Chapter 1
The proctor, a grey unicorn stallion with a white mane, checked off another item as Twilight stood before him. Clouds of steam puffed out into the cold air as her breathing slowly returned to normal after the run she had just finished. “Alright, that’s the last of the physical exams. Now onto the magical portion of the test.” He led Twilight over to a target range, with several unicorns already at this point at this point in their own test. “Please cast an offensive spell.”
Twilight gathered her power, and magical energy lanced through the target, a little less than three inches away from the center. The proctor let out a small spark from his horn, and the target began to move erratically. “Again,” he said. Twilight watched the target for a few moments; if there was a pattern to its movements, Twilight couldn’t tell. Lightning travels nigh-instantly, she thought. It might be more appropriate than the raw magic if I can’t lead a shot. A moment later, a bolt charred the surface of the target at about the same distance from the center as her previous attempt. The proctor cocked an eyebrow, then asked for a few more shots. After three more attempts, the target was almost too charred to see the scoring lines.
“Good. The next stop is telekinesis,” the proctor said as he jogged to the next station. A pile of weights were placed in front of her when she arrived. “Lift as many of these as you can, then hold them for one minute.” Without much difficulty, she lifted the whole group. After she put them down, the proctor closed his jaw before examining the weights. It wasn’t unheard of to lift five hundred pounds with telekinesis, but most unicorns had trouble holding about half of that.
“Could you do more, kid?” the proctor asked.
“Probably, this kind of thing was my job for almost a year before I enlisted.”
He trotted over to an unused station and brought over its weights. “We need to figure out what your limit is. I can keep giving you weights until you can’t take any more.”
After bringing over weights from four other stations, he appeared to doubt that statement. A crowd had started to gather, made up of the exercising soldiers whose weights had been commandeered. Twilight was almost as surprised as they were at how much she could hold, and how intense the light from her horn was getting. Each one of these workout stations is five hundred pounds, Twilight thought.. I’ve got six here and I could definitely do more. I guess that training paid off, after all.
“Alright, kid,” the proctor said, snapping her out of her thoughts but unable to remove the grin forming on her face. “I’d have to start delaying tests to get more weights for you. Let’s just say you passed. And the rest of you, clear out!”
After the onlookers had gone back to their own stations, the test resumed. “Alright, I need you to take those weights and spread them out, so they’re not all in one field. One weight per field, however many fields you can make.” He was hardly surprised when she had ten of them spinning around her before she looked to be straining. “Is ten pounds each your limit for multiple fields?”
Twilight shook her head, but didn’t say anything. Had she tried to, she probably would have dropped the weights. They weren’t too heavy, but splitting her focus this much was a problem. She barely even noticed when her proctor placed the remaining weights from her station into the fields, doubling each of them.
“Kid, whatever construction site you were at, they weren’t paying you enough,” the proctor joked as he wrote down the results of the test.
Twilight chuckled. “Um, it was a book store, actually.”
The proctor’s jaw went slack for a moment before he could speak again. “You’re kidding!”
Twilight broke eye contact, busying herself examining her hooves as she mumbled. “I wasn’t anywhere near this good until I got some training, but seriously, books are heavy.”
The two walked inside for the final portion of the test. The proctor led them to a sparsely furnished room, and lay down on the only bench. Once he was settled, he spoke again. “I want you to cast a spell without producing any light from your horn.”
Twilight gulped. This was one she always had trouble with. “What kind of spell?” she asked nervously.
He shrugged. “Anything you like. Let’s go with levitating my clipboard.”
As Twilight gathered the energy to cast, she tried to hold in her aura. Shining had tried to teach her this trick a few years ago, but she just couldn’t separate her aura from the energy she unleashed. Her horn was a little dimmer than usual when she levitated the clipboard, but was still glowing. “That’s all I can manage,” she said with her eyes lowered. At least this wasn’t a crucial test element; she could still pass without getting it.
