Twilights Mane Passion

by Darkonshadows

48

“Now stick it in there.” Twilight had managed to decipher the odd text and they were nearly done here with Pinkie’s request. Now if only she would stop saying that darn phrase.

“That’s what she said!” Pinkie said once again proving to be silly. She was running a constant gambit of either getting her two new friends to laugh or despise her.

“Well, from here on out it’s yours to modify Pinkie. Twilight has thankfully copied the instruction into something even you could follow Pinkie.” Tress was just happy they were done with Pinkie’s request. “Now will you pay us?”

“Of course I will. Thanks for giving me all the instructions and building most of it while you were making it easier for me to modify later!” Pinkie chirped happily back at them as she pushed her welcome wagon away, leaving them with a bag of bits for their troubles and having to deal with her random blathering.

Even if she was annoyingly perky, Pinkie did get a good laugh out of Twilight and Tress every now and then.

“I think it’s time for a snack in the marketplace, either that or Sugar Cube Corner with Mr. and Mrs. Cake. Maybe visit Fluttershy to see what she’s getting into.” Twilight knew their friend was happy spending so much time with so many cute small animals.

“I would love to see shy today. Back to the earlier discussion of spells, what else have you learned from all those books you’ve been bringing in from the castle recently? I hope you’re keeping them well protected.” Tress really didn’t want to run into Pinkie again so soon, she was a good friend if you wanted a party and she was always the life of it. “I want to go to the marketplace, we might actually run into some pony not crazy or doing weird things today. I can only hope.”

“We really need to stop doing that Tress, hoping things won’t happen seems like a catalyst for things to go horribly wrong around us. Things haven’t been as bad as the incident with Pal destroying the café.” Twilight’s ears perked up as she heard the cat in question meowing and they saw him running up to them wagging his tail.

“Speak of the little demon and he shall appear. Here Palatable, come here boy.” Despite him being a cat, Tress thought it was odd that her cat acted like a dog at times. The cat purred and rolled onto his back to get his belly rubbed. Tress sighed and then continued on her way with a happy cat following in her wake. “I think I’m actually beginning to get used to the weirdness of my pet now. Let’s swing by a pet store while we’re out and about.”

“We can do that, we don’t really have much to do today. As for spells, I’ve been learning a gravity spell. The spell is not really easy to get down, but it allows me to flip my personal gravitational field in any direction I want to.” It was a very intriguing find and Twilight wanted to explore all the options that such a spell could provide. Thus far she learned that the spell would only affect the unicorn using it, easily altering their own gravitational field relative to everything else around them. It couldn’t be used on other ponies.

“So you basically discovered a method for flying without wings? I swear you’re becoming more like a real super hero Radiance. You’re already scheduling fights with villains, crashing a wedding that an almost entirely reformed villain is going to just to make sure she doesn’t do anything wrong and then there’s you gaining of super abilities beyond the average unicorn pony. Oh I do declare is that a flying purple unicorn I do see in the air? My heart is aching to touch the sky the way she does.” Despite her dramatics and the way she held the back of her left hoof to her forehead while clutching her other hoof to her chest momentarily, no pony in the marketplace was paying her any attention. The ponies of the surrounding populace had gotten used to their antics and seeing them doing odd things at times.

“Tress, that’s not the spell’s intended use! That would be an interesting use for it, but to try it immediately without testing it in a safe environment first would make me as reckless as Rainbow Dash is.” Leaping into the air to control the gravitational forces around her body to fling herself around using magic sounded fun to Twilight, but it also sounded exceedingly dangerous. Flying with the gravity spell would require her to not run out of magic at any given time while using it or else she could go splat. It was a relatively complex spell and to control it to such a fine detail would require hours of practice, instead she should just address a spell she already knew about. “Besides I wouldn’t need the gravity spell to fly. I can create temporary wings with a very low maximum flying height as if you fly to high with them they freeze or melt off your back. The reason why Smart can even fly is because of the wing spell that I modified into an enchantment in the first place. Other than that I’ve recently learned to cast a cloud walking spell that allows a unicorn or earth pony to manipulate clouds and stand on them.”

“Gravitational flying would still be faster right?” Tress could imagine the many silly super hero names she could come up with if Twilight were to fly around like that. “Think of all the heroic names I could call you! There’s Shooting Star, Meteor Mare, Twinkling Titan, Galaxy Galloper, Altitude Arbiter, Iridescent Impulse and Radical Radiance. We could even have Rarity make the costumes!”

“Tress, I’m going to put my hoof down on this. I am not becoming a super hero!” Turning to the ice cream vendor next to her Twilight calmed down slightly. “I’ll have strawberry flavor two scoops please.”

As the stallion got to work preparing her cone, Twilight was thinking up a lot of arguments to not become a super hero.

“And for you miss?” The stallion addressed Tress as he started scooping up the strawberry ice cream.

“I’ll have the peach cobbler flavor one scoop.” Ice cream soon in hoof, Tress continued the topic of discussion. “Why not become a hero Twilight, you did a pretty good job of it when you talked me down without a fight.”

