"Well hello, isn't this quite the gathering," says the Doctor as he, Derpy, and the two younger unicorns come nearer. The others are all smiles, including Vinyl, who seems to know Derpy, and the Mane Six all seem to know the Doctor as they talk amongst themselves, the two younger ponies hanging back a bit as their parents chat. Not knowing what to say yourself, you stay out of the conversation too, and luckily, so does Octavia, not seeming to know anyone. Unluckily, as soon as the various bits of random talking are over, the Doctor and Derpy come over to where she's standing, the Doctor to stare at you, and Derpy just kind of hanging on with him.
"So, this is the human I heard about on the radio last night then?" he asks, knowing full well who you are, but since that was after breaking into somepony else's house, he probably doesn't want to advertise that fact, and you respect him by trying to act like you don't know him.
"I am indeed. And you would be a pony whom I haven't met yet, but seems to know everypony I've run into so far," you respond.
"Oh, right, human, this is Mr. Whooves, Mr. Whooves, human," says Twilight, seeming the most familiar with the Doctor. She then gives the name you'd been giving out to them, and the Doctor nods thoughtfully.
"A human in Equestria, that's just brilliant, it is. Still, seems awfully small," he says, holding his hoof above you, and just to surprise him, you flit around it like Tinkerbell might, and do a swirl up his leg until you are right in front of his face.
"Who you callin' small, brown boy?" you ask, hovering in front of his face. You would stay there trying to give him the evil eye, but suddenly you find yourself wobbling in the air, and land with a thud right on his face, causing him to panic a bit and toss his head back, throwing you into the air. You don't scream, though that's more because the speed at which this happened had ripped the air from your lungs, and you go sailing high into the sky, before your arc reverses, and you plummet back down towards the earth. One might expect the unicorns in the group, considering there are a few, to catch you with their telekinesis, but before any of them can do so, a blur swoops under you, and you land with a thump on the back of a pegasus, between a pair of massive wings that flap a few times, before fluttering down towards the ground.
"Thanks Rain...er Mrs. Whooves," you say, surprises to find that instead of being Rainbow Dash, fastest flier in Equestria, it was in fact Derpy Whooves who'd saved you, and she giggles a little while grinning at you on her back.
"Don't mention it. Between me and my husband I've had a lot of practice at catching things we drop," she says, and then you find yourself covered in a light blue glow, that levitates you off her back, and gently sets you back down on Octavia's, the telekinesis being provided by Vinyl, who smiles at you, and mouths, good job, before getting a look from Octavia and putting on her most innocent smile.
"Well now, that was interesting. Since when can humans fly?" asks the Doctor, rubbing his nose with his hoof. Before you can answer though, Derpy walks up beside him and kicks his shin a bit hard, considering you can hear the hoof smack.
"Dear, don't you think it would be best if we left? You did just nearly get their little friends squishified on the ground, and we still need to take Sparkler to get tested for magic," said Derpy, pointing back towards the pink unicorn, who blushes a bit. That was probably not something you wanted your mom to say to anyone, least of all the local heroes, who try to put on a good face....expect for Vinyl and Rainbow Dash who are giggling behind their hooves, despite some more withering glances, these from Octavia and Applejack respectively.
"What? Oh, right! The tests, well then, I suppose we should go, but be sure to look us up later, I have a lot of questions for your human friend," he says, and the family trots off, the others looking at each other, before they continue on with the tour.
"Who were they?" you ask Applejack, who's walking close to Octavia, trying to keep your voice a whisper.
"Well, the fella was Doctor Whooves, though what he's a doctor of I don't rightly know. His blushin' bride though, she's our local malemare, Derpy, and the youngun's are Dinky and Sparkler, some real stand up gals. Sparkler even helps out at the farm now and then, though I think that's cause she's got a crush on Big Macintosh," Applejack explains, and you look back over Octavia's flank at the pink one, and then try to imagine her next to the mountain that was Big Macintosh...and failing that you just let the subject drop as the pony party continues their tour.
In the next hour, you are taken all around Ponyville, seeing things from Sugar Cube Corner, which Pinkie nearly dragged the party to, though she was prevented from going inside by a pull from both Applejack and Rainbow Dash, while Octavia stopped Vinyl from entering, to check on the sweets they both insisted, not to eat anything. You also saw the Boutique where Rarity worked, though again, no one wanted to go inside, least of all Rarity, who insisted she would faint dead away if she looked once more on the mounting pile of work she had to do. They then insisted on taking you to see Fluttershy's cottage, which was outside the city, but was one of the nicest spots in town, and so, not really having a choice, you were dragged off to it.
