• Published 4th Mar 2019
  • 403 Views, 11 Comments

Dan vs. Mysterious Stranger - Typist Gray



Dan and his girlfriend Pinkie are just minding their own business, not even burning anything (yet), when they come across a fella who will help keep their lives interesting, and determine which of them is wearing underwear.

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Chapter 3: Damage Control

Several minutes later, the screaming and other sounds of commotion had come to a dead halt. The neighbors, as ever, pretended not to notice anything out of the ordinary, lest they somehow get caught up in the middle of whatever was definitely not happening. Chris and Elise had been afforded the chance to get dressed properly while Dan, Pinkie, and Fel waited patiently on the living room couch.

“Refreshments?” Chris called from the kitchen.

“I could use some milk. Lactose free, of course,” Dan reminded.

“Of course.”

“Some lemonade would be nice,” Pinkie requested weakly.

“I’m also putting on a chicken. Elise says the extra iron is good after you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Thanks.”

“And I’ll have a vitamin water,” Elise replied with a slight rasp from yelling.

“Sure thing, beautiful.”

“A glass of water will be fine,” Fel added politely. “Did you need any help?”

“It’s no trouble,” Chris replied. “You’re a guest. It wouldn’t be right to impose.”

“Guest,” Elise grumbled from the floor, busying herself with cleaning up all the blood. “Comes into my home! Gets blood all over my new carpet.”

“Sorry about that,” Pinkie said.

“Oh, I don’t blame you, Pinkie,” Elise assured. “The new guy-”

“Stalker Freak,” Dan corrected.

“-is the one who set off the initial chain of events. Ergo, this is all his fault.”

“A fair assessment,” Fel agreed. “As such, I wouldn’t mind helping you to clean.”

“No, no. It’s fine. Like Chris said, you’re a guest. And if we can welcome the likes of Dan into our home, I suppose we should be willing to show the same courtesy to anyone.”

Fel blinked. “An… interesting line of reasoning.”

“Put some elbow grease into it,” Dan cheered. “Gotta work double shift if you want to get blood stains out.”

“Ugh! I know, Dan,” Elise replied irritably. “This isn’t the first time people have bled all over my floor. In fact, the only reason we got the new carpet was because the old one was just so damaged that we agreed it was a lost cause.”

“Which would have never happened if you’d applied proper cleaning techniques from the beginning,” Dan informed with smug certainty.

Elise growled, mumbling an explicative under her breath that made Pinkie flinch.

Fel’s brow furrowed. “Elise. If it’s not too much trouble, I wish to ask something.”

“Shoot.”

“Well, as an alien to this world, I am unfamiliar with your foreign customs. General responses to mayhem and incivility have left me especially vexed.”

“Get on with the question!” Dan growled.

Fel pursed his lips at Dan and eventually turned back to Elise. “Given your past history with Dan, would it be deemed acceptable for you to break a plate over his head in retaliation for his current attitude?”

Elise gave an unexpected chuckle. “Yeah, no. I’m not doing that.”

Fel blinked again. “Why?”

“Because we’re in my house and those would be my plates,” she informed. “And who do you think has to clean up afterwards?”

“Ah,” Fel acknowledged. “So it’s not the action that is contentious, but the personal inconvenience. That helps me understand quite a bit. Thank you.”

“No problem,” Elise replied casually as she continued scrubbing. This new guy might not have made the best first impression, but his manners were a clear cut above what she’d become accustomed to with Dan.

“Drinks!” Chris announced.

Dan got his milk first, so as to avoid giving the impression of an insult which would only cause further problems down the road. “It’s about time.”

Next came Pinkie, who got a full carton which she immediately began to guzzle down. She might have said ‘thank you’, but it was hard to hear over her gulping.

Then came Elise. She took her custom formulated bottled water and gave her husband a kiss in gratitude.

Lastly was Fel, who accepted his glass with a polite nod. “Thank you, Chris.”

“Happy to help.” Chris remained standing between the kitchen and living room, keeping an eye on the oven while regarding his guests. “So, what’s this all about anyway? Are you guys on some kind of revenge run?”

