"Meant to say." Stan was walking alongside his friends, robotic and equine. "Good job out there. You make those swords work a lot better than I would have given credit. Shoot, ain't gonna convince me to bring a knife to a gunfight, but you pull it off."
"I'll come clean." Skyline veered off to be at Stan's side. "I'm a terrible shot. These ears are real good, but that means nothing when you're trying to hit something with a pistol or rifle. Just crap, total crap. Swords, on the other hand, I can handle, literally come to think. They go where I want them to go, and things get done."
Applejack cocked a brow, but stayed in her lane. "Not doubtin' you. Some jus' have poor aim, but I feel yer leaving out how strong yer arms are. Even with all the accuracy in the world, if ya didn't have got power behind it, a sword would only go so far, ya know?"
Stan waved left and right at his equine companions. "Look, the others aim with their mouths, ya sure you just ain't approachin' it right?" Surely ponies could aim. He'd seen that much!
"That's an advantage."
Stan hefted his rifle against his shoulder, less ready to fire, but easier to carry a ways. "How is firing with yer mouth a bloody advantage? Ain't somethin' I plan to get in the habit of."
Skyline pointed to his eyes, then to some thin tree in the distance. "If you're set up properly, what you're looking straight at is what you're shooting."
Applejack nodded firmly at that. "That's how it works fer me, so how are you a poor aim?"
Twilight gasped loudly enough for eyes to turn his way. "You're visually challenged!"
Skyline brought down a leather wing on Twilight's head. "Thank you for sharing."
"Sorry..." She rubbed at the sore spot gently as she ambled along. "But you seem to get along just fine. What form of visual impairment do you have?"
"The further away something is, the worse it gets, alright? If I'm cutting it, it's close enough to not be a problem." Skyline snorted, tail lashing with agitation. "Just how it goes."
Daffodil shook her head. "There's a reason Twilight's wearing those glasses."
Skyline looked over to her, up and down. "Glasses?"
Twilight stopped dead in her tracks a moment. "Oh... You don't know what glasses are." Her horn began to glow as she plucked off the pair on her snout. "These. They help correct my vision difficulties."
Skyline reached for them, but Twilight easily floated them further up and out of the way. "How do they work?"
"I'll explain!" And, with that trap triggered, Twilight began a long rundown of how exactly glasses worked, at least until she thumped face-first into a yield sign. "Oof! I should watch where I'm going." She dropped the glasses back on her snout, restoring her vision. "That's better. Now, about refraction..." The lesson continued.
Aunt watched the exchange with one eye, the other on Stan. "I don't think he understands half of what she's saying."
"Do you? No insult or nothin'." Not like Stan grasped the fine workings of glasses.
"I know how glasses work, on the basic level, but couldn't make them myself." Aunt was incapable of shrugging properly and just hovered along with Stan. "It must be harder to get them, without a working optometrist. I haven't seen a single one of those."
"Someone, somewhere, decided you needed to know what one of those are?" Stan chuckled in a dry huff. "I don't see you running into that on your own."
"That was right out of the factory." Aunt was quiet, other than the roar of her flames as they cut through the brushes that, thankfully, did not ignite for her passing. "I'm made to care for children and families. I need to know about glasses to do that. I can give a visual test, though a proper optometrist is still a good idea before getting glasses."
"One thing." Daffodil cut off Twilight's explination abruptly, shoving up next to Skyline. "You said you were up above us. If you can't see, how did you even know what was going on?"
Skyline angrily stomped forward. "It's not obvious? Good enough to see something is there is not good enough to aim. Besides, you can get away with a lot by squinting. You wouldn't know."
"I imagine she would not." Twilight played with her glasses in her magical glow. "But I do. Aunt, you said you were capable of measuing sight? Good enough to get a perscription?"
"A what?" Skyline peered at Twilight with new confusion. "I am doing fine."
"Better than fine." Twilight pointed up at her glasses. "But you could be doing even better."
He extended a hoof towards her. "Alright, I'll take those then."
"That is not how that works." She pressed a hoof against their front, protecting them. "Each particular eye needs a specific make of lens to work properly. What helps me may make yours worse, or not. We don't--"
He snatched the glasses right off her face. "Let's find out." And onto his snoot it went. His slit eyes narrowed and expanded visibly as he looked around in a wild swing. "Woah..."
Twilight remained at his side with a faint pout. "That was very rude, stealing those. I do need them back. Still, since you're wearing them, are they helping... or hurting?"
Skyline reached up, adjusting his borrowed glasses. "It's different... I want to say a little better, but still all fuzzy if I look far enough away." He brought up his other hand, popping the glasses free and offering them towards Twilight. "Thank you."
"You're quite welcome." Her magic set her glasses back on her snout. "I felt blind for a moment." She blinked her wide eyes as they re-adjusted to the corrected vision. "That's so much better... Now, that it improved at all does imply I was right in my guess. You're short-sighted."
"I consider the consequences," Skyline got out in an angry huff.
