//------------------------------//
// Course 2 
// Story: Harmonic Gourmet 
// by Robomac 
//------------------------------//

The feast Twilight shared with Toriko and Komatsu proved to be something she would never forget. Even with all the eating, they had time between bites to ask questions and give answers. The two men seem to want to know more about her magic than anything else. She was careful to only demonstrate spells that were more whimsical in nature rather than anything that could prove dangerous with the inexplicable power boost her spells had somehow acquired. They became especially excited when she turned one of the macaroons into an orange. Toriko immediately ate it only to look slightly disappointed. He was probably expecting something with the taste of both the macaroon and the orange.

Twilight had far more questions to ask about the world that the two called home. The first thing she learned was that every civilization on their world was going through a period in time collectively known as the Gourmet Age; which is an age where men spend their entire lives seeking unknown textures, indescribable tastes, and unbelievable flavors. She also learned that the Macaroon Mangroves were no anomaly, but were actually the norm for the world.

Even with how unusual the world they called home was, Twilight learned that anything other than humans holding intelligent conversations was something that simply didn't happen. This meant that she wouldn't be able to move around freely in the middle of cities. This left her will one other option, even though she didn't want to impose upon her new friends. "Toriko, Komatsu, I need a favor."

They both swallowed another slice of gator meat and looked at their pony friend. "Sure."

She breathed deeply to prep for the request she needed to ask of them. "Since I'm not from this world, I don't have anywhere to go or any clues. I need somewhere to stay and get my bearings." With that, the pair went on to describe their homes to Twilight. Komatsu lived in one of the employee rooms of the Hotel Gourmet that he worked at. Toriko lived in a single home miles upon miles away from the nearest neighbor.

This left Twilight with choice on top of choosing between friends. If she chose Komatsu, it would place her in the middle of civilization where there would be libraries with books that she could research for clues. This unfortunately meant that she would have to trouble Komatsu for access to this information. She didn't want to hinder his ability to persist in his dream.

As for Toriko's home, the only real negative was not having the positives of Komatsu's home. On top of that, the secluded area would allow her somewhere to practice her enhanced magic without potentially startling or hurting someone else. It only took a little more thought before decided that mastering how to restrain her new magical prowess was the best thing she could do for her friends. It could be up to a week before rumors of talking ponies began to even show up. Twilight could only hope that her friends would be okay long enough for the rumors to begin.





The pain she felt was unlike anything she felt before. While she had experience in a whole lot of different external injuries, this new pain was way worse. It seemed to start at her core before spreading out to the rest of her body. As she started to try to classify the pain, it stopped. It wasn't because she passed out from it being too much.

She decided to get up from her nap when some jerk started poking and prodding at her hoof. She forced her annoyingly stubborn eyes open so she could get a look at the pony she was getting ready to chew out. What she saw instead of a pony were three freaky looking apes wearing clothes that looked more like fur covering the trunks of their bodies. "What the hay are you?"

The bigger one's cronies were startled for no good reason while their leader looked back at them angrily. "What are you getting freaked out about? I've seen all kinds of talking animals. Half the RPGs I've played had one."

Dash narrowed her eyes at the big ugly one when he looked back at her. She didn't really understand what he said, but she felt that it was really stupid. The bald ugly one pumped his fists and smiled. "You're right Boss Zongeh. Talking animals aren't a really big deal at all."

"Hey! I am not an animal! You numbskulls never seen a pony before?!"

"What's a pony?" asked the least ugly one. Dash felt ready to join the skies at the next stupid thing to come out of their mouths.

The big ugly one turned towards the least ugly one. "What do you think it is?! That's her character class." That did it.

Dash looked up and spotted a low hanging cloud in the sky. She crouched in preparation for the jump and raised her wings high. She managed to close half the distance with just a single flap. Startled by her faster than expected acceleration, she flapped back and crashed into the ground. She blinked towards the sky twice and did a mental check for injuries. When nothing seemed to hurt, she proceeded to do a visual check. The first appendages on her checklist were her most important. She froze immediately when she looked at them; her feathers aren't supposed to have red tips.





