The Meal
Dash and Jason sat down at a small table inside, and were almost immediately greeted by Lyra.
"Hey Jason! Hey Dash!" She distributed out a few menus. "I didn't expect to see you two here."
"Well as it turns out Dash wanted to go here for her lunch break." Jason responded.
"Well I'll leave you guys to it then." She winked at Jason.
"Why the winking?" Dash was looking at him suspiciously.
"I was talking to her in the park and I told her if she could find us a bass player I would play a show here. She's really happy because this place doesn't get a lot of business." Jason gestured to the multitude of empty tables. There were only two other groups of ponies inside. "So is that okay with you? You are the unofficial drummer after all."
"I'm fine with it, as long as I get a few days to practice stuff."
"Yeah, and we still have to wait for Lyra's bassist and get whoever that is trained. You have time."
"Good. So how did the presentation go?"
"Pretty well, I mean Diamond Tiara was a bitch, but that was to be expected. The kids didn't look too freaked out, although besides what's left of these bandages on my chest I don't really look that scary."
"You do have a lot of scars."
"How many scars?"
"Pretty much all those cracks in your armor are scars now."
"So a lot of scars then?"
"Yeah, sorry. I couldn't care less though."
"Well that's nice to know." He paused. "Scoots was glad I showed up."
"Yeah, I bet. I wonder what it's like for her, suddenly getting thrown into all this. It's gotta be better than all those weeks alone."
"Oh yeah, that reminds me. While I was walking back to town, some pony in an alley basically told me to get out of Ponyville, because his boss didn't want me here."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, but say he's not bluffing, say that he's got ponies actually backing him up. What should we do? Let's assume that they don't know about my relationship with you or Scoots, which would meant that you two are safe."
"And if it turns out they do?"
"We'll just have to be careful. We fought in a war, it couldn't be that tough. Scoots, however, is where the trouble starts. I can pick her up from school and drop her off, but I don't want to intrude on her time with friends and so forth. We're going to have to wait until something happens, probably file a report to the local police. We can easily keep Scoots away from that part of town if it comes down to that."
"Why does stuff like this keep happening to us?"
"Mostly the fact that we were traitors and I'm a changeling." Lyra walked back over.
"Do you know what you want?" She looked at Dash.
"Yeah, I'll take a hayburger and some fries." She jotted down the order and looked over at Jason.
"And you?"
"I'll just take the same thing. Don't freak out if you see two of Dash over here." She stared at him quizzically. "I can't taste food unless I'm mimicking a real pony."
"So food has absolutely no taste to you?"
"Well it tastes terrible if it's inedible, and it tastes great if it is edible, but that's the extent of it." She laughed.
"If I see two of you, Dash, I'll look the other way, so to speak. Your orders should be done in a few."
"Thanks Lyra." Jason said as he leaned back against the booth.
"So did anything else awesome happen while I was doing other stuff?"
"Not today, but yesterday I placed an order at Rarity's for Scoot's Nightmare Night costume. She's afraid of me, as it turns out. I would have thought that that honor would only be reserved for Fluttershy, but I guess I was wrong. I got the order placed though, so I'm to pick that up two days from now, on Nightmare Night. Pinkie insisted that she throw a party for, I dunno, a welcome back to Ponyville party or something. I told her to keep it small, which probably means that there's going to be a fair number of ponies there."
"That sounds like Pinkie."
"Do you guys have alcohol?"
"Um, yeah. We have hard cider from Applejack, and Pinkie sometimes spikes the punch. You're not an alcoholic, right Jason?"
"If I was I'd have gotten some already. But yeah, I enjoyed a beer every so often."
"Beer?"
"Oh no. Don't tell me. You seriously don't have beer in Equestria?"
"No, should we?"
"Yeah, it's only the best low alcohol content drink on the market, as long as it isn't light. Oh well, it's not like I have my own tastebuds anymore."
"Yeah, that's gotta suck."
"It's not that big of a deal, as long as I can still taste some food it's fine." He phased. "That reminds me, don't ask me how, but Lyra said that she was in Canterlot during the attack, and that a changeling actually helped her."
"What?"
"Yeah, that's what I said. She told me that he was constantly keeping up an argument with himself. I'm assuming he wasn't totally free of the hive mind. Lyra said he got blown away with the rest of them though, which is too bad. I would've liked to meet the guy, see what was different about him from the other identical changelings."
