"Speech"
'Thought'
Spell
Ranma saw the familiar sliding wood doors of a traditional japanese styled home she was well acquainted with and didn’t even stop to think before racing to them from her place next to a koi pond to throw them open. Collapsing to the floor in relief, “I’m back,” she exclaimed happily to the assembled group who looked to be sitting down for a meal at the square table.
“I don’t know how it happened—,” she sighed in relief choosing not to question her good fortune. Her father Genma and mother Nodoka were seated next to each other. Akane, her fiance was next to her two older sisters Nabiki and Kasumi while the trios father Soun sat off by himself. “It’s only been a few weeks, did you miss me?”
“Who invited the horse?” Nabiki asked shattering Ranma’s euphoria.
“I’m not a horse,” she corrected, looking down to find that she still possessed the body of a pony. “Well I’m a pony but it’s me, Ranma!”
“How adorable, it looks like its trying to talk,” Kasumi sweetly remarked.
“I am talking,” she would have stomped her front hooves in frustration but her ears caught the tail end of a whinny, and that stopped her cold. “But I can talk,” she tried again but it was only a long neigh. ‘Why is this happening? Have I been talking like this the whole time without realizing?’
“Don’t worry, I’ll take you someplace where you’ll fit right in,” Akane said soothingly as she appeared at Ranma’s side, gently stroking a hand along her neck and through her mane.
Before she could plead with Akane, something was slipped over her head, a single band wrapped around her muzzle linked to another ring that went up around her jaw and behind her ears. “Akane?” she tried to back away but her head jerked painfully as Akane held tight a rope leading to a ring by her muzzle.
“Akane, get this off me now!” she demanded, raising a front leg to try and push it off but it wouldn’t budge. Akane made no move to listen to her so she tried her next option and closed her eyes to try and get it off with her magic.
Another quick painful jerk broke her concentration and when she opened her eyes she found that she was no longer at the Tendo home but the pig farm of Akari Unyru. That is if the comically giant form of her prized sumo pig Katsunishiki being ridden by Akari herself was any indication.
“Look what showed up at our house,” Akane declared happily and thoughtlessly jerked the rope holding her head again causing a sharp spike of pain in her neck. “Right away I thought she’d be perfect as a gift for your and Ryoga’s kids.”
“I’m sure they’ll love having a pony,” Akari gushed, sliding down Katsunishiki’s flank to land on the ground.
“I’m not a pet!” Ranma jerked and pulled straining to pull herself free, her hooves leaving deep ruts in the dirt. But Akane held the rope easily and paid no attention to her efforts.
“And when the kids get tired of having a pony, we could always sell her to that nice Kuno Tatewaki boy, I hear he was looking for a new broodmare,” Akane added, oblivious to Ranma’s increasing panic.
Ranma screamed and felt a sharp jolt before she fell out of bed tangled up in her blanket.
Luna spread her wings and launched herself off of her balcony into the brisk night air. Giving a few hard flaps, she glided lazily around the tower dedicated to her. She had barely raised the moon an hour before and already the castle grounds were silent and empty. Like most nights she welcomed the quiet solitude, often feeling overloaded by all the activity of the day. And like most nights she found the way everypony shunned the wonders of her night en masse upsetting. But if she had patience eventually they would see the beauty in the darkness.
But now was not the time to focus on the negatives, finding the right window, she hovered outside long enough to telekinetically open the glass window before she went through. Inside was the barren room Ranma had been given upon her arrival. It wasn’t a room fit for an alicorn but it was one of the better guest quarters that they had available, and they weren’t yet convinced Ranma would be around long enough to justify furnishing her a proper room.
Closing the window, she silently made her way over to Ranma’s bed and sat down next to it. The reddish equine was facing away from the window asleep, her legs twitching enough to be visible underneath her blanket. Being able to sense when ponies were dreaming was an ability she had slowly grown into since gaining her cutie mark. And judging by how strongly she could feel Ranma’s mental state recoiling, it must be a nasty nightmare.
It stood to reason that if she was capable of sensing the state of a pony’s dream, then she may grow to be capable of influencing them. The temptation to experiment when given access to a perfect subject was strong but she knew Ranma had been having regular nightmares, and she felt too protective of the displaced creature to use her in that way. At least not without explaining the situation and getting permission.
“Ranma, wake up,” she whispered, prodding at the girl with a hoof to wake her up.
Her touch, along with her desire to know what was troubling Ranma, caused a shiver to pass over her whole body like a wave and she had to shake herself out to get her fur to stop standing on end. “Woah,” she gasped and wavered side to side feeling dizzy.
