//------------------------------// // Chapter XXX: Birthday // Story: Astral Aegis // by Silvak //------------------------------// Sitting on top of the town hall, I simply chosen to wait until some pony came looking for me. Which didn't take long as I spotted Rainbow Dash heading towards me, a wide grin plastered on her face. "Who would have thought big bad Aether would be scared enough to telepo—" Rainbow started to say when she reached me, only for me to stuff a hoof into her mouth in response. "I was surprised, and that triggered my fight or flight instincts. So it was either me hitting something, or fleeing," I replied with a huff as I pulled my hoof out of Rainbow's mouth. "Can we go now?" Still bearing a grin, Rainbow answered in a teasing tone, "Sure thing, whatever you say," before she grabbed me and placed me on her back. "Hold on tight!" Rainbow announced before she zipped off at top speed. Instantly this caused me to cling to her as hard as I could. Instead of stopping, I saw that we bypassed the bakery, causing me to wonder what Rainbow is planning. I didn't had to think long, because it only took a few seconds before we arrived at Applejack's barn, where Rainbow promptly dropped me off on my rump before bucking the barn doors open. "Happy Birthday Aether!" everypony in the barn shouted as Pinkie suddenly appeared with her party cannon, firing it at me to shower me in confetti. "Sorry about surprising while you were waking up, I was just so excited I couldn't resist," Pinkie said with a giggle. After giving her a nod, I looked around to take in stock of who was here, since this party was much more smaller than the last one Pinkie threw for me. Of course the elements, the crusaders, and my recruits showed up for the party. However, Cheerilee and half my old class along with some of the town's residents have showed up as well. Even Princess Luna showed up, which caused me understand what she meant about seeing me soon. A small group compared to the last party, but a sure sign of the ponies that have accepted me after hearing the truth. "I wanted to throw you another big party since you missed so many birthdays, but after the last one I thought you would rather have a smaller party. But I still wanted to make it special for you, so I said to myself, 'What can I do to make this party super-duperific for Aether?' Then I realized I could just making you a lot of chocolate sweets!" Pinkie exclaimed, before reaching out and somehow bring over a rather long table filled... with... "...So much chocolate!" I shrieked in joy as I charged the table. Ever since I gotten a bit fat, Pinkie had made certain that I didn't had too much chocolate sweets in a day, since I developed a sweet tooth for them. Sure, I brushed my teeth and made sure to work off the fat that the chocolate would give me, but both she and the Cakes were firm on limiting my intake. But now, there was a table covered with chocolate cupcakes, muffin, candy, and cake. At the corner of my eye, I saw that there was another table filled with more average party food, but buck it, there was so much chocolate and it's my birthday. "Wow, I never saw a pony eat so much chocolate before," Apple Bloom announced. "Doesn't your stomach hurt?" Sweetie Belle asked. "If I ate that much chocolate, I know mine would hurt." "Yeah... it hurts, but it's so worth it," I answered as I laid down on my back, patting my bulging belly. The Crusaders backed away from me as Scootaloo said, "You better not puke on me." "Oh, I'm not going to puke on anypony." "And how can you be sure about that?" Apple Bloom said. "Simple, if I puke, I'll just keep it inside my mouth and swallow it back down." This caused Apple Bloom and Sweetie to gagged as their face turned green, while Scootaloo just gagged and looked at me like I was crazy. "Hey, where I came from, food is sometimes hard to come by, so I had to learn to keep everything I eat down in my stomach instead of having it on the floor." The Crusaders just nod as I looked around the room, seeing everypony talking with each other, while the other foals were getting their share of whatever left of the chocolate goodies that weren't eaten by me. As much as I wanted to just eat everything on the table, I did had limits. So instead, I had four muffins, six cupcakes, half a bowl of candy and a full chocolate cake. This caused some ponies to stare at me while I was feasting, and Twilight's left eyelid started to twitch a bit halfway through my meal. Maybe I was taking after Pinkie a bit too much for the poor mare to handle. After lying down long enough for my stomach to settle, I finally got up to mingle with the rest of the party goers. My former classmates questioned me about my past, since they never gotten the chance to do so since I've been busy after leaving the class. Lyra also came to mention that she finally wrote down all the questions she wanted to ask me, to which I told her to just send it over to the bakery so I can work on them there. Which I instantly regretted saying when I remembered that it was almost a whole month since I last encountered her, meaning that if she just recently finished, it mean that she had a massive stack of paper for me