Previous Chapters Next
Close
0 - Ab Initio4,734 words
1 - Ab Initio Iterum4,533 words
1.5 - Pony Uno (tm)778 words
1.5.5 - Long Nights, Fizzling Alicorn474 words
2 - Sunrise3,173 words
3 - Energy Failure1,601 words
4 - Long Talks2,612 words
5 - Breakneck2,649 words
6 - Lost Years4,240 words

4 - Long Talks

"You need... a friend?" Celestia asked with a touch of amusement to her, giving you what you could best describe as 'a pretty weird look.'

Not the best reaction, but serviceable.

"Yeah. A friend. Hopefully someone who can help me figure out how to do a few things I'm totally lost on right now."

... Nope, nevermind, you're making it sound like a contract or something. After all, being groggy was the best time to do this, obviously.

'No chickening out,' you remind yourself, trying to think of something to follow that up with to dampen the blow.

...

Nope, you've got nothing.
Shit!

...

"That's... perhaps the most direct, yet indirect way anypony has ever asked me for help," she says with a laugh, shifting a bit away so she can get a good look at you.

"So-uh... I haven't outed myself as completely socially inept?"

You manage to steal another laugh from her- which is probably overall a positive.
Yeah, the mood definitely needed to be lightened right now.

"That's yet to be seen," she continues after a few more stray laughs, "but you could have... just asked for help, you know?"

That's a really good point that you hadn't even thought of.
Yep, you're totally awake right now.

"Probably, yeah. Except I'm maybe a bit out of practice acting like a normal person right now," you just outright admit it.

This time, the both of you start to laugh.

"I might... have tried to argue that, but I'm afraid I may be in the same kind of situation," she admitted as well, "I believe I've been... starved of conversation, much less friendship, for a very long time. It might be showing."

...

Okay, so maybe waking up against her should've been more of a panic response, and you were both just being dumb right now.

That laughter, though? It's doing some wonders.

The both of you probably needed it.

It took a little bit to wind down, but in the end, you knew one thing for certain: Alicorns are normal people. Except crazier, and they're probably stupidly powerful.
A good thing to know moving forward.

But anyways, you decided in the interim to actually... talk about what's going on recently, at least on the one front you really needed some help on right now.

Twilight.

It was honestly a bit harder to do than you'd like to admit, and at some point it was kind of like you... fazed out. There was still some emotional baggage there, and you definitely felt it.

At the very least you actually had someone to talk to this about, so it wasn't as bad as it was before, but still.

"So... you stopped talking to her when?"

Except this one part you weren't exactly looking forward to touching up on. You were basically moving backwards, from the most recent stuff, to the older things.

"A few years back. You know what happened to the library in Ponyville?"

"The Golden Oaks? Well, yes, I was personally involved with Tirek's invasion, but..."

She paused, looking over at you.

"Well... uh... you know how it got blasted, right?"

She didn't say a word, just continuing to probe at you. It took a lot of will to keep a decent poker-face right now.

"Well, I was... still living there at the time. This was before I got my own place."

It was incredibly awkward trying to come up with a good segue here.

"So you were... inside? When that happened?"

"Yeah..."

There was a tangible pause that followed, and you could almost feel her tense up slightly.

"I'm so-"

"Don't," you start, raising a hand to pause her, "if you're worried about me getting scarred or anything, I had years to get over that part. Trust me. I won't go into the whole speech, because honestly, I've had like three separate people talk to me about it professionally before, and I don't need to get into it again. Yeah, I was trapped inside as the place got blown. Yeah, I was buried under the rubble. I was in the hospital for weeks, and yes, I got some bad injuries from it. Lost a damn leg, actually, but Equestrian medicine is dumb and breaks literally all of the rules, including but not limited to re-attaching limbs. And Celestia? You don't have to do that thing where people get sorry about things they had or have no control over. I'm fine. That's not the part that pushed me away from Twilight at the time."

Celestia was genuinely thrown off for a moment, and you just decided to focus on a cup of tea you'd been neglecting for most of this chat, to give her a moment to compose herself.

"F-forgive me, it's a bit of a force of habit."

"Don't worry about it too much, I've dealt with a lot of ponies before. Herd instinct thing, I think, makes it a bit more common than humans to do that. Sorry if I was a bit harsh, honestly."

She shakes her head for a moment, "n-no. I have a bad habit of doing that, sometimes to my own detriment," she admitted with a bit of a sigh.

