“...” I stared back at the polka-dotted colt looking at me with a smile plastered on his face. I scanned the rest of the room where the other colts were likewise smiling in my direction, and I felt utterly and horribly confused. “Okay, you lost me after that first word you said. What do you want me to do?”
Pip waved his hoof back at the map next to him on the wall. “The torch, we want you to be our runner for it.” His smile fell to a slight frown. “You do know what the Ponyville torch is right?”
“No,” I deadpanned, earning an audible sigh from the white and brown colt.
“You’re not from around here are you?” he asked.
“Nope,” I replied.
He scratched the underside of his chin with his hoof. Well I’m not exactly sure if scratching is the correct word to use, more like rubbing thoughtfully, but the gesture was still conveyed. “Alright, let’s start with what the game is then,” he said after a moment of thought before crossing the room to the opposite side where a poster of a classic torch was hung up on the wall.
“This is the Ponyville Torch,” he motioned to the poster though I could have probably guessed. “And all the clubs in Ponyville are constantly trying to get it. Right now the Timberwolves have it, but we figured out where they are hiding it yesterday.”
“Okay, so it’s like capture the flag?” I asked.
“Yes exactly! But this is a game on such a big scale, and it is always going on. Although, we can only steal the flag on the weekend, it still needs to be guarded a lot of the time so that nopony finds it. Now do you see why we want you to join up with us?” he asked expectantly.
I shrugged, “Still a no.”
“You’re a runner right? You like to run?” With that last question it felt like all of the pieces fell into place.
“Okay, I think I’m starting to get it now. You want me to grab this Ponyville Torch thing, and run off with it so that you guys can have it,” I said.
“Right, some of us saw you running around the school the other day, and I knew that you would be awesome to have in our club.” Some of the other gathered colts nodded in approval.
Now it was my turn to rub my chin in thought, strange sensation sure, but it wasn’t all too foreign. This whole pony thing had been coming to me rather quickly, maybe that was my special talent. Of course, I didn’t really see how that had anything to do with a pen, and would being a good pony really be a talent. No, it felt like it was something different from a talent, maybe an innate skill. Maybe it was an earth pony thing, and that was why Steel was having such a hard time. Of course, he had been a pretty uncoordinated guy ever since I had known him, so that could negate the theory completely.
I looked back to the group that was still staring at me like I was about to say something, and realized that my mind had drifted off into a tangent once again. “Let me think on it. What are the rules of this game?” I asked, causing all of the eyes to shift back to Pip.
He frowned again but recovered quickly as he moved onto his explanation. “Simple really,” he said pointing to the map with all of the x’s and circles on the other side of the room. “Whatever club has the torch gets to hide it, but you can’t keep it inside a building, and you have to be able to see it from far away. The clubs usually put it on top of their clubhouse, or in the middle of a field near their clubhouse or something, so that they can keep track of it. Snails found the torch yesterday on top of Sugarcube corner.” He looked to the lanky unicorn how nodded slowly.
“And then what? You just find where it is and take it, and hide it off somewhere else?” I asked.
“Basically, yeah,” he answered.
“And then what?” I prompted, rolling my hoof toward him expectantly.
“Well, you guard it so that nopony takes it from you.” It was here that I began to see the failing of this game.
“So how do you win?” I asked.
He stood there looking at me for a while like the question had never even crossed his mind. Could it have been possible, and his blank expression was making me seriously consider the possibility, that for however long these colts had been playing this game that they had never thought about how it might end. “Well...you don’t really win,” he said. “You just see which club can hold onto it the longest.”
With that I did an immediate about face, and started making my way to the door. “Wait!” I heard him call from behind me before he appeared in front of me a few short seconds later. “Where are you going?”
“Well, first I am going to wander around in the street until I can find my way to the library where I am going to pick up some books. Then, I am going to go home and read said books, and hopefully learn something,” I replied coolly, looking for an opening around the small colt that didn’t involve me pushing him over, though from the difference in our sizes I doubt it would have been difficult.
“You’re going to go read some books instead of playing an awesome game, and joining our club?” he asked, seeming almost hurt as he did so.
“Yeah, I am kind of a busy guy. I don’t want to sound rude or anything, but I can’t really spend much of my time ‘playing’ around right now,” I said as I took the left side of the hallway, forcing him to move aside.
“But…” I looked back at him, he now sitting on the floor looking like I had just crushed some long held dream of his. The look of the heartbroken colt sent a shiver down my spine, but I turned towards the door anyways as soon as I saw more of the youngsters leaving the living area and joining us in the hallway.
I continued walking for a moment before stopping. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t right now I just have too much on my plate,” I said as I exited the run down house into the daylight that was breaking through the overcast. I stood there on the porch for a little while just looking out at the non-functioning part of Ponyville that the clubhouse was located in.
