While I wouldn't mind seeing Vinyl, I'm not sure what she'd be like during mating season. And Octavia doesn't look like she can handle herself much longer. Also, I don't particularly feel too comfortable being carried by other ponies. It just feels wrong, when I'm a pony also.
"On second thought, I think I'd rather stay here. You can go get her," I said to Octavia as she climbed in.
"Fair well then, Mr. Blaze," she responded as she drove away. She looked disappointed. I wasn't sure if it was from not being able to converse with me anymore, or that her plan to rape me failed. I bet the latter. I should go visit Twilight, I need mental simulation. She should be home, studying magic. That's all she ever does. I did my best to limp over to that tree she lives in. Why does she live in a tree anyway? Oh yeah, I don't give a fuck about living arrangements for cartoon ponies. Well, that solves that problem. Wait, I just thought of something. When I'm a pony, people call me Neon. When I'm human, people call me Dylan. I wonder just how many people know that Neon and Dylan are the same soul, different bodies.
Twilight's tree came into view as I walked past one of the nearby houses. It's like a game of fallout 3, I act all nice and stuff, then go into their house and rob them blind. Except I do the opposite. I act unfriendly, and don't steal from them. I really need to stop comparing myself to video games. I get bad ideas enough already. Like that one time I tried to generate a real life creeper. One hiss, and there went my prototype matter generator. And that other time I tried to make a diamond sword. The friggin thing broke in half after one swing. Did you know there's a lot more diamond than you think? Some company's been stockpiling them. And they're not even the hardest thing on Earth. My dick- I mean, hyperdiamond is. It's a real thing. Look it up. Although, to be fair, diamond is hardest natural mineral. But come on, who cares about the word natural in diamond advertisements? Oh yeah, and do you remember how to tell a real diamond from a fake? If so, get off my Internet and go back to that rock you live under. We can create fake diamonds in twenty hours that are indistinguishable from real diamonds. Gotta love science.
*BANG*
Ow, fuck! I slammed into Twilight's door, not paying any attention to the real world. I wobbled on my good hooves, and rubbed my head. I really need to stop doing that. The door squeaked open, and Spike stood between me and the wooden floor.
"Uh, you can use your hoof to knock," he greeted me with. I growled and glared at him and he dashed back inside. I walked inside and closed the door behind me. Twilight was at her desk in the main room, reading and scribbling down detailed notes. Her jumbled hair told me that she hadn't left the house yet. She tapped her chin as she thought about new magic spells. I examined the room, she seemed like she was hiding something. Her hair usually is straight and well-maintained, and there's no way she didn't notice me. I have to wonder. My eyes scanned the books, looking for things out of the ordinary.
"Twilight," I asked her, "I know you've noticed me. What are you hiding? These books on the shelf seem strange. You wouldn't mind if I looked through them?" I started walking over to the bookshelf.
"No! I mean, that wouldn't be a good idea," Twilight said in an attempt to get me to stop. I heard a slow breathing from behind the books. I pulled a think book off, revealing Colby's head.
"Uh, good to see you..." Colby said. Then a section of books, a few sections away from me, exploded into the air, with Pinkie Pie in the air. She landed with a bounce.
"Hiya! We haven't seen Colby since chapter 21! Oh yeah, and I love this story! Keep writing more, please!"
"Pinkie!" Twilight screamed, ignoring her story comment. "Where did you come from?!"
"Uh, I forgot," was her response. I put the book back, covering Colby's face, and said,
"Pinkie, I'm not in the mood for your games right now."
"But party! We should party!"
"Have you forgotten that there's very few ponies here?"
"There's more than one! And that's good enough!"
"You're bubbly extroverted nature is very antagonizing to me. Now, stop disobeying gravity and leave." Pinkie pie was standing upside down on the ceiling. Strange, I don't remember her doing that.
"Oops, I forgot all about gravity! Don't worry, I'll fix this. Oof!” She fell to the floor with a thump. “Now, party!” She pulled a party cannon out of nowhere, and started shooting party decorations all over Twilight’s house. Twilight seems busy with her studying, Spike might join Pinkie, I won’t. That makes it a party for two. A DJ station shot out of the cannon, and Pinkie Pie pulled Vinyl out from behind it. “I keep emergency DJs stashed all over the place in case of DJ emergency!” I’m not even going to attempt to understand how she did that. Loud music started playing, and Twilight left her desk to walk upstairs. I started to follow after her, until Pinkie Pie jumped in front of me
“Move, I don’t want to party,” I told her in the most serious tone I could use.
