That was murder on my intestines.”

Celestia walked over. “I’m truly sorry, Gale. Had I known that would happen I wouldn’t have done it,” She said, going over to the door. “How about we go into the sitting room?”

Twilight, just remembering Pinkie’s party, jumped up. “That might not be a good idea, Princess.” She said, walking to her. “Gale and I believe that Pinkie wanted to throw him a party, and she may still be on the main floor waiting,” Putting her hoof on the door she continued, “I think I should go down stairs and see about breaking it up real quick.”

“That sounds like a plan, my faithful student.” Celestia started, walking to the bed as Twilight shut the door. She sat for a few minute before addressing Gale. “I don’t mean to rude, but how are you coping with this?” She asked him.

“As much as I’d like to give you an answer, I’m pretty sure I’m still in shock. I know I should be freaking out, but I just haven’t yet.” He answered, getting up and pacing.

Celestia’s horn lit up for a moment before she chuckled and said. “Twilight’s always on point with these things, it would seem.”

Gale looked at her quizzically. “On point about what exactly?” He asked, walking toward her.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I mean that she’d already cast things like a translation spell. It seems that they weren’t necessary, but that can’t be right.” Celestia said.

“It is rather odd that we should speak similar languages, but I’ve just been rolling with it.” Gale replied. “This week’s been so weird already, what’s another thing or two thrown in the mix?”

“Well, for what it’s worth,” Celestia began as Twilight walked back in. “this should be the weirdest things get for awhile.”

Twilight stepped out of her room, closing the door behind her. Here’s hoping Pinkie didn’t invite the whole town. She thought walking down the stairs. Might as well tell her I’m here.

Before Twilight could say anything, the lights flashed on and Pinkie was right in her face.

“Heya Twilight! How’d you get inside without me noticing? And what took you so long? Oh, and where’s your friend? I wanted him to be here so that town could meet him!” Pinkie said, with barely any room for spaces.

“Pinkie there was a reason I’d agreed that he didn’t need a party,” Twilight said, much to her friend’s disappointment. “And I really hate to say this, but you need to clear the library out.” She said, noting the crowd of ponies circling them.

“Why?” Pinkie asked.

Twilight groaned. “Pinkie, now’s not the time.”

“Why doesn’t he want a party?” Pinkie continued, looking more and more crestfallen.

Twilight, seeing where this might lead, took Pinkie into the kitchen. “Pinkie, has it occurred to you that nopony really knows anything about Gale?” She whispered, walking closing the door behind her.

“Well of course,” Pinkie said, sniffing. “that’s why I wanted to throw him a party.”

Luna dammit, mayor! Twilight mentally swore. “Pinkie, the reason he doesn’t want a party is because the mayor’s labeled him as my pet.” Twilight said flatly.

“What?” Was all the party mare had as a response.

“Mayor Mare, she doesn’t like me that much and I don't know how she found out about him, but when she did she must’ve decided to get some payback against me.” Twilight continued.

“Well that explains a lot actually,” Pinkie said, returning to her normally chipper demeanor. ”He probably thinks that if the mayor’s labeled him a pet then everyone else will, doesn’t he?” She asked.

“Probably.” Twilight confirmed.

“I guess I can tell everyone to go then,” Pinkie said sadly. “but he owes me a party!”

“I’ll tell him.” Twilight said, walking back into the main room, headed for the stairs.

“By the way, Twilight,” Pinkie started. “tell him I said I’m sorry.” She said.

That, was unexpected. Twilight thought, clearing the main room and starting on the stairs. Maybe she and Gale will get along though?

“Sorry everypony, but the party’s been called off for now,” Pinkie called out as Twilight ascended the stairs. ”There’ll be one again in a few weeks, I promise!” She continued.

I wonder how Celestia and Gale are doing. Twilight mused as she walked to her room. I hope they’re getting along.

Twilight walked into her room to hear Celestia say..”This should be the weirdest things get for awhile.”

Celestia stood as Twilight walked in. “I presume everything’s all clear, my student?”

Closing the door, Twilight responded. “Yeah. Pinkie said she’ll have everything clear, I’m gonna give her a few minutes though.”

“That’s good news,” Celestia yawned, getting up from the bed. “unfortunately I need to get back to Canterlot.” She continued, “I’ll inform my sister to the state of affairs and then we can go about fixing this glaring oversight.”

They sat for about half an hour after Celestia left before Twilight convinced Gale to go downstairs. “Okay I’ll go, but you’re going first.” He said, hopping off the bed.

“Of course Gale,” Twilight replied, opening and stepping out the door, “I doubt you’d know the way through my house anyways.“ She smirked at his confusion.

“Good point.” He conceded, pointing to the ceiling.

Stepping out of Twilight’s room, Gale noticed three things, one: the door across the hall was open, two: in that room was a basket big enough for a large dog and three: there was a bird cage with the door open in the middle of the hall.

“You have a dog?” He asked, motioning to the basket in the other room.

“Oh, no,”- Twilight replied, looking back. -”That’s just Spike’s bed.”

“So, a dog?” He continued.

“No, Spike’s my assitant, more like a brother actually, and that’s where he sleeps.” Twilight clarified, silently hoping Spike didn’t hear what he’d just said.

“Okay then.” Gale said, still confused as to what she’d just said.

Twilight stopped as she reached the stairwell and turned to him.

“There’s a good chance that she’s still waiting down there.” She said, worriedly gauging Gale’s face for a reaction.

“At this point? Screw it.” He said, walking to the stairs. “I see you don’t have a railing.” He continued, ignoring her worried looks.

Much to Twilight’s surprise and Gale’s relief, there had not been a group of ponies hidden and waiting for them.

“So this is where you live?” Gale asked, slowly walking around the library proper. “Pretty nice if you ask me.” He concluded.

“Yeah, well, being a princess’ personal student comes with a few perks, I guess,” Twilight said, idly walking toward the kitchen. ”Do, uh... Do you want something to drink?”

Gale didn’t respond however, his mind stuck on what she’d said. 'Yeah, well, being a princess’ personal student comes with a few perks, I guess.' He froze upon the realization that he was to be staying with someone who was the personal student to one of the most powerful women in the entire country.

“Gale, are you okay?” Twilight asked, poking him in the arm.

Startled, he jumped back from her touch. “Oh jeez, don’t do that!” He semi-shouted.

Before Twilight could say anything else a voice called out. “Twilight? Who are you talking to?”

The voice, although foreign to Gale, was instantly recognized by Twilight. “Spike?” She asked. “Would you come out here please? We have some things to discuss.”

From the other room a muffled thud rang out. “Can it wait for a minute? I’m trying to finish organizing the books in the backlog.” Spike hollered.

Twilight groaned. “Spike you can do that tomorrow. Right now you need to come out here.”

Spike, upon hearing her comment, stopped what he was doing and scampered toward the door. “What is it Twili-” He started, rounding the corner and seeing Gale for the first time. “-ght… Woah.” He said taking a small step back in fear. “Um, Twilight did you mess up a spell again?”

What the hell? Is... is that a dragon? Gale’s mind reeled at the sight of Spike. “A dragon?” He asked incredulously, turning to Twilight. “Your assistant’s a dragon?” Voice full of awe.

“Yes, he is.” Twilight responded. “He’s also supposed to be getting ready for bed right now,” She continued, glaring at Spike. “but I suppose given the circumstances that I‘ll let it slide.” She finished, eyes softening.

“By the way, what did he mean by ‘again’?” Gale asked, confused.

“Don’t ask.” Twilight responded scowling.

Spike, attempting to change the subject, asked. “So who’s this then?”

Twilight, calming down, replied. “I guess you could say he’s a friend of mine and Rainbow Dash’s.”

Gale waited for Twilight to finish before saying, with a grin, "Basically I’m your new roommate.”

Spike’s only response to this statement was a single, solitary. “Oh.”

Gale took a step back at Spikes comment, though it was more from the look Twilight was giving the dragon.

“Spike don’t start this again. I’m not replacing you or anything.” She said.

“So what’s he doing here?” The drake commented.

Oh great. I’ve got all the luck don’t I? Gale wondered as the scene unfolded in front of him.

“Come on, Spike it’s not like it’s his fault that he’s stuck here, and yes I do mean stuck here. As in he can’t go home.” Twilight said, getting increasingly worried over Spike’s attitude.

Gale’s eyes widened upon hearing that since Twilight hadn’t told him about it earlier. Forcing his mental anguish aside, he’d caught the tail end of her conversation and decided to step in.

“I don’t care about that.” Angrily crossing his arms, Spike continued. “There is absolutely no way that I’m sharing a room with him.” he retorted.

“Twilight, if I may?” Gale asked, walking over to them and putting a hand on her back.

“Sure,” She replied. “I’m gonna go get some spare pillows from the closet.”

Once Twilight left the room, Gale crouched down next to Spike and said. “So I take it you don’t like the idea of sharing a room with me?”

Spike responded. “You’re right, I don’t.”

Sheesh, someone’s in a bad mood aren’t they? Gale wondered before thinking up a solution. “How about if one of us slept on the couch?” He asked pointedly.

Spike gasped. “Twilight would never!”

“Would never what?” Gae chuckled. “Have me sleep on a couch because I asked? And here I thought you’d love that idea.” He continued while standing up.

“What?” Spike asked, utterly dumbfounded.

“Spike I was a kid too, you know. I get that you don’t want to share a room with someone you just met, honestly I do. I’m not even sure why Twilight thought that was a good idea.”

“Yeah-” Spike managed a chuckle ”- Sometimes she just assumes everything will go her way.”

“So, If I sleep on the couch, are you gonna be less of a jerk about me being here?” Gale continued.

“You mean you’d sleep on the couch just to make me feel better?” Spike asked.

“Hey, if I end up with a friend out of it, what’s the harm?” Gale replied.

Spike chuckled. ”Wow. You’ve been talking to Twilight a lot lately, haven’t you?”

Gale’s mock exclamation of ‘How’d you know?’ did wonders to lighten the mood.

“You know what, Gale? If Twilight says you’re okay then I guess I do, too.” Spike conceded as Twilight walked down the stairs, pillows and blanket in a telekinetic field.

“Alright, I’ve got some pillows for you Gale, I’ll just go put . . . wait . . . did I miss something?” She asked, walking down the stairs.

“Not really, no.” They answered almost simultaneously

A few minutes later Twilight came back from putting Spike to bed. “I’m sorry about that, Gale,” She yawned.

Gale, yawning himself, replied. “It’s okay, kids will be kids after all.”

“Well you get some sleep then, okay?” Twilight said, walking to the stairs. ”I have a feeling you’re gonna need it.” She quickly whispered.

Despite how crazy the day had been, Gale found himself falling asleep almost immediately.

"Bad Moon Risin'."

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Gale awoke the next morning hazily thinking he’d overslept his stay in a hotel room somewhere on the road. Oh man, did I oversleep again? He thought while stretching his limbs. Opening his eyes, he started to worry.. If I’m not there on time Jess is gonna ki- . . . Sitting up, he was able to take in his surroundings. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me . . .

After a few moments of silence he uttered the only response to his situation that he could think of. “Well, shit.”

The next few minutes consisted of him pacing around the library whilst wrestling with his thoughts. Man, what the hell have I gotten myself into?! The more he thought about it, the angrier with himself he became. Why the hell did I think it was a good idea to cannonball it across the country? What was I thinking?

He suddenly stopped next to a bookshelf, put both hands to his forehead and shouted. “I’m so fucking stupid!”

In the space of a few seconds he then turned to the bookcase and swung out in full force with his right hand, in blind fury at his own stupidity.

Krack!

Brilliant idea you fucking nimrod! “Agh, dammit!” He hissed, clutching his hand and groaning in pain. Of course, Gale didn’t realize that his yelling would have woken up the local residents as Spike rushed down the stairs.

“Gale, are you okay?” His question answering itself immediately after he saw the look of pain in Gale’s eyes.

Gale sank to the floor, clutching his hand and muttering obscenities before realizing the drake had even appeared.

“Oh hey Spike, did I wake you?” He said in as calm a voice as he could muster.

“What did you do? I heard this loud thud and then you started yelling.” Spike stopped as he looked at Gale’s right hand.

Oh that doesn’t look good. “Hang on dude, I’ll go get Twilight, maybe she can help.”

“‘Maybe she can help’ with what?” The mare in question asked as she to trotted down the stairs. “Spike what are you doing up this early? Did Gale wa-” She stopped dead in her tracks once she took a good look at Gale’s hand. “Gale, what did you do?”

Spike chose that moment to sidestep over to Twilight, put his hand over his mouth and loudly whisper. “I think he hit the bookshelf.”

“I can see that Spike,” Twilight responded. “But what I’m wondering is, why?”

As she said this, Gale slowly rose to his feet. “If you can do anything about this, I’ll gladly tell you why I did it.”

“Oh sorry, let me see what I can do.” Twilight said, horn glowing as she proceeded to perform a similar, albeit smaller, version of the healing spell she’d used the day before.

Gale hissed in pain as the spell did its work and his hand healed itself. “Thank you.” Panting, he moved to take a seat on the couch.

“Now as you were saying?” Twilight began while walking over to the other couch. “What happened anyways?”

In the few minutes that Gale took to explain to Twilight just why he’d punched her bookcase, Spike decided they should all get ready for breakfast.

“Well now that that’s all over, who wants breakfast?” Walking to the kitchen, the drake continued. “I’m not quite sure what you can eat, Gale, but I can find something.”

Fifteen more minutes later found the three sitting around the kitchen table, eating breakfast. “So you hoofed my bookcase because you got ‘pissed off’?”

“I would advise you not to talk like that, but then again I’m the only one here who knows what the worst parts of my home’s language even are.”

Spitting her pancakes out, Twilight stared at him. “You mean I was, but I . . . Ugh, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Partially because I forgot about it for a bit and partially because it was funny.”

After breakfast, they went about starting their day. Twilight, by reorganizing some books, and Spike, by moving inventory to and from the basement.

“So how often do pe- er, ponies come in to check out books?” Gale asked from the couch. He’d spent the last five minutes walking along the shelves looking for a book and took a seat once he’d found one. “And how long until I can go see my car?”

Twilight mumbled something to herself before answering. “Anywhere from five to ten ponies a day.” Levitating a book onto its proper shelf. “Mostly ponies who wanted to look up how to do something.” She added. “To answer the second question, as soon as I’ve finished reorganizing for the day.”

Chuckling, Gale commented. “I would say something like ‘ten’s a small number’, but then again how do you ponies even turn a book’s pages, let alone read?” Turning his newfound book over Gale continued. “Daring Do . . . Why does this seem familiar?” He asked aloud upon seeing the cover art.

Seeing that Twilight was busy, Spike spoke up. “It’s an adventure series that’s pretty popular.” Setting his box down, he continued. “I definitely recommend it dude, it’s pretty cool.”

Rolling his eyes, “I guess I’ll be the judge of that then, won’t I?” Gale asked, reclining some and opening the book.

Roughly an hour and a half later found Gale sitting on a couch and reading a book. “Huh, it’s like they’ve taken an Indiana Jones movie, made it into a book, and replaced all the normal contraptions and such with things for ponies. Not to mention the main character’s a chick, or mare, I guess.” He said to a startled Spike.

“How’d you know I was here?” The drake asked. “I mean, I didn’t even say anything.”

Without looking up from the book, Gale replied. “When I was a kid we used to have a few dogs around the house. Your claws make almost the same noise as theirs did and I recognized it, I guess.”

Satisfied by his answer, Spike continued. “Anyways, how’s the book read?”

“Like a typical adventure story, I suppose,” Gale sighed, closing said book and standing up. “Although I think it’s about time I got up and moved around a bit.” Cracking his neck and stretching, he continued, “If I stay in one place too long I think I might get stuck there.”

The bemused look on Spike’s face was enough of a hint for him to stop.

Nervously chuckling Gale asked. “Have you seen Twilight recently? She said she’d see about taking me back to my car once she was done organizing, or something like that.”

Up in her room, Twilight sat reading the note that Princess Celestia had sent her shortly before breakfast.

Heh, I still can’t believe he was that scared of Spike’s dragon breath. she thought, unrolling the scroll. unfortunately her good mood slowly regressed as she read the letter.

“Dear Twilight, I’m sorry to inform you that our attempts to help your friend are going to have to be put on hold for now. There have been some diplomatic issues with the Griffon ambassador as of late and we both have to devote most of our time to it.” As she read the letter Twilight’s face fell, and she became a little depressed as she reached the end of it.

“Buck me.” She groaned.

“If that’s a euphemism for what I think it is, then you can count me out.” Gale snarked walking into the doorway.

“Oh!” Twilight yelped, jumping off her bed and quickly hiding the scroll. “I’m sorry Gale, I didn’t hear you come up stairs.”

“Well in that case, sorry for startling you.” Gale said, deciding it best not to mention that he’d heard her while walking up.

“No, no, that’s what I get for leaving my door open.” She hastily replied, hiding the scroll as best as she could.

“Okay, well I was wondering, If you’re done reorganizing for the day, think we can go see my car? I want to see if any of my stuff survived the crash.” Some things more than others.

His odd expression momentarily worried Twilight.

“Oh,” Twilight paused. “Okay, just give me a few minutes to back my saddlebags and we can go.”

“Uh, pack your saddlebags?”

“Yeah. You know, what we ponies use to carry things around since we don’t have hands like yours.”

What’s with these ponies and not taking hints? Gale sighed “I know what saddlebags are, what I meant was why are you packing them?”

Before Twilight could answer, there was a knock on the door and Spike yelled up to her.

“Twilight, Rarity’s here to see you.” the drake said, running up the stairs.

“Oh horseapples, I forgot she was coming by the library today.” Twilight said before rushing to the stairs. “Gale, could you wait here for a bit? I’m not entirely sure how she’d react yet and I want let her know about you first.” As she ran trotted down stairs, Gale heard her call out to Spike and tell him to go watch for someone up in her room.

Clever girl, or would that be mare? Gale wondered as he listened for the sound of small footsteps reaching the landing.

The next twenty minutes were occupied by Gale telling Spike some of the things he’d done growing up.

“Yeah, we got him so drunk that he passed out in Mitch’s car before we even got to the last bar, so we left him in the parking lot. Man Johnny was a lightweight . . . “

“So, you got your best friend drunk and left him in outside a bar? Weren’t you afraid the guards would catch you?”

“Guards?” Does he mean police? “I think you’d mean our police but anyways, that reminds me of the first time I borrowed my dad’s car.”- he started rubbing his hands together - “Heh, he never even found out I took it.” Right before he could tell the drake about his first joyride, Twilight called up for them.

“Looks like that’s our cue then.” Spike said, hopping off the bed and jogging to the stairs, “Are you coming dude?”

“Give me a minute little buddy, I’m still kind of tired and I’m gonna move a bit slower because of it.” Standing up and walking toward the door, he continued. “And besides, who’s this ‘Rarity’ anyways?”

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.” Spike said, turning his head sharply. “She’s the best looking mare this side of Canterlot.”

“Well that’s certainly an opinion.” Gale remarked while walking to the stairs.

“Twilight dear what have you been up to lately?” Walking along the bookshelves, Rarity turned to her friend. “It’s been a few weeks since we last spoke my friend.”

“Well, I’ve mainly been reorganizing the bookshelves again, how about you?”

“Well, right now I’m trying to find a book on music notes for Sweetie’s talent show project.”

“Really? What’s she doing that involves music?”

Shaking her head, Rarity pulled a book off a shelf. ”Oh she and the other crusaders are apparently wanting to do a music number for their set.” Waving her hoof, she continued down the row of books.

“Well, have they settled on a theme?” Walking over to her desk, Twilight pulled out a stack of notecards. “If so I can help find the appropriate text for reference.”

Sighing, Rarity responded. “I think they wanted to do something involving ponies who are displaced from their homes. Apparently Cheerilee though it was a good idea.”

“That seems a bit peculiar, are you sure Cheerilee approved it?”

“I assure you dear, I had thought the same thing. Yesterday afternoon I paid Cheerilee a visit to confirm and she told me that; yes, she did approve of their idea, as long as they took it seriously and did their best not to offend anypony.”

Upon hearing her explanation, Twilight spent the next few minutes talking with Rarity about which books to reference, all the while the beginnings of an idea were forming in her mind.

“The only thing left that Cheerilee wanted them to do before proceeding was to talk to somepony who has had to relocate so that they know what those ponies can end up going through.”

As soon as she heard that, Twilight jumped up. “Rarity I might have a friend who could help with that.”

Momentarily startled by her outburst, Rarity wondered aloud. “Oh really darling? Who is it?”

Trotting over to the stairs, Twilight shouted. “Spike, you two can come down now.”

“So as it turned out, Rarity came by to check out a reference book for her little sister Sweetie Belle.” Twilight huffed.

“Forgive me for asking, but how does that turn into me getting a suit custom made?” Shifting on his feet, Gale sighed. At the very least I guess I’ll have a spare set of clothes . . .

“Come now dear, getting a suit is nothing to be ashamed of. How can any stallion hope to catch a mare if he doesn’t look his best?” Walking out from her store room, Rarity continued. “And besides, your old clothes were torn and ruined.

“Hey!” Gale yelped, from both annoyance and a bit of pain, as Rarity accidentally cut his leg with a sewing needle.

“Oh, I’m sorry darling, my hoof slipped.” Horn glowing, rarity continued. “Here, this should help.”

“No.” Gale and Twilight responded simultaneously

“It’s fine Ms. Rarity, I’ve been through worse.” Meeting her bemused expression, he simply nodded toward Twilight. “Aren’t even going to ask why she said no as well?”

Taking a moment to ponder his question, Rarity turned to Twilight. “Why did you say no Twilight? I may not know as much as you in terms of spells, but I know a few for healing cuts and scrapes.”

Twilight sighed for a moment. “Because as we’ve found out, Gale has a bit of a different reaction to magic than most. It’s part of the reason he didn’t put up much resistance when you, ahem, ‘offered’ to make him a suit.”

“Wait, is this true Gale? Did you only come with me out of fear?” Turning back to Gale, she wore a sorrowful expression.

“Well, yes and no. I honestly have no idea what’s going on anymore and figured it would be a good idea to be nice to the pe- er, ponies who can inflict pain on me with their minds.”

Rarity turned back to Twilight, anger quickly flashing across her face. “Twilight, don’t you think you should have informed me of this?”

“I guess I should have,” looking down at the floor, Twilight continued, “I’m sorry you two, I’m just not sure what to do right now.”

“You’re telling me- Ow!” Gale yelped, wincing at the pain from Rarity slapping him with a nearby towel.

“Darling, that was a little insensitive, don’t you think?”

“No no Rarity, he’s right. Despite how odd this seems for us, he’s probably feeling a whole lot more confused.” Twilight stepped forward. “Anyways, we should probably be going soon. I promised we’d go take a look at the crash site and see if any of his things survived.”

“Well, if it’s not too much to ask, would you mind if I tagged along? I’ve finished all of my immediate orders and it’s such a lovely day out.” Glancing back at Gale, she continued. “And I could buy us all lunch, as a sort of apology.”

Shrugging of her casual self-invitation, Gale looked to Twilight. “So, how much can you carry in those saddle bags of yours?”

After ten or so minutes of Rarity fussing about not having the right hat for the occasion, they left her boutique and headed for the far end of town,

Another five minutes later saw them walking towards the one thing Gale had both been wanting and dreading to see.

The apple farmstead, and his beloved car, Charlene.

All was quiet at the Apple farmstead save for the sound of two approaching sets of hooves and a set of tennis shoes moving closer along one of the dirt paths leading to the farm. With Apple Bloom at school, Granny Smith, Gale was told, would probably be taking a mid-day nap and Applejack as well as her brother Big MacIntosh would be out harvesting apples.

“So, they call it apple bucking?” Gale asked quizzically while leaning against the fence gate they had just reached.

“Yeah, it’s an old style of farming, not the most effective,” Twilight admitted after quickly looking for any sign of her farmer friend, “but it’s what the Apple family uses and they use it well.”

“The more I hear of your language, the more I appreciate mine.” Leaning against the gate, Gale chuckled. “Seriously, is the only way to tell if someone’s swearing by context?”

The next few minutes passed via a conversation between Gale and Twilight about both linguistics and semantics before Rarity interjected.

“Ahem, Gale there’s something I wanted to ask you about. If you don’t mind, of course.”

“Shoot . . .“

Blinking quickly, Rarity stood confused. “. . . What?“

Figures ponies wouldn’t know what I meant . . . Gale sighed. “I mean, ask away.”

“You and Twilight were discussing the weather of your home earlier,” Shuffling her hooves, Rarity continued. “And I wanted to ask how your people can willingly plan for certain types of storms to occur knowing that they’re very dangerous?”

Crossing his arms, Gale sighed. “Well, honestly. We don’t.”

“Wait, you . . . you don’t?”

“Well, while you two talk about this, I think I’ll go look for AJ and Big Mac.” Twilight interjected before trotting off.

It was Rarity’s turn to be dumbfounded as Gale spent the next few minutes describing Earth’s weather patterns to pass the time, while Twilight had gone off to look for either of the two farm ponies.

“Oh that’s dreadful darling. I don’t know where we’d be without our weather pegasi.”

Scratching the back of his neck, Gale replied. “Yeah, but it makes life a bit more interesting,you know?”

“Although that’s true, I can’t see how your people could willingly live in areas where such horrible storms could take place.” Twilight said, coming back from her search with Applejack in tow.

“Howdy Gale, it’s good to see ya. Oh hey Rares, I guess I didn’t see ya there.” The farm mare chuckled. “What brings you to my family’s homestead?”

“Oh I’m just enjoying a lovely day with Twilight and her friend here.” At Applejack’s look, she continued. “I, ahem, may have accidentally forced Gale into letting me make him a suit and I bought lunch for us all to try and repay him.”

Before Applejack could question her any further, Gale interjected. “So, Applejack,”- Pushing himself off the post. - “Do you know if those guards are still out there?”

“Well Sugarcube, they left about an hour or so ago. Said something about getting reassigned by royal order.” Turning back to Twilight, Applejack continued. “I can only wonder how that happened.” She said with a wink.

“Well then let’s go,” Taking a step away from the gates, Gale added. “before anything else comes up.”

“Now wait just a minute Sugarcube, I have to tell Big Mac that I’m goin’ off to the south fields before I do or he’ll just come lookin’ for me. And no offense Gale, but chances are that he’d get startled by you and I don’t want that happenin’.”

Well that’s not foreboding or anything . . . “Well okay then, I guess we’ll wait here for you,” Walking over to the porch, Gale continued. ”Well I’ll be right here anyways, I don’t know about those two.”

A few minutes later and Applejack came walking back into view followed by a large red stallion. Okay definitely not messing with him. Taking a step forward, Gale introduced himself. “Hello, I suppose you’re Big Macintosh?”

“Eeyup.”

“So I take it you don’t talk much?” It had been a few minutes since Applejack and the other two decided to take off, leaving Gale and Big Mac to go see his car.

“Eeyup.” Big Mac said, walking off toward the field.

Quickly moving to keep pace, Gale continued. “I see . . . Well is there any reason for that, if you don’t mind my asking that is.”

Big Mac didn’t even glance toward him. “Eenope.”

Well . . . This is awkward . . . “Anyways, thanks for volunteering to help me go and see her.”

“Eey-, Wait, what?” Big Mac blinked a few times before throwing him a questioning look.

So he can say more than two words . . . “Thanks for helping me go see my car.”

With a nod of semi-understanding, Big Mac replied. “Eeyup.”

“No seriously, everyone here’s been so nice to me since I got here. It’s, it’s not something I’m really used to . . .“

Gale wouldn’t realize just how much his statement had hit home himself for quite some time, but Mac caught on immediately.

“Are you saying you want to stay?” The stallion asked as the started walking towards the southern field.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” - Gale paused. Especially since you could probably kill me - “but I just want to go back to what little of a life I had.”

“No no, I can see where you’re coming from. This must all seem terribly confusin’ to you.” Chuckling, Mac continued. “Just remember; if’n you ever need anything, we Apples would be happy to help.”

The continued walking for a few minutes with Gale rambling on about whatever random topic he chose. They passed row after row of trees until they rounded a corner and Gale got his first real look at the wreck. Standing there, his heart shattered as he muttered the only response that he could.

“Oh no.”

"Everything Is Alright."

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The land around Sweet Apple Acres was dead silent that afternoon, save for the sound of a man’s heart getting shattered.

The last thing I had to remember him by, and it’s gone. Making his way forward, Gale started crying. She’s gone and it’s all my fault.

He wiped away his tears before placing a hand on top of destroyed driver’s side front fender, crouching to get a better look. Twilight said I crash landed. I thought she was exaggerating, but now? Now I’m not so sure . . . "This kind of damage ‘ll take months to fix.”The whole front clip is bent. Jesus, how hard did I land anyways?

He slowly moved further along toward the door from his crouched position, running his hand across the faded and smashed surface of the fender along the way. Glass is all gone, I’m sure of it. But what about the rest of the door?

Standing back up, he reached for the handle. Come on girl, help me out here. “Great, the hinges are junk.” After another minute of struggling he managed to open the door and saw the front seats. Damn, that’s a bit of blood right there . . . Grimacing, he leaned into the car and started searching for any of his effects that might have survived intact.

“Well there’s not much here that’s usable as is; but there are a few things that might be salvageable.” Backing up from the door, he turned and started back down the car.

He winced as he caught sight of the two foot long indentation in the quarter panel. Fucking hell that’s a big dent.

“At least it’s shallow.” Big Macintosh drawled.

Gale quickly glanced over his shoulder to see the farm pony staring at the quarter panel.

“Well, I guess there’s that.” he admitted with a sigh of defeat before moving around to the back of the car. His heart sank as he laid down to inspect the undercarriage.

“Dammit.” As he crawled as far as possible under the car, it’s condition finally started to hit home. “She’s all kinds of screwed now” Taking his time, he squirmed further under the car, careful not to bump into the several rocks that were probably holding it in the air.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get ‘er back into driving shape, the driver’s set of leaf spring shackles are broken, the diff looks cracked, and there was a lot of general wear and tear to begin with.. All the while the front’s not looking much better.” he said, taking as close of a look as possible. “Good god, that snapped a torsion bar . . . ”

Big Macintosh was about to ask what he meant when Gale realized he didn’t know.

“Basically, the entire car’s suspension is shot, it’s a miracle the things sitting at the height it is, those rocks are probably the only things propping it up.”

Walking back behind the trunk, Gale took a look at the partially dented vinyl roof. Thank whatever god may exist that this wasn’t Sam Posey’s Challenger . . . Sighing he commented. “Well, that’s not that bad I suppose. I mean, it’s not good but it could have been much worse.” A thought occurred to him shortly before he started walking around to the other side.

