Chapter Nine
Hook, Line,...
Lunch was actually a very pleasant thing. You had to hand it to the plucky dragon. He had a knack for cooking. The sandwiches had been grilled panini style with the cheese melted to gooey perfection. The side of sauteed leeks in a rosemary butter was equally delicious. Sitting in the kitchen basking in the warmth of sunlight and a full belly, you spent awhile bringing Spike up to speed with your abbreviated story up to this point. The dragon seemed fascinated by the idea of traveling to other worlds, and urged you to recount 'just one more' of your travels time and again.
It was nice in a way, as you had long lost the romance of space travel. In your line of work, traveling from world to world had become nothing more than a job. Seeing genuine excitement well up in the youth's face was a nice change, and you soon found yourself throwing every possible embellishment into your 'adventurous tales'.
"So you just dropped out of the sky into the middle of the Everfree Forest?" Spike had moved to the sink to begin cleaning the tableware from your meal.
"As far as I can figure, yeah. Pretty lame ending to my greatest journey ever, huh?" Not exactly the workings of great sci-fi, you admit to yourself while handing the young dragon your cleared plate.
From her place at the table, Twilight joins in after several minutes of silence. "Well, it's not what I would consider an ending, really."
"Oh?" Awfully optimistic of the unicorn in your opinion.
After a moment, she explains. "Well, I mean you just got here a few days ago, right? If you ask me it seems like your adventure here is just beginning." You can't help but return the warm smile that is once again perched across the mare's face.
"Yeah, when you put it that way it does seem that way, I suppose you're right." A thought suddenly comes to mind. "Wait, so you mean you're not anxious to have me out of your hair as soon as possible?"
She looks at you as if the answer were painfully obvious. "The scientist in me would never shirk a chance like this to learn so much of a completely alien society. Besides, as long as you make yourself useful around here I don't see your presence as much of an inconvenience."
"Make myself useful? And how exactly would you propose I go about doing that?" you ask with open amusement.
With a squeak, the water faucet is turned off and Spike jumps down from his place at the sink. "You know what guys? As fascinating as your little discussion is, I actually have someplace to be this afternoon, so, if you'll excuse me?" You can practically see the sarcasm as it comes pouring off Twilight's assistant in torrents.
"Someplace to be?" She sends him a look that practically yells 'explain yourself'. "Why had I not heard of this?"
Sighing heavily, Spike stomps over the table grabbing an oatmeal cookie from the jar resting at its center. "Jeez, lighten up Twi! Can't a guy get out and unwind every once in awhile?" He takes a hearty bite as if doing so would bolster his position. "I was just gonna' go hang out with Feather Weight and the guys down at the lake today. Snips said he had some awesome new Wonderbolts cards!"
"The lake? So that means it's just going to be the two of us here all day today?" She looks at you from the corner of her eye. "Alone?"
"Jeez Twilight, you really do need to relax a little every once in awhile. Our new friend here seems like a pretty cool dude. I mean, how bad could he be? He has hands for crying out loud! Hands!" Spike wrings his own clawed hands about in a surprisingly human gesture.
"Spike's right, Twi! I won't bite! Hard." You can't help yourself with these cheesy lines sometimes. "Besides, this will give us the perfect opportunity to start going over my engineering suit like I promised." Crossing your arms, you adopt a look of disbelief. "Are you saying you'd pass up a chance at unraveling the secrets of advanced, alien technology just because you were afraid to be alone for an afternoon with little ol' me?"
"I'm not afraid!" She sits up straight, puffing out her chest in an adorable show of bravado. "Why would I be afraid...of...you?"
You offer her a decidedly toothy grin and she visibly gulps at the display.
"Hah, I like the human already, Twi! Finally someone around here with my kind of humor," Spike offers with a hearty chuckle. "Anyway, I'm heading out now. I'll leave you to your 'unraveling of secrets', or whatever you pass as fun these days."
"Hey, I'm fun! I'm so fun you don't even know!" She stamps her hoof in bemusement.
Spike pauses as he's just about to close the front door behind him, a look of obvious amusement smugly plastered to his scaly face. "Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that, Twi." With that, the diminutive dragon closes the door behind him, his laughter trailing away from the house and down the road.
"I do so know how to have fun! What does he know anyways? What do dragons know about having fun?!" Twilight is at this point pacing round and round the entryway, having seemingly completely forgotten about you in her anger.