She had seen Ranma’s nightmare, just a flash of an image, blurred like she was looking at it from underwater. There had been a room with several indistinct human figures lacking details, the only one who did was a human mare with a short mane of dark blue hair who was directly next to Ranma’s point of view. At least Luna thought it was a she but who could tell with alien beings? The human was tugging harshly on a rope tied to Ranma’s muzzle.
Luna didn’t know the full context of the scene only that Ranma was terrified and the humans were the cause of it.
She reached out to more forcefully wake Ranma from her nightmare, wondering if her touch would cause another vision. Ranma screamed, and the next thing Luna knew she was being knocked to the floor flat on her back by a blanket wrapped pony.
“Um— are you up?” she hesitantly asked the moment she came to her senses, unable to remember the last time any pony or beast had overpowered her.
The little alicorn began speaking rapidly in her language, kicking and struggling to get out of the fabric wrapped around her. Luna heard the sound of fabric tearing instantly as Ranma’s monstrous strength ripped it apart. Having never been in such a situation, she panicked herself, wrapping her forelegs around Ranma, and trying to make soothing noises as best she could.
“It was just a nightmare,” she gently whispered, struggling to actually hold onto the smaller alicorn whose bucking was becoming too much.
Ranma’s wild blue eyes finally focused and her heavy breathing slowed to a normal pace. With one last long breath the red alicorn relaxed fully. “Luna?” Ranma asked in a small voice, continuing on in words Luna could no longer understand. But her body language said a lot, sinking into herself and trying to hide within the remains of the blanket.
“It’s alright,” she shifted to get out from underneath Ranma. The other alicorn was hopelessly entangled in her blanket, her limbs sticking through multiple layers. So Luna did the only reasonable thing and magically cut out the material from Ranma’s neck down past each leg to free her. “Blankets can be replaced,” she joked more for herself, seeing that Ranma was not wearing the pendant so she couldn’t cast the spell to communicate properly.
‘I didn’t think she ever removed it,’ Luna raised an eyebrow and stood up to look for the necklace, needing to know more about Ranma’s nightmare. Finding it on the small table against the wall, she levitated it over intending to place it back around Ranma’s neck but finding the little alicorn moving her head out of the way. “We need to talk,” she augmented her voice briefly with magic to speak with authority, distracting Ranma long enough to slip the necklace on her.
She was in the process of casting the spell but Ranma was trying to use her hooves to push the amulet off. A ponies front legs were quite dexterous but Ranma didn’t seem to be thinking clearly, and was merely trying to push upward making the movement awkward and ineffective.
“Calm down, I just want to talk about the nightmare you were having,”
“And I don’t!” Ranma angrily snorted, horn beginning to glow a blindingly bright white. “Who asked you to butt into my dream?”
“Ranma, please don’t be angry,” she pleaded, looking away and shielded her eyes with a wing from the overpowering light. “I was only trying to help.”
“I’m not doing this, wha— what’s going on?” Ranma’s anger vanished into fear as her aura continued to expand, pushing Luna with enough force to slide her along the floor to bump up against the wall.
“Then relax and it should abate!” she called out, buffeted by a wall of mana that threw the few pieces of furniture in the room crashing against the walls. Luna took one step forward, then another, surrounding herself in a protective bubble as she slowly trudged her way towards Ranma.
‘Unless—,’ she thought worriedly.
Very young unicorn foals often had uncontrollable magical surges, normally they were ultimately just a nuisance, too weak to cause any real harm. Could Ranma be going through a similar event? Regardless of her former status as a magicless biped, she was now on the cusp of being an adult mare, and an alicorn beginning to grow into her powers. With as much mana she could sense being gathered, an errant thought was all it would take to cause devastation.
“Keep your mind clear do not desire anything to happen!”
Suddenly the light and unrestrained release of mana stopped, causing Luna to slam forward painfully on her muzzle. She allowed her barrier to dispel and ignored the small amount of pain in her nose to quickly look up to Ranma who stood frozen, head turned downwards where he necklace was now a band of pure white magic.
“I didn’t want to talk,” Ranma admitted in a small voice, grimacing nervously. “I wanted it off,”
The magically enchanted item dissolved like it was a cloud being dissipated.
“Oh no,” Luna gasped.
A spark of magic ran up her horn like lightning to teleport Ranma to her side, leaving the uncontrolled magic hanging in place an instant before it exploded.
