//------------------------------//
// Chapter 15 
// Story: With the Shadow of Lightning 
// by oneupthextraman 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 15

Rarity bursts out of the library, looking around to see what possible directions he could have gone. Worried that Lightning will get in some kind of lust filled problems, Rarity starts to have a minor panic attack. If she says yes to a marriage proposal from Lightning, he will forever be under her spell. But if she says no, he will fall into a depression deeper than any pony has since known.
Rarity knows this because the plot says so, and at one point in the past, she had read the book of potions, and remembered this being a rather odd situation for that spell. After a few moments, Rarity sees Lightning approaching her with a box. Rarity briefly panics, but then realizes that it is not a box with a proposal necklace. 
Lighting smiles as he levitates a box to Rarity. “Here, I bought you some chocolate.” He smiles a bright loving smile.
Rarity softly says, “Yes.” She continued to look into Lightning’s eyes.
Lightning’s eyes look back and forth. “Yes, it is chocolate.” This quickly snaps Rarity out of her stupor. 
“Oh yes, quite.” Rarity laughs a bit. “Let’s go have a sit.” She points to a nearby park bench. The two walk over and have a sit. Lightning hovers the chocolate to Rarity. But she does not open it. “Lightning, can I ask you a question?”
Lightning looks off into the distance, looking as epic as he can with a video rental store across the way. “If it is what your heart, you can ask anything.” A small gust of wind blew onto Lightning at that very moment. It was rather epic. 
Rarity ignored his odd answer, and the sudden burst of dramatic wind, and decided to ask anyways. “What do you look for in mare?”
Lightning seemed to be thinking deeply about this. “You!” He laughed, and Rarity punched him with her hoof playfully.
“I’m serious.” 
“Well, I would look for a cute one, and one that is nice, and generous, and cares for others. Doesn’t always only think about what they want, but what other needs and want as well.” Lightning turned to look at Rarity, and smiled. Rarity returned the smile. 
Rarity felt she was getting sucked into the moment. She could not let herself get sucked into this. “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
Lightning answered in the most dead pan way possible. “Dead.”
Rarity was caught off guard by this. “What makes you say that?”
Lightning stood up and walked a few steps into the road, slightly affecting the flow of traffic. He took a dramatic pose looking off into the distance, or just up the street. “The same legend that foretold I would destroy a great evil that would destroy Equestria, also said I would die in said skirmish.” Lightning stopped posing dramatically, and walked back to the bench.
Rarity looked sad. “Oh.” She looked down at the chocolates Lightning had bought for her.
Pinkie Pie suddenly appeared. “Well, that was a nice exposition dump!” Rarity and Lightning jumped. “Now let’s go do something else!” 
Rarity, still recovering from her sudden appearance asked, “Pinkie Pie, where did you come from?”
Pinkie laughed. “Oh Rarity. You know I can’t answer that question. Your knowledge of quantum mechanics is not NEARLY strong enough.” Rarity was only somewhat aware of what quantum mechanics was. She wondered if it was related to quantum conundrum. Rarity’s thinking was interrupted by Pinkie Pie talking.
“HEY! Let’s go see a movie!”
Rarity was jolted out of her thinking process. “Oh. That sounds like a good idea.” Surely Lightning wouldn’t start proposing to her if he was watching a movie. “What’s playing?”
Pinkie Pie whispered in a hushed tone. “Exploder.”
A short time later (somehow using that quantum mechanics thing Pinkie Pie mentioned earlier) the three found themselves watching a movie in a theater. 
There were two ponies on the screen. One had sun glasses on, and was yelling to the other one “TIM! They have your wife!”
The other one responded, “But I’m not married!”
The sunglasses one responded, “You are now…” He took the glasses off. “… To Equestria.”
Rarity looked over to see Lightning rather getting into the movie. Pinkie Pie had decided to sit between them, much to the chagrin to Lightning, but once things started exploding on screen, he seemed to notice little. Rarity knew she just had to buy some time until Twilight was done analyzing the scans of Lightning to see how to fix him back to normal. 
After everything seemed to have exploded in the movie (and some things that should not have exploded), the three walked out of the theater. 