This was the right decision I was sure, it was a no brainer really. If I did go along with their little game then I would just be wasting my time on something that was essentially pointless, and what I needed to focus on right now were important things like finding a way out of Equestria before any real craziness started up. Of course this world was awesome, and compared to my relatively boring life back home the last few days were a whirlwind of excitement; and sure, joining this little club and game would give me an opportunity to lay back and maybe even show off, but I couldn’t do things like that right now, could I?
There was a slight wind in the air, pushing the fur smoothly against my skin on the right side of my body, though all the product in my mane kept it firmly in place. The sky was grey, maybe there was some sort of rain scheduled later today that I hadn’t been made aware of, or maybe it was just this pit in my stomach making everything feel so out of place. I was doing the right thing, the adult thing, so why did it feel like I had just jumped off the train. Why did this feel like a mistake when I knew it to be rationally the right choice? Why, when I turned to look back into the house and saw that they were not in fact watching me, did I start walking towards the door and duck back inside.
Before I could find the answer, there I was standing outside the empty doorway, looking in on the colts that were huddled around in quiet discussion. I held a hoof up to my mouth, and cleared my throat loudly enough to garner some attention from the group. “You know what, I think I changed my mind. My brother joined a club so why should I have to sit out on joining one?”
It wasn’t really an answer that I got back from the group, but their collective cheer was enough to tell me what they thought of my decision to join up. I was still a bit torn, but now that I had taken back my previous denial I was most definitely feeling back on track. Pip stepped out of the group huddle and walked back over to my side.
“Alright then, let me introduce everypony,” he said as he turned back to face the group. “You already know Snips and Snails,” he said motioning to the two. “That over there is Blueberry.” He motioned to a plump earth pony colt that was only a little shorter than myself, who of course was all blue. He didn’t have a cutie mark but, betting on it being a blueberry pie wasn’t too far out of the question.
“That’s Ball and Racket,” he went on, pointing between two identical looking pegasi, save for one being yellow with a red and green mane, and the other being green with a red and yellow mane. Neither had a cutie mark, but their wings looked to be in a lot better shape than I had seen either Steel’s or Scootaloo’s being in, so I guessed they were probably able to fly halfway decently. I hadn’t really paid any attention to who had been pointed out as being Ball and who was Racket, not that it would have mattered I always end up mixing twins up anyways.
“And finally we have Checkers,” he finished motioning to black unicorn with a red mane. Just seeing the clash of colors and the asinine smirk on his face made me want to gag. In fact, I had to cough loudly and turn my head to stop everypony from catching onto my disgust. I couldn’t really blame it on the kid, and now that I turned back to see him he was only smiling pleasantly at me, probably excited that somepony new was joining the club, but come on, red and black. I knew that no matter how much this colt proved himself to be an awesome or cool guy that I would never be able to take him seriously. Sorry Checkers, you aren’t getting anywhere with me, blame Celestia if you want.
“Wait a second…” I said, looking back over the assembled group of colts in front of me. “A lot of you don’t have cutie marks.” Blueberry looked down at that, while Ball and Racket just glared back at me, Checkers didn’t seem the least bit fazed. “No that’s not what I meant. Just that, why did you all join the CMC or something.”
“Psh,” Ball...or Racket said as he stepped forwards. “If the girls never let them join any of their clubs before why would we want to. Since they wanted to be like that we decided that we would make our own club. It’s kinda weird that your brother ended up joining them though…” he trailed off.
Huh, so it seemed that there had been some sort of battle of the sexes going on before I had even stepped foot into Ponyville, and Steel and I had agitated the situation. Cool. It did make a certain amount of sense, with there being so many more mares than stallions walking about every time that I had walked into town, it seemed that the whole fandom idea of the females being the greater sex here held up somewhat. Of course, when you have multiple goddesses running the world you would think that it should naturally swing that way. Though I hadn’t seen any so far, it didn’t seem to be too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that the girls probably hung “no colts allowed” signs from their club windows.
“Alright that makes sense I guess. So Pip,” I said, swinging a hoof around the smaller colt’s neck, “why don’t you tell me exactly what I’m supposed to do.”
He smiled back at me, and slipped out of my grasp to go point back to the map of the town. “Alright,” I said, walking over to where he was standing, “I get that it is at Sugarcube Corner.”
He looked at me like I had just cut him off in his explanation, and for all I knew, I had. “Yeah, but we have a plan to get the flag and take it away before anypony knows what happened,” Snips said, joining us at the map.
“Right…” Pip began.
“You see we are going to come out and distract them,” Checkers said as he stood next to Snips and formed a line with his hoof in front of Sugarcube corner. “While we all block them here, you are going to act as the knight and slip past their line undetected. Once you get the torch and get out the back that will be mate.”