"And there it is, the cutest little corner of Equestria there ever dun was," says Applejack, and looking at it from a really being there perspective, it really was. The place smelled....earthy and natural, something you really hadn't expected considering the animals, but then, they weren't on a farm or anything, and while Fluttershy built a coop for the chickens, everyone else lived in more natural dwellings. Heck, her own tree was more natural looking than any other home tree you'd seen, with the branches a chaotic tangle of life overhead.
"It's lovely," was all you said. Not because it was all you had to say, but because before you could say more, a sudden thundering boom echoed over the whole area, the trees and things shaking visibly from it, and through Octavia, you could feel it too, shaking you, until you fell off her back, and with a bit of flight power, landed on your feet lightly in the dirt. Of course, the instant you were down you had to dodge a hoof, though who's you couldn't tell, as you rolled out of the way watching it pound into the dirt where you'd been as the ponies try to stay standing, the pounding getting closer, and the sounds of trees falling reaching you. With a roar, a huge shape, bigger than the whole world, or at least the size of a dragon compared to the girls, comes out of the trees. Looking up at the mountain, expecting a monster like an Ursa major or the like, you are surprised to find yourself staring instead at a giant pony.
Now, when the pony is described as giant, don't take that to mean giant from your perspective. All of them were pretty big from your perspective after all. No, this pony was giant from everypony's perspective. His, and from the shape of the head you were sure it was a he, stood several feet taller than the trees that surrounded Fluttershy's cottage. He towered above everypony, and his hooves, once they broke the tree line, were big enough that he could have crushed any of the girls as easily as they could have crushed you, if not more so considering he appeared to be a bit bulkier. Luckily, he was easily visible, with a dark purple coat, several shades darker than Twilight's, and a bright orange mane. Unluckily, those under his hoof didn't seem as visible, as his hoof hovers overhead for a moment, and nearly steps on the group, landing just past them.
"See? I told you this was the right way? How could you ever doubt me?" he says, and turns his head, allowing you to see silver eyes, an interesting color actually, and he smiles at something on his back. You then notice that he's wearing saddlebags made in the same color as his mane, but due to the angle, you can't see his cutie mark. Also interesting is, like with you, his voice sounds normal, not huge and booming like one would expect of a giant, probably something to do with the world, but then, it is a magical land full of ponies and thing.
"Because we should have been here an hour ago and you stopped to investigate that old griffon nest?" comes a reply, sounding exasperated, and suddenly a head peeks out from behind his back, looking towards where you assume Ponyville is in the distance.
"What in tarnation is goin' on here?!" demands Applejack, after she and the others get over the sight of somepony almost as big to them as they are to you, and suddenly both heads turn towards you. Now you can get a better look at the pony on the back of the giant one. He looks to be about the same size as the girls, a bit bigger probably, as he's also male, with a light brown coat, and dark brown mane, offset by orange eyes, a few shades lighter than the mane on the giant pony he was riding.
"And you almost stepped on the locals again. This is turning into the Fillydelphia trip all over again," says the brown pony.
"Well, this time try to stay out of the dance clubs then. I don't want to have to search for you for three days again," chided the purple pony, his head turning, and you finally notice that he has a unicorn's horn, a detail lost on you before since he was just massive compared to anything you'd seen before. You notice it now because it glows slightly, and then a small shimmer covers the giant pony, who then seems to collapse into himself like a deflating balloon, soon standing only a bit taller than the girls, while shaking his head a bit.
"I thought we agreed never to speak of that again?" asked the now tiny pony from on his back as he was levitated down to the ground by the once purple giant. The brown one then revealed he too was a unicorn, his own horn glowing, as he grew up from your size, to stand at the same stature as the others.
"You agreed, I said nothing. Now then, perhaps you lovely ladies can help some strangers out. I'm looking for....hmm....you know, I don't rightly know what we're looking for...Deasly, what was it we came here for again?" he asked, turning to the other unicorn, who sighed and facehoofed, before pushing the purple one aside, and nodding his head in greeting to the girls.
"I'm sorry for the Professor's rudeness, he's a bit of a ditz. It's a pleasure to meet all of you. I'm also sorry if he startled you, but him being dragon sized is one of the easiest ways to make good time getting here. As he said, I'm Deasly, apprentice level Magister. and this flighty pony is my instructor, Professor DawnChaser," said Deasly, gesturing towards the purple pony, who had seemingly forgotten everyone was there as he looked around Fluttershy's home, and began to pull leaves off nearby trees, looking at them and studying them intently.
"Say hello, Professor," Deasly told the purple unicorn.
"Hello, Professor," responded DawnChaser with a smirk.
"-sigh-. Anyway, we're here because a royal summons arrived today at the Hayvard office telling us there was a potential research subject here. Do any of you know where we can find a thing called a human?" asked Deasly facehoofing again at the purple pony professor’s remark, but then smiling pleasantly as he faces the girls.
