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// Chapter 1 2/2 Playing house 
// Story: A Collaberative Conundrum 
// by Not Professor Kokonoe 
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It seemed as if the stairs went on forever, but, as I climbed, the crystal around me grew lighter and more reflective. Instead of absorbing the light from my phone, the walls glittered and sparkled like some psychedelic prism of color. The seemingly never ending spiral staircase finally ended. However, its end was not at a door, or a hole in the ground: it was a wall. A wall with a conical divot in its center, that I climbed up to and ran my hands over. It was smooth, except for the divot. No etchings, no designs, no handles or buttons. Just a hole.

    So, I did what any good Private would do: I stuck my index finger in it.

    Light spread from where I touched, beginning as a small circle around the ring and spreading out in all sorts of shapes and colors. A rumbling issued from what must’ve been a mechanism in the ceiling as the door slid to the side, and more steps formed in front of me. Light filtered in in a sliver, at first, then a flood. I squinted as my eyes adjusted, and I took my first step on the newly-formed crystalline structure ahead of me, and into the world beyond.

    When I reached the top of the staircase, I immediately took stock of my surroundings. More crystalline structure, with windows open to sunlight, or perhaps strong artificial light. A throne with a pink pony in it. Ponies lining the side of the chamber, lowering their spears but advancing trepidatiously.

    Ponies? The pink one in the throne next to me was clearly equine. However, it had a picture of a crystal heart wrapped in golden filigree on its ass, a horn on its head, and wings at its sides. The others, dressed in armor though they were, glittered as if they were made of the same material the walls were made of. My brain stopped for a moment.

    “Step back, creature!” This, from a pony that’d run up to me while I stood there, failing to process what was going on around me, and staring at the pink horned and winged creature in front of me. She, in turn, stared back.

    “No, it’s alright.” The Pink One said, waving a hoof at her guard. Said guard backed off, but I could tell he still wanted to run me through. Pink stood from her throne, and faced me head on. “Who are you?”

    Instead of an intelligent response, I provided this: “Whelp, I’m fucked.”

    The subsequent conversation went about as you’d expect: Princess Cadence, who I’d guessed was the pony in front of me, but didn’t want to name just in case I actually was insane and seeing things, told me that I’d become an unexpected guest. Despite my sudden arrival the ponies were very hospitable, as Cadence, once I managed to explain my situation, gave me guest quarters in her palace and an invite to dinner.

    Needless to say, dinner was an awkward affair. I sat down to the left of Cadence, two seats down. Cadence, at the head of the table, an orange and white unicorn to my right, what looked to be a foal directly across from me, and a white unicorn to Cadence’s right. Of course I already knew their names, but they introduced themselves, regardless.

    “I’m Prince Shining Armor, and these two are Flurry Heart and Sunburst.” Shining Armor said. I looked to each in turn, giving a small wave and a smile to Flurry, and a nod to Sunburst.

    “Nice to meet you all. Uhm, I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Stefan, and I’m, as I’m sure the good Princess has already told you, a human. I’m not originally from this world, so if I ask any weird questions, I guess just give me a break, eh?” I smiled.

    “D-does that mean you’re an a-alien?” Sunburst said, eyes wide and ears angled slightly back. He looked both terrified and intrigued, if such a thing were possible.

    I nodded, of course. “Yes, yes I am. I’m not exactly sure how far away my home is, but… I might be able to guesstimate if I took a look at your night sky.”

    Flurry suddenly exclaimed “Blablian!” And teleported right in front of me. I jumped at the sudden intrusion on my personal space, and almost fell back into my chair. Flurry Heart, of course, paid no heed to my surprise, and proceeded to latch herself onto my head with all four hooves. “Seffan my blablian.” She said.

    “Hon, my head is not Mount Everest.” I said, reaching up to grab the little princess and hand her back to her father, who looked about on the edge of uproarious laughter. When I laid my hands on her, her horn lit up, and she said:

“No!”

One loud popping noise later, and the baby that was firmly in my hands was… still in my hands. I couldn’t see it, as what happened had happened atop my head. But, as was later explained to me by Sunburst and Shining Armor, the amount of contact I had with her had caused her spell to fail. Now, that wouldn’t have been much of an issue if Flurry hadn’t poured all of her power into it in an effort to get it to work, which left her tired and hungry.

After a few minutes of trying to pry her off my head with the help of all three ponies at the table, I found that the ponies had opposable thumbs with which to grip things. They were smaller than a human’s thumb, but just enough to be able to grip and manipulate objects. As it happened, it was a vestigial adaptation. The magic in a pony’s hooves was more than enough to enable them to grip things and use them, but it existed as a relic of ponies’ prehistoric ancestors, which didn’t have as much access to magic as modern ponies did.

Along with that tidbit, I also learned the reason why I’d caused the spell to fail: I was resistant to magic. A spell, when channeled through a unicorn or alicorn’s horn, gets its energy from the soul of the caster. However, all spells require a magical ‘ground’ to store any leftover magical energy. If the leftover energy is too great for the ground to hold or pass, then the caster’s spell would fail and they may experience magical backlash. In this case, the leftover energy from the spell would disperse into the environment around the caster. As a magical resistor, I was not all that great at being a ground. Indeed, if I’d put my hand on Flurry’s activated horn in that moment, then I could have caused a backlash severe enough to kill or seriously injure her.

After that incident, I ended up avoiding Flurry Heart as much as I could. I would occasionally see her at dinner, or in the halls running from her parents, but usually she wore a magic-suppression ring around her horn to prevent her from causing much mischief.

I found myself working with Sunburst quite often, though. The wealth of knowledge the human world provided me with would, I thought, help advance the ponies’ civilization beyond that of their small kingdom on one world. In combination with magic, technology would see an even greater use than before, but the infrastructure required to produce the odds and ends necessary for all the complex machinery we needed would be mind-boggling. So, with my generous stipend, I began investing my money in various growing industries, and my time with Sunburst and the Prince and Princess.

    Within a few months, I’d gotten a bit of a reputation as an inventor and a newcomer to Equestria, and, lo and behold, some journalist came by whilst Sunburst and I were working in the lab. He said his name was Green Quill, and requested some time to interview us.

    By the time he finished, the young colt seemed absolutely giddy with the thought of writing up his article. He thanked us, and rushed off toward the train station not even five seconds after Sunburst and I answered the last question.

    I didn’t pay much thought to it until a week later: Sunburst and I were all over the front page of every journal in Equestria, and soon ponies came up to me with questions about how it was on Earth, and what it was I was doing in the lab.

    Sunburst took the fame a little harder than I did. Every time he went out in public, he wore a long cloak that hid his body from sight, and at every opportunity he asked me to come with him into town so that I would serve as a distraction.

    This is not to say that I appreciated all of the attention, though. Six months in a world of magical ponies, and people were treating me like I hadn’t lived with their leaders for as much time.

    I was grateful for it, though, the day I met a certain Sphinx from Teramu.