Cause and Effect: Discord's Truth

by Coltsguy

Panic and Practice

The dust had finally settled from my magic beam. It had left quite the impact as there was now a sizeable crater where the beam had hit. I looked back at Twilight who was glaring at me.

“That is why I said we should go somewhere that no ponies would get hurt. That was way more destructive than I thought it would be.”

“No kidding!” she said in a loud and obnoxious voice.

“At least my headache is gone.”

She rolled her eyes at my cheerful remark and huffed at the same time.

“Let’s go ahead and go back to your place," I said with a bit of seriousness. "There might be some explaining that needs to be done so that nobody panics.”

“That’s a good point.”

“Also, I’m not sure you should tell anybody but your friends that I did that or else there might be panic as well.”

“I suppose that depends on what I have to tell them.”

Twilight’s horn glowed again and with another flash we were teleported back to her library home on the ground floor.

“Twilight!”

We both looked over to the source of the voice. It was Spike coming in through the front door. He ran over to Twilight soon after.

“Boy, I’m glad to see you! Did you feel that rumble?”

“Yes, Spike, I felt it too.”

“All the ponies in Ponyville felt it. Do you know what it was?”

“I need you to not freak out when I tell you, alright Spike?”

“Why does that make me even more nervous?”

“Spiiiike.”

“Fine,” Spike groaned out.

“It was our new friend here,” she said and pointed to me.

As Spike gaped at me, I gave him a short wave.

“What!?!”

“Calm down Spike.”

“How can I calm down? You just told me that he just caused the ground to shake!”

“It’s called and earthquake and that was a side-effect,” I interjected.

“You’re not helping, Seth.”

“Sorry.”

“Twilight! What’s going on here?”

“I took him out to the woods near where we encountered those diamond dogs a long while back. It was deserted so he could release his pent up magic that was giving him terrible headaches. However, he released a magic beam so strong that it created an explosion large enough to cause an earthquake.”

Spike’s jaw literally dropped to the floor. That was really odd to look at. What it appeared to be was the bottom of his jaw right behind his back teeth just seemed to expand like rubber. It gave me a nice look at his teeth while it was happening. Those suckers were fangs all the way through. They didn’t seem all that sharp, but Spike was still technically a baby dragon so it made sense. The funny part was when Twilight pulled on his jaw and it snapped back over his face. A quick shake of his head and returned to where it was supposed to go.

“You mean he fired a magic beam so powerful that it shook the earth from all the way out there?”

“I didn’t really mean for it to be that powerful. It sort of just happened that way.”

“That funny stance you were in and the strange words you used didn’t make it seem like it wasn’t meant to be that way.”

“That was just a technique that I was mimicking. I saw it on t.v. before. Honestly, I was just playing around and didn’t think that it would become so powerful.”

“So you were just mimicking something some brute you saw was doing?”

Hearing that got me kind of upset. It made me start talking before I thought about it.

“Hey! Goku is one of the noblest warriors that have ever lived! Don’t you dare besmirch his legacy by calling him a brute!”

Twilight looked like she was warring internally on whether to yell at me or apologize for what she had said. Actually, a few seconds after I saw that, I thought she was probably thinking of a way to word that so she could do both.

“I’m sorry if I offended his good name, but you, however, don’t have an excuse for trying to copy some magic that you saw him do! Besides, I thought humans couldn’t do magic!”

It was an interesting choice of words. I decided to try and break that down.

“First of all, Goku isn’t a human. He’s a saiyan; an alien. Secondly, he wasn’t using magic, he was using life energy called ki. And lastly…”

I trailed off there; unsure of what to say. I decided to apologize instead of trying to make another point.

“Lastly, even though I was mimicking him, I should have been a little more careful about doing it. Magic is something that I shouldn’t be abusing. I’m sorry about accidentally blowing a crater into the ground. I’ll try to be more constructive with my magic from now on.”

Not to mention that I’ll probably never have the chance to use it here again. There isn’t anything around that would warrant such destructive power.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve learned your lesson. Perhaps we could find more constructive ways for you to use magic later. Right now, we need to stop anypony from panicking who might be doing so right now.”

“You go ahead and do that. I don’t think that my presence out there would have a calming effect on them. I’ll stay here and see if I can try to use my magic in a constructive way.”

“You’re probably right. At least about the panicking ponies, anyway. I’ll be back later. Come on, Spike.”

Spike hopped up on Twilight’s back and the two of them ran out the front; closing the door magically as they left.

That left me alone in the library with nothing but my thoughts and my newfound magical talent. It may have been funny when I was doing it, but unleashing my faux Kamehameha wave was a dumb thing to do. It isn’t a toy. It’s a technique that’s been used to kill people. Unleashing it was a mistake. A very cool looking mistake, but a mistake none the less.

Besides, it’s not like I can’t do other things with it. Just from what I’ve seen Twilight and Celestia do, there are a great many things I can do with magic. Levitation, transformation, teleportation, magic shields, locator spells, and a whole slew of other things. I ought to try and feel out some of those things instead of causing chaos with things I shouldn’t be doing.