Decidedly to interrupt her little pep talk, you sneak up behind your host with as much stealth as you can muster and stoop down to her level. "So, you're going to show me some of your patented fun today?"
"Ah!" she yelps loudly. "Jeez I really wish you wouldn't sneak up on me like that!"
You almost fall to the ground laughing. "Sorry, but I just wouldn't have felt right wasting an opportunity like that. I'm sure you understand."
"...Uh, right, well..." She is pawing nervously at the ground avoiding eye contact.
"Is something wrong, Twilight?" you ask, climbing back to your feet.
No response, but she's doing an excellent impression of a tomato.
You run a hair through your hair while sighing loudly. "Maybe Spike was right about you needing to learn a thing or two about fun."
"W..What? No! I don't" She quickly snaps out of her stupor at the mention of her assistant.
"Would you like me to show you my own personal brand of fun?"
"Well, m..maybe I could use some pointers here and there," she admits dragging her hoof in pathetic little circles.
"I'll remember that for later," you begin, "but for the time being how about I give you that diagnostic run through as promised?"
Her lack of a loud outburst isn't exactly convincing you that she's still looking forward to your suit's tech run down.
"You know I really thought you'd somehow be a little more excited about this. We could always start the evening off with something else if that isn't fun enough for you. In fact," with a grin you place your index finger against your bottom lip, "I'm not sure you're aware, but you've been giving me all kinds of fun ideas we could try out instead."
"...I am excited. You just caught me off guard a little." For a few moments she does nothing but shuffle about nervously. "What did you mean by that?"
"Care to be a little more specific?" you ask, eyebrow raised in question.
"Actually, never mind. It was nothing important."
"If you insist. Well anyways, if you'd like we can get started with that demo now. I think down in the lab would probably be best, don't you agree?"
"Right!" Your happy to see her energy seems to be back in full force. "You can head down in a few minutes. I need to make sure my machines are properly calibrated to read energy output levels and check for any fluctuations in the sub aether magic stream."
"Uh huh. Guess I'd better let you get to it then." You get the feeling that no length of explanation would allow you to wrap your head around that one.
"I'll give a shout when I'm ready for you!" she yells to you as she happily trots down the stairs to the basement below.
You shake your head and chuckle to yourself. "She's pretty cute when she's excited."
"Did you say something?" you hear Twilight shout back up at you.
"Nope not this guy!" Entertaining as always, this one.
-----
"Do you mind holding the suit up with your stasis field?" you ask, pulling your neatly arranged garb from the duffel bag Twlight had provided for your use.
"How many times do I have to tell you my magic isn't a 'stasis field'? Magic is magic, pure and simple. Can't you humans remember anything?" You can tell she's not actually mad. The back and forth comes across more as friendly ribbing.
"Simple, says the expert on magic."
"I'm no expert. I'm still learning after all."
"I think you're selling yourself short on that. Besides, even the grand master of an art continues to learn and improve every day. I've heard some people who consider the concept as 'living' or some other such nonsense."
"Ha hah. Very funny laughing boy. Now if you're done getting all philosophical on me, do you mind kicking off this little exhibition?"
"Why certainly my lady!"
Twilight rolls her eyes at your antics and offers an amused smirk.
"Remember to keep hooves and horns inside the ride at all times, no flash photography, and please hold all questions 'till the end!"
She's staring at you as though she almost can't believe what you've just said. "I'm starting to think Pinkie Pie is more to the point than you."
"Tough crowd tonight." You're hamming it up, but that's part of the fun. "Well I suppose it'd be best to start from the top, right?" You move to stand beside your suit as it gently sways in within the confines of Twilight's magical veil.
"The name of the game here is form and function. This suit was designed to act as a self contained environment. Mainly for working in the freezing vacuum of space. The visor is a holographic heads up display with full retinal integration contained within a four millimeter matrix of graphene. All wavelengths of light are filtered and automatically modulated to yield optimal viewing of the environment. The helmet also contains the subspace communications transceiver and acts as a master to the suits other sub systems.
The rest of the suit is constructed of graphene woven into a form fitting fabric that provides enough surface tension to counteract the lack of an atmosphere in outer space. The stuff is pretty much the toughest stuff going. Plus it's conductivity is perfect for integrated circuitry systems. In fact, all told, this thing has over 1,700 miles of circuits printed in it.
The integrated re breather and O2 scrubbing systems allow me a solid five minutes outside with no connectivity to the ship. That little fact makes me feel a whole hell of a lot better when I had to work on a gate's exterior systems. Plus, it's completely impervious to micro meteors!
