//------------------------------//
// Five Hundred More 
// Story: George Trestale, God of... Something 
// by DrOcsid 
//------------------------------//

After witnessing that sorry excuse for a chase, Twilight decided the best thing to do would be to write a letter to Celestia, alerting her to the human's presence in Ponyville. After having Spike write a letter, roll it up, and send it off with a puff of his breath, Twilight went back outside to start looking herself. Flying high up into the air, and focusing on a spell, she caused a beam of light to start emanating from her horn. After a few flickers, and a few hits to her horn in an attempt to get it to work right, she started shining it around Ponyville, between the alleys for any sign of George.

~Meanwhile, in Canterlot~

Princess Celestia took another sip of her tea, after cooling it just slightly with some manner of spell. It wasn't often she managed to have small moments like this, and recent events made that all the worse. The initial search party had failed to find the human, meaning she was still clueless as to where he could be running amok. But she felt no need to consider that right now. She cherished the moment all she could, as she felt it would end soon.

And as if it were predicted by an ancient civilization, a letter from Twilight appeared in front of her. Unfurling it, she read over it and quickly stood up, almost spilling her tea in the process. She walked out the door and to a nearby guard.

"Please notify the captain to start a search party. The human has been sighted in Ponyville."

"Yes, your highness," the guard replied, quickly running down the hall and turning a corner.

Watching the guard run off, Celestia's center of attention was quickly brought to another letter that had just appeared in front of her. While a different seal than Twilight's, Celestia knew this one all too well. Opening this letter, she read the contents with a concerned look on her face.

To Princess Celestia, co-ruler of the land of Equestria,

It has come to my attention that you have been giving one of my citizens quite
a hard time in your kingdom. While I understand the basic laws barring humans 
from entering Equestria, I will not have you attempting to capture someone
under my jurisdiction. I hereby demand that you either cease the search for him,
or extradite him back to Anthropia. You being one of the few to know its location,
that should be easy for you, should it not?

If that is not enough motivation for you, here is an extra part of the deal.
Should you not agree to my conditions, I will be forced to enter a state of war with
your kingdom. We both know war isn't worth the capture of one single citizen,
which should make the proposition all the more enticing to you, Celestia. I
strongly advise you to make the right decision here. We both know you're
not stupid, contrary to what my citizens think, so I advise you to let me keep
that opinion of you.

With warm regards,
King Tetesac

Celestia sighed. A typical letter to receive from him. This was not the first time Tetesac had threatened war on Equestria. Far from it, in fact. Only once did he ever bother to go through with his threats. And that one time having caused some rather negative consequences for him, she doubted he'd try again. Not to mention, George was in no way under Anthropia's jurisdiction. However, on the other hand, this is only one human. Is it really worth chasing after this single one? Regardless of that, she had to be careful where she disputed him on this.

Celestia went back into her study to write a letter in reply, throwing out the first after mistakenly writing a swear word in her frustration.

~The next morning, in a field not too far off from Ponyville~

After waking up, my attention was quickly brought to the realization that nothing happened to me overnight. Seriously, you have no idea how glad I am for that considering everything that's happened to me over the past day or two. Flicking an ant off my sleeve, I got up and stretched, looking over the horizon to see that the sun rose not too long ago.

"Well, glad to see I'm up decently early."

I grabbed the doily off the ground, brushed it off, and shoved it into my pocket. I don't know if I'm ever going to really need this, but hey, you never know. Looking around some more, I started again on my journey.

Now, most of my journey consists of me walking in one single direction, following the train tracks. Because it would be boring as hell to actually list every small thing that happens, I'm gonna be skipping forward through those parts. For the sake of convenience, of course. Not laziness.

Now, I walked for quite a while. I went through a few very uneventful days of just boringly walking, walking, and walking. I got pretty hungry, too. I never reached the point of agony, but it still existed as a nagging reminder that I really want something to eat. Unfortunately, for some damn reason, I didn't think to actually bring any food. Yeah, thanks, me. Not to mention, there were no landmarks detailed on the map, so I couldn't tell how close I was. I assumed I was about halfway there after a couple days. Although it felt more like I'd walked halfway around the world.

Around this point, one night I finally came across another semblance of civilization. A town, looking somewhat like some kind of stereotypical wild-west sort of ordeal. Looking from a distance, I noticed it was rather well-kept. Must be decently populated. I started on getting a safe distance from the town before walking past it, but I felt the pangs of hunger again.

Hm, I wonder if they have any food in one of those buildings. I mean, I know it would technically be stealing, but it's not like I don't already have a criminal record here. Besides, I'm sure they won't miss one small meal's worth of food. Sneaking between the buildings, watching out for anyone who might be roaming around, a building caught my attention. A big sign was on the front of it that said "Saloon".

Saloon... those are like bars, right? Maybe they'll have some food in there. I went up to the door, only to see it was locked. Complete with a little "Closed" sign and everything. Alright, time for the old teleportation trick. I focused on the inside of the saloon and waved my arm to the right, miraculously appearing perfectly on the inside. Hooray, it worked for once!

Looking around in the dark saloon, I saw... nothing. It's way too dark in here.

