//------------------------------// // Chapter 7 (Lecture Time) // Story: Moving Day // by Timothy48 //------------------------------// Chapter 7 It was still dark out when Blueblood, Twilight, Lyra, and Ash Fall trotted back into the pony’s base camp at Sweet Apple Acres. Both Twilight and Lyra were showing signs of tiredness, as evident by their drooping eyelids and shambling gait, and while Prince Blueblood and Ranger Ash Fall hid it better than the mares, they were also beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Coming to a stop outside of one of the barns that had been commandeered as a temporary command post, much to the Apple family’s irritation, Blueblood took a deep breath, and using his magic, straightened his tie and mane before striding confidently inside, the others following close behind. Inside, it was controlled chaos, with ponies talking, giving, and receiving orders, and rushing around to complete tasks unknown. Through it all, Blueblood strode towards the center of it, a single table with a map spread out over it, and several ponies clustered around it talking. “...And you are sure that this report is accurate?” asked Lieutenant Palisade. The guard he was talking to nodded and replied crisply, saying, “Yes sir, as far as we can tell, the hoomun is still inside the house.” “Has anypony looked inside any of the other buildings yet?” The guard shook his head in reply. “No sir, it was felt by the NCO’s that it was too risky to perform a night recon.” Palisade nodded absently, before dismissing the guard with a distracted wave of his hoof, as his attention was now solely focused on the map in front of him. In fact, so lost in thought was he that he didn’t notice the return of Prince Blueblood until said prince noisily cleared his throat behind him. Blinking tired eyes, Palisade turned around to see who wanted his attention now, but when he saw Blueblood standing behind him, his eyes shot wide open and he came to attention. “Forgive me, Your Grace, I didn’t realize that you had returned yet! Was your mission successful, sir?” Blueblood absently nodded in reply, his eyes focused on the map in front of him. It was a local map of Ponyville and the surrounding area, and in particular, this map had been recently updated to include the human’s newly appeared homestead as well. Turning away from the map, Blueblood motioned to Lyra with a hoof and said, “Lieutenant Palisade, may I introduce to you, Ms. Lyra Heartstrings, the pony who will be helping us resolve this little issue with, hopefully, minimal fuss.” Palisade inclined his head respectfully, “Ma’am.” Lyra giggled and gave a friendly wave of her hoof. Blueblood had meanwhile found himself a chair and settled himself, before clearing his throat to regain everyone’s attention. “Now that we are all here, I’d like to get started with our discussion on how to resolve this problem. So if you all could take a seat, we’ll get started.” Several minutes later saw everypony seated around the map table. Blueblood, seeing everyone was as ready as they were going to be decided to get the ball rolling. “Now that everyone is here and ready, let’s get started.” Turning to address Palisade, who was seated to his left, he asked, “Lieutenant, can you fill us in with the details of what has been happening since we left? We’ve already given Ms. Heartstrings a basic rundown of what occurred between the time the human showed up yesterday, and the time we left to acquire her services.” Palisade gave Blueblood a confused look, “Human?” “Yes, human,” replied Blueblood, “apparently the original word was mistranslated.” A look of sudden comprehension blossomed on Palisade’s face, “Oh! Well, alright then, as far as we know the human is still inside its home.” “Excellent,” replied Blueblood, a pleased smile on his face, “Were there any other new developments since we’ve been gone?” Palisade shook his head, “No sir, there hasn’t.” “I see.” Turning to Lyra, Blueblood continued, “Now, Ms. Heartstrings, we did not have much time earlier to go over what you know about humans, and seeing as we are all here, would you kindly inform us of what you know?” Lyra gave a happy smile and nod, “Sure thing, Your Grace!” Standing up, she quickly trotted over to a nearby chalkboard, and, grabbing it with her magic, pulled it over in front of the table. Levitating up a piece of chalk, Lyra began to write, all previous signs of tiredness dissipating as she began. “Now, I know that I went over a couple of things with Prince Blueblood, Twilight, and Ranger Fall on the way over, but for the sake of the new ponies, I’ll just go ahead and start at the beginning. Now, first of all, humans are very intelligent, easily as intelligent as ponies, and maybe even smarter in some areas.” “I’m sensing a but in there,” commented Blueblood dryly. Lyra gave a happy nod in return, much like a teacher would with a clever foal who quickly