I looked down at the town from the crest of the hill and stood there for a few moments in awe. Everything, while not being animated so it did look a little bit different, was exactly the same and could be picked out at a glance. Just like I had expected, Twilight’s tree was right in the middle of town next to the mayor’s offices. I could see the top of Rarity’s boutique peeking out from over a few hovels, next to the library that was probably the tallest building in the whole town. I was having a lot of trouble picking out exactly where Sugarcube Corner was, and I really wanted to avoid that place and it’s pink employee at all costs. Out of the entire mane six Pinkie Pie probably posed a bigger threat to my new identity than Twilight, perhaps even more than Celestia herself.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Pinkie, in fact she was one of my favorites of the mane six, but at least for now until I had gotten more familiar with the world I was in I wouldn’t be taking many risks. That was kind of ironic I realized with how I had just skipped class. I could see up in the sky that there were half a dozen pegasi flying around about their own business, some were moving clouds, some were kicking them apart, and some were just flying around and intentionally trying to make me ache for wings. I never would have let Steel know, but pegasi are so damn cool and he totally lucked out with the whole body situation. Colorful ponies filled the streets since it was well past time for them to be up and about, I guessed some of them went shopping everyday and worked in their own little businesses.
I wasn’t really very familiar with how small towns actually functioned, and it is never actually gone into in the show. All I really knew was that there were plenty milling about and it was probably about time for me to head down from this hill and see what there was to do. I was on a strict time table here so it would probably be best to try and get in and get out as quickly as possible. Now all I had to do was figure out exactly what I was even here to do in the first place.
Since it was midday that would mean that most of the ponies with a job would be at work. Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Twilight, and Pinkie would all be busy with their own work and Applejack would most likely be back at her farm a couple of miles in the opposite direction. I really had no idea what Fluttershy’s schedule looked like but running into her would be pretty fun and probably have a low risk of getting caught in my lies even if I did. The trick, I realized, would be getting into that library and checking out the particular book that I wanted without alerting suspicion from one Ms. Sparkle. I supposed that I could always just try and get Spike to help me out in that area, but even he proved to be uncannily intelligent on occasion within the established canon so I could need to tread carefully with him as well.
“Hey, wacha doin sittin up here all by yourself?” Came a very cheery voice from behind me causing me to turn around just a little too quickly and get a glimpse at the pink mare before I lost my footing and started to tumble down the hill. It wasn’t an exceptionally big hill, neither was it very steep really but once you start rolling down an incline like that it is terribly difficult to stop yourself. I rolled head over tail halfway down until one big bump sent me sideways and I finished the dizzying ride on my back with my hooves in the air. I continued to lie there for a little while as I tried to blink my eyes back into focus and heard a sound quickly beginning to approach me from the direction I had just left.
“Weeeeeeeeee,” Pinkie squealed as she too rolled down the hill, though I bet she actually meant to do it. When she reached the bottom she smacked into me with a thud that sent me rolling another couple of feet and somehow coming to a stop on my hooves. “That was fun, we should do it again.”
I was too busy trying to keep my grilled cheese down to reply immediately but after a few deep and calming breaths I managed to finally speak. “No, let’s not.” Oh Celestia how could I have ever hoped to predict where this pink ball of energy would show up, she regularly defies logic and physics on a whim. I needed to think of a plan quickly before she started…
“Oh wow, are you in new in town because I know everypony in town and you’re not one of them. And if you’re new in town then that means we get to throw you a big welcome to Ponyville party with bunches of ponies and cake and streamers and ponies. Oh yea, I forgot to ask what your name is, my name is…”
I immediately moved to cut her off, but with her the timing really has to be perfect. “Pinkie Pie,” I finished for the energetic mare.
“Yeah! How’d you know?” She never did seem to lose that smile which while endearing in the show was just a little bit creepy here.
“We’ve met before,” I readily supplied.
That got a gasp out of her, and while I hadn’t seen some gravity defying stuff yet I was really let down. It seems that they just play the stuff up in the show and that she doesn’t actually hang in the air for untold amounts of time whenever she does gasp, sorry. “No way, I know everypony I’ve ever met and you aren’t one of em mister.” She sat back on her rump and stroked her chin in contemplation.
