“Darling, if you could please introduce us to your friend? I’d quite like to get to know someone who appreciates fashion around here,” the white unicorn said, addressing Twilight, though she kept her eyes firmly on me. Er… my body, or clothes more likely.
“Of course!” Twilight perked right up as she dragged me over to the table, where the other unicorn looked at me expectantly while the yellow pegasus… I think she’s trying to hide behind her hair.
“This is my human friend, Victor Hex, from Canterlot!” She pointed at me with a hoof. “And these are my new friends in Ponyville, Rarity,” she pointed to the white unicorn, “Fluttershy,” she pointed to the yellow pegasus, who responded by shrinking further into herself, “...and Rainbow Dash,” Twilight finished lamely as she looked at the rainbow-maned pony who trotted over the table.
“Mhmm,” I nodded along as I offered a hand/hoof-shake to Rarity, “I can be your go-to for any alchemical needs, technological innovations, information on humans… and I guess monster eliminations now, too.”
Technically, by Equestrian Law, I was an honorary Monster Slayer after taking out the dragon that had tried to kill me. All it took was to kill a Monster, and the definition of the term was unbelievably ambiguous; literally any living being with an unjust intent to kill (as defined by a bunch of laws or the Princess’ discretion…) would be classified as a Monster.
“You’ve killed Monsters?” Rainbow Dash gave me an unimpressed look.
“One, and it was self-defense,” I sighed. “I mean, sure, it might have been a little bit my fault for having gone all the way over to the Badlands. But, what else was I supposed to do when a freaking dragon tried to assassinate me and then tried to eat me anyway after I tried to get it to stop?”
“You killed a dragon?!” Rainbow Dash, Twilight, and Spike all yelled at the same time. Though, their tones were completely different from one another. Rainbow Dash was looking at me with newfound respect, Twilight looked even more skeptical than Rainbow Dash did previously, and Spike was currently taking discrete steps away from the table.
“Yes,” I said. “It wasn’t difficult at all because I was wearing my exoskeleton suit at the time and it severely underestimated me. And, no Spike, it wasn’t a dragon like you. It was a Sky Wyvern Monster that tried to kill me just because it wanted a snack. You’re still a friend in my eyes.”
At that, Spike relaxed and returned to the table. He looked like he wanted to say something, but Rainbow Dash beat him to it. “How’d you kill a dragon?! Unless it was a little colt or filly dragon like Spike, those things grow to be huge and wicked strong!”
“I built a suit that makes me physically stronger,” I said. “I’d never been in a real fight before, so when I was attacked by the Monster, I hit it as hard as I could.”
“That alone killed a dragon?” Twilight’s look of doubt only intensified. “Sky Wyverns may not be considered True Dragons, but even their decade-old young have reinforced hides that can protect them against the average Earth Pony mare or stallion.”
“Twilight, I know it hasn’t been that long since we last saw each other, but I’ve gotten pretty strong. I even managed to develop my own way to use Magic, so it’s kind of hard to put into words exactly how hard I managed to hit the dragon to kill it.”
For a moment, all was quiet. But eventually, Twilight slowly said, “...You what?! How! Wait. Just now you used magic to throw Rainbow Dash off of you!” She made her way over to me and started poking and prodding at me with her hooves and tactile telekinetic magic. “How can you do that when you’re body is completely devoid of magic and thaumatological pathways?”
“I use Runes,” I said as I shook her off me and activated my Body Strengthening Rune for her to examine. “You can think of them as temporary, artificial “magic veins” that are encoded to utilize magic in a very specific way.” If it were anyone else, I would have dumbed down the explanation, but this was Twilight, so…
Seeing as she started salivating while devolving into an incoherent rambling fit at the mere thought of discussing the matter further, I cut my connection to my Rune off and gently shook Twilight back to the world outside her head. “Later, Twilight. Later…”
“Um… I don’t quite think I’ll be needing most of your services,” Rarity said. “Of all the things you mentioned, the bit about human information interests me the most; specifically that marvelous style you’re currently sporting. If you’d indulge me, I’d like to know more about that.”
“The clothes?” I asked, looking down to remind myself which set of clothes I’d picked for the day. When she nodded, I said, “They’re nothing special, just a polyester t-shirt and cargo shorts. If you want to count my shoes, they’re plain high-top sneakers.”
“Poly-what-now? I’ve never heard any of these terms,” Rarity said with a sad frown.
“Makes sense to me,” I shrugged. “Everything I wear, I made myself based on what the people where I’m from normally wear. They’re not considered very fashionable where I’m from; most of it is common everyday wear for utility.”
“Oh, I’d just love to take you down to the boutique and learn all about your clothes.” Rarity sighed as she took a look out the window to the evening, setting, sun, “Unfortunately, it looks like the last of my free time for this week will soon run out and I’ll be all caught up with work for who-knows how many days…”
“I’ll probably stick around Ponyville for at least ten days. I’ll be staying at the town inn, so if you find yourself with some of that precious time, you can find me there… unless I’ve wandered off somewhere.” It was times like this when I realized just how badly I missed having my phone.