“Not yet, at least,” Dan informed, already annoyed at having to tell this story a second time. “This guy says he’s from another universe, but one different from Pinkie. He said he wants to hang out with us until ‘something significant’ happens,” he said derisively.

Pinkie pulled the empty carton from her lips with an audible gasp. “In exchange, he says he wants to help stabilize the portal between Earth and Equestria so all my friends can travel to and fro as they like.”

“I’m just doing this for the chance to hang out with a real-life fire breathing dragon,” Dan added.

“Okay. Makes sense so far,” Chris acknowledged, grateful for the simple and straightforward explanation. At least it didn’t sound like anyone necessarily needed to be hurt on this adventure.

Elise sat up and looked back at the couch sitters. “You told him about the portal?” she asked apprehensively, not comfortable with such delicate secrets being shared so casually.

“Nah,” Pinkie assured enthusiastically. “He already knew. He knew about Twilight and everything.”

“Stalker Freak, remember,” Dan informed. “The name pretty much says it all.”

Elise narrowed her eyes on the stranger, vowing to not let herself be swayed by that handsome and disarming smile of his. “I still don’t trust you.”

“As you shouldn’t,” Fel agreed. “I’ve given you no reason to trust me.”

Elise stood. “Then how exactly do you expect me to give you access to my portal research?”

Fel took a sip of his drink. “You really need to put a filter on your water,” he said to Elise. “Fluoride has all manner of negative effects on the body and brain.”

“Finally, someone else gets it,” Dan agreed, feeling vindicated at hearing the words from another. “Why else would the government do it unless there was a shady ulterior motive?”

Elise opened her mouth to object, but no words came out. Although she’d always dismissed the fluoride thing as just another conspiracy theory, her time with her quasi-government source of employment told her that Dan’s remark probably held a lot more truth than she’d like to believe. She filed a mental note to look into that later. Also, given that Dan and Pinkie were in the same room, she felt a certain obligation to open her mind to possibilities normally dismissed as absurd.

Finally, Elise remembered where she was and tapped her foot impatiently. “I believe you were about to answer my question.”

“He does that a lot,” Dan commented. “Very evasive. Very shifty.”

Fel chuckled good-naturedly. “Well, since I want us to cooperate, that means that blackmail is off the table.”

Elise tensed. “What exactly do you have to blackmail me over?”

Fel leveled a flat stare at Elise. “Seriously? Do we really need to go over how I know what I know again? Because you people scream loud.”

Elise and the others all adopted bemused expressions, save for Chris who looked oblivious.

“Suffice to say that I have the ability to produce all manner of incriminating evidence that could not only get you locked up with several consecutive life sentences, but also start world war six and a half.”

“Half?” Pinkie asked.

“And what about wars three through regular six?” inquired Chris.

“You’re welcome,” Elise said with a finality that brokered no further elaboration. She folded her arms, now recognizing Stalker Freak as a true and proper threat.

“But I’m not going to do that,” Fel continued. “I would much prefer bribery over blackmail whenever possible, anyway. Helps to build good will that way.”

“Alright,” Elise allowed before taking a seat beside the couch. “And just what exactly do you have that I would want, besides incriminating evidence?”

Fel took another drink. “Besides being credited for the history making accomplishment of bridging the gap between dimensions, thus bringing humanity into a new era of exploration, understanding, and trade with a civilization of magical candy-colored talking horses?”

Elise smiled flatly as her imagination ran with the possibilities. She saw herself dressed as an ambassador, cameras flashing as she shook hand and hoof with Twilight Sparkle before the active and functional portal. In this vision she no longer needed to work in espionage, as just about every agency, government, and celebrity would be willing to pay whatever she asked just for the chance to talk with her. She could retire after just a few years, freeing her up to spend all the time she wanted with Chris. Who worked at a bakery. Under Dan’s employ. Thereby meaning she’d be reduced to a home body, letting her skills atrophy while she awaited Dan’s inevitable revenge schemes as the only cure for the grueling monotony of suburban life. Right then, out of everything she’d ever faced in her life, she was having difficulty imagining a worse kind of hell.

“Yes. Besides that,” she affirmed.

Fel shrugged his understanding and reached into his vest. “Well, there is one thing you might want.” He extracted a notebook and waved it tauntingly at the woman.

“And what might that be?”