Celestia’s eyes snapped open, her ears pinning back in vain to muffle the explosion that shook the castle around her. Up and out of her bed, she dropped down to the balcony a floor below, and slid to a stop outside at the railing. She immediately spotted the two story tall gaping hole in the guest tower, the top two floors and roof beginning to topple inwards.
With no time to waste, she took to the sky, and cleared the distance in an instant with a single powerful flap of her wings to come to a stop beneath the falling tower. Her horn glowed and a yellow aura sprung up around the structure as it began to pick up speed. She couldn’t let it fall, there were close to forty ponies sleeping in the residential section below who would be crushed. Struggling against the massive weight, she grunted as it forced her down towards the castle below. Wings flapping and horn glowing brighter, she struggled to arrest the momentum.
Sparing a glance downwards, she grimaced at the ponies who had gathered to see what the commotion was, inconveniently putting themselves right where she needed to divert the tower remains to fall. ‘Hopefully there’s nopony in this part of the tower,’ she fretted, and began to loosen her hold to divert part of her attention to the ponies below.
There was no room for error, the ponies below weren’t moving away fast enough, and she would not be able to hold the heavy load much longer. Reshaping her hold on the tower, she began to direct it towards the open courtyard. Her eyes began glowing white, the nearest side of the courtyard rose up with a yellow wave traveling away from the impact zone, sweeping any pony in it’s path safely away, and holding them in a protective aura at the far end while the tower crashed into the open space, the roof portion breaking free to crush the outer wall.
Letting all her magic fade away, Celestia closed her eyes, and released a ragged breath. “That was quite taxing,” she sighed, looking down briefly to see several ponies below already had begun checking the wreckage, so she turned her attention upwards.
“Steward, are you alright?” the pegasus guard Moon Shower asked, hovering next to her.
“Not yet,” she answered worriedly, shooting upwards with a flap of her wings. “Where is Ranma? How did this explosion happen?” she asked, landing on a portion of stone that still appeared stable. Ranma should be incapable of such a spell so who could have done this?
“Your sister entered through the window. Past that we do not know what occured before the explosion,” another guard pegasus answered, the pair floating just in front of her.
“We must find them. Moon Shower, lock down the grounds, we can’t rule out this being an attack of some sort,” she commanded.
“Yes, Steward,” Moon Shower nodded, diving over the edge of the ruined tower.
“Hot Air, come with me,” Celestia launched herself back into the air to see if she could spot her sister and Ranma. (1)
‘Is it possible that one of the nobles attempted to assassinate Ranma and caught Luna in it as well?’ she considered in horror. They had always been leery of her power over the Sun and ultimately the power she held over them. Was the appearance of a third alicorn too much in their eyes? Did they fear an attempt to take over their Kingdoms? Even after all they had done to remain neutral?
‘If they’ve hurt my sister—’ she took a deep breath and buried her anger to deal with the most important issue of finding out what had happened to Luna and Ranma.
“Ouch,” Ranma moaned, limbs twitching erratically as she hung upside down in a tree. One wing hopelessly tangled in thin branches while a thicker branch was shoving leaves annoyingly in her face.
Her body was one big dull ache from the explosion which was probably the reason why she was buried in a tree. Well it was the only explanation she had for how she ended up in a tree, so she had to go with it. There was a pony talking up to her from below but she wished he would shut up. Every word made her ears twitch uncontrollably, like she was hearing two languages spoken simultaneously while being unable to understand either.
“I’m— fine,” she groggily tried to respond. “Just— gimme five— maybe ten minutes.”
She had enough experience with concussions to know that the constant buzzing of her thoughts wasn’t one. Unless ponies had different symptoms. Maybe she really should find out more about pony biology cause feeling like a ball of static electricity was bouncing around her brain and screwing up her ability to move was unpleasant.
Celestia strode with purpose into the room chosen to treat any injuries. She had just finished getting a report from all the guards pertaining to the possibility of an intruder but nothing had been found. The explosion had left it’s own evidence that narrowed down the cause to two very specific mares. Since her fears of an outside attack were thankfully unfounded, she now had to find out why it had happened.
Stopping just in the doorway, she gave a reassuring smile to an earth pony in the process of leaving, she didn’t immediately recognize him but his head had been bandaged from being struck by a piece of stone. Luna was awake and laying on a mat next to a comatose Ranma. Both were covered in bruises and cuts that had already been cleaned and bandaged. Her breath caught seeing her sister in such a state but she fought down the urge to run over and comfort her.
“Bounding Brook, are there any other injuries that need tending?” she asked the unicorn doctor.
“No, Steward. Your quick action limited it to only five injuries, all but your sister and ward were minor.” He answered.