“Now now, no need to be a mister grumpy-face! Come on, let’s dance!” Pinkie shouted at me over the pounding music.
“In case you haven’t noticed, my leg is broken, I can’t dance.”
“Then we could have an eating contest and-”
“Go bother Spike, I don’t feel like partying.” I then limped around her, going up the stairs also. Pinkie followed after, until I slammed the door in her face. The music started to die out as I got farther from it. It seems that trees are very noise insulated. Or at least whatever this tree is made of. Looks like wood, but there’s such a small chance of it being the exact same as on Earth. I knocked on the door Twilight went though, and she said,
“Come in.” I pushed open the door and noticed that she was reading and taking notes, like before. She looked up at me. “Need anything?”
“Yeah, there was... somepony that woke me up in the middle of the night, while I was at Fluttershy’s. But, I don’t know who. It was just a shadow, I couldn’t see anything. He said I wasn’t a hero, and he was going to prove that. But, he was fair about it, he gave me a month to recover. All I could tell was that he had wings, and cold voice. Do you have any clue about this?” The color from Twilight’s face drained slightly.
“We need to report this to the princess. You could be in danger and-”
“I can handle myself. And I’ve seen too many movies to know that royal guards won’t be enough. I need you to train in magic, so I can defend myself.”
“You won’t be able to learn much in a month, and the royal guards-”
"Are just for show. Think about it, Celestia is one of the most powerful creatures in Equestria. If she can’t handle something, her guards can’t either. She doesn’t need guards to protect her. And try me, I’m a quick learner.”
“I’m not a teacher, I don’t know how to teach you anything more advanced than basic levitation.”
“Excuses excuses.”
“I guess I could at least try...”
“Good, how hard would magic body armor be?”
“It’s a high-level spell, it takes a lot of concentration to keep it perfectly around you.” So I did a failed version of that spell out of fear when fighting that manticore.
“What about self-healing?”
“Again, that’s a very advanced spell that’s very dangerous to use if you’re not a trained doctor.”
“Does emotion such as fear and anger affect the spells?”
“In cases of extreme emotion, each feeling has different effects on spells. Anger is the most dangerous and unpredictable. Fear powers up defensive spells, but at the cost of offensive spells. There are other effects of different emotions, but we should spend that time learning spells.”
“Agreed. What about teleportation?”
“That’s a very hard one to learn, it’s pretty far down on the magic tree. But, once you do learn it, you can do a lot with it.”
“Magic tree?”
“Yes, magic is separated in branches. The trunk would be levitation. Then it branches off in three ways: Physical, mental, and nature. There might be more, Celestia keeps the rest of the branches locked away, no one else but her and maybe Luna knows them. She says they're, 'too dangerous'. The most I could get out of her was that one of them is called, blood magic. Each new spell can unlock another branch. Let’s use teleportation as an example. There’s a spell that lets you teleport other objects, but to learn that spell, you need to learn how to teleport yourself first. Understand?”
“Yeah, this is very close to a lot of RPG games.”
“Are pee gee games?”
“It stands for role-playing games. It involves acting like someone else, doing some adventure. Nearly all of them have some form of upgrading the character. Some have the upgrade tiers, which are the the same thing as the magic tree.”
“Interesting. I don’t quite get it though.”
“It happens in a virtual world, in a video game.”
“Like the school children play on those arcade things?”
“Yes, but this is getting off-topic. I need to be able to protect myself. What’s a good spell for that?”
“It depends on your personalty. Which branch would you think you’d be best at?”
“I like to combine things like that if I can. What is a good spell that combines physical and mental?”
“Well, there’s the invisible spell, that fools your target into not seeing you. It’s an eye trick, but it also requires you change your skin a bit for the spell. Don’t worry, your skin goes back to normal when the spell ends. But, that’s an advanced spell. I need to look through my books for simpler spells. Try to meditate and bring out your magic aura.” I closed my eyes, and tried to focus on the magic that flows through my horn. I could feel a slight increase of heat in the air around my horn as I collected my magic.
Outside Twilight’s tree, on the roof of a nearby building. That strange pony from before is turned invisible, and is also spying on Neon. He can see other unicorns magical aura. Twilight gave off a large purple could of it, but Neon, his magic is... different. The mysterious pony couldn’t put his hoof on how his magic was different. It wasn’t even that powerful, just not like anything he’d ever encountered before.
“What exactly are you...” The strange pony said to himself. “This could go bad if I don’t do something sooner.” He then became visible again, and teleported in a flash of black and blue.