She'd never felt anything that horrible in her life. It only took a few seconds before the experience became more than her mind could handle and she fell into the absolute blackness of sleep; but she still heard Wordsmith's voice one last time.

Fluttershy wasn't sure for how long she was sleeping, but it didn't feel like a catnap. Her ears were first to start picking up information on her surroundings. The sounds of countless animistic growls, chirps, snaps, roars, and screeching surrounded her from all directions. She could make out the distinct sound of squeaky wheels rolling against a tiled surface below. She could even make out the footsteps of two shoe wearing bipedal individuals flanking her on both sides.

With all the information she could get with her hearing gathered, Fluttershy slowly opened her eyes and instantly recognized the sight of iron prison bars. She quickly looked around with fearful eyes to find that she was surrounded by bars on all sides. She was only able to make out a few of the massive and ferocious looking creatures contained behind thick glass walls. She partially hated herself for being glad that transparent walls were containing them.

"Well"    she turned towards the voice    "looks like our little chickadee is awake." She cowered away from a bear sized creature and the strong odor his breath reeked of. He was hairless with the exception of his eyebrows and a small thin mustache. He wore simple clothing that did little to hide the massive musculature he had that make even Iron Will look small. "I was some kind of surprised when I saw you right outside. You're lucky I got to you first." He laughed loudly as if there was some kind of joke behind what he said.

Fluttershy shrank away from his gaze and instead turned her attention towards her long hair. She trailed her gaze down the pink cascade all the way to her black tips. ... She forgot her surroundings and stared at the blackened tip and four black strands that faded to pink a few inches up. She rubbed the discoloration with her hoof and applied considerable pressure. When that didn't remove it, she tried to see if she could remove the coloring with her mouth.

"Awwwww, it's so adorable!" Fluttershy turned towards the female voice's source and saw a red clothed figure approaching quickly from the side her hair didn't hide from the outside world.

"What, did you call me admirable?!"

The woman with short black hair stopped in place. "No I didn't!"

Fluttershy chuckled at the exchange but instantly regretted doing so when the man nearly pressed his face against the bars. "Did you just laugh at me?"

She shrank away from his intense gaze. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." The following silence was deafening.





Excruciating. That was the only word that truly came close to properly describing how her body felt at the moment. She wouldn't wish this on her worst enemies. It was fortunate that it wasn't long till a blissful sleep took her.

That sleep didn't last long when the sensation of water up her nose woke her. Rarity shot up only to slip on a slick surface below and fall face first back into the water. She sat up with more caution and snorted in a rather undignified manner to expel the offending liquid. One the task was complete, she opened her discerning eyes and began to pick apart details of the immediate vicinity. There was knee deep water with many plants floating on the surface in all directions as well as many trees with smooth bark. "A swamp! He drags us from our home and then drops me in the middle of a swamp! I thought he was a gentlestalion, but oh was I wrong! Why if I get my hooves on him!" Rarity took a deep breath and willed her glare to soften to a placated gaze. "Now listen to yourself Rarity. Criticizing somepony behind their back is no way for a lady to behave, no matter how much he may deserve it." She said that last part with considerable venom. "My first task should be finding a way out of this dreadful place."

She took a step forward and let the back of her hoof touch the ground first; which was a manner of walking that allowed her to easily muffle the sound of each step rather than let them hit the floor as most ponies did. This proved to be a mistake in this particular situation as the slippery surface blow once again claimed her balance. She mentally cursed the stallion responsible for her current predicament while carefully returning to her hooves. Rarity regretfully decided to take on a more natural gait with her next steps. The choice proved effective when her nose wasn't filled with water again. With her direction chosen and the required movements memorized, Rarity began to forge ahead with the most grace she could manage.

While she made sure to maintain a calm exterior, Rarity remained on constant lookout for the movement of any large objects. There were a quite a few smaller creatures that moved through the trees, but most look nothing like anything she'd seen before. Rarity decided that Wordsmith clearly kept the alien portion of his Alien Gourmet promise, but there was a distinct lack of fine dinning.