“Thank you, I’ll need some time alone with my fellow Alicorns, please.”
“As you wish,” Bounding gave a deferential nod of his head before leaving the room.
A spark of magic traveled up the length of her horn as she secured the room for privacy. Even with an open door nopony could enter or hear the conversation she was about to have. “Luna, would you please tell me what happened?” she asked after taking a deep breath.
“Cellie, please don’t be mad.”
“Do I sound mad, Luna?” she snapped a little too quickly and her younger sister winced. “I just want you to explain yourself.”
Luna glanced at the sleeping form next to her worriedly before answering, “I was going to see if she was still awake, not to wake her. But I could tell she was having a nightmare so I decided to rouse her.”
“No doubt to take her halfway to the Crystal Mountains.”
“That is not true, it would have been to a place within Everfree itself,” Luna blurted out.
“Luna— Sister, she has a family to return to. It’s wrong for you to try and distract her with pretty things hoping she will stay here with us.”
“Yet it is fine for you?” Luna paused to rise into a sitting position. “Was I supposed to remain ignorant of you providing her with flight lessons from Captain Lockheed?”
Celestia recoiled slightly at the accusation, not having expected her sister to defend her actions in this way. “She was trying to learn on her own, the Captain wished to help so she wouldn’t hurt herself.”
“And your personal tutoring so that she might use the magic of her horn?” Luna continued her line of questioning with growing confidence.
“I have only given her what she has asked for,” she responded without much conviction.
“What if she is not able to ask? Am I to sit idly by while my friend suffers?”
“Luna, how could Ranma be suffering while safely asleep in her bed?” She asked incredulously.
“She cannot have a good nights rest because she has a nightmare nearly every night. Tonight I was able to see a glimpse of it, and she’s terrified of the humans she would return to,” Luna exclaimed overcome briefly by emotion. “How can we let her go back, Cellie?”
“They’re her family, what could she have to fear? You must be misinterpreting what you saw,” she tried to sound convincing but she had her own doubts. The way Ranma had talked about her father, with long pauses to compose the most gentle way to frame events, had not allayed her worry.
Shaking her head she wanted to get away from the uncomfortable line of thought, resolving to be more direct in questioning Ranma later. “We can discuss whether or not Ranma belongs here with us now or not later. It’s not relevant to what I really wish to know, and that is why is part of our home now in ruins?”
“Ranma had an uncontrolled surge.”
“Luna, she is no foal, why would she have any sort of uncontrolled outburst?” she scoffed at the idea, writing it off as absurd but almost immediately realized an issue. Ranma professed that her mind had not been affected by her transformation so her maturity should not be an issue. However the body she now wore was still a barely two week old alicorn. Would it really be so unbelievable for there to be growing pains that could not be predicted? “That still wouldn’t explain the explosion.”
Luna gestured to amulet draped around her neck. “Ranma gathered far too much mana and with an errant thought destroyed the necklace I had just cast the communication spell upon.”
“Raw magic from two alicorns with nothing to contain or direct it,” she summarized and Luna nodded. Celestia sighed, knowing that if it happened once that it would likely happen again. “So now there really is no choice, she must be trained so she can contain such outbursts.”
“I’m sorry, Cellie.” Luna said head falling, “I felt like I had to try and protect her, and it happened so fast.”
“I know,” she let the tension in her body drop as she collapsed next to her sister. “I was so worried something had happened to you, both of you,” she admitted tiredly, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep.
“I was worried too, I’ve never been blown up before,” Luna joked in her usual deadpan tone and painfully lying back down against her. “I did not enjoy the experience.”
Later the next day
Ranma slowly awoke to find herself laying on a mat with a pillow underneath her head. The static headache from the last time she was awake was mostly gone but she could still feel a faint tingle. As she grew more aware, the tingle around her brain was drowned out with the painful throbbing she felt from her horn.
Delicately raising her head while ignoring the way the scent of dried blood made her nose scrunch up in disgust, Ranma dimly remembered being brought to this room after being pulled out of that tree. Luna was on a mat next to her, exactly where she had seen her the night before. Seeing the dark blue pony safe immediately set her mind at ease even if both of them were covered in similar amounts of bandages.
She wasn’t feeling very good to start, and her mood darkened further seeing the only other occupant to the room was a unicorn stallion she knew all too well from the examination he did when she had first arrived on Equestria. He was laying near the doorway reading a book, with a quill writing to a scroll to the side. Luna chose that moment to take a deep breath in her sleep and Ranma saw that the unicorn’s ears turn before he glanced up.
