Roaring Winds and Rising Tides

by vortex123

Twilight's Tower

So I knew that Twilight had a method to her madness, what I didn't know, was what that method was. Instead of using the normal sorting method literally every other library in Equestra uses, she would sort her books however she wanted. And that wouldn't be so bad, if the times she decided to change that order wasn't seemingly random. I looked at the last place I saw "Pyromancy for beginners", and instead found "The female form: How to prepare for strange changes". I look at the area where she had kept her collection of Starswirl related books, and found "A Gardeners guide for rose maintenance". Why a magic obsessed girl has a book about gardening, I will never know. I even tried looking in her room (which was unlocked for some reason), and I couldn't find anything pertaining to a fire based magic book, just some ominous feeling black book.

Rubbing my face in agitation, I walk out of the room, and close the door. A few moments after, I heard someone at the door trying to get in, but can't, probably due to an enchantment. Due to past problems, like the "Nobles" trying to pull a fast one, this tower was reinforced with many countermeasures. This tower is quite literally one of the safest places in Equestra, baring certain…instances.

"Ugh!" I heard someone groan on the other side of the door. "What the hell!? This is the 10^th magic lock pick that's broken! What's this lock made of? Anti magic!?" I heard the same person speak.

"Don't be ridiculous, as if a no-horn like her could get her hands on something like that." Another one said with a scoff.

I just ignore them and get back to searching.

"Hey, what's it doing?" I hear the first guy ask as I take a break from searching, cut on the security camera crystal, and take out a can of soda from the mini fridge.

"W-w-whoa! It's got my wrist!" I heard the same guy yell. I opened the can of soda as the screen finally showed what was happening outside. For some reason, tentacles have been Twi's go to when it came to deterrents lately. I take a sip as the tentacles grap the two's remaining limbs. I struggle not to chock from laughing as I watched boxing gloves appear out of thin air, and then preceding to hit the two in the stomach. Having finished my can of soda, I crack out another one as I enjoy the show.

Alas all good things must come to an end. I couldn't just sit there and watch those two idiots get hurt, I had magic to practice after all. So with a heavy heart, I cut off the security crystal screen, and ignored their crys for help as I continued my search for a fire related spell book. I wonder if I should have told them that it gets worse everytime they say "no-horn" or "fake (wannabe) unicorn"…eh, I'm sure they'll figure it out. Honestly, I've been possessed by ghosts and demons, faced otherworldly abominations due to technically being a living portal, and dealt with the insanity that is my caretakers. But none of that is even remotely as terrifying as that mare.

…

…

…

'Why is there a mutilated body on a workbench in her basement lab? Why are runes written everywhere in this room? I gotta-' I feel something jabbed in my neck, and I lose consciousness.

…

…

"Mike? Mike? Mike?" I'm woken up by a familiar voice.

"Twilight?" I asked in confusion. Then everything comes rushing back. "Twilight! What the heck was going on in your basement!?"

"My basement? There's nothing in my basement." She says with a confused look.

"What?" I asked in confusion.

"There's nothing in my basement." She repeated. "You can check if you want." She said with a shrug. Taking her offer, I rushed to her basement, only to find it empty.

"I don't…" I'm at a loss for words. A quick look at my watch showed that only five minutes past. A unicorn with a horn would have needed 30 minutes at the least to clean a room this thoroughly and precisely, a unicorn like Twilight would take twice as long, and I've only been unconscious for 5 minutes.

"I got an alert that someone was (rather poorly) trying to break into the tower, so I rushed over here as fast as I could. And when I got here, you were unconscious." She explained, then gave a glare that sent a shiver down my spine. "You had me worried you know."

"Oh." I say, a feeling of guilt rising up. "I'm sorry." I say, genuinely regretful. For the first time in a long time, I see her flinch.