Perhaps, one of my next big projects will be to recreate radio telecommunications towers. Would that be too small scale? Maybe, ramp up directly to the point where we have satellites and an internet? It’d probably make Celestia’s work countless times more efficient… at the cost of making her life that much more miserable from having to keep with everyone who would then be able to contact her.
I mean, could you image how much more overworked she’d be if foreign dignitaries could call her at the drop of a hat? Maybe she’d finally get around to establishing a proper government with a secretary and some administrators; she’d have to if she didn’t want to be overrun with work.
“Um… Well… I also have to go.” Fluttershy quietly said. “It’s almost dinner and, and… My animal friends are waiting for me.” Without any context, I had no idea what she was talking about. Consequently, I was more invested in knowing why she was so skittish or dare I say shy.
On second thought, the answer was obvious. When in doubt, you could always count on the abstract, incorporeal force that seemed to compel parents into naming their newborns with striking predictive accuracy as to what their future Cutie Mark or matured personality would be. I hadn’t met a single pony that wasn’t implicated by this force and that went doubly so for Celestia and Luna.
“Yeah, I should probably go, too,” I said. “I should get checked in and drop off all my things. Can someone point me towards the inn?”
Spike ended up leading me to the Ponyville Inn personally. For some morbid reason, he seemed particularly interested in asking me all kinds of questions as to how strong the dragon I killed was. He gained this glint in his eyes that only seemed to intensify after he asked me to confirm the extent of my powers, especially after I included details about my exoskeleton suit.
…
After getting a room and unpacking my things, I sat on top of the much-too-small bed and sighed. It was going to be a miserable vacation for me if I had to constantly deal with the inexplicable fear most of the ponies in town had against me. If not for Spike, I doubt I would have even been able to get a room at the inn without the owners running away for their lives.
I wouldn’t always have someone to help me out, so I had to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Fortunately, I had an idea in mind that should fix things quite nicely. I just had to make sure it was possible first.
I fiddled around with my Runes for a moment and… Uh, Surely, it couldn’t be that easy?
Right?
I was running both my minds through all the details I’d included in the Rune I’d taken minutes to create, going so far as to enter a meditative trance to utilize Brainstorm in the process. Danger Analysis nor Precognition didn’t so much as hint that there would be any possibility of backlash. But even then, I decided to comb over just about everything I knew about magic to make sure I wasn’t unknowingly about to kill myself.
Three hours later, deep into the night, I found myself right where I’d started. There was nothing to suggest that the “simple” Rune I’d created could harm me with its activation. I was just about ready to throw caution to the wind and activate it to see the results firsthand, when one of my two minds pondered using Identify on the Rune as an afterthought.
Logically, since I was the creator of the Rune and knew all the details that went into its creation, there shouldn’t be anything Identify could tell me that I didn’t already know. But, just in case…
[Identified Status]
[Name: Unnamed Rune]
[Composition: 98% Shape, 2% Capacity]
[Tier: ???]
[Details: Comparable to a simple Transformation Spell, this Rune transforms the caster such that their Race temporarily becomes that of a Pony. Ingrained in the Rune is a safety circuit to undo the transformation with just a thought. It is powered by a Capacity script that should power the spell for up to one hour. Pony Type and physical details are not defined in the Shape script. Final form will therefore be random upon first use, but ultimately fixed and known afterward.]
Welp, that was the last thing I could think of to postpone testing the rune. Thus, with that last confirmation that, yes, the Rune was probably safe as can be, I decided to power it with my Metaphysical Link and see what would become of me after I turned into a Pony.
I galvanized the Rune with magic in front of a mirror to see exactly what would happen and to my chagrin, the transformation happened faster than I could perceive. There wasn’t a puff of smoke or really any indication that I’d used magic besides maybe a pulse that I couldn’t detect. One moment, I was my normal human self and in the next, I found my line of sight lower by about a foot and my body get replaced by—
The transformation undid itself before I could even get a good look at myself.
“Hmm?” I took another look at the Rune with Identify to check what the problem and after another hour of “debugging” the problem, I realized what I needed to do.
Apparently, for whatever reason, the form I naturally took after using the Rune was that of an Alicorn. I hadn’t even considered that was possible considering their godly nature, so when I turned into one, the hour’s worth of magic that would have been used to maintain the form of a “lesser” Pony was used up in an instant.
There were two ways around the issue. Either I beef up the existing Rune’s Capacity Runescript to hold a veritable ocean’s worth of magic to sustain my Alicorn form. Or I could redesign a variant of the Rune to specify that I want to transform into a normal Unicorn, Pegasus, or Earth Pony.
It didn’t take more than a second to decide it was infinitely more convenient to pick the latter over the former. I mean, a big part of the reason I wanted to transform in the first place was to become inconspicuous. I couldn’t really do that if I turned myself into the rarest type of Pony of which there were only three in the current era.
Oh well, it’s not like I couldn't continue working on the original transformation Rune on the side. Who knows, maybe someday I’d need a reason to pretend to be a Pony God?
Probably not, but maybe Celestia or Luna would get a kick out of seeing the transformation. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.