A few days later, a pegasus and an earth pony stood in the newspaper office.
"It's nothing personal, but you haven't been contributing much to the paper at all. I'm sorry, but I don't have much choice in this matter."
The two grumbled as they turned to leave. They didn't like the new manager very much at all.
Just as they were leaving, a pegasus colt ran in.
"Oh, excuse me." He moved around them. "Hi Dad. You forgot your lunch."
He lifted the flap on his saddlebags with a wobbling blue levitation field and pulled out a box with his teeth. Quartz picked it up in his own levitation field and set it on the desk.
"Thanks Obsidian, but shouldn't you be heading to school?"
"I'm heading there right now. Bye"
"Goodbye."
Muck Raker looked up looked up at his former manager. "Interesting kid you've got there."
Quartz smiled. "Yep. One of a kind."
As they stepped out of the office, Muck Raker had a most glorious idea.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"That the new manager stinks?"
"Besides that. Think about it, how many creatures like that are out there?"
Mud Slinger thought a moment. "Three, I think."
"And where do they come from?..."
The pegasus's eyes went wide. "You mean...?"
Muck Raker nodded. "I think I can get us our jobs back."
Obsidian was actually glad that more ponies around the town knew about his condition. His dad was right, this place was a lot nicer than Manehatten.
Besides, he could go back to wearing his own saddlebags again, and under his wings instead of over them. They were a lot more comfortable that way.
He caught up with his sister as she was reaching the schoolhouse. Apparently, Twilight was coming to class to talk about how magic worked, and he didn't want to miss that.
"Okay, so the family came from Manehatten, what else do we know?"
"They've got two foals; the other one's a regular pegasus. They moved here due to a sideways promotion... Oh, and I've got this." Mud Slinger pulled out a letter indicating that Obsidian had failed to show up for detention.
Muck Raker looked it over. "The date here is for after they moved."
"Either way, it's still authentic. I checked. If nothing else, it means the kid's a troublemaker."
"That doesn't have anything to do with our investigation. Did you check with any doctors?"
"Yeah, yeah. I've got the reports here. They claim he's a tetraga-something-or-other. Making up words to try to explain it away. I wonder how much they were paid for that."
Muck Raker picked up the report. "Tetragametic chimera. Weird. He's definitely not a chimera; I've seen those before. These doctors can't even lie convincingly."
Twilight had brought some strange apparatus to school, and was demonstrating how it could be used to measure magic. At the moment, Snails was wired to it and was levitating a chalkboard eraser around the room.
Cheerilee held up the gauge for the class to see, while Twilight explained what it meant.
"As you can see, his magic is a bit stronger than that of most around his age. That's why he can levitate things so easily."
As the class nodded, Cheerilee asked if there were any questions. A couple students wanted to know if the machine worked on pegasi and earth ponies, to which Twilight responded that it did, but the tests would be harder to do in a schoolhouse. If anypony wanted to use it outside, she would gladly show them how it works there.
Later, on the playground, Feldspar trotted up to Twilight.
"Could you use your machine on my brother?"
Twilight smiled at her. "Only if he agrees."
She watched as Feldspar ran off, then returned dragging him by the hoof.
"What is this about?"
"I wanna know how much magic you have."
Obsidian looked at Twilight's equipment, then at his sister.
"Well, I guess I am a bit curious too. Why not?"
In a moment, he had electrodes stuck to his horn and head.
"Okay, try picking up that small rock."
He concentrated, lifting the stone about a couple feet off the ground. It quickly went from lightweight as a feather to heavy as a cart.
"Looks like it starts off about normal for somepony your age, but depletes rather quickly."
"But that doesn't make any sense. He lifts me up onto the roof all the time."
Twilight looked at Feldspar with some skepticism. She then turned to Obsidian.
"Do you do that a lot?"
As he nodded, Twilight looked him over. An idea formed in her mind.
"Would you mind lifting her?"
He concentrated, even closing his eyes at one point, and tried to summon as much energy as he could. A stream of magic shot out of his horn, but nothing happened.
He looked down.
"I can't."
She looked him over again, then tried attaching a couple extra electrodes and a different gauge to Feldspar's wings.
"Okay, try again, but this time," she turned to Feldspar, "you try flapping your wings."
They tried again, and this time, the green glow lifted Feldspar off the ground easily.
"Interesting. From these readings, I believe that you're not really lifting her, so much as giving a bit of extra strength to her wings. I can't say for sure without further testing, but I think you're channeling pegasus magic through your horn."
As Feldspar fluttered back down to the ground, they both looked at each other and smiled.
"Cool!"
None of them were aware of a camera lens peeking through some bushes.
As they were heading home, Obsidian and Feldspar felt increasingly uneasy.
They met Pinkie Pie while walking past Sugarcube Corner.
"HIIIIIEEEEEE!"
"Hi Pinkie."
She noticed their expressions. "You don't look happy. Is something going on?"
They looked at each other, then back at her. Feldspar spoke up first.
"Do you ever feel like your being watched?"
Pinkie immediately dismissed the thought with the wave of a hoof. "Oh that? All the time! Don't worry though, it's just the audience. They're just interested in our lives because we're entertaining to them. Well, gotta run. Byeeeee!"
Obsidian and Feldspar were not particularly relieved by that.
As they were about to turn in their article, Mud Slinger turned to his associate.
"Are you sure this is a good idea. I mean, this could be considered slander, couldn't it?"
Muck Raker reassured him, "no, it's a perfectly good idea. We need our jobs back, we can get them back in a way that exposes our old manager as the fraud he is, and our story is guaranteed to get published. Besides, it's technically not really slander anyway..."