The castle doctor smiled brightly, saying something in Ponish that was probably supposed to sound reassuring, and rose up to his hooves.
Ranma winced as the buzzing static headache returned in full force, her ears pinning back, and muscles twitching painfully like a muscle cramp. “Ah! What is this?” she hissed, hearing him speaking to someone outside the room. Burying her head underneath the pillow she had slept on, she tried to block it all out.
Without being able to hear the words clearly, the buzzing subsided into a light tingle again, allowing her to think. ‘I think I broke this body and Celestia is probably going to kick me out,’ she let out a haggard breath, her chest seizing up at the thought.
Slamming her right hoof into the floor, she cursed her luck. The explosion was an accident and she was about to get blamed for it. ‘Are they even going to let me use the mirror? It’s not my fault!’ she hit the floor again, hearing it crack from the force.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” she whispered to herself. An image of Luna’s face frozen in fear, that brief instant when the overpowering bright light from Ranma’s horn had moved to the necklace.
How many ponies were crushed underneath tons of stone? She may have been disorientated when being carried back but she had seen the missing tower. There were dozens of ponies who lived beneath her, whole families, and all of them would have been asleep when it fell. Why would they let her go home now? Luna may be alive and well but she had killed so many.
Shifting to be able to push the pillow down around her head with both front legs, she wanted to block out this world, maybe if she could deny it enough she would awake back on Earth like it was a dream. Back where she was a human, with hands instead of hooves, no wings to fly with, and no magical horn to kill with an errant thought.
“Pop, I screwed up so bad,” she whispered in self loathing.
She remained hiding under the pillow for what felt like a long time until a hoof softly nudged her shoulders. Ranma chose not to respond except to tuck her hind legs up underneath her, unable to completely bury the instincts telling her to run from such a huge problem she could never hope to fix.
Another nudge and this time the hoof stayed in place applying gentle pressure.
Reluctantly she pushed the pillow off her head and sat up facing away from Celestia. A golden shoed hoof stretched out to hold up one of the necklaces in front of her and she nodded. Yellow magic surrounded it before it was lifted up and placed around her neck. Celestia didn’t speak the incantation as she always did but Ranma could feel it as the buzzing exploded in her head. She almost collapsed but the sharp spike of pain passed just as quickly as it appeared and it even took the tingling with it. (2)
Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders briefly before turning to face Celestia expecting to see all manner of incriminations, disgust at what she had done, so she was not prepared to be gathered up into a hug.
“You gave us a scare, how are you feeling?” Celestia asked full of concern, releasing her to sit back while Ranma remained stunned.
“I— uh— I’m,” she stammered in a daze. Why wasn’t Celestia angry? She seemed to care so much about all the ponies in the castle, why wasn’t she at all distraught or furious over their deaths?
“Luna told me you had yourself an uncontrolled surge of magic last night. We should have realized it might happen. Unfortunately there was a sort of comedy of errors that led to quite a bit of property damage. But what’s done is done,” Celestia laughed softly to herself.
“Just tell me how many I killed,” Ranma blurted out in disgust with herself, ears drooping as she stared at the floor watching tears start to stain her muzzle. “How many?”
“Kill? Nopony died, Ranma. Is that why you were so upset?” Celestia gathered her up in a hug again. “Oh my little pony, you and Luna were the only ones seriously hurt by the explosion. I was able to catch the remains of the tower before it could hurt anypony else.”
Relief washed over her and she relaxed against the white alicorn, traitorous equine body desiring the comfort and closeness after working herself up over nothing. Everything was as alright as it possibly could be in this colorful barnyard animal world.
Ranma stiffened when Celestia continued talking, noticing immediately how she was no longer understandable and had slipped into Ponish. “What did you say?” she asked in confusion, the spell had never failed to translate before.
Celestia released her to look down into her eyes, “I was just saying how you seemed to have gained some curious mana mingling with your own aura that I was going to investigate,” the white alicorn started before her speech suddenly shifted back to Ponish mid sentence.
“Uh Celestia, I think somethings wrong with your spell,” she gulped.
Later
Gliding down to a parapet, Ranma flapped quickly to stop her momentum before landing lightly next to a pair of pegasi. They were trying to push the last remaining stone block down to a group of earth ponies. But the two stallions were not having much luck moving a square block of stone bigger than both of them. It was locked in place at an odd angle and they just didn’t have enough power to budge it. The two noticed her after finishing their latest attempt without having any more success.
“Let me help,” she said, hoping that she was using the right Ponish phrase. She had heard it used by others working to clean up the rubble and hoped that it meant that and she didn’t sound like a moron.