I hummed and looked back to the map, it was a simple plan, a little too simple, but then again these were children coming up with plans here. “Why do I have to go get it, can’t Ball and Racket fly up and get it?”
“Well you see,” started Pip once more.
“That’s against the rules,” Racket...or Ball...the green one said.
“You aren’t allowed to fly or do any magic when you have the torch, earth pony rules,” his, I was assuming fraternal twin brother, added.
“Well that makes sense I guess, kind of levels the playing field,” I said, looking back to the map and studying all of the paths leading to Sugarcube Corner. I even found a little tag on a house on the far side of town that had ‘Us’ scrawled on it, and made a mental map from it to the library so that I would know how to at least get there from here.
We weren’t that terribly far away from the main street that ran down the center of the town, so after following the route with my eyes a few times I felt confident I could navigate the town a lot better.
So basically, these guys were going to distract whatever team was currently holding the torch and it was my job to sneak in and grab it. Not that hard surely, I was pretty monochromatic afterall, with the whole slate gray coat and black mane, the only thing that really stood out about me was the few streaks of light blue in my mane and tail as well as my cutie mark. As long as we made sure to make this some sort of night mission I could probably be super ninja about this, and get in and out Solid Snake style. I needed a box…
“Alright, so two things,” I said after my little internal monologue that didn’t last more than a few seconds. “When are we going to be doing this, and where am I supposed to go after I have the flag...I mean torch.”
Pip stepped forward eager to answer my question, but then stopped and looked behind us to Blueberry who was sitting at the coffee table in the middle of the room doodling something. “Easy…”
“I’m getting kinda hungry, anypony else hungry?” Blueberry asked to the assembled colts.
“I could eat,” Snips murmured in agreement.
“Let’s finish this first!” Pip snapped, but it sounded more like a squeak coming from him. It was very hard not to laugh, even Mr. Yellow twin snickered before being elbowed by his brother. Pip stared at the laugher with his polka-dotted eye while keeping the other looking forward, which was really creepy from my vantage of looking him dead on, but it made Yellowy wilt pretty easily. I was starting to see why this guy was in charge.
“Right, so when you get the torch and head out the back, we want you to circle around the town,” Pip turned to the map and made a long circle around the entire perimeter of the town. “When you get here, we will meet up with you and all return to home base,” he finished, smacking his hoof on a field just off the main road.
“I have to run around the entire town?” I asked in disbelief. I mean sure I did enjoy running, way more than I ever had before, but that had to be at least a three or four mile run.
“Well you have to get to the field, and you can’t go through the town,” Pip explained, though by his tone he felt that he shouldn’t have to. “Everypony is going to be out in the streets, and if you get tagged you have to drop the torch and go all the way back to home base before you can join the game again.”
“You didn’t say anything about that before,” I deadpanned.
“Oh yeah, don’t get tagged,” Snips said, stepping up to the map as he did so. “It’s a while to get here and back from Sugarcube Corner.”
“Yes, thank you, Snips.” Okay, so not only did I have to run a gauntlet, but I also couldn’t let anypony get anywhere near me.
“Don’t worry about it,” Pip said waving his hoof like the little tagging part didn’t really mean anything. “With the way I saw you run at recess, you can outrun anypony on the Timberwolves easily. The tough thing is going to be worrying about their magic.”
“Magic?” I asked, brow arched.
“Yeah, there are five?” Mr. Green asked looking to Snails who simply nodded. “Five unicorns on The Timberwolves, and they use all kinds of tricks to keep the torch away from us. The last three times that we tried to get the torch from them, they had something up their sleeve.” Strange that idiom carried over when ponies don’t tend to wear any sleeves at all.
“I thought you weren’t allowed to use magic with the torch,” I said.
“You can’t,” Pip confirmed, “but they always use their magic to get around the rules without actually breaking them, but as long as they don’t know that you are there we should be golden.”
“The main thing we need to watch out for is their leader Mistep,” Checkers said. “She is homeschooled so we don’t see her much, but she is really smart and always thinking three turns ahead. Plus, she is really good at magic and basically do anything the other unicorns on her team can. She is truly a queen at this game.”
“Still,” Pip said, again trying to reign in the discussion, “you let us worry about them, all you need to do is get the torch.” He poked me in the chest.
“Okay,” I said, taking a step back from the very determined looking mini-colt. “So like I asked, when are we doing this?”
“Tonight,” he said with a smirk, letting the word hang in the air as everyone, including myself, just stood there in silence.
“Isn’t that against the rules?” I asked, after a far too long period of silence. “Didn’t you say we could only take it during the weekend?”