Stopping where he was, Gale pulled out his keys. Seriously, when did I take these out of the ignition? Walking back to the trunk, he tried opening it. Much to his surprise, the latch still worked and it popped right up. Unfortunately most of the contents had been thrown around like farmhouse in a tornado.

Looks like most everything’s intact . . . “Huh, it’s not as bad as I thought.” Sighing, Gale started taking all of his belongings out of the trunk and setting them into a pile.

“So do you mind my asking what all this is?” Big Macintosh walked up, stopping a few feet beyond the pile.

“This? This is basically everything that I own,” Looking up at him, Gale continued. “I know it’s not much, but it’s what I could take with me when I left.” Sitting down, Gale started sorting out all his belongings into several different groups, all the while muttering to himself. “Electronics, clothes, books and shit, and . . . these . . . “

Big Macintosh had stopped short of asking what Gale was muttering about when he saw the expression on his face, but after a few minutes his curiosity got the better of him. “Gale, can I ask what those are?” Pointing a hoof at a group of two objects.

Closing his eyes, Gale mouthed something to himself before answering. “They’re the last things my father gave to me, and I hope I never have to use them for anything ever again.”

Well, that’s not very ominous. Big Macintosh thought before deciding it a good idea to get Twilight. “I think I’ll go an’ get Twilight, If you’re ready to head back that is.”

Without missing a beat, Gale responded. “Yeah, I’m not so sure I want to be out here much longer . . . Go ahead.”

Gale waited until Big Macintosh was out of sight before bursting into tears. God, but I wish I was dreaming! Why is this happening to me!?

After a few minutes, Gale gathered himself for one last inspection. This is a bad idea, I know . . . but I just have to see.
Slowly but surely, Gale stood back up and made his way to the driver’s door again. I’d hope the release worked, but that would be too much of a miracle. Just as he’d thought, it didn’t work. Why am I not surprised?

Gale was about to try the hood latch when he heard a few sets of hooves approaching. Either I was moping around for awhile, or they’re quick. Turning to his right, he saw Twilight, Big Macintosh and Applejack.

How did they get back so quickly? . . . Turning back to the car, he began searching for the hood latch. Dammit, why isn’t this working? He kept trying to open the hood until they were within talking distance. “So, I see you brought some friends.”

“Gale I - I’m sorry this happened,” Twilight started, walking up and dropping her saddlebags. ”but I promise to do as much as I can to fix this.” Turning around to Applejack, she asked. “Is there anywhere you could put this stuff for him? There’s no way it’d all fit in the Library right now.”

“Twilight,” He started, turning to her with a bag over his shoulder. “I’ve been in your library and there’s plenty of room.”

“Gale, do you know how many questions it would raise for us to haul all of this through the middle of town so shortly after you got here?” At his blank stare, she continued. “You haven’t been here for very long so I guess you wouldn’t know . . . But a large number of ponies are extremely skittish and the way you acted earlier today probably didn’t help things much.”

“Well, can you teleport them there or some shit like that? I really don’t want to leave this all out here.”

It’s always my fault, isn’t it? “And I guess I’ll just have to be more careful around most peo-ponies . . . “ Wonder how long it’ll take me to remember that . . . I hope I don’t have to find out. Walking back to his pile, he shouldered what looked to Twilight like an oddly shaped Cello case.I’m not letting anyone near this.

After a moment of realization, Gale turned to Twilight asked. “Hey, you opened the door and got me out the first night, right? Could you get this thing open now?”

“Hang on,” Twilight replied before turning to Applejack. ”Aj can I ask you something?” Walking back where the Apples were standing by the pile of belongings, she approached Applejack, she said. “Aj Could you find somewhere to put most of this for now? It would cause too much of a scene to bring it all back this soon.” Applejack looked over at the boxes, then back to Twilight before asking. “Twi, I think you could at least try movin’ them for him, can’tcha? It seems obvious that this all means somethin’ to him, though he probably won’t say it.” Nodding in agreement, Twilight hollered over her shoulder. “Gale, we’re going back to the library for now, it’s getting late.” Before trying, and successfully, teleporting his things back to her room in the library.

Well that’s a way to avoid a question if I’ve ever seen one. At least my stuff is safe, . . . I hope. Deciding it best not to object, Gale slung a bag over each shoulder and started off towards town.

All the while, Applejack brought up a few concerns to Twilight. “Twi, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean I know he don’t look to dangerous but are you really okay with him sleeping in your main room?”

Chuckling to herself, Twilight responded. “With the way he handled figuring out sleeping arrangements last night, I have no doubt that he’s okay. At least, for now.” Twilight glanced down quickly hoping against hope that Aj didn’t ask what she meant by that.

“Hey, am I gonna get in trouble for walking by myself?” Gale called out from over his shoulder as he neared the main gate. “Because I really don’t want to spend a night in jail for doing something as simple as Jay-Walking.”

Strolling through town garnered Gale many a stare from passing locals. Twilight did her best to distract him from this by asking about his life.

“So when we spoke the other day you told me a lot of things about your people as a whole, but I still don’t know much about you.” Looking over to him, she continued, “So Gale, can I hear anything about you as a pony?”

Maneuvering around some of the mingling townsponies, Gale thought to himself. Ugh, I get that’s how their language works but damn will that get annoying quickly . . . Taking a deep breath, he began. “Well, there’s not much to tell in all honesty. I was born and raised in a small midwest town, moved to the big city for awhile when I was growing up, then moved out east for the latter half of highschool and college.”

Quickly taking note of the thinning crowd, Twilight wondered Huh, I wonder why everypony’s gone home so early . . . Looking back to Gale, she continued. “Is it common for your people’s families to move around like that?” The look on Gale’s face was enough of a response for Twilight. “That bad, huh?”

With a shake of his head, Gale replied. “No, it’s not like that. It’s just that, well . . . It was more the circumstances for why people leave that aren’t always good”- Lost in a moment of thought, Gale rambled on. -“Let’s see here . . . death in the family, divorce, pris-”

Looking back down, Gale stopped talking when he saw Twilight’s expression.

Wearing an expression of distress, Twilight carefully asked “Were any of those the reason for your family?”

“No, no, ours was more for a change of scenery.” Well, that and a few other things that you don’t need to know . . .

The conversation died out shortly after their exchange. They walked in silence until the library came into view.

As they approached the library, Twilight turned to him and said. “Look, I know I ignored your question earlier Gale, but the truth is that I couldn’t have opened it.” At his confused expression, she clarified. ”The night you got teleported here and crashed, when we found you I tried all I could think of to open the door. After a few minutes it became obvious to me that brute force wasn’t going to work, so I began trying some of the lock tempering spells I know. After a few minutes of doing that I came to the conclusion that I was just too tired to move an object as heavy as one of those doors probably is. I only just realized that there was another reason.”

Gale cut her off by opening the library’s door and saying. “I still can’t get over the irony of a tree becoming a library . . . “

Glaring at him, she sighed before continuing. “Well, I realized it earlier-” Once again, Twilight found herself cut off as a blur of a pegasus came crashing through the doorway between them before slamming into a bookcase.

I’ll tell him later . . . Glancing over to Gale, Twilight sighed. “Would you like to handle this, or shall I?”

Dropping his duffle bags, Gale started toward the fallen pegasus only to be startled as she hopped right back up, brushed herself off, and walked back to them.

Okay, whatever these ponies are made of, I want some.

As she walked over, Twilight, who it seemed was just going to ignore her entrance, struck up a conversation. “Rainbow Dash, what brings you here?”

Taking a second to gather her bearings, Rainbow responded. “Oh, well I was over watering the flower garden at the town hall and I overheard the mayor saying something about you and Gale heading back here again. So I thought I’d stop by.”

Well, at least she’s not being asked to spy on me. Satisfied with this answer, Twilight went on. “Is she still going on about how I’m quote ‘A nuisance to society’?”

“Yeah, she’s probably never going to let that go.”

“I mess up [one spell!”

Closing the door, Gale walked over to, set his bags beside and promptly fell onto, the couch and said. “You know, I sort of want to know what you’re talking about, but I’m also slightly frightened.”

Twilight’s ear twitched as she replied. “It’s really nothing to worry about, just an accident.”

Walking to one of the other couches, she asked.“Rainbow, are you going to join us?-” Without looking over her shoulder,Twilight could tell Rainbow was about to leave. Before she could, however, Twilight quickly added. “- Come on, Gale’s a nice pony.”

“Ehem. Once again, not a pony.”

Twilight tossed a glare at Gale before continuing, “Rainbow, don’t you think that, if anything, Gale deserves an explanation?”

A wave of emotions washed over Rainbow before she sighed and agreed. “Yeah, I guess he does.” She then made her way to where the two were seated, all the while thinking. This is a bad idea . . .

Sitting back down, Rainbow began. “So, Twilight asked me to help her test some long distance teleportation spell because I’m the fastest flyer in the world,”

“I don’t recall that being a reason.”

Rainbow glared at Twilight for a second before starting again. “Anyways, we tested a few smaller scale spells for a few days so I could get used to the effects.” She stopped talking long enough to grab a glass of water off the end table. “Thanks again Spike.” Downing her drink, she continued. ”So the day we’d decided to do the final experiment I happened to be on call for the weather team, and I had to go all over town just to help clean up other ponies’ messes. Ugh, I still can’t believe Carrot Top made such a big scene about her rainstorm being ten minutes late, I mean it’s not like it’s-”

“Ehem, I think you’re getting a bit sidetracked there Ms. Dash.” Reaching into one of his bags, Gale started fishing around. “Please continue though, and don’t mind me. I’m just seeing if something’s here is all.”

“Right. Like I said, I was having to move all over town, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when right as Twilight was ready to cast the spell that one of the other weather ponies called out to me and I had to see what they needed. Before I left though, I told Twilight to be ready so she could cast it as soon as I came back. Long story short, I was kind of flying back a bit too fast and yelled for her to cast it before I was stopped.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem like much of a bright idea.” Still feeling around for something, he mumbled to himself. Where did they go?

“Considering how much everything went to Tartarus from there on out? You’re probably right.” Levitating a glass of water to herself, Twilight interrupted. “But it’s not all her fault either. The spell I was using hasn’t been used in a very long time, I’m not sure of quite what caused it to backfire in such a way, but I do intend to find out.”

Once they stopped their tangent, Rainbow began again. “So as I was saying, Twilight accidentally cast the spell too early and I got sent farther through what looked like a cloud tunnel. I’m not sure how long I was in it though because when I got out it looked like it was late in the afternoon.”

Leaning forward, Gale interjected. “Wait, do you have any idea what time it could have been?”

“No, I don’t. All I know is the place I’d ended up at, or maybe it was in, looked incredible. The everything had such a vibrant color to it, I don’t know what else I can say about it.”

The central U.S. in the fall . . . Gale interrupted her once more to add. “Yeah, that part of the country is real nice right around this time of year.”

“Hay yeah it was! Anyways, I went flying off to the west looking for anypony, or any place I could think of. Obviously I didn’t find any.”

“But,” Gale questioned. “you did see something that caught your eye?”

“I was getting there actually. So yeah, I saw this thing, which turned out to be you, I guess, moving down a road.”

As she continued, her hoof drifted up to scratch behind her neck.

“So yeah, I saw you start swerving all over the place and then you shot out across the water. I remember thinking something like ‘That can’t be good!’ and trying to grab it.”

Gale blinked for a few seconds before interrupting again. “Wait, wait, wait, just hold up a second. You’re telling me that you just decided to try and lift an object that is not only larger than you, but much heavier?”

Momentarily halting his search, Gale brought his hands up and said “The fact that you even managed to do so for as long as you did boggles my mind, but I have a question.”

Her curiosity getting the better of her, Twilight asked first. “About what?”

Giving her a sideways glance, he continued. “Why?” Raising an eyebrow, he went back to searching his duffle bag.

“What do you mean ‘why’?” Rainbow asked, dumbfounded. “What was I supposed to do, let you. . . you know . . .?”

Looking back up at the two, Gale finished her sentence. “Die? That’s what you we’re going to say, right? Well, I don’t know about you two, but I can swim better than most of the people I knew could have dreamed. It came naturally to someone raised along a coastline, like I was.”

Deciding to continue his search later, Gale moved his duffle bag back beside him and continued. “While what you said makes me think highly of your peoples for raising you to value life. I’m afraid you misinterpreted my question.”

“How so?” Rainbow asked, seeming to get annoyed.

“You assume I was asking why save me, what I meant was why follow my car in the first place. In all seriousness, I’d been going along a single stretch of road for well over thirty miles and I know I passed several different cars, so what made mine so special?”

Once again, Rainbow reached up to scratch her neck with a hoof. “Um, well I had been following you for a little while, but mainly because I wondered if you were going towards another town.”

listening to their conversations, a few pieces seemed to fall into place and Twilight suddenly became suspicious of her pegasus friend. Gale caught her slip of the tongue at the same moment as Twilight, but they both held back until they knew for sure.

Deciding to see where this went, Gale asked another question. “So, what drew you to my car anyways? I mean, I know she’s got an exhaust leak, but I doubt you would have found that interesting. Unless you somehow heard the music I listen to, which isn’t impossible I might add, but highly unlikely.”

Seemingly relieve that the subject had been somewhat changed, Rainbow made yet another slip up as she answered. “Well, I thought it looked cool. All roughed up like that.”

Realizing what she had done, Rainbow made a move to get up saying she needed to get another glass of water. While she went into the kitchen, Gale and Twilight exchanged a glance that told them they knew exactly what the other was thinking: She’s hiding something.

Deciding not to push his luck, Gale feigned becoming tired in an attempt to convince Rainbow to head home. “I don’t know about you, Ms. Dash, but I’m kind of beat after today.” Gale stifled an actual yawn as he continued. “Maybe we can finish this tomorrow, I’m ready for bed.

In a manner of complete coincidence, Twilight had the same idea as Gale for the second time that night. Getting up from her position on one of the sofas, she stretched before saying. “I think Gale’s right on this. I’ve had a long day too.”

Once she got the message, Rainbow Dash got up and started for the door. “Okay, I’ll see you around Twilight, oh, and you too Gale.”

Once she’d left the library, Twilight walked towards the stairs. ”Okay Gale, you get the bed in the guest room, Spike agreed to sleep in the hallway.” She nearly whispered as she ascended the staircase. “Just be careful not to wake him in the middle of the night. The tree’s fireproof, but I doubt you are.”

Making his way up the stairs, Gale wondered aloud. “I don’t know about you, but Ms. Dash seemed kind of defensive earlier, what do you think?”

Twilight waited until he caught up to her on the second floor before she answered. “Why do you keep calling all of us, save the princess, ‘Ms.’? But yeah, I do think she was a little off tonight.” Walking to the door for her room, she commented. “Well, we should probably continue this in the morning.“

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I am pretty beat.”

"Through Glass"

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Opening the door to his new room, Gale sighed. Well, this bed can’t be worse than that motel in Kentucky . . . Walking inside, he looked around at the room he’d been given until further notice. . . . It’s not the worst I’ve stayed in, by far.

The layout of everything in the room, save for the bookshelves, reminded Gale of the road trips he went on as a kid. “Well, motel room motif aside, I guess it’ll do.” Moving to a bookshelf, he looked over the extensive selection. “I wonder if there’s anything here I’d even like . . . Let’s see...” Taking a quick look at the different volumes, Gale realized that he didn’t care.

Walking to a window on the right of the bed, Gale looked out and observed Ponyville in the evening hours. Staring out the window at the farmer’s market, Gale watched as the ponies began packing up their stalls and heading home for the evening. Leaning onto the windowsill, he started looking for the town hall. Huh, Twilight said you can’t miss it. After not even a minute of searching, he saw the building towards the center of town, looming over the others. Yep, definitely can’t miss that.

Gale continued staring out the window, taking note of all the little businesses the town had to offer. “So a bakery, quill shop-” So, pencils aren’t a thing? ”-that sells sofas-” Well, okay then . . . “-a dentist’s office, a thrift store, and a hardware store.” Huh, why am I surprised by that one?

Cutting his own monologue short, Gale sat back down on the bed and grabbed a set of pajamas. As he changed clothes for bed, he couldn’t help but notice the size of his sleeping accommodations. Man, pony beds are freakin’ small . . . Once dressed, he strolled over to the lightswitch on the wall. With the lights off, he made his way back to the bed and laid down. Once laying down, he fell asleep quickly.

As he awoke to the sounds of rain the next morning, Gale groaned, stretched, and grimaced. His back letting him know just how uncomfortable the bed was. That’s gonna do a number on my spine.

Getting up from the bed, he shuffled, with the speed of a tortoise, over to his bags and began looking through them for something to wear. Grabbing a random T-shirt and another pair of jeans, Gale set about getting dressed as Spike knocked on the door.

“I’m getting dressed. Who’s there?” he asked, while removing the last of his clothes.

Spike, unaware of human taboos, opened the door to find Gale standing next to the bed in only his boxers. This, of course, caused Gale to jump in surprise.

“Hey man! Don’t you know not to open the door on someone? Christ! I don’t have any freakin’ clothes on!”

Startled by his outburst, Spike quickly backpedaled into the hallway and closed the door, all the while spouting apologies of ‘I didn’t know, I’m sorry. Really sorry.’ Gale quickly threw on his jeans and went to the door.

Opening the door, he looked out into the hallway and said. “Hey, look, I didn’t mean to shout. You caught me by surprise is all.” Chuckling even before he said it, Gale continued. “Besides, now that I think about it, I wouldn’t expect a kid like you to know anything about that.”

“I’m not a goat, though."

“What?” Gale asked, blinking. It took him a few moments to realize what he meant. “Nevermind. Anyways, tell Twilight I’ll be down in a few minutes. I need to finish getting dressed.” With that over, Gale pulled himself back into the room and closed the door.

Man, I bet Jess'd think that little guy is a riot.

Walking back towards the bed, he made a quick grab for a duffle bag and brought it up next to him as he sat down. Gale searched the bag for a minute before he produced his mp3 player. How the hell . . . You know what? I’m not even gonna bother asking. Setting the device on the bed, he went back to rummaging for another few minutes before he found what he was actually looking for.

Wonder if I’ll ever have the strength to kick this garbage . . . he mused, slipping some pills into his pocket and tossing the bottle back, before throwing on his shirt and making his way down into the kitchen.

Still rather groggy from his poor sleep, Gale practically failed to notice the three ponies that were already mingling in the library. Instead, he headed straight for the kitchen to look for something to put water in. Unbeknownst to him, the ponies in the living room were all here early trying to get a glimpse of the figure they’d seen later in the afternoon on the previous day.

Walking into the kitchen proper, Gale immediately started searching the bottom cabinets to try and find a glass of any sort. While looking, he couldn’t help but to hear an exchanging of words.

“What a dreary morning, am I right Berry?” Gale heard a pony ask another, presumably one of the three he’d seen while walking to the kitchen.

“Oh, yeah. This is doing wonders for my mane.” He could almost feel the sarcasm of her words.

”Say, are you mares looking for a book too? I’ve been waiting around for half an hour and haven’t seen Twilight.” Another pony, Gale assumed this was Berry, responded before a third voice joined in.

“Really? I thought we were here to check out that thi-” Gale couldn’t make out the rest of their sentence as it was muffled. A few seconds later, and Berry started again, although much quieter.

“Lucky! You can’t just say things like that! It’s rude.”

Lucky, as Gale now knew her, responded “What the hay, Berry?! Okay, I shouldn’t have said that but you didn’t have to hoof me in the shoulder for it!"

“Look, Lucky-” the first voice spoke up. “-I get that you didn’t mean anything, but you really need to what what you say around ponies.” Gale could almost feel Lucky wince as she was rebuked by her friend, but once the other pony continued, her voice softened. “One of these days your mouth is going to get you into trouble, and neither me nor Berry will be able to get you out.”

With that said, Lucky sighed, “I guess you’re right. Sorry, Charged.” She said, genuine sadness apparent with her words.

Figuring he shouldn't be listening in on their conversation, Gale opened up one of the cabinets above the sink and found a glass to use. Why didn’t I open this one first?

After grabbing a glass and getting some water, Gale fished the pills from his pocket. It’s a good thing these aren’t they type that break apart easily. He quickly downed them with a gulp of water and left his glass in the sink.

As he walked back towards the door, Gale decided to see if Twilight needed anything. Once he opened the door, however, he saw Twilight walking down the last steps into the main room. Before she could say anything, the three mares bombarded her with questions. Deciding not to get involved, he leaned back against the doorframe and quietly watched as she went about answering the trio of ponies.

“Lucky, Berry, Charged, what are you three doing here so early?” She inquired. “Spike may have unlocked the door, but the library isn’t technically open for another hour or so.”

Looking from his place in the doorway, Gale observed as Twilight talked with the trio. While watching, he was able to discern which pony went with each voice, as well as which of them was in charge.

So, Lucky’s the, what color is that? Mauve? Yeah. Mauve pony and I assume the one with the tattoo, can you call that a tattoo? Fruit tattoo is Berry. Looks like Charged is the Tan one then.

As he absorbed all this, Twilight put a few things together as spoke with the three. “So, you’re looking for the etymology of the word cooper?” She asked, pointing a hoof at Berry.

“Yeah, I was hoping to find some history on it, and them in general.”

With a nod of agreement, Twilight continued. “And you’re here looking for something about-” Twilight had to pause for a moment before continuing, “-Something about stripping techniques?”

The other two burst into laughter at their friend’s expense, all the while Charged was getting more and more agitated.

“Ugh, why does everypony think I mean that!” She yelled. “I’m an electrician. My cutiemark’s a light bulb for Celestia’s sake!” Her outburst causing the others to stop their laughter.

At this point, Gale couldn’t help but chuckle, and soon found himself the center of the trio’s attention.

“Oh, um … Hi?”

“Um, hello.”

“Uh, what are you?”

The last one, Lucky, received a whack on the head from Berry for her comment before Charged started apologizing for her.

“We’re very sorry. Lately she’s just lost her filter and she doesn’t always think before she speaks.”

You know, if I didn’t know this was the exact reaction I would get from these ponies, I’d have been tempted to let that pink one, what was her name? Let her throw me that party she wanted.

Whatever reaction they were expecting, it wasn’t for Gale to completely ignore Lucky’s comment. Instead of commenting on it however, he looked over to Charged

“So, electrician huh? Would that make you a linemare?”

Slightly confused by his question, she responded. “Um, I guess so. Why?”

I'm going to hell for this . . . Gale’s smirk should have given Charged a hint, but she didn’t notice. “So, you’re always climbing up poles for work then?”

The instant that sank in, everyone in the room, save for Charged and Spike, who just walked in from the kitchen, erupted in laughter. Yup, definitely going to hell.

Her downtrodden expression made Gale realize he’d crossed a line. “I’m sorry, really, I am. But you left yourself open for that.”

“No, it’s okay.” Charged said, looking to Gale with a soft smile. With that said, she walked over to him. “To be honest, I’m just glad somepony knows what I do for a living.”

Gale let out a small chuckle, shook his head, and replied. “Well, I don’t know if any ‘pony’ will know, but to my kind? It’s pretty well understood.”

As he said this, Charged’s mind came back to that fact that she was talking to somepony who was a complete unknown to herself.

“Well, I can’t say much about somepony I don’t know.-” She smiled and stuck out a hoof. “- My name’s Charged Up, although I figure you already know that.” After shaking his hand, she continued. “These two,-” , waving her hoof over towards her friends. “- are Berry Dreams, and Lucky Star. Now, if you don’t mind my asking, who are you?”

Finally pushing himself off the wall, he replied. “Well, my first name’s Gale and my last name’s not important right now.” Glancing back to the others, he continued. “As to your earlier question,-” he said with a nod to Lucky. “The simplest answer is that I’m a human. That isn’t the best answer, but a better explanation could take hours.” A sudden crack of thunder drew their attention outside, where the rain started to pick up. "Huh, I guess you three have time then." With that said, he moved to the end of the couch closest to a window, and sat down.

The other three followed suit and soon they were all gathered around the sitting space. “Gale, can I ask you a question?” Charged asked, looking rather nervous.

You just did. Gale thought before responding. “Sure, what is it?”

Charged shifted on the couch, unsure how to proceed. “Well, I was wondering if you’d be willing to tell us a little about you. Maybe, what it’s like, you know, living somewhere other than here?”

A number of emotions flashed across Gale’s face coinciding with the thought. ”Well, I’d rather not talk about myself for now, but I can give you some background on us humans in general.”

Three looked at each other before Charged responded “Well, if it’s not too big of an issue, it would be kind of neat to learn about another species.”

“Nah, it’s no trouble at all.” he said with a nod towards the outside where the rain continued to pour down. “So, since we have some time, do you girls want everything I know or the abridged version?”

The trio of ponies looked amongst themselves before Twilight walked back over. “Trust me on this, girls, you want the abridged version.” The group nodded in unison so Gale began.

“I’ll only say this once, though, our history is anything but pleasant at times. I have no problem telling it, if you still want to know. Just know that I warned you.

Alright, our history goes back incredibly far, so I'll just start about the time we actually started counting years. It’s 2014 back home, so a lot of shit’s happened. The first couple hundred years are kinda fuzzy, as far as I know anyways, folks started out in an area between two of the major continents, a sort of desert-oasis, originally they were hunters/gatherers.

For the longest time, they’d been used to hunting down animals, which aren’t actually sentient like you guys are, so we hunted them for food. Still do to some extent, depending on your locale. Anyways, life started out there and a few other places, areas like what would become Great Britain, or rather, just Britain.

That’s a small-ish island far to the north west of Egypt. There are a couple of places along the northern coast of Europe . . . it’s a large land mass directly east of Britain. There’s also a little known about some peoples from the land that I was raised in, but I don’t remember all these anymore, just highlights.” He said, taking a break to drink and make sure he still had their attention.

“So, many different people, all over the place. Some of the first non-natives to land on my home country are believed to be from that northern area of Europe, though no one knows for sure. The most well known explorer was the supposed first man to reach an island to the south of my country’s mainland. History celebrates him, I don’t. There’s a lot of things that get brushed aside when teaching history to kids . . . it’s kind of disturbing actually

Anyways, he and others from a nation known as Spain ‘conquered’ the regions I now know as Mexico and Florida, I think parts of Georgia and a bit of Alabama too. Oh, um, we subdivided our land since people wanted to live in their own nations, rather than as a big country. I don’t know much about the rest of the world at this point so I’m afraid I’ll have to skip a bunch of it. What I do know is that there was a plague that killed millions, countries from Europe would practice slavery, yeah, not many of us are happy about that. So, my nation formed when a group of smaller nations banded together to break away from the country that had been ruling them. See, Britain is across an ocean and they were getting fed up about having no say in any of the laws they had to abide by.”

Berry spoke up as he took another drink, “I don’t blame them. I can’t imagine living under the complete rule of another group of people. The princesses are very open about their policies, but from the way you describe it, this country wasn’t?”

“Open about it or not, it’s that they were being ruled by a group that had never set foot on the land that they called home. They rebelled, all thirteen original ‘states’ and formed a new nation. Things went well for awhile, they moved further west, more states were formed, peoples spread out and things were going okay. About the time the country had claimed half of the area, they started fighting with each other. ‘History’ teaches kids that it was because one side was against slavery while the other flourished because of it and, while that is disgustingly true, it’s not everything. A good deal was just internal politics. Some states getting upset about how they were getting treated. The group on the southern half of the nation separated from the north and they fought over it. It wasn’t pretty.

Moving on. ‘We’ claimed complete control of the land we now call home, save for a few small areas and one chunk we bought later. Things were going okay, there was legally no slavery, but it was not a good time to be a member of the race that we had at one point considered ‘slaves’ that racism never really went away, 200 years later it’s still there . . .

So, in about 1910, I believe, a war started between many of the European nations when one of the leaders of one was assassinated by someone from another. It was a mess of alliances that dragged a whole lot of countries into the fray. It wasn’t pretty. Oh, it did help our development of ways to fly though. Mostly wooden and cloth, people were building airplanes powered by gasoline engines, that’s a different discussion entirely. The war was fought, it was hell for the soldier.”

Gale pause yet again to take a drink. “Geeze, I didn’t realize that even an abridged version of human history was this long of a story. Alright, so the first ‘World War’ had been fought. It was referred to at the time as ‘The War To End All Wars.’ They were wrong. The treaties that ended the first world war ended up screwing a few countries pretty badly. It completely tanked the economy of at least one of them, Germany.

The German government in the 1930 and 40’s deserves a special place in hell for the things that were done. The leader was highly racist against another group, and when he formed his political party, we referred to them as Nazis, though even now the word is rarely used since it’s considered terrible to mention them. It kind of sucks for the few survivors that are still around. No one seems to notice them anymore.

Anyways, this leader was really racist and sometimes hid, sometimes blatantly, passed laws against a group of people known as Jews. For someone to be Jewish, it’s how they’re typically referred, not an insult, in Germany at the time was tough. They lost their jobs, homes, possessions, they were forced into camps-.”

He stopped to get andother drink, and wipe his eyes. “Sorry, it’s it’s just that this is hard to admit we let happen at any point. Those bastards deserved every bit of what they got. The easiest to explain, and least terrifying, maybe, the event known as The Holocaust is this: An incredibly high number of peoples from the Jewish faith lost their lives in horrendous ways. There were also prisoners of war, politics enemies, and people who were even suspected of being Jewish were taken away.

Sadly, it took a whole different even for my country to even join in the war. One of the other nations, Japan, attacked a military base of our with no warning. They destroyed the place. Killed hundreds . . . what was left of our military in the area then went after them for it. We pushed them almost all the way back to their home before we did something even the man who ordered it regrets. Okay, so what Germany did to a lot of people was bad, I’m not gonna say this wasn’t as bad because it was definitely was, but in different ways. My people detonated two bombs, over two different cities, each on a different day. All it took was one bomb to level each city it went off in. We did that twice, as a final sort of ‘fuck you’ to their leaders, I guess.”

Gale stopped again as he saw the horrified faces of the ponies in front of him, even Twilight was put off by some of this, though she’d heard it before.

“I never said it was pretty, but it’s our history . . . that essentially ended the Japanese war effort and they surrendered. Germany, however, had basically run over most of the nations on the land near it. One of the few left was actually Britain. Perks of being an island, I guess. Let it be said that I have nothing but respect for the British peoples who lived during the 1940’s.

The nation just kept on moving, almost ignoring the nightly air raids that were slowly destroying the cities. A large number of pilots decided against joining our military, and joined Britain's so they could fly in the war effort. Midway through 1944 My country, along with Britain and I believe what was left of the French, launched a massive invasion in order to take the fight back to the Germans. That invasion was very, very bloody, but successful. They took back the land and started pushing from the west. Meanwhile, Germany’s ruler made what one could call the biggest mistake of his life. He sent his armies to attack the nation to the east of him. Russia.

