Painted Horses

by Alaborn

Chapter 5: Downtown

Painted Horses

By Alaborn

Standard disclaimer: This is a not for profit fan work. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is copyright Hasbro, Inc. I make no claim to any copyrighted material mentioned herein.

Chapter 5: Downtown

---

Back at the hotel, we did our normal thing, entering through the side door that connected directly to the staircase. Once in the room, Jason brought out his iPad. “Now, let’s see what we can find.”

The group of us crowded into the living room area, grabbing all the other chairs in the suite. Still, some of us had to sit on the floor. Jason called up YouTube, searching for the name of some paranormal show that ran on Syfy, and started a clip.

“You have a movie theater in that small thing?” Lyra said.

“It’s like a theater, but it doesn’t require a projector,” Rose said. “Jason explained it to me how it works once, but I don’t remember all the details.”

Minuette shushed them. “I want to focus on these humans and how they act.”

We watched the clip in silence. After that clip, Jason navigated to several others, following the links suggested by YouTube. It turns out Jason was right; there was a ton of paranormal shows, both professional and amateur. The Equestrians seemed quite fascinated by the whole thing. I, on the other hand, was growing restless.

“Is there anything else we need done?” I asked.

“Reconnaissance,” Lightning Shield said. “Can you pilot that vehicle, and identify the locations of all these painted horses?”

I thought for a moment. “I bet we can get the information without going there. I’ll see if this hotel has a business center.”

Sure enough, the hotel had what was generously called a business center, with two computers and a printer. But that was all I needed. A quick online search found a Web page with information about the painted horses, complete with images, the name of the painter, and when they were officially revealed. I printed out the information, and then printed out a map. For all of the painted horses that weren’t in the downtown area, I noted their location, and marked it on the map. There were a smaller number of these; I hoped we could find the rest of the missing ponies in the downtown area.

I returned to the room after working for half an hour, hearing laughter as I approached. Once inside the room, I heard the dialogue coming from the iPad, recognizing the scene as from Ghostbusters.

“I don’t think that’s the kind of show we want to create,” I said.

“This is just for fun,” Jason replied. “And to explain some of the references I made as we plotted this out.”

“We’ve decided on the roles we’re playing already,” Minuette said. “I’m the psychic, the one who can feel when we’re in the presence of the supernatural.”

“And I’m the scientist, with all the wacky gizmos,” Jason said.

“What gizmos?” I said.

“We’re working on that,” Jason said.

“The wands I brought include a variety of offensive, defensive, tactical, and utility spells. Notably, this includes illusion and minor transmutation effects,” Minuette explained. “However, the only changes I can make are cosmetic in nature.”

“Then it’s a good thing everything we’re doing is fake,” I said.

“Not everything,” Lightning Shield said, pulling out a checklist he made. “As we walk by the statues, Minuette will use her wands to detect the presence of Equestrian magic. Then, once her spell is triggered, we will approach the identified statue as a group. Minuette will act her role, pretending to be a distracted human woman, to conceal the fact that she is casting the same spells she used when we investigated the statue holding Lyra.”

“My part is fake,” Jason said. “I’ll spout off some ‘facts’ about the artist or the painting before waving my tricorder, confirming what Minuette felt.”

“We have the two actors. We need three of us to hold the devices we are using as cameras, and then the rest of us will focus on crowd control,” Lightning Shield said.

“You know, politely asking anyone who’s curious not to get too close,” Greta said, punctuating her words by punching a fist into her palm.

“We agree that Sweetie Drops, Greta, and I are best for that role,” Lightning Shield continued. “That means Lyra, Rose, and John can hold the cameras.”

“Sounds good,” Rose said. “But I’ll need someone to show me what to do.”

“Why don’t you show them how it works?” Jason said to me. “And then we’ll practice the whole routine here before leaving,” Jason said.

Lyra, Rose, and Sweetie Drops gathered around me. I showed the visiting ponies the camera function on our phones and the iPad. “As you can see, the screen shows you what the camera sees. You touch the button here to take a still picture.”

“Where does the picture come out?” Lyra asked, rotating the phone in her hands.

“It’s all digital. That means the picture is stored as information, and can be printed anytime,” I replied. I changed my phone to movie mode and held it up. “How do your cameras work?” I asked Lyra.

“A spell captures the image, and then translates it to the enchanted paper loaded into the camera. A mana crystal provides the energy for the whole process,” Lyra explained. “They’re both simple spells.”

I nodded. I wonder if the ponies ever dreamed of the idea of moving magical pictures, like in Harry Potter. I held up my phone again. “Okay, what we’re going to be doing is taking movies, like this.” I pressed some buttons, and my screen replayed Lyra’s explanation of how Equestrian cameras worked.

“Cool!” Lyra said.