"That would be me," you speak up from Octavia's back, and the pair of unicorns both turn to notice you for the first time. The Professor, looking at you, sets the leaves he'd collected down in a nice neat pile, before trotting forward, his saddle bag opening, and a ruler coming out of it, growing from near microscopic size to pony size, and then floating next to you.
"Fascinating," was all he said, as the ruler hovered for a moment, before going back into his saddlebag, and then a few more devices coming out.
"Professor, I told you, stop being rude. Now put your toy's away until we've made proper introductions," chided Deasly again, and DawnChaser, looking at the girls, suddenly zipped everything back into his pack.
"Oh, of course. I'm sorry, I just get caught up in my studies. I'm Professor DawnChaser, lecturer at Hayvard University just outside Manehatten, and this is my apprentice, Deasly," he said.
"They know that, I told them not a minute ago. Now how's about we politely ask their names?" Deasly said again, and DawnChaser nodded, before pulling a book out of his bag, and starting to look through it.
"Well, the one over there is Twilight Sparkle, she's the apprentice of Celestia, and a powerful unicorn, probably the strongest of the last few generations. The one with the hat is Applejack, she's one of the Apple Family, an extended farmer line who owns the local Sweet Apple Acres. The pink one is Pinkie Pie, she works at Sugar Cube Corner. The white unicorn is Rarity, she runs a local Boutique, and is a fashion deva prided for her design talents. The blue pegasus with rainbow colored mane and tail is Rainbow Dash, she's one of the local weather wardens. The pegasus with pink hair is Fluttershy, I don't have any information beyond that," he said, the last bit done in a different tone, as if he was surprised to not know anything else about Fluttershy.
"The six of them together are the new Wielders of the Elements of Harmony. The other two are obviously noted radio personalities Vinyl Scratch and Octavia, the white one is Vinyl, the brown Octavia. They run a popular radio talk show named for Vinyl, and are in a relationship together, though how deep it goes, I'm not sure," he said, and suddenly a quill comes out of the saddle bag, growing like everything else from tiny to normal as he scribbles something else down into his book, and then turns it towards the others, who are a bit surprised by what they see. You are too, all things considered.
The book contained pictures, of them...all of them, in profile, with their cutie marks, a few basic stats to the side like birthday and things, which you notice that your's is within a week of Octavia's, and just a day past Twilight's, if the numbering of days and months is the same. Beyond basic statistics though, he includes other things, including biographical data, and what you can only assume are RPG stats, as they're marked with just numbers, but say things like strength, endurance, magic, and agility, though what the limit of them is, or even what the numbers mean you don't know before he slams the book closed, and then slips it back into his bag.
"Um...don't think that he's been stalking you or anything. That's just the Professor's way. He remembers things he reads, so he writes down everything, on just about anypony he knows about," explains Deasly, before anypony can assume the worst.
"Well now, that's a mighty interetin' book ya'll got there Professor, but since you're here, might I suggest we all mosey somewhere else for a bit of privacy?" asks Applejack, and the others, looking around at a gathering of ponies, who'd probably seen the giant DawnChaser earlier, agree. It's decided, after a bit of debate to head to Sweet Apple Acres.
Well, some of you head to Sweet Apple Acres anyway. As it turns out, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rarity have to get back to their jobs, as Rainbow has kind of let her part of the Weather Warden duties slide for...two or three weeks, and she needs to make up for it today. Pinkie Pie doesn't really give a reason, but then, she seems to just want to get back to Sugar Cube Corner, where those sweet smells had been coming from. Fluttershy is a bit more forthcoming, and says simply that her animal friends need some mid-day tending to, feeding, medicine, and the like, and so she'll just stay at her cottage. Rarity, meanwhile, admits that she too has her job to consider, and needs to get back to it before orders get too backed up to ever dream of catching up. Interestingly enough, she drags Vinyl off with her, the white mare having agreed to help out while she was in town, something that Octavia cheerfully reminds her, as Rarity and she trot back towards town.
So a much reduced group set off from Fluttershy's cottage towards the road that leads straight to the farm, with Applejack in the lead, Twilight just behind her, talking about something that seemed to be a bit private, considering they'd pulled ahead to discuss it, and you riding Octavia's back, with Deasly, who is looking around interestedly, probably never having been to Ponyville before, trotting beside, and DawnChaser on the other side, a book pulled out, into which he was quickly scribbling, the quill levitated by his power flying like it was still part of the bird, a blur of motion over the page, until, a minute or so after you start, he turns the book around, and you find yourself staring at a picture of you, and quite a good one too.
"That's an excellent skill, Mr. DawnChaser. Does your writing and drawing talent have something to do with your cutie mark?" asks Octavia, looking towards his flank, which was still covered up by the saddle bags he was wearing.