"H-hey! There's no need to be that upset about it. All that matters is that you're ok." She says with a big smile. Though something was off. Her smile wasn't a normal happy-go-lucky smile, it was one I've seen on those hiding something, something baaaad. Also why was I unconscious? The two from earlier couldn't get in, and even if they did, they'd be too hurt to be an actual threat to me. "So why were you concerned about my basement?"

"Well I had checked it (or at least I thought I did) to see if I could find any fire related spell books, and I saw something unpleasant to say the least." I answered.

"OH! Duh, of course you'd have no idea where it is." She says, slapping her forehead and muttering something I couldn't make out. She then summoned a bunch of books pertaining to fire magic. "Well since I idiotically didn't tell you where these books where, it's only fair that I stay right here with you, to personally make sure nothing goes wrong."

"You don't have to." I say raising my hand.

"Oh believe me Mike." She says with a chuckle. "Yes, I very much do." Something about the way she said that sent a red flag off in my head, but I chose not to question it.

'Huh…what's that weird taste in my mouth?' I think in confusion, it seemed familiar, in a bad way.

---

Twilight had said that before we could actually start practicing spells, I had to isolate my magic (the magic Link gave me) from the magic I…inherited(?) from Princess Celestia. According to Twi, I now had a magic network that was actually functioning properly. Since the one I had from my 'displacement' was so bad (Twilight even went so far as to say that if a plumber had to fix pipes as bad as my old magic network, they'd quit their job), the magic from the princess was starting to redirect itself from my old network, to my new one. And that wouldn't be so bad, if my new network was actually strong enough to handle the strain, which it wasn't. So I had to learn how to only use my magic, without accidentally using the princess'. Simple enough…

…

Yeah, no. It…it wasn't actually. In fact, it was incredibly hard, to say the least.

"Ok, don't get too upset, most beginners take months to do what you're trying to do. Just try one more time, then we can take a break." Twilight said with a patient smile, then frowned. "Celestia she's good." I heard her mutter.

"Who's good?" I asked in confusion.

"Don't worry about it. Just focus on your magic." She said with a chuckle. I nod and zone out, completely focusing on my magic.

Twilight's POV

I quietly sigh as a take in the sight in front of me. Specifically Mike, and his stalker.

She was an earth pony with peach skin, pink hair (done in a pony tail), and blue eyes. She was wearing a red dress (not fancy enough to draw attention, but cute enough to make a stallion's heart skip a beat), and white shoes. Though this was only a glamour spell, she can't afford to show what she actually looks like, do to her past crimes. She was actually a unicorn with black hair, grey eyes (which sometimes glowed red), and white skin. She also had runes tattooed all over her body, which Mike would have seen if he had been able to investigate her unconscious body, when she was in the basement. I would have told him about it, but he wouldn't have approved, even if I told him his mentors green lit this. The runes had many different functions, which I told the mare most of, just to be safe. One of the runes prevented her from using magic, which is a good thing, since her magic power rivals mine.

…Huh

It's just occurred to me that I've never learned her name.

Knock

Knock

Knock

With a sigh, I summoned a piece of paper, and left Mike a note. Then I fix the mare a death glare, and wrote a message in the air out of magic, the white in my eyes turning bluish and my skin turning darker.

If you ever want to see another sun rise, let alone Mike, you won't do anything stupid. Got it?

Instead of getting scared like most ponies, she just nods, that same agitating smile still on her face. Taking a few more moments to glare at her, I walk downstairs, making sure to add some more commands to the tower's protocol systems.

I had a bad feeling about this, so I'm not taking any chances.

Reaching the front door, I open it to see what looked like a 13 year old human girl. She had a white cat tail and ears, (the inside of her ears being pink), and a pink bow near the end of her tail. She has shoulder length white hair with the cat ears on top, even though she had a set of human ears on the side of her head as well. Her top consists of a mustard yellow and pink top with a pink bow tie. She's wearing a pink skirt with this top. And finally, she was wearing plain white shoes, which look to be enchanted to absorb a great amount of shock and kinetic energy, and redistribute according to the situation. Not hard to do by itself (that's actually how Shining's favorite shield spell works), the only difficult part is storage, the amount of storage in the enchantment dictates the limit of shock and kinetic energy it can store at once. Any unicorn my level could make out that enchantment, since it wasn't that impressive considering how outdated it was.