“Right, and since it’s Friday after school, that counts,” he replied.
“It’s Friday?” I asked, honestly I hadn’t bothered to take note of the days.
“Yes…” Now it was his turn to deadpan.
“So, is that all there is to the plan then?” I asked.
“Basically,” he said with a shrug. “We were planning to head towards Sugarcube Corner just as the sun was going down to have the best chance of getting it. Hopefully they won’t have anypony there to stop us and we can just grab it easy.”
“Okay, so now I am all caught up right. Nothing more that needs explaining?” I asked.
“No, I think that’s all of it,” Pip confirmed.
“Good,” I said as I turned and started to head back to the hallway, “because I really do have some stuff that I need to get done. I will meet you guys back here at dusk then.”
“Alright, take care of your stuff, and make sure you get back with plenty of time,” Pip called to me, as I heard him rip the map off of the wall. “We are going to go over our jobs again.”
“Sounds good!” I replied loudly enough for them to hear me as I ducked under the door and once again stepped out onto the porch. I couldn’t really tell where the sun was, and there was a small amount of water soaked into the boards beneath my hooves. I judged that I still had a few hours until I had to be back here, and carry out this little mission that I had apparently decided to be part of. Sure it took away from my whole studying magic in hopes of uncovering something. Sure it was kind of pointless since in the end nopony really won the game, that part was still bugging me a little bit, but in the end it was a way to hang out and relax. I had been trying so hard to stay under the radar, and even if I hadn’t been doing such a good job of avoiding the mane 6 like I wanted, it was still kind of draining. Playing a pointless game with some kids might be just the thing that I needed to pick me up.
Spike stared back at me, scale ridge raised as he probed me with his stare. Now I had admitted before that the guy was definitely one scary looking reptile, but I was confident that I was able to play off his stare pretty well. Or at least keep from wetting myself as his tongue slipped from his mouth in what was probably some kind of effort at concentration, but ended up being a much more threatening gesture.
“Are you going to come looking for some magic books every single day?” he asked eventually.
“Heh,” I laughed trying to seem lighthearted about it as I pushed the literal pile of books I had been browsing behind myself with a hoof. “You know what they say about books...read ‘em.”
That finally got him to break this little staredown we were having and laugh a little. “That was terrible,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, scratching the back of my neck. “I’m not all too good at coming up with funny stuff on the spot.”
“I could tell,” he said as he passed me, and started to look through the books I had strewn out on the floor around me. I don’t really know how long I had been sitting here reading through the material that had been on the bottom shelf, but it had to have been at least an hour or so. While I had pounded wastefully against the high level tome that I had seemed to be a good idea to go ahead and grab the day before, I could have actually been enjoying the learning material that I should have taken in the first place.
I had been skimming through all sorts of beginner magic books, and to be completely honest, they were fascinating. Magic, as it turns out, is very much like a completely different branch of science, falling somewhere between physics and chemistry. It was all about the change of an energy called mana, and how it could be harnessed and channeled into different applications. I was still trying to grasp some of the basic concepts, but the principles that I had read through so far all seemed to be scientifically sound, that is if you are willing to accept that there is a source of energy out there that can be controlled and manipulated through pure willpower.
“I know this is a library and all, but we don’t usually have ponies that just come in here to read,” Spike admitted as he started to clean up the pile.
“Wait,” I said, managing to stop myself from screaming at him before he started to unscramble my perfectly organized chaos. “I want to take some of these with me, and um...how many can I check out at once?”
He turned and stared back at me, his face slowly changing to that slightly suspicious look that he had given me earlier. “I have been working here for a while, and I think that is the first time I have heard anypony still not out of elementary school ask that question.”
I turned to the side and motioned to the cutie mark on my flank. “I love to read and write, and right now I am on a magic kick. That book I pulled yesterday was way to advanced so I figured I needed to start at the basics,” I said.
“I coulda told you that,” he replied with a smirk.
“Yeah, rushing ahead of myself I guess. Anyways, can I take this whole stack?” I asked, motioning to the maybe dozen books laid out on the floor.
“No way man, Twilight would kill me if she saw that the entire bottom row of the magic section was missing. She kind of has a thing for magic ya know,” he said.
“Alright, how many can I check out then?” I asked again.
He stroked his chin, the appropriate way that it should be done, damn him for having digits, I really missed those. “How about five as a limit,” he replied after a moment of contemplation.
“Did you just make that up,” I asked with a frown.
“Yeah,” he answered, smiling widely and nodding his head as he did so.
I opened my mouth to protest, but eventually just had to smile back at him “I’m feeling that arguing with the fire breathing lizard of awesome won’t go my way right now.”
“Probably not,” he agreed.