Lightning breathed heavily. “That’s a good movie. I rather liked the parts where things exploded.”
Rarity looked confused at Lightning. “What part was that?”
Pinkie Pie interrupted. “There was a fifteen minute part at the start of the movie where nothing exploded. What a bore.” Lightning agreed. Rarity felt out of the loop. 
The three left the theater. It was early afternoon. The sun was still out, and many ponies were walking round doing their business, and interacting. Rarity started becoming concerned about how to continue distracting Lightning. There was not enough activity going on that they could start chatting about it. Then, Rarity started feeling some pony start nuzzling her a little bit. It was Lightning. 
Lightning asked, “So, what did you think of the movie?”
Rarity was at a loss. “Well...” She thought about it briefly before saying, “I didn’t much care for it. I’m not as much into those action movies. I prefer a few less explosions, and something with a bit more class.” Rarity smiled. 
Lightning also smiled. “I get it. I think those movies are okay as well, but sometimes you just want to see something go BOOM! It gets the adrenaline going.” At the boom, which he yelled, Rarity jumped a little.
A voice from part way across the theater yelled, “Hey Lightning!” It was Shining Armor and Cadence.  The pair started walking toward the group of three. “It’s been a while since we saw each other! How have you been?”
Rarity smiled an obviously fake smile. “Oh, you know. Hanging out, and such. Doing pony thing?” Rarity laughed a weak laugh.
Cadence raised an eye brow at the obviously nervous Rarity. “Something bothering you there Rarity?”
Rarity looked around suspiciously. “I’m going to say…no”
Cadence turned to Shining. “Hey, Shine, why don’t you take Pinkie Pie and Lightning and see what coming attractions are coming.”
Shining responded, “But I know what movies are coming! You know what I read in the paper.” Cadence gave Shining a look of ‘come on’. He nodded. “Hey Lightning, let’s go see what movies are coming out soon.” Shining put an arm around Lightning.
“But I read the paper, so I know what is coming out!” That did not stop Shining from pulling Lightning along. 
Cadence approached Rarity with a serious look on her face. “You did something, didn’t you?” Rarity felt like she was being integrated. “Did you poison him, and he only has a few days left to life?”
Rarity was barely able to get out “What? No! He should keep on living.”
Pinkie Pie approached. “Rarity, not in the correct state of mind, accidently gave Lightning a love potion that has made him care deeply for her. And now Rarity wants to avoid marrying him, and rejecting him causing him to fall into a deep depression.” Pinkie Pie smiled a Pinkie Pie smile, and then hopped around. 
Cadence, who had turned to look at Pinkie Pie while she was talking, now slowly turned back to Rarity with the most menacing ‘I am disappointed in you’ look her pink face could express. “Is that true?”
Rarity, who is shorter than Cadence, was now beneath her stare. Rarity mumbled, “Yes.”
Cadence lightly activated her horn, and looked at Lightning, and then back to Rarity. “I detect no magic or potion affecting him. He seems normal.”
Rarity cheered up. “Really? So his feelings were genuine for me?” Rarity seemed to have so much hope.
Cadence smiled. “Yes.  I detect he may have had a stomach ache from something. But that could have been a bad sandwich.”
Rarity, who had fallen to the floor during this interrogation, stood up and smiled, and walked over to Shining and Lightning and lightly nuzzled with Lightning. “Something wrong Rarity?” Lightning asked. 
Rarity smiled. “Nope. Nothing at all.”
Lightning resumed looked at the poster he was looking at. “Good. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t love poisoned.”
Rarity was caught off guard by this. “What?”
Lightning laughed. “Yeah. I figured it out before. I thought I wasn’t poisoned, but I wanted to make sure. When we came out of Exploder, I didn’t have an unstoppable urge to get it on with you, so I figured I was good to go.”
Shining Armor was standing on the other side of Lighting, and leaned forward to make eye contact with Rarity. “Yeah, the Royals already have a high mating drive.” Shining adjusts his back two legs. “And with a love potion, a movie would stop a Royal from turning it into a make out session.”
Cadence walked over. “It’s true. It can get crazy some times.”
Pinkie Pie hopped over. “This seems like a good place to end this part.”
Rarity raised an eye brow. “What do you mean, end?”