State of the writer + preview + random ideas

Hello, everyone. As you can see, it's been a while. I am working on this story, and hopefully I'll be getting a job that lets me work on it for longer. However, I have other things I'm working on, including another story (available on my DeviantArt page) and a certification exam I have to pass for my job. I don't want to give this up, and I don't want to leave you in the dark. As such, here is an update, along with a preview of the next chapter. First, though, I have a few thoughts. Sometimes, stories come to me, but since I've already got something (three things, actually), I don't want to spend time on them. So I'm going to leave them here for you: a collection of ideas. If anyone wants to take them up, that'd be cool to see (though I reserve the right to develop my own takes on them). Here they are:

Public Servants: One thing that fascinates me about the Equestria Girls universe is trying to puzzle out the hows of a very different world. One of these is the backstory of Celestia and Luna. In the prime universe, they're regents and defenders of Equestria. However, I couldn't help but want to develop my own version of their past battles. As such, the question occurred to me, 'what if they used to be police officers?'

Hear me out.

Basically, Celestia and Luna were from another country, as they were in this timeline. In EG, however, they were part of a minority that was being persecuted, and were thus forced to flee their country of birth to Equestria, without much in the way of money, almost no connections, and a suddenly insufficient amount of post-secondary education for their true passion: teaching. Thus hard up for money, the two sisters joined the police force of a crime-ridden city named Canterlot.

We Can Do It Together: Now, I haven't watched the show since the end of season 4. It's a good show, but that's when I started feeling its target demographic. I do, however, intently keep up with the show and the comics, because I love the world it takes place in. Thus, I found Zephyr Breeze. Beyond the cool name, I actually found a lot to identify with in the guy, even if audience response has shown that he wasn't executed in quite the best way. That, plus an annoying tendency of writers to assume that he hadn't learned anything at the end of his episode, resulted in a friendship fic between him and Rainbow Dash.

No, not shipfic. Beyond having him come onto her way too strong, I don't know if the two have a whole lot in common. Honestly, I'd pair him up with Rarity, who's not only got an interest in manedressing, but who's also neurotic about being considered a failure. However, I could see him and Rainbow Dash having a close friendship once he learns to stop overcompensating. And that's what I wanted to write: a series of stories about Dash helping Zephyr practice for his degree, teaching him how to talk to a mare, Zephyr helping Dash adjust to a really bad crash, things like that. Just showing two people who become an important part of each others' lives.

Twilight's Baby: Given the preponderance of Fluttercord hints in the series, I find it safe to assume that the two are getting shipped by the writers. Which means marriage and very possibly children, who would be half being that is in essence pure chaos. You have to wonder how that particular pregnancy would go. Hiccuping bubbles, craving rubber and mustard, the fetus suddenly teleporting away into one of your best friends several years prior to conception...

...yeah, it could be weird.

Yeah, there's apparently a trend to make pregnancies involving Draconequii to be very strange. In addition, I find surrogacy fascinating, as it's supposedly the most conjoined a mother and child will be, but the child is being carried by someone other than the mother. Combine the two, and you get this story, where Twilight winds up agreeing to carry her friends' baby, come what may.

Luna versus the Uniboar: This came immediately after the pigasus issue of the comics, when I realized that there were also 'earth hogs' as well. Thus, the uniboar was born, a pig with incredible magical powers. And one night, about a thousand years before the start of the series, it decides to start playing with the moon, causing tidal problems and firey rains of falling stars just for fun. Luna is forced to kill the evil creature, but then a griffonic custom enters her mind. One that that wasn't adapted for equine innards, or magical bacon...

Yeah. Kind of a weird idea. I think it's pretty funny, though, and I really hope I can adapt it some time.

OK, those are the ideas that have to wait for now. Now, the preview!

<<***>>

"Umm, what's your name... Blueblood?"

A young white colt with a golden mane shook his head as someone poked him. "Huh?" he asked.

The purple filly leaned back to her own desk, adjusting her rather cheap glasses. She paled a little as Blueblood stared down his nose at her, but she continued. "You were staring off into space. I didn't want you to be surprised by the teacher."

The classroom was peaceful in the moments before class began again. Since the teacher hadn't arrived yet, the foals were free to do almost anything. Some talked, some worked on homework, one ran down to the bathroom, and one had started staring out the window. That is, until the little purple filly, desk calling her Twilight Sparkle, poked him in the back of the head. "What were you thinking about?" she asked.

Blueblood turned back to the window, which was currently being pelted with snowflakes. "You see that snow?" he asked.

Twilight looked up at them. "Yeah?"

Blueblood sat up a little straighter in his chair. "Well, most snowflakes are hexagons, but there are a few that are are triangles. Well, they're hexagons, 'cause they have six sides, but some have three sides that are much longer than the others. Those encounter a mote of dust on the way down, so that one side faces up. Because of that, two other sides face down at an angle, so they absorb a lot more ice crystals. This pinches the sides that they touch, which makes the third side longer as well." Then he turned back to Twilight. "Did you know that?"

Twilight nodded. "Yeah." Then she looked out the window. "There are only about forty different kinds of snowflake: the ones we think of are called plane crystals."