After a few more attempts, the proctor noted Twilight’s first failure thus far, and brought out a gramophone from the room’s closet. He started it up, and Neighthoven’s Fifth began to play. “Cast a silencing spell on the gramophone.”
Twilight wasn’t great with sound-based spells, but she could at least manage a basic silence. Soon enough, the room was quiet. The proctor put away the record player, and Twilight could hear him talking from the closet. “I’m going to throw this at you. Block it with a shield, and don’t just grab it with your telekinesis,” he said as he returned with a bouncy ball.
Shields were something Twilight knew well. Her brother had been an expert with them, after all. Practicing those spells together with him had been one of her favorite pastimes as a filly. She easily brought a purple bubble up in time. “Okay, your reflexes seem to alright, but we need to find out how big you can make your shield. Expand it as much as you can without losing strength.”
The shield expanded to fill most of the room. “Good. Now we need to find out its strength.” The proctor went back to the closet, and came back with a banged-up mannequin and a warhammer with a gauge on the handle and wires running to its head. Twilight recognized the gauge as a device for measuring the force of an impact, similar to ones she’d used in science classes at the Diarch’s School for Gifted Ponies. She had never seen strapped to a weapon, however.
“I want you to put your strongest shield around this mannequin, and I’m going to hit it.”
Twilight complied, focusing as hard as she could on creating a nice, strong shield. The first few hits were light, but her concentration began to shake as the blows came down harder and harder onto the purple dome. When the needle was about halfway up the gauge, it finally broke through. The proctor checked the gauge, then turned back to Twilight. “Your shields are a little stronger than average.” He moved over to the door to the hallway. “Now, I’m going to leave the room for a moment. I want you to communicate with me through the walls in some way.”
After the door shut behind him, Twilight grabbed a blank sheet of paper and the proctor’s pen off of his clipboard. She wrote “test” on the paper before teleporting it, using the clipboard as an anchor back to its owner. Shortly afterwards, the door opened once again and the proctor walked back in and began rummaging in the closet again. “Alright, so we know that you can teleport. Guess we can skip that part of the test. Unless of course you can only teleport things.”
Twilight shook her head. “My record for somewhere I couldn’t see is twenty-five hundred feet, but I don’t want to push it with how dangerous teleporting can be. It was also to an area I’d been to before.”
Twilight couldn’t see what the proctor had been holding in his mouth, but from the sounds of things he had dropped it. “Twenty-five hundred? As in, two thousand and five hundred? Almost half a mile?” Twilight nodded. “And you don’t consider that ‘pushing it?’” Twilight nodded again.
The proctor whipped around to face her. “Kid, some unicorns don’t ever even learn to teleport! Most that do can only go a hundred feet or so. How in Tartarus can you teleport twenty-five hundred feet without anything going wrong?”
“Well, my doctor says I have an unusually powerful ability to channel magic, and my special talent is magic. I guess stuff that’s only hard because of how much energy you need always just came easily to me.”
The proctor went back to the items in the closet, finally retrieving what he had been looking for. “Well, if your doctor told you that, you’ve probably seen one of these before,” he said as he put a block with an emerald sticking out of one end on the bench. From the side with the emerald, two wires protruded, which led to a small metal ring just wide enough to fit around Twilight’s horn.
“Yes, I’ve seen a vortometer before. So I guess you’re going to measure my channels now?” Twilight guessed.
The proctor tapped the bench with a hoof. “If you’ll just have a seat, I can get this on your horn.” After she did as he said, he slid the ring into place. “We’re going to do your burst channel potential. When I tell you to, just pump as much magic as you can into your horn,” the proctor said as he continued adjusting the settings on the vortomoter. After a few moments of fiddling with the knobs, he put it down on the bench. “Alright, let’s see what you’ve got.”
It was only three seconds, but beads of sweat began to form on her face as she strained. After it was over, the proctor examined the readout on the equipment, and tried not to lose his composure again. “Kid, do you know wanna’ know what the limit on what this vortometer can handle is?”
