So That's Where I Am

I had been practicing with my scales for a couple hours now. I noticed that the trajectory was fairly hard to aim, but once it was done, the scales could follow pretty much any continuous curve, circling around or going straight depending on how I held it and threw it.

"So where am I anyway? The place looks oddly familiar, but I can't quite put my foot on it. Hold on, nature calls. Big time."

The next half hour was spent behind a bush, pretty much dying. Evidently, my new body stored up before making it's call. Good to know.

"So where am I anyway? The place looks oddly familiar, but I can't quite put my foot on it. Hold on, nature calls. Big time."

'Mental notes. I can breathe fire. I seem to be immune to excess heat. Gas is extremely volatile. Do not burn.'

"I can breathe fire... Why am I surprised? I'm a dragon, for Pete's sake. Still, it's pretty cool."

Deciding that I should find some shelter, I flapped my wings experimentally, preparatory to taking off. *Whump*

"Okay, wings are powerful, with altitude easily gained, and trees are officially annoying now."

I was getting steamed, and I decided to take it out on the branch. *CHOMP* My jaws bit through it like it was made of cheese. Very crunchy cheese that didn't taste very good. I let it fall and soared upwards, trying out my wings for the first time.

'Okay, it's not that hard. Just keep yourself in a glide and flap only occasionally.' *WHOOSH*

I made a bad movement with my right wing, raising it too much, and I flew rapidly to the left.

After a couple close calls with some trees, I finally stabilized and tried to go straighter and slightly slower. Soon, I saw an area of rock, a mini-mountain. I lifted up my wings more and let the air escape slowly from them.

I descended in front of a large opening in the rock. It was a cave, quite large, that slowly descended. As I entered, I noticed a slight glow coming from the walls; I attributed this to a light-reflecting mineral or luminescent fungi. It seemed like a nice place to stay. Evidently, the dragon who lived there thought the same. A dark shadow moved between me and the opening. I froze.

"What are you doing in my cave!?" said a gruff and barely understandable voice. The dragon easily surpassed me in size. Heck, my entire body was smaller than his head.

"Um... Pardon me, I was just looking for some shelter but I didn't know this place was occupied already... I'll just go now then."

Taking the civilized approach with a creature 50 times your size that lived in a cave. Effective? Debatable.

I squeaked. Thankfully, my new body came with some tricks. A combination of instinct and quick calculation made me jump back just enough to avoid the gaping maw of the orange reptile. I turned quickly. *POW*

The dragon's head hit the wall to the side after my club-tail swatted him. With a grumble, he turned back to face me and lifted up a large claw. Then he stopped. He looked around. Slowly, his arm came back down. I was panting, the adrenaline coursing through my body, only to have him shrug and move further into the cave. I quickly slammed myself against the wall to avoid getting trampled by his mass.

'What was up with that?' I wondered as I stepped out of the cave. Then I gasped. I could barely see myself. I could see a basic outline, but not much else. I twisted and turned my arms around, trying to figure out what was up with my body.

"Okaaaaay, so... Add chameleonic scales to the list," I said as my body flashed back into it's proper color. "But that can't be it. There's got to be something else, because a simple color change cannot make me that hard to see." I filed that thought away for later.

********

That night, I just decided to sleep in a tree. Better that than another dragon's lair. I laid down on a branch and closed my eyes. My final thoughts as I drifted off were wondering what worlds had talking dragons.

A scream pierced the silence of morning in the area where I was sleeping. I woke up with a start and looked around myself. Seeing nothing, I listened for a sound which would determine where the piercing vocal rendition originated.

'Galloping... and barking... little bit of soft furry paws running.' At that moment, some figures came into view. A pink equine with a red mane galloped away from four dark grey voracious-looking wolf-like creatures, a bit shorter in height, but a bit longer in length. Frankly, I couldn't believe it.

'I'm in Equestria? Or at least on the same planet. Seems a bit overdone... Still, AWESOME!!! But say, what are those pooches? They're not diamond dogs, they look a bit more wild, less sentient.'

The pony screamed again as she tripped on a malevolent root sticking out of the ground.

Before the unfortunate pony could get up again, the small pack was nearly upon her. They paused momentarily. Obviously, the hunt was over and the victim couldn't run. There was nothing to stop them from enjoying fresh meat. The leader crouched and leaped towards her. She screamed.

A small object crashed into the hound, knocking it off course and urging a yelp from the beastly thing. It crumpled on the ground, a thick gash present on its left shoulder. The projectile flew around some more and embedded itself in the trunk of a nearby tree. Silence was held for a moment.

