Now You See Me
Smile like you've got nothing to prove
No matter what you might do
There's always someone out there cooler than you
Twilight could understand what put others off about Pinkie. It wasn't necessarily that her responses were high volume and rapidly paced without space for breaths. Most ponies fell into the habit of working out what they were going to say next-- which almost created a sort of audible psychic energy. Pinkie's attention was always complete and absolutely rapt.
There was a sense that words spoken to her were kicked into an endless chasm. She would sit there and fixedly stare at a single point on your face with that small smile of hers until you simply ground to a halt. All the while she'd be dissecting and examining everything that was said.
She also always knew how to cheer Twilight up. She'd awoken in such a mood that Sunset had stomped out of the library to get away from her, and Spike had scampered off to play with his friends.
When Pinkie entered, the lights were out. She carefully picked her way over and tapped the switch with a hoof, gasping quietly as the lights snapped to life. The library had always been disorganized for as long as she could remember, and now everything fairly sparkled. The cushions in the foal's corner were immaculately stacked and squared, the books on the shelves were leveled and perfectly even. The floorboards glittered under her hooves and her nose tickled at the scent of lemon from fresh wax.
She sat down and glanced slowly around the main room of the library, noticing that the checkout desk had been shifted three hoof-widths left. She poked through the card catalog and found that the yellowed cards had been replaced with fresh ones bearing new writing so precise it could have been typewritten. She trembled as a shudder ran down her back, and she made for the doorway to the door hiding the hazardous stairwell to the basement. She found Twilight sitting before a stack of books, staring forlornly at the press. Every so often she'd reach for one, twitch, stop. Her hoof would rise and scruff her mane, before her aura sparkled and smoothed it back into its usual perfect laser-cut alignment.
“Twilight.”
When Twilight stared at her, she stared back and balanced on two hooves, extending a hind and stretching out a fore to gently tap her nose. The cheerful “Honk!” had brought a surprised giggle from Twilight, and… Twilight relaxed visibly.
The pink pony with no sense of personal space nestled in against Twilight's side, worming under one of her forelegs and brushing her cheeks together. Her head was normally a cacophonous maelstrom, a whirlwind of thoughts competing for attention with the sheer sensory overload. In the past weeks and months of knowing Twilight, she'd felt herself beginning to slow. She cleared her throat softly, and Twilight perked up.
Twilight, the only pony who always wanted to hear what she wanted to say. Aside from Rainbow Dash, the only pony who sought her company. To everypony else she was always too much something. Too loud, too energetic, too fat, too pink. With Dash and Twi, she was always just right.
“I was watching Dashie and the weatherponies work on Extreme Weather Week, and I realized that I don't actually know how weather magic works! Do you, Twilight?”
Twilight's response was to smirk and light her horn. She closed her eyes. A soft squeak filled the room as she tugged a chalkboard over towards them. The eraser lifted and danced across the surface, before a small ballet of colored chalks twirled.
She snapped out a pointer and cleared her throat. “Of course I do! See, at the heart of each race of pony is the carbuncle, a naturally-occurring magical gemstone. The body absorbs raw magic from the field that bathes Ungula, and this quintessence is solidified into a substance called Tass.”
Pinkie tilted her head. "So... like an oyster making a pearl."
Twilight smiled. "Exactly!"
She touched the tip of the pointer to the drawing of a unicorn’s skull in cross section. “In unicorns this is against the brain and beneath the horn, directly in the middle of the forehead. During casting it glows- which in extreme cases causes the eyes to glow. The aura projects along the spiral of the horn, following the channel of magic into and out of the body. Because it's attached to the brain, unicorn magic requires the most structure and focus to channel.”
She slid to an anatomical cutout of an Earth Pony. “In Earth Ponies, it accretes in the cannon of each leg, and in the structure of the heart. Each heartbeat carries magic through the blood, and every step leaves it behind. This is what we call the “Cornucopia Effect”. Earth Ponies increase the health and yield of soil by walking over it."
Pinkie chewed the inside of her cheek and shook her head. "So that's how earthsong works, and why most Bards are Earth Ponies?"
Twilight paused and tilted her head. "Earthsong?"
