//------------------------------//
// Ch. 16 New Friends? 
// Story: Misunderstood and Mutated 
// by TheGoldenDragon 
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	“Okay Beorn,” I said before clapping my hands together, “Time to work on the most basic sentence structure; ‘Subject-Verb-Object’” 

The Minor Ursa looked around confused as whatever he had been dreaming about before became the stereotypical classroom scenario. The next three hours were hell, mostly for me, when trying to explain what really was basic knowledge, but I couldn’t fault him for that shortcoming. After all, he wasn’t taught this at a decent age of two hundred, so it was going to be slow to get him up to speed.

The next week fell into the simple routine of gravity training with Rainbow Dash, picking up berries from Berry Punch, getting no closer to catching up with Rayquaza, and teaching Beorn how to speak properly.

I woke up almost immediately after the night’s lesson was over, but Beorn the oversized teenager equivalent was going to sleep for a few more hours. While staring out the mouth of the cave for a few minutes to clear my head I remembered something important that almost slipped my mind, It’s Spike’s Birthday. I had no idea if I could make it to his party, so I came up with a plan to give him his present, whichever one he chose. 






3rd Person POV


Spike had a wonderful day in Icecream Land. First he had eaten gallons of every flavor of ice cream, then he he swam in Rootbeerfloat Lake, and now to cap off a great day he would build an ice-cream pony; kind of like a snowpony but made of ice cream.

When Spike had finished, it looked almost exactly like Rarity. But not seconds after he had stepped back to admire his work, the ice-cream pony began to change shape. The color became dark purple and pink, it stood up on its hind legs and began to turn more and more into that guy Medulla that had stayed with Twilight and him only a few days ago. And he said, “Ah, ice cream dream, you know what’s important kid.”

The young drake just stood there not sure how to respond, and the mutant just patted him on the head. Medulla levitated Spike up to his eye level before saying, “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it to your birthday party today, though you really should call it a hatching day, so I’m giving you your present early.” At this, two boxes popped into existence; one wrapped in red paper, the other in blue. “You get to pick one, you can’t get both.”

The drake looked incredulously at the gifts, before asking, “This isn’t like that time Twilight made me choose between two books for my present, is it?”

“I would never get you a novel without knowing your preference, which I do it just hasn’t come into existence yet. I would have bought you a comic book, but haven’t gone into town for shopping in a while, and I would have just given them to you without choosing between anything.” Medulla declared confidently. “No, I am letting you choose between two relics that I found before the rise of Nightmare Moon. One is a claw of an ancient dragon and will imbue you with some of his strength, the other is charcoal made from a branch of a magical tree and will strengthen you fire. You’ll just have to choose to find out which one’s which.“

The young dragon thought deeply for a moment, then he pointed to the red package and said with conviction, “I’ll take the red present!”

Medulla smiled, “Here you go, you chose the Dragon Claw.” The box popped open revealing a razor sharp claw attached to a necklace, “You’ll wake you with this around your neck.” Medulla then began to melt like ice cream in summer heat as he left Spike’s dreams.






Medulla’s POV


After intruding on Spike’s dreams and leaving him with his present, I decided to the same with an old friend. It didn’t take very long to find the largest tree in the Everfree, levitation and all that. This tree was much deeper in the forest then even most sane individuals ever traveled. If I had to guess the species of tree this was, I’d probably say mangrove. The trunk was massive pillar of entangled ancient vines, the canopy well over nine hundred feet wide and tall, making it the quintessential “Power of Nature” tree. And considering the creator and oldest resident of the tree, I’d say that calling it that would be very accurate.

I slowly worked my way through the labyrinthine tunnels between the roots that made natural paths to the heart of this tree. The tree seemed to radiate a calming aura, because most of the creatures here were very lethargic and predators wouldn’t even so much as look at sleeping prey. All in all, it seemed to be some kind of natural paradise, if it weren’t for the fact that I could sense that this was a defense mechanism for the nature spirit I was looking for. There was a hint of malice in the air that most could miss.

I continued forward through the living woodwork, the sunlight becoming more sparse as I approached the heart of this monolithic tree. Eventually, I was completely surrounded in darkness, and for a few dozen feet I had to use Miracle Eye to know which way I was going, but it wasn’t long before a soft green glow became visible and I knew I was close. 