Russians are the craziest motherfuckers I think I’ve ever seen. They can withstand damn near anything. They lost ground, yes, but the fight for them turned at one city. The German army spent I think even months trying to take it from the Russians, but they never gave in.the people who lived there survived on practically nothing so that the soldiers could fight. The Russian army was a brutal one though, they would send out one group of soldiers with all the weapons and gear, when those died, they sent out more to pick up where they left off. There’s even a story floating around that officers were shot and killed if they attempted to retreat.”

Grabbing for another drink, he realized he ran out. Getting up to refill it he said, as he walked away. “Again, I never said the history of my people was a nice one. Some of us are just that crazy and things go way off from what one would think. Hell, we once banned all alcohol in my country. People just made it themselves, and ran it illegally to sellers. When they repealed the ban, those runners started a sport for high speed driving. Nascar’s still popular today, though it bares little resemblance to what it once was . . . “

Sitting back down, Gale took a drink and looked at the group, who were talking to Twilight and trying to see if she had heard all of this, or if I was lying just to mess with them. When she told them he wasn’t lying, they all turned to look at him in unison, looks of fear evident across their faces.

“I warned you, and you could have asked me to stop at any point. Besides, there’s still maybe 70 years to cover . . . but phew, does a lot happen. Not too much fighting, and definitely not on the scale as the two World Wars. And, yes, the one with Germany was the second, thankfully. So, Russia beat Germany back to their land, as we pushed from the west. When our armies converged on the capitol, their piece of shit leader committed suicide as we took the city so that he didn’t have to face defeat. Okay, even I’ll admit that was a bit dark to say.

Anyways, shortly after started a period known as ‘The Cold War’ Though, they say cold because there was never any actual fighting. During that time, my people figured out how to make our planes fly much farther, using jets and even rockets in some cases, heh, there’s one design that for the longest time, held the record for fastest plane at over three times the speed of sound.”

He had to stop and chuckle for a second as their jaws simultaneously hit the floor. “Huh, I take it that’s a big achievement?”

Lucky was actually the first to respond. “‘Big achievement?’ You’re telling us that your people have traveled over three times the speed of sound!?”

“Um, it’s 767 of your miles per hour, right?” Twilight asked, knowing where he’s going with this.

“Yep, and it appears our miles are the same length so that’s gotta be what your speed is, but it doesn’t seem like it . . .eh, either way it’s fast. That design is over 40 years old. We’ve since given up our need for aerial speed, as far as companies tell us anyways,and moved onto land speed, but that’s a different discussion. What I was getting to though is, that if you think that’s ludicrous how about this: my nation has managed to put a man on our moon. 6 times if I recall correctly.”

“But, but why the hay would anyone want to go to the moon!?”

Don’t they have a moon princess or something . . .? “Instead of asking ‘why’, we asked ‘why not?’ We’re a very scientific people at times.and anything beyond our atmosphere is very interesting to a lot of folks, I used to be into astronomy for awhile, but I’ve probably forgotten it all by now. You want to know the best/worst/funniest part of it all?”

The three leaned in, almost expecting him to say it was a joke.

“We actually know more about the farthest reaches of space than we do the depths of my world’s deepest oceans.”

Once again, the trio were left in shock. “How can somepony not know their own planet, but be content to learn about the stars?”

“Good question, but here are two things: I am not a pony, none of my kind are, and believe it or not, it’s actually easier for us to explore space. It’s apparently a lot easier to keep a capsule pressurized in space then to keep one depressurized at the bottom of an ocean.” I ought to see about recording this some time, this whole spiel is getting annoying to repeat and I’ve only had to twice!

Twilight saved him the trouble of finishing his tale by adding. “From what he told me, there was a big ‘race’ between his country and Russia about who could get to space first. Humans seem to really thrive technologically during times of war or general competition.

Man, you ought to see the shit people come up with running the Baja 1000 . . .

Taking another drink, Gale added “Yeah, so ‘space race’ in the 50’s, the ‘civil rights’ movement, along with a war in a place called Korea, there was a war in Vietnam, but no one likes to talk about it . . .” he said, with a visible noticeable shiver.

“It was a massive clusterffuck, pardon my French, after that the world saw the wall between the eastern and western sides of the city of Berlin get destroyed. And, yes, I do mean a literal wall. Russia believed in one style of government, we believe in a different one, in the indecision over what to do with the German capital, they split it right down the center.”

He said, taking a quick glance out the window before continuing. Yep, still raining.

“Moving on . . . Reagan screwed our economy . . . um, oh, a group of guys in Seattle started an entire musical movement with one record. That helped spawn bands like Rage Against The Machine, yeah, they’re exactly what you’d think. Some good stuff though.” he said, noting that they’d started to look less afraid. Well, at least they're sort of understanding it . . . I think.

“Would you believe me if I said that people actually got so concerned about what might happen when the world hit the year 2,000 that governments had started plans just in case . . .?” he asked, pausing to let everything set in.

“Oh, Y2K, the hilarious times you caused. Early 2000's saw the product from some of the mishaps we’d made back in the 80s. One of the biggest being a terror attack on one of my people’s biggest city. A group of radicals who believe strongly that their religion is the only one, that’s something I am not talking about by the way.

So, they hijacked three of our airplanes, which are quite large now, able to hold hundreds if not a thousand or so people on them. They took control of these three and ran two into a building that was used as an international trade center, the World Trade Center, actually. The third flight though, my heart goes out to the souls who acted how they did.

The passengers took the plane back in time to prevent it from hitting an important military outpost, but in the process it crashed. There we no survivors, to my knowledge anyways.” he continued, briefly thinking. Flight 93 . . .You will be remembered. “That kickstarted another way, actually this was in and around Iraq . . . or well, the middle east at large. Lots of things went wrong in that area, and still were going wrong last I knew.

That war was so unpopular, people used media to rebel, music was made, sites were created for people to meet, things like that, by 2010 everything seemed to settle into a pattern that I think it’s gonna hold at for awhile. It looks, or it did last I knew anyways, like my country was staying in that area as a military presence to try and keep the peace, but I have a feeling it’s not gonna last for too long. Peace is beautiful, but fleeting, I suppose."

Taking a final drink, he set the glass down and turned back to the trio. “So, that’s an abridged version of my knowledge of human history. Sorry that it’s a little dark, but I’m not one to sugarcoat things.”

The group slowly made it’s way back to the shelves on the west side of the library, and started talking about something Gale couldn’t quite make out. “I think our new friends are scared of me and my kind, Twilight. We’re not bad, really, but history shows only the negatives it seems. And, I even probably left out a few things I shouldn’t have . . . Polio vaccinations for one, the massive leaps in health care for that matter, or even the fact that our lifespan has gone from roughly 35 during the earliest years of mankind, to nearly 85 now, on average. There are people out there that were born in the 1800’s. Not many more though.”

“Well, I’ll admit I was rather shocked by it all, and I’ve seen some the worst of what our history has to offer. I’ll see if I can talk to them about it.” she said,

“Thanks. I think I’m just gonna sit here for awhile.” he said, turning his head to the window as Twilight walked towards the group.

“It’s just . . . how can somepony be proud of any of that?” Lucky ased, barely keeping her voice down.

Charged facehoofed, before replying “I don’t know how you got that impression, Lucky, he seemed pretty upset about a good deal of it to me.”

“Are you kidding me, Charged? He was practically gloating about some of that.”

At this point, Berry stepped in “Lucky, did you ever think that maybe he doesn’t mean for it to come off that way?”

"The hay are you talking about, Berry?”

“Well, if I was a unicorn, like Twilight over there,’ she said,nodding towards the mare in question “and I was talking about how to turn a bird into an orange, would you be scared of that?”

“Well . . . I, I don’t know . . . What does that have to do with this though?”

Charged cut back in with “Everything, Lucky. It has everything to do with this. You really need to realize that ponies can and will have different views about things than you.”

“Like Charged said, different views. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m completely okay with some of what he said, but I get that it’s how his kind view things.

“Well, I’m glad two of you girls understand things, even if only just.”

“Oh, hey, Twilight, when did you get here?”

“I live here . . . “ she deadpanned, before continuing “Anyways, Berry’s right. I had a talk with him the other day about they build things to do what we can with magic, and that seemed to unnerve him a bit.”

“You know I can hear you, right?” he called out, startling the group.

“Eh, hehe, sorry.”

“Whatever.” he said, turning back to the window, humming to the tune of a song that only he knew. And with the early dawn, moving right along . . .

Turning back to the group, Twilight started again “So, how about we get you those books you were looking for?”

The group looked amongst themselves, before the all answered.

Berry was first to say anything “Sure, I think I’ll look around for a bit.

Followed by Charged “Maybe later.”

And finally, Lucky “Um, I think I forgot something across town. . . . I’ll see you guys later.” Lucky said, as she opened the door and sprinted out into the rain.

One of these days she’s gonna get herself into something neither of us can get her out of. Berry thought, before turning to Charged “So, ‘later’?”

“Yes, ‘later’.” she said, starting back towards the couch where Gale was sitting, still gazing out into the rain.

And in your waiting hands I will land. . . Gale thought, though he’d unconsciously started mumbling the words by the time Charged walked over.

“Um, hey, Gale? Look, I’m sorry about earlier. It’s just. . . it's a bit of a shock to the system is all.”

“Yeah? You’re telling me.” he said, still staring out the window. “Your friend out there, I don’t think she realized how hard it’s raining.”

Whatever reply Charged was expecting, that wasn’t it. After a second, she heaved a sigh and said “Yeah, she’s . . . I don’t know. Sometimes I think that filly’s just plain lost her filter."

“Eh, I guess I can’t really hold it against her. Hell, I knew plenty of people like that back home.” Sometimes I wish I didn’t. Finally turning back inside, he added “It stings a bit, that she thinks I’d enjoyed any of that, but . . . I can’t change her mind so why bother?”

All Charged could do was just stand there for a moment. Wow, this stalli- what do I call male humans? He’s clearly had a rough time, maybe even before he got here.

“Some things never change, I guess.” Gale said, as he grabbed his glass, stood up, and headed for the kitchen.

“Well, you’re probably right there.” she said, as she went to follow him “Hey, what was that you were saying when I got over here?”

“Hmm? I said something?’

“Yeah, something about ‘waiting hands’?”

Gale paused for a second, and put his glass in the sink before answering “Huh, must’ve started mumbling that . . . it’s part of a song I know.”

“Who’s it by?”

“Considering it’s from my home, I doubt you would know.” At this point, I won’t be surprised if there’re pony versions of famous bands. . .

“Well, I may not know, but I kind of want to.” She said, walking next to him “I mean, I’m kind of curious about the type of music another species would be into.”

“Well, I was gonna see about going outside for a bit, but apparently that’s a bust.” he said, waving his arm towards the window which revealed that it was still, in fact, raining. “Hmm, I think I’m gonna go and sort through my stuff, actually get it all organized. Feel free to come up in maybe five minutes. Berry and Twilight too, if you guys want.” he said, shouting the last part over his shoulder. With that said, Charged headed back to Berry and Twilight, while Gale went up to move a few boxes and bags, then sort through everything.

While those two were talking, Twilight went to help Berry find the book she’d been looking for. Once they were far enough away, however, Twilight stopped to ask “So, what was with Lucky? I’ve never seen her act like that.”

Berry took a moment before she responded “Ugh, I don’t know. She’s been a bit off as of late,” before she could finish, however, Charged walked over to them “So, what are you two up to?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“Oh, well, . . . I wanted to apologize for earlier. I know I should have had a better reaction to all that, and I wanted to see how he was doing. Especially after Lucky . . . Berry, what the hay has gotten into her lately?”

Berry shook her head before responding “I don’t know. Like I was just telling Twilight, she’s seemed a bit off lately.”

“Weird. Anyways, I was gonna go up and help Gale sort through his stuff, he said you two were welcome as well.”

"Ordinary."

View Online

Okay, just gotta move a few of these out of the way, I don’t want to deal with that right now. Gale thought, as he moved a group of boxes and bags to the far side of his bed.

"Knock, knock.” Twilight said, tapping on the doorway for effect.

“Holy shit, she remembered to knock.” Gale called back, before pushing the last box into the corner. “Come on in. Just, don’t touch anything over in the corner there.” he said, waving an arm to the far side of the bed. “That’s all a little too personal, sorry.”

Twilight slowed her pace as she entered the room. Wow, it didn’t seem like this much stuff at Aj’s. . . After a second, she made room for the rest of the group.

As she walked into the room, Charged gasped at the sheer number of boxes and bags that Gale had with him. “Gale, were you moving? This is a lot of stuff for somepony to have with them otherwise.”

“Yet again, still not a pony. As to why I have this all? It’s a rather personal reason. The easiest explanation is that, yes, I was moving.” he replied, picking up a duffle bag, and throwing it onto the bed.. “So, Lucky’s been extremely flighty lately? Hmm, I’ll have to take your word for it. I have no way of knowing.”

Berry took a second to respond, still in awe of just how much he had with him. “Yeah, Like Charged said, she’s probably been having a rough time at her job.”

Twilight gave Berry a puzzled stare before asking “What does she do anyways?”

“Oh, she’s been helping Cheerilee teach at the school.”

As he picked up a box to sort, Gale replied “That, explains a lot actually.”

“Huh?” the three mares replied in unison.

“She’s an assistant teacher? For a group that’s how old?” he asked, momentarily turning to face them.

“I see your point. It still doesn’t excuse her behavior, and I-”

“Eh, don’t worry about it. Trust me, I’ve had worse.” Gale said, with a dismissive hand wave, as he started sorting through things.

“Okay, shirts, socks, pants n’ shit, phone, . . . wait, when the hell did I pack my phone?” he asked as he threw it onto the pile, angrily muttering I thought I left that piece of shit at the police station . . . dammit, that’s how the bastards found me . . .

Pausing to let himself calm down for a second, Gale started continued “Nevermind. Okay, clothes, check. Now onto . . . everything else.” he said, before grabbing a box and setting it on the bed. “Well then, what’s behind door number two, Monty . . .?”

“Who’s Monty? I thought it was just us four in here?”

“Eh, you won’t know where that’s from . . . pop culture reference, and an old one at that.“

“Oh, okay.”

“Okay, so what's in he- dammit.” Taking a deep breath he continued “That’s okay, I’ll get to this one later.” he then moved it over by the stuff on the far side of the bed. Making sure to set a bag on top of it before moving back.

“I forgot one. Just . . . drop it please.” he said, before anyone asked.Ugh, I forgot about the damn ammo box . . .

Though he’d been quick to hide it, Twilight had managed to make out a word on whatever was inside. What she caused her to slowly take a step back, in fear. He has a box of ammunition for something . . . oh Celestia, do I even want to know?

Thankfully for her, Gale hadn’t noticed as he’d picked up another box. “Take two. This should be guitar cables and sheet music.” he said, lightly shaking the box before opening it onto the bed. “Phew, I was wondering if these guys were okay.” he said, grinning as he took a piece of music in hand. “Heh, I forgot ‘Fake It’ was in this folder.”

“What kind of song is that? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anypony play something with a name like that.”

“Well, it’s from back home so I’m not surprised. As for the type of song? Well, here.” he said, handing her the lyrics sheet “I think that would explain it well enough.”

As Berry read down the page her expression went from curiosity, to shock, to disgust “This is the kind of music your people listen to?”

“Well, no, not everyone. Rock music has sort of faded in interest over the years, but it’s the genre I prefer.” he said, continuing as she passed him the sheet. “Not all of it is angry, though it can seem that way. Personally, I prefer the sound in comparison to what’s currently being put out there. Well, mainstream anyways.”

“Huh, I hadn’t thought of that. Do you have any I could listen to? Now I kinda want to know just what type of ‘sound’ is that appealing.”

“Well, I’ll have to look but I know I have my old mp3 player somewhere, if I can’t find it, I may have a few cds and I know for damn sure that I brought my cd player.” he said, nodding to the device in question. “I think I only have my duffle bags left, and I already know what’s in both of them, so yeah, I’ll see if I can fish my mp3 player out of one. It has just about everything I’ve got on cds already on it.” he said, grabbing a bag to search.

The group spent the remainder of the hour up in Gale’s ‘room’ while he sorted through all of the things he’d taken out. Only once more did Gale find himself quickly hiding something from the ponies around him, though in truth it was nothing major.

“Okay, so how about you guys go back downstairs, I’ll finish up here and be down in a few. “ Gale said, escorting the group out of his room. When he was satisfied that they’d all left the area, he slowly shut the door, and blocked it, so he could sort through the last few items in peace. Phew, I can actually check on the things I wanted to now . . .

After he was sure the door wouldn’t be openable, Gale walked over to things he’d moved aside earlier. The first item he decided to check was the case Twilight had seen him carry back from Applejack’s, his guitar. “Phew, little guy’s alright” he said, picking up the flamed painted Epiphone Special II that he’d owned for half a decade.Turning it over, he reminisced about how the instrument had acquired the small number of scratches it had. “Man, you’re a tough ol’ bastard. I’m glad you’re in good shape, buddy.”

Setting the guitar carefully down onto the bed, strings up, Gale went to open the other guitar shaped case he had with him. Man, I wish I would have gotten the chance to give this to you, babe. I know you’d love ‘er. “Oh I hope she ain’t scratched too bad.” he said, opening the case to reveal a metallic blue Xotic XPJ1T bass guitar. Phew, almost spotless “I wish I could give this to you, Jess, I really do.” he said to no one as he set the bass next to his guitar. It’s a shame I’ll never get to hear you play it.

Those two out of the way, Gale hesitantly went to check on the last three items he’d brought in. The only three he really didn’t want anyone else to see. I hoped I would never have to look at these again. Not after that. Steeling his nerves, Gale grabbed the box he’d been quick to conceal earlier. Opening it, revealed varying boxes of two types of ammunition. And here I was hoping I’d imagined packing this. Damn.

Heaving a sigh, Gale lifted the first case out of the box, revealing three loaded magazines and several more boxes, these filled with 7.92X57mm rounds. I guess it’s a good thing that cop never pulled me over in St. Louis . . . Moving on from the ammunition, Gale took another moment to steel himself before reaching for the larger of bags. He opened the bag slowly, as if what lay inside could attack him at any moment. Get it together, man. It literally can not hurt you unless you do something fucking stupid. After another second, he carefully lifted the rifle from its bag and gave it a quick once over. I will never understand why grandpa kept this after the war, nor how he even managed to kill a German sniper in the first place.“I’ll give it to you grandpa, you kept this thing in good condition for over 70 years.” Deciding it prudent, he carefully double checked that the gun was empty. It wasn’t. . . . I left a 98k Mauser loaded. God, . . . am I really that paranoid?

The last item for him to check sat in a small triangular bag at the foot of the bed. Well, I guess this was inevitable. Grabbing the bag, Gale unzipped it to reveal his father’s standard issue Colt .45. “I hope you’re doing alright out there, dad. Wherever ‘there’ may be.” he said before beginning the same checks he’d done with the Mauser. I hope you can forgive me for the times I’ve had to use this dad, you know I never wanted to. he mumbled to himself.

“Never wanted to what?” Twilight asked, having just teleported into the room.

Her question shocked Gale to the point that he jumped off the bed, spun around, and went to aim the gun. He caught himself before actually aiming at her, though she jumped back as well. “Jesus christ, woman! Don’t do that!” he shouted, breathing heavily and trying to calm back down.

Realizing the position he was in, Gale lowered his gun and sat back down. “Seriously, knocking. Is that such a hard goddamn concept to grasp?”

After a moment of hesitation, Twilight responded “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just wondered if you were doing alright.” she said, before she realized what Gale was holding. Is that what he . . . was he going to . . . what in tartarus is going on here. She walked all the way to the bed before asking “Gale, what is that you’re holding?"

“Nothing.” Quickly hiding the weapon behind him, he added “It’s nothing, really. Please don’t teleport in here like that though. You about gave me a heart attack.” And I almost shot you by reflex . . . what the hell happened to my life?

Unfortunately for him, Twilight wasn’t buying it. “That didn’t seem like ‘nothing.’ Especially with how quick you were to hide it.” she said, pointing out Gale’s, failed, attempt to place the weapon back in its case undetected.

“Look, it’s not important. Okay? I’m never taking it out of it’s case again anyways.” I ought to just bury the damned thing.

As he reached for the case, Twilight took note of the other items he’d unpacked in private.

'So, what’s that?” she asked, nodding towards Gale’s rifle.

"That one I don’t mind talking about. It’s basically the last thing I have from my grandfather. It’s an old German Mauser. 98K to be exact.” Picking up the rifle, Gale continued “He picked this guy up about 70 years ago. Kept him in good shape, too.” Getting lost in the memory, Gale failed to notice Twilight’s expression as he went on. “Yeah, he told me this was given to him by his squad commander after they found it on the body of the sniper it belonged to. A sniper gramps managed to shoot first.”

“Why would somepony keep something like that? That’s completely morbid!”

“For the nth time, we’re not ponies. Yeah, I’ll admit it’s a tad bit morbid, but when you’re in the midst of a fight for your life, you’re not gonna be thinking about things like that. Hell, as far as I know the man never even shot this thing. Not once in 70 years.”

“I’m starting to see why Lucky was nervous.” Twilight unintentionally said to herself, though Gale could hear it perfectly clear.

“Yeah, I figured as much.” he sighed, standing up to put the guns away. “I’m just gonna put these guys over here.” picking up the case, Gale deftly replaced the weapon inside and proceeded to move it to a nearby closet. “Keep these nice and out of the way. Even I don’t really want to see them.” Turning back to Twilight, he could easily see that she was still acting scared. This is why mom always said I needed to lay off the war documentaries. I think I started to enjoy them a bit too much . . .

“Okay, so, how about I put up my guitar and we both go back downstairs?” he said, intentionally diverting her interest to something completely different.

“Guitar? Is that what those are?” pointing at the instruments, she added “Hmm, why does one have more strings than the other?”

“Well, they’re not both standard electric guitars. The one with four strings is a bass. Though that one’s not really mine so I think I’ll just put ‘er back in ‘er case for now.”

“Not yours?” Twilight backed away in shock, once more. “Why would you have something that’s not-”

“It’s for a friend, Twilight. Jesus, calm down.”

“Wait, what?”

“I bought this. For someone . . . close to me. As a birthday gift. It’s a shame I’ll never get to hear her play it.”

“Her?” Twilight intoned.

“So yeah, it’s not mine. The one painted with flames, however, is.” he went on, completely ignoring her question. “I think I paid maybe $75 for this guy at a swap meet down in Atlanta. I didn’t even intend to buy him either. Hell, I didn’t even know how to play.”

“You bought it when you couldn’t play it?”

“Well, I can’t really learn on air, now can I? Here, let me see if I remember this.” Grabbing a pick out of his guitar’s case, he went about playing the beginning of Pantera’s ’Cemetery Gates’. Reverend, Reverend, is this some conspiracy?

Twilight opted to sit and listen as he progressed through the song for a minute before asking “Is that what those normally sound like?”

“Not really. It sounds better if I have an amp to play through, but I never packed mine so I guess that’s a bust.”

“Actually, I may know of someone who could get you a new one. She’s a friend of Pinkie’s, real good with electronics.”

“Hmm, maybe. If I’m gonna be here I may as well find a way to use this ol’ guy.”

His saying that send a stab of guilt through Twilight, as she quickly remembered the idea that started all of this. “You know what, I think I may have Spike cover the library today. I need to go do some research on a few things.”

“Hmm? Research on what?” Gale asked, mimicking Twilight’s tone from earlier.

“Don’t worry about that for now, but if I can, can I ask you to help Spike reorganize the shelves today? I’ve been meaning to do it myself but haven’t had time.”

“Sure, I don’t see why not. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.” Well, I have several things I’d rather be doing, but I can’t really do any of those at this point . . .

Berry and charged stood, watching as the rain died down, when Gale and Twilight finally came down stairs. The duo turned to the stairs as they heard the pair approach. “Oh, there you are.” Charged called out, as Berry went off with Spike to find to find whatever book she’d been looking for.

“So, yeah, Twilight, most of the artists I listen to have been making music for over 20 years.” Gale said, continuing an unheard conversation.

“20 years? That seems like a long time for somepo- someone to be making music.”

She’s learning . . . “Well, yes and no. Hell, most of them started way back in the 70’s, some even earlier.”

“Wait, over 40 years? How old are they then!?”

“Probably late 60’s. What I’m trying to say though, is that you shouldn’t take my music taste as an indication of every human’s. Honestly, there aren’t too many people out there that enjoy the same music as me.”

“Was that song you played earlier very old?”

“What, ‘Cemetery Gates’? Nah, a little over 20, or something like that.”

“Is that what it’s called? Oh, and that’s a long time for such a short song to be popular, Gale.”

“‘Gates’, short?” eyebrow raised, he then remembered that she couldn’t have known. “No, I was only playing the intro. The whole song’s like seven minutes.”

“Really? Hmm, do you know how to play the rest of it?”

“Yes. “ he deadpanned “I probably won’t though.” Before she could add anything, he called out “Hey, Charged, it finally done raining?”

“Yeah, it just stopped. What took you so long, anyways?” she said, turning to face the two.

“Nothing.” Gale said, before Twilight had a chance to say anything, he added “I was looking through some things, and Twilight decided she had to know what they were. I told her, and we came back down here.”

“Ah, okay. So, are you doing anything else?”

“Well, I was going to go look through my private collection of spell books for a few hours, I want to see if I can find something.”

“And I’m probably going to see if Spike needs help organizing things. I think it’s fair to say that I’m the tallest one of us all in here right now, so I can probably get to every shelf in the place.”

With that said, Twilight went off to a back room, leaving Gale and Charged alone by the large front window. “You know.” Charged started, staring to the sky outside “I think the schedule called for the rest of the week to be sunny.” Turning back to him, she asked “What do you think of that?”

“The mere fact that you have ponies who can control the weather is like witchcraft to me. Humans can’t manage that, and we’ve been trying for decades, centuries maybe.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. I mean, we have naturally occurring seasons like you do, but predicting the weather past the next three or four days gets quite hard, especially during Spring. It’s why I planned to never move to Kansas. Screw that.

“Kansas?”

“One of the states in my home country. About middle of the continent. The landscape is very flat and the area gets a lot of tornadoes during the Springtime. We had them back in NC, too, but nowhere near as bad.

“NC?”

“North Carolina, yes. That’s the state I’ve spent most of my life in.”

“Hmm, okay. So, how many states are there?”

"50.”

“And they’re all part of a single nation?”

“Yeah. Things don’t always go so well because of that, but it generally works out.”

As their conversation continued, the pair moved to the couches and Gale told Charged about the systems humans use to determine the weather patterns. He also started absentmindedly drumming on the arm of the couch.

After a few minutes, Spike called out “Hey Gale, can you come get this for me?” Turning to face him, Gale saw that the book Berry was after sat atop a shelf that neither could reach, and Twilight had moved the only ladder to an unknown location.

“Yeah, give me a sec.”

An hour or so later, Berry and Charged decided to leave, which left Gale and Spike with little else to do, as none of the ponies in town seemed to need any books. Since they had nothing better to do, the two sat around discussing their, or rather Spike and Twilight’s, friends. “So let me get this straight, you’re telling me that miss tye-dye mane over there can actually break the speed of sound?”

Spike looked him dead in the eyes and said “Yes.”

“I don’t believe you.” he shot back, both of them unaware that Dash herself had walked in just a moment before.

“You want me to prove it?” she said, strutting over to the couch.

Are all these ponies freaking ninjas?“Yes.”

“Why don’t we step outside then? I don’t think Twilight’d be too happy if I broke all the windows again.”

“Again?”

Spike answered for her “Yes, ‘again’. That sort of stuff happens when you break sound.”

“Still not believing you.”

Following her outside, Gale went on “There’s no way you’re gonna pull it off. No way in hell.”

Giving her best, albeit unintentional, Maverick impression, she replied “Well, I guess you could say I’ve got the need. The need for speed.”

Did, did she just? No. No, she can’t have . . . he thought, as he watched her fly up over the library.

“Still wanting to take that bet?” she yelled down, her demeanor staying just as cocky as before.

“Screw it, why not?” he called back, wondering if she was actually bluffing or not. There’s no way she can actua-

The sudden boom that rang out broke his train of thought, and he was left even more confused when he looked up to see a rainbow like wave emanating from where the pegasus had done what he thought impossible.

Holy shit. “Okay, I believe you now. But, I have one question.”

“That is?” she inquired, floating back down to the ground and enjoying the look of shock on his face.

“How the hell did you just do that!?”

“Um, flapping my wings?

Her comeback snapped him out of his shock, and he replied “Okay, smartass, you know what I meant.”

“That’s speciest.”

“What?” he asked, before facepalming as he realized what she’d meant. “Ugh, it’s a figure of speech.”

“Still speciest.”

“I don’t give a damn.”

“Wow.”

“Figure. Of. Speech. No malintent behind it aimed at anyone save for the person I call one.” Note to self: Calling someone a jackass here is much more insulting than back home. Cool.

“Whatever you say.” floating up to him, she went on “So, what were you two talking about when I came in?”

“Nothing much, Spike was just letting me know a bit about the area. It seems I’m gonna be here awhile . . . “ Gale knew that his saying that would hurt to her, so he quickly added “Other than that, I was thinking about getting my guitar out. Yeah, I don’t have an amp for it but I can still practice a few of the tougher songs I know.”

“What’s a guitar?”

“Human instrument. Not too hard to play, but a pain to learn. I bought one a few years ago and sort of self-taught myself how to play a few of my favorite songs.”

“Hmm, that sounds lame. I mean, who wants to sit around playing some dumb instrument all day? No offense.”

Dumb instrument, eh? “You wouldn’t be saying that if you heard some of the stuff you can do with one. You know what, I’m gonna go bring mine down. At the very least, I’ll have something to do for the rest of the day.”

Rainbow and Spike stood idly chatting as Gale went upstairs to get the instrument in question.

“So, what do you think of him, Spike?”

"Rainbow Dash, I don’t have an opinion on that. I barely know the guy!”

They halted their conversation when Gale came back downstairs. It took him a few moments to reach the couch, since he was carrying his guitar and a box of sheet music. “Geeze, I never realized just how much I know and or am learning to play.”

Setting the case down he opted to spill the box onto a table, and started filling through all the songs. The collection of varying pieces was somewhat of a shock for the other two, since they didn’t know how one could possibly play them all.

Wow, so he knows how to play a lot of different stuff, huh? I may need to get him and Thunderlane together someday. Dash thought, remembering about how her co-captain liked to just sit around and drum on anything.