Grinning sincerely for the first time in what felt like ages I looked over the books on the floor, and pointed to the few that I wanted to take. “Well I guess I will just have to make more runs to the library when I finish these off then,” I said as he collected the few that I pointed out and stacked them into a separate pile.
“That’s not so bad is it?” he asked as he separated the four I had picked out from the rest, and carried them over to a podium near the door. “Carrying around a lot of books is a good way to get your exercise in at least,” he went on as he started writing the titles of the books down in some sort of log.
“Yeah, is that how you got those guns?” I asked as I walked on over.
“What?” he asked, as he set the pen down, and looked back at me more than a little confused.
“It’s a...Manehatten thing, don’t worry about it. Anyways, are we all good to go here?” I pulled the backpack off my back, and started to put the books into it one by one.
“Yep, all done,” he replied as he hopped down from the stool he had been standing on. I finished packing the items into my bag, and zipped it tightly before slinging it over my shoulder once again. As I did so I felt the weight of five heavy tomes press down against my spine, something that I hadn’t been hit with since my university days, and boy did I not miss that feeling in the least.
As I struggled to carry the nearly thirty pounds of books on my back to the door I stopped and looked back at Spike again. “Hey, can you not mention to Twilight that I got these,” I said from the doorway.
He stopped picking up the books that I had left lying out on the ground, and looked back over to me. “Why?” he asked.
“Well I kinda feel bad for what I said to her the other day, and I don’t want to make things any worse than they are already.” I smoothed a hoof over my mane to pat down any loose strands that had found their way out during the day.
“If you feel bad about it you should probably apologize to her,” Spike said as he turned back to his task.
“You’re right,” I replied as I turned back to exiting the building. “I’ll do that the next time I see her,” I called back, closing the door behind me as I did so, and walking out into the dimlight of the late-afternoon sun. “Which will hopefully be never.”
I peered out from the bush that I was told to wait in at the side of Sugarcube Corner. Honestly, it looked like nopony was around, the streets had died down to nothing a little while ago, and I hadn’t seen a pony outside for at least twenty minutes, but still I felt like I should just go along with the plan. It just kind of sucked that Pip was taking so damn long to make his move.
“Wait here he says,” I whispered to myself, “climb the boxes when you get the signal he says.” The boxes that he had been referring to were some crates on the north side of the confectionary that had been placed in a certain way to create a kind of makeshift stairway just short enough for some clever kids to climb up. The Torch, which I noticed was just outside of Pinkie Pie’s bedroom window, stood straight up on a wooden platform supported by some scrawny looking sticks. So when everything hopefully started going crazy it was my job to scale the two story building, and grab the torch before anypony noticed.
I looked to the west, I had lost track of the sun a long time ago as it had disappeared behind the buildings in town, but I could still tell that the last light of day had nearly faded. My eyes flicked back to the street leading up to Sugarcube Corner, where I could make out the distant outlines of my clubmates walking towards the building. I realized that I still didn’t know what the name of our club was; probably a detail worth knowing.
They made it about halfway from the end of the street to the bakery before there was some more movement off to the other side of the small square. I saw a good amount of filly shaped blobs emerge from the darkness, and begin heading towards my group. At the lead of the girls was a dark purple filly with a rose colored mane. The rims on the glasses that she wore on the tip of her nose just gave her away as being one of those smart mean girls you will come across every so often, like a librarian you just happen to run into on a really bad day.
“The Pirates again?” she asked as the two groups stopped to face off with each other. Pirates huh, well that would explain why Pip had seen fit to put on an eyepatch, but surely they could have come up with something better. “Can you guys just go home so we can all get home before our parents find out we aren’t there?” Now that was something that I couldn’t believe had slipped my mind. Well, I was already screwed on that account so no point in worrying about it now.
“No Mistep,” Pip said, taking a step towards their leader. “We are getting the torch this time!” he declared. Taking this little meeting as being my cue I crept from my bush behind the group, and proceeded over to the boxes.
Pip and Mistep continued shooting comments back and forth at each other, but I was so focused on climbing up these very unsturdy and creaky boxes that I couldn’t really care about whatever it was they were discussing. Everytime I would shift my weight to the next one in front of me before pulling myself up, I felt it give a little under my weight and cry out in protest; and every time that I made it up over the lip and stood on the crate I would wait a second to listen for anypony running my way, but as of yet I was still undiscovered. The process was slow going, but after a few minutes, and six decently sized crates, I had arrived at the top of the first story.
I looked down the narrow path that on top of the first story roof that would lead me over to the balcony the torch was on. From the ground, or at least from my small vantage point, it had looked relatively flat, but up here it was easy to see just how angeled the roof was. I looked back down to the front of the building where the two groups now seemed to be circling each other, I honestly had no idea what they were doing, but I decided that I should just try to focus on my own task at the moment. Briefly, before stepping onto the long beam that I would need to traverse to reach my destination, I thought about backing out and telling everypony that I give up. This was probably not worth a very dangerous fall after all.