When a splash occurred from whence she came, Rarity quickly turned around expecting the worst. What she saw instead was a set of colors that did not belong in a swamp: pink, bright green, blue, and white. While not exactly the same, she could not help but see the colors as familiar to a certain member of royalty. "Sweet Celestia!"





'Wow, that feels funny. Okay, not funny anymore.' The mare opened her mouth in a soundless scream as a sensation unlike anything she'd felt before coursed through every part of her body, mane included. 'Ooo, sleepy time.' She blacked out with that thought and the sound of that weird stallion's voice.

Pinkie Pie opened her eyes and looked around with a straight faced expression. "That was not fun ... weeeeeeeeee!" She yelled out in glee as she began sliding down a steep and slippery slope. She looked down and laughed at her ridged tail. "Wow, my tail is all spiky," she said with a laugh. She then decided to observe the scenery. "Ooo, moutainy." The area around her had had mountains everywhere with no flat surfaces to be seen anywhere. She continued to smile and scream until a quadrupedal figure further around the mountain she was sliding down caught her eye. She put her feet to the 55 degree surface and came to a instant stop, partially thanks to her tail impaling the mountainside. She dashed along the uneven surface and towards the figure. Upon reaching it, she saw that it looked like some kind of llama/alpaca with big, delicious, and crunchy looking cookies forming armor-like plates on its body.


Cookie Alpaca
Mammal Beast
Capture Level 7


The Cookie Alpaca on the other hoof was enjoying a rather peaceful day. It had been a few days since something last tried to eat either her or her cookie plating. She found a nice patch of Mountain Sugar Moss growing in a spot that allowed her full view of her surroundings. Not even the dragon that ruled the area would be able to catch her unawares. She gave one last survey of the area before eating some of the green-tinted white moss. "Hi there." She looked up at a pink anomaly like a dear caught in headlights. "Can I have a cookie?"

She cared not for the meaning behind the anomaly's sounds nor did she understand them; she only cared about escaping so she could eat in peace. She leapt over the pink thing and raced along the mountainside with flawless precision. Once a mountain was directly opposite of her position, she leapt the great distance and landed on a pink spiky rock and clamped onto one of the larger spikes with all four hooves. "And I said that you should bake them first." She looked down and saw that she was standing on the head of the anomaly. It looked up at her while somehow not moving her. It then cupped its mouth with a single hoof. "I ate some dough when he wasn't looking," said the pink thing with a much softer sound.

She ran off again with even greater speed than before. Nothing chased her if it didn't want her cookie plating, and she didn't want to lose any. She spotted a cave with a river running through it like all the others. She new this cave well; it was too small to contain anything dangerous. She ran for it and entered. With the rounded walls being the only surfaces above the river. She ricochet between the walls and stopped on a precarious yet stable protrusion on one wall. There's no way that thing could ... "And that's when the oven blew up." She turned around to see a set of big blue irises looking at her. "Mrs. Cake laughed really hard after that ... though it did sound a lot like yelling."

She left the cave in a hurry and tried to put as much distance between her and it. She leapt towards another mountain than began running straight up the slope. "The moral of the story..." she looked back to find it riding on her back, "don't let a toothless alligator be the princesses' caterer." Her startled jump was sudden enough to lose half of her cookies. That didn't even matter if it meant getting away from that thing.

Pinkie Pie hovered over where the alpaca was before drifting down to the sloped mountainside. She whimpered due to realizing that she won't be making friends with the alpaca. Her spiky mane flattened down as she remembered she didn't know how to get to any of her bestest friends. She'd only just started forming tears when a large shadow caught her eye. A really big crow with something riding it landed a short distance away. Her hair spiked back up as she smiled. Maybe they wanted to meet her. If they wanted to meet her, then they're nice. If they're nice, then maybe the can be friends. If she had new friends, maybe they can help find her five friends.





If she could move, she would have bucked his head in. She instead ended up falling fast with a pain that felt like hot needles having a rodeo in every part of her body. She could feel her mind trying to give out, but she held on with a stubbornness that'll make a bull-headed mule whistle in admiration. This allowed her to easily make out Wordsmith's words in her head.