As she sorted through the music, she started to notice a pattern. “Gale, some of these songs, there names are kinda dark.”

Glancing up, he asked “How so?”

“Well, there’s this one.” she said, passing him a sheet labeled ‘The thing that should not be.’

“Yeah, okay, I’ll give you that one. Metallica are known for their darker themes. It’s fun to play tough, if you have the endurance.”

“Oh?”

Gale chose to respond not by talking, but rather by taking his guitar and playing a slowed down version of the solo.

Gasping, Dash said “Sweet Celestia, that’s fast.”

“That’s a slowed down version. Maybe ¾ speed.”

"Holy hay.”

“Okay, I can not take you seriously if you’re gonna keep saying things like that.”

“What?”

“Ugh, nevermind. I’m just gonna be over here practicing this for now. Let me know if you need me, Spike.”

The rest of the day went by without incident, though many ponies came into the library, not all strictly for books, most left Gale alone when they saw he was preoccupied. The rest of the week went by in this fashion, with Gale and Spike manning the library while Twilight went off to do some research.

"J.A.R."

View Online

Over the course of the next week, Gale opened up a bit to Twilight and Spike, gradually getting less abrupt in his responses to anything they ask. Just as well, Gale began to figure out how the two he was staying with would normally act, which he thought was quite like a brother and sister would.

On Friday, Gale went to go find Twilight, looking to ask her if they had a shower that he could comfortably fit in. When he got to her room, he happened to overhear Twilight as she read through an older looking scroll. “. . . And it is believed that the spell must be cast under the same circumstances in order to . . . ”

The hell is she talking about? Eh, screw it, I can set something up in the, wait . . . does this place have a basement? He figured it best not to bother her, and went back to the main room, intending to play his guitar for a few hours, he hadn’t practiced in a long time and was still rather rusty.

Twilight came out of her room about an hour later, saddlebags strapped to her sides and a list levitating in front of her. Stopping at the door, she turned and called out “Hey, Gale, I’m headed into town to get some groceries, you want to come with?”

“Uh, sure, I guess.” he said, setting his guitar in it’s case. “Just give me a second.” he moved the case out of the way before getting up to join her. “So, how does this work? Is it an open air market or is there a building somewhere?”

“Open air. Most ponies already have their own stores, for the winter months, but prefer outdoor stalls.”

“Hmm, okay then.” he said, keeping pace with Twilight as they approached Ponyville's market. I wonder what ponies would actually sell in a market. . . I guess I’m about to find out. As they walked in the market, Gale found himself once again looking about the town.

Though he’d only been there a week, his willingness to help anypony who went into the library had already started to change the townsponies’ collective view of him. Though it was subtle, he’d already picked up on it. Hardly a week and it seems that these ponies have started to realize that I’m not just another animal. I was not expecting that.

Twilight interrupted his train of thought when she asked “So, what do you want me to get?”

“Hmm?”

“Well, I figure I should probably get you something to eat as well. I mean, I doubt you’d enjoy constant salads.”

“Well, I bet most of my favorite foods wouldn’t be for sale here,” Hell, they’re probably illegal. Sapient animals and shit . . . “Do ponies eat fish?”

“Well, it’s only guard ponies that really eat any meats, and even then it’s mostly just the long patrol. I do know somepony we can get some from though, after we’re done here.” They walked up to a stall before Gale could reply, so he stood back and watched. Twilight spent a few minutes talking with the owner, a mare named Carrot Top, before she turned to Gale and they left for the next stall.

Gale spent the majority of their market excursion as he did at the first stall, merely standing back to let Twilight do all her bargaining and chatting in general. As they continued, Gale found himself carrying a few boxes since Twilight either didn’t have the room left in her saddlebags, or whatever she bought simply wouldn’t have fit to begin with. Well, it’s not the worst I’ve had to endure, and I get free food.

“Are we dropping this off back at the library before we go talk to this friend of yours? I wasn’t entirely expecting to be carrying nearly seventy pounds of varying foods.”

“I never said we were going to see a friend, but yes, This will be the last stall.” she said, trotting over to see the Apple family stand.

Hmm, figures. Gale followed suit, setting the box he’d been carrying down when he got there. “Christ, that’s heavy.” he said, waiting for a break in the conversation.

“Twilight, you know you don’t need to come out here to order anythin’, right? Just drop by the farm.” Applejack said, nudging her brother

“Eeyup.”

“Yeah, I know, I just wanted to say hi before Gale and I take my groceries back to the library. Say, do you now if Fluttershy is home today?”

“I don’t know, actually, why?”

“Ehem, if I may, Twilight?” Gale interrupted. At her nod of approval, he went on. “Applejack, humans are omnivores, we typically eat more meat than plants though, but that’s not always true. Anyways, I asked, Twilight if she thought your friend could get some fish for me, so I could have something other than a salad.”

Applejack took a moment to mull over what he’ said, before nodding her head and saying “Yeah, that makes a lot a sense. I know she buys ‘em, but you might even be able to catch a few upstream from her place.”

“Hmm, I always did enjoy fishing . . . “ Gale said, picking the box back up. “Thanks for letting us know, Applejack.”

“Sugarcube, just call me Aj.All my friends do.”

Okay then . . . ”Okay then. Twilight, sorry to interrupt you two’s conversation but we should probably get some of this to the library.” he said, shaking the box he was carrying for emphasis

Twilight said goodbye and she, along with Gale, set off for the library.

When the pair returned to the library, Spike was waiting for Twilight with a scroll from the princess. “She sent that, then one telling me not to read it. Is everything alright?”

Snatching the scroll with her magic, Twilight started for the kitchen. “Yes, Spike. It’s just a personal discussion between the two of us.”

Gale followed her to put away their freshly bought food, still amazed by the fact that Twilight knew the princess that well. “Hmm, ‘personal discussion’ with the nation's demi-godess leader? Now I’m wondering what’s up.”

“She asked me to look over a few documents for her, that’s all.” she said, beginning to sort her groceries via magic.

Gale took a step back to let her finish putting things away. “What, are you her editor or something?”

“I guess you could say that, at times.”

“What’s next? Are you and her secretly on first name basis outside of the public eye?”

Twilight made to scratch her neck with a hoof. “Um, . . . well you see . . .”

“Seriously?” Gale deadpanned.

“Well, yes to an extent. I don’t in professional correspondences of course, but if it’s just a private letter, then yes.”

“Wow . . . I don’t even have a witty response to that.” he said, moving to help her load the last of the groceries, as well as grab something to drink.

Though he could see the house in the distance, it wasn’t until they were almost there that Gale realized the sheer number and variety of animals Fluttershy cared for. Not sure how I feel about being dragged out to see someone I don’t even know the name of. Eh, it’s not like this is the first time that’s happened.

“So how would humans normally eat fish? Twilight asked, in an attempt to keep the conversation going for the remainder of their walk.

Gale counted off the methods he knew on a hand as he replied. “Hmm? Fillet, grilled, fried, seared, whatever the hell sushi is supposed to be, sandwiches, and probably a bit more. It really depends on what kind of fish you’re cooking.”

Not quite satisfied with his answer, Twilight specified “How do you normally have it?”

Taking a moment to this, he replied “Hmm, I don’t each much fish, but usually fried.” Don’t even think about asking if you can fry a chicken. “So what about you?” he asked, quickly turning the tables on her.

“What about me?” Twilight looked up at him, genuine concern in her words.

“Well, you said it’s mainly the guard that eat any sort of meat, but surely someone like you would have at least tried it once. For research if nothing else.”

With a shake of her head, Twilight said “Me? No, not personally. My brother’s in the royal guard, and I’ve been told that I probably wouldn’t like it.”

“Hmm, suit yourself.” he said as they walked up the path to the front door.

Just before they reached the door, Twilight stopped him “I should probably warn you now, Fluttershy’s . . . well . . .”

“Extremely shy?”

With a sigh, Twilight replied “Yes.”

“Well, I guess her name was prophetic.” at her look he went on “Sheesh, I’ll turn down the sarcasm then.”

Smirking, Twilight knocked on the door. ”Hey Fluttershy, you there?” she called out, hoping to catch her friend’s attention. “It might take a minute, especially if she was making dinner.”

After a few minutes of waiting, Twilight knocked again. “Hmm, she may be out back feeding some of her animals. I think they usually eat right about now.” She started walking around to the back of the house, but realized Gale hadn’t moved to follow her. “Well, come on. She’s probably just back here.”

Ugh, there’s a reason I never liked zoos . . . “Give me just a second.” he said, walking over to her. “Might I add that I am not at all comfortable with walking into an area filled with animals my kind have had a long standing tradition of hunting?”

Twilight told him she understood, but kept going anyways, reminding him that they were not going to hurt him

They immediately spotted Fluttershy some distance away, seemingly feeding otters. “Hey Fluttershy, come here. I have someone I want you to meet.” Twilight hollered, getting the mares attention rather quickly.

Fluttershy went to walk over to Twilight, but paused when she saw Gale standing next to her. Oh my, who is that? She did her best to remember that Twilight wouldn’t be talking to them if they were dangerous. I don’t think I’ve seen anypony like them before . .

She paused a few feet away from the two to ask. “Um, who, who’s this, Twilight?” She asked, quickly adding “I don’t mean to offend but I’ve jus-”

Gale held up a hand to stop her for a second. “Never seen anyone like me? Yeah . . . I’ve been getting that a lot lately.” Motioning for her to come over to them, he added “So, you must be Fluttershy?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow to the fact that he hadn’t laughed as he said it. Hmm, he’s getting better. After a brief discussion, Fluttershy went to finish feeding her animals before she, Twilight, and Gale went inside to continue their conversation.

Once inside, Twilight gave them a proper introduction. Beginning with Gale. “Fluttershy, this is Gale. He’s been staying at the library for the past week or so, ad will probably be for awhile.” She winced as she realized what she’d said, and how she’d said it.

Thankfully for her, Gale brushed it off for the moment, opting instead to nod his head and say. “Nice to meet you.”

Thankful that he didn’t say anything, Twilight went ahead and introduced Fluttershy. “Gale, this is my good friend, Fluttershy. Ponyville’s resident veterinarian.”

“Oh, I’m not that good twilight. I just watch my animals to make sure they don’t get hurt.”

Twilight offered a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Fluttershy, you’re an absolutely amazing vet. Don’t let anypony tell you otherwise.”

“Well, I, um, i-if you say so . . .”

Gale stood silent, deciding to let them have their moment. Damn, and I thought Ritchie shy when I met him . . . “I’d think you must know what you’re doing if you’ve got all these guys as well taken care of as they seem to be.” he said, as he walked to a nearby couch. “Do you mind if I take a seat? It’s a bit of a hike out here if you’re not prepared for it.” Carrying 70-ish pounds of food around for over an hour just before definitely doesn’t help . . .

“No, go ahead. Twilight, can I ask you something though? If it’s no trouble?” Though she’d asked nicely, there was a certain urgency in her tone that caught Twilight’s attention.

“Yeah, Fluttershy. What is it?” she asked, following her across the room.

“Um, how do I ask this, . . . um, what is your friend? I, I don’t want to be mean” she hastily added, afraid that Twilight would be mad at her for asking. “ . . . It’s just that I’ve really never even heard of anypony like him before.”

“Well, as he’s said to me several times now, he’s ‘not a pony’. As to exactly what he is? He says he’s called a human. I’m not entirely sure what that means myself, but who am I to judge?”

As Twilight gave Fluttershy a brief description of Gale, he sat on a couch at the far end of the room. Looking down at the table in front of him, Gale wondered about this friend of Twilight’s. I’ve known some shy people in my life, but I think she takes the cake at this point. Still, she seems like a nice person.

While both Twilight and Fluttershy were occupied, Fluttershy’s pet rabbit, Angel, snuck up to Gale. Angel had seen Fluttershy’s initial reaction to Gale and had taken a dislike to him. Once sure that the two weren’t looking, Angel bit Gale’s right leg.

“Ow!” Looking down at his leg, Gale saw that Fluttershy’s pet rabbit had bitten him. The hell was that for? “Okay there, buddy, let go.” he chuckled as he lightly shook the rabbit off himself. Sheesh, should I call him Bugs or Roger? Does it really matter if no one but me knows who they are?

Fluttershy, who’d only seen Gale shake Angel off his leg, walked with Twilight back to the couch to get to know Gale better. Though, she’s already taken a bit of a dislike to him for being mean to her rabbit.

The better part of the next hour was spent with the three discussing Gale’s dietary habits. “So, yes. I am an omnivore. I do tend to eat different meat-based foods, though I can get by without much of them.”

“Well, I guess that’s good to know. I was a little worried about some of my friends here.” she said, quickly adding “Not, not that I think you would’ve but” Once again, he held up a hand to stop her.

“I know, you’re worried about your pets. Trust me, if anyone would have hurt my old dog, they would have made a very poor life decision.” Chuckling, he added “There was a guy down the street from my who came after Rusty with a knife. He ended up in the hospital with a concussion, and I ended up with a chip in my old mahogany baseball bat.” Probably would’ve gotten an assault charge had a responding officer not seen the guy chuck his knife into a bush.

“Why would somepony attack your dog with a knife!?” Fluttershy gasped.

“Hell if I know. The guy was a druggie anyways . . . “ he said, bringing the conversation to a complete halt.

After a few seconds of silence, Twilight spoke up. “Uh, could we maybe, change the subject?” When she saw that neither of them were “Well, as we’ve said, Gale is an omnivore. It’s not really easy to get any sort of meat based foods here, so he,”

“Ehem?” Gale looked down at her, raising an eyebrow for emphasis. Don’t pin this whole thing on me.

With a roll of her eyes, Twilight went on. “We, were wondering if he could try fishing from the river out back?”

“Um, I don’t see why not. Just, please be careful.”

That was almost too easy . . . “Will do. Now I just need to get a fishing rod . . . “

The group spent the next few minutes discussing the different types of fishing rods, as well as their uses. Fluttershy’s rabbit Angel, took this as an opportunity to sneak up on Gale once more. Taking his time, the rabbit carefully moved up to his leg before he bit down. Hard enough to draw blood this time.

“Hey!” Gale yelled, jerking his leg up into the table. Both Twilight and fluttershy jumped at his outburst, as he glared daggers down at Angel. What the fuck, man?! “Okay, what the hell is your problem, rabbit?”

Twilight looked at her friend, confused as to what he was talking about. “Gale, what are you-” she trailed off, having caught sight of Angel, who was still holding onto his leg.

Forcefully shaking Angel off his leg, Gale answered. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” Looking back at Angel, he quietly growled. “Do that again, rabbit, see what happens.”

As he turned back to the mares, he found himself nearly face-to-face with, a rather angry, Fluttershy. “Please tell me, Gale, what would happen to my bunny?” she asked, not even acknowledging his, now bleeding, leg.

You know, she’s actually a little intimidating. Matching her stare, he coldly replied. “For everyone’s sake, let’s not have to find out.” Though she’d wavered, Gale could easily see that she wasn’t going to back down until she got an answer. Okay then, Butterball, try me.

He hardened his stare slightly. Just enough for her to start backing off. “And, I don’t know if you noticed, Ms, but your rabbit,” he practically spat the word in disgust “has bitten my leg twice now, and it’s kind of hard to get blood out of socks.” Motioning down to his leg, he stopped talking and let her take in what he’d said. One more time and I’m fucking drop-kicking the little shit into a lake.

Fluttershy finally broke her stare and looked at his leg to realize that yes, Angel really had bitten him, and yes, it drew blood.

“Oh, oh my . . . Gale I’m . . .”

“It’s fine,” he hissed. Having taken a deep breath to calm himself, he added. “Like I said, I’ve had worse. Just, please, don’t let him do it again.” Motherfucking rabbit . . .

Fluttershy then turned to scold her pet. “Angel Bunny! You should know better than that!”

Twilight decided it was best to leave before anything else happened. So, she said goodbye to Fluttershy before she, and Gale, left. Once they were a good distance from Fluttershy’s cabin, Twilight rounded on Gale. “What happened to being nice?”

He shrugged, and looked down at her and asked. “I thought I was?”

“You threatened Angel Bunny.” she shot back.

Oh great, so this is happening . . . he thought, rolling his eyes. ”No, I warned him. I could have said that I’d drop kick him into a fucking lake. Hell, I wanted to say that.” he deadpanned, looking right at Twilight and showing no remorse.

His comment flabbergasted her. “What the hay is wrong with you?”

And there it is. In an almost eerily calm tone, he asked.“Twilight, do I look like a pony?”

His sudden tone shift surprised her. “What does that have to do with this?” she exclaimed.

“Just answer me, would you?” he went on, still unnervingly calm as he, unbeknownst to Twilight, was doing his best not to cause a scene. “Do I look like a pony?” finally showing a sign of emotion as he asked the question yet again.

“Well, no . . . but I-” she started before he went on.

“Then why do you assume I must think like one?”

That caught Twilight off guard, leaving her with only one reply. “What?”

“Look,” He sighed. “I wasn’t going to actually do anything to him. And, I admit, I probably shouldn’t have said that right in front of Fluttershy, but again, I was never going to actually do anything to her rabbit.” he said, refusing to dignify Angel by saying his name.

“Then why would you-”

“I wanted to scare the little shit so he wouldn’t do that a third time. His teeth are fucking sharp.” he said, looking at her coldly,

His last comment ended the conversation and they walked the rest of the way back to the library in silence. Once they returned, Gale went up to his room and Twilight went back to her studying.

Spike manned the library until closing before they all went to sleep that night.

Gale took a seat high up in the grandstands to watch the second half of the homecoming game. Though he was never a sports person, he felt it right to at least go to his senior year homecoming game. Especially since he wasn’t going to the dance.

Why’d you sit this far up again?’ Jessica called out as she walked over, holding both plates of nachos in one hand and two bottles of soda in another. ‘Sorry I took so long, the line was awful.’

Looking at his girlfriend all Gale could do was smile and ask. ‘Have I ever told you you’d be great as a waitress?’

Setting the food down, she lightly punched his arm before shooting back ‘You do realize I have a part time job as one, right?’ Leaning in, she looked him in the eyes with a smug expression.

I don’t know whether to love or hate that look on her face . . . ‘Well, yes . . ‘ he stammered. ‘ . . . Oh you know what I meant.’

‘Yeah, yeah. How’s the game going anyways?’ she asked as the buzzer went off, indicating someone scored a touchdown. Both of them looked over to see that it had been their team.

‘Would you look at that?” he said ’Ritchie’s finally got his ass in gear this game.’ They watched as the teams lined up once again. Both wondering if their friend could rally a comeback for the rest of the team.

A few minutes after the game ended, the air waited to greet their mutual friend and congratulate him on a job well done.

After that, they made their way back to Jessica’s car. They couldn’t use Gale’s since the engine was being rebuilt.

Walking up to the car, Gale could tell something was wrong before Jessica did. ‘What the? Who hit my door!?’ Jessica shouted as she saw the large dent in her Malibu.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ a woman in a dark jacket called over her shoulder as she walked away. ‘I figured you wouldn’t care for that pile.’

‘Come back here you bi-’ she started before Gale held her back.

‘Jess, calm down. It’s not worth it.’ he said, slowly releasing her once he was sure she was calm enough. ‘Besides, you can clearly see her plates and there’s a camera over there.’ he said, pointing to the building not 20ft behind them. ‘I’m sure they caught that on tape.’

Heaving a sigh, she turned and hugged him. ‘Alright, to the office then.’

‘Yeah, let’s go. . . . ‘ he said, turning to follow her.

Walking towards the door, Jessica muttered ‘What a bitch . . . ‘ Completely failing to notice Gale’s shock.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard her swear at anything. . . Then again, I’d be just as pissed f that was my car and not hers.

Waking up the next morning, Gale reflected back on the memory he’d dreamt the night before. Man, I still can’t believe Jess was about to punch that bitch. When did I start being the overreacting one? Still thinking about days past, Gale got dressed and headed downstairs.

When he got to the bottom of the stairs, Gale noticed that Twilight was hurriedly reading through a scroll on the far side of the room. Curiosity getting the better of him, he called out. “Hey, Twilight, what’re you reading over there?”

She looked up from the scroll for only a moment and replied. “Some legal documents. I'll be done here in a minute, then I want to talk to you.”

Oh boy, I have a feeling I know where this is going . . . he thought, walking over to, and taking a seat on, one of the two couches.It took Twilight a few minutes before she put the scroll away and walked over.

“So, about yesterday . . . I’ve been thinking about what you said and you’re right. As much as I try to, I have a hard time remembering that you are completely different from us in several ways.” She took a seat on the couch opposite him and continued. “I’m still a little upset at you for scaring Fluttershy like that, but,” she paused, searching for the words she wanted. “I realized yesterday that I have no right to try to make you change.” she hung her head and started tearing up as she went on. “After all, it’s kind of my fault you’re here in the first place . . .”

I stand corrected, that is nowhere near where I thought this was going . . . wow. Gale thought, holding a rather emotionless stare at the floor.”Yeah, it kinda is, but hey, there’s no use crying over it now is there?” he asked, the silence set in once more as he sang under his breath. “Well, yeah, they say life goes on, long after the thrill of livin’ is gone.”

Twilight looked up as he said that, confused as to how he wasn’t yelling at her right now. She would be yelling at her if their positions were switched. I don’t . . . I thought he’d at least have raised his voice. Aiming to hide her confusion, Twilight looked out the window as she thought of a response. Something happened to him before coming here, that’s obvious. I guess the question is, what happened? What caused him to act like that?

They sat in silence for another minute before Gale spoke up. “That wasn’t all you wanted to talk to me about, was it?” he asked, not in anger but genuine curiosity. He looked up at almost the same time as Twilight looked back, and they stared at each other for a moment before she answered.

“No, it wasn’t. I, uh, I got a scroll from Princess Celestia early this morning, I think you might want to read it.” She said, getting up off the couch and motioning for him to follow her. “It’s just over here.”

You could’ve just teleported it to us, but whatever. Walking never killed anyone. Getting up to follow her, Gale wondered aloud. “So, what could possibly be in a letter from your princess that I need to read?”

“See for yourself.” Twilight said, floating him the scroll.

With scroll in hand, Gale read aloud.

'Twilight, I’m happy to tell you that as of now, Gale is a legal citizen of Equestria. My sister and I were able to expedite the legal process necessary so he didn’t get caught in legal limbo. Please, do give this to Gale to read. There is also a message I would like to give him privately. If you could have Spike send me a message once he’s awake I would greatly appreciate it.'

“Wow, that was much quicker than I was expecting.” he said, eyes wide. “I mean, I was figuring it would take at least three months . . . “

He started to say something else but was cut off when Twilight called out. “Hey Spike? Can you come here for a minute?”

He rushed into the main room, skidding to a stop before asking. “What is it Twilight?”

“I need you to send a quick message to Princess Celestia for me.”

“Okay, what is it?” he said, as she floated him a quill and paper.

Wow, able to move objects with her mind and still has someone else write for her . . . Gale thought, amused with the situation in front of him.

“I just need you to tell her that Gale’s awake and she can send the message she wants to give him.” she said, slowly so that Spike could write it down. Once he did, Spike sent the letter off with a puff of fire and they waited for a reply.

Their wait was short as Spike coughed out a scroll. Upon its materialization, Gale quickly grabbed it and started walking away.

Starting after him, Twilight asked “Where are you going?”

“Well, she said ‘in private’.” Gale called back. “I might as well go over here and read it.” With that said, he walked over to the stairs and sat on one of the lower steps. “Okay then, what do we have here?”

'Hello, Gale. As you have probably been told, you are from here on out to be considered a legal citizen of Equestria. That said, I’d like to warn you that your current status does not allow you any sort of legal immunity. Not that I think you would do anything, but I figured it best to tell you. Now, if this is being read in private, look over your shoulder.'

Looking over his shoulder, Gale saw that Twilight had been standing a few feet away the entire time. Damn, she’s good. He thought, before getting up and heading for his room. “I’ll be back down in a minute, I want to read this in an actually private location.”
Walking into his room, he shut the door before sitting down to read.

'If Twilight is no longer watching you, and I figure she would have tried, then I feel it safe to say that you will need to be cautious with your dealings for now as few ponies will know about your status as a citizen. I believe you’ve already heard of one who will try to give you a hard time. Unfortunately, there is a clause in Ponyville’s town charter that prevents me or my sister from actively intervening in the political system if no laws have been broken. As much as the town’s mayor has tried to do, she hasn’t technically broken any laws. One more thing, I cannot express how sorry I am that you’ve found yourself in this situation. I am already working with Twilight on finding a way to send you back, until then you are a welcome citizen. - Princess Celestia.'

“Well, that happened.” he said, standing back up and walking back into the hall. I don’t see why that needed to be read in private, but whatever. He thought, making his way back downstairs.

"Shambala."

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Don’t know why the hell I needed to read that in private. Nothing in it seemed that important. Gale wondered, coming down off the step and back into the main library. “Hey, Twilight? You got a stove, some eggs, and a skillet? I kinda wanted to make breakfast.”

Twilight turned from the bookshelf she’d been looking through to answer. “Yeah. I bet Spike would cook them if you asked."

“No, I’m good to do it myself, I just need to know where everything’s at.” he said, walking over to her.

As soon as he said that, Twilight started looking for Spike. After looking for a second, she called out. “Spike, can you show Gale how to use the stove?”

Looking down at her, Gale deadpanned. “I’d like to think I know how to cook, Twilight."

“That’s not what I meant!” she stammered. “I just wanted to make sure you were shown how our stoves work. In case they were heavily different from yours in some way.”

Sure, that’s what you say . . . “Whatever.”

Having Spike show him the ins and outs of an Equestrian stove got Gale reminiscing about the times he’d cook for his parents on their respective birthdays. Once he’d been told how to use it, Spike left him to his own devices because he wanted to ‘Go help Twilight.’ Gale might’ve believed him if he hadn’t seen him pull a book off a shelf and start flipping through it as he sat down. Yep, he’s definitely a kid.

Going back to the task at hand, Gale cracked a few eggs into a large glass bowl, added in some milk and mixed it all together before pouring it into a hot skillet. Having made breakfast for his family for a few years, and then for himself later, he slipped into a sort of autopilot as he cooked. The kitchen was silent save for the eggs cooking and his singing.

“Does she walk, does she talk, does she come complete?” he began, stirring his food and tapping a foot to the rhythm of an old favorite of his late father’s. He spent the next few minutes cooking, then did his best to find all the silverware.

Once the table was set, he called for the other two/ “Hey Twilight, Spike, I made eggs for you guys, if you want ‘em.” He went ahead and started putting some on a plate for himself as they walked into the kitchen.

After a minute of eating, Twilight turned to Gale. “Hey, Gale, do you normally sing while cooking?”

Looking up from his eggs, he asked. “Hmm? I was singing?”

“Yes. Something about a ‘centerfold’, whatever that is.”

She laughed at a stripping joke the other day, but has no idea what a centerfold is? . . . Wow. “It’s not too important, just a bit of human slang.“ Going back his eggs, he mentally added. Slang I am not explaining around Spike, even if it isn’t applicable here. The group sat in near silence for a few more minutes as they all finished up their breakfast.

Once they were done, Spike volunteered to do the dishes, citing it as being therapeutic. That struck Gale as odd, but he decided not to question it. He did, however, question that. How is it that I’m finding that odd but getting more used to this whole whateverthefuckitis that got me here?

The three stood around the kitchen, idly chatting until Rainbow Dash showed up. “Oh, hey, Rainbow. What brings you here today?” Spike asked when he spotted her walking in.

Rainbow scratched her neck before replying. “I, uh, I wanted to get a book for Thunderlane.”

“Oh?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow. “What for?”

“Well, he fractured his wing a week ago and he’s been grounded since. . . “ She said, mentally going back to the training accident that caused it. Sighing, she continued. “He pulled a favor I owe him and I’m supposed to get him something about drumming.”

Percussion with hooves? Gale wondered. How the hell does that work, and what kind of crazy shit could you manage to pull?

“Well, that’s a little unusual, but they’re over there.” she said, motioning over to the music section. “Look for subsection D-18."

Rainbow looked at her for a second before asking. “Twilight, what the hay is up with this ‘system’ of yours?”

Shooting her friend a questioning look, Twilight said. “What do you mean?”

“How do you expect anypony to find anything!?” Rainbow Dash burst.

Watching the conversation from a few feet away, Gale spoke up. “It makes a fair amount of sense to me.” he said as he walked up to the two. “Theme, section by alphabet, sub-sectioned by the second letter of each title.” he said, counting off on his fingers as a visual aid. “Music has a shelf. That is shelf organized into alphabetical sections. Each section has a subsection, which in turn is organized by the letter’s place in the alphabet., so 18 is ‘R’.”

Nodding her approval, Twilight said. “Exactly! See, Rainbow? Somepony gets it.”

“He’s not a pony.” she said a fraction of a second before Gale.

“Not a po-” Stopping, he looked down at her, eyes narrowed. “I don’t know if I should be happy, or offended by that.” he said, walking over to the shelf marked ‘Music’. “Give me a minute here,” he went on, looking through the subsections. “Found something.” he proclaimed, holding out a book on basic drumming technique.

Both Rainbow and Twilight stood slack-jawed at how quick he’d done that. Rainbow in particular was extremely surprised. How the hay did he do that so fast?

“I was going to point out that books labeled as ‘basic drumming techniques’ are harder to find because they’re going to be in ‘B’ and not ‘D’, but I see you’ve solved for that.” he said, nodding towards the subsection labeled ‘basics and instructions’. “Good call, by the way.”

Getting over her shock, Twilight responded. “Thanks. I was trying to make it as easy to navigate as I could.”

“Well, you did great.” Dash rolled her eyes and went on. “It’s really easy. . . “

Not one to let her get away with that, Twilight shot back. “Dash, just go work on whatever cloud project you’ve dreamt up.”

Well, alrighty then . . . Gale thought, looking between the two.

“Whatever.” she said, taking the book in hoof and making for the exit. She stopped at the door and called over her shoulder. “Oh, don’t forget, Twilight, first snow’s due next week."

Having realized she struck a nerve, Twilight called out. “Thanks for the reminder, Dash. I don’t think I have anything outside, but I’ll look later.”

Despite the fact that Dash was almost completely out the door, Gale yelled to her. “Hey wait, you said ‘first snow’? How much snow are we talkin’ about here?”

“The system’s supposed to drop four or five inches. I don’t remember the exact amount.” Turning back to him, she added. “Why’re you askin’ anyways?” Wincing as she, remembered that his car was still out in a field.

The three of them stood there for nearly a minute before Gale turned to Twilight. “Hmm, what do you think the odds are that Applejack would led me push Charlene into a barn?”

Almost without hesitation, Twilight replied. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t, there’s not a lot in them this time of year.”