I only let the thought have a few seconds of breath before strangling it and burying it in the backyard of my mind before I stepped out onto the beam. My hooves were shaky below me at first, but as I took a few steps forward I found my balance quite easy, and soon was walking forward without much trouble. I guess it made sense really, four legs are probably better than two when it comes to the whole keeping your balance thing. I looked back to the group, and even though in my mind I knew that up here against the dark night sky I was probably invisible, I still couldn’t help feeling like somepony was watching me.
Seeing that all those below were still focused on whatever the hell it was they were doing, seriously, now a circle had formed, and two ponies were in the middle going at it, trying to tag each other before the other one did. Shaking of the bizarreness of seeing that display, I turned back to traversing my perilous path, and finding it getting easier with every step, I reached the wooden platform quickly enough. Once I got to the balcony I tried to peer over the top of it to where I knew the torch was, but it seemed that I would have to scale this too before I would be able to.
I pushed myself up to my back two hooves, and for a second I felt my balance leave me as the weight of my backpack pulled me backwards, before my front hooves came down heavily on the edge of the platform in front of me. My heart started pounding in my chest at the near slip, and I stood there for a second until it calmed down a little bit before stretching as far as I could, and pushing my hooves all the way over the ledge to haul myself up. Finally getting over the edge I laid there for a little bit catching my breath and congratulating myself on a job well done.
“Aw man!” came an exclamation from below, making me turn a little too quickly, and rock the balcony that I was laid out on. To my immense relief I still hadn’t been spotted, and Blueberry was just mad about getting tagged out. He started to waddle his way back the direction they had come from, and after a few seconds he had passed out from beneath the glow of the street lights that were illuminating all the other ponies down there.
“Hey what’s going on out here!” Pinkie yelled cheerfully as she flung her window doors open. All at once all the eyes down there turned towards the pink mare that had called them out, before locking onto my grey form that was standing out brilliantly thanks to the light streaming from her room behind me.
“He’s going for the torch!” Mistep yelled, making all of the other fillies completely forget about their standoff with The Pirates, and start racing towards the bakery.
I looked over to Pinkie Pie, with what I was sure was pure terror plastered on my face, and she looked back to me with something more akin to embarrassment. “Heh,” she laughed, looking over to the torch, “you better run future colt.”
I didn’t have time to bemoan this unfortunate turn of events as I turned to grab the torch that was held in place on the edge of the balcony. I had actually been hoping that this thing would have been lit, but all it appeared to be was a very old brass torch that could have been used in the Olympics half a century ago. There was a short glow of purple light from beneath the torch for a second, and then suddenly the wooden support beneath it gave out and it started tumbling off the edge of the balcony. Not thinking, I leapt forwards and bit down on the small tip of the torch just before it went over the edge. Once again, my backpack tried to kill me by causing my hooves to slide far too close to the ledge of the balcony before I came to a stop.
I froze there on the edge of the balcony, waiting for something else to go terribly wrong, when I caught sight of Mistep looking up at me from the ground with her horn still glowing. Off to the edge of the roof I could hear a whole mess of ponies climbing the crates I had come up as quickly as they dared, and here I was standing motionless, an easy target.
“In here Time Colt,” Pinkie called from behind me, snapping me out of my near death experience. I turned quickly to see her waving me into the window that she had opened, and without second thought I turned and sprinted into the safe room beyond. She quickly closed the window behind me, not that it mattered much since the other ponies were smart enough not to risk climbing onto the roof.
“Thanks Pinkie,” I said, as I stood in the middle of what I could only assume was her bedroom.
“No problemo. I remember when I used to try and get the Ponyville torch. Do you want to hear the story?” she asked.
“I think I need to be running right now or something,” I replied through the old metal object that I held in my teeth. Talking with something in your mouth, not as hard as I have seen many fanfics make it out to be, but then again ponies do have bigger mouths so I guess it works out.
“Oh right, you can go out the back of the bakery, come on it’s this way,” she said as she began to bounce to another door that led from the room.
“Hold on,” I said, causing her to stop and spin mid bounce back to my direction. “Can I leave my bag here, it’s kind of heavy, and I think that I will want to be as light as possible.”
“Sure, whacha got in there?” she asked as I began to unsling it from my back.
“Just some books I picked up at the library,” I replied as I quickly made my way over to the door that she had been heading towards. I adjusted the torch in my mouth so that I was biting down on it more like I would a bit, and opened the door. “Tsanks Pinkie,” I managed to get out, now talking was actually kind of difficult.