... Were you going to have to give her a therapy session later, too?

"Anyway... l-let's get back on topic, shall we?"

"Alright," you nod, taking another drink of tea to clear the throat.

Whatever brew this was, by the way, it was winning you over slowly compared to the coffee you occasionally indulged in. You'd have to ask later. This might be an acceptable substitute to the blackest brews you could find for any kind of cramming, early mornings, or really anything else.

... Moving on.

"The part I think got to me the most about it back then..."

You sigh, trying to not think about it too much.

You fail.

"Was just... well... when it happened, I remember Twilight teleporting inside for a moment, desperately trying to grab at me and her owl before teleporting out. She couldn't actually grab onto me, it was too quick for her to account for the whole 'magic resist' thing, and..."

You shake your head, quickly finding a very interesting spot on the floor to stare at.

"Before I blacked out after the blast, I just remember her... crying out my name. Like I'd died."

You honestly can't think of any words after that, and despite trying to open your mouth a few times to force words out, you can't find any.

The comforting feeling of a wing curling around your back is... welcomed.

"... After everything went down. When I woke up in the hospital after that, I remember having heard that Twilight visited me before I was awake, at some point. And that she'd... apparently been devastated. To the point of almost trying to fight Tirek down, before she was faced with the possibility that she'd lose her friends too."

You have to pause and take a deep breath, before continuing.

"I'm not sure why, but I just... couldn't face her after it. After I heard... that. And she never came to me afterwards. Not when I was awake."

...

"I feel kind of like an idiot now, honestly. Letting all of that... destroy basically all of my friendships in Ponyville. Fuck's sake, with hindsight, I never should've gotten a house on the edge of town- I was just running away from it all. I don't..."

A feeling of frustration starts to grow, and so does one of your oh-so-familiar and oh-so-hated migraines of the past entire-time-you've-lived-in-Equestria.
Perfect timing. As usual.

The same wing on your back gives you a light tug, bringing you into Celestia's side.

... She's always noticeably warm. Sunhorse is overpowered. You might need to kidnap her for an entire winter someday.

A bit of your own humour, and the addition of another one of her... really, really comfortable hugs is enough to raise your mood to a stable level.

"Thanks. I just want to say it again, but thanks."

She nods, deciding to not say anything else for the time, giving you a moment to decompress.

...

"You... did mention in passing that you came to Canterlot... well, when we first had our encounter, due to something Twilight did?"

That forces out an awkward cough.

"Not one of my proudest moments... and technically not her fault. The lack of communication still stood, just-uh..."

You have to return to the age-old art of pokerfaces.

"You know what happens when new creatures from around the globe suddenly start gathering in a small town, and then hear about a mysterious alien creature living on the outskirts?"

There was another pause from Celestia.

"I can tell you one thing. It gets annoying. And-uh, if it wasn't obvious, I haven't exactly been in the best state recently."

"... Really? It was about the school?"

"I said it wasn't one of my proudest moments. I meant it."

"I just..." she took a moment to gather her thoughts, before you heard a small choked laugh come from her, "I can't help but find a bit of humour in the fact that... you stormed your way to Canterlot... to complain about the issue of foreign exchange students being nosy to the leader of an entire nation."

... Okay, yeah, it was kind of funny. You'd give her that one.

"I mean, technically, it's state-sponsored, and it did work out without me yelling about foreigners, so..."

You were both probably about a step away from having a laughing fit over this.

"You... I still can't quite believe that you made it all the way to Canterlot, not thinking of a single solution other than 'burst into the throne room and complain about it to the highest official...' and you, instead, consoled the nation's ruler instead of actually going through with what you stormed to the capital of a nation for," she said, having to force back a few solid laughs throughout.

"I'm going to be honest with you- I can be pretty dense. Especially when I'm spending most of my time being an idiot, and avoiding literally all of my problems."

"You don't... you don't say."

"I think we can both agree it worked out, stop making me feel like even more of an idiot."

"Never, this is one of my few joys in life. I live with politics, Anon, how else am I supposed to amuse myself?"

Valid. Perfectly valid.

Also, you're laughing again. So is she.

This is going to take a bit.

"Generally," you'd continue after the conversation wound down again, "I think I need... a bit of a game-plan here. Or, at the very least, somebody who'll force me to actually go through with... whatever I honestly need to work on, and not let me try and weasel out of it. Like I... did the other night."

