A common theme throughout Human history seems to be that conflict occurs due to an imbalance of some kind.
One group doesn’t have enough of one thing, be it money, food, territory or bragging rights and they strive to take it away from another group who does have whatever it is.
Pony history is quite different, however. Be it due to their beliefs in the power of Harmony or because of lessons learned through events such as Hearth's’ Warming Eve, it seems that ponies have learned to accept what they don’t have and work around this problem together in order to avoid conflict.
Many bronies, looking at Equestria through our television screens, have considered Equestria to be a Utopia, a place where everything is in perfect harmony.
Unfortunately, such a perfectly balanced scale is quite difficult to keep in place. All it takes is the smallest grain of sand in one direction to send everything spinning out of control.
Subject 2: Moon Dancer
Having unicorn friends was awesome.
… Scratch that, having friends in general was awesome!
It had been about a month since my first encounter with Ms. Bookends and Twilight’s timely save, and Twilight’s friends had made that time fly by faster than I expected.
Colga- I mean Minuette, yes totally not Colgate what with the whole blue and white mane, lighter blue body and blue eyes what could have possibly given you that idea - was a very excitable pony. I remembered back when we were introduced by Twilight, I had known her for all of five seconds before she pulled out a camera and instantly took a picture of the ‘new addition to the gang!’. Let’s just say that it wasn’t my best picture.
Twinkleshine, the white filly with pink curly mane, was the more collected of the two. She usually let her hyper blue friend do the talking, but occasionally she’d pipe in and give her opinion on whatever subject was at hand. While she didn’t have the enthusiasm of Minuette, I quite liked her more grounded personality.
Lemon Heart was essentially the Fluttershy of the group. While obviously not quite *that* bad since her name didn’t literally have shy in it, the bright yellow filly with the cerulean mane was soft-spoken. Despite that though, she had a friendly personality that made her approachable and she laughed just as much as her other two friends. If only she wasn’t so clumsy. Honestly, how do you get your head stuck in a beaker?!
And then there was Moon Dancer. Out of all of Twilight’s friends, she was the one who spend the most time with Twilight herself. The two seemed to be the kind of friends that would compete with each other to see who could give out the right answer to a question fastest, or score higher in a test, and yet they were also commonly bouncing interesting ideas off each other in order to polish them into workable projects.
Besides Twilight herself, she was clearly the most intellectual in our group, but she was also the most closed-off. Sometimes it honestly felt like if Twilight wasn’t there, Moon Dancer wouldn’t interact with any of Twilight’s other friends.
Including a new addition like myself, of course.
And yet, despite her clear attempts to avoid interaction with me, I knew that I had to get her to open up.
Why?
Because out of all the unicorns I’d interacted with besides Twilight, she had the most potential to be the Element of Magic.
In terms of magical power she and Twilight rivaled each other, with Twilight being perhaps a shade more skillful. She more than made up for it with her sheer knowledge though. Were as Twilight could perform extremely magically intensive spells, Moon Dancer had the advantage of knowing a more obscure spell that was less power-intensive but achieved the same purpose.
So did having more magical knowledge enable a unicorn to become the Element of Magic? Or was it based on pure magical power? Was Twilight even the most powerful unicorn in Equestria during the first season premiere?
The fact I couldn’t answer these questions meant that I couldn’t discard the possibility of my changes to the timeline making Moon Dancer the new Element of Magic.
Which meant I had to befriend her.
‘...This isn’t going to be easy is it…’
Subject 3: Sunset Shimmer
Sunset Shimmer wasn’t a happy pony.
Now, you wouldn’t know this just from looking at her. To the outside world, Sunset Shimmer took great care to appear perfect.
She got perfect scores, the ‘coolest’ ponies on campus always invited her to hang out and she could easily cast spells that other ponies would never be able to achieve on the spot. As far as the rest of CSGU knew, Sunset was the best possible choice for Celestia’s personal student.
I wasn’t so convinced though.
Call it an instinct from having watched too many high school movies, but even back when I first saw her during her speech, I felt something off about her… Although that might have been the panic too.
Pony faces were quite simple to read. The fact their eyes were so large made it so you could usually identify what a pony was feeling at a glance, unless they had a lot of practice hiding it.
Sunset Shimmer was not easy to read.