“Sorry to tell you Pinkie but we have met before, so yea. No need to treat me special and throw parties or anything, I’m just a regular pony like everypony else.” As I spoke I slowly began to back away from her, but it seemed that my words barely even registered as she continued to stroke her chin and stare out into space. I quickly turned and started to enter Ponyville, hoping against hope that she would continue to stay put there until I had finished and returned to class, at least it should buy me a couple of minutes.
“So where did we meet then, if we did meet at all my little mysterious colt friend that I don’t know but knows me and says we’ve met?” I looked to my left and sure enough there she was trotting along beside me, though her pace was far more relaxed than mine. Stupid adult sized legs.
“How about a game,” I replied after a moment of thought.
“Oh a game I love games! What kind of game is it?” she said immediately, I wonder if ponies had diagnosed ADD yet.
“It’s a guessing game, you guess where we’ve met before and I’ll tell you. I am kind of disappointed that you don’t remember me.” I entered a gap between two buildings that led into the town and Pinkie followed along alternating between hopping and just walking normally. Yes, the hopping was a thing and I could not figure out how she did it.
“I am really good at guessing games whoever you are. Alright let me think.” She continued to hop along next to me as she went quiet, the grin on her face always present as I stopped and looked around for a moment. I really wished that I had remembered where the library was, but after taking a tumble down the hill I had lost all sense of direction really. I did happen to know somepony that knew where the library was however.
“Hey Pinkie, I’m trying to find the library so can you point me in the right direction?” I asked, and as soon I did she stopped bouncing immediately. It was the weirdest thing to see since she didn’t really change what she was doing in the least, she just stopped.
“Oh sure, that’s where I was going anyways so we can go together,” She said happily before she started trotting off in a seemingly random direction, forcing me to quickly scurry after her. We passed the denizens of Ponyville by as we made our way another street over, after finally catching up with the pink mare I matched her pace and made a position for myself to her side.
“Alright, I’m ready,” she announced suddenly.
“Ready to what?” I asked, not really paying attention. I was far more interested in taking in all the sights of Ponyville like I hadn’t really been able to do the last time that I was in town. The colorful buildings were made in neat rows on either side of the street and it looked like the street we were on led straight to the mayor’s office. Ponies went back and forth mostly minding their own business or talking to whoever they happened to be with. There weren’t an exceptional amount of ponies but just seeing them out and about was pretty great.
“Ready for my first guess of course.” I wasn’t looking in her direction but her tone of voice told me that she was rolling her eyes.
“Okay, guess then,” I replied casually.
“Did we meet...at a baking convention in Manehatten?”
“No,” I said simply.
“Drat. Did we meet...In Canterlot?”
“When in Canterlot, you can’t just guess cities until you get the right one,” I said, adding an arbitrary rule to make sure she dwelled on this as long as possible and didn’t realize I was straight up lying to her.
“Okay um, during the wedding? It was wasn’t it, that wedding had so many ponies around and I met a lot of new Canterlot ponies.” She looked so triumphant it was almost too hard to put her down, almost.
“Nope, wrong again.” I stopped for a moment to turn and look at a strange store that seemed to only sell couches and quills, how odd. I shrugged it off and continued to follow my pink tour guide towards the destination that I was heading for. She stopped for a moment and looked up to the sky where several pegasi were passing overhead and waved to a few of them, surprisingly many of them took the time to wave back before continuing doing whatever it was that they were doing.
“Wow, this guessing game is really hard,” she said as once more she began to bounce along. Sad to say, I did in fact try and copy her movements if nothing else just to see how in the world she was doing it but I failed miserably. After picking myself back up off the ground and wiping whatever dirt i could get to on my face away I looked once more to the mare to see her giggling madly at my misfortune.
I sighed before starting ahead once more and leaving her there to catch up even though I didn’t know where I was going. “So how do you do that anyways?” I asked Pinkie who was once again bouncing along next to me.
“Do what?” she immediately returned.
“Bounce like that. You don’t seem to be contracting your legs enough to get that height, it’s just like you are a spring or something.”
“Hehe, Twilight said the same thing,” she replied with a slight smirk. “I bounce when feeling bouncy, that’s what I told her anyways.”
