• Published 12th Aug 2022
  • 8,185 Views, 712 Comments

Still No Signal - Axel Azabash



Human gets lost in the forest, he tries to use his phone to find his way back and for some reason it isn't working. Weird things start to happen, because you can imagine where he is now...

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16- At least Yellowings is back... kind of... maybe?

It was very early in the morning, barely a few minutes after the time Celestia raised the Sun. Twilight though was up and about, walking down the path to Fluttershy’s house. The yellow mare was back from her trip to Las Pegasus, although she was so tired yesterday from the whole experience that she didn’t show up in the castle to pick up the apetaur. Well, Twilight was about to find out because she needed her right now to take care of him again.

Twilight had really been behind her schedule and today she was required to go to Canterlot in order to give some presentations. Celestia wanted her to give the students a quick overview of the history of enchanted objects in Equestria, moreover, she needed to catch up with Starlight Glimmer’s lessons. She was an amazing student and her magic abilities were impressive, although, Twilight was starting to worry about the friendship lessons, and that matter needed to be addressed as soon as possible.

Long story short, she was going to be away in Canterlot and Starlight Glimmer was going to be busy socializing with Twilight’s friends, and the young alicorn was still uncomfortable about leaving the apetaur alone for the whole day. He had no magic and was probably vulnerable if something happened. Without anyone to bring him food, or take care of his needs, she was uncomfortable. At the very least, he was a guest, and she didn’t like the idea of leaving him to his own devices in the deserted castle. That’s the reason why she needed to make sure that Fluttershy would be taking care of him again, at least for a day.

“Hey, Twilight!” A particularly raspy tomboyish voice greeted Twilight from above, interrupting her train of thought.

“Hey Rainbow, how come you are up and about this early in the morning?” Twilight replied.

“Fluttershy has been to Las Pegasus and I wanted to hang around for a little while to ask her how it was. And probably she needs help with her animals and that weird creature.” Rainbow answered. “I’m kind of curious.”

Rainbow landed and they both walked the rest of the way to the cottage. In spite of the early hour, Fluttershy was in her garden, taking care of the early morning birds that came for their dairy rations of food.

“Hey Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash greeted the timid pegasus with her typical energy, scaring some birds away in the process.

“Um… hi Rainbow. And hi to you too, Twilight.” Fluttershy responded, noticing her visitors.

“Hello, Fluttershy, how is it going?” Greeted Twilight.

“A little bit tired, but fine. Las Pegasus was kind of exhausting.”

“I bet it was awesome.” Rainbow interjected.

“Um… maybe?” Fluttershy shied a little bit away from Rainbow’s enthusiasm.

“Uh… actually… Fluttershy, sorry to be so direct, but I came here to ask you a favor.” Twilight said.

“Uh? Of course, Twilight. What is it?” Asked Fluttershy, tilting her head to one side.

“Remember the creature you rescued from the Everfree? I would like you to take care of him again for a day or two while I’m busy catching up with my chores.” Twilight asked.

“Of course! I was planning to go to the castle right after I finished with my lovely birds here! Oh, I can’t wait to see Mr. Handy again! The poor little thing…” Fluttershy answered in excitement.

“Oh, and while you and Applejack were away, Starlight Glimmer and me did some interesting discoveries about him.” Twilight added.

“Um… What discoveries?” Fluttershy asked with a puzzled expression and her head adorably tilted.

“Apart from how adorable, nice and cute he is?” Rainbow rudely interrupted, snickering a little.

“We have discovered that he is a sapient being, just like ponies, maybe from a very far away civilization that even Equestria hasn’t heard of…” Twilight explained.

“That’s impossible! Pegasi have explored the whole world already! We haven’t found anything like it! Maybe he is just very smart.” Dash objected.

“At least that you know, Rainbow… But I think you aren’t the brightest expert in Pegasus History…” Twilight teased, making Rainbow remember her struggles with the History lessons to get into the Wonderbolts.

“Whatever!” Rainbow grumped, blushing slightly.

“Anyways… The point is that he is probably a stranger from a faraway place, so far that even Equestria hasn’t discovered it yet. He can’t speak because he doesn’t know the language, and that’s why he was learning some words from you, Fluttershy, and now he is learning from all of us and I asked Cheerilee to help him too.” Twilight explained.

“S…s…so… he is…” Fluttershy hesitantly stuttered.

“We have still a lot to investigate about him, but everything points us in the direction that maybe he is in reality a foreign stallion that belongs to a species and culture never seen before!” Twilight concluded.

“A… s… ssss… sta…” Fluttershy blushed at the particular way Twilight worded the situation.

“Uh… So, Fluttershy, you got him to bed the very first day you found him… Wow… that was fast.” Rainbow teased. “And me telling somepony she is fast is quite something…”

“Bu… bu… but I thought he was a lost critter, and he was ill and cold so I just used my body warmth to… to… It’s not like I… I…” Fluttershy turned into a trembling blushing ball.

“Rainbow…” Twilight warned, realizing how difficult this had become for the timid mare all of a sudden.

“…To warm up his body…” Rainbow continued between fits of giggles and snorts. ”Oh dear… Didn’t know you had such a liking for foreign and exotic stallions! Like they say, it’s always the quiet ones!”

Fluttershy ran into her cottage and closed the door, the lock clicking in place just afterwards. Rainbow Dash fell to the floor in a fit of laughter, Twilight deadpanning at her, a slight blush on her own face.

“Great…” Twilight mumbled.

