//------------------------------// // Chapter 37: To Canterlot // Story: The First Steps of the Rest of Your Life // by Rhino //------------------------------// ***Sunday, Day 29, just before noon*** Volt and I appear behind a building about a block away from the library due to my quick Blinking us out of the there. I blink rapidly a moment from the higher power drain of casting the spell on myself and another instead of just me, while Volt seems to have a bit more of an adverse reaction to the spell if his stumbling face first into the wall is any evidence. Volt shakes his head a moment while his eyes roll in their sockets before turning to me with a slightly dazed look on his face, holding a hoof to his head, “Ugh, what was that? It felt like I was being pushed through a tube… a very very trippy tube.” I’m tempted to warn him against trying to decipher the things seen in the corner of one’s eye when one is in mid-teleport, as such things have been tried before and have only been successful in driving those who tried it insane via either lack of success, or, in the rare case, success only to be driven mad by what they learned, but ultimately decide to take the less complicated way to explain it to him, “You get used to it.” Volt shakes his head while looking around before focusing back on me, “That was nothing like Twilight’s teleport, and we’re not even halfway there.” Everypony’s a critic. “That’s because my version is not a normal teleport. Also, I could have gotten us there with a series of them, but judging by how shook up you were by this first one, it was probably a good idea to stick to one. Having two ponies appear out of thin air is bad enough; you don’t need two ponies and projectile vomit hitting whoever happens to be nearby.” Volt appears to think about this for a moment before replying, “Fair enough. Well, if she’s not too mad at you, maybe you could ask Twilight for tips.” I mentally flinch at how I ran out on Twilight mid conversation, “Well, I can apologize later; besides, I don’t think she’ll be too mad.” *** 3rd person, Twilight Sparkle*** The lavender unicorn in question, realizing that pursuing a teleporting prey is a fool’s errand, instead focuses her irritated energy into more… practical applications. As various books fly around the library, all surrounded by the magical aura of the librarian, the mare can be heard muttering under her breath, some words identifiable amid the grumbling, “Running out on me… purposefully avoiding questions… stupid Rhino and his stupid distracting friendship questions… messed up my plan…” As the librarian took out her frustration by angrily rearranging the books with a fervor that would have terrified them had they the capacity for thought, one book remained steadily in front of her. Twilight continues her annoyed mutters while looking into her newest fascinating read: “Equestria’s Great Collection of Angry Words and Phrases.” ***1st person, Rhino*** Volt simply looks at me before shrugging at my answer to his concern about potential female fury, “I guess so.” The two of us start making our way towards mine and Hydro’s house as I address the second part of his earlier statement, “And as for asking her for tips… it doesn’t work that way.” “And why doesn’t it work that way?” “As much as I’d love to go into it, the answer to that actually gets a bit complicated and considering current circumstances we don’t really have time to discuss it right now… but suffice to say, it’s a rune thing.” With that statement, Volt and I make our way to my house in relative silence. We arrive and the lack of hammer-wielding guardsponies allows us to head inside without a hitch. Inside we find that Hydro had acquired Blue since I had left, and that Navy had indeed showed up this morning as he said he would. I leave Volt with the pegasi for a moment to explain to Hydro what took me so long. His response is to simply chuckle and mumble under his breath, “Totally cock blocked him.” I ignore this mutter in light of informing the three so far out of the loop ponies of the group about the situation, trying to word this as delicately as possible, “Alright, half of you know why we are here.” I gesture to Atom, Hydro, and myself, “and the rest of you are probably wondering what is going on. Well, it’s like this… I assume everypony slept well last night? Well, suffice to say things were not so peaceful within this household, as shown by the broken window and the nice collection of bruises we seemed to have garnered overnight…” Hydro clears his throat to silence my nervous rambling and tries it his way, “Here’s the deal: an assassin dropped by last night, we stopped him from killing Atom, he swore death on us, our friends, and family then escaped. So we are going to Canterlot.” The silence was so thick you could make it into a winter blanket. Volt breaks the silence, “So… why are we going to Canterlot?” I answer, “Because the assassin was after Atom, there’s almost no way all the suspicious parts in his story, combined with this, can be a coincidence. There is something going on here and now we are a part of it. We can’t just go to one of the Princesses because Atom was set up too well, at least some guards are in on this. Thus we have to be careful of those we trust. We are going to Canterlot because they wouldn’t expect such a quick response from us, we get there, and we follow leads, starting with Navy’s friend that overheard the guards that dropped Atom off with us. We keep our heads down, work fast, and we might get out of this before things get bad.” Blue nods his head affirmatively, “They said they were going to come for us, I’m all for a plan that has us getting them first.” Volt thinks for a moment, “Stay home and get assassinated, or go on infiltration mission that may or may not work and will likely have us go against members of the royal guard… I guess I’m in too.” Navy simply has a relaxed smile on his face, “Hey, I was just hoping to convince you guys Atom wasn’t guilty, this is way better than I hoped.” All of us reach in a hoof and lay them on top of each other, eyeing the others of our circle. We nod to each other, signifying our commitment to the mission. *** We all head back to our respective dwellings to gather supplies before meeting back up at the train station. In the end though, the only ones who bring anything are myself, with first aid supplies, Volt with his conductor rods, and Navy with the bag he had brought with him from Canterlot. We board the 1 o’clock train to Canterlot and manage to snag a cabin to ourselves since we are some of the only passengers. As the we hear the call for anypony who has yet to board, and feel the rumble of the train stirring