I once more had to try and succeed not to facehoof. I honestly don’t know why I expected a different kind of answer out of her in the first place. Pinkie Pie is Pinkie Pie if I wanted some rational explanation for why something is a certain way then I should go and talk with Twilight. I wasn’t planning to do that of course, but certainly you can see my point.
“Alright I got another one,” Pinkie announced just as I finished my train of thought.
“Shoot then,” I said, stopping for a moment to check landmarks.
“Shoot what?”
I looked back to the mare puzzled for a few seconds before I caught on. “It’s something that you say when you want somepony to go ahead with a question that they want to ask. An idiom that….what’s your guess?”
“Okay so since you say we’ve met and I don’t remember having ever met you then there is only one possible conclusion.” Oh god Pinkie using logic. “You must be from the future, you are aren’t you? You’re from the future and are stranded back in time, oh no wait. You are on a mission from the future to save the world.”
Was this really what happened when Pinkie used logic. Any logical conclusion would have led to the fact that I was just completely lying to her and she would be left to try and figure out why, but she tried to make all the facts fit a theory and this is what she came up with. Wait a second, I could use this to my advantage, or at the very least dig myself out of this guessing game hole that clearly wouldn’t last forever.
“Well...you got it. Good job,” I said nonchalantly as I looked over to the mayor’s office where I had been just yesterday.
“What? Really?” she asked as she also stopped and looked at me with a good bit of disbelief.
“Yes, we meet in Ponyville in about eight years for the first time. I can’t really tell you why I am here as it could change the future drastically so that is all I can say to you Pinkie.” I thought through what I had said and felt that it was vague enough. I didn’t really reveal anything just confirmed something she said and would allow her to continue developing the story however she wanted to.
“Oh my gosh are you being for real right now? That’s so cool, hey do they still have parties in the future?” I was actually pretty surprised that she bought it that fast.
“Um...yes. Look we are here,” I said, motioning to the big tree that we had finally arrived at in order to change the subject. It looked exactly like it had in the show when I had seen it, but now that it was in person it was so completely bizarre. It was a massive tree, probably the biggest one that I had ever seen and it had been completely hollowed out to allow for a library to be built inside. Windows poked out of the bark here and there, and the door that stood ajar before us led back into a well lit room that I could only see a small portion of from my vantage. The leaves, and there were many many leaves, slowly waved in the breeze that had kept the day nice and cool so far and looked completely healthy. I really wanted to ask somepony how they managed to keep the thing alive and still carve out so much of it to live in, there was likely some kind of spell in place to keep it standing. I wondered if plants did feel some modicum of pain in this world since it seemed like most animals had a higher sentience so plants might as well. If so then I felt really bad for this mighty oak.
“Yep, this is Twilight’s house. It’s also a library too, but you probably already knew all of that didn’t you?” Pinkie asked with a smirk. Oh damn, she is going to expect me to know things now isn’t she. Well I did know quite a bit that I didn’t rightly have any reason for knowing so I could still pull off this whole future thing without revealing the lie and getting myself into deeper trouble. “Hey, if you’re from Ponyville in the future then how come you didn’t know where Twilight’s library was?”
Shit, how did she catch onto that so quickly. How smart was Pinkie really, it was very difficult to gage with how eccentric she always acts. “The layout is different in the future after the….thing happened…” Damn, now I had to fabricate reasons.
“What thing?” she asked as she inclined her head to the right.
“I can’t tell you about that. Can we just go inside please.”
“Okie Dokie Loki,” she said, immediately dropping the subject and bouncing her way into the building. I was stunned, again, I really needed to throw away my assumptions with this mare because it didn’t seem like anything I predicted her to do turned out right. Maybe she was doing these things just because I predicted her to do something else. No, that was a little too paranoid to have any basis.
I followed her into the building to building and was hit with the smell of old paper as soon as we passed the threshold. There was a light overhead, that combined with the sunlight coming in through the multiple windows, kept the main room well lit. Many bookcases lined the walls, all filled to bursting with books on all sorts of subjects on anything I could possibly imagine. The whole look of it was very nostalgic and I came to realize that seeing this place relaxed me quite a bit. I had been pretty nervous about coming here in the first place, but it didn’t seem like anything sinister was waiting to greet me, why I had expected something of that nature was beyond me.