"Alright," I thought. "Let's make some light."

I snapped my fingers a few times, making some sparks until I managed to create a small sustainable flame at the end of my index finger. I flinched reflexively, but I quickly realized I didn't feel a thing. Huh. Well, now I've got two things going for me! Looking around in the saloon, my attention was immediately brought to a multitude of shelves holding various bottles containing what I assume to be alcoholic drinks. Alright, I'll come back to that later. Looking around some more, I found an open doorway that led into a kitchen. 

Going through the kitchen and admiring the various cookwares, I saw yet another door, marked with a sign I could just barely make out to say "pantry". Jackpot! I went inside and was met with a large amount of various foods. The sort of foods that one would have in a household, actually. Boxed macaroni and cheese, canned tomato sauce, things like that. Shuddering at the thought of drinking tomato sauce, I suddenly noticed a bagged loaf of what looked like some kind of rye bread. Well, I suppose it's the most convenient thing to eat. I grabbed the loaf and closed the door.

While I was about to leave, the wall of drinks caught my attention again. Alright, let's see what they have. I set the bread down and looked at the drinks. Man, they've got a load of stuff here. Whiskey, rum, vodka, tequila, even a few wines.

"Huh," I thought. "I wonder what those taste like."

Having no memory of the taste of any of these, I decided to try a little sample of one out of simple curiosity. After some quick deciding, I opted for the whiskey on account of it looking like maple syrup. Hell, maybe it'll taste like it? I dunno. I flicked the cork off the bottle of whiskey and took a quick swig.

Alright, so, this is the part where I suddenly realize that was a bad idea. My immediate thought when the whiskey hit my tounge was "This tastes nothing like maple syrup". My second thought was "There is way too much of this in my mouth". My mouth was overcome with a horrible burning sensation as I quickly set the bottle down and painfully gulped down the entire mouthful of whiskey.

I quickly doubled over coughing, trying to overcome the horrible taste. Holy shit, I have never tasted something so bad in my life. Still coughing, I attempted to right myself only for the coughing to get worse. And then, I heard a voice from upstairs.

"Who's there?!"

Desperately trying to be quiet, I covered my mouth to no avail. In fact, the coughs got so bad that I ended up stumbling around out of lightheadedness. Not being able to tell where I was going, I backed up right into the wall of drinks, knocking a ton of them off the shelves around my feet.

"Shit!" I shouted, drinks still falling off the shelves and shattering on the ground below. I made an attempt to run, but in my hastiness I slipped in the mixture of disgusting drinks and fell to the ground.

See, this would have been relatively fine normally. Just get back up and try again, right? Wrong. See, one little aspect of this current pratfall occurred to me as everything seemed to go in slow motion. Right before I hit the ground, I noticed that my left hand, index finger still lit, was headed straight for the pool of alcohol readily lying on the floor.

You know when you get that feeling that the entire world's against you? Yeah, I can relate.

As I crashed to the ground, the drinks instantly lit as my hand made contact with them. The flames spread so fast that I had no time at all to react as I was suddenly surrounded in them. Through the flames, I noticed a stallion who was now downstairs holding a lantern. Yeah, lot of good that's going to do you now, buddy.

"Aaaagh!" he said, dropping his lantern. "A human! And he's using fire magic!"

Scrambling to my feet, I tried to shout to him that it was an accident, but to no avail as he ran off to somewhere else in the saloon. Alright, fuck that, I need to get out of here. I saw the flames spreading to various areas of the saloon, now also closing in on me as if I was their prey of some sort. Running through the flames as quickly as possible, I stopped to brush off several spots of myself that had caught fire. Looking around at the now smoke-filled saloon, I frantically looked around for an exit. Front door's still locked. Fantastic. 

Alright, I'm out of options here. Taking one last look behind me as the flames spread even more, I ran as fast as I could at one of the windows and dove through it, shattering it into pieces and giving me a good amount of cuts at the same time. I hit the ground outside just as some more flames erupted from the windows.

Too frantic to notice the multitude of glass shards now sticking out of me, I scooted away from the windows and considered everything that had just happened.

"Christ," I said. "I did not mean to do that."

...Wait, that's not the saloon. I looked behind me, to see the actual saloon in perfect condition, completely flame-less.

Wait, what?! I looked back at the building I just came out of, now seeing it was actually someone's house. Christ, now I feel even more guilty.

Hold on a minute. I... could have just teleported out, couldn't I?

Well, fuck me sideways. 

I guess that's the least of my current concerns, though. I quickly started trying to make some water spray out of my finger, in an attempt to try and save the pony's house. After getting nothing but a few small squirts, my hand was suddenly knocked back into my face as an absolutely huge stream of water sprayed from my palm.

Alright, okay, that's good! I attempted to control my arm, pointing it in through the window I jumped through. After about five seconds of struggling with this crazy garden hose of an arm, the stream ceased. Looking in through the broken window, I saw that every flame had been extinguished. Yeah! Hooray for George Trestale!

Drying my hand off, I turned around to head back towards Anthropia, only to see there were now a multitude of ponies surrounding me with rather angry looks on their faces.

I'd put some one-liner here about my misfortune, but I think I've used them all up by now.