Twilight pondered a moment. Her doctor had mentioned something about it the last time they’d had to measure her magical ability. “Um… I think a normal one measures up to twenty thousand?”
The proctor took a deep breath in. “Well, a civilian one does. We frequently deal with unicorns that are a lot more powerful than that here. This one goes to about fifty thousand,” he said slowly. “And at about fifty-five thousand it fries.”
“Is there any particular reason you’re telling me this?” There was an obvious reason Twilight could think of, but she was sure that it also couldn’t possibly be correct.
He let out a short laugh before turning the meter’s readout to face Twilight. The emerald that the wires connected to appeared to have turned to a mist-like substance inside, and the panel where one would normally read the numbers had a fresh burn mark in the center. “Because you broke it, kid.”
This time, it was Twilight’s turn to be shocked by her magical ability. “But how? I’m not that powerful! My burst was only ten thousand before I enlisted! There’s no way it could have gotten that much stronger all of a sudden.” Her breathing began to accelerate as she realized she could be one of the most powerful unicorns currently alive, and the possible implications of that began coming unbidden into her mind.
The proctor gently laid a hoof on her shoulder. “Hey, calm down. Most unicorns going through our training see a pretty big increase in how much magic they can throw around. We usually get somepony who breaks the meter every few years or so. Heck, you heard of Sunset Shimmer? I hear she broke one of those meters they use to measure multiple unicorns at once! By herself!”
Twilight frowned a little. “I just wish you could give me a hard number. Can you at least give me an estimate I could use?”
The proctor shook his head. “Sorry. Don’t have a more powerful meter. For what’s it worth, you definitely passed.” As he spoke, a grey glow surrounded the damaged emerald, freeing it from its housing in the rest of the equipment before floating over in front of Twilight. “And here, take this. It’s beyond repair, but it might make for a nice keepsake.”
Twilight smiled as she stowed the gem into her saddlebags. “So, what now? Was that the last test?”
“Yeah kid,” the proctor said. “You are officially Private Twilight Sparkle in Their Majesties’ Royal Guard.” His horn glowed briefly, and a previously-flat surface on her armor’s metal formed into a chevron. “Congratulations. Can’t wait until ponies are telling me how there’s this crazy mare who’s got the dragons running scared.”
________________________
“I humbly request your Majesty to waive the restrictions regarding the study of certain less-savory magics in this instance. The potential medical applications are staggering!”
Luna sighed. “I’m afraid I must remain firm once again. Some things simply weren’t meant to be tampered with. While I respect your desire to help ponies, the study of dark magic brings only suffering.” She looked past the mare towards the line of ponies behind her. “Next petitioner!”
As the next pony began to say his piece, Luna heard what sounded like laughter from among the assembled nobles sitting along the walls to the throne room. Curious as to what was so humorous, she cast a spell to enhance her hearing, while doing her best to make it seem like her attention was still focused on the stallion before her. It seemed that the group talking consisted of four nobles.
“—the fifth time Nightingale has tried to convince Luna to let her learn dark magic. I daresay that pony is either too insane or too stupid to realize that nothing is going to change unless she takes a different approach!”
Another stallion chimed in. “Which pony, Nightingale or the Princess?”
The four of them laughed quietly at that. It wasn’t a terribly good joke, but nobles would laugh at anything if it meant appeasing somepony further up the ladder. And of course, Luna was the butt of the joke. However, they had finally crossed the line from saying Celestia was her better to saying something was wrong with her. As much as she wanted to let it go, this could not stand.
Luna held up a hoof, indicating the stallion should stop speaking. “Allow me a moment,” she said as she walked over to the group that had been laughing at her. Before they could ask what she wanted, they were nearly struck deaf by the magnitude of Luna’s voice.