"I mean your eyes." Twilight tapped at her own glasses. "Your focus is such that you can see near things more easily, just like mine, so my glasses help, but they're not made for your eyes, so they aren't working perfectly. You need your own glasses, made for you."
Stan climbed up on a short fence to hop down the other side. "Not against the idea, but how do you plan to make new glasses?"
Skyline threw his head towards Twilight's face. "Where'd you get yours?"
"Funny thing." Twilight scrambled over that fence that Stan had, and Skyline practically jumped over. "The vault has a number of spectacles. I had to try a number of them to find one that suited me, which is my suggestion. Instead of asking for payment in caps, one set of glasses, assuming they have one that works."
Skyline gripped one of his swords firmly. "Yeah... I'm gonna need to try it before I take that deal. I've gotten on pretty well the way I am."
Applejack nudged into him from the far side. "Don't be like that. You could be even more just fixing those peepers ah yers."
"Hey." Eyes turned to Stan. "Let him decide. Ain't nobody like bein' told there's somethin' wrong with 'em, 'specially when they're managin' just fine."
Daffodil didn't move past Applejack, but she was looking at Skyline curiously. "How did you not notice this?"
"Of course I noticed it," he spat. "But what could I do about it? I figured maybe it came with... everything else." He batted at one of his tufted ears. "Just one more strange part to add to the pile. When you're showing chrome--" He brought up a hand, clenching it. "--the rest seems pretty normal."
Applejack lifted her shoulders with a grunt. "Can't rightly argue that. There don't seem to be a lot of... Do ya have a name fer what you are? No offense or nothin'. Yer a fine... what that is."
Daffodil ribbed Applejack. "Smooth."
"It's the best she had." Skyline was smiling despite it. "And I don't. I'm the only one, besides being a pony. Pretty sure I still count as that." He jumped as a hand touched his head. Stan had grabbed him, resting his left hand on his skull, ears poking up between fingers. "I know you well enough to assume you have a reason... So spill it, quickly."
"Easy there." Stan did not pet or stroke, just leaving the hand there on Skyline's head. "Jus' wanted to say I get it, really do. Plenty of people look at me odd, like it or not. You don't want none of that. You are what you are, and that should be good enough."
"Yeah..." That he didn't bat Stan's hand away or flee was hint enough that he was mulling over the words. "Look, I am a pony, even if two of my hooves are sometimes hands."
Applejack closed in from the side. "Didn't mean to imply otherwise. Yer a fine pony."
Twilight darkened suddenly. "Completely compatible."
Daffodil squinted at Twilight's words. "You did not."
But that drew laughter from Skyline. "Completely compatible." He swatted Twilight's shoulder, then Stan's hand free from his head. "I'm alright, really." He sounded more amused than morose at that point. "I'm me, and that's a pretty good thing to be. What's the other option? Being Stan? No thanks."
"Hey!" He swatted at the pony, but Skyline was already jumping away with bouts of laughter. "What I get fer bein' nice to you."
Giddyup took up the space Skyline gave up. "I am 76% certain that was humor."
"Look at you!" Aunt was powering in from behind. "When did you get so good at humor?"
"Practice. Giddyup units are given very little humor programming to start. I almost self-terminated as a result."
Stan set a hand on Giddyup's back. "That's a story. Share."
"Affirmative." Soft beach noises began to play from within Giddyup. "I was near the water and was instructed to 'take a long walk off a short pier'. The only reason I am--" Daffodil was laughing too much for him to finish. He waited for the pony to calm down patiently. "The only reason I am functional is because I had to measure the piers to determine which was the shortest and qualified as 'short'. Their parents arrived and rescinded the order before I could complete it."
Stan brought the hand that had been on Giddyup to his face. "If I tell you that now, you know better, right?"
"I would consider." He was quiet in his march, doing just that. "Analysis of command complete. I cannot perform this action for several reasons. Would you like me to list them?"
Applejack pulled her hat down in front of her chest. "Well, shoot. Glad ya didn't finish that. The wastes would be a lonelier place without ya, pardner."
"Thank you." Giddyup looked to Stan. "Would you like me to--" A human hand was in front of his mouth, not that this actually stopped him, but he was polite enough to silence himself.
"Just tell me if the first reason is because that's a dumb idea." He drew his wrinkled hand back. "All I need to know."
"In what order should I categorize the answers? Alphabetical? Chronological? Oh. You want them in order of negative balance." Giddyup was marching along, not looking upset for discussing why he wouldn't throw himself off a short pier.
"Yeah, that last one." Stan rapped on Giddyup's firm hide. "What's the first there?"
The sound of whirring tapes could be heard a moment. "Number one in that category: Doing so would void my warranty, but since I am the one that performed it, the company would be responsible for my actions. This is undesirable."
Applejack clopped a hoof to her face. "Any warranty you had is long expired, Giddyup."
"Despite that." Giddyup swung his head towards Applejack, neck and all. "They would be responsible if I self-terminated. That is a clear mistake in programming. I am fortunate I did not perform that action."