Her pink friend took a deep breath and set a hoof flat on the packed earth floor of the cellar. She concentrated, her entire body tightening and relaxing, before a small pebble worked its way out of the soil. "Our magic is taught as... "Tools". Our heart speaks to the heart of the Earth from which we came, and we ask it to do things for us. My family might ask a stone to cleave, or to move itself, or for impurities to move to the center and create gemstones. Applejack's family tools ask for nitrogen, phosphorous, for the soil to become softer in certain places for roots to tunnel."
Twilight pursed her lips and blinked, tilting her head the other way with a small smile. "Your Plain accent comes out when you talk about your magic, have you ever noticed that?"
Pinkie giggled sheepishly and shrugged. She worked her jaw for a moment and straightened her neck, squaring her shoulders. "Yea, and when thou doth speak of thine Arts, thou spedde as wan who doth walk in the Queen's ain Court."
Twilight's nose scrunched as she parsed the thick Plain tongue, snickering a bit. Her pointer moved to tap a pegasus sketched in flight. “In Pegasi, the crystals are smaller and arranged throughout the nervous system, in the eyes, and in the wings and feathers. This projects a field over the skin and along the wings, which withstands impacts without injury and decreases air resistance. They stop and hover by spreading the wings, the smaller crystals allowing them to float on the aetheric currents of Ungula’s magical field.”
She tapped her hooves together as she erased the drawings, and drew air currents around a pegasus circling a cloud. Pinkie sniggered as she realized that Twilight had selected a light-blue chalk for the pegasus. “Now, pegasi constantly affect the air around them. Small motions of their body bring magic to the crystals in their nervous system, and allow them to shift or influence the local weather. These changes are accretive. When a pegasus flies in a spiral, she is influencing the air to follow her. They use these air currents to move heat and moisture, to condense or disperse it to create clouds and weather.”
Pinkie tapped her chin slightly. “So like the little shimmy-dance Dashie does when she's cold?”
Twilight nodded. “I haven't seen her do it myself, but… it sounds like the small motions a pegasus would perform to raise the temperature of the air around them.”
Pinkie smiled as she felt the shudder travel back up her spine. Twilight hadn't been alright, but she was now. She tilted her head, bringing her nose very close to the ridge of Twilight's jawline. With small circles of a hoof on Twilight's side and slow brushing of her nose with the grain of her coat, she spoke silent volumes. She practically shouted that Twilight was important to her, that seeing her happy made Pinkie happy. With the way she tucked almost underneath her she showed how she would support and if need be carry the smaller unicorn.
“There's a magician setting up in town square, do you want to come watch the show with me?”
Twilight's mind raced. She had run out of things to clean, to organize, to sort and put right. Her house was in order, and now it was time for her to fix herself. She smiled faintly and squeaked as Pinkie's hoof slid along her dappled flank. She nodded a little and let the taller mare pull her upright, tucking forehooves against Pinkie's withers. With her nose pressed against the base of the Earth pony's skull and her quiet, even breathing, she told Pinkie that she meant the world to Twilight. That her life was fuller with the bubbly mare in it. That she trusted Pinkie to carry her if need be.
As Pinkie carried her up the stairs, Twilight cocked her head slightly. “Do you remember when your first Surge hit, Pinkie?”
The mare's hoof faltered on the steps for just a moment.
A tiny filly raced from the house under cover of a cloudy sky, fleeing the news that had shaken and shattered her world. Hooves sparked with power as she raged against the heavens. Her fores slammed together, and the snapping of the earth peeling open in a fissure counterpointed her wordless shriek of fury and anguish.
She smiled. “Nope.”
Twilight cleared her throat. “Mine… I tapped into the field like never before. I don't remember anything about it but terror and… Celestia touched my magic with her own and I got a glimpse of her. In that moment I knew her as well as I knew myself. I felt the name burning in her heart singing in my blood, and I felt the call of the immeasurable power of the Sun itself. It shocked me out of the Surge, but I've never been able to not wonder what might have happened if I'd… grabbed. Let her magic flow into and over me.”