“What you need to do is toggle this slide bar from camera to movie mode. The red circle means it’s not recording. Press it, and it starts recording. You can see the time count up. Press the same button, which is now a square, to stop recording. It doesn’t really matter, because we’re not using the footage we’re recording, but let’s try to be realistic.”

We practiced using the camera function on the phones, along with just generally getting them used to using a touch screen. It’s a technology unlikely to ever be employed in their world, unless they wanted to use their tongues to manipulate them.

Once that was done, I glanced over at Jason and Minuette. They had crafted something that vaguely looked like a scanning device out of the television remote control and a coat hanger, and something else with a plastic tube and some of the rings that held up the shower curtain.

“Those are your tech gizmos?” I quipped.

“Correction: Those are our fake tech gizmos,” Jason said. “Or they will be. Minuette?”

Minuette pulled out a wand and a mana crystal, and then looked at the items. “What kind of appearance do you want?”

“Whatever you can imagine,” he replied. “We’re looking for unusual, and I’m sure your vision will be more exotic than mine.”

“Do Buck Charger!” Lyra suggested.

“You read that schlock?” Sweetie Drops said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A series about an earth pony soldier who is put to sleep by a curse and wakes up in the distant future, where ponies have spread to the stars,” Lyra said.

“That sounds a lot like a show we have here,” I said.

“Believe me, the parallels between our worlds are surprising. That they have sci-fi that’s a lot like ours is one of them,” Jason said. “But schlock is just what we’re looking for. Can you describe something?”

“There was this cool ray gun he held in his foreleg. That was my favorite. Or that scanner!” Lyra started. Minuette listened as Lyra described various items from the book series, and then she used the wand. Before our eyes, the prop was covered with an illusion, forming curves like a tool from science fiction. The buttons of the remote control became crystals, and the wire from the coat hanger turned into something that wouldn’t be out of place in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. The tube and rings turned into something that definitely looked like a ray gun.

“There’s one more thing we need,” Minuette said. “We need to make these things react when we want them to, and that means one of you needs to use a wand. Since Lyra is still recovering from having her magic drained, that would make you the best choice, John.”

That caught me by surprise. “But I’m no pony,” I said.

“I agree with Minuette,” Lightning Shield said. There were nods all around.

I fidgeted as I felt all eyes on me. Then Rose whispered something to Jason. He stood up and walked over to me. “Can we talk?”

We went into the bedroom, and Jason closed the door behind us. “I want to know what’s bothering you, John. From the way you always talked about Harry Potter, I thought you liked magic.”

“I did, but that was before I encountered this real magic,” I replied.

Jason nodded. “You never really told me much about the first time you went to Equestria. You told me what happened, but not how it affected you. Was it bad?”

I sat quietly, staring at the picture on the wall. It was a landscape, a picture of grasses with a copse of trees, something very ordinary. And once again I recognized that I was stalling. What happened to me was something I never told anyone. I couldn’t. But there was someone who I could talk to, a good friend. And I was shutting him out, something I had done far too often in my life.

“Yes,” I finally said. “I was having a hard enough time with my life back then, and I wasn’t ready for something like this. I was in an unfamiliar body, everyone was reacting strangely to me, and then I found out I was just someone’s pawn, someone with magic, a lot of magic. I told you what actually happened, but after I went home, I couldn’t stop thinking of what could have happened. I lived only because I was useful to Discord. Had he come up with another plan, and all he needed to do was kill me, I would have died. It haunted my nightmares for months.

“I put it behind me, moved on with my life, and then I had that nightmare on the plane. It reminded me of what could have been. I’m scared.”

“Then why did you follow me to Equestria three years ago?”

“I didn’t want what happened to me to happen to you,” I said. “It turns out you were brought for love, not hate, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

“You know, when I found out I was being used, it hurt,” Jason said. “But what happened to you, I don’t want to happen to anyone else. And, as much as none of us want to be involved, we’re in the best position to stop this Discord. All you need to do is use a little magic, for good, and not for evil. So what do you think?”

I sat, thinking about what Jason said. I remembered the thrill when I used magic the first time, during my second trip to Equestria. Then I thought about no one experiencing that again, what might be the result of whatever Discord is planning. Compared to that, a little discomfort was nothing.

“Okay. Let’s get this show on the road.”

---

We did get the show on the road, literally. We drove downtown, parking in an open-air lot somewhere near the center of the painted horses. Lightning Shield pulled out a printed map, on which several X’s were marked. “Our best search pattern is a spiral pattern, like this,” he said, tracing his finger over the streets. “We go east on 3rd Street, go one street south and back west on 4th Street, go two streets north and east on 2nd Street, and so forth.”

“All right! Let’s make some fake videos,” Jason said. He unzipped his jacket to reveal the T-shirt he had changed into before leaving: one with the classic Ghostbusters logo.