Her face was usually carefully blank when doing anything not magic related, seeming to hide whatever her true thoughts were behind a mask. When she was doing magic though…
When Sunset Shimmer did magic, her mask slipped. A cocky smile would surface, sometimes she would even close her eyes and whistle as if to appear nonchalant. Usually by the end of the ‘show’, she’d look at the spectators’ look of awe and smirk arrogantly before she ‘humbly’ accepted their praise.
Now, you may be wondering how I could possibly have access to all of this information. After all, not only was Sunset Shimmer two years my senior, but surely I couldn’t sneak into her classes in order to witness her casting magic!
That’s all true.
However, none of those restrictions could stop a creative thinker.
On that particular day, we had a Spell Progression 1 test that involved freezing water contained in the water bottles given to us the week before. We had been given the whole week to figure out any sort of spell that caused water to solidify, whether it be ice or not. By this point, the teacher had gotten used to me pulling some sort of trick in class, and made explicitly sure that before the start of the test, my water was not only liquid but at room temperature.
If that had happened the month before, I would have had to resign myself to failing the test and improving my grade later on the ‘make an object invisible’ test I knew was coming up.
Luckily for me though, having friends was awesome!
Minuette had warned me about the exam the day before, since her schedule had her taking it a day early. Because of that, I asked Lemon Heart to do me a favor.
When the teacher’s back was turned, Lemon Heart magically swapped our water bottles. As soon as Minuette had warned me, I had asked her to take my water bottle home and put it inside her magical freezer for exactly one hour and a half, at exactly -18 degrees celsius. Then I had given her very strict instructions when it came to carrying the water to the classroom. She was to carry it through magic only and make certain not to shake it.
In exchange for the seemingly ridiculous request, I taught her all the theory behind the water-to-mercury spell and had Twilight test her on actually casting it. Obviously, this was done so she’d get bonus marks.
When my turn came around and the teacher skeptically looked at my face, I made absolutely sure to maintain a calm demeanor as I stared into my recently-exchanged water bottle…
And whacked it with my hoof!
Instantly, as if by magic, the water underneath my hoof became ice, quickly followed by the rest of the liquid inside the bottle.
The teacher’s eyes widened noticeably for an instant, before he quickly closed them and brought a hoof to his head. He then sighed.
“Mr. Hope, I had hoped that you would’ve stopped trying to pull tricks in my class. Everypony here knows that isn’t a true spell-”
“Can you prove that it wasn’t, sir?” I quickly asked, knowing that if I didn’t I’d likely get my grade lowered.
“... No.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
He shook his head and walked past my desk. He didn’t even seem angry, just tired of my bullshit ‘ruining’ his class. I kinda pitied him, but at the same time he was trying to fail me so…
It was only after class that I noticed an opportunity.
Walking out of the classroom next to my own, surrounded on all sides by a group of older ponies was Princess Celestia’s orange personal student: Sunset Shimmer. She was ignoring everything around her to put her focus on the book held in front of her by her magic, which was a light blue, like her eyes.
… That is until I ‘accidentally’ bumped into her, of course.
It wasn’t difficult to fake. Just had to pretend I was walking on two hooves for a couple of steps, head stuck in my magical theory book. Page 76, to be exact.
‘OOF-’
We both went sprawling on the floor, books falling on their respective pages. Everypony trotting out of Sunset’s classroom suddenly stopped to watch as they realized the ‘grounder’ had knocked down Celestia’s personal student!
“Hey! What’s the big deal?” Sunset said from on top of me. Two years of growth really did make a difference when it comes to size for ponies. She was… Well, not light.
“Oh! I’m sorry! I… uh… didn’t see where I was going!” I stammered out, for once thanking my gray coloring as it allowed me to fake a blush fairly easily.
Sunset managed to stand up and get a good look at me.
“Oh. You’re the earth pony.” She said with a bored tone, as if just seeing my hornless-ness had drained what little interest I had. “Tch. Whatever, let me go back to my-”
“Oh, this is so interesting!” I said in an excited voice, holding Sunset’s book in front of my face, blocking everypony else’s view of the page. “Look at all of these cool notes! You have scribbles all over the pages! Although I’ve never seen any of these spells on the libr-” My intentionally loud exclamation was cut off by an orange hoof in my mouth.
I looked up and was met with two light blue gateways into doom.
“You.” She pointed her hoof at me. “Come with me.”
She didn’t have to add ‘if you want to live’. It was implied.