Pinkie reached back and tapped Twilight's nose with an affectionate ‘honk’ as the library door snapped shut behind them. “Fear is the mind-killer Twilight. There's no point wondering about what-wills, or what-could-have-beens. A hundred years from now we'll all be dead and the sun will still shine on. But right now, we're alive. We're going to go see a magic show, we're going to eat some unhealthy food, and we are going to have a good time.”
Twilight smiled and buried her nose in the mare's curly mane. “You're right. Thank you, Pinkie Pie…”
Twilight’s brow furrowed pensively as they walked along. Her hooves tucked firmly beneath her barrel and she held a bag of peanuts between them. Every so often she would carefully split the shell of one in half, deposit one nut on her tongue and maneuver the other for Pinkie to nip from the air, and tuck the shell into an empty refuse bag. The noise of the market slowly fell away as she concentrated on the salty snack and her own racing thoughts.
She liked Pinkie. Pinkie liked her. But Pinkie was dating Rainbow Dash. Was she destroying their relationship? Was she wrong to want to be around Pinkie? She wasn’t jealous of Dash or anything but… She was jolted from her thoughts by Pinkie skipping a step and jostling her slightly. She smiled sheepishly before leaning to press her nose into the mare’s mane. Dash didn’t seem to mind the connection she and Pinkie shared, or the time they spent together, so she shouldn’t worry about it either.
Her attention was snatched from idle daydreams of pink candyfloss by a sudden cry. She was grateful for the height sitting on Pinkie’s back afforded her as she snapped to a crowd of ponies pressing in on all sides of them, but she still couldn’t see much. She prodded Pinkie to continue her slide to the front of the mob, eyes on a brief flicker of burnished gold coat and a spray of red mane.
Sunset glanced between Twilight and Pinkie before smirking to herself, reaching out to ruffle the small unicorn’s mane. “Heya Sparky. You girls are just in time for the show.”
Pinkie smiled and carefully adjusted her weight, settling into a comfortable position on her haunches with Twilight peeking over the top of her head. “I heard that a real live magician was coming into town!”
Sunset shushed her with a hoof before pointing ahead. The side of a caravan had been drawn downward to erect a stage. Music began to build, before the curtains parted with a flourish of fanfare to reveal an azure unicorn in a starred hat and cloak alongside a paler purple one in a waistcoat and top hat. Twilight’s jaw dropped and their opening patter was lost to her in the excited chatter of the townsfolk around her.
Sunset snickered softly and gently ruffled Twilight’s mane again as the little mare prodded her pink friend. “Those two- I know them from school! They were always huge troublemakers, I wonder what they’re doing in Ponyville…”
As they watched, the mares trotted smartly to either end of the stage. Trixie swept aside her cape with a hoof, her telekinesis drawing out a trio of razor-sharp looking daggers, her magic beginning to move them in complicated patterns. Starlight drew herself up in front of a target as Trixie tied a blindfold over her own eyes. Twilight chewed on a hoof nervously as Trixie suddenly jerked around, one of the daggers flicking in a flat arc straight towards Starlight.
She uncovered her eyes sheepishly at the sharp thud of steel striking wood and a cheer from the crowd- Starlight’s mane fluttered in the breeze of the blade’s passage even as it vibrated in the target less than an inch from her face.
The remainder of the act followed the same lines, each mare escalating in their attempts to do the other fatal harm- but always a near miss or daring escape. A rope line snapped around Trixie’s hindleg and jerked her into the air, which she quickly cut and retaliated with another thrown dagger that embedded in the stage at Starlight’s hooves. At one point Starlight drew a pistol from her waistcoat and displayed the shiny brass and lead in each cylinder to the crowd, before aiming and firing with a sharp report; Trixie’s head snapped back and she flashed a grin before spitting the slug onto the boards.
The show eventually drew to a close accompanied by the dull clinking of bits falling into their tip bucket. Sunset groaned and let out a breath she’d been holding practically the entire time, and Pinkie seemed about to shake herself apart with sheer excitement overload. “She’s doing it again.”
Twilight chewed the inside of her cheek. “Well… They’ve always been very close. Starlight just doesn’t want to see Trixie fail or get ridiculed.”
Pinkie tilted her head and deflated slightly, her muzzle scrunching slightly with all the air of somepony who was about to have real magic spoiled for them for the first time. “What are you two talking about?”