"Yeah."
"You're talkative today, Dash."
"Yeah, well I don't really have anything to talk about. I've just been moving clouds and creating charts and graphs all day. That doesn't exactly lend itself to conversation." She said.
"So what are the charts about?" Jason rested his head on a hoof.
"We're only supposed to create a maximum amount of rainfall all year, and normally we stick to an average, so that we have wiggle room if there are crop problems or floods from the Everfree. All the charts and figures that we were supposed to follow have gotten blown out of proportion to some degree, and now we're stuck re-doing them and at the same time keeping the weather particularly clear."
"I like how before all this you would have added, 'not like I'm an egghead or anything'." He said. Dash giggled.
"I don't really need to impress them anymore. That's pretty much finished after the attack stuff. You should see them at work, it's hilarious! I mean, they're always nodding their heads and saluting, they never did that before!"
"Enjoying the power?"
"Am I ever! No one even groans when I tell them to do things, they just do it! Stuff gets done around here now."
"Glad to hear that. How many days until you finish all that stuff?"
"It was scheduled to be about a week, but it looks like we could finish everything in two, maybe two and a half days. I'm kinda getting a newfound respect for the weather team, they're pretty hardworking in a pinch." Jason made a thoughtful hum while Lyra walked over to the table with two floating dishes.
"Here you go guys!" She passed out the burgers and looked at Jason expectantly.
"What?"
"Oh, nothing, I just kinda wanted to see you transform."
"Ah." He shifted into Dash's form. Judging from her squeal of joy she had enjoyed it.
"Thanks, have a nice meal." She walked back into the kitchen.
"That mare is so strange." Jason said.
"Yeah, in more ways than one."
"What do you mean?" He took a bite of the burger, flinching slightly at the texture of the hay. Somehow it tasted slightly like a hamburger, although he couldn't begin to figure out why.
"Oh, just that she tends to act kinda strangely, and she has some kind of obsession with the ancient humans or something. Maybe just humans in general."
"How did I see that coming?" Dash looked at him quizzically. "Wouldn't it be funny if she were to find out? I think she'd explode from excitement."
"You gonna finish that?" Dash asked. Jason peered over at Dash, who had apparently already finished her burger and fries.
"Yeah..." He took another bite. "You still want to be on the Wonderbolts, Dash?"
The question caught her off guard, and she remained silent for a few moments, looking to the side. "I don't know what I want anymore. A month ago, sure, that's what I wanted, and it'd still be cool. But it's a full time job, and that'd mean traveling away from you and Scoots."
"Well jeez Dash, I didn't mean to stomp all over your dreams."
"Dreams change. I wouldn't give up what I have now for a job with the Wonderbolts, I'm glad all this happened."
"You sure?"
"Completely." She paused. "Done?" Jason rebelliously shoved the rest of the burger into his mouth, attempting to smirk at Dash. She giggled. After he finally swallowed the lump of food, Jason transformed back into his regular form, and pulled out a hooffull of bits to put on the table. They both got up and made their way to the door, waving to Lyra as they did. Dash looked up at the clock tower, which read twelve forty five.
"I have fifteen minutes left before I gotta go back to work. Whadda ya want to do?"
"I don't know, I already looked through most of the stores." His eyes trailed over an ice cream stand, which was a strange sight in October. It wasn't exactly cold though.
"Ice cream?" Dash looked over at him. Apparently she had been thinking the same thing.
"Sure, I guess." They trotted over to the stallion that was handing out the ice cream and waited in line behind a few foals. "What kinds of ice cream do you have here?"
"Strawberry, vanilla..."
"Alright, so it's basically the same." The foals left and they moved up in line.
"I'll take a strawberry cone." Dash said.
"No toppings?" The stallion asked.
"Nope." She looked over at Jason. "Make that two, actually." The stallion scooped out some ice cream and made some cones, handing themboth to Dash, who suddenly remembered that she couldn't really hold both of them. Jason's light green aura enveloped them, and they started to float with him as he turned to leave.
"Where are we going to eat these? I mean, we might as well not stay in a busy square like this and freak everyone out."