Not one to be left out, Rainbow asked.“Mind if I tag along? I don’t have much else to do today.”

As a reply, both Twilight and Gale asked in unison,“What about Thunderlane’s book?”

“Eh, I’ll give it to him tomorrow.” she shrugged. “Besides, he’s gonna be stuck in bed for another few days. It’s probably not much use to him for now.”

Seeing no reason why they needed to stay, Twilight let Spike know they were leaving, and off they went.

The walk to the farm was mostly silent, with only small amounts of conversation between the three. Once they reached the gates, they started looking for either Applejack or Big Macintosh, whose name Gale still found amusing. Seriously, that’s something you’d call a freaking male stripper . . .

Hovering above the treeline, Rainbow Dash looked around for anyone in the Apple clan. “Ten bits says Big Mac’s still out messing with the fields” She haughtily proclaimed.

Gale, who had caught sight of the farm pony right as she’d said it, shot back. “Twenty bucks says you’re wrong.”

Twilight looked at him in confusion. “What do deer have to do with this?”

. . . That’s gonna keep happening, isn’t it? With a roll of his eyes, Gale replied. “Figure of speech.”

Once the reached the farmhouse Gale spotted Applejack and went to go talk with her, leaving Rainbow Dash and Twilight by the fence.

“Hey, Dash,” Twilight began. “What happened to Thunderlane’s wing? You said there was an accident?”

Rainbow offered a nervous laugh before replying. “He asked me to help him with endurance training but he couldn’t keep up.” Even as she said it, Rainbow knew that Twilight wouldn’t buy it, and she started sweating.

Thankfully for her, Gale and Applejack walked back over. “So, you guys are just okay with me parking my car in a barn until I can get ‘er running again?"

“I don’t see why not pardner, there ain’t anything needin’ to be there for now.” Applejack replied.

That might be one of the most Southern sentences I’ve heard in years. He thought, walking down to the fields. After a couple of seconds, he called out over his shoulder. “Well, I think we’d best go see what can be done with the old girl before it gets too dark, eh?”

With that said, the group set off once more for the crash site with Applejack diverting to go get Big Macintosh for help with the task at hand.

Once they had all gathered at the wreckage, Applejack began “So, how hard do you two think it’d be to get the left front here off the rocks?” Looking to her brother as she ended her sentence.

“Shouldn’t be too hard, just need ta get something to keep it in the air.” Big Macintosh said, pointing at the fender.

“You got a wheelbarrow?” Gale asked. “You might be able to get the tire in one and use that to pull it.”

Tapping her chin, Rainbow Dash commented. “That could work, but I think it will do more harm than good. I mean, that must weigh a ton”

“3,650Lbs, actually.” he said with a sheepish grin.

Scratching her neck as she floated, Rainbow Dash asked. “Um, how do you know that?”

“This’ll be the third time I’ve rebuilt a Challenger. I know a lot about them.” he replied, in what seemed like too calm of a voice to Rainbow Dash.

Taking a step away, Twilight took another look at the situation before stating. “I agree, I think that’s just going break the wheelbarrow and make the situation worse.”

After a moment of thought Big Macintosh snorted. “How ‘bout I go get my plow and set it on that? It should hold and if we’re all pushin’ we could move it.”

Taking another good look at the car, Gale replied. “Sounds good to me. You go get that and we can get started here.”

As the apple siblings left to locate Big Macintosh’s plow, Gale turned to Twilight and Rainbow. “Thanks for letting me know about the incoming snow, Ms. D-”

He got halfway through his thanks you before Rainbow Dash cut him off.“Please, dude, just call me Dash.”

Okay then. That’s what I get for trying to be nice, I suppose. “. . . Thanks for letting me know about the snow Dash. I really didn’t want to leave the old girl out in the elements.”

“No problem. It’s what I do.” she said, hiding her confusion at why he kept referring to a ‘her’.

Once the Apple siblings returned, Big Mac donned his plow and the group lifted Charlene up and attached the car to the plow.

“Well, I suppose it’s time we did this.” Gale said before the group fell silent as they struggled to move the car into her new home.

As they pushed the car into it’s new home, Gale called Twilight over. “Twilight, come here.” Once she moved over, he went on. “Do you see anything on the ground?”

She took a good look around before answering “No, why?”

“I don’t either, and I didn’t see any where she landed. I don’t know about gas, it would have evaporated by now, but there was no oil. To me that means the oil pan has to still be intact.”

Twilight figured he was talking about the car, but that didn’t stop her from asking “I’m sorry, what?”

“Hang on.” Gale said, walking to the driver’s door. “I don’t care if I put a hole in it, I need this hood open. Aj, think you can help with that?” he asked, pulling the release for the hood latch.

“Sure thing. Gale” she said, preparing up to buck the hood up. Together, they forced the hood open, the hinges were in good enough shape to hold it up.

Now able to take his first good look at the engine bay, Gale commented ”All the hoses are here, there’s no oil on the ground, hell the fuel lines are still intact.” He then began digging out any and all debris from the crash. “Fan’s not even bent. How the hell?”

Once he was sure everything was clear, Gale walked back to the, open, driver’s door and sat down. “A hundred bucks says she still turns over.”

“Once again, not sure what deer have to do with this.” Twilight said.

“Again, figure of speech, Twilight. Anyways, here goes nothing.”

Now sitting fully in the driver’s seat, Gale put his car in neutral, kept one foot on the brake, the other on the clutch, and turned the key. Almost five seconds after he turned the key, the engine turned over. It didn’t start, but it did crank. “Come on ol’ girl, I know you’re tougher than that.” he muttered before trying a second time. This one worked.

All the ponies present jumped back as the car’s 340Ci Chrysler V8 started. You wouldn't have needed to hear a new one to tell that it wasn’t running right, but Gale didn’t care.

“Oh, hell yes!” he shouted over the exhaust, before gunning the engine for a few seconds and then shutting it back off. “I knew this ol’ gal was tougher than that!”

As he climbed out of the car, he saw Applejack’s questioning expression. “Aj, according to, Rainbow Dash here, I dropped from maybe forty feet in the air. At over sixty-five miles an hour. I don’t know how, but this ol’ gal’s still alive and kicking.” He said, fondly patting the roof for emphasis.

Taking a step forward, Twilight proclaimed. “This seems highly improbable.”

“Twilight, you are a unicorn. You can literally teleport across town at will. To me, that is highly improbable. In fact, if I hadn’t already seen you do so, I’d say it was impossible outright.”

“Point taken. So, what are you going to do now?”

“Tear the ol’ girl completely apart, I suppose.” Wistfully looking back over the roof.

“Huh? You said it runs though.”

“Yes, she does. Very poorly. I wouldn’t expect you to know with no frame of reference, but that engine” he said, pointing to the still open hood. “Needs some serious work before I’d let it run for more than two minutes.”

That got Applejack curious. “Is the rest of ‘er that bad, Sugarcube?”

Hmm, someone gets it. ”I’m not sure to be honest. The fact that we could get her rolling in here, even if the left side had to be picked up, is good news to me. Don’t get me wrong, the entire suspension is shot. But if at least one side is good enough to have someone recreate the design, than it wouldn’t be too hard to mirror it.”

“Why not just fix what’s broken?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Big Mac, who had been silent until then, weighed in “I’d wager somethin’ like that needs ta be done in pairs.”

“Big Mac’s right, Rainbow. It’s a really bad idea to replace each side of a suspension separately.” He really is a man of few words, isn’t he? Well, I can’t fault him for it . . .

He took a few moments to look over the body damage once more, before commenting “Yeah, I’m not as concerned about the body for now. Most of this could be taken out with a sledgehammer and a bit of patience. I might just hope that the trans isn’t broken either because fixing one of those isn’t easy, even with the right tools.”

As he continued looking the car over, something caught his attention. Wait a minute . . . The back half of the car was sitting lower than the front. Not by much, but enough to catch his attention. “You know, now that I think about it, I didn’t get a good look at the rear suspension the other day, kinda hard to do with all the rocks n’ shit. Hmm, I wonder if I left a wrench anywhere? There might be something I can start with.”

After a quick search, Gale found the wrench he’d stashed under the passenger’s seat. Grabbing it, he walked to the passenger side of his car and, once again, crawled under the back half of it.

As he was looking around, he wondered aloud Huh, that’s weird. It’s like all the bolts back here were loose, and there’s even . . . a few . . . missing . . . It took Gale less than ten seconds to see what had caused his crash. What the sole reason he was stuck here was.

“That son of a bitch!"

The assembled ponies, save for Big Macintosh, all took a step back at his explosion as he pulled himself back out from under his car.

“Those motherfuckers loosened everything!“ he shouted, kicking the door. “Gah! Dammit, why didn’t I fucking check before I left!?” Big Macintosh even took a step back at that point.

Before any of them could say something, he turned and chucked the wrench out the door while yelling to the sky. “You happy now, ya fucking bastard?!” As the wrench landed, he leaned against the car, sliding down the side and sobbing.. “I should have known. God, I should have fucking known!”

Watching as he sat down against his car, Twilight stepped forward “Gale, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” he said, barely controlling his rage.

“Really, cause you don’t sou-” Dash started, before Applejack cut her off. “Rainbow, stop.”

Flashing Applejack a grateful smile, he said. “Really, I’m fine. Just, . . . just go back to the farm house or something.”

“You don’t seem fine to-” Twilight started, moving to help him up.

“I said I’m fine, dammit!” he shouted, once again startling all present.

“Hey! Don’t take your anger out on me. I just-”.

Putting a hand to her muzzle, he said “Look, Twilight, I get it. You ‘Just want to help’. Unless you can go back in time, and tell me to leave my motherfuckingphone behind, don’t bother . . . “

“What would your phone have to do with anything?”

“I would rather not say.” he replied, voice going cold once again.

“Gale, I just wanted to know what your phone has to do with anything,”

Putting his face in his hands, he said. “It’s not important.” Unknowingly muttering They’d have never found me . . .

Twilight caught this and wondered. Found him? . . . And, who are ‘they’? “Wait, somep- someone was looking for you?”

“What.”

“You just said someone was looking for you.”

What part of ‘I don’t want to tell you’ are you not getting?.“It doesn’t even matter anyways, I’m more than likely never going back.” Heaving a sigh, he unthinkingly added.” . . . I just hope she can forgive me.”

“Forgive you? Who are you talking about?”

”I don’t want to fucking talk about it!” standing back up, he turned and put his head against the roof before sighing once more. “I, I shouldn't have snapped like that, . . . I . . . I’m sorry.” he heaved a sigh and continued. “It’s, . . . it’s a long story and I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“But I-” she said, still trying to wrap her head around what she’d heard. What the hay is ‘it’ who are ‘they’ and who is ‘she’? Why is he being so defensive about whatever it is!?

Meanwhile, Gale was thinking. Dammit, why did I say anything? Fucking ponies don’t need to know about that shit.

Applejack saw where this could go, and walked over. “Now Twi it’s clearly somethin’ he don’t want to talk about. It’d probably be for the best ifn ya dropped the subject for now.”

“Thank you, Applejack,” Gale sighed. “It really isn’t something I want to bring up for now. It’s . . . difficult to talk about.” he said, stepping back from the car and turning to face them. “Again, I shouldn’t have snapped like that and I apologize for it.” With his anger mostly subsided, Gale finally realized just how hard he’d kicked his car when his leg started to ache. The others realized it when they saw the fresh dent in the door.

“Well, . . . shit.”

"86."

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With everything settling down, Twilight and the others went back to the farmhouse leaving only Gale and Applejack, who had elected to stay behind and keep him company as he began disassembling his car.

“Thanks Applejack,” Gale started, moving to go pick up the wrench he’d thrown. “Letting me keep my car in here means a lot to me. And, I’m sorry about that outburst it’s just that . . . ugh, there are some things I don’t want to talk about.” he continued, moving to take off the rear wheels. “And it seems that that’s all anyone is interested in asking about me.” He added under his breath.

“It’s alright sugarcube, I can tell that was gettin’ to ya.” she said. Moving to watch as he worked on loosening the lug nuts on the left rear wheel. Applejack sat down next to Gale as he continued to work on loosening the lug nuts, which were made harder to removed from the force of his crash-landing. “So, uh, can I ask ya a question?”

“That depends on what it’s about.” Gale calmly replied, keeping in mind that she didn’t seem like the type to push a question if he said no.

“Why did you call this thing a ‘she’ earlier? I mean, I figure it means something to you that’s why I did but, why?” She asked, looking at him in sincere confusion.

Gale shifted to look at her before replying. “Well, the phrase ‘this is my car, there are many like it but this one is mine’ comes to mind. Basically, every car either develops or already has some little things about it that are different from even another car of the same make, model, and year.” Standing back up, he moved to the trunk of the car. “Because of that, the longer you own a car the more you notice its particular quirks. It sort of develops a personality, in a sense.”

Applejack got up and followed him before saying. “I’m not sure I follow ya here, you’re saying that these ‘cars’ have a mind of their own?” Even as she said it, she took a small step away from the car.

“No, that’s not what I meant.” Gale replied with a smile, chuckling before continuing. “I’m not saying the car actually has a mind of its own, but rather that it has developed a few traits that, when you add them all together, can lend to the idea of it having a personality. For example,” He paused, walking to the radio antennae. “This car’s radio pretty much refuses to pick up any radio station ending in a 7. Everything else is fine, just not 7.”

Applejack had to pause for a second to wrap her head around what he was saying before she said. “I’m still not sure I get this. So, you gave the car a name because there are things about it that aren’t there on other cars?”

“That’s the basic idea of it, yeah. Because the car’s little flaws or quirks make it unique, some owners will give their car a name they see fitting. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Well, you look like a’ in reference to a pony’s name?”

“Yeah, I think I’ve heard that before.”

“Well, when I was putting this car together the first time, I noticed that the original owner had the license plate made as a way to remember his mother. A woman named Charlene. After I got her running and driving, the name just sorta made sense. She kinda seems like a Charlene.”

“Hmm, that’s still a little weird to me, but if it’s whatcha do then that’s that.”

The two lapsed into silence as Gale opened the trunk once more and removed the carpeting to reveal that a metal box had been underneath it up against the inside wall. “I knew putting this in would come in handy one day . . . just never figured it’d be like this.” At Applejack’s questioning expression he said. “It’s a tool kit specific to this car. I compiled one with the help of one of my friends and our boss, his dad.”

“Ah, so you got everythin’’ you’re gonna need to fix ‘her’,” she was still unsure how to address the car. “In that box then?” she asked, nodding to the box in question.

“Pretty much everything except the parts themselves. Thankfully it seems like there’s enough here to reverse engineer the rest of it all.” pulling the box out of the trunk with a grunt, he set it down and looked around for a second. “Say, is there anything I can get under the axle to hold it up once I get the wheels off? I knida should have done that before taking the lug nuts off the one wheel.” he admitted sheepishly.

Applejack thought about it for a second before telling him she’d be back after a few minutes.

I’ll be surprised if she actually comes back . . . I probably scared the shit out of her earlier. Hell, I scared myself with that . . . was it the three days without- his thoughts were interrupted when Applejack came back in, pulling a small wagon with several fairly sized logs in it.

Spitting out the wagon handle, she turned to him. “I hope these’ll work, pardner. It’s all I could find right now.”

After she brought in the logs, Gale asked if Applejack thought she could at the very least get under the axle and force it up enough for him to wedge a log under. She took a minute to decide, and another two to get herself into position underneath the car, but the both worked together and balanced the rear axle on two foot wide logs that were just tall enough to keep the wheels off the ground.

With that done Gale took the rear wheel he’d already unbolted off the car and set it to the side, opting to take a closer look at the brakes before inspecting the tire.”By the way,” He started as he moved to the other side. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

“Why’s that pardner?”

“You literally just lifted over 3,000 pounds of steel with your legs.” He exclaimed, voice tinged with a small amount of fear.

“Aw, that wasn’t too hard.” she said, tipping her hat to help hide her blush.

“That makes it worse . . . “ What the hell, man? She could drop-kick me into the next county . . . wait, . . . does this place even have counties?

The next half an hour went by in near silence as Gale began to disassemble the rear facia, noting that both tail lights seemed to be intact. “Well, that’s all I think I’m gonna do for now. The rest of it’s gonna have to wait a few until I can get my hands on something like an air impact or a blowtorch,” or both “because while I was the one to put this together, the car’s been parked mostly outside for the past year or two and everything’s already started rusting. Damn road salt.”

Since there was little left that Gale felt like working on, he and Applejack went back to the house, where the others had already set up dinner.

“So, what’s the story with the stetson, anyways?” He asked as they reached the porch.

“Oh, this ol’ thing?” she replied, taking her hat off for a moment. “I got on as a gift a while back, and I like it enough to keep it.”

“Ah, I see.” He said, reaching for the doorknob. Opening the door, he took a step back and motioned for her to enter. “After you. It is your house after all.”

Taking his cue, she made her way inside. You know, I jus’ don’t get this pon- er . . . what did Twilight say he was again? Walking down the hall, she wondered. One minute he’s nice, then he freaks out about something, and now he acts like he’s done something terrible. She wondered as they both entered the main room. I jus’ don’t get it . . .

As the pair made their way into the living room, the rest of the ponies were in the middle of a conversation, so they stopped at the doorway.

“So, I heard the weather team’s looking to hire another pony?” Twilight asked, looking to Rainbow Dash. “Is that true?”

“Well, the bosses are telling me I should look into replacing Thunderlane if he’s not doing better in the next two weeks. I haven’t had the heart to tell him, and I think I’d rather cover for him than let him go.”

Wow. That’s a side of Dash I thought I’d never see. Twilight wondered before saying. “Well, are there any candidates if they force your hoof on this?”

“Hmm? Oh, none so far. I should probably start looking.” she admitted with a laugh, rubbing the back of her neck and looking around. “Any suggestions?”

All the ponies in the room burst into laughter at their friend’s expense.

Gale noted that, as the ponies’ laughter died down, the youngest of the group was looking at him. The others followed her gaze and greeted their friends. Not wanting him to feel left out, Applebloom asked.

“So, uh, Mr. Gale, what would you normally do in your spare time?” as she said it, she looked to her siblings for approval.

“Hmm? Well, I haven’t really had any ‘spare time’ for awhile now.” Pausing to take a drink he scratched his neck and went on. “I mostly bounced between the two jobs I held and taking care of my house for my mother.”

“Well that’s really nice, but there's gotta be somethin’ else.”

“Well, I would take time to practice playing a guitar on the weekends.” he said, thinking back to the tail end of high school. ”I even had a friend wanting me to a band with her at one point,” After a brief pause, he added. “But I declined for personal reasons.” Reasons I am not bringing up here.

The next few hours went by with the group discussing anything and everything. Applejack filled them in on how the harvest season had gone and what to expect for the next year while Rainbow Dash added that the weather bosses were considering a program to help farmers stabilize their weather patterns. Twilight made a mention of how farming and weather work have become more entwined in recent years, and that it’s lead to an increase in harvest size. Soon, the clock struck seven and the group dispersed. Rainbow left for her cloud home while Twilight and Gale went back to the library.

When they arrived, Gale went up to his current room and picked up one of the few books he hadn’t really read back home: George Orwell’s 1984. Coming back down stairs, he sat down against the window to read for awhile before going to bed for the night. Big Brother is watching you . . .

The next morning, Gale awoke early and decided to take a shower before heading into town. Taking a shower was an adventure in an of itself as he remembered that the showers here were much smaller than those back home. Oh yeah . . . that . . . After he had worked out how to, and properly took, a shower Gale went back into his room to get dressed.

He grabbed yet another pair of jeans but paused when selecting a Tee-shirt. Hmm, no one here knows who any of these bands are . . . I could get away with getting an interview with one on. Nice. He thought, grabbing one of his favorite shirts, one that bore the cover image from Pantera’s ‘Cowboys From Hell.’ album.

With that done, he quickly made some toast for breakfast before making his way into town. Armed with the knowledge that he was legally a citizen of the nation, Gale decided that he should get a job to repay Twilight, or help buy replacement parts for his car. That thought actually brought a smile to his face as he recalled thinking the same thing at the start of his sophomore year of high school.

Gale first went to the hardware store, thinking it would be the most logical choice for someone with hands. Unfortunately it seemed that, although there was a help wanted sign in the window, the owner wasn’t really interested in giving Gale an application. Hmm, whatever. He thought, walking back outside and strolling down the street to the sofa and quill shop. Ought to have better luck here . . . To Gale’s surprise, the owner was actually willing to give him an interview. One of the shop’s previous employees had just been sent off to guard training so they were short hooved, the owner had told him. Unfortunately, Gale didn’t quite have the stamina to constantly move couches around all day, but the owner said he’d consider him if they ever needed a managerial standpoint.

Considering the place I’ve worked at before don’t actually exist here . . . I think he was just humoring me. He tried a few other places with similar results before finding himself looking at a ‘Help Wanted’ sign posted outside a coffee shop on the corner of Main and Saddle street. ‘Mocha’s Lattes’ With a single look inside, Gale could tell that the owners knew what they were doing, if the number of ponies sitting around was anything to go by. Either it’s a Starbucks, or an actually good coffee shop . . . might as well find out.

Gale opened the door and made his way inside, ignoring the occasional stares that some ponies would throw his way. Gonna have to get used to that. Walking up to the counter, Gale politely waited until the current customer was done with their purchase. He didn’t have to wait too long as the stallion in front of him was a rather impatient one. Harping the barista for being too slow. Wow, some things never change I suppose.

One the stallion had left, Gale approached the counter cleared his throat to get the mare behind the counter’s attention. “Hello, is there any chance I can speak with a manager?” He said, nodding towards the door. ”I noticed the sign out front and would like to apply.”

To her credit, the barista didn’t flinch when he asked this, she merely look at him and said. “I think Mrs. Mocha’s in the back, hang on.” Before springing to a door at the back of the sitting area. Her reaction had actually caught Gale off guard. Huh, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

The barista, whom Gale would later come to know as Hazelnut, returned with another pony in tow. Gale assumed this must be Mrs. Mocha. If the not coffee bean mark on her flank than the fact that her coat and mane were two shades of brown gave it away.

Just like the mare before her, Mocha trotted right up to Gale, seemingly unphased. “So, you’re that new stallion everypony's been talking about, huh? It’s nice to meet you.” she said, balancing on her back legs to shake his hand.

Not a stallion. “Well, I wouldn’t technically be called a stallion, but I’d wager you’re right on the rest.” he replied, shaking her hoof and giving a genuine smile.

“It seems I was, yes. I’m, sorry about that.” she said, letting him go and moving behind the counter. “Anyways, Hazel says you were here about the job listing?”

“Yes ma’am.” he nodded.

“Not to be rude, but, do you know how to serve coffee?” she asked.

“I held the same job for about two years back when I was in school.” he replied.

“Hmm, can I,-” she started before the realization hit her. “Well,” she started again, this time chuckling. “I was about to ask for references, but something tells me that would get me nowhere.”

“I’m afraid so, ma’am.” he laughed.

“Hmm, if you can have a seat over there,” she said motioning to a spot in the corner. “I’d like to talk with you more once I’ve gotten this taken care of.” As she said it, Gale took notice of just how many ponies had wandered into the shop. With a nod, Gale walked over to the table and sat down to wait.

It as another half an hour before Mocha could make time to finish their conversation. “I’m ever so sorry about that,” she started, moving to sit across from Gale at his table by the window. “As you can probably tell, we’re a little short hooved at the moment.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Still, it seemed like you had a handle on everything.”

“Well, yes, I’ve been doing this long enough to keep up reasonably, but since we’re a server down poor Hazel has been getting overworked.” As she said this, Mocha cast a glance back at the other pony.

“To her credit,” Gale began. “She does a good job of putting up with some of these people.” Taking a quick glance around the room he quietly continued. “I mean seriously, the way some ponies were acting earlier I almost thought I was in Chicago again . . . “

“I’m sorry, where?”

“Oh right, a city back home. Nothing but a bunch of assholes livin’ there,” Gale covered his mouth for a second before adding. “Pardon my French.” Should probably start watching what I say if I want to work anywhere . . .

Mrs. Mocha spent the next half-hour giving Gale a pseudo interview at their table. Their chat would have taken longer, but a number of questions that she wanted to ask were not entirely applicable given Gale’s situation. Once the quasi-interview was done, she told Gale he should come back in a few days, so she could have some time to talk it over with her husband.

Having managed tom and completed, an interview, Gale decided to call it a day. Shortly after he left, he made his way back through town and back to the library, but he only made it halfway before running into Pinkie Pie.

Oh great, here we go again . . . he thought to himself as the mare in question jumped up to him.

“Hiya, Gale, how’s it gon’?” she asked as she bounced to a stop in front of him.

“Well, it could be better,” he began, intending to quickly end this conversation before remembering that, at least he wasn’t in a hospital bed. “but I suppose it could be a lot worse . . . “ once he’d said that, he motioned for her to follow him as he went back to the library. I have a feeling she’d follow me anyways, might as well get it over with. “So, what does a pink mare get up to in a town like this?” he asked, a bit of his natural sarcasm returning.

“Well I haven't had much free time lately because we’ve had a bunch of orders come through the bakery. Oh, yeah, I work at Sugarcube Corner, the bakery in town, oh, and I also live there.”

Jesus, this one’s a fast talker. Gale thought as he tried to keep up with her words. In doing so, he failed to realize that she’d rerouted him towards the bakery.

“That’s fascinating, really, but why exactly are you leading me there?” he asked, stopping and interrupting her as he noticed what she had done.

“Well, I was gonna bake you something, since you seemed a bit down and nopony deserves to feel down about anything.”

Ignoring the fact that I’m still not, and never will, be a pony . . . “That’s great and all, but I don’t have any way to pay for it.

“Oh don’t worry about it! Think of it as a gift, . . . and maybe a bit of an apology.” she added the last part rather softly, almost not wanting it to be heard.

Okay, from what I’ve been told of her, this seems rather off . . . “Well if you really want me to, I guess I can.” Might as well play along . . . I’ve got nothing better to do.

With that settled, Pinkie Pie lead onwards and they made their way to Sugarcube Corner. “Have a seat here, and I’ll go see what I can find.” she said as they walked in.With Gale having nodded in agreement and having sat down at the counter, she went into the back to look for something to make. After a moment of consideration, she decided she knew what would work the best to raise his spirits. Pumpkin bread should do the trick, after all, can anypony really say no to pumpkin anything?

After several minutes, Pinkie returned with a plate full of dessert balanced on top of her head. “Here ya go,” she said, sliding the tray off of her head and onto the table. “I hope you like it.”

What are the odds? He though, curious as to the reason she’d decided to make pumpkin bread, which happened to be a favorite of his. “So, wait a minute,” he started, looking at the dish in front of him. “Why’d you make this anyways?” he asked, motioning to the plate full of pumpkin bread.

“I don’t know,” Pinkie said, leaning against the counter. “It seemed like a good idea. Why?”

Okay, what the hell? “Well, . . . pumpkin bread is actually one of my long time favorites.” he said before digging into the dessert and temporarily blocking out the world.

In his haste to eat, he failed to notice Pinkie’s sigh of relief. Phew, I knew he’d like it but it’s nice to hear it said.

Gale ate for about ten minutes before deciding it was time to leave. Gonna head back to the farm, I think I can get the fenders off while there’s still light out . . . I could always ask about a lantern though . . .

“Say, where’re ya goin’ now, Gale?” Pinkie asked as he made his way to the door.

“Probably back to the farm, I have some work I wanted to get done.” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice. So much more I wanted to get done.

“Well,” she began, glancing to the clock before she said. “Would you be willing to swing by a friend’s house with me real quick? I think she’d love to meet you.”

Does this woman-mare-whatever, not get the hint? “Hmm, that’s nice and all, but I doubt there’s anything I’d have to talk with them about.”

“Oh,” she began, defeat in her voice before she remembered something. “Well, I don’t know if this is anything, but she makes music for a living.”

Oh? Gale though, his interest piqued. “Does she now?” he began, thinking this was just a ploy to get him to come with her to who knows where. “What kind?”

“Well, mostly electronic, though I think she can play a few instruments. Say, don’t you play something?”

“I know how to play a guitar, I can kinda play a bass, and I can sort of play the drums, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yeah! I’m sure you two’d get along great.”

Okay, you had my curiosity, now you have my attention “Hmm, that sounds great except I can’t even properly play my guitar as of now . . . I don’t have an amp.”

“Oh, pshaw, I’m sure she could get something made for you if you asked nice enough.”

“Well, what I meant was that if whoever this mystery woman, whom you’ve yet to name,” he said, emphasising the last half of his statement. “is, they would probably want to hear some of the music I listen to, but I have no way to play any of it.”

“You don’t have any way of playing any? None recorded in some way?” Pinkie asked, seemingly trying to remind him of his phone.

“I do probably have an old mp3 player in with the rest of my stuff, but I’d have to dig for it.”

“Well, maybe do so tonight and come with me tomorrow? I just know you two would be great friends.”

And her motives come to light . . . “Hmm, ah hell, why not. I'm supposed to swing by the cafe on main street at some point tomorrow, but other than that I have nothing planned.” Well, nothing but fender removal . . . I suppose one day won’t kill me though.

“Sounds great! I’ll be here whenever you want to come by!” she said.

With that conversation done, he left for the library once more. Once he returned, he went into what had become his room and started rummaging around for his mp3 players. “I know I brought at least one of them, I kinda hope it’s the one with everything.” After about half an hour, he produced an older looking iPod and began searching through it. “Yep, this one’s got it all.” he proclaimed.

Now that he’d found it, Gale went back downstairs to eat a small dinner with Twilight and Spike before returning to his room and preparing for bed.

The next day, he got up and quickly found some clothes to throw on before downing two pills with a glass of water he’d procured the night before.

He hung around the library for a few hours before deciding that he might as well take Pinkie up on her offer. As he opened the door, he spotted Pinkie Pie trotting up to the library. Okay, that’s just weird. He thought to himself.

Pinkie quickly trotted over to him and said. “Hiya, Gale! You ready to go?”

“Yeah, I am.” he said, wondering how and why she’d decided to come to the library. “I thought I was gonna go meet you, though?” He stood still wondering just how much of a coincidence it was that she’d happened to be on her way to the library as he decided to leave for the day.

“Oh, well, I just need to ask Twilight a question, oh, and she wanted to know if you could bring your guitar. She told me she wanted to know what it sounded like up close.”

I was seriously expecting her to say ‘in person’ . . . wow. “My guitar? I mean, I’m decent with it, yeah, but nowhere near as good as you’re probably thinking I am.”

“Well, why not bring it so you can play like you did for Rainbow Dash? I'm sure she’d love to hear it anyway.”