“You dare mock your Princess?” she shouted, each word increasing in volume. “You have the audacity to say I am insane? And you do so within my own court?” The group of ponies had begun attempting to make excuses, but Luna wasn’t even listening. “Begone from this court, until such a time as you have learned proper respect!”
The four of them needed no further prompting and bolted for the door in such terror that those who had borne witness to the event would likely never let them forget it.
As Luna calmly walked back to her throne, she drank in the silence of the room. It was as though something had rendered all the nobles and petitioners mute. Well, Luna thought to herself, it looks like I’ve finally begun to command some respect around here. Perhaps Celestia is wrong, after all. Perhaps I should try that more often.
________________________
A bell above the door chimed pleasantly as Twilight walked into the shop. She wondered if the sign claiming she could get a jeweler’s services here was accurate; all she could see were dresses. Before she could start looking around the store for the owner, she heard a voice approaching from behind one of the racks. “Welcome to Carousel Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique, and magnifique!”
As she was speaking, a white unicorn with a heavily-styled purple mane rounded the last corner between them. “Now, what can I help you with?” she asked in an accent that Twilight guessed was supposed to sound like the one used by Canterlot’s upper crust. It didn’t quite match, but to her credit, that was only because it was less obnoxious.
“I was walking around town waiting for my train and saw a sign saying there was a jeweler here. Would that be you? I have a stone I was hoping I could get set into a necklace.” Twilight said as she opened her saddlebags. Finding what she was looking for, she levitated the emerald from the vortometer and her bitpurse out of the bags. “I’m only in town until the train comes, but I could pay to have it shipped. It would still be better than the insane prices a jeweler in Canterlot would charge me.”
“That would be me. My name is Rarity. A pleasure to meet you, Miss...”
“Twilight Sparkle,” she replied.
Rarity took the gem into her own telekinesis, looking puzzled. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like this. It’s clearly an emerald, but the mist inside is so strange. It looks lovely, though. Wherever did you get this?”
“Oh, heh. You know what a vortometer is, right?”
“Why of course I do,” Rarity said as she tapped the tip of her horn with a hoof.
“Well, I just got out of basic training for the guard yesterday. The last test was just measuring my burst channel. I um… overloaded the meter.” A small blush came over Twilight’s face. “Apparently that’s what happens to the gem at the core when you do that.”
Rarity led them over to a table in the corner, and produced a jeweler’s loupe to get a more detailed look at the emerald. “Well, that would explain why it’s already cut. You mentioned you were in the royal guard? I hope you weren’t planning on wearing this onto a battlefield. It would be destroyed!”
Twilight chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I can just enchant it. It should be fine.”
After a few questions about Twilight’s preferences, Rarity had sketched out a design that she assured Twilight would be “absolutely fabulous.”
“And let’s see, you’ll be providing the stone, so my estimate is…” She added up a few figures in her head. “Five hundred bits.”
Twilight’s ears went flat as she frowned. “Oh, I didn’t know it would be that much. I hoped that I would save a little more because I already had the stone. I’m sorry, but I don’t have quite that much that I can afford to spend.”
Rarity took a long look at the gem still on the table. “Oh dear. Well, that shouldn’t be a problem. I could bring it down to three hundred if we used silver instead of gold.”
“I’m so sorry, I really thought the stone made up more of the cost than that. I only have about one hundred I can really afford spend.”
“I’m sure we can work something out, Miss Sparkle. I should have asked what budget we were operating on in the first place. Do you care for white bronze? It’s a less expensive option that would look quite nice alongside your armor. It would also stay inside your budget. Perhaps a little less filigree...” As Rarity talked, she picked up the sketch she had made. Within moments, she had already penciled in the first alterations for the different material. “In fact, with these alterations-do tell me if you don’t care for them by the way-I think I could probably fit this project into… fifty bits in material cost.”
Twilight looked over Rarity’s shoulder at the new sketch. It definitely looked like something she would love to wear. “Okay, so what’s your estimate for the total?”
“Why, fifty bits of course,” Rarity said with a chuckle.