Fel reached out to hand it over.

Elise eyed the book skeptically like she was afraid it might bite. “That book isn’t laced with anything, is it?”

“I can respect a healthy bit of paranoia,” Fel chuckled. “But no. We passed a convenience store on the way here and I thought this would be handy.” He extracted a receipt from his vest and placed it atop the notebook.

Elise leaned over and confirmed the name of the store, as well as today’s date.

“We didn’t stop at any convenience store,” Dan remarked.

“I checked myself out,” Fel answered. “Paid in cash before the cashier even knew what happened.”

“Impressive,” Pinkie marveled. “I wish I could shop that quickly.”

“Chicken’s done!” Chris announced as he brought a tray full of the butchered remains of a hen who once went by the name of Henrietta, only for her and all her friends to be thrown into a literal grinder. Oblivious to this fact, Chris served everyone a portion before sitting down and enjoying his own. Pinkie looked a little sad at first, but eventually joined the men in eating as well.

Elise, still wary, grabbed the notebook, holding it away from her body as though it had an offensive smell. With much trepidation, she applied the absolute minimum skin contact necessary to both corners of the book, and opened it. It took a second for her brain to catch up and make sense of what she was looking at. When that happened, she dug her fingers into the cover and practically threw her face into the pages.

“Honey?” Chris asked worriedly.

“N-nothing,” Elise replied, sounding distracted. “These are…” She cleared her throat and turned the page, only to feel her heart attempt backflips in her ribcage. “Where did you get these?”

Fel grinned sinisterly, his face the very picture of ‘gotchya.’ “I drew them myself.”

“Yourself!?” Elise exclaimed. As her fingers delicately touched the masterful strokes on each fragile page, she had no doubt in her heart that these were all hand drawn. Although the spy was no art critic, she could easily tell that the images before her were free of the impurity of digital line work. There was only good old-fashioned pencil and marker, line and color twisting and writhing in a heated dance to produce a truly jaw dropping piece of art. Elise turned to the next page, and the weakening of her knees made her grateful to already be sitting.

“So let me get this straight,” Dan interjected. “While I was driving at around 40 miles per hour-”

“Uh huh.”

“-you went into a store-”

“Yup.”

“-bought a notebook-”

“Paid in cash.”

“-and then proceeded to draw in said notebook-”

“Indeed.”

“-filling it with images that I’m fairly certain I’d rather not think about-”

“You really don’t.”

“I do!” Pinkie piped up.

“-and all without any of us seeing you do any of it?”

All eyes, save Elise’s, fell upon Fel, who shrugged. “I like to keep myself busy.”

“Just to clarify,” Chris meekly spoke up. “Should I be worried about what my wife is looking at?” he asked as he watched Elise turn another page. She made a faint whimper as her pupils widened to the point that her eyes barely had any white left.

Fel smiled flatly. “She’s just going through a, well, a doughnuts moment.”

“A what?”

“Like how Homer Simpson goes into a mild trance at the mere sight or mention of doughnuts,” Fel elaborated. “It’s just a brief moment of obsessive indulgence with something you crave. Nothing permanent.”

Dan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t tell me we’re suddenly running off cartoon logic or something,” he grumbled. “Me having super powers and Pinkie’s weird teleporting is one thing, but treating real life like a cartoon is just something I can’t abide.”

“What about ‘Who Framed Rodger Rabbit?’” Pinkie asked.

“… It’s a thing I mostly can’t abide.”

Fel clucked his tongue. “I am repeatedly fascinated as to where you people draw the line.”

“So what was this bribe thing you were talking about?” Pinkie asked.

At last Elise tore her eyes from the engaging images.

“Well, I thought it was rather obvious, but here it is. Elise. Cooperate with my shenanigans, and I’ll continue the series.”

“Series?” Dan, Chris, and Pinkie asked as one.

“Deal!” Elise screamed and snapped to face Pinkie. “Where’s the mirror?”

“Mirror?”

“The one you use to talk to Twilight. Where is it?”

Pinkie furrowed her brow. “I thought you still had one.”

