//------------------------------// // 20 - Anti-magic human vs Canterlot bureaucracy // Story: Physics Bubble // by LordBucket //------------------------------// The herald trotted brightly up the red carpet and into the throne room. Bowing to the princess, he telekinetically lifted a scroll from his pack and unfurled it to read. "Petitioner #27 to the Court of the Sun, announcing...uhh, there's no name listed. It just says...mwahaha?" "That's pronounced, 'Mwahahaha!'" the human twirled his mustache, sneering at the herald as his anti-magic physics bubble caused the scroll to fall to the ground as he walked past. Celestia watched with interest as the human marched towards her throne. It was always nice when the otherwise dreary and predictable humdrum of the court was interrupted by something unusual. It had been at least a few months since an aspiring new villain had been the source of such an interruption, and she was curious to hear this one's pitch. "Princess Celestia!" he bellowed. "I am a human, and I am immune to magic! Therefore you are helpless before me and I demand that you surrender of all of Equestria into my care!" Oh. That was a bit of a disappointment. She'd heard that one before seventeen times in her thousands of years. Eighteen if you counted Fluffy Biscuit 'the horrible' who had found that one artifact, even though it hadn't actually granted her magic immunity. Of course, Fluffy hadn't realized that at the time she'd issued her leadership challenge, not that Celestia had bothered to tell her that the item in question was actually just a spell focus to help manage surplus magic from unwanted estrus cycles. Celestia smiled fondly at her memory of their final battle, the chase up in the rafters, the blindfolded sword fight, the exploding alchemy lab in the south tower...good times. Pity the stained glass window commemorating the event hadn't survived through the 500s. "I said," the human shouted again with a bit more volume, "I am immune to magic! Surrender Equestria or feel my wrath!" The princess glanced over at her guards. They were excellent at remaining standing while sleeping, but she could always tell. Well, no sense waking them. Turning to the right of her throne, she spoke to her aide. "Raven," the princess intoned calmly. "Is that timeshare in the Bahamares still available?" "I believe so," Miss Inkwell nodded, flipping through her notes. "Starting this Friday, and until the following weekend. Shall I have it booked for you?" "Please do," she nodded, removing her crown and peytral, then teleporting them up to her bedroom. Regally, the now unencumbered princess stepped off her throne, reared up onto her hind legs and dramatically covered her forehead with the back of one hoof. "Oh, alas!" she cried, giving a good impression of a bad Shakespearian actor. "Alack! What could a mere pony such as I possibly do to overcome such a clearly overpowered ability as an anti-magic bubble! A bubble of such raw strength, such unseemly power, that no pony alive has seen the likes of it since at least their first few undergraduate classes at my school for gifted unicorns! Oh, the horror!" "Booyah!" the human cheered, giving a fist bump to the sky. "Finally a pony who gets it!" "Oh, woe is me!" she continued, taking another step towards him, then dramatically tossing her mane in a tragic display of helplessness. "Oh, calamity of misfortune! What travesty it is that I, merely a timeless immortal, with mere millenia of experience protecting Equestria from chaos gods and the demons of Tartarus alike, must do battle with such a powerful foe as an ordinary human!" "Hey, I'm no ordinary human," he objected, pausing his victory dance just long enough to grumble. "But yeah, that part about the calamity and misfortune sounds about right." "Oh, alas!" Celestia continued, taking yet another step closer. "Oh, how callous is fate to pit me against such a dreadful thing...I, mere alicorn, burdened with such useless abilities as dematerializing and reconstituting my own body, battlefield removal, extreme long range teleportation, casual nuke-tanking level durability, and before the post-Lauren Faust retcons started happening, substantial thematic metaphor suggesting that I'm a nigh-omniscient, hyperdimensional Sun Goddess operating independently of a physical body that I wear merely as an avatar, while I myself am not fully tethered to time and space-" "Wait, hold on!" the human interrupted. "When have you done any of those things? And no, the comic books don't count. I'm pretty sure you just sit around the palace eating cake all day. It's always Twilight who saves Equestria or fights anything. What is this 'not tethered to time and space' nonsense? When have you ever 'operated independently' of your body?" "Do you remember when Twilight ascended?" Celestia replied calmly. "Yeah, of course." "Do you remember the scene where we walked through a starry background, watching scenes from the entirety of Twilight's life?" "Yeah?" "Where did that happen?" "Uhhh..." the human thought about it. "Dream sequence?" "And where," the princess prompted, "were our bodies when we were 'dreaming' this?" "I don't know," the human shrugged. "Twilight blew herself up and then somehow ended up in the sky. But that doesn't mean anything for you. Maybe she was disembodied for her ascension, but you could have been projecting into her mind while munching cake in