"Sorry, furballs, but breakfast is cancelled." I said as I sprung out of the tree. The earth shook as I landed between the frightened filly and the horrendous hounds. All members of the hunt, including the victim, became uneasy, but the wolves soon recovered. The leader slowly stood back up onto it's feet and barked what seemed to be an order. Five or six more wolves seemed to just appear all around us, forming a large circle. I readjusted my position so I had a basic view of most of them. Another howl of the boss, and a single hound approached alone.

A noise from my hands made me momentarily look at them. Two huge spike-like black structures had sprouted out of the back of each hand, halfway to the wrist, between the tendons of the index fingers and the middle fingers, and between the tendons of the ring and pinkies. The tips weren't fully sharp, but with enough force, I could tell these things would cause a bit of damage.

The hound growled at me, showing its well-developed denture. I yelled right back at it. Only it didn't come out as a yell, as a shout. I roared. A deep, loud roar like I had something rattling in my throat. The hound then did something unexpected. It shimmered and disappeared. Kinda just winked out of existence like someone had portaled it somewhere.

'Wait a minute... Portaled...' I felt a sharp pain in the back of my neck and claws holding onto my shoulders. I swung my tail up and knocked it to the side with my club tail.

The hound yelped as the swat connected and flew into a tree. I quickly blasted a fireball at it, but much to my chagrin, the heat just struck the fur and dissolved into thin air. The beast limped to its feet and nearly collapsed from the blow of my tail. The leader enunciated a series of barks which pierced the air like an arrow, and the rest of the canines crouched menacingly and shifted. The main attack was underway.

"Now I remember why you look so familiar. I know what you are. The grey fur, the short-distance portaling and the resistance to fire, and most likely all forms of magic. You are blink hounds.", I said. "Also, the heightened intelligence, leading to a language for easy communication. Let's dance."

'Isn't a dog pile a bit of a cliché?' I thought to myself, while fighting to keep them off of me. I tore one off of my left arm and flung him into a nearby tree, and then punched one heading for my throat from the front, my knuckle-spikes giving him two extra wounds. My tail was constantly swirling as I stepped around the ground, trying to keep the vicious brutes from giving me pain. I roared again, this one being slightly prolonged and louder. It was almost no use. However many times I picked them off and flung them away, they still got up and rushed for me again. A yelp came out of one of the blinkers when he foolishly lunged for my throat, only to be repelled by a fist to the ribs.

We continued on, neither side letting down the attacks, me throwing them around, careful not to step on the pony beneath me as they piled onto me. One of them finally got under my skin, both literally and metaphorically. The drop of green blood oozing out of my right forearm was the last straw. My roar shook the very trees before my jaws closed upon the neck of the magical menace, holding him in a tight grasp before throwing him through a tree. Yes, that's right. I threw the dang thing right through the wood of a nearby tree.

I felt a change coming over me. My eyes slitted, I could tell by the new field of vision detected by my eyes. Something like adrenaline flowed through my blood vessels, yet it felt somewhat different than adrenaline. It cooled my sweat down and my muscles felt stronger. I tossed the remaining blink hounds off of me and took a deep breath before engaging the few that could still get up. The five that were left circled and all jumped at once.

My breathing accelerated and I could feel my heart humming, barely bothering to put space between beats. I spun around in place and noticed that the blink hounds were going somehow... slower. It was if the whole world except me had gone slightly slow-motion. I grabbed the paw of the hound that reached me first, stepped aside and flung him into the ground. As the other remaining three hounds grabbed hold of me, the one on my right was pummeled to the ground by a big scaly fist and lay there, either unconscious or unliving.

I opened my wings, and two hounds focused their attention on them. I flapped them once, quickly, and their teeth lost their hold, allowing flight to the two specimens, right up until the point where they kissed the ground. The remaining blinker I grabbed by the tail before taking off. In the air, I did several loop-de-loops and let the momentum remain as I chucked it down at the ground, where the impact sent him to a happier hunting ground.

I floated down to the ground, my breathing and my heart both slowing down. I fell to my knees and my hands as I gasped for some extra air. Throughout the fight, the pink pony had been staring wide-eyed in fear and astonishment. I smirked at her.

"Don't forget to blink." She slowly nodded, and then blinked a few times as she realized she hadn't been doing that for a while. "Well?", I asked.

"Oh, um... well... I, uh, I... um, uh, P-p-please d-don't h-hurt m-m-me...", she pleaded, now shaking quite visibly.

"Okay, you seem to be getting a couple of things just a tad bit wrong. I'm not gonna eat you, and if you think I'm gonna take down 9 magical carnivorous hounds to hurt you instead of just letting them hurt you, you got another thing coming on." I retorted, looking her over for the first time.