There was another pause, this time mainly because the both of you were suffering from a slight tea addiction, before she continued herself.

"Well, I don't see a reason why I wouldn't help. After all, I both have a favour to repay, and a student to look after," she answered with a small nod.

"Wait, that easily?"

Celestia gave you probably the most deadpan expression you'd ever received- and that was even after spending a few years living with Twilight before, "I think it goes without saying that it wouldn't have been very hard to convince me to help repair the relationship of two of my subjects, much less considering one of them is my student, and the other one has not only improved a poor day for me considerably, but is even making an active effort to befriend me. Yes, Anon, 'that easily.'"

Valid. Point...
She keeps making those. Damnit, why can't you just act like the world was going to resist you at every turn!
You're getting ever so slightly afraid of another pan-to-the-face coming from the crossroads of destiny soon.

This was going way too smoothly.

Like, eerily so.

"Well-uh... thanks?"

The deadpan switches quickly to a small smile instead, and you get flicked on the head by a wing, "you need to stop saying that so much. There's doing it to be polite, and then there's using it to sidetrack."

She was catching onto your tricks. You should've expected it from someone well over a thousand years old, but still. You'd decided a while back to not do that 'assume too much greatness' thing with her, even if it was coming back to bite you.

"Alright. Advice?"

"Talk to her. I honestly can't give you any simpler form of advice. And if you indeed need somepony to sit outside the door and physically stop you from leaving when you do, I can and will do it for you."

"I was afraid of that answer."

"You asked for it~"

True that, sunhorse, true that.

"When?" You ask, partially fearing this answer too, mainly because you knew it.

"Will you be this willing if you sleep on it?"

"Probably not."

She lightly gestures towards the door with a hoof.

Yup. That exact answer. Definitely feel the anxiety flaring.
Damnit.

Sighing with a form of resignation, you just force yourself to your feet- Celestia coming with you- and head towards the door.
You're not even going to fight it, she was right. Keep this momentum going, especially with this all on the mind.

With a small glance towards the clock- it was a bit past 3:30 now. The two of you were chatting for a while. Plus, you'd have plenty of time before the day started to wind down too much- or ponies started to leave for dinner or something.

Welp, you wanted to bite the bullet. Time to hope your teeth hold.

???
???
???

As the princess and a rather reluctant human closed the door behind them, one of the unused chairs began to silently pace the edge of the room, as if it were a perfectly normal thing for a chair to do.

'Well, that took far too much effort,' it mused in wood-churning noises, 'I'm starting to understand how much of a pain it is for ponies to deal with magically-resistant creatures... Pheh! Sleeping spells are supposed to be easy!'

...

'You owe me, Celestia. If you weren't likely to mess this up earlier, I wouldn't have had to go that far. And considering you're just a crucial step if anything, and your friendship with him here is entirely secondary, I fully expect a generous Hearth's Warming gift this year when you figure it out!'

'Now, after he's dealt with the whole 'Twilight' problem... the real question is, how do I get Luna dearest involved without being too explicit about it? An extra bout of energy before dinner?... That might actually work, yes. Though I may have to delay it a day or two, despite the circumstances...'

A pocket watch seemed to pop out of nowhere, onto the chair's pillow. It had an extra hand, almost as if to dictate days, and an entirely separate row on the edge to correspond with it. And for once, out of many of these items, it wasn't going completely mad.
No, rather, it was completely orderly.

However- it did start to tick slowly, and the days were counting down to something approaching. Almost a week or two away, in fact, sometime around the scheduled Running of the Leaves this year.

And, even for a spirit that was hardly malevolent anymore, it was marked with a large, red X.
And no, it wasn't only because he hated the formal ball that came with the celebration in Canterlot, filled with all those stuffy politicians he wasn't allowed to mess with...

Author's Note:

I'm going to be honest, this is what was going through my head at the 'dense' bit.

Dear lord I'm actually writing more consistently. This is weird. Help.

Oh, also, plot-twist. This wasn't all complete unguided nonsense- there was a plot hidden underneath it all along! With intentionally confusing writing, no less!
Now, let's see how many people start to figure it out...

Edited this really quickly, thought I'd add. Typos, errors, that kind of thing... I do always appreciate it when people point them out.
Anywho, have a nice day!

4,921 views

1,129

Previous Chapters Next