Elise pursed her lips and averted her gaze. “Well…”

***

One swirly scene transition to signify a flashback later…

“Holy f#&ing Jesus Christ on a f#&! How do I work this thing!?” Elise demanded from her station in the lab as all kinds of hell was being raised around her. The lights were flickering on, off, and into some in-between state that mortal eyes were not built to process. The entire room shook as if from an earthquake, but the readings from what few working instruments remained said that there was nothing natural about these tremors. Most of the controls were no longer responding to manual input and she’d been locked out of voice command by what she could only have assumed to be a hyper advanced Trojan horse virus she’d picked up while experimenting with space-time. “Holy Jeez! What the-”

“F#&ing piranhas!” Twilight exclaimed from her end. It was the closest approximation she could think of to describe the vicious three-legged creatures that were marching out of her mirror. Upon emerging into this plain of reality, the things looked around, blinking as they took in the world with an almost wide-eyed innocence. They then jumped on the purple princess and tried biting at her soft parts. “F#&ing piranhas! F#&ing piranhas!”

“What the f#&!? Where the f#& did the octopus come from!?” Elise demanded of the tentacles that shot out from the dark places around her lab. The appendages flailed about like snakes pumped full of super cocaine. They grasped for anything and everything in their reach before adhering their awful suckers to their poor target, picking it up, and smashing it to pieces. Elise didn’t even notice the Pinkie clone – one of the few she’d saved from a prior experiment – being playfully tickled by the spawn of the outer realms that was otherwise raising absolute hell in her lab. “What in the Jesus!!! What the f#& is ha-pen-ing!?” she cried out in desperation as she opened fire with her pistol.

Twilight, similarly, had also resorted to offensive magic to hold back the scourge. “What the f#& is this!? Oh my Go-”

*BANG*

The areas surrounding both portals experienced a level 3 earthquake in the aftermath of both mad scientists’ emergency containment procedures.

***

“It, uh… broke,” Elise finished flatly, losing much of her prior urgency. “The point is, I’ve been meaning to ask for a replacement for a while, anyway.”

“But I thought you had, like, three more backups,” Pinkie recalled.

“Did they break during the earthquake last week?” Chris asked, trying to be helpful.

“Yes! They broke… then,” Elise affirmed, her voice stilted and her mannerisms constipated.

“Oh. Okay.” Cheerful as ever, Pinkie needed no further elaboration as she reached into her hair and extracted her hand-sized mirror. “Here ya go.”

“If I understand correctly that you are about to create a window to another universe,” Fel began, “then I would very much like to watch the process. Studying new means of generating portals is always fascinating.”

With Elise’s agreement, the rest of the company invited themselves along down into her secret lab.

“It still amazes me that you’ve managed to build all of this under our house,” Chris said as he marveled at the high ceilings and walls covered in machines whose names he was pretty sure he could never pronounce, let alone understand. “When was that, anyway?”

“Remember that vacation we went on a bit after our honeymoon?” Elise reminded as she submitted herself to the various scanners to confirm that she was who she said she was to the automated security system.

“Yeah?”

“Well, let’s just say I had a bit of… Ahem,” she awkwardly cleared her throat and motioned the others to turn around. When they did, she kept her eye on Fel – for she trusted him the least – as she dropped her pants and sat down on the rectal scanner. It blinked its confirmation and she made herself decent once more. “-a bit of renovation while we were gone.”

“Obviously,” Dan grumbled. “Either that or the house was built like that before you bought it.”

“I actually did have this setup where I lived while I was still dating Chris,” Elise informed conversationally as she led the group down the halls. “I mean, it’s not like I could have had a place like this with my parents breathing down my neck all the time.”

“Impressive layout and adequate security,” Fel appraised. “Would you be open to some constructive criticism on ways you could make improvements?”

Elise looked over her shoulder back at Fel. On principle she wasn’t opposed to honest critique of her skill. Advice from fellow masters in the various fields was one of the most convenient ways to see one’s flaws and improve. However, it bothered her that Stalker Freak might actually be counted among those respected masters. “I suppose…”

Fel quickly extracted a piece of paper from his jacket, scribbled some notes, and handed it over to Elise. She read what was written. Although his pointing out of the various flaws in her security were written with the utmost tact and his suggestions for corrections were acceptably professional, she still couldn’t help but feel just a tiny bit insulted by the sheer quantity of mistakes he’d listed.