Without waiting for a response, she shouldered the nearest one to get enough space to put her own muscle behind it. Giving them an expectant look when they both hesitated, the pair nervously laughed before enthusiastically joining her in pushing. This time the block gave way to fall flat next to the parapet, so they repositioned to gently push it over the edge where it fell to the dirt with a heavy thump.
The pegasi thanked her and bowed before setting off to help others. Ranma didn’t immediately go anywhere, looking over the side to where the earth ponies were already inspecting the block to decide how it would be reused.
After the eventful talk with Celestia, she had thrown herself into helping fix the mess she had caused to distract herself but found that her help wasn’t exactly needed. Plans had been made while she had been out and groups organized to execute them. Being that this seemed to be the most exciting event to happen at the castle in a long time, there were a lot of volunteers eager to get involved. The communal effort of the whole thing was infectious.
Which meant they didn’t need her getting in the way as they ground to a halt attempting to explain to her what needed to be done.
Her stomach protested the lack of attention she had shown it today with a loud growl. “Alright I’ll get some food,” she shook her head and took off to visit the kitchen.
Normally the kitchen was empty of ponies at this late time of day but as she peaked her head around the corner she confirmed what her ears had been telling her. The kitchen was filled with more cooks than usual and by the looks of it were preparing a lot more food than usual. Celestia must have thought it would be a nice thank you to prepare a feast rewarding all the ponies for dealing with the extra work Ranma had accidentally created.
She had barely taken two steps through the doorway to see if she could scrounge up a meal without getting in the way when Mint Drop, a shorter plump earth mare wearing a chefs hat stopped her. The golden coated pony with pale green mane shooed her back out and gestured encouragingly towards the table Ranma usually sat at with the alicorn sisters.
“Thanks, Mint Drop,” she nodded, giving the mare a big smile before trotting off to her usual seat. Truly relieved to see the golden pony had not come to any harm.
Mint Drop was a great cook and had caught her raiding the kitchen several times. The reward was usually a swat to her hindquarters with a wooden spoon and then a much better prepared meal than she could hope to make herself. Reaching her normal table, she settled in to wait as patiently as she could with her softly rounded stomach making occasional rumbling noises.
‘I wish there was a TV or a radio or something to read,’ she sighed, having literally nothing to do to kill the time. There weren’t even any other ponies to watch in the big empty hall save some cooks who passed through without stopping. ‘Too bad Celestia isn’t here so at least I’d have someone to talk to.’
Ranma stopped that thought immediately and tried to smack her forehead into the table but instead bounced her horn painfully off the surface. “Ouch!” she hissed and rubbed near the base with a hoof. ‘Shouldn’t have done that.’
Grumbling, she crossed her front legs on the table, and rested her head on them to stare out at the empty hall. ‘I’ll never get to talk to anyone here again,’ she blew out a long breath through her nose.
She had broken a magical enchantment and that seemed to have consequences that weren’t expected. Some of the last words she had understood the white alicorn saying were speculations that fragments of it were lingering and feeding off her aura. Past that she didn’t know what Celestia had said or how that explains why further applications of the spell lasted less and less time.
By the time Celestia stopped attempting to fix it, she had not looked or sounded hopeful.
But what did it matter? So what if she couldn’t understand anyone anymore? Not like that was any different from when she had shown up here. As daunting as it was, she would adapt and survive like she always did. Just like how she had made out quite well spending a year in China not knowing the language, even if her father had ruined the last weeks of it with his stupidity. She could get along here just fine now, she didn’t even need to wait that much longer, and then she’d be able to go home.
Mint Drop interrupted her, the earth pony using a wheeled cart to carry a tray filled with food and utensils to the table.
“Thank you,” Ranma said gratefully, having lost track of time as her thoughts had all started to spiral together into a tangled mess of confusing emotions.
The cook used her snout to push the tray onto the table and then gave her a big smile and reassuring pat on the back. She then said something in Ponish that Ranma guessed from the tone was a phrase like everyone feels better after a good meal. Or that’s what she hoped it meant so she just returned the ponies smile.
Mint Drop waited with an expectant look, clearly wanting to see her try some of the food before she would leave. She guessed that because it was the same look that her fiance Akane would give after making some inedible toxic dish because she had no clue how to follow simple directions. Being that Mint Drop’s food was some of the best she had here, Ranma was eager to dig in.
