//------------------------------// // The Elements of Surprise (Morpheus) Part 2 // Story: dC/dt ≠ 0 // by I Thought I Was Toast //------------------------------// Ponyville gossip is a terrifying beast sometimes. The amount of stares we drew as we entered town still creeps me out to this day, and I am quite thankful that Twilight had her head buried in her agenda for most of the way to the train station. She was oblivious to the furtive glances and whispered rumors—all concerning her possible relationship with the pudgy, pink pegasus following her. “Don’t forget anything!” Twilight called from the window as the train pulled away. I shook my head and chuckled, biding my time to begin damage control. Waving back until she was a decent distance away, I perked up as if I’d remembered something, and ran towards the station edge calling out to her. “Say hi to Auntie Velvet for me!” As I faked catching my breath at the end of the platform, I listened to what the gossip mill had to say. “She’s just family? That’s way less interesting.” The reporter that had been stalking us sulked. “Aww... And here I was hoping Twilight had finally found somepony.” One of the local flower vendors pouted. “Does that mean I have to give you back the money?” One of the two pegasi pushing clouds above the station frowned at the bag of bits his partner had given him. Excellent. Rumors successfully controlled. I whistled a jaunty tune as I turned around and trotted out the station. The analysts were busy reworking the master equation, while the lords were busy parsing a report I’d sent in buried under three different kinds of encryption layers. Twilight was taking Spike to Canterlot, and nobody left in Ponyville had the faintest idea I was a changeling yet. I was free for a day, and I was determined to make the most of it. There was my little list of chores, but they gave me exactly what I wanted—a nice, quiet stroll through town. It was a good day for it, too. The sky wasn’t that deep crisp blue I loved back home, but the sun was balmy instead of oppressive. There wasn’t the comfort of warm sand between my fetlock cavities, but there was a delightfully cool breeze dancing through them instead. Cobblestones passed beneath my hooves as I began to tour the town. Ponies moved about their day, heading to work in the early morning. Earth ponies trundled forward at a sturdy trot, while pegasi zipped past on the winds. Unicorns strolled at a leisurely pace, and even a mule or two trotted along. There was plenty of chatter buzzing about the air, and I received a constant stream of friendly greetings and compliments. I answered with simple nods and waves of acknowledgement, continuing to whistle as I headed down the street. Thankfully, the whispered rumors seemed to have disappeared without the presence of royalty to fuel them. “She spent the night with who?!” Or maybe they were just developing out of ear shot. Ve placed the voice as Twilight’s friend Rarity, and I sighed, adding a trip to Carousel Boutique to my list of chores. It seemed ve would need to do more damage control. “What do you mean she was pink?! What kind of pink?! There are at least five shades of pink that wouldn’t flatter Twilight in the least!” I mentally underlined the trip to Rarity’s twice. There were simpler chores to handle, however, and one of them was looking for a good source of ambient love. The air currently tasted of a mix of different feelings—too many, in fact. It was as if somepony had poured hot sauce, vinegar, carrots, peas, whole potatoes, cotton candy, chicken, and even the kitchen sink into a cauldron to be served flambe. There were just too many conflicting emotions drifting off of the houses to get anything useful. A front door opening here or there sent a brief waft of a more stable emotional cocktail, but ve doubted shopping for food in other ponies households would endear us to them, even if ve were only looking for ambient emotion. Thatched roofs gave way to tents and stalls as ve entered the market place, where the ambient emotions tossed and turned even more. I sensed a calm in the storm ahead of me, though, and a brief walk brought me to an apple stall that saturated the air with the taste of sugar. Not a single dissatisfied customer. Applejack was too busy tending to ponies to notice me, while Rainbow was napping on a singular cloud above the stand. I did not escape notice, however, as I hastily enacted a tactical retreat. Two soulless blue eyes locked on to me as I tried to nonchalantly whistle my way out of the square, and I shivered at the feeling of doom that filled me. Ve had many names for the monstrosity before us. Anomaly. Enigma. Reason’s Bane. All of these names—and more—were used to describe the abomination before me. As she saw me recognition lit in her eyes, and I panicked. “Oh my gosh! The new ice cream mare’s here and she knows the jingle and everything!” The perky pink body turned to match the previous 180 of its owner’s head and began to pronk up the road towards me. Stupid rainbow snow cone cutie mark! “I want a double chocolate dip and a painful pepper pop…” The unearthly chatter did not cease as the creature pronked onward at a pace no creature should pronk. My pupils dilated, but I didn’t run. Ve knew ve could not hide from Pinkie Pie. “…and a banana-swizzle sandwich…” The stabilization plates on my legs slid into place, sealing my fetlock cavities to prevent fractures. A quick calculation on our part had us shifting our carapace density to strengthen the armor at the estimated point of impact while softening the surrounding shell to mesh with the tactile illusions on the disguise spell. “…and a peanut butter and pickle split!” All this left a few milliseconds to have my life flash before my eyes as the pink