Finally they made their last turn down the corridor and to Elise’s recently repaired lab.

“The rest of you can go sit over there,” the spy directed to a couch in the back. “There’s a TV and everything. I’ll get started over here.”

The party split with Fel and Elise going for the main work station while everyone else gathered around the TV to wait and see if anything interesting happened.

Fel watched intently as Elise placed Pinkie’s smaller mirror beside the glass pane that could have fit over an extra wide television screen. His eyes flashed faintly when he saw the mirror’s aura begin to radiate outward. The aura was on an ethereal spectrum, something that only beings naturally attuned to magic could see clearly. Even an alicorn like Twilight would have had to cast a spell to boost her senses. Near as Fel could tell, the aura of the smaller mirror seemed to be reaching for the larger mirror, likely in anticipation of what was to come.

“Hey Twilight,” Elise called into the mirror, making the reflective surface shimmer and shift to that of a room made of cool colored crystal. “Twilight?”

“Hmm?” A purple mare with a horn and wings poked her head out from the side. “Oh Elise. Thank goodness you’re alright!” she beamed happily. “I was worried when you didn’t call me back after…” She trailed off at spying the stranger. “Uh…” She pointed.

“It’s a long story,” Elise replied with a heavy sigh. “All that matters is this guy thinks he can help us with the portal, so I’m letting him help out.”

“Oh, then he’s a new work colleague?”

“That’s… probably the simplest way to put it,” Elise conceded.

“In that case, hello,” greeted Twilight as she posthumously extended her hoof to the mirror. “My name is Princess Twilight Sparkle. A pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine, Twilight,” he greeted with a short bow. “You may call me Fel, although Dan has taken to calling me Stalker Freak.”

“For exactly the reasons you’re imagining,” Dan called across the room.

“Who else is there?” Twilight asked.

“Hiiiii Twiliiight!”

“Pinkie?”

“Hey, Twilight.”

“Chris?” Twilight then looked between Elise and Fel, quietly demanding an explanation.

Elise twiddled her fingers together, apprehensive about giving so much away. “I, uh, didn’t want to bother you. That’s why it took me so long to call back.”

Twilight’s eyes widened as it hit her. “That’s okay. I,” she smiled guiltily, “didn’t want to bother anypony either.”

The two scientists of questionable ethics shared a knowing grin about how they’d both been too embarrassed by the failure of their last experiment.

“Wow,” Fel remarked. “That must have been some goof you two had.”

Elise whirled around on Fel and brandished her gun where Twilight couldn’t see. “Okay, how did you know about that?”

Fel rolled his eyes. “It’s all over your body language.” He gestured between Elise and Twilight. “You’re both terrible liars.”

“I’ll say,” Spike agreed as he came into view.

“Spike!” Twilight snapped. “I told you this room is off limits when-”

“No sock on the doorknob,” Spike reminded.

“… oops. Well I meant to!”

“Hey, is that my accidental arson buddy?”

“Dan?” Spike asked, running up beside Twilight.

“What’s up, mah lizard,” Dan greeted back as he also came up to crowd around the small mirror. “How’s it hanging?”

Spike puffed out his chest. “Yours truly just got done helping AJ with a little… pest problem.” He snorted a puff of smoke for emphasis.

“I like the sound of that,” Dan replied with a sinister toothy grin.

“Well, AJ’s barn got infested with a pretty bad batch of dire termites,” Spike began. “They’re just like regular termites, only dire.”

Twilight cleared her throat.

“Excuse you,” Dan replied impatiently. “We’re having a conversation, here.”

“Oh right!” remembered Elise. She turned the tiny mirror around to face the larger one and pressed the two pieces of glass together. The image upon the larger mirror quickly grew murky as hazy clouds began to swirl. Not a few seconds later, the image had changed to a much larger version of the tiny mirror. “There we go,” Elise bragged. “All done.”

“You can take this smaller mirror,” Twilight said to Spike after carrying out the same procedure. “It’ll connect with Dan’s so that you two can catch up.”

“Sweet!” Spike cheered as he and Dan wandered off to resume swapping stories.

