//------------------------------// // Q&A With A Princess // Story: The Lone Survivor // by AvidSeason //------------------------------// "So... I guess the first question I have for you is...what exactly are you?" Twilight's question provoked serious thought. Not. "The answer to your question can be many things. What am I to myself, to science, or maybe, to you? So, can you elaborate with your phrasing and/or word choice?" Yep. I'm gonna be a douchebag about it because this is gonna be boring as hell, and I might as well have some sort of fun with this. Twilight's face was a little red and I could tell she was a little peeved. She calmed down a little and sighed. "I meant in the scientific perspective." I snickered for some time before I actually answered her. "Well...my species is called human. We are also descended from some type of ape or gorilla that I can't remember the name of. Now it's my turn to ask questions!" "Wait! Why are you asking any questions? I still have more for you!" I face-palmed as I just realized how much explanation of human talk-slash-culture-slash-my tendencies I'm going to have to do for the unicorn uncultured in my humanly ways. "Have you ever heard of a Q and A Twilight?" Her cheeks turn a slight tinge red as embarrassment creeps up onto her features. "I thought so. Anyway my question is actually about this thing that we're doing right now. You know the talking and such. How is it that we are able to talk to each other at all while Spike can't even understand me?" Twilight's eyes go wide with surprise. "Oh! I'm sorry Mark. I didn't realized that I hadn't even told you about the inner working of the spell I used on you. You must be extremely confused right now. Let me explain. The spell just simply tampers with the ears and how they receive sound into the brain. Simply put, I made it so you can understand me, but I can also understand you. Anyone else that was not here when the spell was cast just hears us talking in both of our separate languages. Sorry about the confusion." "It's alright Twilight. I'm just very confused about this whole....'magic' business. Back where I come from it's more of a.......concept than an actual real thing." Twilight's eyes widened once again to the processed information. I assume it was either her trying to understand a world without any sort of magic or if she wanted to try the tests right here and now. Twilight's horn lit up and suddenly a white light burst from nowhere and random things were now touching my body. "A world without magic is an incredulous thing. It's like thinking of the 'Law of Balance' not even existing. I have to study you right here and now! If what you say is actually true then this could change what we think about the Universe. Or it could just prove that you're from a different Universe, let's actually find out!" I called it. Twilight was flipping random levers, dials, and switches while attaching all sorts of plugs to my body and other general areas. Before I even got a chance to object to the treatment, Twilight had stuck something in my mouth. "Okay Mark. Can you please breathe into this *Nicker-neyigh*? Please co-operate or I will be forced to make you." Wow. Twilight has definitely taken an assertive class with Iron Will. Either that or Princess-hood actually did something for her. Anyway I'm just going to have to go and do it. It's not like I can actually object otherwise Twilight might literally take me apart for the glory of science. After a while of obeying the commands of the "probably" Professor Twilight, I was taken off the equipment and put back on the bed. Suddenly my shirt was ripped off and she had stuck some sort of suction cup devices all over my back, front, and on my head. Now don't think that she was silent during all of this. She was spouting random gibberish at some point, and she had gone back to neighing again. It was getting really annoying ,so I just went and did a very impulsive thing. "TWILIGHT!!" Her ears swiveled towards me. Her checks were slightly flushed. "Uhhhh....Yes?" I was glad that at least I had gotten her attention. I know when she usually gets like this it's really hard to pull out of. "Can you please stop the weird invasions on my personal space?" A hoof flew in front of her face before she wacked herself. "Sorry...Sometimes I can't control my urges." She smiled sheepishly. Oh god the cuteness factor. Must..remain..strong! "It's...fine. As long as you don't do that again. Anyway what did you get? I might as well know." Twilight's face brightened once again and her magic glowed. Paper readings and charts flew from the many machinations into Twilight's face. They flew in front of Twilight's face at a rapid pace in a sort of hemisphere globe. It was a kind of awesome to see all the things floating individually in random lines. All of a sudden Twilight's magic fell off of everything except the one chart she had in her hooves currently. "That...doesn't really make any sense. It shouldn't technically be possible." Twilight's mutters had greatly disturbed me. If she had not heard of any kind of species, native to her world, that had the kind of magic that I had then she surely would want to perform many, various experiments upon myself. "I'm going to assume that you are kind of an expert when it comes from this "magic" business since you have all this equipmentw tih you. Now can you tell me if this is hazardous to my health right now?" Twilight quickly shook her head. "Noooo! Your magic is just....peculiar as it were. It kind of...alternates?" I looked at her weirdly. "Aaaaannnnddddd.....How is that weird exactly?" I replied. "Think of magic as a whole, like water. All of it's existence is just water. Now sometimes it can be made to freeze or evaporate to use magic in better ways. Your magic is somehow ice, water, and water vapor at the same time. This slightly violates some laws that we know about magic." "Okay. How much am I violating right now?" She seemed to mull over the answer for a bit before she decided to speak. "Right now, you're violating about 39% of our laws?" Huh. I thought that I would be violating more than that. "So you said that there are "states" where magic can become, right? What exactly are they and in what way am I doing