I decided quickly to try levitation first. I looked at the books on the shelves and picked a book on the end. I knew she was very picky about how she organized these books, even if she changed how she did it once a month. I held out my hand and concentrated on the book. I imagined it being wrapped in magic. Shortly thereafter, my hand glowed and, sure enough, the book glowed as well. I closed my hand slightly and the book slowly came off the shelf and over towards me. I managed to stop it about five feet away from me.

I was pretty pleased with the result. I thought about transforming it, but I wasn’t sure if I could transform it back, so I left it alone. Instead, I tried levitating more of the books. Slowly, but surely, I managed to bring all the books from that shelf over with the first one. Feeling that I had a good handle on that, I started to levitate more and more books from the shelves. Eventually, I had the entire library of books slowly revolving around me.

The whole time it didn’t feel tiring, it just became more and more difficult to concentrate on encompassing each book. It seemed that my magic was about power, concentration, and in a small amount it was also about creativity. I didn’t have a problem so far, but the concentration on each book was a bit more difficult.

I heard a gasp behind me signifying that my time practicing was at an end. It almost made me lose concentration right there.

“Twilight, if that’s you could you take over? It’s starting to get hard concentrating on all of these. I did, however, keep them all in the same order.”

“I ain’t Twilight.”

That, unfortunately, did snap my concentration. I heard a startled yelp as Applejack was buried beneath the books.

“Aheh, sorry about that Applejack.”

I started to unbury her from the books, but she simply shook them off of herself shortly afterwards.

“Again, sorry about that. It turns out that tattoo gave me magic powers and I was practicing by levitating the books.”

“I suppose it’s a might size better than whatcha did before. I reckon that was quite the doozy of a spell you musta done out there for the ground ta shake like it did.”

“Did you see that or did you just feel it?”

“I done saw that all the way out at the farm.”

“I see. Did you pass Twilight out there? She’s supposed to be calming down all the townsfolk.”

“I can’t say that I did.”

“Too bad. Though if I keep making every pony in Ponyville scared of me, then who will show up to my welcome party?”

“Heh. Sounds like you met Pinkie Pie.”

“Yes I did. In fact, that’s how I found out I could do magic. Why would anybody have a working cannon just sitting around let alone use it for parties?”

“That’s just Pinkie being Pinkie. She don’t mean ya no harm.”

“I didn’t know that at the time. All I saw was a cannon suddenly pointed at me and I just threw my arms up in front of my face. That’s when I caught everything with magic. It was really odd. After that, I blacked out.”

“Heh, you seem ta be doin that a whole lot dontcha?”

I chuckled a bit from that.

“Yes I do at that. I don’t think I’ve fallen asleep of my own volition at all since I’ve been here.”

“See anything new this time around?”

I almost blurted out that I wasn’t sure what she was asking me, but I managed to stop myself before that. I decided to answer her with a few scenes from the show.

“I do remember a few things that I didn’t before. I remember a hedge maze, I think I saw Pinkie Pie wearing a chicken suit, Rainbow Dash was getting carried around by a turtle, and there was you and her running past some trees. I think Rainbow Dash must have been hurt somehow since her wings were tied to her body.”

Applejack flashed a hint of recognition, but stayed quiet. I decided to keep going with a few more stories.

“There was also some pony I didn’t recognize leading Spike around with some gems, this one black horse that looked like she was made out of Swiss cheese, and Fluttershy was yelling at a dragon. That doesn’t really seem like something she would do though, does it?”

“No I reckon it don’t sound a lot like Fluttershy at all,” she said with a hint of apprehension.

Yeah, I think I got her attention with this.

“Some of those do sound familiar though. I suppose ah could ask ta others for ya.”

“That sounds nice of you to do that for me, but you don’t really need to. What I’d really like is for you to help me get these books back on the shelf before Twilight comes back.”

"It’s much too late for that now.”

I looked up from Applejack to see Twilight in the doorframe next to Spike. I chuckled nervously. Applejack outright giggled at the situation.

“Well, too late for that then. Can I plead for mercy?”

“Your plea has been considered and your punishment has thereby been lessened.”

“You are most gracious judge Twilight.”

That drew a quick laugh from all of them.

“I’ll go ahead and get started on shelving all of your books now.”

“That is not your punishment.”

I gave her a blank stare.

“Alright, then if that isn’t what my punishment is then what is it?”

“Oh you’ll be doing the shelving again once you get back.”

“Get back from where?” I asked apprehensively.

“You’ll do that when you get back from town square. It’s the place you’ll be giving your public apology for causing the townsfolk to nearly panic.”

Comments

[Coltsguy]

1589116 I guess it didn't take as long as I thought.

[skultech]

I really like how the story is unwrapping.
Normally I don't really like the whole human has magic thing, but here it is kinda funny.
A kamehameha LOL