Blueblood frowned at Twilight for a moment, but that vanished as she turned her head forward again. "Cool," he said. "What's your report on?"

Twilight opened up her desk and pulled out a small book and a wooden box. "Crystallography. I've got a string and sugar water: I got my brother to enchant the process to go faster." For a moment, she paused, staring at Blueblood. "W-what about you?"

Blueblood rolled his eyes and groaned as he reached into his own desk. "My father had a suggestion." Blueblood pulled out his own book, as well as a small bag of coins. "Capitalism. I get to tell everyone about 'the invisible hoof'."

Twilight nodded noncommittally. "Well, good lu-"

The bell rang and the teacher walked in on the dot. "Alright, class," the tall blue mare said, "I hope everyone has their projects ready, because we can't afford to stop if we want to get through them today." She looked over at one side of the room, then turned to face the other. "Let's start wiiiiiith..." her eyes drifted around to the windows, "Twilight Sparkle! Come on up!"

Twilight's eyes widened in surprise. Very slowly, she inched herself out of her desk, lifted the box onto her muzzle, and carefully plodded up to the front of the class. Blueblood noticed that once she'd gotten up to the front of the class, she took her sweet time opening the box, removing a paperclip on a string and cup with a lid, and oh so carefully removing the lid from the cup. She finally turned around. After a big gulp and a fidget, she opened her mouth.

"Uhh, hello everypony!" she stammered to the class, a big, fake smile on her face. Nopony answered. "Well, thi- as I..." She stopped to swallow. "Crystals!" she chirped. "Crystals are... are..." Her eyes flashed back to her desk, where she'd left her book. Face falling, she started to sweat. "Crystals are a solid ordered in a- ordered so that the molecules form an ordered lattice."

Blueblood groaned to himself as Twilight turned around to draw on the board. Then he opened his desk a crack and started skimming over his book, practicing his own presentation under his breath. Occasionally, he'd look up.

Finally, Twilight stepped away from the board, showing a cube. "Th-this is a salt crystal," Twilight stuttered out. "A-as you can see, it has..." She paused for a moment, now gasping. "I-it's a cube shape, so other salt molecules would stick on in a cube sha-"

Twilight had started to wander, so at this point she bumped into a table, causing a small fit of giggles. Blueblood rolled his eyes, but when he looked up, he stopped. Twilight looked completely lost, staring at the other fillies. After a few moments, she started to sniffle, tears springing to the corners of her eyes. Blueblood's mouth dropped open for a moment. Then he shoved himself out of his desk and strode forward.

"Thank you, Twilight," he gently told her as he stood next to her, "I can take it from here." Then he turned to the class. "As my partner here said, other molecules form different kinds of crystals. For example, sugar forms hexagonal crystals."

Blueblood pulled the lid from the cup. He tilted it just enough to reveal a red liquid inside. "This," he continued, "is sugar water. As you can guess, it's water that contains dissolved sugar molecules, as well as some red food coloring. When I insert the string into the cup, the dissolved sugar will cling onto the string and bind into rock candy crystals." Blueblood looked in the box, then he turned to Twilight. After no response, he turned back to the class. "I'd demonstrate for you," he said, "but rock candy takes a week to grow. So-"

"We're going to speed things up," Twilight announced just as Blueblood lifted his hoof. "I got my brother to place a spell on the mixture so that it forms faster. It'll only take a couple of seconds."

In response, Blueblood smiled. Then he turned to the class, motioning to Twilight. "This is why we're partners," he said. "She gets the best ideas." Blueblood could barely hold in a giggle as he saw Twilight's cheeks go red in the corner of his vision. "Alright," he said, "let's begin." With that, he lifted the string in his mouth and roughly dunked it into the water.

For the first few moments, the class couldn't really see anything. Still, Blueblood patiently kept the string in the water. "Th-the forming crystals are very fragile," Twilight explained. "Too much sound, even a lot of hoof traffic can cause the growing crystals to fall off or shatter. "However, once they get bigger..." Twilight motioned to Blueblood, who raised up the string, "...they can withstand a lot more vibration. And in the end, we get-"

Twilight was interrupted by a stifled yelp. The crystals had kept growing, and were now growing over Blueblood's red-stained muzzle. As a few of the kids started to laugh, Blueblood tried to smack off the string of sugar with his hoof. However, the crystal was tough, and it was stuck tight to him. Every attempt to pulverize it just resulted in it tugging painfully at his lips. The crystal moved around his nostils, but hit completely covered his mouth. Eventually, Blueblood reared back.

Then crystal quickly shattered, and any laughter instantly stopped. Sternly, the teacher stalked forward, sparing one glare at the class before turning back to Bluebood. "Are you alright?" she asked.

Slowly, Blueblood nodded.

"I'm guessing that the solution touched your lips," the teacher said. "It won't hurt you, but I doubt you were part of this project. Go take your seat again."

Pulling on his inner reserves, Blueblood kept elegant posture as he walked back to his desk . As he walked back, though, he could hear Twilight sobbing in front of everyone, even as the teacher tried to comfort her.