"Oh, no, that's just a force of habit, my cutie mark is...well," he doesn't bother to explain, and instead levitates the saddle bag, revealing his cutie mark to be a book as one might have surmised. It was an oldish looking book too, like one of those wizarding tomes you see in fantasy fiction, with slightly yellowing pages, a brown, dusty looking cover, and open with a red bookmark that appeared to be attached to the book holding the pages in place. There was writing too, but it wasn't anything you could understand, just squiggles, but they seemed to move and shift a bit every time you turned your head just a little.
"So your special talent is books?" you ask, probably a bit insensitively, sine this was like the pony version of puberty, but you are really curious. After all, he's the first pony not from the show you'd met personally, though you'd seen a few from a distance during the Ponyville tour.
"Sort of. I retain information I read. I can read a book, and then recite it to you from end back to the beginning word for word, years later," he says. It wasn't pride in his voice as he did it though, just a statement of fact, though at least Octavia looked impressed, though you bet Twilight, if she'd been paying attention, would have been more so.
"That must make teaching an excellent job for you," she comments, and Deasly laughs at it. He doesn't shy away as Octavia turns to him, or as DawnChaser gives him what should have been a withering glare, but fails miserably when he sees something, a bird you think, overhead, and is instantly distracted.
"So he's not good at teaching?" asks Octavia.
"Oh, he's a great teacher, when he remembers he has a class. There were whole weeks there where he'd vanish, however, or he'd just leave in the middle of a test or lecture, wandering off, only to come back with some new book to publish. Heck, I think that's the only reason they keep him on, he keeps publishing theory books that make the school look good. Well, that and he's got tenure thanks to being able to cover for just about any teacher in any subject with that ability. He never forgets to sub, mind, and always follows the lesson plans, but when he's supposed to be the teacher regularly, he'll just kind of forget about it," comments Deasly, how motions his head towards DawnChaser, who's now stopped at the side of the road, drawing something else in his book.
"Professor! If you don't hurry up, we're going to leave you behind!" he shouts, and DawnChaser only now seems to notice that no pony else had stopped with him, and quickly closes the book he'd been writing in, before trotting to catch up.
"Like that?" asks Octavia, asking him to clarify his earlier statement about DawnChaser's flighty nature. Deasly merely nods.
"I think that's why I was assigned to be his protege for my entrance into the Magisters, because I can keep an eye on him, and follow him even when he doesn't want to be followed," he says.
"Oh, and why can you do that?" she asks, and you notice for the first time that Deasly doesn't have a cutie mark...or rather, he's wearing something over his, saddlebags, like the Professor's, but thinner, probably like wallet thick to the pony, and colored precisely to match his coat. Deasly smirks, obviously having forgotten himself that they were covering his mark, and uses his snout to lift the one on your side, showing his mark. It was three silhouettes of ponies, one tiny, one big, and one in between the two, with them getting darker in reverse order of size, meaning the small one was completely black, and the big one was almost a shadow.
"My special talent spell, is a shrink spell, watch," he said, and hopped towards Octavia, with her flinching and pulling back a bit, but she needn't have bothered. As he flies at her, Deasly's horn glows a bit, and suddenly he's tiny again, like when he'd been on DawnChaser's back earlier, and he lands on her's lightly, his hooves not even denting her coat as he trots towards you. He's actually only a bit over half your size, four feet or so, with his head coming up to just at your chest, while standing on his hind legs he would probably be a foot or two taller than you.
"Now that is a neat trick," you say, looking down at him, and poking him a bit to prove that he's real. He doesn't take kindly to that, and runs at you, causing you to hop, and land on his back, showing that, considering his size, he's actually pretty strong, able to hold you up with ease, and probably gallop if he wanted to. This time, since he doesn't want to, he rolls, and you are flattened into Octavia's fur for a moment, rising and smiling. It had been a while since you'd been able to interact with anyone like that, and you had to admit, it was nice.
"It's not a trick, it's a useful skill. Mind, unlike the Professor, I can't just do it to anything I please. It takes some concentration, and even then, they have to have some natural magic, so mostly I can only work my spell on other ponies, and then only if they're willing to stand still for me to cast it. I did learn to do it to my own fur, though, or things wrapped in it, which is why I wear the saddle bags I do," he explains, and opens them. Inside his are sketch books, rather than library ones like DawnChaser's. He doesn't open them though, and instead just slips them back inside before closing the bags.
"That actually sounds useful. Think we can trick Vinyl into staying put long enough for you to do it to her? Or at least to her ego?" asks Octavia, and you all...well the three of you have a good laugh, as the group continues to trot onward towards Sweet Apple Acres.