“Fascinating,” Fel praised as he ran his fingers along the surface of the larger mirror. “Without the need of a verbal command, the original spell sensed the intent of its wielder and acted accordingly, duplicating the core matrix without sacrificing any of its internal power.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “For a spell created by a chaos spirit, the internal workings seem especially refined.”

Twilight blinked. “H-how did you get all that?”

Fel smirked. “I was invited as an outside expert for a reason,” he bragged. “Also, if I’m not mistaken, it appears that the spells on both mirrors seem to be drawing a bit of energy from Equestria as a sort of anchor, given this world’s utter lack of background magic. Inanimate objects can pass through easily enough, suggesting that this is already a stable portal. However, the issue is with complex organisms passing through, yes?”

“And you’re getting all of this just by, what, looking at the mirrors?” Elise asked, equally as stunned as Twilight.

“In a matter,” Fel agreed. “It is similar to how a great chef can deduce the ingredients of a cake just by the smell.”

“Cake?” Chris almost stood, but Pinkie grabbed his sleeve and held him down, shaking her head.

“I have traveled across many universes and studied the many ways of seeing,” Fel continued. “As such, I’ve adapted my eyes to pick up on just about every visual spectrum there is. Infrared, ultraviolet, etheric, spectral, ubidy’garmuch, various cloaking techniques, x-ray, and more.”

“Now that sounds like something I could use in my own research,” awed Twilight. “Do you think you could-”

“The surgery involves pulling my eyeballs from the sockets while the nerves are still intact,” Fel informed flatly. “The orbs are then split in half, in addition to twelve other incision points. Machines, genetically engineered nerves, and even a few unholy artifacts are all implanted within my peepers, all while I’m still conscious.” He gave a sinister smile. “And that’s just step one of twelve. “For the next part I had to-”

“I get it!” Twilight cut him off, trying to keep herself from gagging. “Seriously, why would you put yourself through something like that?”

Fel’s smile softened as he looked between the two women before settling on Elise. “Remember when I said I respected a bit of healthy paranoia? Well, I’m not the sort who feels comfortable with others getting the drop on me.”

Elise’s face was stoic. She’d dealt with far more gruesome things in the past, and so wasn’t as nauseous as Twilight. However, she had heard down the grapevine about what others in her line of work had done to themselves in the name of protecting what they considered precious. “Where you’re from. It’s pretty dangerous, isn’t it?”

Fel nodded. “Even with all of your training and gear, I fear that even the likes of you would be fated to meet a horrific end if you came to my world,” he informed somberly. “My home is a terrible and dangerous place for creatures like you. I’m working on changing that, but that takes materials and resources that are increasingly hard to come by. So, whenever I find myself in worlds like this, I seek out the nearest source of power to learn all that I can in the hopes of taking that knowledge back home and finding some use for it.”

“What use could this be?” Twilight asked, gesturing to the mirror. She’d heard the sincerity of his words and felt compelled to believe. As such, if he only wanted to help, then she was obligated to help as well.

“Communications, perhaps,” Fel offered. “It’s a big world and there are places where the service is basically dead or even undead. Another alternative could always be handy. Besides that, this type of portal isn’t exactly common. Maybe we could make use of it for deliveries, or even find a defense so that they can’t be used against us. Honestly, just about anything can be made useful if you put it in the hands – or hooves – of the right mad scientist.”

Elise and Twilight managed proud grins at the praise that they were reasonably certain had been delivered upon them.

“Of course, these are only initial assessments,” Fel continued. “The two of you have been running experiments for some months now. I’d love to see your research.”

Elise, while skeptical, agreed. She attempted to throw a few secret phrases Twilight’s way as the two compiled their notes on past experiments. She asked if Twilight sensed anything unusual about the guy, to which the purple mare agreed. Even with just their talk through a screen, Twilight felt that his explanations pulled at her heartstrings a little too well, almost as though his words had been carefully chosen for that exact effect. Both agreed to hold back on their most critical findings and just wait and see what Fel could contribute.

***

“-and it burned for three days straight!” Spike concluded.

“It’s at times like this I wish Equestria had recording devices,” Dan gushed as he imagined the sight of the great barn going up in flames that danced in a rainbow of color.

“We do, but I forgot to bring one,” Spike admitted.