As always utensils were left out for her if she wanted to use them. Having been excited about her progress with telekinesis the day before and wanting to show off, she quickly used it to grasp the fork. It leapt obediently off the table with much greater ease than she had the day before to hover over the salad portion. Her mouth went dry and she quickly set it back down before making a show of rubbing near her horn again as though it was bothering her. Mint Drop seemed to buy it so she just used her mouth to eat some of the food. Satisfied, the mare went to return helping the other cooks in the kitchen.
Ranma ate enthusiastically until Mint Drop was out of sight and then she slowed to a halt to stare at the fork. Going back to eating the food slowly, her eyes occasionally looking up to the empty hall, struggling with how isolated she felt.
Edge of Everfree Woods, Outside of Gaitlend
Bouncing!
I loved bouncing!
Boing! Boing! Boing!
Maybe I should have rolled into a ball first? Nah! I giggled, keeping my serpentine body coiled in a spring shape as I bounced my head repeatedly off the ground through the forest.
A delightful tingle raced up my spine, down my leg, around to my arm, back to my head, and my spine again. Wanting to feel more of it, I gave up the pretense of bouncing, and appeared next to the creatures who had caused it. Gasping in delight I swept down and gathered up the spiky rodent in my arms. It made such wonderful noises as it cuddled against me violently. I loved it already.
Oh but there were more! One, two, five, nine, three, pi, I love pie you never know how long you’ll get! What was I at? Who cares? I know I didn’t, I just wanted to play with them all!
The one chewing on my neck didn’t seem very fun though, they were just porcupines. Are they? I don’t know what a porcupine is. Well if they were porcupines they were too dull. They needed something more. Some kind of flash, a little razzle dazzle. Dumb animals weren’t fun to play with.
I dropped my boring toy to wonder how I could make them more fun. Just some extra parts, a few new abilities, and certainly a few I didn’t expect.
Giggling, I snapped my clawed fingers.
Four Days Later
Ranma had been awake for some time, laying still on a thin cushion in front of the slowly dying fireplace in the room she now shared with Celestia. She couldn’t figure out if it was to keep an eye on her better or if it wasn’t worth putting her into another guest room. The tall balcony doors were closed, but they didn’t seal tightly enough to keep an occasional chilly draft out. Buried underneath a blanket and with a fur coat couldn’t even keep her from shivering occasionally and Ranma didn’t know why Celestia didn’t have it fixed. Or what reason she had all this fur if it couldn’t even keep her warm?
Picking her head up to glare at the remaining embers then shift her focus to the stack of wood to the side. Briefly considering the option of using magic, she decided against it, quickly leaving her bastion of warmth to use her mouth to throw several more pieces of wood into the fire place. And just as quickly she was back into place impatiently waiting for the fire to build up again.
As the wood started to catch fire, Ranma enjoyed the familiar sound of soft popping and crackling, feeling nostalgic for her times traveling with her father in the wilderness. Adjusting herself to fully face the fireplace and enjoy the warmth it radiated out, she could almost imagine his awful snoring.
‘Ugh how bad is it that I’m wishing to hear that?’ she laughed to herself and started to doze off.
“Good morning,” Celestia greeted, bringing her back to wakefulness, the alicorns hooves making soft tapping noises as she descended the staircase.
“Good morning,” Ranma returned without picking her head up.
The white alicorn opened up the balcony doors to go raise the sun. Ranma barely trusted her own magic now but eagerly watched as Celestia cast the spell, her own horn tingling as the powerful spell completed, and the sun obediently began to rise from where it had been hiding behind the horizon.
‘That’s always incredible,’ she sighed as she went back to watching the small fire that was quickly becoming unnecessary, the sun rapidly chasing away the former chill of the fall night. ‘If Luna hadn’t been avoiding me, I’d like to find out if the moon rising is as impressive as that. But seems like she’s pissed at me for blowing her up so I’ll probably never get to feel it,’ she thought sadly.
Celestia wasn’t content to watch the sunrise, closing the doors as she left the balcony, and walking around to a place behind her. Ranma followed this with her ears, enjoying the small perk of movable, and sensitive ears. The pad she was on jumped slightly when Celestia laid down on the far edge.
‘She really doesn’t need to take the morning pony thing this seriously,’ Ranma huffed, sitting up because she already knew what the the white alicorn wanted.
Sitting on a tray was a stand carrying the replacement for the journal she had destroyed. On the tray itself was a quill and inkwell waiting to be used. Celestia was looking at her with an expectant but reassuring look in her eyes. Ranma glanced at the blank page, having had Celestia push her to write with magic twice a day now. Once in the morning and usually again in the afternoon.