I came to most likely the largest chamber in the tree, a thirty foot sphere of open space only obstructed by an hourglass shaped structure, and in the middle was the “oh so cute” green time traveling nature spirit, Celebi. Even though most would call him cute, he would call them compost; he still had enough power and skill knock me around a fair bit before I spammed my fire attacks. So to me, this was a somewhat ominous image with the sickly green glow emanating from Celebi, and the almost overwhelming external desire to just fall asleep here forever.

With a shudder I wormed my way into the almost millennium long dream of this powerful being.

Almost immediately Celebi cleared his mind leaving us in a white void. “What do you want Mewtwo?” he asked, his venomous tone of voice undermined by its pitch.

“I go by Medulla now,” I stated trying to how much I disliked having to come all the way out here, just to make sure I had a secure stable connection. “I just wanted to make sure you were aware of a few things, before-”

“Before I wake up,” he said almost screeching as he cut me off, “I’m pretty sure we already had this conversation, oh wait that’s just me being aware of me at all points of my time stream.”

I said with feigned sorrow, “I like to be courteous about this stuff, just because this was a possibility doesn’t mean you or I should disregard its relevance on either of our lives.” I then shifted to general sarcastic tone, “Oh, and are you aware of how many times across all of the us’s I’ve call you a callous asshole?”

Then he said in one breath, “Including that one, somewhere around thirty seven and a fourth, when you average it, because you know nigh infinity and all that you linear-minded man-made-legendary.” 

We both stared at each other with dark scowls for a few seconds, before we broke into peals of laughter. Celebi was the first to recover, before asking, “Why do we always have to go through this?”

I was just able to hold my breath before telling him, “Because we may be friends, but I still find your philosophy lacking nuance and kindness.”

“Time and nature seem cruel only because others feel entitled. They don’t act, they move forward. That is all they can do. I take after that a bit, but you are capable of true cruelty it’s just that you only bring it out when you feel like it.” He said all this while poking me in the chest almost as punctuation. 

“So I’m going to take it you already know what I was going to tell you.” I said trying to change the subject.

Celebi stared flatly at me as he said, “Yes…” his seemed to lose focus as his gaze drifted. He then looked back to me and said, “You know that town on the edge of my forest-”

“Well I wouldn’t really call it yours...” I interrupted.

Now he looked a bit angry, “My Forest, there’s a lot of panic and worry coming from there, and I think there’s a dragon there.”

“What?! That wasn’t supposed to happen until tomorrow!” I almost yelled.

“Remember what happened last time you connected to my mind like this, you ended up missing an entire week.” Celebi said.

“Shit… Oh before I go can I get a genetic sample from you for another friend, he’s a shapeshifter from another world?” I asked.

“Sure, just snap off a twig, this entire tree is made from me.” He said as I let him eject me from his mind.

Now with a much better understanding of where I was relative to outside the tree and Ponyville, I teleported, bagged a small twig from the tree, and quickly returned to town. What I saw was the expected chaos, but something felt off about Spike’s mind, and I mean more than just out of control greed. Something had messed with his inhibitions, and what ever did it made did a crappy job hiding their work. I knew I was the only one that recognised the true problem and could do anything to fix it. So I got straight to work infiltrating his mind, but the strangest thing happened. Instead of contacting Spike and fixing the problem in his head, I saw only darkness for a few moments that was quickly broken by three light; one yellow, one blue, and one red. The red one moved closer and from it a voice declared, “You now know where we are. Come find us!” And an image of a pristine lake, surrounded by mountains and immense greenery flashed before my eyes along with the knowledge of where the lake was. Then I was ejected and physically sent flying.

My only question that I mentally shouted was, “HOW THE HELL DID THEY KNOW?!?!” I then looked down to everypony currently in Ponyville looking up at me, apparently Spike had returned to normal not long ago. 

Pinkie yelled back at me, “ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT SOME NEW FRIENDS?!”

”Twilight, I’ll meet you in the library to explain.” I told her before I disappeared from the sky in  flash of light.