“Well, now you know better for next time,” Dan reminded patiently.

Spike was grateful for his human buddy’s understanding. “But I seriously had no idea it was going to get that big! Lucky Rainbow was around with some rain clouds to keep the fire contained.”

Dan frowned skeptically. “All this from just some old barn?”

“A barn full of dire termites,” Spike reminded. “Twilight looked it up afterwards. Turns out the little bugs have a… volatile reaction to dragon fire.”

Dan bore his teeth as he grinned from ear-to-ear. “Dan want!”

“I can definitely see why you would,” Spike chuckled. “Although, they only react to dragon fire that way. Regular fire just makes them go pfft,” he approximated a flatulent noise. “Still makes a satisfying popping sound, though.”

“No doubt, but now I’m thinking of something else,” Dan said with a plotting expression.

“Is it,” Spike leaned forward and lowered his volume, “dangerous?”

Dan responded in kind. “Most likely.”

Spike’s grin mirrored Dan’s. “I’m listening.”

***

“This isn’t so bad,” Chris said as he and Pinkie watched cartoons. “You and me, just sitting back with some nice TV while our significant others scheme away.”

“I usually like the scheming,” Pinkie chirped. “Half the satisfaction of delivering righteous vengeance upon the sinful masses is seeing all the hard work from the scheming stage come to fruition.”

“Makes sense,” Chris replied evenly.

“But this is pretty fun too. Dan can sometimes be a little stubborn when he doesn’t want to watch the same things I do.”

“I thought you guys liked the same stuff?”

“Mostly, but I think Dan is being just a teeny weeny bit unfair to the Disney channel. Gravity Falls was freaking awesome!”

“No argument here,” Chris agreed. “Even Elise liked it… after a bit of negotiation.”

“What kind of negotiation?”

Chris’ cheeks turned bright red as he made a conscious effort not to look Pinkie in the eye. “Just… things,” he replied evasively.

“Oh. Things,” Pinkie giggled knowingly. “I don’t see what you’re so embarrassed about. It’s not like me and Dan don’t do things too.”

“It just feels a little weird talking about this sort of thing with someone else.”

Pinkie frowned. “If it’s something bad, I’m all ears. I used to give out advice to my friends in Ponyville all the time.”

“Advice?” Chris questioned. “On… things?”

Pinkie nodded. “Yappers!”

“Okay, just so we’re clear. When talking about things, we’re actually-”

“Talking about bedroom stuff, along with stuff that doesn’t necessarily have to take place in the bedroom,” Pinkie finished. “If it makes you more comfortable, just keep the descriptions vague and maybe use a little innuendo instead of explicit stuff. So long as we can maintain a teen rating, then it should be fine.”

Chris nodded, grateful for what he interpreted as a metaphor. “Well, it’s not exactly a problem, per se,” he explained with a jittery grin and rubbed the back of his neck. “If anything, it sounds more like I’m bragging.”

“That’s okay. I Pinkie Promise not to let this turn into a competition.”

Chris smiled. Now that he was aware that such a thing was possible, he was glad it had been taken off the table. “Well, the problem was that I like eating cookies in the bed, but Elise doesn’t like sleeping on the crumbs.”

“Dan and I have a similar problem with pizza.”

“Well,” Chris continued, “I’m not too sure how the conversation got there, but we kinda agreed that the issue was the mess and not the cookies. So long as I cleaned it up before light’s out, there wouldn’t be a problem. And then… I’m not sure if it was her or me who suggested the next part. And…”

“Yeees?” Pinkie inquired, leaning into Chris’ personal space.

“Well, instead of me using a plate in bed,” Chris struggled to keep his giggling under control, “somehow we came to the idea of, well, using,” he whispered as quietly as he could, “Elise as the plate.”

“Elise?” Pinkie whispered back.

“But with her nighty pulled up.”

Pinkie’s eyes practically bulged out of her skull. “I’m glad I Pinkie Promised not to compete,” she said breathily. “Cuz I’ve got all kinds of juicy stories that leave that one in the dust.”

“Same,” Chris whispered. “That’s just the only one I’m comfortable telling while Elise is in earshot.”