mare tackled me to the ground. We tumbled end over end for at least a good ten feet or so before stopping, and I woozily looked up from the ground to see Pinkie Pie looming over me. Her face was mere inches from mine, and she was still prattling off a large and varied list of exotic ice cream flavors. Ve attempted to put together a coherent response that might allow us to bring some form of order to the meeting, but I was too muddled from the impact. Thankfully, Applejack arrived on the scene. “Simmer down now, sally.” The sturdy farmer pulled Pinkie back a few feet—a feat in and of itself given the amount of enthusiasm the Unsolvable Puzzle was showing—and tossed her a warm fritter as a momentary distraction. I watched in morbid fascination as Pinkie tore into the fritter much like a bear would gut a fish. The joy radiating off of her was like a thick and murky fog of sweet and delicious cotton candy. If she left this much emotion everywhere, I could probably live off of visiting Sugar Cube Corner and her various parties alone. That much emotion also might explain why our reports on her tended to lack coherence. I was already slightly giddy from all the ambient joy myself. Someling who wasn’t a lord might overload on that much free emotion. A hoof appeared before me, snapping us from our musings. Applejack was… trying to help me up? She had been saying something, but ve had been too focused on the Endless Riddle to notice. I shook my head and hesitantly held out my hoof. “Sorry. What were you saying?” Applejack pulled me to my hooves and trapped my hoof in an iron grip. “Ah was just saying not to mind Pinkie there. She might be a little enthusiastic sometimes, but she means well.” She shook my hoof so hard I swore I could feel a couple cracks forming in the chitin. “But where are my manners? Ah’m Applejack-“ “And I’m Pinkie Pie!” A pink blur pushed Applejack to the side, and I found one overzealous hoofshake had been be replaced by another. “I just know we’re going to have so much fun together, and I already have at least three ideas for your surprise ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party. I’m sure you’d love them, but if I told them to you they wouldn’t be a surprise, and then you…” I let the Anomaly’s speech wash over me without really listening. Tasting the air around her was one thing, but direct contact left me feeling dazed. I smiled and nodded without paying attention. Before I retracted my hoof, however, I carefully slid one of my fetlock cavities open. A few extra seconds of shaking hooves allowed me to mark her with a few stray strands of silk. In their unwoven state, they were thin enough to be undetectable to the naked eye, but that didn’t stop me from tasting the synthesized emotion I’d spun into them. A little warning would be nice, after all. “…and that’s how Equestria was made! Enough about me though. We don’t even know your name, mysterious ice cream mare.” The tirade finally ended, and I stumbled back. Two dangerous pairs of eyes were now looking at me expectantly, so I shook myself to clear it. Ve needed a straight head for this. “You can call me Snow Flurry.” Not technically a lie. It was the name I had chosen for this guise. “I’m not the new ice cream mare, though. I’m okay at making ice cream, but I’m better with snow cones.” This was also not a lie. While ve could look up how to make ice cream, snow cones were just ice and syrup. Ve ran some quick calculations in our head before continuing. “Would you like one?” “Huh! Would I?!” Pinkie latched onto the concept of free treats like a nymph onto love crystals. Okay…. I took a deep breath. Ve could do this. I had to sell the disguise, and the contract allowed for magic pertaining to a disguise’s special talent. Opening my fetlock cavities, I began pouring my magic into the air within them. Guiding the magic created a series of currents, and there was soon a small bit of swirling wind around my hooves. There wasn’t much moisture in the air, so I sent a number of small breezes out to collect it. I shaved a bit from a fountain here and a pony’s drink there, harvesting the water I needed. There was a particularly loud snort from Rainbow as I gathered a little moisture from her cloud, but ve barely noticed. There were already about a hundred other discussions going in and out of my ears as all the snippets of wind ran past different groups of ponies. Normally, ve would be filing all of them away to parse into intelligible conversations later, but ve were currently struggling to actually use the moisture I gathered. With so much joy in the air from Pinkie, ve had thought that I could simply brute force the moisture to condense into a tiny cloud full of snow. That was a mistake on our part. I only managed to make a tiny wisp of cloud before it suddenly condensed into a mini storm cloud. “Hit the deck!” A raspy voice called out, and a cyan bullet slammed into my side. For the third time that day, I found myself eating the ground. This time I was thankful, though, as I heard an explosive crack of lightning from the cloud I’d left behind. There were a number of frightened whinnies, and for a moment I was afraid my disguise had dropped with the sudden impact. Getting up, however, I looked over to see a really nice scorch mark where I’d been standing. “What the hay was that?!?” It seemed I had woken Rainbow Dash, and she was anything but pleased. “Lightning?” I decided to play the stupid card, because it’s surprising how often that works. “I’m talking about what you did to the wind!” Rainbow’s tasted like rainbow. “Wind shouldn’t sound like a mob of angry ponies!” Ve didn’t even try to hide my hanging jaw. “You heard that?!” I got a terse nod in response, and there was only one way for me to react. “Well, buck….”