She had a pink body that was about average size from what I would think and her red mane was kinda poofy, with a few curls in it. On her flank was a mark that resembled two vials of liquid, one pouring a blue substance into the other. She also had a light purple horn coming out of her forehead. A pair of simple brown saddlebags hung down on either side. Both her and her equipment were scratched and torn, probably part from the vegetation, part from the blink hounds.

"Anyways, my name is Scales. What's yours?", I said, putting on the least creepy smile I could.

She seemed to become slightly calmer, but she still shook slightly. "M-my name is Doctor Lena."

"You have two vials of liquid on your cutie-mark, most likely representing chemicals. You are also a unicorn, and magic is close to alchemy, which is basically the same thing as mixing chemicals."

"Calm down, I'm not going to eat you. You're probably hungry too. I know of a spring nearby. We can go there and see if there's any fruit there you can eat. As for me, I can just try blink hound."

She nodded, though she looked unsure and cautious, and I picked up the 5 dead blink hounds that hadn't managed to scoot away, not without difficulty, and we walked off towards the spring. I noticed she still watched me from the corner of her eye, as if I was going to try something. Now that we were walking, I saw that I was about double the height that her head was at from the ground.

"Why are you doing this for me?", she asked, somewhat suspicious. I guess I was doing strange behavior for a dragon.

"Why not? Not all dragons are cantankerous and bloodthirsty. Besides, I don't think I'm fully the type of dragon you have around here."

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Soon, we were around a fire, eating. Lena had found some apples and oranges, and I was dining on roast blink hound with lemon and some hot peppers I had found. Lena tried one of the peppers, but it wasn't mild enough for her, to put it mildly. Truly, she had run around like a headless chicken, trying to get past me to the water, which I knew would make it worse.

Not surprisingly, I could stomach them quite well. I guess it comes with being able to breathe fire. Oh, and in case you're wondering, blink hound is very similar to squirrel. Tough to chew, (actually, not so much with my new jaws) but a pretty good flavor. I kept the blink hound furs, as I knew they would come in handy, as well as the teeth. They would resist fire well, and based on my knowledge of them, they were pretty much immune to spells as well.

"So Lena," She jumped as I said this. "Do you think you can draw me a rough location of where we are right now?" She nodded and telekinetically picked up a nearby stick and started to draw with it in a soily patch.

"Well, Equestria is this area right here, and we are right over here.", she said as she marked out a few things.

"Yes. This forest is called Guardians Blessing, and is quite large. It isn't as explored as Everfree forest, and therefore it isn't known whether it is more dangerous than Everfree or not, but it certainly has more light and more life. I personally came in here to find some reagents for my science projects which are only known to grow around here. I live right here for the time being, but I might move back to Canterlot in a few years when my research is done."

"You live outside Equestria? That could probably be considered unusual by most ponies.", I remarked. "But then again, that idea would be the one I would follow. I'm not big on cities. I like small towns better, and forest life isn't bad. By the way, did you ever find the reagents you were looking for?"

"Yes, I found them right before those blasted hounds found me. Why didn't any of my spells or your fire work on them? All the spells just dissolved."

"Well, blink hounds are natural magic dissipators. They are born with fur that protects them from extreme heat, extreme cold and magic spells. Their name comes from their ability to "blink", or teleport short distances. Anyways, there might be more monsters around. Would you like me to escort you to your home?"

"Basically, you're freaked out because I'm a dragon." She nodded and hung her head. "Well, it's your choice. You can make the trip with this monster, or with the other unknown monsters."

She cocked her head and looked at me. "You know, you have a point there. Alright, I'm probably going to regret this, but... I accept." She timidly offered a shaking hoof.

I smiled and shook her hoof gently. "I promise to you that I'm not going to eat you or leave you behind, and that promise is on my honor, which is something you probably wouldn't expect from a dragon."

"Well, you aren't any ordinary dragon, that's for sure." Her face offered just a shadow of a smile as she said that.

"You go ahead and sleep, I'll take the first watch. That is, if you don't mind."

"That's fine with me. You made a promise, and I'm pretty sure you're going to keep it. The unicorn slowly nodded off to sleep, leaving me to the watch, as I wasn't tired. Unbeknownst to either of us, a dark figure observed us from a point high in the sky, behind a cloud...

Who is this mysterious figure in the sky? What is it's motives? And lemme tell you right now so there isn't any confusion: that pony isn't Pinkie-Pie. Let's hope that I can actually keep this guys antics somewhat believable without being the incredibly OP dude he was when he first popped into my mind a few months ago.

Scales the Draconic Oddball

by Kowlickkid

Chapter 2: So That's Where I Am