"Yeah, I know what you mean." She started trotting out of the square and into the park, making her way over a hill as Jason followed close behind. She sat down on the grass under a tree, waiting for Jason to sit beside her. He sat down and floated over her ice cream, watching as the aura dissapeared around it. He transformed into Dash, glad that there were only a few ponies to stare at them, and started eating the ice cream. It was pretty much how he remembered strawberry ice cream; apparently some things just don't change. They sat under the tree for a few minutes, just staring out over the other ponies in the park as they walked around and talked. Dash was the first one to break the silence.
"So what about us?"
"What do you mean?"
"Should we tell them?"
"Like I said before, it's totally up to you, they're your friends. Do you want to tell them?"
"I don't know, I mean, eventually, I just don't know what'll happen. Applejack doesn't really like you, Rarity is apparently afraid of you..."
"Well think of it this way, after you tell them, you won't have to worry about them finding out."
"Yeah, you could say that."
"Dash, they can't possibly care that much about it. They're your friends after all." He finished his cone and changed back. They were both silent for a while.
"Well, I have to get back to work, so I'll see you at dinner?"
"Sure." He said, walking over and nizzling at her chin. She pushed his head up with a hoof and kissed him deeply.
"Yeah, we probably shouldn't be doing this in the park." She chuckled
"Live a little Dash." He said, kissing her again.
"I'll keep that in mind." She hugged him briefly and then took off, heading towards the other side of town. Jason sighed and turned around, slowly making his way back into the town proper, heading in the opposite direction Dash had. He walked into the market area and quickly bought some bread, butter and cheese, planning on actually making a hot meal for dinner. He took off to drop off the food, taking mental note of the time between getting home and picking up Scoots.
Jason landed in Dash's front yard and walked inside, emptying his saddlebag into the cabinet as he usually did, and placed the butter inside a different cabinet, which he assued was the icebox. How that worked was beyond him. As he was closing the door to the old fasioned refrigerator, he heard a 'pomf' noise, which he could assume was coming from the front door. He opened said door to a couple of burly stallions.
"Can I help you?"
"Yeah, we're supposed to install some sort'a map around here somewhere, we at da right place?"
` "Oh, the map? Yeah, I'll show you where to put it." Jason took off and flew around the side of the house, landing on the flat piece of cloud Dash and him had laid out specifically for the map. The stallion made a few hand motions before a few others flew over, carrying, well, the map. It was surprisingly intricate and large, as they set it down on the cloud. The space they had expected to house the map in was several feet too small on all sides, although they hadn't exactly made the imaginary room foundation that large.
The stallions set it down and flew away, leaving only the original one that Jason had fist talked to. "So, da Princess told me ta tell you dat dis here map is magical, more than the whole sitting on a cloud part. By the way, dat spell won't ever wear off, Celestia did it herself. Anyway, see dat button over der?" he pointed to a button on one side of the map.
"Yeah..."
"Well dat dere button is fer submittin' yer positions er sumptin' like dat. There's another one at the castle, and the positions show up dere. Press the button next to it to cancel. Dat's about it. Drawers on the sides hold the peices."
Jason was in awe of the map in front of him. It was just as detailed as the map of canterlot, yet so much bigger. "Thanks, tell Celestia I love it, will ya?" The stallion nodded and took off after his buddies. Jason watched him slowly dissapear as he made his way over to the map. He found Canterlot, and carefully traced the road to Ponyville with a hoof, still in awe of the craftsmanship that was shown in the model.
After several minutes of observing the map and looking over the side of the cloud to judge it's accuracy in it's representation of Ponyville, which seemed spot on, he moved to the drawers, and pulled one open. There was a note inside, and he picked it up.
Dear Jason, Rainbow Dash, and Scootaloo,
I am glad to hear that you seem to be fitting into Ponyville alright. Since you are reading this message, that means that the map has been dropped off. Hopefully it is up to your standards. Shining armor is working on representing the current troop positions on a sister map that we have here in Canterlot. Those should be patched through to you around seven, and should appear as ghost peices, for you to fill in on your own map. I would like to have any strategic plans forwarded over within a couple days of Nightmare Night, so that we can begin to mobilize across the border.
If you would like to send messages for any reason, the pad of paper to the side acts in the same way as the map, anything you write will appear here.
Your boss,
Princess Celestia
"This map just got so much cooler. I wonder what Scoots'll think of-- Oh shit!"