Of course, all this technology doesn't come cheap. I'd say that this baby could probably buy a brand new house for every pony living here in town. Man, I really wish I could see the looks on their bastard faces now that they realize they won't be getting the safety deposit back for this baby!"
As you had requested, Twilight hadn't uttered a single peep throughout your explanation. "Wow. I mean, I don't even know where to begin! I never even dreamed that such technology was possible! Walking and working in space? Being out there amongst the stars and comets? Oh, it's just incredible! It must be so beautiful!"
Twilight had been steadily approaching you, her excitement growing, losing herself in the rush of knowledge.
She has literally begun to glow slightly at this point. The thrill affecting the control over her magic. The display is, in your opinion, far more beautiful than any star scape you've ever seen. "You have no idea," you murmur to the mare before you.
"You're right, I can't even imagine! I'm sure my telescope doesn't do it justice! Do you think you could show me pictures or maybe a videOh!"
You reach out and grasp her face gently within your palms, catching the unicorn completely by surprise.
"I wasn't talking about the cosmos just then, Twi."
On impulse, you begin rubbing your thumbs through the soft fur of her cheeks, teasing up along the ridges of her sensitive ears.
"W..what do you mean?" Her speech is becoming disjointed. "I don't understand..."
"I think you do." She somehow manages to blush an even darker shade.
You move your face closer to hers, grinning while making sure to draw attention to your prominent canines. After a moment, your captive notices and it's as though all other things have taken a backseat to your pearly whites.
"You know Twi, I've been meaning to ask you something for a few days now."
At her continued glazed expression, you continue.
"I can't help but notice that there seems to be something about me you can't quite resist. Is that an accurate assumption?"
She nods slowly but otherwise remains motionless.
"Great! Now, could you do me a favor and point to what ails you most?"
Twilight hesitantly brings her fore hoof up and shakily points to the edge of your mouth, directly at your incisors.
Before she can lower it, you grab her extended hoof and bring it to rest flush with your displayed teeth.
The effect is immediate. You can practically feel her pulse as it suddenly soars off into the heavens leaving Twilight in a panting puddle. It's almost as though the contact had let loose a powerful bolt of electricity throughout the unicorns's being. You decide it's time to quit playing games.
Moving forward, you simultaneously release her hoof and reestablish your former ministrations on your companion's velvety ears, while also bringing the quivering girl's face within a mere inch of your own. She's close enough that you can feel her soft pants against your lips, her eyes moving in quick succession from yours, down to the teeth below.
"Are you okay with this, Twi? I'm not making you nervous am I?"
"N..no I'm f..fine."
"You know, I'm not entirely convinced by that. I think a show of confidence may be in order."
"W..hat do you mean by th.."
She doesn't get the chance to finish as your lips find themselves pressed firmly against her own. You feel her body tense up from the shock, but that passes quickly, and you find yourself needing to more or less hold her up from collapsing onto the floor.
Grinning into the kiss, you exhale huskily, running the tip of your tongue against the smooth edges of her lips, an action which elicits a shuddering exhalation from the purple pony. If her heart beat had been wild earlier, it's quite literally now frantic within her chest.
Deciding that you'd rather not risk giving the poor girl heart failure, you pull back from the kiss, amused to see Twilight frozen there with her lips still twitching slightly where you had left them. Her eyes are still closed, and you can't help but get the impression that her brain may have fried itself.
A solid twenty seconds go by before you can hold your amusement no longer.
"Ahem," you clear your throat dramatically, pulling Twilight from her waking coma.
"So what do you think? Can I interest the lady in some more of my special brand of fun?"
When she hasn't responded several moments later, you actually do start fearing permanent damage.
"Hello? Twilight anybody home?" You begin waving your hands back and forth in front of the catatonic mare's face with seemingly no response.
"Crap, I think I may have actually broken he.." but you don't have a chance to even finish your thought before a purple blur has tackled you to the ground in a heap. Looking up through a single squinted eye, you realize the tables have been turned as Twilight is now straddling your chest with a fore hoof on either side of your face. She has a look on her face that might be unsettling under other circumstances.
"You know, I don't think I quite caught all of that the first time." She bends her fore-hooves, leaning down until your chests are nearly touching. "In fact, I think I might need to take notes this time." She accents her sentence by moving to within striking distance. "For science of course." She pounces.