//------------------------------//
// 3 Cut Snippets, Part I 
// Story: FiSA: Side Stories and Notes 
// by Cordial Nova 
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"The character and training, and therefore the expectations, of the Exploratory Service can perhaps be summed up thus: upon wakening to find herself face-to-face with one of the mythologae, her first question was not 'Are you a unicorn?', but rather, 'How come you're purple?'"







TWILIGHT SPARKLE (writes): "When we got to the library and Moongleam (as she has insisted we call her) saw the collection, she bounced around the room in a circle for a full minute, calling out 'Yes, yes, yes, yes!'. She seems very excitable to me. Is this normal for her species? Is it likely to happen oft-"

(a short moment of embarrassed recollection later)

TWILIGHT SPARKLE: "Oh. Right." (crosses out the above, several times)







From a not-happening future:



"If it would make it easier for these... allegators to do so, I will offer my public promise and assurance here and now that I will not, under any circumstances, accidentally throw them off the side of the Canterhorn and watch to see how far they bounce."







Many episodes downstream of the present:



TWILIGHT SPARKLE (now an ALICORN): ...apparently you don't get an ethereal mane unless you have your own celestial body, so...

MOONGLEAM/CORDELIA (helpfully): I can arrange that!







From even more distant future:



The formerly plain, if not unaesthetic prototypes, she concluded, had been Raritied to within an inch of their mechanical lives. Golden filigree ran down the long, paired barrels in a suggestion of speed and power. Intertwining silver outlined the magnetic coils, weaving back to the breech in a horn-like spiral. At the root of the barrels, the main bodies of the weapon were streamlined teardrops - pearlescent white for the Day Guard, and ebon black for the Night, matching the embroidered battle saddles to which they were attached - each glinting with the polished jewels of nanocircs and thaumic cores alike surrounding Equestria's sigil. It would, it was necessary to concede, be impossible to evade the conclusion, facing these across the field, that you had picked a fight with the very epitome of elegance, grace, and good taste.
If the suggestion of power behind the melodious hum - that had replaced their former rasping purr while in hot standby - was anything to go by, they'd probably leave a discreetly fabulous pile of ash behind, too.







Rarity, when it came to magic, was not Twilight Sparkle. (As a respectable and average 2.7 on the zero-to-eight logarithmic scale used to measure the thaumatic potency of unicorns, this did not concern her, since no unicorn currently alive could match Twilight -- who had, according to the whispers of the Canterlot gentry, been assessed as a 9.2 during a certain infamous entrance examination.)

She was, however, undecided whether to be more amused or irritated by the blindness this caused in all too many of those who found themselves going up against her friends, for one reason or another. After identifying Twilight as the obvious magical threat, the thoughtful ones would then pick out Applejack and Rainbow Dash as "the fighters", and pay all too little attention to the other three - a mistake that might be excusable where Fluttershy was concerned, for anypony who hadn't seen for themselves just how quickly timidity could become intimidation if one managed the difficult task of sufficiently angering her, and perhaps even in the case of Pinkie Pie, if they avoided thinking about just how certain things were achieved with the dexterity of any Ponyville resident of long standing.

But really, she thought, did none of them take a moment to consider the implications of a field honed day and night for years in the skillful and simultaneous manipulation of a good dozen tools of the fashionista's craft?

The silence, broken by occasional strangled gulps, coming from the front rows of the mob - both those who could feel the presence of an impossibly sharp sewing needle encompassed in a gentle blue glow pressed against some sensitive part of their anatomy, and those who preferred not to look for one in case they found it - suggested that they were considering those implications in some detail now...





"Did you have a good reason for refusing Prince Rutherford of Yakyakistan's desire for a journey on your starship?"

"Yes."

"And what was that reason?"

"A vivid imagination of the consequences of" - air quotes - "THIS NOT YAK OXYGEN! YAKS DESTROY!"