“Hmm? Nah, an electric guitar doesn’t sound too great without an amp. Hell, I’m not sure I’ll ever . . . wait, you said this friend of yours is into electronic music?”

“Yeperooni.” she cheerfully replied.

Ignore it, Gale . . . “What do you think the odds are that she could help me get something rigged up for it?”

”I’d bet she could.”

“Might as well then,” he said, turning to walk back into the library and retrieve the instrument. “I’ll be back in a minute.” he added, before going inside and heading upstairs.

Once in his room, Gale grabbed his guitar case and quickly checked to make sure he still had a pick in it. Figures he thought when he saw that there wasn’t one. Okay, where did I put that thing? Another few minutes of searching later and Gale found it, lying at the bottom of a duffel bag, next to his phone. That figures. Walking to the door, he paused before going back to the bag and grabbing the phone. As much as I hate to admit it, this thing’s got all the music I like on it . . . might as well keep it on me for now.

Pinkie only had to wait about ten minutes before Gale walked back out, and they both headed off to visit her, as of yet unnamed, friend. Once the pair arrived, Pinkie went ahead and knocked on the door of a, rather unassuming, two story home.

“So, Vinyl, huh?” Gale asked as he walked into her living room. “Like a record?” Gale added, as he took a seat on a couch in the aforementioned mare’s living room.

“Yeah.” she answered, levitating a pitcher of lemonade out of her fridge. “Mom was a big time orchestra fan so we had a bunch records laying around the house.” Setting the pitcher down, she walked into the living room and floated over a glass of lemonade.

Why do I suddenly want to listen to Dead or Alive? “I’m starting to think names here just end up being prophetic. Oh, and thanks for the drink”

“No problem.” she replied, sitting on a sofa to his left. “You’re not the first to say that either, but most ponies just ignore it.”

How convenient. “Not surprised by that at all.” he pause to take a sip before continuing. “So, you’re a recording artist then?. What genre?”

“Genre? Well, I could really record just about anything but I mainly stick to electronics ‘wub step’ it’s been called.”

Not even ‘music’ genres are safe . . . “Yeah, I’m not a big fan of dubstep personally, I much prefer music that actually has to be played live, rather than with the push of a button.” he said flatly, before remembering who he was talking to. “Not that it doesn’t take effort to make electronic music,” he hastily added. “I just prefer the music I do since it’s something I could write with no technical background.”

“Nice save,” She said, levitating her glass off the table and taking a drink. “But yeah, I get where you’re coming from. It’s not as difficult for me as playing a cello or anything, but it’s not as simple as some ponies think it is.”

“Again, I wouldn’t know.” he began, leaning forward. “I do know, however, that it’s not as easy to play a guitar as some people seem to think it is.” he finished, gesturing to the case next to him.

“Say, what kind of music would you listen to anyways? I can’t imagine it's something the average pony would know of.”

“Oh, uh, I generally listened to old rock songs, though some modern rock groups are good”

“Rock?”

“Well, ‘Rock N Roll’ as it’s usually referred. Basically, very in your face at times and to some, rather abrasive.”

“Well, now I have to hear this. You have anything in mind?”

I wonder if she realizes how bad of an idea asking me that was . . . he thought, reaching into a pocket to get his phone. “Well, I have a bunch of music stored on this little guy. I’ll see what I can find.” After some searching, he found the song he’d been looking for. “Here we go.” he said with a grin before playing Metallica’s ’Welcome Home.’

As the song began, Vinyl soon found herself sitting slack-jawed in awe. Okay, how the hay does somepony do that? She briefly wondered before she even heard the lyrics. As she listened more to the lyrics, she started shivering.

Vinyl sat in silence for nearly 30 seconds after the song ended before finally muttering “What . . . the . . . buck?”

“Not what you were expecting?” he asked with a grin.

“No not at all.” Vinyl shook her head. That, that was dark . . “

Figures that’s what she’d-

“Got anything else?”

What?

“Well, yeah, but I thought you said it was too dark?”

“Nah, I said it’s dark, not ‘too dark’.”

Good to know that, just like back home, there are people fine with dark lyrics. “Okay then. Well, there’s a bunch more on here but a good number of them are better live, even if it’s just the guitar.” He turned to open the case next to him and added. “Plus, I saw you lookin’ at this thing. I get it.” Opening the case, Gale took his guitar out and turned back to her. “Whatcha think?”

Vinyl gave the instrument a quick once-over before whistling. “Wow, so you can play that song on this?”

“Part of it, anyways.” he said, patting the old instrument.

“Yeah, I payed about $75 for this ol’ bastard.” he said, picking up the instrument and strumming a quick tune. After a few seconds, he noted “It’d be a lot better if I had an amp, but,” he sighed “I neglected to pack mine when I left . . . “ At her confused look, he continued “It’s a long story, and I’d rather not talk about it right now.”

Vinyl conceded and the pair spent the next half an hour discussing music genres, lyrics, and most anything related to music in general. Gale, in particular, made sure to make a mention of some of the more famous groups he’d listened to back on Earth.

With only three hours of sunlight left, Gale left Vinyl’s house and headed into town. Hope she isn’t mad about me showing up this ate in the day, though she did just say ‘tomorrow’ . . . he thought, making his way down main street to the cafe he’d visited the day prior.

As he walked up to the building he took note of the scene inside. Though he couldn’t hear, he did his best to discern what was going on.

Inside the cafe, a very distressed Mocha was arguing with another pony. What they were arguing over, Gale couldn’t have told you, but it clearly couldn’t have been good if she was getting as distressed as she was. Hmm, why does that pony look familiar? It took him a few seconds to think about it, but he realized that he’d met this mystery pony before. They had claimed to be a nurse when he first woke up in the hospital.

“Look, all I’m saying is that you need to heavily consider the type of pony you employ. This is a lovely cafe, and it’d be a shame if something were to happen to it.” the unnamed pony said, making no attempts to hide the implications of his statement.

Seemingly very shaken, yet still quite angry, Mocha fired back “Fine. I suppose I should start watching who I serve too, this place is a bit too nice for some ponies.”

“As long as we’re in agreement.” the unnamed stallion coldly replied, before turning around and walking out.

Gale watched him leave from a distance, having stepped back when he saw their argument winding down. The hell is that guy? He wondered as he walked inside. The sound of the door bringing, a still angry, Mocha back to the front area. “What else do you-,” she started, before seeing that it wasn’t the pony from earlier but rather Gale.

“I’m sorry Gale, I know I told you to come by today, but I think it’d be best if we hold off on hiring you for now. I have a few . . . issues . . . I need to work out with my husband first.” she said, knowing he’d seen the confrontation earlier, she hoped he’d get the message.

“I understand. I’m in no rush at this point.” he said. Leaning over the counter he added “Look, I don’t know who that was, nor what they said, but if you need help with anything let me know. I can tell you’re not happy with whatever it was he came here for.” Not even giving her time to reply, Gale got up from the counter and walked out. He then proceeded back to the library as darkness fell on another day.

"25 Or 6 To 4."

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Gale awoke the next morning, got out of bed, and threw on some fresh clothes before heading downstairs. On his way out of the room, he picked up his old phone deciding that, if he was to be out all day then he might as well bring along some music. Arriving downstairs, he went into the kitchen to grab a quick breakfast. Saying ‘hi’ to Spike, he made some toast and got ready to head out for the apple family farm. Twilight caught him as he was about to leave and asked what his plans were for the day.

“Plans? Man, I learned to not plan things a long time ago . . . “ he said, pushing the door open and thinking ‘Cause look where ‘planning’ got me.

Twilight didn’t have a response for that, she simply watched as he walked off towards the farm. “Spike?” she yelled, hoping to get his attention.

After a second he walked out of the kitchen. “Yeah, Twilight?”

“Can you do me a favor and start gathering some of these books?” she asked, using her magic to summon a list of books for him.

“Uh, sure. I’ll get right on that.” he said, moving to go and start searching.

With that said and done, Twilight went upstairs to her room, in search of a specific scroll.

While all of that was happening, Gale had made it about halfway across town. He was just entering the market when a unicorn came running around the corner and ran right into him, sending the two back. They came to a halt and Gale saw that whomever it was that hit him had enough sense to look away so they didn’t impale him.

“Um, excuse me,” he began, gently separating himself from the other party. “But, what was that about?”after a second, both he and the pony had stood up and brushed themselves off.

As the pony stood up, Gale took note of her almost seafoam coat.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” she hurriedly replied, already starting to move past him. “I’m running late for my assembly.” Before he could even respond, she’d already taken off towards the school house.

Weird. After a second, he continued on with his walk. This time, he was more aware of his surroundings and where all the ponies around him were.

A couple of minutes later, Gale noticed a familiar looking pony seemingly talking to one of the local guards. Huh, it’s that weird pony from yesterday. The hell is he up to? Not wanting to start anything, Gale merely shrugged it off and kept walking.

Another few minutes of walking led Gale to the front gates of the Apple farm.

“Oh, hey Applejack,” he yelled out, waving at the mare and her little sister. “What are you two doing?”

“Not much, pardner, jus’ getting ready for the first snow.” She said looking over her shoulder. Doing a quick double take, she added “You gonna be okay with just that? It’s gettin’ kinda cold out.”

“I’m good. I grew up with winters much worse than this.” he replied, walking on past and towards the barn housing his car.

As soon as he entered the barn, Gale went to business. Moving to the back of the car, he decided to remove the trunk lid. Taking a moment to look it over, he wondered aloud. “Right, no WD40 or anything . . . I’m gonna end up stripping these sons of bitches, aren’t I?” Figuring it didn’t really matter at that point, he went ahead and grabbed the appropriate socket and tried breaking it loose.Damn that’s a tough one.

Back at the house, Applejack and her sister were busy moving all their furniture around to a storage room off the back of the building. The two worked on this while Big Macintosh was out collecting firewood with a hired worker. The hired pony, a tan stallion of decent build, didn’t talk much, but when he did it was almost always a question about the barns. What was in them, were they well maintained, and a number of other things. Big Mac replied to all of them with ‘Nothin’ but our farmin’ equipment.’ Though, he was starting to wonder about this particular pony.

About twenty minutes after Gale arrived and the Apples had continued on with their tasks, the voice of an elderly mare called outside for Applejack,

Gale started on his car by wrestling with a rusted bolt for a few minutes as his mind wandered. Two weeks. I’ve been here two weeks. Dammit, I was supposed to be in Bar- his thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the barn door. What now? He unintentionally barked.

Looking up he realized who was there and quickly apologized. “Sorry,” he said as he quickly glanced over his shoulder. “I’m just having trouble with this damn bolt.” after another moment of struggle, he managed to break the bolt loose and start removing it.

While he was doing that, Applejack walked the rest of the way in. Seeing that he was busy, she sat down for a few minutes and watched as he removed the deck lid and set it aside. “Hey, pardner, you got a second?” she asked when she saw he’d stopped.

“Hmm? Something wrong?” looking over, he could see that something was up.

“No, nothin’ like that. I was jus’ gonna ask if you wanted to come on inside, we’re havin’ an early lunch and you’re welcome to join.”

Why do I get the feeling there’s something else she’s not said. “Might as well, sure.” he said, quickly putting his tools back into the, now exposed, trunk. Once he’d done that, the pair walked back to the farmhouse.

“So, what kind of food does a farm pony eat?” he asked, mentally adding and where can a guy get some damn meat. . . . Yeesh that could be taken out of context . . .

Luckily for him, it seems she’d thought of this. “Well, I remember what ya said about liking fish so I tried my hoof at frying some. I’m not sure how well my cookin’ holds to what you’re used to, but I tried.”

Fish? Eh, it’s better than nothing. “It sounds as if you’d planned for me to attend this lunch then, correct?” he looked down to see her look away for a brief instant.

“I might’ve , yeah.” as they walked onto the porch, she stopped and said. “I do wanna warn ya though. Granny, she can be kinda . . .”

“Insensitive?” he cut her off coming to a stop next to her.

“Uh, well . . .” she started

“It’s fine.” he laughed. “My folks were like that too. The older you get, the less you care I suppose.”

Applejack opened the door and let them both in, all the while thinking I hope Granny doesn’t say anything to extreme. A brief image of Gale chucking a wrench out the barn doors flashed in her mind, though she quickly shook it off and followed him into the kitchen.

As Gale entered the dining area he saw the rest of the Apple family casually chatting amongst themselves. Right away it struck Gale as odd that the three of them lived with their grandmother, and seemingly only their grandmother, but he knew enough to not ask about something like that over dinner. If ever.

As he sat down, Applejack walked over to her brother and they both went into the kitchen proper to bring out the food. Doing this left Gale alone in the room with both Applebloom, whom he’d met once before, and another pony, much, much older than her.

Sparing him from any awkward silence, Applebloom offered him the seat next to hers on the end of the table. An offer to which he readily agreed, walking over and taking a seat. One thing that bothered him, however, was that the older mare hadn’t said anything.

“So how’s yer day been, Mr. Gale?” Applebloom asked, wanting to prevent more awkward silence.

“Please, just call me Gale. As for today? I wandered around town for an hour or two before coming out here. After I said hi to you two I went out south and tried to make some progress.”

“So it was you that crashed that crazy lookin’ machine.” the elderly mare finally spoke, immediately bringing any other potential conversations to a screeching halt.

It took Gale a second to respond, but he sighed and answered. “Yeah, that was me. Believe me, I didn’t want that to happen either.”

“Don’t get to worried there sonny. I was just wondering whose it was.”

What? Gale had expected many possible responses she could have given. This, was not one of them. Anything he could have said to that, however, was interrupted by both Applejack and Big Mac walking into the dining room, plates of food across their backs. How did they get those there, how are they not burning, and how do they plan on getting those on the table . . Gale wondered as the pair walked up to the table,leaned against it, and let their platters slide onto the dinner table. That’s how, I guess.

With that done, the two took their seats and they all began to eat. They all ate in near silence for several minutes. Things became awkward when Gale realized that they’d all finished eating and were looking his direction. He couldn’t tell if they were waiting for him to be done, or mortified by the site of someone eating a fish. Admittedly, Gale wasn’t the most proper of dinner guests, but he’d had the decency to at least use a knife and fork.

“Yup, this is some good fish” Gale commented, having eaten almost all of the trout that Applejack had prepared for him. After a moment though, Gale decided that even though he was still somewhat hungry, he should probably be done. Setting his silverware on the plate, pushed it forward a bit, and sat back in his chair with his hands folded.

Granny Smith was the first to say anything “I must say, Gale. I’ve known a fair number of ponies and others who eat meat in my life. You’re certainly one of the most reserved.”

“Thanks? . . . I guess?” Though, even as he said it, he could tell she meant nothing bad by it. It just struck him as odd. After another few seconds, he looked between all of them and said. “I’m a little surprised by this all, to be honest.” he said “A large number of ponies I’ve met here have either been completely indifferent, or in some cases outright hostile, towards me.”

“Well,” the old mare started “It ain’t often we get someone like you ‘round here.” Standing up from her chair, she slowly walked over to him. “But I’ve been ‘round for a long time. I’ve met some minotaurs in my day, a couple griffons, too.” After a second, she extended a hoof, as if for him to shake it. “While this is a surprise, you’re far from the strangest I’ve met.”

It took Gale a couple of seconds to react. Not only did this elderly mare seem to know quite a set of characters, she was also one of the few ponies to refer to him as ‘someone’, and he wasn’t sure what to think of that yet. Once he came to his senses, he reached out and shook her hoof, having to lean down a fair amount but not saying anything to it.

“Thank you, ma’am. It’s nice meet you.”

After he returned from his, incredibly awkward, lunch with the Apple family, Gale went back to work disassembling more of his car. The first order of business, as far as he was concerned, was to get the hood off. That could wait however, as he figured taking the lights out would be easier and didn’t feel like moving the hood on a full stomach.

Once he arrived back at the barn, he looked over the headlight fixtures in detail, seeing what he’d need to get them out before moving to the box of tools he had in the trunk.“And then he said ‘let there be lights’,” Gale muttered as he finished disconnecting the driver’s side headlights.

After he removed both the headlights, Gale started on the hood which, thanks to Applejack, was forced all the way up. Since it was up, the hinges were a lot easier to get to, but he still had to struggle with them as, like the rest of the car, the bolts had already started rusting since he’d originally put it together. Been on the road for two years now, and she’s already rusting. Great . . .

Before he could take the hinges off, however, he had to remove the hood in it’s entirety. Well, this is gonna suck he mumbled, struggling to loosen the bolts holding the hood to one of the hinges. Once that was done, things were made harder by the fact that he was going to have to single-handedly hold the hood up while removing the last bolts from the other hinge, and then manage to get ahold of the hood to set it down properly, lest he drop it and catch his leg. Last thing I need to do is go and get fucking Tetanus.

After a few minutes of struggling, he’d managed to get into a position where he was able to keep the hood from falling while working on the last bolt. When he finally was able to remove it, he moved to pick up the hood and attempt to set it in a corner. Using up a fair amount of his strength, Gale picked up the hood, balancing it in his back, and steadily shuffled over to a corner of the room. As he was about to set the hood down, he was caught off guard by the arrival of one Rainbow Dash.

“Heya, Gale. I was just inside talking to Aj, she wanted-” the mare started, before Gale lost his grip and the hood fell to the ground. Catching the side of his left leg in the process.

“Son of a bitch!” he hissed, the expletive clearly not aimed at the new arrival. “Look, Rainbow Dash or whatever, can you not just barge in like that?” he said, looking down he saw that his leg hadn’t been cut deeply, but was still starting to bleed. Fucking. Great.

“Uh, is now a good time to mention Aj sent me out here with a first aid kit? She said you might want one.”

“Perfect timing then,” he said through gritted teeth, sitting up on the right fender. “Toss me a roll of bandages, and some alcohol if you have any.”

“Are you sure you want to be getting drunk?”

“I can use it to disinfect my leg.” he stated matter of factly, motioning for her to toss hit the kit.

“I think there might be some in there, I don’t know. I’ll bet she’s got some back at the house if you want me to-”

‘No, it’s fine. I can make it there.” he cut her off, standing up he winced. Yep, this hurts deeper than I thought it did.

“Gale, you’re clearly having trouble. Let me go get some-”

“I said I’m fine.” he replied. Heaving a sigh he calmly added. “It’s far from the worst thing a car’s done to me.”

“Are you su-” she started, after catching his glance however, she thought better of it. “Nevermind.” she finished, floating over to him. “Can I at least help you get packed up?”

“Packed up?” he asked “I’ve still got a few things I aim to do before I go.”

“Gale, part of the reason I came to get you was that it’s gonna start snowing soon. I don’t know how weather works for you, but the weather team here likes to make the first snow a big one. I figured you’d want to get inside before it hit.” And I’d feel terrible if anything else happened because of me. She mentally added.

Gale looked outside to see that, as Rainbow had said, it was actually starting to snow. “Well, shit. I guess I’m done for the night.” that said, he carefully made sure the bandage on his leg was tight, then went to pack up all his tools.

“Wait, you're not taking those back with you, are you?” Rainbow asked, noting just how big of a box he’d managed to have. Where the hay did he hide that, anyways?

“Hmm? No. It’s just good practice to keep all your tools organized. Even if you’re only working on personal projects.” he said, closing the box and walking over to Rainbow who was standing by the door.

It took the pair only a few minutes before they reached the library and parted ways. Gale headed inside intent on finding something else to do, while Rainbow headed back into town for. ‘personal reasons’.

“Yeah, you might want to stay inside until about noon tomorrow. This year’s gonna be a big one to start.” Rainbow Dash said to Gale as he entered the house.

“Thanks for the advice.” Closing the door, Gale stepped further into the house and started looking for something to do.

When the door closed, Rainbow Dash turned and walked back into town to go visit with a friend for the night. Walking along main street, she stopped by the bakery and bought a box of doughnuts. I will never understand why he likes Maple glazed . . . she wondered, exiting the store and heading for the hospital.

As she walked along, Rainbow Dash noted that snow was already starting to accumulate. Considering recent events, I may have to stay overnight . . . great. Continuing on her way, she saw many shop owners hurriedly closing their stores and making their way back to their respective homes.

As she approached the building Dash wondered how Thunderlane was doing. She didn’t have to wonder for long, however, as she saw the stallion himself walking around the lobby when she arrived.

He’s finally got himself up and about, eh? That’s good. Walking up to the door, she was able to get a better view of the hospital, the staff were rushing to and fro preparing in case the coming storm took out the power. With barely a moment’s hesitation, she opened the door and walked in. She made it some distance before being noticed.

Thunderlane had been taking his evening walk when Rainbow Dash walked in. Turning to her, his expression went from morose to happiness. “Hey Dash!” he said, stepping away from the nurse who’d been with him, much to their irritation. “How’s it going?”

“Well, I don’t know if you noticed but it’s already starting to snow. I think the snow crew’s really pushed themselves this time.” Dash answered as she came to a stop in front of him.

Thunderlane took a moment to look outside and see that the blizzard was already setting in. Panning back to her, he let out an exaggerated gasp of surprise as he noticed the box on her back. “Wow, you actually bought doughnuts!”

“Hey, I said I would, didn’t I?” she smirked.

Thunderlane notified the nurse that he and Dash, were going back up to his room to chat for awhile. He hadn’t seen her much in the last week and wanted to see what was up.

Once there, they sat for some time and watched as the snowfall became heavier, to the point where Dash thought it better for her to spend the night than attempt to fly home. “I know the snow crew’s got this, but I’m not entirely sure I want to try flying in a blizzard any time soon.”

After a moment of silence, Thunderlane finally asked a question that Dash had hoped he’d forgotten about. “So, where have you been this past week? I know prep for winter is usually tough, but I figured you’d have at least come by more than twice.” Dash took a minute to respond and Thunderlane was already wondering if he should regret asking that.

Finally, she started. “Well, remember how me and Twilight were going to do some teleportation stuff? Yeah, things got interesting real quick after that . . . “ After another moment, she continued. “Alright, so I may have brought somepony back with me.” Thunderlane looked at her incredibly confused for a moment, before asking. “So, you brought somepony here from another city or something?”

Oh colt, this is gonna take some explaining . . . “Well, not exactly no. According to Twilight whatever it was she cast didn’t send me to another city, the best guess she could give was either some place really far away or even weirder, possibly another dimension.”

Thunderlane interrupted for a second to comment. “If it was anypony else but Twilight, I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Well, believe it or not I’m here, and so are they.” she said before giving a very basic rundown of the events that took place over the week prior, leaving out most everything about her time on earth before rescuing Gale.

Soon the nurse came in and explained that visiting hours were over. She told Rainbow that there was an area down the hall that had been set up for the family and friends of those admitted for the duration of the storm.

Nodding in understanding, Dash made to leave the room before remembering the book she was supposed to bring him. She took a second and quickly dug through her saddlebags until she found it. “I almost forgot about this.” she said, walking back in just enough to set it on a table with a wing.

At the nurse’s behest, Dash quickly said goodnight and that they needed to talk tomorrow after he was to be discharged. Thunderlane nodded in agreement, rolled onto his good side, and promptly went to sleep.

As he fell asleep, Rainbow headed out into the hallway and made her way over to the waiting area. With winter setting in, the hospital staff had brought out a number of blankets and pillows so that the families of those admitted would have somewhere to stay instead of venturing out into the possibly harsh weather.

Gale did not rest well that night, the weather outside coupled with the nature of the library had been enough to make sleep difficult. Thus, he awoke the next morning feeling very sluggish. It took him several minutes to get himself out of bed and start getting ready for the day.

Taking note of the weather outside the library, Gale sifted through his collection of Tee shirts looking for something a little heavier. I know I have a long sleeve shirt in here somewhere, Upon finding a shirt, he quickly threw it on moved over to the duffle bag he left sitting in the corner. Reaching inside, he hesitantly pulled out a pill bottle and held it up close.

Shaking the bottle, he frowned. 8 pills left . . . I don’t know if I should be upset that I don’t have any more, or thanking god that I can’t get any more. He wondered, pocketing two of the remaining pills before heading downstairs. Stopping by the door, he quickly went back and found a jacket. “Might want to have this.”

Once downstairs, Gale headed for the kitchen. Dash said not to leave ‘till noon . . . might as well cook something to eat. Saying hello to Spike, Gale made to cook a quick breakfast. It’s a real good thing I like waffles. Gale ate in near silence as Twilight and Spike had moved off into the other room for the time being.

Having spent almost half an hour eating, Gale went ahead and washed off the plate he’d been using. Gale then walked out into the main room carrying his jacket over his shoulder. He fully intended to leave for the day as the weather had cleared. “So wait, how cold is it outside?” he asked Twilight, who was looking over a scroll of some sort.

Looking up from her scroll, she hovered over a thermometer and said. “It’s 3 degrees outside right now, why?”

Stopping where he was, Gale slowly looked to her, then to the door, then back to her. After a moment, he walked to the door and slowly opened it, fully expecting he’d want to jump back from the cold. While it was rather cold outside, it didn’t seem to Gale like it was much colder than an average winter day back home.

“There’s no way it’s only 3 outside.” he called back as he closed the door, causing Twilight to look up at him. “It’s gotta be at least 35, maybe 38.” he added, motioning for her to come see for herself.

Walking over to the him, Twilight opened the door, leaned outside for a moment, then came back in and closed it again.

“Right, I forgot. Different temperature scales.”.she said while walking back to her table. “I’d love to ask you about that sometime. Maybe see if I can find a conversion between the two.”

Giving her a confused stare, he asked “How would you propose to do that?”

“Well, I could probably come up with an equation based off the freezing point of both.”

“Oh, okay.” he said, looking back outside. “I think I see what you’re getting at.” He waited a few seconds for a response before decided to go ahead and leave. Right before he did, however, he called back. “By the way, water freezes at 32 degrees.” and then he left the library for the day thinking. She said it’s 3 out here? At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they use freaking Celsius.

That morning found Rainbow Dash sitting in the hospital cafeteria, eating a bagel, when Thunderlane walked up behind her. “Hey there, boss. How’s it going?” he said, smirking since he’d caught her off guard.

“Going well.” Getting up from her seat, Dash turned to face him. “How close are you to getting discharged?”

“Already did.” he said, using his good wing to give her the paperwork from the bag he’d been given.

“Well that’s great! I guess you’ll be helping out later today?” she asked in an overly polite manner.

“Ha! You’d like that wouldn’t you? No, like the doctor said I’m probably gonna be out for a few weeks.” he said. Setting his bag down, he searched through it eventually producing another group of papers. “Here, for the team’s medical records.” he said, knowing that Dash and her bosses liked to keep tabs on the health of their employees. The records they kept were voluntary, however, since they didn’t necessarily want to dig too deeply into a pony’s personal life.

With that said, the pair left the hospital with Dash carrying all of Thunderlane’s acquired belongings so he didn’t have to strain himself. The cold itself was bad enough to make things difficult for the stallion and she already felt bad about the whole situation. While they made their way to the complex on the other end of town.

As they walked along, Dash thought back to the decision to incorporate a section of town specifically for weather team members, and how some ponies argued it was a form of separatism. Truth be told, it was simply one of the ideas originally used for the bigger teams that live in and around the major cities.

About 2 years ago, construction had begun on a small cluster of homes to one corner of town. For the team, they were like an apartment in the sense that they didn’t actually own the house, and most didn’t keep much in them, but the buildings were essentially there’s for the duration of their stay on the team.

Occasionally though, one or more of the team members would have to share their ground based domicile when another pony got injured or the team needed to bring in extra help from the surrounding districts. Otherwise, most pegasi had their houses in the air around the outside of town.

Though she wouldn’t admit it, the project was one of the reasons Dash loved being the weather captain. As much as her bosses annoyed her, they were usually pretty understanding. That said, she still wasn’t looking forward to the next few weeks since she’d have to double for herself and Thunderlane while he stayed at his ground house.

Once the reached Thunderlane’s temporary home, they went inside and Dash took a look around the place. “So, are you gonna have somepony go on a grocery run for you later? I can’t imagine there’s much here.”

“Actually, I was going to ask you about that. I was originally just gonna ask Cloud Kicker, but . . . well, it’s Cloud Kicker.” he said, doing his best not to flat out insult another member of the team in front of his boss.

“What, I thought a stallion like you would love having a mare like her around.” Dash replied, well aware of what she was implying. It was well known to most everypony in town that Cloud Kicker ‘got around’. “Come on Lane-y, we’re not at work. I won’t hold you to anything if you want me to go get her for ya.”

“One, I told you not to call me that. Two, that’s just insulting. And three, I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a cast on my wing. Even if I wanted to, and I don’t, there’s no way in tartarus I would right now.”

Realizing she’d crossed a line, Dash backpedaled “You’re right . . .I shouldn’t’ve said that. I was just trying to lighten the mood a bit, is all.”

Scoffing, he said “Well, you did a great job of that.” Walking into the kitchen, he set down the bag he’d been carrying and opened the fridge. “Hmm, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to help me get some stuff from town, would you?” he called over his shoulder.

“I don’t see why not, no. I don’t really have anything planned today, except head over to Aj’s and see what they’re up to.” she answered, trotting into the kitchen. “How much ‘stuff’ are we talking, and who’s paying for it?”

Thunderlane walked over to her and said. “Enough for a few weeks. I’ll be paying of course. Though, in a way you are since you write my check.” After a few minutes, the pair left for market street, Rainbow carrying a saddlebag and shopping list while Thunderland walked next to her, chatting.

“Well, as far as I know, Gale, that’s his name by the way, is planning on doing anything and everything to find a way back to his home.”

“Wait, why can’t Twilight just recast the spell?”

“I had the same question. Apparently she isn’t entirely sure she cast the spell correctly in the first place and because of that she doesn’t want to risk messing it up even worse.” she replied, though in the back of her mind she vaguely wondered if Twilight was just keeping him here for some reason. As they walked on, Rainbow Dash managed to convince Thunderlane to follow her out to the orchard first, and then they’d go back and buy his groceries.

Thunderlane was the first to notice, as they were walking up to the barn, that there was music playing inside. He didn’t know what kind of music, but it clearly was. “Hey, Dash, you hear that?” he said, stopping where he was. As she turned to look at him, he pointed towards the barn. “This stallion you’re bringing me to, they big into music?”

“I think so, yeah. I know he had a . . . well, don’t remember what it’s called but he has something to play stuff on.” she told him.

“Well, now I’m really curious, ‘cause I don’t think I’ve heard anything like that before.” he said as he started walking again. It’s kinda relaxing. After another minute they’d reached the barn, and newm angrier sounding, song starting as they got closer. “Whoever wrote this must’ve been mad about it.”