Twilight blinked. “What?”
“I’m offering to make the necklace at cost, Miss Sparkle. I'm quite eager to work with that stone,” Rarity said with a chuckle. “Although if you’re uncomfortable with that, I suppose I could make you a deal instead. You said you were waiting for your train. Are you going to be staying in Canterlot until you ship out?”
Twilight was still trying to process what she was being told. “Oh, um, yes. I’ll be with my parents for a few weeks. Is there something you need there?”
“Nothing in particular. I was just thinking you could provide my sister and myself the pleasure of your company for tea tomorrow. Some of your time for some of mine seems like a fair trade to me.”
Twilight stammered a bit, not knowing how to respond at first. “But you have to have other projects this is taking time from! Please, you can add at least some labor to the cost,” she said as she began going through her bitpurse again.
A blue aura surrounded the purse, which quickly found its way into Twilight’s saddlebags. “I simply won’t hear of it, Miss Sparkle! Now then, would jasmine be alright? The tea that is, not the stone! Or we could reschedule to a few days later, if tomorrow isn’t convenient.”
“Um, that’s fine. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow. And jasmine tea is my favorite.”
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Good
And thus, Twilight meets the first of her future best friends.
Unless time works differently for one of us, hasn't it only been one month?
Woops.
This entire part needs to be its own paragraph. You switch speakers and POVs in one single paragraph, and that's no good. XP When someone new is talking, they get their own line. Even when they talk using body language.
You know . . . there are a few things that I have problems with in stories, and one of them particularly is when their whole element thing is beat into the heads of the readers through either repetition or an extremely ridiculous selfless act. I mean, some stories revolve around the main character being the epitome of the element they represent, but I don't see this story measuring up to . . . say Austraeoh and its subsequent stories.
Anyway, more to the point, I have a problem with this quoted material because . . . it just doesn't seem believable. I mean, Rarity is indeed generous. That's her element, and she defines the element (not the element defines her, which is a rather massive complication that most people like to have). However, for a pony she just met, giving her the entire thing for free? Really? I'm not sure I can believe that. Twilight has money; she just doesn't have enough. Now, a very nice discount would be understandable. THAT'S what I assumed would happen. I mean, generosity runs out after a while. You can't help everyone and take the hits for doing so.
Didn't she just say that if Twilight wasn't fine with her . . . generosity that she would cut her a deal?
Anyway, pretty interesting chapter. This was rather . . . I suppose you would call it filler, but it was definitely a good chapter that allows us to get acquainted with this new Twilight. You also gave us a glimpse of Luna, and the seeds have been sown for future conflict. Things should be pretty interesting.
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Apparently, my skills do not include counting.
4833963
That's a fair point. In my defense, we've seen Rarity do something very similar in Art of the Dress. Sure, it's not the same situation since Twilight isn't a dear friend, but it's still something we know Rarity is crazy enough to do once in a while. Also, I was trying to emphasize that Rarity is doing this almost as much for herself because she really likes the strange material she's been presented with. I suppose since this discussion is happening I likely failed in that regard.
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No, you made it perfectly clear that she was doing this for both Twilight and herself. But . . . I don't know even then. If she is doing it more for herself, then that is very understandable, but we are, once again, dealing with Rarity only just meeting Twilight.
And I actually think that the show portrays Rarity in . . . some of the oddest ways possible. She is generous, yes, but the show wants to make her perfect or something. She is just so helpful and awesome all the time, she'll do anything for her friends and random people. Like I said, there is a limit to generosity. And something the show has YET to touch on even a bit is just that: limits.
You can't always be laughing, you can't always be loyal, you can't always be kind, you can't always be generous, you can't always be honest, and you can't always use the magic of friendship to fix everything. Sure, season four came CLOSE to making these points, but they didn't do a very good job, in my opinion. But I digress.
Way to go, Twilight, break those testing devices and wear their carcasses on a chain around your neck.