to look over. Maybe I can get her to share the answers with Twilight, since she was still wanting to drain me for every bit of information she could get. I had a short discussion with my recruits, with all of them giving me their birthday greetings along with some teasing at my chocolate-filled gut. I countered that remark with the option of them joining me on a few days of exercise runs as I worked it off, on top of their usual training regimen. That ended the teasing instantly, though a couple of them muttered how cruel I could be. After exchanging some pleasantries with the elements and later the rest of the adults, I found myself sitting right next to Luna. It made me wonder if she was using her magic to orchestrate that when she finally spoke to me. "I see that you're enjoying the party." "And I see that you're enjoying your playtime with the my former classmates, Princess Luna," I said with a smirk, causing Luna to raise an eyebrow at my jab. Not like she could deny it, since I spotted her playing around with some of the foals earlier. "True... though I was surprised that instead of joining our merriment, you instead chosen to talk to your recruits." "Well, since I have an adult mind in a foal's body..." "That doesn't mean you shouldn't have fun with your old friends. From what I heard, you didn't have a proper foalhood, so maybe you join in some of the games they are playing right now." "...Maybe later, my stomach is still working off all the chocolate I ate. I wonder though, why isn't your sister here?" I asked, which caused Luna to raise an eyebrow at me again. "What?" "Is my presence not to your pleasure?" "What? What are you talking about? I was just being curious. Didn't you forgot that out of the two of you, you're the only one that haven't gave me any headaches?" After blinking for a second, Luna shook her head before saying, "My apologies, I thought you might be uncomfortable like some ponies are with me due to my... past." This caused me to stare at her for a moment before I remembered my history lessons, in particular the Nightmare Moon incidents. "Oh... you're talking about that. No, I'm not going to judge you on that, since it sounded like what happened to you wasn’t entirely your fault. It's in the past, so best not to bring it up, that and you certainly aren’t acting like how the stories portrayed you. Besides, you did save my life, so it would be very ungrateful of me to not want you around." Luna just looked at me with a surprised expression, before she just smiled at me. "It is... nice for you to not judge me through my past," she said, as I just shrugged at her like it was nothing big. "Hey, since you're here, do either you or Celestia have any plans for me? While I am training a squad... it's too small of a group to make any large impact if we end up in a war." "That hardly seems like the appropriate thing to discuss during a party, much less for you to bring it up on your own birthday." "It may seem wrong, but to me, it would be nice to know that there is more planned out. Knowing that either of you two have something big plan would get rid of some of the stress I have over this dimensional issue." Looking around, Luna made certain that no pony was close enough to overhear us before she leaned down and quietly told me, "We are planning to have another round of recruitment for you, as well as having those weapons the researchers have developed be mass produced for the E.U.P. We also hope that you can train a few instructors for those weapons, since we heard that you think they would help us fare better against the aliens should they ever discover us." "Good, though they really need to think up of some high explosive weaponry, and a name for them. It's getting tiresome of just calling them weapons," I whispered back. "Do we really need explosives?" "Yes, we really do, a lot of them and different kinds. Remember that crystal alien war machine that you fought? Any interdimensional force would bound to have a lot of things that are of that size, if not bigger. So we need them to take those kinds of things down instead of having you and your sister flying all over Equus to take them down personally." "Hmm... you have a go—" Luna started to say before we were interrupted by Pinkie hopping over to us. "What are you two doing here? We're playing pin the tail on the pony! Come and join the fun!" Pinkie said, and before I could say a thing, I felt myself yanked halfway across the room before being blindfolded. Even though Pinkie is rubbing off me, I doubt I will ever be able to do the crazy things she can do. Regardless, I decided to roll with it, since like Luna mentioned, I shouldn't be talking business in my own birthday party. So for the rest of the day, I decided to let go of my worries, and just have fun with everypony. Though I got to say, I never expected myself to be so loose and carefree as I am right now. I might not show it much, but Equestria is changing me, bit by bit. Yeah, I'll never be 'normal' as some ponies would like me to be, but maybe in the future I'll end up being a lot less violent and rude than I am now. I'm still keeping my taser though. There are still some ponies that deserve it out there.