Canterlot for all I know. That's remote viewing or telepathy at best. When have you personally ever 'rematerialized' a body or done anything without one?" "Season 1, episode 2, Friendship is Magic part 2," Celestia recited, her starry mane billowing silently. "After Nightmare Moon was defeated and Twilight's friends settled in with their new jewelry." "I don't remember that." "Applejack 'reckoned' that they really do represent the Elements, to which I replied that 'indeed they do.'" "So?" "I wasn't in the room at the time," "So what?" the human repeated. "Any stage ventriloquist can project their voice." "And then a ball of light flew from beyond the horizon, like the light of dawn." "Just symbolic nonsense because of your cutie mark." "And then only after entering the room did the ball of light become a pony body for me to wear." "Just the animators being lazy." "While a choir of angels sang in the background." "Yeah, yeah," the human dismissively waved his hand. "I don't remember that scene, and it's all just symbolic nonsense anyway. Alicorns obviously aren't hyperdimensional energy beings or something. It's not like you can just dematerialize and rematerialize a body whenever you want. And even if you could, it would just be magic, and I can turn that off." "Even though Luna does it casually and routinely, and her horn doesn't glow when she does." "Whatever," the human rolled his eyes. "Go ahead and dematerialize your body if you can, and I'll just conquer Equestria while you're off watching as a useless ball of light somewhere." The princess's mouth slowly grew into a grin, and she threw back her mane and resumed her lamenting. "Oh dear!" she cried aloud, rearing up again to clutch one hoof to a breast and one to the sky...then taking yet another step closer to the human. "How fickle is fate, to pit such a clever antagonist against Equestria! Surely there can be no outwitting such a tactical genius, able to see how clearly useless such abilities would be! If only I were powerful enough to overcome his anti-magic barrier through sheer magnitude of strength! But alas, a mere alicorn such as myself, able to telekinetically accelerate objects in the octillion ton range to double digit multiples of c, with requisite secondary powers that imply both casual violation of the speed of light-" "Wait, wait...stop!" the human facepalmed. "I already know where you're going with this, and no. Just no. You can move the sun because of your cutie mark, and that's it. Nothing else." "Even though it's canon that teams of unicorns were able to do the same without a sun cutie mark." "Yes, exactly!" the human gleefully pointed his finger. "Any pony can do it! So clearly it's just magic and I'm immune to that." Again the princess grinned, now with a nearly predatory look in her eyes, as she took yet another step closer, before throwing her head back and lamenting again. "Oh, how terrible!" she cried. "What horrible travesty it is that I, a mere alicorn, blessed with the attributes of all three pony races, have not the sheer strength to effortlessly overpower you, nor the speed to remove you from my chamber before you can blink, nor a horn sufficiently pointy to gore you upon, nor the-" "Sheer mass to crush me from eating all that cake?" Celestia paused her monologue to look down at the human. Slowly, deliberately, taking one last, final step closer...she lowered her head to bring it level with his, then turned a single eye to bear, mere inches from his. Close enough that her pastel mane, billlowing freely in the invisible solar wind, crossed the threshold into his physics bubble. It did not turn pink. "But no!" she cried out, backing away and spreading her wings. "There is but one suitable option available to me, to retreat! To flee, to turn tail and run like the wind! Perhaps someday, as ruler in exile, I might yet forge an army from among the non-magical races to reclaim my throne. But that day is not today. Care well for Equestria in my absence, mighty human, for some day when I return there may yet be a reckoning!" And with that, the princess pushed off the ground with a single flap, then teleported away, the only sound left being the light snoring of a guard. And a few crickets. "Wait," the human frowned at the near-silence. "Did I actually win this time?" "Indeed you have," Raven trotted over to her new liege. "And as new ruler of Equestria, I will be your assistant to help you properly manage affairs of state. To begin with, there are currently fourteen new tax policy proposals under discussion, as well as forty five public construction projects needing review in eight different jurisidictions, each with their own unique licensing requirements." The human opened his mouth to speak, but Raven continued uninterrupted. "Next, we have twenty-two petitions for redress of greivances, three ribbon-cutting ceremonies to attend, a floodgate planning committee meeting you're already late for, an orphanage in Manehatten that needs..." ~~~~ The following week, Princess Celestia returned from her Bahamares vacation feeling well rested. Her first act upon her return, to send an exhausted human back to Earth via a magic portal to get some much-needed sleep. Maybe he was immune to teleportation, but clearly he wasn't immune to portals. After all, if his physics bubble prevented him from going through portals, then how had he arrived in Equestria in the first place?