I took advantage of my two-day free pass from schoolwork and found Miss Verdigris again. She had the SBS Omnibus sent down. I got much farther, and made copious notes before I again fell asleep in the mid-afternoon on my notebook.
Don't get the impression that I was bored. Far from it. If you've ever had the good fortune to attend a concert of contemplative music sung by a great choir or played on a resonant pipe organ, like the Great Lion Organ in Baltimare, you'd know what I mean. The music can resonate in your brain, massage your mind, and control your internal rhythms, inducing a state of bliss. If it catches you right, your eyelids droop and you might find yourself asleep in a musical realm—only to be woken drooling with a crick in your neck.
So it was with me and these mathematics. The very practice of solving and calculating using it made certain magical thought somehow smoother, providing a sense of predestination, a feeling that something started would finish because it had to do so. Better put, like the beginning of a mathematical sequence implying the end because each coexisted in both time and space.
Thus, I fell asleep contemplating what an overlay of a Barthemule Omega Transform might do to a force spell. Change its shape?
The gray library tech pony shook me awake as he took away the book.
I was walking along a red-brick path through a university courtyard, passing by a circle of white and mauve rose beds surrounding a weeping willow—humming, thinking how the scent of roses and certain mathematical functions could be considered sweet—when I heard a voice say, "So this is where you were hiding."
I stopped. "Sunset Shimmer. So very nice to see you."
"You've been avoiding me."
"Your father wrote me an excuse so I could take two days off and rest."
"Rest is walking around the university? Rest means staying home in bed!" Her fiery mane seemed oddly as if it were in flames, ruffled as it was by the breeze that rustled the weeping willow.
"Fine. You found me. What do you want?"
"You said you would teach me how you cast spells so quickly. I'd be happy to take you to dinner and—"
"You said I would teach you how I cast spells so quickly. It was actually your father who told you to teach me how to spell cancel." By the set of her jaw and the tension in her muscles, I could see she was clearly about to bristle, and I wasn't really angry with her. I had a job to take care of tonight, but was in no hurry. "Oh, all right."
Her wary smile was quick. "The Hey Burger is—"
"Here. Now," I said, looking to assure that most of the ponies passing between buildings were paying attention to nothing but their books or their path. I began working up some approximations that I could transform into various spells that might affect the three-dimensional space safely not occupied by any object in the courtyard. "Observe me carefully for a few moments, trying to sense my magic. When you think you have some sense of what I'm doing—" I looked behind me to assure no buildings or ponies were in the line behind me drawn between her and me. "—I want you to hit me with your strongest force spell."
"I— What?" She blinked, then narrowed her green eyes. "That wouldn't be fair." She clearly equivocated, though I wasn't sure why.
The longer she took, the better my approximations became. "Oh, come on, Shimmer. I bet that purple runt wouldn't hesitate—"
Miss Prickly's face barely had time to twist into a rage before she fired a bolt at me. Maybe two seconds prep. Despite my transforms, I nevertheless was able to sense her magic blossom. In shock, I didn't even move.
Her spell hit me full on in the chest.
I felt over giggling as a bizarre pulsing electrical field pulsed and wheezed around me, tickling every inch of my body almost unbearably. It lasted almost ten seconds and left me gasping. I often sneered when I talked about ponies using namby-pamby spells, spells all about giggles and rainbows. Her spell incapacitated me for those ten seconds as completely as a stun spell might have; had it gone longer, I might have peed myself.
It wasn't a force spell.
Gasping, I looked at her where I lay and asked, "You can't do a force spell?"
"Ugh!" She stomped her fore-hooves, repeatedly.
"Did you at least observe me—?"
"Observe this!" she yelled, ripping a brick from the walkway and throwing it.
Not a force spell, but it did the trick. Shot with adrenaline—my drug of choice—my combat reflexes kicked in. I triggered three teleport spells, dodging the brick by popping to my left, then half a block behind her, and finally—to my chagrin—above her. Gravity did the rest.
We tumbled in a pile of hooves and manes, with Sunset Shimmer screaming incoherently as she bucked me off her. I scrambled up as every nearby university student began trotting over. Yeah, nopony could teleport as quickly as I had. Nopony measured my inaccurate targeting because, well, they didn't know it was inaccurate.
"Look," I said, pointing my nose at the gathering audience, many of whom looking like they recognized her. "I'll explain as we walk."
After we turned a few corners around the Alchemistry Building, heading for Castle Walk Boulevard, she blurted, "Celestia won't teach me, and I've read every book I can get on the subject! I don't get it. I can't do a force spell."
"Can you levitate?"
Eye-roll. "Of course—"
"Same basic spell, just concentrated and directed through the air at a point."
She huffed. "Easy for you to say. I mean— I'm sorry, it's just... embarrassing."
I chuckled. "Ask me to do a ward or a cantrip."
"Perhaps you could teach me—"
I trotted faster. "Not today. I've got work to do tonight."
"What?"
"Nosey posey."
"No, really. Maybe I could help."
"Not possible." I broke into a canter. I looked at her and she looked eager. "Were you observing me before like I asked? No—? Are you observing my magic now?"
"I—"
I didn't wait. I popped back to the willow courtyard because I knew the exact range and vector and could easily visualize it down to the waving willow branches and the smell of the perfusion of roses. Pastel ponies shrieked and bolted through the roses before I next popped forward to the sidewalk I had observed near Castle Walk Street. It worked; by sheer luck, I didn't materialize onto anypony despite there being a crowd that hadn't been there moments ago. The sound of the busy thoroughfare masked my exit pop to all but the few startled ponies I found myself between. I galloped rapidly from view, laughing as a fancy-dressed aristocratic pony in yellow frills and salary-ponies in their blue business suits alike gaped at my retreating sweaty blank flank.