'This must be Carl, guess she's got transformation magic down.' I think, remembering her little adventure with one of Mike's incidents.

"Can I help you?" I say with a raised brow.

"Hello Twilight." Carla greets with a nervous chuckle. "Can I-er-WE come in?" I’m silent for a moment, taking time to look at the assembled creatures. A light green unicorn stallion with blue eye, and black mane. He was wearing a white shirt, light brown pants, and flip flops. And two humans, one was a young looking male teenager, and the other was a young adult looking woman. Both of them had crimson red straight hair, with the teenager having short hair, while the woman’s hair went all the way down to her waist. Both had light blue eyes. The woman was wearing a purple sleeveless shirt, while the teen was wearing a green short sleeve shirt. The woman was wearing a long black skirt, while the teen was wearing black jeans, both had white tennis shoes on.

‘Two humans, a pony, and Carla. Eh…why not?’ I think, not that interested.

"Sure, just don't go upstairs, Mike needs to focus on something." I say, letting them pass, while keeping on eye on the enchanted gem above them. Suddenly everyone, save for me, got light headed.

"I see you still have THAT feature." Carla says, the affects wearing off after 10 seconds.

"Better safe then sorry." Twilight shrugs. It wasn’t something big, just something to scan their intent. If it was bad (which would make the gem glow red), the tower’s defense system would be on high alert, but not aggressive until they did something they shouldn’t do. If their intent was good or neutral (which would make the gem glow green or yellow respectively), the defense system would be calm. I’m still working out the bug that makes people light headed. "So, to get back on topic, can I help you?"

Carla preceded to explain situation with the humans (named Jack and Nicole apparently), while I just sit there and listens quietly. After Carla finishes, I speak my mind.

"Well…there might be a problem." I started to say, only to see Carla raise her hand to stop me.

"Let me guess, since they're not citizens, we can't legally help them until they're processed. Right?" She guessed.

'For a girl who has foresight, albeit fuzzy, you sure are shortsighted.' I think with a mental deadpan and sweat drop. 'It's way to convenient for them to just appear out of nowhere, and find something like a gang leader's HQ on day one. Plus they could be lying about who they are; they could be cult members for all we know. And all of that isn't including their strange aura.'

"Twilight?" Carla called, braking me out of my thoughts.

"Sorry, was deep in thought." I say with a chuckle. 'Better play along; for now at least. Though I should warn Mike about this.' I think with a mental frown. "And that's right. Thanks to how dangerous it's been lately, we can't afford to use government resources to help noncitizens. I'll try to help as best as I can, without the government's help, but that's all I can do."

"The fact that you're helping us at all is more then enough, Ms.Twilight." Nicole (according to Carla) said with a grateful smile.

"Glad to hear that." I say with a small smile. 'Well she's either being genuine, or she's a good enough actress to fool me. Let's see which it is.'

Author's Note:

I know some of you are gonna ask why Twilight left one of her best friends with a criminal, that'll be explained in the next chapter.

Also, while Twilight may not want to deal with things similar to the things Mike's strangeness is related to (i.e. The Displace as a whole), she isn't gonna turn a blind eye to something that could endanger her friends. And yes, Twilight does see Carla as a friend, even if she doesn't show it.

Comments

[Carlie]

You still working on this?

[vortex123]

10642285
Yeah, just hit writer’s block

[Uncle Iroh]

10642551
My advice is to listen to music and take long walks, it will clear your mind, also try meditating it worked for me when I was writing an essay.

[vortex123]

10698458
Thanks, I’ll try some of that.