Gale reached the apple farm about thirty minutes after he set out, having stopped to buy lunch with a few bits that Twilight had given him. He arrived at the barn a few minutes after that, having stopped once more to talk with Applejack. With her permission, he took a table and some towels out to the barn with him

Standing in front of his, now partially disassembled, car, Gale noted that most of the damage he’d initially expected either wasn’t quite as bad, or was merely cosmetic. I probably shouldn’t question it, but I still have no idea how this thing wasn’t obliterated.

Fishing his old phone out of his pocket, he set it up to play some music while he worked. The first thing he did, after taking his tool box out of the trunk, was to start in the air filter. He’d decided that the car’s body seemed in good enough shape and now he desperately wanted to see if the engine was salvageable. It started once and ran, briefly, so the crank must still be in good shape, right?

After a few minutes, he was able to set the air filter and covers, as well as all three carburetors on the table that he’d moved in with him. Taking a second to switch to a different playlist, Gale noticed that it hadn’t taken nearly as long as he thought it would have, maybe half the time. Must just be that good with this car, not entirely surprising.

Starting up a new, heavier, rock music playlist, Gale began working on taking the valve covers off, before deciding it better to get the intake manifold first. He had just finished removing the intake when there was a knock on the barn door. He reached over and muted the music he’d been playing, but didn’t turn to face whoever had knocked.

He already guessed it was Rainbow Dash when they got there, so he didn’t feel like he needed to look back. Plus, he was in the middle of something.

What am I, a freakin’ show and tell project? “So, I take it you’re Rainbow Dash’s drummer friend?” he asked over his shoulder, having still not turned towards them.

“How did you even know it was me?” the mare asked.

“One, I see the shadow of at least one pegasus, two, you’re the only one who has been out here to see what I’m doing. I put two and two together.” Finally standing up, he added. “So, who’s your friend, here?”

After a moment, she motioned for the other shadow to speak up. “I’m Thunderlane, Dash’s co-captain on the weather team, and you’re . . .” he paused, momentarily forgetting Gale’s name. “I’m sorry, I don’t have the best memory as of late,” he started, nudging Rainbow Dash rather forcefully with his good wing. “Hmm, it’s Gale, right?” he continued, the name coming back to him.

“You’re right there,” he said, turning around to face them. “Nice to meet you.” he went on, extending a hand before remembering. “. . . Right, ponies don’t have . . . nevermind me.” he said, shaking his head and hoping the two would just brush it off. Thankfully for him, they did.

Wow he’s taller than I figured on. Thunderlane took a moment to look over what he could see of Gale’s car. “So, this is that machine Rainbow was talking about then?” he asked, looking at it in astonishment.

“Yeah. she’ll be a lot better looking once I get ‘er running again.” Gale commented, walking around to the trunk and his toolbox.

“Her?” Thunderlane started to ask, before Dash nudged him and whispered

“Just roll with it.”

Gale briefly looked back at Rainbow and said “You do realize that you do not know how to whisper, right?”

With both of them looking at her, Rainbow shied away in embarrassment. This, of course, caused Thunderlane to burst into laughter at the site of his boss and friend finally getting knocked down a peg.

“So, Thunderlane, can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.”

Wise guy, eh? “Well, I was going to ask if you were doin’ alright since you mentioned poor memory. Though . . . I can’t help but notice-”

“My wing?” he interrupted, finally addressing the elephant in the room.

“Well, I was trying to be nice about it, but yeah.”

“Don’t sweat it.” he he said, with a dismissive wave of his hoof. “I got in a training accident. Serves me right for trying that crazy stunt.” he said with a pointed glare at Rainbow. “Yeah, I could probably have walked out same day too, but that kind of spell’s far beyond my insurance.”

Huh, I hadn’t thought of that. Gale looked at him curiously. Healing spells and insurance.

Thunderlane saw his look and decided to explain. “Yeah, only a few ponies are trained to use those types of high level healing spells. Most of them have already been doctors for years and because of that, they aren’t cheap.”

Shortly after he said this, Thunderlane briefly walked around the car, noting the size and how complex it was put together.

“So, what’s the story on this thing? Like, what is it and . . . I don’t know . . . why’ve you got it?” He asked, genuine interest coming through.

“Well, my people don’t have wings, nor we we all have the endurance that you all seem to. Combine that with that fact that the nation I lived in is absolutely fucking massive and you come up with a need for some way to get from place to place easily.”

Pausing for a moment, he walked around to the far side of the car. “This right here,” he said patting the roof. “Is a Challenger. Dodge, the company that built it, first sold this car some 40 years ago. This happens to be a 1970 model, the first year they were made and she means alot to me.” He paused for a moment, sighed and continued. “She’s about the last thing I have to remember my dad with.”

Thankfully for him, both ponies present understood and neither decided to ask what he meant by that. Instead, Rainbow Dash walked over to the table he’d placed parts of the intake on. “I may regret asking this, but how does this thing move, anyways?” Taking a closer look at one of the carburetors, she added “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before.”

“To explain it all would take an incredibly long time, and you’d both probably get bored.” Glancing off to the side, he added. “As I bet most people would.” he said, walking over to her at the table. “Basically, you have a lot of small explosions that move pistons. Those spin the shaft they’re connected to. That goes through a series of gears and out to another longer shaft to reach the back of the car. From there it goes through another set of gears, and splits off into two shafts to spin the rear wheels.”

Both the ponies present merely stared at him.

“Hey, you’re the ones that asked.” Going back to his toolbox, he procured a socket and went back to removing the valve covers. “If you want to know why I’m messing with it, well . . . I tried to start this once, after I crashed here, and while it did actually run, I really don’t like how sounded, so I figure I might as well give everything a quick once over just to be safe.”

The group fell silent for a moment as Gale went back to work. Tat silence was short, however, as Thunderlane decided to ask the question both he and Dash had wondered since they walked up to the building. “Say, Gale, what was that you were listening to?”

Without looking up from the engine, Gale replied. “Hmm? Oh, RATM.”

“I’m not sure what that means, but okay . . . “

“Right, sorry.” he said, reaching over to grab his phone off the fender. “It’s a group called Rage Against The Machine, RATM is just shortened version of the name.” he said, now scrolling through his music playlists. “Do you remember any lines? Honestly this stuff just fades into the background for me at times.”

“Uh, not really. How ‘bout you, Dash?” Thunderlane asked, turning to face her. “Any ideas?”

“Oh, uh . . . I don’t know. Something about a radio. I wasn’t really paying attention to that too much, I just know whoever was singing it was not happy.” she replied, walking over to them.

“Well, yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, the band literally has ‘Rage’ in the name.” Gale said, backing out of that particular band’s playlist. There’s a reason RATM is in it’s own playlist. Let’s go back to regular shuffle. Setting the phone to shuffle once more, now set to play every artist except Rage Against The Machine, Gale lifted the driver’s side valve cover off of the engine and set it down next to the intake. “It occurs to me," he started, realizing his mistake. "That I don’t currently have the exact tool needed to measure these . . . “

Now that he realized he could go no further, Gale set the valve cover back on the engine and proceeded to play some music while talking to both Rainbow Dash and Thunderlane for the next two hours.

"Bab's Uvula Who?"

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As Gale sat talking with both Dash and Thunderlane they occasionally stopped and listened to the various artists that came up. Thunderlane, it would seem, was quickly becoming a fan of Boston while Rainbow Dash had, unsurprisingly, taken a liking to Rise Against. Some time after that, Thunderlane realized just how long they’d been there.

Wow, we’ve been here for, like, two hours. Shortly after that, he and Rainbow Dash said their goodbyes and headed off back into town. Leaving Gale to wonder about where he could get the tools he needed. That thought led him back to the fact that he didn’t have a job here, and his money was essentially worthless.

That made him remember that he should probably look back into the hardware store. He figured, if nothing else, he could make some money over the winter, and maybe afford to buy some things for his car. Seeing as he didn’t have much he could do, Gale decided to head back to the farmhouse and see if any of the Apple family needed help with anything. No use taking a head off if I can’t really do any sort of inspection right now.

As it turns out, Twilight had invited Applejack to the library for some sort of ‘girls day out’, so Gale arrived to find Big Macintosh, Granny Smith, and Applebloom all sitting in their main room. Big Macintosh sitting by the fireplace, occasionally stoking the flames or adding another log. Granny was in her rocking chair, taking a midday nap. Applebloom, however, was attempting to finish a piece of homework for school the next day, as today had been cancelled.

“So, ‘Big’ Macintosh, huh?” Gale asked as he took a seat near the fireplace. “Is that actually part of your name?” he asked, careful not to finish the statement since Applebloom was still in the room.

“Actually, I’m trying to get ponies to drop the ‘Big’ from my name. Some of the mares in town are trying to start some, rather indecent, rumors about me using that as a base.”

“Hmm, I can’t say I’ve had that problem. Will ‘Mac’ work?”

The stallion nodded consent. “Eeyup, that sounds good.”

“Well then, Mac, how’ve you been today?”

“Fine enough, I suppose. Aj’s out with her friends for awhile so I figured I’d stick around here and keep a fire going.” Not that I need to, I know little ‘Bloom can manage. Plus, Granny’s not as bad as ponies think she is. He thought as he stirred the coals in the fireplace.

The room went quiet for the next few minutes. Not a silence with any meaning, there was just nothing to say.

“If I may, Gale,” ‘Mac asked him, after some time had gone by.. “Can I ask ya a question?”

“Uh, sure.” he replied, already thinking of a few places this might go. Hey, keep calm man. He ain’t done anything.

“That machine out in our barn, why are you so attached to it?” The stallion wondered, idly adding another log to the fire.

“That, . . . is a long story.“ Turning to the window, he sighed and started. “Throughout sophomore year of high school, I had a Duster of the same year. Duster being the model name for that car. Well, right after sophomore year let out, and I turned 19, my dad rented a car trailer. Nothing fancy, just an enclosed car hauler to put behind his truck.” he paused for a second, remembering the flimsy excuse his dad had given him. Chuckling, he went on. “He originally told me it was for his Chevy, but I didn’t believe him. I know the car ran well, always had.”

Mac nodded in half-understanding.

“Well, a few weeks later, early one Saturday morning, he practically dragged me outside. I’m not too happy with getting woken up early at this point, but then I saw it.”

Once again, Gale briefly paused, as much as he didn’t like talking about the last few months of his life, the year prior he remembered fondly. “Sitting there in the driveway, the paint had faded, there were a bunch of dents and scratches all around, the top had started to peel back, and it sat way too high up in the front because there wasn’t an engine in it at the time.”

As Gale paused once more, Mac ventured a question. “So, this was something between you and your dad, then?”

“It was, yeah.” Gale sniffed, before continuing. “The intention was for us to finish it together, then I would take ownership.” Gale briefly paused, looking back out the window. “That’s not how it happened, but I don’t want to talk about that right now.” As he’d said it, he subtly motioned to Applebloom, who was sitting at the other end of the room.

From where he was sitting, Mac glanced over to Applebloom, who took the hint and quietly left. Granny stayed behind, but nodded in understanding.

After another moment, he put a hoof on Gale’s shoulder. “I figure by now you’ve noticed it’s just us an’ granny.” Now it was Mac’s turn to pause, this wasn’t an easy subject for him either but he knew the kind of pain Gale must be going through. “My sisters and I, our parents died in a train wreck a little over ten years ago. Aj was maybe ten and ‘Bloom was only two.”

The admission shocked Gale briefly, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything as Mac continued. “You’re upset, and I understand that. I've always felt a little bad for my sisters. Especially little ‘Bloom. She didn't get to grow up with our folks like I, and to a lesser extent Aj, did. . . . Do you think talking about it might help?"

Gale sat, with Mac’s hoof on his shoulder, and silently cried for another minute before quietly saying. “Lung cancer.” turning back to the two ponies present, he added. “He passed of lung cancer exactly six months after we finished the car.” And there’s not a doubt in my mind it wasn’t entirely ‘natural causes’ either. He thought while allowing a very brief flash of anger to show. “It was hard on me and mom for awhile. I had to drop my plans for college and go full time at my job.”

Gale was very thankful that Mac didn’t push the questioning any further, especially surrounding his dad’s cause of death. “Thank you for not asking about it. I hate talking about him ‘cause I don’t think I can do his memory justice.”

After a few minutes of silence, Applebloom made her way back into the room and continued on her homework. Gale initially started to offer help but, as she pointed out, it was an Equestrian history quiz.

They all sat around for some time before Applejack came in the front door. “Hey y’all, how’s it going?” The other Apple family siblings were a bit more enthusiastic about their greeting, but that was understandable. “Oh, Gale, before I do anythin’ else, Twilight said she wanted to talk to you ‘bout something. Didn’t say what though.”

Gale got up from the couch and turned towards the door. “Well, I guess I should probably go see what she wants then.” Pausing briefly, he looked back to Mac and mouthed the words “If you think she needs to know, that’s fine. You know who not to tell.” With that out of the way, he walked to and, went out of, the door.

Applejack went into the kitchen to get a drink before she sat down, though she didn’t get the chance as Mac had followed her. “Hey Aj, can I talk to you for a minute.”

“Sure, just let me grab a drink real quick.” she said while grabbing a glass out of a cabinet.

“Alone.” he added, stopping her with a hoof. “It’s about Gale,” he started, going on to tell her a slightly shortened version of the conversation that took place before she arrived home.

“You told him what?” she asked, almost dropping her glass.

“I told him something he needed to hear right then.” his stern tone surprised her further. “Aj, you and ‘Bloom aren’t the only ponies who’ve grown up without parents.” he paused for a moment and let that sink in, sighing before continuing. “I’ve always felt bad for you and ‘Bloom when it comes to our folks, you know that. Neither of you got to know them as well as I did. At the same time, I almost envy you both for that. You were young enough that you didn’t really know what was going on at the time, and ‘Bloom was far too young to remember.”

Applejack didn’t really have a response for that so she didn’t say anything. Instead she just hugged Mac and they stood there for a moment.

“I’m sorry, Mac. Sometimes I forget just how far the age gap between all of us really is.”

As he reached the farm’s main gate, the wind started to pick up, throwing snow in his face and reminding him of just how cold it was. I must’ve left my jacket in the barn. I don’t remember bringing it inside. With that in mind, he turned back and headed deeper into the farm.

Gale saw the note from a distance as he walked up to the barn, once he reach the building, he quickly found that it had been stuck to the door with a nail. Weird, is tape not a thing here or wh- he all but froze solid as he read the words.

“Do you know how easy it is to fake a suicide by hanging?”

Gale involuntarily shook as he recalled another time, and a similar message. How the hell did they . . . no, it can’t be and you know it. . . . so then what the fuck is this!?

Carefully opening the door, Gale saw that there was no one inside. Not wanting to test fate, he quickly grabbed the jacket he left there and started back to the library. Walking at a faster pace than normal. I think I’m done coming out here alone for now.

The sun finally slipped beneath the horizon as Gale got about halfway back to the library. Realizing what time it must’ve been, he picked up the pace once more and was practically running by the time he reached the door.

Tell Twilight in the morning, maybe this was Dash’s idea of a prank. The door closed with a click as he entered the building. He quickly found that, it seemed neither Twilight nor Spike were home right then. Okay, going upstairs, closing the goddamn door and deadbolting it if I can..

Gale did just that before falling into an uneasy sleep. About two hours later, a loud ‘click’ could be heard. While it was most likely Twilight closing a door, to Gale, who had been extremely on edge after reading the note he found earlier, it sounded like a gun being cocked. His eyes shot wide as he threw back the covers and hopped off the bed, frantically searching for anything to use in self defense before he heard Twilight apologize for waking him.

Twilight arrived home a few hours later than she had originally planned, with Gale already having fallen asleep. Since the lights were already off, Twilight made the, correct, assumption that Gale must’ve already gone to bed. That in mind, she tried to make as little noise as possible while walking up to her room, across the hall from his. The only sound made was that of her shutting the door to her room, she did so magically and it made a louder ‘click’ than she had hoped it would.

A mere fraction of a second after she closed the door, Gale had practically jumped out of his bed. Being as tired as she was, Twilight refrained from actually getting out of bed to tell him what that was and instead, opted to yell it to him. “Sorry about that, didn’t think it was gonna be that loud.”

Even from across the hall, Twilight could hear Gale muttering. “God dammit, Jess was right. I’m getting way too jumpy.” After a few more minutes had passed and he hadn’t said anything else, Twilight went to sleep. Meanwhile, over in his room, Gale stayed up for another half hour or so, trying to calm himself down a bit so he could go back to sleep.

He found that incredibly difficult, however, as the message from earlier kept coming back.

“Do you know how easy it is to fake a suicide by hanging?”

“To fake a suicide by hanging?”

“By hanging?”

The last part of the statement in particular had really gotten under Gale’s skin. Getting frustrated, he grabbed the nearest object, a pillow in this case, and chucked it at the wall opposite himself. Dammit! What the fuck is going on here!?

Eventually, with only a few hours until dawn, Gale was able to fall asleep once more. Though, it was certainly not a comfortable one.

The next morning, Gale arrived downstairs to find Spike making breakfast. In addition to that, there was a very concerned, and somewhat angry Twilight. “Gale, would you please explain this paper?” She asked, magically shoving the note into his hands. He didn’t need to ask what she was talking about the moment he read it.

Doing his best to conceal that he’d already seen the note, he scratched the back of his neck and replied. “Well, it just seems like a question. A rather dark one, too.”

Magically taking the paper back from him, Twilight, herself, walked up to him. “Well, why was it sitting outside your room?”

“Hmm? This was?” Genuine shock evident. I thought I bought that inside with me, great. “That seems really odd.” Attempting to end the conversation before it went any further, Gale moved to, and picked up a box of unsorted books. He was hoping Twilight would just forget about it while he went to work on something.

Twilight did not, in fact, drop the subject. She opted to follow him across the room and say. “Gale, I know that you know well enough to take this at least a little seriously. What if that’s a death threat?” Stamping a hoof, she glowered up at him.

“It wouldn’t be the first death threat I’ve ever gotten.” he muttered while attempting to calmly put books on shelves. So many damn books in this place . . .

Lunadammit, Gale. Twilight was really starting to get annoyed about his reaction by now, “Gale, will you just tell me what you’re talking about already?” her tone actually got him to pause, just for a second.

“No.” he replied, almost automatically, sighing as he already started regretting having brought it up. Dammit, why didn’t you just say you got one once in highschool or something?

His behavior causing Twilight a great deal of concern, she asked “Why?” Taking a step forward, she added. “Why won’t you?”

Gale picked up another book and put it on a shelf, rather forcefully, as he started “Because I don-”

Having already expected this response, Twilight interjected. “You don’t want to, yes. You have said that. I just want to know what happened before you came here. It’s clearly been bothering you so why not tell somepony to get it off your chest.”

Oddly human expression . . . “Twilight, there are some things I’d rather not talk about. I was going to meet someone, and then I crashed. End. Of. Story.”

“Except it isn’t and you know it.” Twilight didn’t get mad too often, so Spike knew something was up. He stopped himself just before walking out of the kitchen and decided to let them finish their conversation first.

“You know it much better than any of us..” she said “Gale I remember that outburst from the other day, whatever happened to you clearly wasn’t ‘just an accident’.”

Now it was Gale’s turn to start getting angry. “Like I said. I crashed. End. Of. Story.”

Switching tactics, Twilight asked him. “Okay, if that’s all then why not talk about what you were doing before you crashed?”

Gale wasn’t affected by the sudden topic shift. “Because my personal life is just that, personal.” Deciding he was done with that shelf, and partially just to get Twilight to leave him alone, Gale picked up the box and moved to another section.

“Gale I’m just trying to help!” Following him, Twilight went on “Whatever ‘it’ is, it’s clearly bothering you. I really think tha-”

“I don’t care what you think, Twilight.” he snapped. “I said what I said and that’s that.” Even Spike, who was still in the kitchen, flinched from that.

“Okay, so you won’t talk about what you were doing.” Twilight stated, not even bothering to make it a question.

“No.”

“Can you at least answer one thing?”

“That is heavily dependent on what that ‘thing’ is.” The tone of his voice managed to put both the pony and dragon on edge. They’d not heard him get this upset about something.

“Who is ‘Jess’?” An innocent enough question, but given the context that was about the last thing she should’ve asked.

Gale looked at Twilight over his shoulder, his gaze cold enough to freeze water instantly. “None. Of. Your. Fucking. Business.”

“Gale, I just want to know who she is! Why is that-”

“It. Doesn’t. Matter!” he yelled, cutting her off. Almost as soon as he said it, that anger left him. “Like you said,” he sighed, continuing to replace books. “I’m not going back . . . so why bother?”

That doesn’t even make any sense . . . “But what if I said you could?” Twilight asked, finally getting to the second thing she wanted to talk to him about.

He turned to face her faster than she’d thought physically possible. Pointing at her with as much anger as possible he said. “Woman, don’t you dare joke about things like that.”

“I’m not,” she began, some of her courage coming back as she saw his expression change to that of shock. “I’ve spent the last three weeks looking through every sun-damned book and scroll on teleportation I have in this library trying to find something, anything.” her sudden outburst had actually caught Gale off guard enough that he’d taken a step back.

Dammit, man, I should know better than to let myself get that mad. As he stepped back, he went from anger, to shock, to just plain confusion.

Upon realizing this, she calmed down slightly. “I might have found something, but I need to get an original copy of the spellbook it’s in first.”

Gale stood there, silent, unsure how to respond. Okay, when’s the other shoe gonna drop. “Let me guess, it doesn’t exist anymore?” he asked once he’d regained some semblance of composure.

After a moment, Twilight went on “Well . . . no, it doesn’t. But there’s a genuine complete copy in the palace archives.”

And there it-wait, what? “Palace archives . . . you mean it’s essentially in the princesses’ personal library?”

“No, it’s more than likely in the restricted section of the advanced magic department.”

The fact that she knows this . . . A thought occurred to Gale as she said this, however. “Wait, if it’s in a restricted section . . . how do you intend to get it?”

“To be honest, I probably have the ability to without much issue, having been a student of a princess.” she paused for a moment, then added. “If that isn’t enough I could probably ask Princess Celestia herself if she could get it for me.”

“Okay, pause. You seriously believe the princess will just get a book for you, from such a restricted area? I know you said that you’re a student of hers, but that’s a little much.”

“I mean, I did ask her to grant you citizenship so you could live some sort of life, assuming I couldn’t find anything.”

Gale had nothing to say in response to that, and just stood there silently for a moment before heading upstairs.

Sitting in his room upstairs, Gale became progressively more upset with himself. Dammit, Dammit. Dammit! Dammit!. I should know better than to let my emotions get a hold of me like that. That’s something my asshole father would’ve done, not me. . . . God, why the hell was that the one thing I got from the bastard?

Getting up off the bed, he slowly circled the room, thinking of how to apologize for losing it earlier, and wondering if she’d kick him out or not. I can’t blame her if she does. It wouldn’t be the first time my anger’s gotten me kicked out of somewhere.

Before he could continue down that mental rabbit hole, there was a knock on the door. Directly after knocking, Twilight called inside to him. “Gale, are you alright?”

Gale didn’t respond at first, instead he looked out the window and, to Twilight’s surprise, seemed actually upset as he replied. “Ye- . . . No, no I’m not.”

Finding that he’d left the door unlocked, Twilight opened it and walked in. “Gale, what’s going on here? I’m not talking about anything from earlier, I mean right now.” stepping up next to him, she too glanced out the window. “I don’t know about your life before you got here, and I’m not going to ask for now, but if whatever it is can cause that level of stress. . . “ she trailed off, not sure what else to say.

It was a full minute before Gale replied, his doing so causing her to jump slightly. "Twilight, I'm sorry for snapping like that. It's . . . it's just, . . . “ The mare jumped back as Gale unexpectedly kicked the wall..”Ugh, dammit!” he sighed.

After another moment, he turned to her. “Look, Twilight, when I got here I had a bottle with 30 something pills in it. I don’t really want to say what they were or how I got them, but they weren’t exactly ‘prescribed’ if you get what I mean. I’ve been taking two a day, every day, and I ran out yesterday.”

He stopped talking to let that sink in, and it was almost two minutes before he turned away and, although she couldn’t see it, Twilight could hear the sadness and anger he’d come to bear. “I kept telling myself I needed to quit that shit, I just never expected it to be completely cold turkey.”

“Gale, what are you talking about I’ve never seen you taking anything the entire time you’ve-” as she started talking, he’d moved over to the bedside table and pulled the bottle from a drawer. She stopped when he tossed it to her. “Gale, isn’t this illegal where you lived!?”

Gale looked towards the ground as he walked back over “Yeah, and I’m not happy with myself for it either.” Putting his hands on the window sill, he looked out admitted. “I should know better, my dad was a fucking cop for christ’s sake.”

Twilight stood silent for a moment, intensely debating with herself over what to do with this revelation. Once she’d managed to decide, she glared up at him. “Gale, I am going to take this bottle and burn it. Given the circumstances, I’ll let this slide for now, but if I ever find out you’re taking anything else like this, that wasn’t prescribed, I’ll be forced to turn you into the local guard regiment.” softening her stare, she added. “Please, don’t make me do that to a friend.”

“Thank you, and, I won’t.”

Gale intended to spend the rest of the day in his room sulking, but after awhile he decided that sitting and doing nothing simply wasn’t an option. Still not wanting to actually go downstairs, he went and picked up his guitar. As he sat back down on the bed he began to play parts of various songs, eventually landing on C.C.R’s Up Around The Bend.

Despite her feelings about Gale’s addiction, and her own ignorance for not noticing it sooner, she started writing a message to Celestia, asking if she, and by extension Gale, could stay at the castle during a trip to Canterlot. If not, she could always visit her parents. Though, she’d rather not for now.

Back inside his room, Gale was unaware that she’d ever been upstairs after her initial following him. As far as he knew, he wasn’t being watched, and that meant he could sing if he wanted to.

Because of this, Twilight approached the door in time to hear him sing out. “Catch a ride to the end of the highway, and we’ll meet by the big red tree. . . ”

As he kept playing, she slowly opened the door, intending to say something once he was done. Fortunately for her, she had come upstairs towards the end of the song and Gale was done playing shortly thereafter.

Seeing that he was done, and wanting to catch him before he started anything else, Twilight walked in. “I didn’t know you could sing.”

Her sudden entrance made Gale jump clean off the bed. Turning around, he deadpanned. “Must you always do that?”

“Sorry. I just wanted to tell you something before you started playing anything else.” Before he could even ask what, Twilight had summoned a scroll and passed it to him magically. Gale took a moment to read it, the looked at her in confusion. Before he could say anything, she answered. “Yes, I realize a week is a long time right now, but it’s the best opportunity have to look for that book.”

Nodding in understanding, he had one question. “Wait, why am I coming then?” Even as he asked it, he saw Twilight freeze, if only for a second.

She did so, knowing her answer would require possibly putting herself on ice of an unknown thickness, metaphorically speaking. “Gale, I think it might be a bit safer for you if you come with me, instead of staying in town for a week. Alone.” To her surprise, his response wasn’t angry. No, it was far from it.

Don’t even start, ‘cause you know she’s right. “Well, how light should I pack, and is there anything in particular I should bring?” Please, don’t say anything about a gun.

“Well, no. The plan was originally to have you bring one of those two weapons of yours, your guns, but I convinced Celestia otherwise. I told her you weren’t entirely comfortable with bringing something like them into the capitol.”

Thank you, non-existent god . . . also, learn to shut your damn mouth. “Thank you for that. Honestly, I wouldn’t be bothered if I never looked at the damned thing ever again . . . “ Gale didn’t really have anything to add to their discussion, so he asked when they would leave and began packing when Twilight told him they were leaving tomorrow. A little short notice, don’t’cha think?

With a few hours left before she needed to go to sleep, Twilight went back downstairs to send a message to all of her friends. She knew of them all, only Rainbow might have trouble coming along with them for at least a day, preferably more than that. Using her magic to send five copies of her invitation out, she decided to wait another hour for their replies. Within the hour, all but one of her friends had responded. You’ve got to love knowing a spell that lets you send messages to somepony, and have them send a reply right back.

"Westbound Sign."

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The next morning went by smoothly, both Spike and Twilight got up early to go take care of some last minute errands in town, while Gale took some time to get ready for the day. Phew, okay. You can do this. It’s only a few . . . thousand . . . feet up . . .

Once he calmed down to a state of minor annoyance, since no one thought to let him know Canterlot sits on the side of a mountain, he had some time to think about things. Less that three weeks. It feels like it’s been closer to three months . . . Snatching his phone off the bedside Table, Gale decided to head downstairs and get himself off the train of thought. Might as well make some breakfast. I think we’re supposed to leave around noon.

Twilight returned not too long after he’d finished eating and the three of them started out for the train station. Only barely paying attention to their conversation, his mind being occupied by myriad other things, Gale almost failed to notice when they’d arrived at their destination. In fact, it was Spike poking him in the leg that brought him back to reality. Taking only a few seconds, he caught himself up on what was going on. I guess the gang’s all here then, aren’t they?

Looking around, it was becoming more and more obvious to Gale that he’d been left out of the loop. He was certain the odds of all Twilight’s friends having business in the capital were low. Possible, yes, but rather low. Having come to the conclusion that Twilight must’ve planned this, he asked. “I take it the intent the entire time was for everyone to come along, and you just ‘forgot’ to tell me?”

After a few moments of nervous shuffling, Rarity stepped forward and offered some form of explanation. “Well, I can’t speak for the others, but I have some personal business to attend to while in town. This appears to have been a happy coincidence.”

Following her example, the rest of the group followed suit. “Well pardner I wasn’t really planning on coming, but I don’t go on too many trips as of late. ‘Cause of that, Mac’s told me he’s got the farm for the week.”

“I’ll only be there for a day. It was hard enough to get the weather bosses to let me skip two days, let alone a whole week, so close to a team member getting injured.”

“Twilight sent me a message, and it sounds like this’ll be fun!”

“Oh, I need to get some, um, specific foods for the animals. Some of it’s not available here.”

The time to board the train came shortly after their arrival, and the group quickly made their way onto the train. Having seen inside some of the other cars when they first arrived, it was obvious to Gale why this car was selected, and he has his suspicions as to why they were the only ones in it. Twilight, however you pulled something like this off I do not know, but I am glad. While the other train appeared to have been built with only ponies and maybe griffons in mind, this one seemed more suited to someone of Gale’s size. He guessed Minotaurs. Still odd to know those actually exist here in some way.

It was only as the train started to pick up speed that Gale realized the situation he’d just put himself in. Seven of them, one of me, in a train car . . . how did I not think about this? As the train picked up speed, Gale sat and listened as the group of friends next to him all chattered away about anything and everything. He eventually started thinking back to a few of the times his family had taken long trips by train, and how stark of a contrast there was between those trains and this one.

