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// Some Adaptability Not Included 
// Story: The Unwilling Command 
// by KGBCowgirl 
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	The human race is notorious for facing any situation that may be new or unexplained. We can take something as outlandish as magic and eventually accept it as something beyond our immediate comprehension and move on with life. I, however, have more difficulty dealing with certain changes that aren't addressed beforehand. This include the aura sight and other apparent abilities that I had been "blessed" with.

Maybe I should talk to Luna about this problem I have, since she had to learn about a thousand years of culture after she escaped the moon. Little did I know there was even more to come beyond the already apparent madness...





I awakened to Celestia levitating a bucket over my head, which was slowly tipping upside down. I groaned as I rolled off my bed, ignoring my splitting headache to escape what I all but knew was a gallon of water that Celestia was preparing to tip over my sleeping form.

"I'm up, Fireball-Flank..." I grumbled from my face down position on the ground. Apparently the bucket wasn't meant for me, since I heard a high-pitched squeal from the other side of the bed, followed by a loud thump. I looked under the bed to the other side and saw a miserable, soaking wet Vinyl Scratch. She was naked, only covered from the waist up by the sheets she was tangled up in, giving me a very hood view of her thigh and her cutie mark, which was apparently still present in this world. I was shirtless, leaving my tattoos exposed for all to see.

Vinyl turned over to me and gave me a sheepish grin. "I didn't know humans got cutie marks, Bass Drop." I figured she was looking at the kanji on my right arm. "Looks pretty cool..." She pushed herself up to a kneeling position, and I turned over onto my back to sit up.

"I don't have a cutie mark." I said, standing up and wandering over to where my shirt and trench coat had migrated. As I bent over to pick up my shirt, Vinyl walked by and smacked me on the ass. I stood up quickly and gave her a disbelieving look. "They're tattoos." I pulled my shirt on and stretched every muscle I could manage, causing several joints to pop loudly. "Urgh, I hate stretching in the morning" I groaned as a particularly loud crack could be heard from my back.

"If you two are quite done..." Celestia said loudly, making her presence known again. I glared at her sharply. "We do have to get moving." Celestia then directed her attention to me. "You also shouldn't be too sure about your lack of a cutie mark. Those of you who have partnered with my subject may find things like that to be a bit different."

I pulled slightly on the waist of my pants. "I think I would have noticed if there was a mark on my thighs. One doesn't really miss that sort of thing in the shower." I lowered one side of my pants and looked down. I expected to see nothing but unmarked skin, but I was met with a surprise. I blinked for a few seconds, since I was sure I was hallucinating. Then I looked at Vinyl, who was staring at me with wide eyes. "Please tell me I'm just so tired that I'm seeing shit that isn't there..."

Celestia and Vinyl shared a look before returning their attention to me. They shook their heads and I looked down again. Emblazoned on my thigh, clear as day, was. in fact, a cutie mark. One I was familiar with, since it was the same as my OC, whose name was... oh fuck me. In plain view of everyone was a black bass clef, the cutie mark of my OC, Bass Drop.

"Huh." I said as the shock set in. "Bass Drop, out."

My vision went dark as I hit the floor.

[hr[

I awoke to the familiar smell of artificial tropical flavors and caffeine being waved near my nose. I groaned, opening my eyes to see Vinyl holding a can of NOS near my head. I instantly became fully awake and snatched the can out of her hand, chugging the contents voraciously. I looked around to see that I'd been moved to a chair and I'd been fully dressed in my unconscious state. I saw Octavia, Jay, and Pinkie sitting on the other side of the room, expressions of relief painted across their faces.

"What the hell hit me?" I asked, rubbing my eyes to remove the rest of the sleepiness from my system. "Last thing I remember is seeing some sort of new tattoo on my thigh... Celestia called it a cutie mark of all things, can you believe it?" I laughed a bit until I saw everyone else looking around nervously. "Speaking of which, where is Fireball-Flank? It was my understanding that she was coming with us to D.C."


Vinyl laughed nervously. "Yeah, about that..."

Everyone else covered their ears as they saw my irritation rising. I couldn't help myself at this point, since the extra emotions that I used to keep under wraps were now free to roam. "THAT BITCH LEFT AGAIN?!" I swear some of the windows near me managed to crack from my volume.

Right when my outburst occurred, there was a flash of golden light in the middle of the room and Celestia appeared, looking very tired. "I really wish you would not assume such things, Maximus. I did not leave, I was merely in the other room quietly consulting with my sister over this new development." She seemed to be a bit more on edge than usual, since she was in a defensive stance.