He ran inside and checked the clock; school let out about now. Without thinking any further about it, he ran out the door and dove into the air, diving as he usually did. He evened out close to ground level, dodging around buildings and trees as he flapped his wings to gain more speed. He hadn't ever acheived these kinds of speeds before, and he was loving every moment of this flight as he continued to accelerate. He decelerated quickly as the school house approached, and ended up etching a few grooves into the ground as he stopped. He trotted over to the school house, not seeing Scoots anywhere outside.
His feeling of nervousness grew as he turned around the corner and entered the building, seeing Scoots and the rest of the crusaders, and Diamond and her little crony. They were all facing away from him. Cherilee looked up and frowned.
"Hello Jason, are you here for Scootaloo?" She asked.
"Yeah, what happened?"
"These girls had a little skirmish on the playground today."
"Just a little skir- Oh god!" The kids had turned around, and were mostly covered in dirt and bruises. Scoots had a particularly black bruise on her cheek. Sweetie Belle looked terrible, and was wimpering into a hoof, while the rather unscathed Diamond Tiara just stared at him with hatred. The other two of them weren't particularly hurt.
"Yeah, now I'm here to give them their punishments."
"So do you know who started the fight, or what it was even about?" Jason asked.
"From what I heard, Diamond was making fun of their lack of cutie marks, and apparently graduaed to making fun of Scootaloo's previous lack of parents. All I know after that is that Scootaloo said something and Diamond ended up being the first one to throw a punch. At about that point things got out of control. So basically I'm giving them all detention tomorrow, along with a parent teacher conference on the increasing frequency of these fights."
"Why?" Jason asked. "I mean, if Diamond threw the first punch, then the others were just acting in self defence. There's no rule break there."
"I understand what you're saying, Jason, but I can't condone any and all violence in my school. I'm sure you know how it is."
"You can't give them the same punishment though, you can't treat them the equally if they don't share equal parts of the blame. If you give Scoots and her little friends detention, you've got to give Diamond a worse punishment. I'm not just saying this as the parent of one of the kids, it's only fair."
"I see what you're saying, Jason, and I'll take the night to think on it. In the meantime, all of you have detention tomorrow until further notice. Give this slip to one of your parents about coming in." She handed out the papers. The foals sighed and slowly made for the door. Scoots bumped into Jason's leg to get his attention, sadly smiling up at him before fluttering onto his back. Jason twisted his neck around and floated the paper out of her hoof. At least he could inquire about Scoots' grades when he came in on...the day after Nightmare Night. And that was a weekend too... He looked back at the beat up Scoots on his back and sighed.
"I've got something big at home that'll cheer you up Scoots." She suddenly perked back up. He figured he'd show her the map, then wait for Dash to get home before breaking out the new scooter. He couldn't exactly hide the map.
"What is it?"
"You'll see, it's a surprise. It's no fun if I just tell you." He felt Scoots sigh on his back.
"Can you at least fly fast?"
"That, I can do. Any requests?"
"No, just do that stuff you normally do. I liked that flip from before."
"Alrighty then Scoots, here goes nothing."
___________________________________________________________________
Scoots walked in the front door, stumbling sideways before regaining her footing. Jason walked in a few seconds later, looking slightly less dizzy than Scoots.
"That was awesome! What were you even doing in that part where we were spinning everywhere?"
"Trying to get a buterfly off my face."
"Well it was still cool." She looked around excitedly.
"Scoots, stand still a sec, I'm going to get rid of that bruise on your face." Jason focused some energy through his horn and watched as Scoots' bruise went through the normal color cycle before turning back to it's native orange. She briefly felt her face before looking back at him.
"So where's the surprise? Where is it?"
Jason walked over to the wall that Dash and him had agreed to make into a door,and after a few tries pried the wall apart to show the new map. "I've still got to build a room around it, but there it is."
"Oh, wow. This is what they made for you?"
"Yep. Pretty cool huh?"
"Yeah, I'll say! It's so much bigger than the Canterlot map!" She moved to a new spot around the map and continued to look around.
"Be careful Scoots, it's not indestructible."
"Can I play with it?"
"Sure, but here's the deal, DO NOT press this button. It'll send the troop positions to Celestia, and we don't want that to happen, alright?"
"Yeah sure thing Jason!"