“Sure thing, just make sure you don’t break anything getting outside kay,” she replied to me as I began to exit. I nodded back to her, and stole into the dimly lit hallway that awaited me just outside of the door. I didn’t know, or to be more accurate didn’t recall, if the Cakes actually lived inside their own bakery, so to err on the side of caution I crept down the hallway as quietly as possible. The stairs at the end were easy enough to go down, with only making a very small amount of sound, and I quickly found myself standing in the middle of the bakery.
I could see the front of the bakery on my left, which would logically mean that the back exit would be to the right, so I turned in that direction and started making my way through the store. I couldn’t recall having ever been inside a real bakery in my life, but as I walked through the barely lit building the smells that assailed me brought me to the verge of drooling. I realized that I had completely forgotten to eat dinner today, not that I was unaccustomed to skipping meals when I was busy, but I couldn’t imagine that it was healthy for a colt my age to go without eating. I immediately stopped in place, and perhaps more forcefully than I should have, slapped myself across the face. The smack rang out in the small and silent room, and I felt my eyes start to water at the burning sensation on my cheek.
“You can’t start thinking like that,” I whispered to myself, “as soon as you do you are doomed. You aren’t a pony or a child dammit. You are a man, so don’t start thinking of yourself as one.” Having said that I stood there quietly and looked around to make sure that nopony had actually heard me admit that. Seeing that the coast was clear, I continued to make my way to the back of the shop.
The door that led outside was pretty obvious, what with the light of the stars visible through the four windows in it. As I reached for the handle that would open it I paused, and thankfully caught myself before I would do something incredibly foolish. It would make sense for me to leave through this entrance, hell even these kids would likely already have the back door guarded for when I made my inevitable escape. Still, going out the front would probably be even more likely to get me caught, and I wasn’t about to brave using a window.
Taking a deep breath, and coiling the muscles in my hind legs I slowly, and as quietly as possible, turned the knob on the door. Holding the doorknob completely turned, I crouched as low as possible before throwing the door wide and sprinting out into the darkness just beyond. As I ran outside it took all of a second for my eyes to adjust to the even dimmer light of the town, and register the several ponies that had turned and were now running towards me.
“There he is! Get him!” The Timberwolves screamed, as all of their heads turned towards me at once. I ducked a magically suspended net that came sailing at me from the right, being held aloft by at least two of the unicorns that were chasing me, and sidestepped a piece of two-by-four that was thrown into my path to trip me. As my eyes caught up fully to everything that was happening I realized that I was completely surrounded by fillies, doing everything in their power to stop me from escaping with the very metallic tasting torch in my mouth.
“Ash! This way!” I heard Pip yell from a nearby street just ahead. The rest of the club was forcing back a small escape route for me, and fending off any of our adversaries just with their presence, I was starting to get the feeling that being tagged was kind of a big deal, which just spurred me on to run faster. A pot came sailing at me from the darkness, and as I ducked my head under it I felt it clip my ear. Why were these fillies trying to kill me!
Juking out a blue unicorn I made my final break to the street, and admittedly laughed a little as she fell over herself to the ground. I finally passed the outer barrier that my team had established, and raced onto the street ahead. “Get to the meeting spot as fast as you can,” I heard Pip say as I passed him, but I didn’t stop to say anything.
I ran on, taking the road I was on directly to the edge of town, where if there was any merit to this plan, I would be safe. It seemed that Pip had been right, as I had run through that group of ponies trying to surround me it came to my attention that they really didn’t move all that fast. Maybe that was an Earth Pony thing, not able to use magic or fly around, but man can we run. That of course wouldn’t make all that much sense though seeing as how Rainbow Dash can keep up with Applejack. Maybe those events had been a little exaggerated or off the mark like I had some of the things I had seen so far had been. Just to make sure, I turned back and could see nopony following me as I reached the end of the road, and made a hard left turn onto the soft grass that surrounded the town.
Running, something that had never really been my thing, was suddenly so easy and, hell, exhilarating. At the pace that I was keeping up as I passed the first block on my circuit, I felt like there were plenty of adults that I would be able to outpace. Maybe that was quite an exaggeration with their strides probably being far longer than my own, but as far as ponies that were in my age bracket went, I was pretty awesome at this.
My front hoof struck a rock, and not the little kind of rock that you kick out of the way easily, no this was the kind of rock that you encounter half-buried in the dirt with a good angle on it so that it sends you flipping, like I did as soon as I made contact. I must have tumbled head over ass at least four times before my chin found a good position on the ground, and I slid forwards another three feet or so before coming to a stop. To my bane, I had managed to hold the torch in my mouth the entire time, and now both my upper and lower row of teeth were protesting the idea of putting a big metal rod in my jaw and then slamming my head against the ground. A rather poor idea in retrospect.
