//------------------------------// // 8 // Story: Twilights Mane Passion // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Enchanted comics were tricky things; all their enchantments had to be set mostly in stone. Such as the enchantments that draw in and eject ponies. The Power Ponies comic Twilight was sucked into had a maximum load of seven ponies. The same seven that entered would be the only ponies that could exit. The enchantments that made the comic book disappear after going on the adventure in the comic book had to be working or else the other enchantments on the comic book wouldn’t work at all. So therefore as long as the comic book was set to disappear after use, this is the only way it would work. Mane-iac was not a pony who entered the comic book as she was part of it. For one to understand the meaning of why this is important, one has to know it should be impossible for anything more than the objects you can feasibly carry to come out of the enchanted comic book. Basically you can’t pull an entire bank vault out of the comic or take more then what you should possibly be capable of carrying. So it is intrinsically impossible to remove anything larger then a building or heavier then you are. Twilight was carrying the following when she was pushed out of the comic by the enchantments: two and a half gallons worth of honeyed cider, one empty gallon bottle that had honeyed cider, one pair of fake bee antenna, a shirt that read ‘hug bees’, one honey festival mug, cured hooves, a spa treated mane and tail, a refreshed body, a stomach filled with good food… and one friend. One would say that Mane-iac coming out of the comic should be impossible because she’s heavier then Twilight. It is a good thing that Mane-iac didn’t come out of the comic then, but that’s not to say Twilight didn’t exit the book without a friend. The most important thing in all this is just exactly how powerful Twilight is and who exactly she pulled out of the comic book world with her. Mane-iac gave her first hug to her friend, who was Twilight as Radiance at the honey festival; previously she had received a hug from her but did not reciprocate at that time and only received. Twilight who after watching the fireworks hugged her friend fiercely who returned the hug as equally strong, but in a more confused manner. Twilight could not feasibly lift Mane-iac out of the world with her, but at the time of their hug Twilight had her own power returned to her and her Radiance abilities stripped of her. Magic can be simplified down to three things in Equestria even if it was more complicated than that. These three things are intent, power and focus. Intent, Twilight didn’t want to be separated from the first friend she had ever earned and it was Mane-iac of all ponies. Her intent was that she would take her ‘friend’ with her if she could, even if she didn’t know she had the ability to do so, her magic certainly did. Power, Twilight was more gifted than any average unicorn given her mystical strength. She could, if given enough time, work her powers hard enough like a muscle to put her on par with beings that were gods. Her special talent being raw magic was certainly a factor in what exactly happened. Focus, it was different and of the previous two needs this was a very important one. Twilight had an incredibly powerful mind and her ability to focus it in mere glimmers of duress was impossible to copy by any other pony, even Celestia would be hard pressed to focus her magic to such a fine point. Had Twilight not the ability to focus such a degree in specific instances, then what she did would have been completely out of the question as even anywhere being close to feasible. Her focal point was her first friend she had been hugging onto for dear life. Friendship, Twilight wouldn’t let go of Mane-iac and unfortunately she could not lift her. So she didn’t lift Mane-iac from the world of the comic book, she lifted the bond she forged with her which in turn started a chain reaction. Friendship, love and familial bonds that are forged can become stronger than any barrier that existence could even be bothered with putting in their way. Existence lost that fight too many times to care at this point when something broke or became horribly bent out of shape when it came to Equestria, so a being named Discord having caused some previous influence on the world did have some bearing on the situation. Saying Twilight dented existence would be like saying that she tore off a Hydra’s head with her bare hooves without the aid of magic. It seems completely implausible, but that’s exactly what magic was, probability of the impossible and possible to become an intertwined reality. One last thing to note, to make sure we’re all on the same page of the lessons on magical causality. Twilight did not pull Mane-iac out of the comic book nor did she intentionally or unintentionally do so. The truth of the end result of Twilights unknown struggle to hold onto a friend might be a tad stranger than that, clingy beyond all reason and the laws of physics kind of describes the effort Twilight put into hugging Mane-iac without realizing it. Twilight was on her back; her magic font was down so low she really doubted that she could do much more then light her horn slightly at the moment much less have the thought of actively using magic. She was still too dizzy and tired when she heard her daughters’ voice. Her heart soared, only her mind finally fed her the message that Barb had relayed to her in her dazed state. The message came in incredibly slow, as if it were slow motion no less. Twilight felt the weight of the saddle bag that she had acquired in the comic book world, so she still had the cider. Yes, score! Her mind finally picked on something, she couldn't move her legs. Her mind started to panic; hopefully she didn’t lose the use of her legs and would have to move around using only her horn to move some kind of hovering wheel chair. She’d only be able to get a job teaching gifted ponies without the ability to be incredibly mobile on her own, well if she did end up teaching then she’d work on mutating equality for every pony race with the power of her mind. Lifting her head Twilight opened her eyes and they bugged out spectacularly, her mind wasn’t able to record this moment properly but she’d definitely