it?" "Well Mark, there are mainly three states of magic. They are 'Active', 'Passive', and 'Constant'. As their names would imply they do the sorts of things you could expect them to do. Active is only 'active', as it were, when somepony is making magic bend to their will. Passive is occurring when there is an effect that is placing on an object or belonging to a person that will last for a set amount of time. Finally there is Constant. It is one of the most illusive, mysterious, and harder to cast of all the branches. These spells last forever, effecting the general area, changing the universe 'slightly' to accommodate the spell caster's base desire." Well....After that brief discussion upon the effects of magic I can conclude one thing. It is not at all subject to what I originally thought about it. Unless something hasn't been discovered by our current physics department, then I highly doubt if I am in my universe anymore. Oh well. I guess I shouldn't be that surprised about it. I mean...if magical ponies actually existed in our universe, and we had successfully predicted their actions through a production by Canadians, then I would say that it was either really coincidental or that aliens were somehow wanting to judge humanity's reaction to their history. Yeah... Like that'll ever happen. Anyway I probably should actually paying attention to Twilight's rants. Somehow they are very easy to ignore. "....and those are some examples of each magical effect!" Welp.. Guess I wasn't paying attention to anything she said at all. After a few moments of her holding a proud attitude on her face and with me being completely lost, I decided to work up the courage to actually ask her about my previous question. Hopefully I wouldn't mess up and look like a complete buffoon. "Sooooooo....... What way am I doing in regards to those three aspects?" Twilight looked at my face blankly before she suddenly had an embarrassed look. "Oh! I'm so sorry about that. I hadn't even realized that I had not answered your previous question. I'm so sorry. I just have a tendency to ramble on and on when magic is mentioned. You must understand that when people ask you about the stars though." Realizing that my 'fake' job had kind of been mentioned I decided to tell her the truth about my work. In a way that doesn't confuse her or tell her of Human's advancements of course "Well....yeah. I guess. I mean in my field I don't get that many questions about my work." "What do you mean?" "Well where I come from, people wouldn't really need a person of my skill unless they wanted to go into my field as well. If there's anything specific they wanted to now they could just look in the knowledge that everyone already has access to." I know... I should probably tell her the truth at some point about what I actually was and all that, but..... I just can't right now. She would only ask for more and more knowledge, and we all what could happen if she actually figured that our world was full to the brim about knowledge. Sure that would get here to move faster with the portal magic, but I don't think that the world is ready for the kind of thing that's going to happen right then. The governments of the world would only seek to better themselves with the capability of producing and marketing magic. Bronies would just come over here and make a mess of things to the timeline as well as bug the heck out of Twilight and her friends. Also, the other species on Equis, if that's the planets name, would think of humanity. they could get into wars with us over the most little things like our culture or our way of thinking. All in all I think it's too much of a liability for them to know about us. "Oh. So everyone has a giant personal library then?" I was shaken out of my musings by Twilight's sudden question. "I guess you could say that Twilight. Anyway what are your questions now? I think I've asked about.....3 questions too much, so go ahead and ask away." Twilight looked slightly surprised before she nodded quickly. "That's quite alright. All of that was just the spawn of an answer I wanted so badly, so I guess that was my own consequence for asking." Huh. I guess Twilight is more mature than I thought. "But since you were so insistent, I guess that I can always go for more questions." Welp. That ideas went out the window. "So, what are humans like exactly?" .....Great. I'm going to have to explain the most hardest of all questions to Twilight Sparkle. Lucky me. "Twilight can you get me some paper and quills. I think this is going to be the easiest explanation I can probably give." She nodded slowly before her horn glowed once again ,producing the required items. After a few trials and tribulations I got the thing to look exactly like it was supposed to. "This Twilight is basically what humans are like. We can be all of these things. Now next question!" Twilight was a little disgruntled with the short answer ,but she seemed to be acceptable of it. Unfortunately before she got her next question out a high pitched whistling rang through the air. Twilights ears twitched as she looked over towards the window. I looked out there as well and I was somewhat disgruntled by the fact that there was a giant dot growing in size. My first thought was why Rainbow dash was exactly flying directly into the castle. Then I actually realized she was heading straight towards us. Apparently Twilight came up with that same thought because she had a panicked look on her face and she had began doing numerous things with the magical horn of hers. The numerous devices disappeared within a blink of an eye and were replaced with tons of pillows. She then dove underneath them all and prepared for the collision. I looked out the window again to have an update on the Rainbow Dash alert. She was only a few yards away. I turned around and began beating on the pillows, demanding that she let me in to escape the oncoming storm of pain. She might've said something about teleporting me in. I heard the familiar sound of a sonic rainboom. I knew that I had become seriously fucked over. I tried to duck in cover, but I was too late. I heard the sound of crashing glass and suddenly pain was felt throughout my back. Color faded to grey as my consciousness faded.