figured out a problem on the board. “Very observant of you, Your Grace!” Turning back to the board, she continued writing and speaking, “Now, while humans are very intelligent, according to the records, they appeared to have difficulty making friends with other members of their own species, let alone other species entirely. The records characterized humans as seemingly distant, mistrustful, and aloof from those that they did not consider their friends, which were very few in general.” “So what are you saying here?” asked Blueblood patiently. Lyra paused for a moment to collect her thoughts before saying, “I guess what I’m saying is that, humans didn’t tend to have a very large circle of friends. In most cases, humans seemed to consider friendship as little more than a convenient, and temporary, condition. Often times, it was observed that humans would casually discard these relationships after they had served their purpose.” “That’s terrible!” cried Twilight, horrified at the thought of someone so casually tossing aside their friendship like a used juice box, “Friendships shouldn’t be something that one just tosses away like that!” Lyra gave a shrug, “Well, from a pony’s perspective I suppose that would be true, however, from a human perspective I suppose it was just what it was.” “So what does this mean in regards to how we should approach this human?” inquired Blueblood. Lyra rubbed the back of her neck, an unsure look on her face. “I’m...not entirely sure. In our case, it probably means that it’s going to very hard to gain this human's full trust. That in human culture is something more valuable than gold or precious gems. Which I guess kind of explains how odd human friendships seem to be to us.” “What do you mean?” asked Palisade curiously. Lyra began pacing back and forth in front of the blackboard as she slipped fully into lecture mode. “Well, simply put, we ponies are fairly trusting of others in general, or at least other ponies, thus we tend to make friends easily. However, with humans, it’s the opposite. Because they are mistrustful of those who they are not familiar with, building friendships is often times more difficult. Therefore, when a human finally does earn the full trust of another, that makes it all the more special, and thus something worth keeping, and fighting for.” A stray thought suddenly struck her as she was pacing in front of the board, and turning to fully look at the other ponies, Lyra said, “You know, I’m suddenly reminded of a small saying in an old record that I read, about humans and friendship.” “What did it say?” asked Palisade curiously. Lyra scrunched up her face as she tried to remember the exact words, but in the end she couldn’t fully recall and said, “I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was something like, ‘The pony who secures a human's true friendship is very blessed indeed, but the pony who betrays that friendship shall be cursed, and pay a price so very steep.’ Or something to that effect anyways. I’m not one-hundred percent sure.” “I think we get the general idea,” replied Blueblood dryly, “In any case, do you think that we will have to worry about anything this human can do, does it possess dangerous abilities?” Lyra shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by ‘dangerous abilities’. Humans, by their nature, are creatures that were capable of great acts of kindness, but also great acts of cruelty, especially against those who they felt wronged them in some way. Moreover, there were several records that indicated that humans fought with, and against ponies on several occasions, however, they’re incomplete, so I can’t really tell you what happened to cause these wars or how well the humans did in relation to ponies on the battlefield.” “So what you are saying is that you have no idea what physical or magical abilities this human may have?” asked Palisade, a worried look quickly forming on his face at the thought of having to fight a human whose abilities he had no knowledge of. Lyra shook her head. “Not quite. While the records are incomplete, they do provide some indicators of what these ancient humans were capable of.” “Such as?” asked Blueblood when Lyra failed to continue quickly enough for him. Lyra gave another shrug, replying, “Like I said, the records were hopelessly incomplete, some went into great detail about certain aspects of humans, such as their intelligence, while others just provided vague generalities about their physical abilities. As of right now, I can only really give you three definitive traits that these humans possessed in these records. The first,” she paused for a moment to turn around and write her thoughts down on the board, “was that they had excellent stamina. Ancient pony scholars seemed to believe that they had better stamina than earth ponies. Though, I should make mention that these Earth Ponies were both smaller and weaker than modern day