Sunset rolled her eyes as she rose to head towards the stage. “Starlight was casting for both of them. At the beginning she used a ward and hid the cast so that the knife would miss her. And used a weave to slow the bullet so Trixie could catch it in her teeth.”
The two mares were alternatively counting bits, congratulating one another on a show well performed, and cleaning up the debris from their act when the trio approached the stage. Twilight found herself sans one pink pony as Pinkie raced up the steps, shaking each unicorn’s hoof in turn.
“Ohmygoodness that was so wonderful amazing fantastic you girls did such a great job I was so scared and then the thing and the stuff and oh you’re friends of Twilight’s so you’re friends of mine and it’s so incredibly great to meet you two and and and-”
Sunset firmly clamped Pinkie’s muzzle shut with a brief flicker of magic, before smiling sheepishly. “Girls, this is Pinkie Pie. Nod if you’d like to say hello, Pinkie Pie. And…”
Trixie’s eyes narrowed sharply, pinning the small purple unicorn in her tracks with a glare. She practically spat, before her nose turned up and she turned to look away from her. “Sparkle.”
Starlight glanced aside at Trixie before sighing and helping Twilight up the last step. “C’mon Twilight. I need you to help me with something inside the vardo. Our icebox is kinda on the fritz and I recall you’re a whiz with sygaldry.”
The prospect of a failed mechanism to pull apart and troubleshoot calmed Twilight down immensely, and the pair disappeared inside the caravan to leave Sunset and Pinkie with Trixie. Sunset smiled crookedly as Trixie tugged her hat off to tidy her mane with a sweep of magic.
“Nice ring.”
Trixie sniffed, before slowly lowering her hat back onto her head. “Thank you. It belonged to Tri- it was my mother’s.”
Sunset chewed the inside of her lip as her snout tilted downward. “Yeah. I heard. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Starlight had removed and hung up her coat and hat, and settled onto the narrow bed to watch Twilight prod at the guts of the broken icebox. She smiled softly. “That Pinkie’s cute. She yours?”
Twilight’s nose scrunched as she extricated a spring. Etched runes in the surface of a metal bar glowed as magic ran along them, and she slid the engraving toolbox Starlight had supplied closer. “Just a friend. Why does Trixie hate me still?”
Starlight hopped down and pushed her muzzle into the mechanism alongside Twilight. “As much as I love her, it’s because she’s an idiot. She’s had a run of bad luck ever since she got kicked out of the Gifted School, and she kinda blames you.”
The diamond-tipped etching tool shook and tapped against the metal bar, before Twilight regained her composure and began carefully carving a new set of runes into the sigil. “She was cheating. You were covering for her. I just thought she’d get a bad mark and have to take a grade over, I didn’t think they’d kick her out. I thought she’d apply herself.”
Starlight chewed the inside of her lip. “Well, the portal to Tartarus is opened with the incantation of good intention. She took it really badly, and then her mom passed. I’ve barely held her together the last couple years.”
Twilight slotted the pieces back into place and squinted at the dials on the machine. Twisting them to set the receiver to the frequency of the Ponyville Electric substation, the mechanism hummed to life and glowed a cheerful blue along the etched sygaldry. “There. It should work now. Just took a knock that scraped off one of the runes.”
Her ear twitched at the sound of panicky screaming, and she raced back outside with Starlight hot on her heels.
Sunset was furious. Spike and his friends had dashed past a few seconds ago crying blue hell, and in the wilderness beyond the caravan there came the echoing crashes of trees being shoved aside, and the trumpeting of something big and angry. “I can’t believe you. You’re so stupid! It’s just like you to do something without thinking of the consequences like this, Trixie.”
Trixie took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes a bit. “Well excuse me for thinking you dumb hick ponies would think to set wards that covered your entire podunk town! I thought this field was a safe zone!”
Twilight and Starlight followed the pair as they dashed around to the woods side of the caravan. Pinkie sprinted off into town, shrieking out Rainbow Dash’s name as the alert siren began to drown out the sounds of panic deeper in town. As they all slid to a halt, the nearest trees crashed to the ground to reveal the bulk of a hydra.