My eyes narrowed to slits, and I could see my recently trained magic beginning to seep out. My glasses had been confiscated by Celestia, so I was able to clearly see everyone else's auras flaring like my own, all of it being directed toward Celestia, though the Equestrians seemed to be resisting the emotional pull. I took several deep breaths to calm myself, returning to my baseline stoicism. I was still staring harshly at Celestia, however, so she didn't relax her stance at all.

"What new development?" I growled. I was secretly hoping this had nothing to do with the "cutie mark" I supposedly had. "I'm getting pretty sick of these 'new developments' popping up every few days. Can't I have a break from the insanity for a week?"

Vinyl, Octavia, Pinkie, and Celestia all looked at one another nervously. Celestia finally spoke up after several seconds of uncomfortable silence. "It seems that medicine we gave to the partnered humans may have had some... unforseen side effects. You all may want to sit down for this."

Vinyl promptly sat on one of my legs, while Octavia took the other. Pinkie sat down next to Jay, her hair flattened out. I leaned forward to rest my arms on what little leg space I had left. I regarded Celestia calmly and waited for her to begin.

She looked around, making sure we were all comfortable. Then she spoke. "I should tell you exactly how we made the 'medicine' that my subjects' partners have been given."





The several months we spent in your world were not only biding our time, but also a period of research where Twilight Sparkle and our greatest surviving minds from Equestria worked to find a way to unlock human magic. It was noted that humans were magically numb for the most part, oblivious to the energy that permeated their own home. This was determined to be caused by centuries of denial of the metaphysical, where magic was ignored in favor of the time and effort directed into human science and technology.

Your kind had forsaken their link with their own world, which used to be a font of magical power that any human could have harnessed. However, since your civilizations' industrial ages, Earth's natural reserves of magic have been depleted as the environment was abused and polluted. Instead of producing excess magic, your world has been draining the latent magic from its denizens. Humans, animals, plants, even the natural elements that permeate your world have all been drained of their magical potential to such a degree that it is a wonder anything can live for very long.

Despite this, it was found that humans were still born with the potential to, at the very least, perceive the natural energies that existed anywhere in the world. This includes your own "aura sight," as you call it Maximus. What your kind refer to as adrenaline rushes are really unconscious pulls against the drain of the Earth's dying state in order to enhance individuals' speed and strength. Empathy is also a lost art to your people, since humans have become so secluded from one another that external emotions have become almost taboo.

We searched desperately for a way to reestablish your species' connection with your home, but our efforts were for naught, as we found the planet's drain to be an insurmountable obstacle. Then a new idea was proposed, one that my sister and I were loathe to pursue. I imagine you already know what it was.

It was proposed that we find select humans whose values and potential abilities could serve in the inevitable war against Chrysalis and her forces. This was an almost unbelievable proposal, which was met with great resistance. However, necessity overcame the inhibitions we would have normally faced. It was found that the link with your world could only be severed if the human was forcibly linked to another world entirely.

Much research was poured into this project, some of it would have been considered almost heretical in Equestria, but we were desperate. The only world we could link a human to other than their own was ours. The magic necessary was almost titanic when we considered attempting a direct shift. Therefore, we used the Equestrians who were to be partnered as a bridge for the new link to follow. We took samples of magic from every Earth pony, Pegasus, and Unicorn that had traveled to this world and put them into the form of pills.

These pills would contain the spell, with a sample of the Equestrian partner's magic as a template, that would sever the bond between the humans and Earth while simultaneously establishing a link with Equestria. It was foolproof in our eyes, until this new "side effect" kicked in. It seemed that in the process of linking a human to Equestria, their magic had to mold itself to be almost identical to a natural-born Equestrian's.

In this process, it appears that the human would essentially become an Equestrian, as opposed to retaining their old humanity. Every partner has been slowly discovering this, ranging from the spontaneous growth of wings in Pegasus partners, to increased strength, stamina, speed, and durability in Earth pony partners, and lastly the awakening of conscious magic in Unicorn partners.





"In essence, the partners are becoming near-perfect counterparts to one another. We have not determined if there is a way to reverse the process, but rest assured that we are doing our best to find a way to repair our mistake." Celestia finished. Jay and Pinkie simply stared with matching looks of shock.

I took in all of this information, pondering the new development. We were all silent for several minutes. Octavia and Vinyl looked at me hesitantly. I raised an eyebrow before asking. "So who is my actual partner, then? I don't think it would be possible to have two partners' magic energies attuned to the same person at the same time... I would assume it's Vinyl, yes?"

"That's correct, which means that we need to find Octavia's partner..." Celestia mused. "Perhaps this will be harder than I thought..."

I chuckled before replying to her sentiment. "Have you never heard of Murphy's Law?"