***

“Most excellent,” Fel said as he reviewed the notes he’d been given, pretending he didn’t have super hearing on top of super sight. “Several of these experiments… well, are impressively creative to say the least. And,” he held the paper up to his face and inhaled through his nose, “is it safe to infer that most of said experiments were created while under the influence?” he asked with a knowing grin.

“It was the only way for anything to make sense,” Elise argued, less defensively than she’d intended. “I mean, it’s Pinkie we’re talking about.”

“Clearly your families did a poor job of teaching you never to drink while sciencing,” Fel said. “Then again, it’s not like my own research teams are innocent on that front.”

“I don’t know. We’ve gotten pretty drunk before,” Twilight reminisced.

“Not as much as the first time,” Elise reminded, causing the both of them to titter nostalgically.

“I see that,” Fel said, flipping back to the first page of notes. “You created an army of lesser Pinkie clones that went into a frenzy and nearly raped Dan to death,” he described as if he were an officer delivering a citation. “That right there is the kind of thing folks lose their licenses over.”

“License?” Twilight asked, taken aback. “You give out licenses to science, er, to practice science?”

“After the indestructible giant fire breathing chicken: yes,” Fel intoned evenly, catching both women off guard. “Those responsible were hunted down, arrested, tried, convicted, heavily fined, put on indefinite probation, and then quietly hired on as unpaid interns to various companies researching weapons’ development.” His gaze darted between the two. “Watch your backs, or the same might happen to you some day.”

“Wow,” Twilight eventually said. “I can’t figure out if that’s a sign of grotesque corruption, or an almost unprecedentedly practical use of valuable resources.”

“Mad science isn’t exactly a market my people brag about with our neighbors, but it is an indispensable element of our economy.”

Elise chuckled. “Reminds me of what my government did with the Nazi scientists at the end of World War 2.”

“You told me about that,” Twilight remembered. “How goes the landing on Mars?”

“Shush-shh!” Elise hissed. Twilight’s ears folded back in recognition of her mistake.

Fel shrugged. “I won’t judge, at least not on that front,” he said evenly. “As we agreed, mad scientists are a valuable resource.” His relaxed comment led to both of his colleagues releasing tense breaths.

“Is anypony thirsty?” Twilight asked. “Because I’m pretty sure that was a good signal to toast.”

“I’ve got a spare bottle of wine if you’re interested,” Elise piped up. She then keyed away something on the control panel and a bottle and two wine glasses levitated down from the ceiling. “It’s an exact molecular duplicate of my grandmother’s wedding gift. I’ve duplicated tons of these and they taste better every time.”

“Does Chris know?” Twilight asked.

Elise had to think on that. “I share with him, if that’s what you’re asking. Although I’m not sure if it ever came up where I get them from.”

“Chris strikes me as the sort whose happy just seeing you happy,” Fel offered.

“Aww!”

Elise leveled a flat stare of betrayal at Twilight, forcing the alicorn princess to wince again. Just because Stalker Freak’s words were objectively true and sweet, that didn’t give Twilight the right to react accordingly. They still did not fully trust him. After all, the notes they’d given him might as well have been a child’s attempt to recreate ‘The Birth of Venus’ for all the scrubbing they’d done.

“Anyway, it would seem that he and Pinkie are keeping each other sufficiently occupied,” Fel informed, gesturing back at the pair now speaking animatedly on the couch. He turned back to face the ladies. “A toast to the eternal march of progress, perhaps?”

“I’m game.”

Elise sighed. “Yeah. That does sound pretty nice,” she conceded. So she popped the cork and poured herself and Fel a glass. For Twilight, she had to put the cork back in and manually hand the bottle through the mirror. Twilight accepted gleefully and poured her share.

“To new friends,” the purple mare cheered.

“To the unstoppable might of science,” Fel declared.

Elise had to think before she came up with a suitable response. “To good times with dangerous people,” she offered contentedly.

The three held up their glasses in cheers and downed their contents.

Author's Note:

Everyone has calmed down and we get down to the nitty gritty as Fel starts doing sciencey stuff after some careful negotiation. However, while they still aren’t fully trusting of Fel, most all of these characters have learned to roll with the punches, so to speak.
Also a few callbacks to some great moments in the original story, which I recommend you all read.

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