earth ponies, so this trait might be less evident today.” “Fascinating,” mumbled Twilight as she furiously copied down Lyra’s words on parchment before looking back up and asking, “did the records say how much stamina these humans had and how far they could go before needing to stop and rest?” Lyra shook her head sadly. “No, unfortunately, they did not,” when she saw Twilight's disappointed look, she gave the other mare a sympathetic smile and continued saying, “yeah, I was real disappointed too when I found that there was no more information on it either, but I digress.” Turning back to the board, she quickly wrote down the second trait. “The second trait should be fairly obvious because of their well-developed hands, but humans are extremely adept at manipulating things in their environment and their craftsponyship was exceedingly fine. The ancient scholars indicated that a human’s hand was superior to a unicorn’s telekinesis when it came to fine manipulation and control." Lyra paused once more in her lecture to organize her final thoughts. However, the silence was quickly filled in by the mumblings and quill scratchings of Twilight, who by this point was completely hidden from view behind her parchment, which had grown considerably longer in the few minutes that Lyra had been talking. Blinking at the somewhat comical sight of seeing a floating piece of parchment obscuring her friend from view, with only the tip of a furiously wiggling quill jutting up from behind it, Lyra turned her attention back to the board. “So that brings us to the final commonly attributed characteristic that I could find, and that was that humans possessed a rudimentary form of magic.” Twilight’s quill came to a screeching halt, and she slowly lowered her parchment so that she could look at Lyra. Though, Lyra wished that she had kept the parchment up, as Twilight’s face had contorted into a creepy looking expression, with a smile that was just a little too wide, and too excited looking for her tastes, like she was high on sugar or something. “Did you say that they had magic?” asked Twilight giddily. Lyra gave a hesitant nod, wondering if Twilight was going to be okay, especially when she saw her friend begin to vibrate in place with excitement, much like a certain pink party pony that she knew. Glancing over at Blueblood, and Palisade, Lyra could see that Palisade was equally...concerned by Twilight’s reaction, while Blueblood simply rolled his eyes and sighed, before motioning for Lyra to continue. Swallowing, Lyra turned her attention back to the board and hesitantly continued. "R-right, well as I was saying,” she flinched slightly when she heard Twilight resume writing, though it sounded as if Twilight had doubled her writing speed. Giving herself a mental shake, Lyra continued on, “humans possessed a rudimentary form of magic, and from what I’ve been able to glean, their magic was similar in nature to that of earth ponies and pegasi, in that, because they didn’t have a focal point, i.e. a horn, their magic was generally diffused through their whole bodies. Though, a unicorn researcher by the name of Sharp Wit, hypothesized that humans could focus their magic like a unicorn's to cast spells if they had a means to channel it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to verify if his assumptions were true or not.” Twilight’s quill scratching has grown louder, as had her mumblings, which seemed to keep including the words, “fascinating”, and “this is so exciting” over and over again. Blueblood cleared his throat to bring Lyra’s attention back to him as he asked, “So this human is able to cast magic?” “Your guess is as good as mine,” replied Lyra with yet another shrug, “As I said, most of these records are incomplete and only referred to humans that lived in our world at that time. With this human? Anything might be possible, in fact, for all we know, it might not even be a human in the first place.” “Right,” said Blueblood tiredly as he massaged his temple with a hoof in an attempt to quell a rising headache. “Well, is there anything else that you can think of that can help us when we make formal contact with it, Ms. Heartstring?” Lyra set her chalk piece down and quietly rubbed her chin in thought. Finally, after several moments she said, “Well after what happened yesterday, I doubt you’ll just be able to waltz right up to its front door and without issue.” “Thank you for pointing out the obvious, Ms. Heartstrings,” replied Blueblood, an unamused look on his face. Pretending not to notice his sarcastic response, Lyra continued on saying, “Probably the easiest way to defuse the situation would be to simply back off and to offer an apology in someway. Though if the human is hostile, it might not be a bad idea to have ponies who are capable of defending themselves along for protection.” *“How do you think we should approach this then if we went with this