“Heeellooooo,” Pinkie called into the library and actually managed to get a bit of an echo, which in such a small and open space was bizarre. I think the show had it right and I should stop questioning anything she did.
“Yeah, yeah Pinkie I’m coming,” a distinctly familiar voice responded from just off of the main room. A few seconds later Spike himself came walking into the main library with a white apron that said “Kiss the Chef” on it. Frankly, I was starting to find that the show was liberal in some of the things that it decided to show and here it really stood out.
Spike was just a little bit taller than me, but the cute dragon thing had been completely lost and replaced by the lizard of death that I had originally expected. His purple scales were actually much closer to being completely black though the godzillaesc ones that lined his back and the top of his head were still a neon green, they even seemed to almost pulse with light every once in a while. His eyes weren’t nearly as large as they had been drawn and focused on the two of us with a harsh reptilian gaze, seemingly contemplating ripping us fleshy creatures apart with the wickedly sharp claws I could on the ends of his hands. All in all Spike was fuckin’ scary, luckily the apron helped to divert from that but the look was still there.
“Oh hi Spike, my new dirty friend here wanted to come to the library so I showed him the way. Hey, you never told me your name or should I just call you future colt?” Pinkie asked, turning her attention back my way.
“Ashen Stroke,” I replied, trying to keep my voice as level as possible with the scaly predator in the room. One false move and my fear might set him off.
“Alright Ashy, nice ta meet ya. Hey Spike where’s Twilight I wanna go talk to her?” ADD, definitely ADD.
“She’s upstairs doing some sort of research project,” Spike said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Twilight’s room. “Something about mapping.”
“Alrighty.” With her information acquired Pinkie bounced her way upstairs to the upper level and disappeared from sight, leaving me alone with Spike.
After a few seconds of him just looking at me he finally decided to break the silence. “So...is there something that I can help you find or did you just want to browse?” he asked.
My mind snapped back to the main objective I had when I came here immediately, and I forced myself to say the words despite my fear, which now seemed to be pretty irrational. “Right, um yes. Do you know where I could find a book that covers transdimensional magic or anything along those lines?” That certainly got a quirked eyebrow out of the dragon but he seemed to get over it quickly.
“I think we might have some stuff like that over in the magic section,” he said as he pointed over to said section, “but why do you want to read something boring like that? No offense, but you’re an Earth Pony and the subject isn’t exactly entertaining.”
“Yeah no offence taken, I hope you won’t be offended by me not telling you though, personal reasons and such.” I approached the specified bookcase that now that I looked at it had a sign above it indicating that it held books about magic. “So which of these am I looking for?” I asked back over my shoulder.
There was a bit of scraping against the ground and Spike came to join me in staring up at the massive bookcase. “Well, it will probably be up on the top there where all of the advanced stuff is. If we even have it that is.”
“Alright, and how do we get it?” I had already spied the ladder that he was often seen using to get books but I might as well let him tell me about it.
Without a word he walked over and retrieved the ladder which had been leaning against a random wall and set it against the bookcase. “I’ll take a look and see what we have.” About halfway up the stairs he stopped for a moment and turned back to look at me. “Hey, shouldn’t you be in class right now?”
“Shouldn’t you?” Hey that was childish and petty and I didn’t even have to think about it.
“Touche,” he replied as he began climbing the ladder once again to reach the top shelf. “Eincolt’s Experimental Explanations, Hawk’s Harrowing Hereditaries, Fig’s Fantastic Fabrications, Thistle’s True Transmutations. Huh, it looks like what you’re looking for isn’t here. Maybe Twilight took it to read through or something,” he said, pointing to an empty space between two books on the shelf. “Want me to go ask her if she has it?”
I caught sight of a clock that hung on the wall nearby and realized that I had been gone much longer than I had wanted. I really did need that book, and was pretty amazed that it actually existed in the first place, but I also needed to get back to the schoolhouse before anypony realized that I had left in the first place. Damn, it seemed that this trip had been completely wasted after all.
“Yeah can you ask her if she has it, I gotta run right now and will be back later this afternoon,” I said as I started heading for the door and heard Spike jump down from the ladder behind me.
“Alright I’ll do that then. See ya later then Ashen Stroke,” Spike said as he waved.
“Later,” I said simply before dashing back into the world outside and heading for the schoolhouse.