into life, a pony in a train engineer’s hat walks into our cabin from the front of the train. The coal dust covered stallion tips his hat slightly as he begins saying, “Good afternoon everypony, just wanted to let you know, my name’s Off Track and I’ll be your train driver for this little journey of ours. I’m just making my rounds to see if anypony has any questions as we get up to speed on our way to Canterlot.” Navy asks him with a curious tone, “Why are you called Off Track?” Blue looks at Navy with a smug look, “Probably because it’s his name.” Our group and the driver chuckles for a moment before the train pony responds, “Well, aside from the fact that it’s my name, I’m also called Off Track because I can get easily distracted… or maybe it was because I sometimes go off the rails… I can never remember.” The stallion finishes his little reveal with a wide grin to match our now wide eyes. The stallion tips his hat and walks back towards the engine as the rest of us look at each other and gulp. *** A few minutes of silence pass after our rather… unique driver’s announcement. The train rumbling providing great background noise until we eventually decide to break the silence with a little catching up. Volt begins our little questions and story session with a query directed at our local weather pony, “So Blue, how are things going with Rainbow Dash?” The blue pegasus thinks a moment before answering, “Pretty good I’d say, she’s been trying to get me into better shape…” *Flashback* “Come on Blue! Just a few more!” Blue grunts in exertion as he repeats the cycle he been going at for the last… he doesn’t know how long it’s been. As he rises to go at it again, his body gives in and he flops over onto his side, panting into the cloudy surface he was standing on a moment ago. Blue pants out his surrender to Rainbow Dash, “Do… I… at least… get a… consolation prize?” The spectrum maned mare shakes her head as she hovers above the exhausted pony, “Sorry Blue, we had a deal. You had to match my 250 reps of flying to that cloud and back to this one to win 10 seconds of making out. Just 200 doesn’t get you anything,” she puts a hoof to her chin in thought for a moment, “but you did do better than yesterday… so I guess that means you are getting better as my workout partner.” Blue raises a shaky hoof in the air for the slight triumph before letting it flop to the cloud again, “What if… I do 100 more… in a few minutes… before we call it a day?” Rainbow smiles, “That’s the spirit Blue! And like I said earlier, you get to pick the challenge tomorrow.” Blue smiles back, letting out a small chuckle, “Sounds good… heh… I guess I’m just a bit…. ‘winded’ at the moment.” “HAH!” Both pegasi look over the edge of the cloud to see a particular pun-loving electric unicorn smiling his approval at the pun. *End Flashback* Hydro chuckles good naturedly before his eyes widen as he realizes something, “We’re gonna have to deal with both of you making puns now aren’t we? Blue and Volt look at each other grinning, Blue decides to answer for them, “Don’t worry Hydro, that nasty lack of puns you’ve had to deal with will soon be water under the bridge.” As Hydro groans from the impending pun onslaught in his future, I decide to try and take his mind off things, “So, speaking of mares, how are things with you and Applejack, Hydro?” Hydro cracks a grin, “Let’s just say… I’ve had a lot of apple pie recently.” *Flashback* Hydro Pump and Big Macintosh sit across from each other at the Apple family table. “So let me get this straight: in order to gain your approval, which I need because I am dating your sister, you want me to beat you in an apple pie eating contest, despite the fact that you have eaten them all of your life and thus have a serious advantage over me.?” “Eeyup.” “Well, I guess it could have been worse.” Granny Smith and Applejack walk in, each with a stack of pies on their respective backs which they set on the table before the two stallions. Granny smith raises the dinner triangle, “Alright boys, *ding* eat up!” *End Flashback* “So how’d that go for you?” I ask. Hydro shrugs, “Oh I lost by a mile, but it turns out the point wasn’t to win; it was to see if I’d try to accomplish something that was essentially impossible. Plus it turns out the irrigation system has been helping out a lot in the areas we’ve set it up in, so I got some bonus points there.” I nod, “Well that’s good. I was wondering how it was going since you two dating kind of came out of nowhere.” Hydro asks a question this time, “So Volt, how are things going with Twilight?” Volt sighs, “Things are going nowhere because they never started, I’m pretty sure I’m friend zoned.” I try to look at how that might have happened, “Well, what makes you say that?” “Well, I thought I had an opening when she was taking care of me after I got hurt during the Fluffers incident, but she said she was taking care of me because she thought it was her responsibility as the leader of that little adventure. I’ve actually been to her house a lot, but it’s been for friend stuff… she gets a weirdly large number of electrical failures at her place, I guess maybe Spike snips wires with his claws accidentally sometimes because they were very cleanly cut… she also tends to invite me over to read… and there was that time I found a book at my apartment that I don’t remember borrowing but was due the next day so I returned it anyway… just a lot of friendly hanging out I guess.” That… does not sound that friend zoned to me… The rest of the train ride goes by smoothly with some more idle chatter until we pull up in Canterlot and start making our way to Navy’s place, which he volunteered as our… base of operations of sorts. It turns out Navy’s place is in one of the lower areas of Canterlot known for cheap housing. We arrive at a dingy little apartment complex and take it all in as Navy guides us to his and lets us in. When we ask why an author lives in a place like this Navy simply says it’s the best he can afford right now and grumbles something about his publisher. We shrug it off since he was nice enough to let us stay here, plus the Canterlot housing market is definitely more expensive than Ponyville’s. Navy tells us that we’ll be heading to meet his friend later in the day, so we settle in for the wait. Volt heads out saying he was going to buy something he had been looking for, while Blue asks Navy if he can make a sandwich. Hydro, Atom, and I decide to catch up the sleep we missed with some nice naps, Atom on the couch while Hydro and I find some comfortable spots on the floor. A tap on the shoulder wakes me up a few hours later to find the others awake and Navy above me. “It’s time.”