option?” asked Blueblood. “Well, first, we have to show that we mean it no harm,” replied Lyra simply. “Yes, but how would we do that?” Lyra opened her mouth to respond, but found that she didn’t actually know the best way to show the human that they didn’t want trouble. So, she pulled up a nearby stool with her magic and sat down, a thoughtful frown creasing her muzzle, as she tried to figure out a way to do exactly that. Everypony else, seeing that Lyra didn’t know what to do either, also adopted thoughtful looks to one degree or another as they too tried to figure something out. Finally, after several minutes, Twilight jumped up exclaiming, “I’ve got!” Startled, Palisade fell out of his chair, while the others merely gave a start. “Got what?” asked Lyra, equal parts curious and hopeful. Striding from her seat to the chalkboard, Twilight gave an inquiring look at Lyra, who, upon realizing what she wanted to do, gave a ‘go ahead motion’ with her hoof. Seeing that she had permission, Twilight quickly wiped the board clean and began writing. “Now, we know that approaching the human physically would be difficult at best, and dangerous at worst. Especially seeing as how we don’t know what it has inside its home or to what degree it feels threatened by us. So, what if we built a large sign saying that we’re sorry, and that yesterday was just a big misunderstanding, and that we just want to talk with it? That way we can show that we want to talk, without having to risk anypony getting too close initially!” Blueblood stroked his chin thoughtfully, and said, “Well...I guess that’s one way. What do you think Ranger Fall?” Ranger Fall twitched his wings in the pegasi equivalent of a shrug, and said, “Well it’s either this or we go in their after it, and I’d rather not risk pony lives doing that if I don’t have to, so I suppose we can try it out and see if it works; if not, then at least we tried.” “But how will we know if the human even sees the sign?” asked Palisade. “Simple, we put it out front, next to the road and we make it so that it can’t miss it; after that, I suppose we just wait and see what it does. Oh!” she said, a sudden thought hitting her, “I can go and grab my telescope from the library and we can use that to observe the house from a discreet distance for any signs that it’s moving around inside.” “Fine, but what if it does miss it? Then what do we do, and furthermore, what if it can’t read Equestrian, what then?” asked Blueblood, a bit of impatience coloring his voice. “Well, as for the first part of your question, if the human doesn’t respond to the sign, then I suppose we can get a couple of ponies to go up to the house and knock on the front door,” said Lyra simply. “As for the second part, we might try a pictograph in conjunction with the words just in case it can’t read our language.” “That’s all well and good ladies, but I think you’re forgetting something,” interjected Palisade suddenly. “What’s that?” asked Lyra confused. Palisade sighed, and not liking what he was about to bring up hesitantly said, “That the human may, in fact, turn out to be hostile, and that we’ll have to find a way to deal with it.” Both Blueblood and Ash nodded in grim agreement, their faces showing their unhappiness at the thought. Twilight and Lyra each winced at the unpleasant turn the conversation had suddenly taken. “A-are you sure we need to discuss this?” asked Lyra hesitantly, her discomfort obvious to all present. “As much as I’d rather not, I’m afraid we must,” replied Blueblood somberly, “if our initial efforts fail we’ll need to at least have some kind of backup plan ready to go.” “So then what would you suggest we do, if the peaceful approach doesn’t work?” asked Lyra, a scowl darkening her face. “Well, I’d think we should attempt to subdue it through non-harmful means, a sleep spell, for instance, failing that, we’d naturally have to move on to more...violent methods.” Lyra’s face darkened further, the hairs on her neck bristling at the casual way in which Blueblood discussed the potential harming of another being that had so far proven not a threat, even if it was just a hypothetical scenario. Twilight, seeing her friend’s anger, quickly stepped over to her and laid a calming hoof across her withers, and said, “Please Lyra, calm down, I don’t like the idea any more than you do, but...His Grace has a point, if the human does turn out to be dangerous, we wouldn’t want ponies getting hurt because we didn’t think of a fall back plan ahead of time.” Lyra took a deep breath, and held it for a moment, before letting it out in an explosive snort. Turning away from Blueblood and the others, she said, “I’m going to go and wait outside, let me know when you’re done,” and with that, she quickly trotted out of the room. Blueblood feeling a headache coming on, massaged a temple with his hoof and said, “Well, that could have gone better, but in any case,” he