Continuing to look out the window, he then went over possible ways to avoid talking to any of them until they were getting off the train. Sleep or headphones really, those are about it . . . Unfortunately for him, he was never given the chance to enact any plan as Rarity tapped him on the shoulder.

“So how are you doing today, Gale?” Though the question seemed innocent enough, Gale had a suspicion any conversation would eventually turn in a direction he didn’t want it to. That said, he replied.

“I didn’t get too much sleep, and I was kinda hoping for a real quiet ride so I could catch some Zs.” How that isn’t obvious, I don’t know. Repositioning himself on the bench, Gale found a position in which he was comfortable enough to sleep. Still a better sleeping arrangement than that motel in Kentucky. . .

Though he had managed to fall asleep, it was a restless one. This became immensely apparent when, as before, Rarity used her magic to poke his shoulder. Though she’d simply been trying to get his attention, she’d unintentionally shocked him wide awake.

As soon as he felt something push into his shoulder, Gale’s eyes snapped wide open and he sat up almost instantly. He looked around briefly, seemingly afraid of something, before realizing where he was and who he was with.

“What about you, Gale?” Rarity started, unsure if he’d heard her original question.

Now finding himself quite annoyed, and still incredibly tired, Gale restrained himself some as he replied. “Look, I get that you’re all friends and want to talk about whatever, but I really just want to sleep for now. Please, just wake me up when we get there.” he said, returning to his sleeping position. God-dammit horse-woman, would it kill you to just let me sleep? For Christ’s sake, I already feel like shit today . . .

Finding it increasingly difficult to block out enough sound for himself to go to sleep, Gale opted to simply appear asleep, and listen in on whatever conversation was being had across from him.

That worked for a few minutes, until Twilight looked over towards him and said. “Gale, it’s more fun to be part of a conversation than to just listen to one. It’s not as rude either.”

How the fuck? Slowly, Gale sat up and finally faced the group. “What’s going on now?” he asked, trying to keep the illusion that he’d been asleep going. Even as he said it, he knew they’d all caught up by now. Seriously though, how? The look he received courtesy of Twilight let him know that he’d definitely been caught. “Okay, so I wasn’t asleep. I still have no idea what you said though. I must’ve zoned out.” You can thank me later.

The eight of them spent the next hour discussing various things, though it mostly ended up with them all asking Gale his opinions on a vast number of things that he knew next to nothing about. Eventually, as he’d feared, the topic seemed to shift towards families. How all the ponies’ families were doing, and if they’d seen them recently. It was right about now that Gale started to get extremely uncomfortable with the whole subject. Partially because of his own past, yes, but also because it seemed that he wasn’t the only one hiding things. Twilight, in particular, her left ear kept twitching whenever she’d talk about her home and her parents. Just her parents.

He already knew from Mac what had happened to the Apple family, do he wasn’t surprised at all by the omission of her parents. What did catch him off guard, however, was Fluttershy’s mentioning that her brother was going back to college. His surprise wasn’t directly to her relative but rather the other ponies’ reaction to this news. It seemed to him as though Fluttershy must only rarely mention her brother.

Pinkie didn’t say much about her family either, just that they were rock farmers. And that her sisters were all doing alright. She planned to visit them in a month or so.

Of her explanation the only thing that tripped Gale up was the mention of being a rock farmer. How the hell does that even work?

Rainbow Dash and Rarity were similar in that they both haven’t seen their parents in a while, though unlike Rarity, Dash didn’t make any mention of going to visit them any time soon.

After everyone else had given an update, the group became rather quiet, looking amongst themselves and trying to decide how to continue. None of them really wanted to be the one to bring up Gale's parents. Everyone except Applejack had assumed that he must’ve been treating them as if they were dead at this point. She, thanks to her brother, was aware that one of them actually was. Though, that didn’t make asking about the other a good idea.

Although Gale had hoped it wouldn’t, the conversation stayed on family related subjects for several minutes. Moving from the last time anyone had visited their parents to their best memories. Though Gale had actively tried to stay out of the conversation, it eventually became apparent that he wasn’t going to. It was mere moments after their last conversation finished that Twilight ventured the question he’d been hoping she wouldn’t have.

After a moment of struggling, trying to find how best to word it, Twilight asked him. “Gale, we’ve all been talking about our foalhoods, would you consider joining?” It was worded nicely enough, and Gale had long since realized that he wasn’t getting out of that question should she ask it here.

“Seven of you, one of me . . . I should’ve known this would end up happening . . . ” Repositioning himself, Gale took a moment to consider how he should continue.

“For the record,” he began, looking between all the ponies present. “This conversation never leaves this train car.” All the ponies shuffled a bit in their seats, as Gale began. ”I’ll start off by saying that I didn’t have the best childhood. No, I’m not saying it was a long list of terrible events, but it could have been better. We moved around maybe three or four times so it wasn’t the easiest to keep in touch with friends.

I moved from a major city to a town way out ‘in the sticks’ if you will, then back to a somewhat large town. Spent a fair amount of my life there, 9th grade clear until I left. Yes, I know that statement doesn’t make sense to you.

We moved there because my dad had been looking for a new job. He was a police officer and he didn’t mind staying one. He and my mother just wanted to live somewhere else. So, when we moved into town my dad got himself hired by the local police force. Within a year he was the new chief. Not everyone was happy about it, but no one really objected.

A couple of the officers’ kids started a group during high school. High School was a bitch, to tell you the truth. I had gone from a town where everyone knew your name to essentially a city where you were just a number.

That’s not to say the staff didn’t care, but with so many students it was a certainty that something would happen. So, like I said, a bunch of us decided to stick around each other. Even if we never really talked, the fact that there was a group of us made people less likely to try something.

A bunch of those guys are real pragmatic about things like that. Anyway, that dropped off in the summer when I became closer friends with chi- officer Lundz’s kid Ritchie. The two of us were practically infamous during junior year. His dad bought him a T-type and I had an old Duster. Again, I know those mean nothing to you. Roll with it.

A few weeks after I met him Rich introduced me to a friend of his. A girl maybe 4 years younger than myself, and only 2 years younger than him. The three of us would still be friends today if not for certain events . . . “ Glancing away gave the ponies a chance to see that he’d started tearing up about the subject. Though they were unsure of exactly why.

“At the start of junior year, even though I had a car, my dad woke me up one day and brought me outside. Loe and behold, there sat the Challenger you all know. She didn’t run, looked like someone had hit ‘er with a semi, and had probably been left in a field for over a decade, with the windows down.

We got the car rebuilt in time for senior year, which was good because we had to sell the Duster to pay for it, and I started driving it daily.

During senior year a couple of different things happened, Rich made the football team, captain even, so we didn’t talk to each other as much at school. He and his dad hired me to work at an auto shop they inherited when his, Ritchie’s, grandfather passed a year prior. Oh, and that girl I mentioned earlier? She was a year behind me in school so by the time she hit senior year, I was already graduated. Anyways, over the summer I went full time at the auto shop and even got an apartment on the other end of town. About midway through the year, after her 17th birthday, she and I started dating openly. The way we figured, my parents had a 6 year difference between them, so what’s the issue if we’re both at least 16?”

He paused for a moment, heaved a sigh and continued. “I should probably mention that, while this was happening, my dad’s lungs were starting to give out. We all knew it would happen eventually, he’d been too heavy of a smoker for it not to. So a few weeks into this last summer and I get a call from my dad. Surprisingly enough, he wasn’t calling about his lungs. No, apparently my mother had recently done another cancer screening, and her leukemia had started to come back. That . . . was not a fun week. She spent the next 2 at the hospital before the doctors decided she would be okay to go home and come back often to undergo chemo.

It’s a good thing mom was able to stay at home too, because dad’s lungs were getting bad enough that he finally had to retire. Somehow, someway, Richie’s dad, Mr. Lundz ended up as the new chief. Shortly after that, is when it all really started going to hell.

A week after my dad first went into the hospital, the doctors were hopefully they could keep him in good shape long enough for a transplant but I know enough about medicine to say it probably wouldn’t have done much but give him a few years. Well, like I said, a week later I get a call from chief Lundz, on my personal phone. Ritchie's dad knew it since he and my dad were friends as well as Ritchie and myself.

He tells me that dad might have taken a collection of files with him when he brought all his stuff home the day he retired. I was informed that they were needed for an ongoing investigation into . . . well, he never really said but I think it was a murder case.

Someone saw me go into the station carrying said box and reported it to their boss. I didn’t even know this had happened until I got home from work the next day. Walking up to my apartment I saw that someone had stuck a note to my door, with a kitchen knife. Truth be told, I haven’t told anyone what was on it, and I still don’t plan to now.” Though I bet Twilight’s figuring it out right about now.

“Less than five minutes later and I get a call from Jessie. She says she needed to come to my apartment as soon as possible. I distinctly remember asking if I should come get her and her snapping back something like ‘No, don’t leave your fucking apartment.’ That got me worried, she rarely swears about anything.”

As they listened, both Rarity and Twilight raised an eyebrow at the mention of the name. Rarity, ever the romantic, was more confused about who that was, while Twilight was surprised he’d even said it, especially given his reaction when she asked him about her the day prior.

“She gets to my place and tells me who it was that left me the note I mentioned. Apparently her father has been doing some under the counter business for awhile, and is linked to the murder case I mentioned earlier. As it turns out, one of his ‘men’ saw me walk into the station and he finally put 2 and 2 together.

Since she’d overheard him say this, she didn’t feel safe either and we both agree to skip town. She’d be 18 in three weeks and there wasn’t a thing he father could do at that point. As for me, I just wanted to fucking disappear.

We agreed that she should leave a few days before me, claim it was a camping trip or something, since it would look incredibly suspicious if we both were to leave at the same time. We agreed on a general area to meet at. I didn’t want to nail down a specific town and she didn’t want to have to hide in one. We agreed that I’d call her from a payphone once I got to Barstow and we’d figure out the rest from there.

I don’t know if it’s a thing here, but we have a sort of ‘witness protection’ program back home where basically, you disappear. As in, you can and sometimes have to have some plastic surgery and are given a new identity. You pretty much have to leave everyone and everything behind. We both agreed that, if we were to go and explain everything, we could still be with each other despite the possible risks.

About a week later . . . I was almost killed. A leading statement, I know.“ he said, seeing the looks of confusion on the ponies’ faces.

“A guy walked into the Lundz’s shop claiming to be an officer. Said he wanted to bring me in for questioning about . . . oh lord, I don’t remember what it was. Rich and me, we know all the officers, and this wasn’t one of them. In a moment of genius, Rich asked who the guy was and like an idiot he went for the first name he could think of: Chief Lundz. Ritchie was in his dad’s office when the guy said it, a few moments later and he walked out carrying an AR-15 and I swear to god I have no idea where that had been. I thought I knew that office like the back of my hand.

So we stood there, a fake officer with a gun to my back, and Ritchie with a gun pointed directly at his right eye. It took a few minutes, the the actual police finally showed up and arrested the guy. His name’s not important to you guys, but he’s a member of the Jones family. in my area, that family had been linked to several very suspicious deaths over the years but seemingly there was ‘No evidence to be found.’.” Air quotes showing how he felt about it.

“So, after that happened we went to the station, gave a description of events, and after we were dropped back off at the shop I told Richie that I wasn’t waiting, and I wouldn’t be coming in tomorrow, or ever again for that matter. He walked back to his dad’s office and came back out with a check, for around $2,000. Said his dad would understand. Now, I don’t know what your pay scale is here, but . . . that’s a decent amount of money to just give to someone.

With that in hand, I went home and packed everything I could out of my apartment. I went to my mother’s house and grabbed everything I could from there, too. I had already explained to her that I was planning on leaving for reasons she didn’t necessarily need to know about. Mom knew about dad’s habit of digging into cases and she understood the idea. She also knew with me leaving, and her having cancer, she would probably be alright for now.” Glancing out the window, he paused for a moment, shedding a tear for his, now completely alone, mother.

“I got on the freeway headed out of town and hit it. I broke my previous record of 145mph, I got up to 160mph. Which is completely ill-advised in a 40 year old car, by the way. I zig-zagged up and down the country for a few days, leaving a paper tail only at specific locations, to throw off anyone who might have tried to follow me. Would’ve worked too, had I not brought my damn phone by reflex.

They did catch up to me once. Once. It wasn’t easy but I got away from them and back to my car fast enough to get away. From what I understand, they caught up a second time. This time, however, instead of going for me, they loosened all the bolts on the back half of my car. The roads around that part of the country are not kind and should definitely be redone if possible. They must’ve figured I’d crash and die. Again, 40 year old car. No real safety features.”

After a moment, he wrapped up his tale by adding. “I got going down a road next to a lake when the back end finally gave out, I swerved off and that’s probably when Dash, who has yet to explain just how she was there saw that and tried to ‘help’.” he said that last part staring directly, at her.

Intentionally shifting the focus onto Rainbow Dash gave Gale a moment to relax. Of course, that moment dissipated when it occurred to him that he had absolutely no idea how long Dash had been following him for. That realization scared him to no end and he quietly hoped she had only just caught up to him as he’d crashed. This . . . could end poorly for me.

As she gave an answer, Gale was surprised to hear that, Rainbow Dash said just that. That she’d appeared, flown around briefly, and that’s when she saw him go flying out over the lake. immediately Gale could tell she was hiding something, the time discrepancy was obvious to him, but considering the events leading up to that, he was in absolutely no rush to push for that information. If I noticed, I bet Twilight must’ve. Oh, do I hope she doesn’t ask . . .

The remainder of the train rider passed without incident. Gale sat back and listened to some music while the others continued their conversation. The eight of them arrived late into the afternoon and were brought to the castle, by a group of royal guards no less. Three of them headed off into town, two on business and one just because she could. The other five, however, stuck to the palace grounds. Applejack went off to the kitchen to talk to the cooking staff, she wondered if she could strike up some sort of deal where they’d buy the farm’s apples.

Dash flew off the the far end of the palace, she had some friends in town who usually hung around that area. Twilight, Gale, and Spike however, walked further inside. They started for the throne room before Twilight realized what time it was. With that knowledge, she redirected them all towards a seemingly unassuming room located along the back wall.

The entire time they were inside, Gale noticed that there were royal guards stationed about a football field apart from each other. Standing in place, they almost seemed like statues. In fact, he was only about to tell that they weren’t when one of them started slouching briefly before snapping themselves back awake.

And here I thought that British royal guards were good . . . I could’ve sworn these guys were actual statues.

As they walked down the hall, Gale noticed that there seemed to be more guards than anywhere else in the palace, and they were considerably closer together. I get the feeling something’s up . . . The reasoning for the guards became clear as they reached the room. All three of them were stopped by two guards at the door briefly. Thought they initially wanted to have both Gale and Spike wait outside, Twilight was able to convince them that neither of the two were of any threat.

Stepping through the door, Gale saw that this room, while unassuming from the outside, must be some sort of hidden dining area. He presumed it was so that princesses could eat both eat in peace and discuss any topics that they pleased, without having to worry what any ponies might hear. It also occurred to him that the guards in the room must be some of the princesses most trusted. Especially when taking the aforementioned topics into account. I wonder what happens if one of them lets something slip . . .

"Bullet with Butterfly Wings."

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Walking inside, Gale could see that the interior of this room had a sort of subdued elegance to it, he assumed that was due, in part, to its function. I wonder how many others have actually been in this room? Judging by the guards reaction to Twilight entering, I’d guess very few. The dining table happened to be on the far side of the room, so as they walked forward he took the opportunity to look around. I thought the princesses were supposed to be gods or something, why this many guards?

Celestia heard the door open first and, after looking to see who it was, magically nudged Luna. Nodding in Twilight’s general direction. “Shall we meet our guests, Luna?” The day had been rather taxing on the solar princess and it started to show as she stood up and gave a yawn. “Before I get too tired to continue.”

The five met halfway between where Twilight and co had been, and the princesses’ table. As they did so, Twilight made to bow briefly, after less than a second she used her magic to pull Gale to the ground as well. “Ow!” Landing on his face with a ‘thud’. Shortly thereafter, Gale got back up and dusted himself off. Glaring at her while silently grateful that he hadn’t chipped a tooth. “Must you do that every time?”

Both the princesses, and surprisingly Spike, shared a brief laugh at Twilight’s expense before Celestia introduced Gale to Luna. The latter of whom was ever so slightly annoyed to find that she was shorter than Gale, even if only barely. With that done, the five of them move to the table where Twilight sits next to Celestia and Spike next to Luna. Gale was content to stand for the time being. My legs aren’t broken, so I’m fine.

Looking up from her breakfast, Luna noticed that Gale was the only one not sitting. “Would you care to take a seat, Gale?”.

“No thank you, I did a lot of sitting around on the way up here so I’m alright with standing.”

“Hmfp. Okay then.” The conspicuous lack of the words ‘your highness’ in his response seemed to have gotten under her skin slightly. Both Twilight and Celestia had noticed too, though they simply chalked it up to exhaustion. Celestia could tell that the trip up the mountain must have been tiring, even if by train. That, and she was tired from the day’s myriad proceedings.

From that point, the group, sans Gale, sat in silence as the two rulers finished their respective meals. They both finished eating at roughly the same time and everyone stood up from the table. Luna informed them that she would be attending a security meeting of sorts before resuming Celestia’s duties as part of the night’s court. Celestia herself, however, was going to prepare for bed. She had apparently spent most of the day mediating between the Minotaur and Griffon ambassadors.

Though, before she did, she called forth a trio of guards and asked them to show Twilight and her friends to their respective rooms. Their belongings had already been moved there for them.

Before the guards showed the to their rooms, however, they went on a brief tour of the palace.Entirely for Gale’s sake, as Twilight was even able to correct a detail if one of the guards wasn’t quite right. At the end of their impromptu tour, they happened to walk past the throne room on their way to the staircase that lead to the palace sleeping quarters. As they passed it, Gale slowed for a moment, somewhat interested in the kind of things that might go on during a night court. I mean, come on . . . there’s a reason everyone loves a late show, right? . . .

They reached Gale’s room, and Twilight informed that guards that she could get back to her room, as it hadn’t changed in the years that she’d been there. The guards left the three and shortly thereafter, Twilight and Spike left Gale to look around his current sleeping quarters and get used to them. Twilight informed him, before she left, that there was a decent chance that he would receive this room again, should he be called to the palace.

With no one else around, Gale spent the next few hours looking through the books by title, and finding nothing he felt he’d be interested in. From there, he took his phone and tried looking for something to listen to. He soon found that he couldn’t either. It quickly dawned on him that. Despite the lavish furnishings, despite the hundreds of books lining the southern wall, despite the fantastic view of the city, He couldn’t stand being there.

At that exact point in time he wanted to be literally anywhere else than in that room, so he went out for a walk around the palace. The majority of guards were stationed near the princesses’ quarters and the throne room, and their apparently secret dining room. That meant that he’d be alone for most of his walk, which was fine, he preferred it that way.

Aside from the quiet breathing of the myriad guard ponies as he passed, Gales footfalls were the sole sound reverberating through the building. Despite knowing that the guards had all been informed of his presence and despite being assured that there were typically very few ponies roaming late at night, Gale couldn’t help but feel uneasy. Looking for a way to ease his mind, he started softly singing various slow tempoed songs as he strolled through the palace’s many halls. “So? So you think you can tell . . . “ As he reached the last verse of that particular song, he walked to a window and looked up to the sky as he sang.

The guards who’d overheard him as he sang stood silent even as he returned to his quarters. It was only once they had changed shifts several hours later that any of them spoke of the event. “Sir, was that one of the princesses guests?”

“We’re not on duty Sure Hoof, you don’t have to keep calling me sir.”

“Right, sorry Snowtail.” correcting herself, she took off her helmet. Removing the headgear allowed the appearance spell to dissipate as it required the full set of armor.. “After all this time I’m only just now getting used to being one of the few mares in the royal guard.” She shook her head a bit as she sat her helmet on the table. Shaking loose her hazel mane.

“Don’t worry about it too much, you’re doing fine.” he said turning so he could see if the cafeteria was open yet. Yet again, we’re too early. “To answer your earlier question,” He paused briefly, either for dramatic impact or just because he was taking his helmet off, Sure Hoof wasn’t sure which. “Yes, that was. All I know is that he’s a foreigner from some far-off land. Nopony will say where, though.”

“Thanks for that. And, I hope you don’t mind my saying this,” she started, quickly looking down as she continued. ”But I hope they can transfer me to a day shift at some point.”

“Just give it a few more months, you get used to it.” giving her a quick pat on the back, Snowtail started walking towards the counter. “Come on now Sure Hoof, we get first take on all the breakfast food. Fresh off the stoves, so let’s not let that go to waste.”

“Agreed.” she said, making sure her helmet was safely on the table for the moment and walking to join him in the increasing line of their fellow guards..

“I would say something about leaving your helmet, but I think I can let it slide this once.” Snowtail said for the hundredth time. “Besides, the line’s moving quick.” The pair didn’t speak much afterwards, save for parting words as they both headed off the sleep.

Arriving back at the barracks just before sunrise, Sure Hoof saw that, as usual, her squad-mates were laying around in various positions and different stages of intoxication. Geeze, don’t you stallions have anything better to do?

Feeling exhausted from her shift, she opted to let them deal with the consequences on this one and go to sleep. Before she did, however, she quietly called out for her dog. “Cedar? Come here girl.” When the dog didn’t arrive after several seconds, she started to get worried. “Come on girl, this isn’t funny.” Still nothing. Her exhaustion quickly faded, replaced by confusion. Cedar doesn’t usually do something like this. Where is she?

Sure Hoof started looking around the barracks for any sign of her dog. She became even more concerned when, after a few minutes of searching, she found no dog. She did, however stumble across a note reading ‘You crushed my heart, I think it’s only fair I get your dog.’. Her confusion quickly slid towards anger as she recognized the hoofwriting on the paper. Oh, he’s a dead stallion.

Having returned from his walk, Gale took to the balcony in order to get a better look at the city. He had a hard time doing so, however, as his attention kept getting drawn upwards and into the air. Well, if she really does control the night sky, then I have to hand it to her. This looks pretty nice. Canterlot, unlike most cities on Earth, had very few buildings more than four stories high. There was also a distinct lack of streetlights, as they used lanterns instead. These things combined lent to an absolutely stunning view of the night sky.

After a few minutes of doing nothing but stargazing, Gale leaned against the rail and turned his gaze back to the earth. Gardens, main gates, guard barracks . . .Wait, guard barracks? Leaning over the rail a little further, Gale was able to make out the entrance into what was very obviously the guard’s sleeping quarters. Seems a little odd to have them way off in the back corner like that . . . and the cynic in me wonders if I was given a room that could see it on purpose or not.

He spent a few minutes studying the building, what he could see of it at least, and was about to head back inside when he noticed a pony go rushing out the door. Looking down at them, Gale could see that they had a light colored mane and a dark coat. He couldn’t tell exactly what colors. Huh, that’s weird. Why would someone be leaving the barracks at this time of night? I doubt it’s shift change if it’s just one of them. Maybe he’s off on leave? That explains the box at least. Having decided to ask the staff in the morning, Gale laid down for bed.

Having his room on the eastern side of the palace meant Gale wouldn’t be able to sleep in late, especially since his room didn’t have very heavy curtains. And here I was hoping to catch some sleep. Sitting up he turned to the side and did his best to keep the rising sun from his eyes. After a moment, his eyes had adjusted enough that he felt he could move about the room to start his day.

Although he was extremely tired, Gale had already decided that he didn’t want to sit around in the room all day. That in mind, he got dressed in order to head down and walk around the place some more. He had to admit, the architecture of the place was something to be admired. Unsure of whether or not he could get back in, Gale was hesitant to lock the door but shortly before leaving, he saw that there was a key under a flowerpot on a shelf next to the door. Pocketing it, he set out.

At first he planned on making a lap of the entire upper level, but as he was about halfway through with that he realized just how big the place was. Since he had decided to give up on that, Gale took the nearest flight of stairs down to the first level. Twilight had given him a couple of bits the night before, in case he wanted to go into town or anything, so he figured finding somewhere to eat was a good idea, and if he couldn’t get something in town then w=there was always the palace’s cafeteria.

Gale had started to wonder exactly how he’d be spending his day after that as he walked, trying to decide if he could make himself just sit around or if he should look for something else. That decision was made for him, however, when he heard an argument break out as he approached a corner in the hall. “I should’ve known you were behind this, Loom. Where is she?”

I guess that settles it. Jogging up to them he could see that this mare, whoever it was, was already chewing this stallion a new one for something. Once he was close enough, he prepared to grab and restrain her, though he tried not to show it, just in case something were to happen. Sure enough, it did as she yelled. ”Tell me what you did with my dog you son of a bitch or I’ll kick your flank ‘till you do.” and started towards the stallion in question.

Well, damn. That one even made sense. He quickly bent down and wrapped his arms under her stomach. “Calm down, miss..” he said lifting her into the air before she could strike the pony before her. “Look, I get that you’re mad, miss, but kicking the shit out of him ain’t gonna solve anything.”

To her credit, Sure Hoof had the sense to realize she’d come very close to, and probably did, cross a line or two.

Even as Gale said it, he noticed the pony edging down the hall. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it sounds like you shouldn’t try running.” That got them to freeze in place long enough for three more guards to show up. Now that he had a moment to look at him, Gale realized this pony had both a light colored mane and a dark coat. Son of a bitch indeed. That was you headed out of the barracks last night, wasn’t it?.

About a minute later, three uniformed guards showed up and took control of the situation. With both ponies under control, the guards were able to ascertain what had happened before Gale arrived. It was Gale’s understanding that this mare, Sure Hoof, has a small dog that went missing the night prior. She found a note with writing suspiciously similar to that of Loom’s. She happened to find him that morning and confronted him about the whereabouts of her dog.

According to Loom, she often yelled many foul things at him as he passed by on his way into the palace on business. It struck Gale as odd that he never mentioned what business, but he didn’t really think anything of it.

In almost no time at all, things had quickly escalated to the point where the guards were questioning both parties. Gale had been asked to stay as well, in case he heard or saw anything different. Since he was already there, he informed the guards present that he’d seen a pony vaguely matching Loom’s description early that morning, around the front entrance to the barracks building. After a few minutes of questioning it was revealed that yes, Loom had taken Cedar, she was apparently in a spare room in his apartment. He planned on bringing her back the next day, it seemed he was hoping Sure Hoof would take him back if he could reunite her and Cedar.

Having sent one of the guards to contact Canterlot’s non-palace guard, who were to go and rescue Cedar from Loom’s apartment, the remaining guards escorted the three of them down to a more secure holding location. Loom was for sure going to be arrested and spend some time in a jail cell, but there was also a chance Sure Hoof would as it had been revealed that she’d struck him at least twice before Gale had arrived to break everything up. That certainly explains why he was backed into a corner.

Eventually it was agreed that Sure Hoof would drop the charges for breaking and entering if he dropped any assault charges. It was only after he’d agreed that one of the guards informed him of a rule stating that, while an individual palace resident may waive those charges, the guard retained the ability to charge him. Especially since it was into the barracks building.

Well, that sucks for him now, doesn’t it? Taking some pleasure in the look of horror the stallion wore, Gale asked the other guard if he could leave. When he was told yes, he opened the door and walked out.

With that ordeal having wrapped up, Gale headed back to his room for a few hours. He intended to catch a bit of sleep and roam the city from that afternoon until late that night. He didn’t get much sleep, however, as there came a knock on his door not three hours after he returned.

Opening the door allowed him to see that a pair of guards were waiting outside. The hell happened now? In almost no time at all, the senior guard had explained to Gale that he’d been summoned and was wanted in the throne room. The tone of voice he’d used combined with the looks he and his partner were sharing gave Gale the impression that this was something he either shouldn’t or couldn’t avoid going to. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

It only took a few minutes for the three to reach the throne room, when they did younger of the guards opened the door for them to walk through. Walking inside, he thanked the guard who opened the door before continuing towards the throne.

Princess Celestia didn’t seem to anything to do that day, as the throne room was rather empty. That struck Gale as odd, but he didn’t think it necessary to mention. What he was more confused about, was the pony that Celestia was talking to as he walked up.

As Celestia briefly explained that Gale was from a distant land and was staying for the week, the man in question realized something about this particular guard. Wait a minute. While all the other guards in the room were in full armor, with coats that were inexplicably the same shade of white, this one didn’t have her helmet on, and her coat was a rather dull grey while her mane was hazel. What are the odds? He wondered, shortly before snapping back to reality.

“Sure Hoof has been assigned to you as a guard for the next three days. I have not ordered this as any sort of punishment for either of you, but it has been decided that one of you could do with a bit of protection over the coming days.”

Nodding in semi-understanding, Sure Hoof moved next to Gale and stood silent while he and the princess finished their conversation. I’m not sure how I feel about that wording.

“I understand completely. Thank you.” he said bowing slightly before turning to leave.

Sure Hoof had expected many things from today. This, was not one of them. Putting her helmet back on, she bowed “Thank you, your highness.” before turning and almost running after him, fully intent on closing the gap and asking him what he was thinking.

As they left, Celestia sat in the throne room, continuing on with her daily responsibilities. All the while, she wondered about Gale and his refusal to properly address her. Are all humans that irreverent, or is it just him? I suppose I may never know.

As they walked out onto the grounds, Gale looked down and asked. “So, what are the odds of this?”

While it would have been impossible to mistake Gale for anyone else, and Surehoof had already recognized hi, she wasn’t quite expecting him to remember her. “Um, what?”

Oh, what was her name again? “Sure Hoof, isn’t it?” Seeing her nod, he sighed in relief that he’d gotten it right before continuing. “Wasn’t that you I ran into this morning?”

“Oh! Um, yes . . . yes it was. Look, I’m sorry about that I-”

Cutting her off, Gale held out a hand in a ‘stop’ motion before saying. “You already apologized once, that’s good enough for me. Say, did they get your dog back safe and sound?”

“Cedar? She’s with a veterinarian until my shift ends. Well, I guess I should say until it’s decided I don’t need to guard you. No offense.”

“None taken.” He replied. “Truth be told though, something the princess said has me confused.”

“That being?”

“Well, the words ‘one of you could do with a bit of protection.’ come to mind.” Again he looked down at her. “What do you suppose she meant by that?”

“Not a clue, mr.-”

“Please, just call me Gale.”

From Under The Cork Tree

by Muscle_Car_Brony

"Fly By Night." Pt. 1.

"Fly By Night." Pt. 2

"Strange Days."

"For What It's Worth."

"Bad Moon Risin'."

"Everything Is Alright."

"Through Glass"

"Ordinary."

"J.A.R."

"Shambala."

"86."

"25 Or 6 To 4."

"Bab's Uvula Who?"

"Westbound Sign."

"Bullet with Butterfly Wings."