remember what she saw later laying across the top of her body. Then Twilights mom, Velvet, walked in. “Oh, you’re back from your vacation. Who’s your friend and is she staying for dinner?” Velvet frowned when Twilight passed out with the back of her head slamming to the floor. “Oh my, she must be so tired after her trip. Night, honey, I think I’m going to need a little help getting our little Sparkle and her new friend into bed, oh and get the camera. We have embarrassing pictures to take.” Twilight’s mother and father were decidedly being jerks to their daughter, but they knew she’d forgive them anyway for what happened the following morning. It was a morning that she’d be tardy in getting to Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns, something that she wasn’t overly worried about because she only has self study periods in the morning and could pick up the slack easily enough as she was ahead on her work. There was a reason why Twilight was leaving Canterlot at the age sixteen and was currently doing jobs for extra money to buy her a spot somewhere literally with greener pastures. Twilight still had two years of school left to go before she started working on figuring out the direction her life was going to take. At the age of fourteen one wonders if Twilight could truly handle another curve ball, other than being a single mother to a magic dragon, one which just hit her directly in the face. Slowly consciousness came to Twilight and her magic was about back up to a quarter to being full. She was hard pressed to remember why she was experiencing magical exhaustion. Much less why she had a mare wrapped in her hooves as her eyes blinked blearily at the warm body she held. Her lips were almost touching the lips of the face in front of her. “What the…” Twilight freaked out and flailed her limbs sporadically, she fell out of bed leaving the other occupant where she laid slightly disturbed before curling up in the blanket to continue sleeping. The flash of a camera caught Twilights attention. “Those two are keepers.” Even with the glare directed at her by her daughter, Velvet could not stop smiling at the pictures she caught of Twilight waking up. “Wake up your friend and help her get prepared for breakfast. Smart! Your better half is still groggy, see if you can direct her to the bathroom and make sure she takes her friend with her. I’ll go wake up Barb, she’ll be so happy to hear how your trip went. She was so worried that you wouldn’t come back after you had been gone for a day or so.” As Twilights mother exited the room, in flew the pixie pony Twilight created. Who settled down on the bed post and looked at the pony sleeping in Twilights bed. Twilight also looked at the pony still sleeping in her bed. First she focused on the light blue tangled mane and tail, this was something Twilight would definitely fix when she remembered why the pony looked so familiar. Her eyes continued to roam the soft pink coat and a cutie mark of a shampoo bottle with a brush. Her mind was almost on to solving the case when Smart spoke up. “Isn’t that the pony who became Mane-iac in the comic book?” Smart’s words caused Twilight mind to snap like a twig and it certainly wasn’t because of the mare in her bed that she had slept with and cuddled like a plush toy. It was because Smart came to that conclusion before even she did. That earth pony mare was the one that eventually became Mane-iac and she was about her age, well a piece of the puzzle Twilight never considered fell into place about why the Mane-iac came about. Being young and a hard working business owner could have lead to heart attacks from the pressure placed on her alone, it was a surprise that she was as healthy as she looked now as she did in the comic book. “Hey, get our head out of the gutter and stop staring at her flank even if she is really hot. We need to wake up… um… do I call her Mane-iac? She doesn’t exactly have the crazy cool green mane or the super powers.” Smart finally caused Twilights brain to reboot as she shakily stood up and carefully stumbled around to the opposite side of the bed to shake the pony awake. With a gentle left hoof, Twilight pointedly prodded the peaceful pretty pony purposefully. When said ponies eyes slowly slid open Twilights eyes stared into a pair of crystal blue eyes, they stared back at her shining purple eyes. “Radiance, where are we? What’s going on?” The pony slowly said as she tried to mentally command her hair to uncurl from around her body, only it didn’t respond to her mental command so she tried again. After a moment a look of wide eyed panic crossed the ponies face. “I can’t feel my hair! Oh no, oh no, this can’t be happening to me. You, what did you do to me!” As she pointed her hoof at an undisguised Radiance or so her mind was telling her, the pony noticed something off about her hoof. It wasn’t the color of livid anymore, but it certainly was a familiar shade of pink. Looking down she found herself swaddled in a blanket and not one made of her tail hair, she was used to sleeping on her mane because it was more comfortable then a mattress. Out of the corner of the pony’s eyes she saw strands of blue hanging down and her pupils shrunk at the sight. She quickly reached up with her hoof and gripped a mass of hair and gave it a tug to find out that yes, this was her own mane she was pulling on. Uncovering the rest of her flank and body with the use of her hooves, since her hair no longer followed her mental commands; she looked at her rear end. Where she would have seen the strange cutie mark of the Mane-iac, here she saw the cutie mark that she had long since forgotten as ever being hers returned to her once again. “How, what, I’m… I’m normal!” She screamed out, causing both Twilight and Smart to back away cringing at how loud the pony's voice was. In a way, Twilight had lost her first real friend who was Mane-iac as she was, in another she hadn’t lost her at all because she was still herself on the inside no matter what she looked like now. Twilight was already missing the beautiful mass of green hair and her heart sunk at not being able to play with it more. “Well that’s a first in this house!” Twilights father Night could be heard shouting back, considering the Sparkles weren’t a normal pony family by any stretch of the imagination. Twilight face hoofed.