Sunset had a brief flicker of pride as Trixie raced out, loosing an arcane torrent at the beast. Before quickly dashing into the fray herself when the darts of magic fizzled out on the hydra’s side. A shriek tore her throat as the hydra’s tail lashed, catching Trixie full in the chest and tossing her skyward. In the second before she slammed into the side of the caravan, Trixie saw the band on Starlight’s horn vaporize as a beam of pure magic rent the air. Then her world cut to black.
The heavens shook with Starlight’s scream of anguish and fury as her hooves dented the soft grass. The ray widened, shifting upwards in color as it struck the hydra. The beast managed half a second of its own agonized cry, before it was simply gone, boiled away in a blast of pure power that carved a burning line in the earth and cut through the forest.
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Wow. It's been awhile. I do not remember what's going on at all.
I guess I'll have to start from the beginning again.
9544552
Yeah... I know. I'm sorry. I'm dreadful.
When I was reading the explanation of magic, i had to stop partway through and make sure this wasn't an Estee story. Like A.P.O.N.I., I'm going to have to reread this to remember what all came before. I do like what I remember, though. And what I read here.
9544581
Pfwa. Either high praise or indication that I need to stop drinking so deeply from the trough.
9544630
... *Makes a quiet edit to queued chapter.*
Not bad, I also like the change to the performance.
I really like your Pinkie Pie. Most of the time she is just too much. To have her be a calm, dependable rock of a mare is a welcome change. (no pun intended)
So, ponies produce pure tass inside their bodies? In Mage the Awakening willworkers would kill for getting their hands on them. Maybe for keeping them in breeding farms, or worse
You did not just do that! I hope the survivor doesn't go for revenge here. Also I wonder if Trixie and Twilight ever found out about their relationship and how would that have effected everything?
Starlight's Wave Motion Cannon
Ah, Extreme Weather Week. A celebration only a pegasus could love.
It's almost surreal to see open discussion of Triptych truespeech. Not a complaint, mind you, just an observation. And Pinkie's home accent slipping out when she discusses rock farming is a very nice touch. Really a fascinating discussion of equine thaumobiology in general.
You do write some fantastic Twinkie.
Ah. Mourning Granny Pie, I presume.
Oof. If Trixie's genuinely dead... Yeah, this isn't ending well for anyone involved.
And that card... I'm not even sure what you're going for there. The timing's bizarre, X isn't defined, and it's a monored counterspell besides.
Wait, they have guns?
I’d personally go with cost {U}{W}{R} and an effect of “Prevent all damage dealt to target creature. Deal X damage to one source of that damage where X is the amount of damage prevented.”
Yay update!
9544854
Of course they have guns. The time period is late 19th, early 20th century. They had pistols back then in real life. The only reason the show doesn't depict them is because, no matter what they got away with before, TV-Y is too low a rating to depict guns.
9544854
Yes?
9544558
Hey, late's better than never. One of my stories went an entire year between updates... and even then, the update is in the form of a rewrite.
You're doing way better than that.
... and after reading that last chapter, even though I haven't read much of the story... Yeah. I like it.
9544558
I have now re-read the entire series up to this point. Honestly, I'm not certain why I didn't favourite this sooner.
I need this for my deck.
9545179
It's a ripoff of Spell Blast
.
9544926
IIRC, that was one of the reasons the early Pokemon episode where Ash catches Tauros was banned... one of the hunters in the Safari Zone pulled a gun.
Dang, it's been forever, since this was updated... I have no memory of the past couple of chapters...
Screw a Hydra deck, can someone help me make a Starlight deck?
Twilight cleared her throat. “Mine… I tapped into the field like never before. I don't remember anything about it but terror and… Celestia touched my magic with her own and I got a glimpse of her. In that moment I knew her as well as I knew myself. I felt the name burning in her heart singing in my blood, and I felt the call of the immeasurable power of the Sun itself. It shocked me out of the Surge, but I've never been able to not wonder what might have happened if I'd… grabbed. Let her magic flow into and over me.”
That is easy Twilight the suns power burns your mind and magic and you go feral becoming the monster of the everfree
9758683
Yes that was a reference. I love Georg.