And with that, we began our pleasant stroll around downtown Ocala. The weather was mild, and plenty of others were walking around, checking out the Christmas decorations. It was easy to spot the long-time Florida residents, because they were the ones with heavy coats. I, being used to more northerly climes, just had a light jacket.

I noticed a few stares at our group. Sure, we may have been doing what everyone else was doing, but the size of our group and our younger age made us stick out. I hoped we could get away with our plan.

We stopped at the first painted horse statue on our route. I looked to Minuette. She had her left hand in her jacket pocket, where a wand was hiding. She signaled with her right hand: no. So we just treated the statue like a tourist would, looking at the art and reading the nearby placard.

The second statue was also a no, but on the third, Minuette signaled go. We reacted. Rose, Lyra, and I held up our phones and tablet and started recording. Greta, Lightning Shield, and Sweetie Drops stepped back and formed a perimeter.

“Do you see something, Mary?” Jason said to Minuette.

“I do.” She motioned in the air around the statue. “I feel the aura, the patterns. I feel....” She furrowed her brow; I could see her other hand gripping the wand. “Sadness. Loss. Longing.”

“Love?” Jason said.

Minuette traced a pattern in the air with two fingers. “Love. Familial love.”

“The artist, Jane Archer, was getting over the death of her sister as she painted this horse. Do you think her emotions were strong enough to forge a link with the beyond?”

She made another gesture while casting another spell from her wand. “Yes. The spiritual presence is strong.”

“Let’s see what the gizmos have to say,” Jason said. He grinned maniacally and pulled out the gizmo that looked like a scanner. The wire from the coat hanger had been shaped by Minuette’s magic into something that looked like a Jacob’s ladder. He started waving it around.

That was my cue. I grabbed the wand hidden in my pocket, and focused on the arcane symbols of the most basic spell—the light spell was literally the first spell introduced in the magic textbook I had studied. The fake green gem that was once the remote control’s power button started to glow.

“And we have confirmation!” Jason said euphorically. He was overacting, but it made the performance something I’d be more likely to watch, so it worked.

“Let’s not disturb the spirits just yet,” Minuette said.

Jason, who had pulled out his ray gun, put it back. “You’re no fun,” he said, making a pouting expression.

---

It took two hours of searching, but we did find the locations of all five of the remaining missing ponies in the downtown area. We went back to Jason’s SUV, but he didn’t start the engine.

“Okay, mission report. Minuette?” Lightning Shield said.

“All five of the affected statues were identical to the statue binding Lyra, including the same binding spell and the same concentrating and transmitting of magical energy.”

“Do you know who was trapped in each statue?” Greta asked.

“Unfortunately, no. Astral Shield’s spirit bind spell conceals a pony’s personal aura.”

“Where was the collected magic being sent?” I asked.

“Still not sure. It was consistent for all five statues, but a different angle from Lyra’s.”

“That means we can triangulate,” Sweetie Drops said. “Do you have a map?”

“Right here,” Jason said, pulling out his tablet. He tapped on it for a minute. “What was your grandparents’ address?” he asked me.

I only remembered the street name, so I repeated it.

“That should be good enough. The statue was at the edge of their community anyway.” Jason passed his tablet back; both locations were indicated on the electronic map. “Minuette?”

She took out a wand, and concentrated. Two blue lines appeared over the map, but they crossed off the map. Once we zoomed out, Minuette replaced the lines, and now they crossed over a patch of green.

“I know that place,” I said. “Silver Springs.”

“What is Silver Springs?” Lightning Shield asked.

“It’s an amusement park, of sorts,” I explained. “It calls itself Florida’s oldest tourist attraction, and it certainly feels old. There are glass-bottomed boats and animal attractions, but nothing like the parks in Orlando. When I was younger, we went there every Christmas when we went to Ocala.”

“So what we need is some reconnaissance,” Lightning Shield said. “John, are you up for giving us a tour?”

Author's Note:

I'm not saying it was Discord, but it was Discord.

Comments

[Seeking Dusk]

Malice in an amusement part... No. Nope. Nu-uh. So much rejection.

Oh this is likely gonna be bad... Could be worse I guess... could have used carousel horses...

[totallynotabrony]

Despite the magic and otherworldly visitors, rolling around in an SUV with special gear on a mission feels very…tactical. I like it.

[Boulder]

“My part is fake,” Jason said. “I’ll spout off some ‘facts’ about the artist or the painting before waving my tricorder, confirming what Minuette felt.”

TREKKIE!!

“Do Buck Charger!” Lyra suggested.

You're old if you remember this from the 80's and then some more if you remember Buster Crabbe's original in the 50's.(although reruns for me in the 70's
Waiting for Flash Gordon Golden now.

[Herald of Opera]

Fun fact on tricorders: there's a specific allowance in the copyright/trademark/whatever that lets any company use the name, but only if the device is capable of actually doing what the tricorder was supposed to be able to.