As a transparent green light surrounded her, Applejack was able to make out different colors forming around her friends as well: blue for Twilight, red for RD, black for Fluttershy, golden for Rarity, and of course pink for Pinkie Pie. She looked back down and began to make out the shape of a quickly approaching planet.

Now Applejack wouldn't consider herself an expert on genealogy, geology, or whatever those book-smart types called it; but she knew that the planet they were all plummeting towards wasn't their home planet. She lost sight of her friends when they split off and started falling to different parts. The pain plum disappeared when she busted through the first set of clouds. It was here that she realized that she was plummeting towards the ground from who knows how high with nothing but some green light to cushion the blow. She could only scream in terror as the ground rapidly closed in. She screamed even louder when most of the land she was falling towards was covered in what she figured had to be red hot lava. If the landing wasn't set to kill her no matter what, she'd hope to land on the thin rock path hanging over the lava pit or on the honeycomb structure hanging from the end of the path.

She closed her eyes tightly and waited for the end to come. The fall did end, but only with her face being lightly pressed against a hot rocky surface. She stood up in confusion and found that she landed on the path and didn't go splat when she did. With euphoric joy of not being a pancake on top of the flood of adrenalin in her system, Applejack did what any sane being would do. "YEEEEEHAAAAAWWWW! Ah'm not dead! I actually survived that!" She looked to the sky with the widest grin she could muster. "Take that ya' Grim Galloper! You won't be taking Applejack today, no siree!"

"SHUT UP YOU COCKY BASTARD BEFORE I KILL YOU MYSELF!"

Applejack froze in place with both her fear and adrenalin refueled. The voice she heard sounded like an extra ornery dragon using a Royal Canterlot Voice that came from everywhere at once. She tuned her ears in and searched the skies for the voice's source. After a few moments, she heard the sound of large powerful wings flapping through the air. A second passed when the next wingbeat disturbed one of the clouds she was watching.

Suddenly, a ball of cloud the size of a mountain was pulled from the sky by something diving through. With one powerful movement, the cloud was dispersed in an aeronautical display that would put the Wonderbolts to shame. What was then revealed shocked Applejack from skin to core: a massive white coated alicorn with a matching mane that covered all its neck more like a manticore's mane than like a pony's. It even had golden regalia studded by three sapphires that were each as big as her barn. She wagered that if it were standing over Ponyville, it would be be able to hold its head eye-level with Canterlot. Even its purple horn was at least tall as Twilight's new castle.


Janus Unicorn
Winged Mammal Beast
Capture Level 800*


Even in her state of awe, a thought that terrified her more than the near fall to her death entered her mind: the thought that it was this alicorn that just threatened to kill her. She did the only thing she could and bowed as closely to the ground she could. She couldn't move; not even to tremble in fear. She could hardly breath for fear of a breath being just a bit too loud. It didn't matter to her that the heated rocks would eventually burn her skin. All that mattered was doing whatever it took to not offend the approaching alicorn any more. Every fiber of her being screamed that if she did, she would not live to see the next second.

With all that in mind, Applejack could only bow with her face against the hot rock and hope that he was feeling merciful. With the sound of another flap and a tremor, she knew he landed. The minutes of silence that followed felt like hours. Her imagination was in overdrive over the countless ways he could fulfill his promise. He could use his magic for who knows what, crush her beneath his hooves, or accidentally flatten her simply because he couldn't be bothered to notice somepony so puny.

Time returned to normal when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching. They didn't sound nearly loud enough to be from the mountain sized alicorn, but Applejack wouldn't dare to look up and risk making him mad. When the footsteps stopped a short distance away, she tensed up whatever muscles weren't already tensed. "Well, what do we have here?" a new voice said jovially. "I know I'm the president of IGO and all, but I'm not sure what to say about a little horse bowing to me."

With the sound of the stallion's joyous laughter, Applejack felt enough at ease to look up. When she saw the voice's source, she could only say what it wasn't. It wasn't the size of a mountain, it wasn't a pony, and it wasn't something that looked ready to hurt her. She suddenly relaxed and found herself able to speak. "What in tarnation are you?"