"Okay, Dash should be home around dinnertime. I'm going to try to build a room around this." Scoots nodded, apparently too engrossed in placing the first few peices to respond to him vocally. Jason smiled and took of to grab a few clouds to build with.
It only took him a couple of hours, but after long last he had finally finished the surrounding room. The fact of the matter was, clouds were only easy to build with in theory. In practice, they would always start warping and sticking to each other if you didn't make sure they were solidified in place. Scoots had, not once, gotten bored with the map, and had outfitted almost half the thing with the troops that were currently engaged in a battle in Manehattan and a few other cities north of Equestria.
"I'm home!" Jason heard from the other room. He made sure the last part of the roof wasn't going to fall apart before fluttering downward and walking into the kitchen, where Dash was waiting.
"Did you have a good day?"
"We got a lot done, but it was still totally boring. What are we having for dinner?"
"I'm going to attempt to cook grilled cheese sandwiches."
"Oh, alright. Those are just cheese and bread?"
"Yeah, and butter I guess."
"That's definitely better than apples again."
"Agreed. You want to see this new map?"
"They got it here?"
"Yup, and Shining is going to send over current troop positions in..." He looked at the clock. "Five minutes. We better get over there."
"What happened to Scoots?"
"She's already in there. I gotta talk to you about her at school later today."
"What happened?"
"Nothing too big. I'll tell you later." Dash sighed and followed him into the map room, gasping slightly at the craftsmanship that had clearly gone into it's production.
"Now that's a map."
"Yeah." Jason was looking over Scoots' troops, moving any that could be close to possible places where troops would show up in a few minutes. Luckily for the both of them, Scoot's had chosen to battle in northern Equestria, mostly away from the griffin border. As he moved the last pieces out of the way, several of the ghost auras began to appear across the map, and Jason immediately started floating peices into the positions, color coded based on whether they were griffins or ponies. As he stuck the last peice down he trotted over to the pad of paper and wrote: 'Got it'. The letters dissapeared, fading into the paper, and were replaced by new ones a few seconds later. 'Be done by Sunday.'
That was two days after Nightmare Night, so that couldn't be that hard of a deadline to meet. He looked at Dash, who was still staring at the paper.
"Pretty cool, huh?"
"Yeah, they really spared no expense."
"I'm going to go make that dinner, I'll call you in." Jason said/ Dash nodded, leaning over to kiss him. "I missed you."
"Me too." She turned back to the map as Jason went to leave the room.
_____________________________________________________________
As it turned out, Jason wasn't half bad at cooking grilled cheese, although the bread was slightly burnt. He really didn't know how a cloud stove worked, but he shrugged it off, as he did with most of the stuff he didn't understand. he called in Scoots and Dash, and brought the food to the table.
"Don't have high expectations." Said Jason as he transformed into Dash. "I'm not very good a cooking."
"I'm sure it'll be fine." Said Dash as she took a bite. "Yeah, this is great!"
"Are you just saying that?"
"No, this it the best grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had!"
"And the only grilled cheese sandwich you've ever had."
"Drat." She giggled. "It is good though."
"So, about what I wanted to talk about earlier."
"Yeah, something happened to Scoots at school?" She sent an accuaing glance towards Scoots, and she sank back into her seat.
"Diamond Tiara started some sort of fight after insults were thrown both ways. Scoots here must have come up with a real zinger to get Tiara to jump on her like that."
"So what's the punishment?"
"Detention, and I have to go in there and talk with Cherilee, not too much." Jason finished the food and changed back into himself, getting up to throw the dish into the sink. Dash followed suit.
"So really Scoots isn't to blame here?"
"No, but Cherilee said some sort of bullshit 'I can't condone any violence' or something like that."
"That's good to hear, well, you know what I mean." She yawned. "You going to bed soon?"
"I take it you are?"
"Yeah." She yawned again. "That was a long day."
"Okay, well then I think I will decide to sleep in the same bed as my beautiful mare-friend."
"Was it that hard of a decision?" Dash tried to create a suspicious look.
"Is this a trick question?" She laughed and they headed upstairs. "Hold on." Jason turned back downstairs. "Scoots, don't move my pieces and be in bed by nine thirty!" He heard a muffled 'okay', and headed into Dash's bedroom. She was already curled up on the bed, evidently more tired then he had thought. Jason pulled himself in next to her, and rested his head on her shoulder. "Night Dash."
"Night Jason."