Shakily, I managed to pull myself back to my hooves and dust myself off as I spat the torch out onto the ground. I wiped...definitely not tears from my face and sniffed once or twice as I flexed my hoof that had hit the rock in the ground. Yeah, it hurt a little, but it wasn’t broken or anything. I felt like I could still probably finish the run that I had been given, but as I looked around in the darkness, with the only lights around being the stars overhead and the full moon that would periodically come out of hiding from behind the clouds, there was nopony around. I bent down and scooped the torch up once again in my mouth, probably a bad idea not wiping it off after dropping it into the grass, but my tongue wasn’t doing a whole lot of tasting at the moment.
As I took off once again on my track at a much slower canter, I felt a sting in my right shoulder from where I had initially hit the ground. Thinking it wise, I made sure to keep my pace slow enough that there wasn’t any actual pain, just some mild discomfort. Admittedly, it had been pretty stupid to run through the dark of night with no lights anywhere to give me a clue to where I was going, not that it did me any good now.
I passed a few more blocks in silence, just the sound of the crunching grass beneath my hooves to track my progress. I looked up to the stars overhead, and tried my best to make out any familiar constellations, but I had never been much of a stargazer back home, so I got jack for the effort. I turned my thoughts back to the books that I had been reading at the library, learning some hard facts about magic was actually pretty thrilling. All that I could have possibly done before was speculate on some possible things that magic might be made of, or how it worked, but here there was an entire scientific field devoted to it. I continued recalling the various examples and explanations of the basics that I had been able to grasp in the short few hours I had to read. Truthfully, the books had probably been written for an introductory course in middle school, or whatever the equivalent in this world was, but even with the dumbed down diction I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That is, until I reached the large red house that marked where I was supposed to turn off of the circle around the town and proceed into a field.
I looked out into the darkness on my right, and sure enough saw a large open pasture with a solitary tree standing in the middle. As I stared at the tree, I noticed that there was a dimlight illuminating the darkness around its base. Judging that to be where I was supposed to go, I turned and made a beeline for the tree. The grass I found myself walking through was tall and unkempt, I didn’t think that I had ever seen any lawnmowers in the show, and seeing the grass that easily came up to my eye level, I was putting my money on the belief that there weren’t any yet. Though I suppose ponies can graze so you wouldn’t necessarily need a lawnmower, and you could just have everyone in town take a day out of their month to go shorten the grass around town.
I emerged from the thicket into the small clear space around the tree to find a lamp sitting next to it and nopony around. Squinting at the world around me, and the weirdness of the situation, I still couldn’t see anypony nearby, so with a shrug I proceeded over to the lamp to inspect it. It was a simple gas powered thing, that did its job of lighting up the darkness well, hell it had been enough to bring me over here. Immediately feeling a sense of dread at that thought, I tried to backpedal away, but this turned out to be my undoing. My back hoof kicked over something as I made my retreat, and before I knew it I was suspended in the air inside of a giant net with the torch lying on the ground below me.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I pouted as the branch supporting me creaked under my weight. There was a rustling in the tall grass around me, and four figures emerged into the light under the tree.
“Sorry bro,” Steel said as he smiled up at me; the rest of the CMC didn’t seem as thrilled about tricking and trapping me, that is except for Scootaloo who was smiling even wider than Steel was.
“Are you serious, what is going on with this net?” I asked as I punched the ropes that had me bound.
“You had the torch right, we are just playing the game,” Scootaloo said as she bent over and snatched the torch.
I was so pissed I couldn’t really do anything else, but glare daggers down at the four of them, as I slowly swung back and forth. “Ah’m sorry about this Ash,” Applebloom apologized as she started walking back to the grass. Sweetie Belle nodded in agreement as she followed her yellow friend and disappeared from sight.
“Hey guys wait for me!” Scootaloo called as she ran to catch up with her friends, leaving just me and the traitor staring at each other beneath the tree.
“Welp, I gotta go,” he said, turning around to follow them.
“Wait!” I yelled at him. “You are just going to leave me up here?”
“Oh don’t be a baby, I’m sure you can figure a way out.” Laughing he disappeared into the tall grass to follow the rest of his new club off to Celestia knows where.
I waited until I was sure that the impressionable fillies had gone far enough away before erupting into a tirade of expletives, that would surely shock anypony in this town, especially when coming from a little colt. It took a good three or four minutes for me to finally run out of steam, and just go back to silently swinging back and forth in the net I was caught up in, probing at the ropes that tightly held me in place. The branch above me creaking, and the sway of the net actually was a little bit soothing after a while, and I started to feel myself drift off a little before something occurred to me.
“Wait a second...was that guy making chess puns?”