paused, and turned his full attention to Twilight, “Ms. Sparkle, we’ll do the sign first and see what happens; since this is your idea, I’ll leave this in your capable hooves. While you are doing that, Lieutenant Palisade, Ranger Ash Fall, and myself will go ahead and formulate a contingency plan or two in case things go south, though I pray that they don’t.” Twilight gave a squee in happiness, and feeling herself relax slightly, quickly ran out of the barn, a quill and parchment suddenly popping into being and floating along in her wake as she quickly began organizing her list, as she quickly set off to complete her mission, leaving the three stallions behind in the command post, both Palisade and Ash Fall looked confused, while Blueblood just looked tired. ~oOo~ “I must say Ms. Sparkle, I am somewhat impressed,” remarked Blueblood several hours later, upon seeing the hastily erected sign outside the human’s property. It was at least two stories tall, and large enough to write, ‘We’re sorry, can we talk?’ on it in large bold letters, with a pair of pictures underneath that showed several ponies offering gifts to the human, and another one showing the human and pony exchanging hoof bumps, that would, hopefully, be visible from the house. “Why thank you, Your Grace! I’m glad it meets your approval! I must say though, that I couldn’t have done it without the help of Applejack and Big Macintosh; without them being willing to lend us the materials, and provide the necessary labor and building expertise, we wouldn’t have been able to get it done so quickly!” exclaimed Twilight happily. “I see, well then, thank you very much then for your help Ms. Applejack, and Mr. Macintosh,” said Blueblood, giving a slight bow of his head in thanks to the two Apple siblings who were just now finishing putting away their tools. Hitching himself up to the cart, Big Mac gave a silent nod in return and quietly headed home, Applejack also gave a nod, but as she passed by the Prince, she hoofed him a piece of paper. Looking down at it in confusion, he asked, “What’s this?” “Yer bill,”replied Applejack simply, as she walked away. "Right,” sighed Blueblood, as he gave it a quick once over, before sending it away with a burst of magic, “I’ll see that it gets taken care of promptly then, even if it is a rather large sum for just building a sign,” he said tiredly, slightly irked at the amount, but at the same time, he didn’t feel like trying to haggle her down. After all, it wasn’t like it was his money being used to pay the bill after all. That’s what the taxpayers were for. Applejack tipped her hat to the Prince and replied over her shoulder, “Oh, the majority of that bill is fer the use of our barns and property, and fer yer guardponies running around and keepin’ us up all night too.” “Of course,” was his deadpan reply, “we are so sorry to have inconvenienced you and your family with all the noise last night.” “Apology accepted, now,” she turned her attention to Twilight, “looks like I ain’t the only pony round here who’s had a long night. You doing alright there sugarcube?” “Oh I’m fine Applejack,” replied Twilight with a tired smile as she set up her telescope, “hopefully this will all be over soon and I can get some rest.” “Yeah, me too, speakin’ of which, what is going on ‘round here anyways?” she asked, pushing the brim of her hat back and looking at the strange looking buildings not far away. “I’ll tell you and the rest of the girls about it later, but the short version is that Discord left us a little something to remember him by when we turned him back to stone again.” Applejack gave an irritated huff, “Figures that varmint would leave us something nasty in case he lost.” Twilight felt her ears pin themselves flat against her skull as an unsure look settled over her face, “I’m...not sure if I would call ‘nasty’, but it’s definitely...an issue, one that should hopefully be taken care of soon.” Applejack gave a single nod, “With you on the case Twi, I reckon you’ll have this problem whipped lickity split! Anyways, I better git going, see ya around Twilight!” Twilight gave a friendly wave good-bye in reply, though inside she felt a ball of nervousness settling in her gut, I sure hope you’re right Applejack, and that we can take care of this problem. I’d hate to see what would happen if we couldn’t. With Applejack now gone, Blueblood trotted up next to Twilight and remarked casually, after noticing that there was little else to do but wait, “Well, I suppose all we have to do now is wait for daylight and hope our guest is willing to come and talk with us.” “Guess so,” replied Twilight as she turned her attention back to her telescope. Fiddling with the knobs, she said, “You know, I really hope this works, I’d hate for things to turn violent.” Blueblood merely grunted in reply, as he settled in next to Twilight to wait for the human to make its next move, whatever it may be.