“’Oh, dear… ‘And his paws felt so amazing!’ She told me the other day…” The blue pegasus continued rolling on the ground in laughter. Probably saying something Fluttershy told her, but out of context, obviously teasing.

“Rainbow!” Twilight scowled, stopping the laughing mare in the middle of another roll. Then she pointed at the closed door of the cottage.

“Oh… sorry about that…” Rainbow snickered, wiping away her tears with a fetlock.

“Now we are going to have to fix this too…” Twilight said, trotting to the door and knocking it gently.

“GO AWAY!” Came the distraught voice of Fluttershy.

“What are we going to do now?” Twilight asked.

“Uh… didn’t you have to go teaching Starlight something and go to Canterlot to do some egghea… err… stuff?” Rainbow asked.

“RIGHT!” One of Twilight eyes twitched. “Oh no, I’m going to be late… no no no nonono… And I still need to find someone to take care of the apetaur… Not this again… DASH! YOU APOLOGIZE!” Twilight pointed at Rainbow, then at the closed door, and then galloped away.

“Oh, boy… okay…” Rainbow snickered, then breathed deeply to calm herself and knocked on the door. “Fluttershy, it’s me, Rainbow Dash… err… you know I wasn’t serious when I said all that stuff… it was just…” Dash couldn’t help but snicker again to herself. “…A joke…”

***

Cheerilee was having breakfast as every morning. Simple coffee and some toast, nothing too fancy. Today she was going to really make an effort to cope with everything, with the help of some extra coffee.

In about one hour, the classes would start, and she needed to be at 100% of herself, her students didn’t deserve any less, and it was not their problem that she was so stressed out with her life in general, problems and situations to think about later, not now, now there was coffee to be had. If she was lucky, she would be able to grade all the exams the foals were going to do this morning, yes, she would do it this very afternoon, just before Princess Twilight appeared with that weird and gigantic creature.

All she wanted was this half an hour for herself, this tiny moment to relax before she had to go to class. A nice cup of an expensive imported blend of coffee, one of the few luxuries that she still could afford, and nothing at all could disturb her right now, the foals weren’t coming to the school in at least half an hour from now, and…

The doorbell rang.

The sound startled Cheerilee in the middle of sipping her drink and sent her into a coughing fit.

After recovering and wiping away a dark streak of her drink that had managed to come out of her left nostril, the mare headed towards the door. It can’t be, it can’t be… It just…

It was.

There, standing proudly and smiling widely was the princess and that… weird creature. The same creature that she agreed to give classes yesterday, but they weren’t supposed to show up until six in the afternoon, why? Why were they here just now? First hour in the morning?

“Good morning, Cheerilee.” Twilight greeted in that way-too-happy tone she gets when she is nervous but pretends that everything is alright.

“Uh… hey, Twilight…” The teacher tried her best to hide her discomfort.

“I have a really urgent matter to talk to you about.” Continued Twilight, more seriously.

“Oh… kay? What is it?” Cheerilee asked, fearing the answer.

“I’m far behind schedule and I need to catch up on a lot of things. The lessons for Starlight Glimmer, some chores and most importantly, I have to go to Canterlot to give a presentation… and, well, long story short… I need you to keep an eye on the apetaur today.” Twilight explained.

“Bu… but I have to work at school, the classes, the foals…” Cheerilee tried to talk herself out of the problem.

“Don’t worry, he is intelligent and won’t cause any troubles, I just need you to check if everything is alright from time to time. I’m just uncomfortable about leaving him alone the whole day yet.” Twilight continued. “Oh, and you can also give him his lessons once you have finished at school, I will be right back to pick him up this afternoon.”

“But… The… I won’t… FOOD! I have no idea what kind of food I need to give him!” Cheerilee was desperate to find a reasonable excuse in the eyes of Twilight, she couldn’t tell her outright no, she was a princess after all.

“Oh, right…” POOF! After a quick teleport, there was a bag of varied fruits and baked goods in front of her.

“Uh… what!?” Cheerilee eloquently asked.

“He should be okay with this. Just give him some apples and bananas, he eats those.”

“Oh… kay… but… You just said he is intelligent; he is probably going to be okay if a day is all you have to…” If the creature was so intelligent, he didn’t need to get a babysitter…

“This is really important, Miss Cheerilee, he is the only one of his kind we know of! We need to keep an eye on him!” but Twilight didn’t look like she was in a good mind state for reasoning. That mare still needed to learn a lot about stress management.

“Yes, princess… I suppose I can do that…” Cheerilee sighed, looking to the ground.

“Brilliant! I will be back this afternoon, goodbye!” And just like that, Twilight trotted away merrily.

Cheerilee looked up at the ‘apetaur’ as Twilight called him. He had just taken a weird rectangular device in his paws and was checking something, and with a mild disappointment he put it back in his pocket.

Author's Note:

Twilight is still stressed out, it will pass, but for now, she having to go to Canterlot in that episode is the perfect excuse to get our human to interact a little bit more with other ponies appart from Fluttershy, who is going to be mostly out of the picture for now because of Dash.

The more I get the human interacting with Cheerilee, the better he is going to be talking in pony language.

And well, now you see why ponies thinking he was an animal was kind of needed at the beginning. Cuddles with Fluttershy were a thing I wanted to write but couldn't really find a way to get unless she thought he was a lost animal, so there is that.

We need to get Fluttershy kind of distant, we don't want to make certain draconequs jealous, do we?

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