There hadn’t been another incident yet but it was always in the back of her mind that she could have an uncontrolled outburst again. If Celestia wanted her to do something with it than she probably expected that she could handle another surge. But she honestly felt sick at the thought of hurting anyone by mistake.
‘She did say horn writing was good for control,’ Ranma’s mouth quirked to one side debating with herself over what the limits of control meant in context of magic.
When first experimenting with magic, she had thought it might be just a more useful and stable version of ki, an energy she had used in multiple ways back on earth. But ki was directly tied to a single emotional state, was difficult and slippery to use, and more likely to fall apart harmlessly than be useful. With all the crazy and dangerous martial arts techniques she had trained in without a second thought over the years, she wouldn’t normally be hesitating to play with such an awesomely powerful tool. If it weren’t for the fact that while magic had some of the superficial properties of ki, it operated off a completely different ruleset.
‘Fine I’ll do a little, but I’m not responsible if something happens,’ she narrowed her eyes and reached out with her magic to surrounded the quill in her pale pink aura, and it lifted obediently up into the air. Celestia looked on with a look of eternal patience, lavender eyes seeming to watch more than just the movement of the quill.
Concentrating on the task at hand and clearing her mind of other distractions, she found herself capable of exercising a greater amount of finesse than her first attempts had allowed. Considering what to attempt first, she settled on writing her name properly.
OMAKE TIME!
A Musical Interlude
By Bree R
Edited by Lawra
“I better get back to work,” Ranma declared returning her dish to the kitchen so Mint Drop wouldn’t have to come and collect it for her.
Making her way back to the cleanup site, her ears started twitching as she heard a vaguely musical beat and happy voices.
She was shocked to see nearly every worker singing, dancing, and otherwise celebrating. Happy smiles adorned each of the ponies faces as the song continued, some even seeming to hit cues to go along with various work activities and shaping of stone, or the dropping of stone serving as makeshift drum beats.
“Did...did they practice this?” Ranma muttered quietly falling into a sitting position in shock as she watched the musical number continue. “When did they have time to rehearse?”
Everything just seemed so unbelievably well timed that they just had to have practiced this. “It’s a nice song though.” Ranma mumurred a smile spreading across her muzzle and before she knew it she was tapping her front hooves and bobbing her head to the beat.
“Okay...enough, magical pony world is tolerable but I draw the line at musical numbers,” But she was powerless, her body was being taken over by the rhythm and welcoming nature of the music. Something about it spoke to her in a way, a harmony that resonated from the end of her nose to the tip of her tail. Feeling her worries washing away from the collective expression of friendship and unity that was being expressed.
The world seemed to fade out with a blink and before Ranma knew it she was singing out the end of a rather stirring and beautiful piece. To which the other ponies around her all applauded and cheered. Breathing heavily with a big smile on her face, she felt an amazing feeling of belonging.
A gentle warmth settled over her flanks and when she looked she found a stylized crystal blue treble clef turned on its side, a crescent moon overlayed the top flourish while a sun with stylized rays was nestled within the swirl. Her special talent! She felt a wonderful sense of purpose. Why had she been so worried about going home? She already was home here in Equestria! She really was a pony! It was her destiny to be an Alicorn and she would be forev—.
Screeching Ranma woke up in a cold sweat. Throwing off her blanket she created a small ball of light with her magic and checked her flank. Blank! Collapsing back to her bed, blessedly missing any sort of creepy magical brand marking her destiny and purpose. She was the one who decided her destiny! And she had no reason whatsoever to be disappointed in remaining a blank flank.
“No way am I ever joining any creepy choreographed pony musical numbers.” She declared before getting up and out of bed. Amazed Celestia hadn’t woken up with her scream. “I wonder what Luna’s doing…’cause I’m not getting back to sleep after that.” With that she exited Celestia’s room to go off in search of Luna and maybe go on some dangerous adventure to take her mind off that horror.
Trotting along, she started to absently hum a tune.
Omake V2.0:
Twilight Shimmer
A pony that looked strangely a LOT like a pony version of Nabiki Tendo walked onto a stage holding a clip board and a pen. "Ladies and Gentlecolts, I would like to now open the betting on whether or not Ms Saotome Ranma's dream will come true or not. Or whether or not she will get that cutie mark. she began with a smirk.
"Can we make multiple bets? Or bet on what aspect she will be a princess of?" a mare asked earning a nod from the bookie.
"Indeed you may, You may also place bets on whether or not she gets home, learns to speak ponish, or gets a marefriend/colt friend, just note different categorys have different minimum bets ranges" the bookie explained then smiled "That said Let the betting begin!"