“Hmm… you just gave me an idea for later. You know I don’t like fighting Tress. The reason you objected to me learning a lightning based spell was because I could eventually end up potentially hurting some pony. In the same vein of thought I could end up potentially saving them just as well.” Twilight really didn’t want to go looking for trouble, which is technically something they were already doing as jobs. In this case the troubles came to them in an orderly manner and they had a choice of whether or not to take on said trouble. Heroes were expected to do everything for free. “Do you realize how often the super hero life cuts into normal living? Keeping up with secret identities would be just plain ridiculous, given our lives as they are. You’re the one that could actually hold a secret identity because you have a transformative state you can enter. Do you really want to run around doing everything for free? The both of us are not going to survive on Smart being a librarian. Furthermore you’d need to increase your product sells and increase production. I personally would have to run a constant mane care practices. While it is something I really do like doing, I don’t want it to be the only thing I can do for the rest of my life. ”

“You do make a lot of good points. It really wouldn’t change what we’re doing now with the exception that we’d be missing out on being paid. What about just making Nightmare Night costumes? You know, I wonder who even came up with that holiday in the first place.” It wasn’t like Tress wanted to stop being hired to do things. She just thought Twilight would look really cute in a hero costume flying around aimlessly. “It certainly wasn’t Celestia unless she really secretly hated her sister and was being unnecessarily cruel to her after she went evil. I mean a thousand year trip to the moon is bad enough, couldn’t she have gotten her sister counseling or something?”

“What’s worse is that she caused the elements of harmony to go inert when she did that. Apparently they need at least two ponies to function.” Twilight sat down on a bench and dragged her tongue slowly along her ice cream.

“Elements of Harmony, okay what are those?” This was the first Tress was hearing of them, if they were important you’d think they’d be mentioned before now. All Tress got was an abridge version of Nightmare Moon is Luna, Celestia’s sister and was sealed approximately nine hundred and ninety eight years ago.

“Apparently they are powerful resonance artifacts that boost certain personality based perimeters in ponies. They also boost magical performance and are really unsafe to be around all things considered. I picked them up at the castle of the two sisters while I was looking for you. I can’t believe Celestia would leave powerful artifacts like them just lying around.” The one vexing thing was that there were only five elements and one was missing. Twilight had gotten information from Smart that once bearers of the five elements were found they’d spark the sixth one to come out of hiding from whatever dimension it was being held in.

“Can you please state that in a way that I or any other pony would understand?” Tress felt a bit lethargic at Twilight’s explanation or maybe it was the peach ice cream she was lapping up.

“Basically they amplify a ponies natural magic and they require ponies that they resonate with to do obscenely powerful magic. Take for example the magic that stuffed Luna on the moon and turned Discord the chaotic into stone.” Twilight scrunched up her eyes from the slight brain freeze from eating her ice cream a little too fast. “I really don’t think there’s an upper limit to what the elements can actually do or if limits are even there at all, misusing their power likely has dire consequences such as the entire planet exploding.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound the slightest bit bad at all.” Crunching the last bit of her cone after her sarcastic statement, Tress smiled at the idea of something harmonious ending it all. Well at least there would be nothing left to be discordant if the planet exploded. “So why are they called the elements of harmony?”

“Because the elements each represent a piece of a total sum of some pony’s idea of what harmony is. I’ve discovered that I already represent some of the elements personally. The elements are honesty, kindness, loyalty, laughter, generosity and magic.” After thinking it over, Twilight realized that magic could be translated as something differently and she looked to Tress with a tiny bit of worry. “I think I might be able to become a bearer to the element of magic Tress, possibly loyalty or honesty too. Fluttershy has a boatload of kindness so she’s just as eligible for one of them. Anyone who resonates with these elements could probably use them if Luna and Celestia could by themselves. There are no permanent wielders of the elements; each element could work for more than one pony and each pony has the potential to wield more than one element.”

“Isn’t Kindness and Generosity kind of the same though? I can understand loyalty well enough that I may as well represent that personally.” Not that Tress would ever leave Twilight’s side for anything short of saving someone just as important such as Barb. “How does laughter fit into harmony? Laughter can be pretty cruel at times.”

“Well they are somewhat similar. Generosity is giving without expecting anything in return. Kindness is helping those who truly need it. Loyalty is sticking by those who you trust to do the same for you. Honesty is telling things as you see them as truthfully as you can. Laughter can be cruel it’s true, but it can also be the best medicine for a sad heart. Then there’s what magic is….” Twilight thought about it and wondered if she should say, she bit her bottom lip and then just stood up and started looking around for a pet shop. Tress followed her sedately with Pal riding on her back. She stopped in the middle of the road and looked at the ground sadly. “Do you remember saying that meeting me is like magic?”

“Of course I do, I still believe that being with you is like magic. What about it?” There was something wrong with Twilight, Tress could just tell as she was acting oddly.

“Do you ever get the feeling that our friendship might be built on a lie because my magic is forcing you to like me?” Twilight kept her back to Tress and slowly started to sniffle. “That all the friendships I’ve earned aren’t real.”

“Twilight you’re asking what is supposed to be a fictional comic book character about what real is and we’ve both seen a poltergeist. You might be the element of laughter too if you can think of a good enough punch line for that.” Tress quickly pulled Twilight into a comforting hug and draped her light blue mane over Twilights head as she snuggled her. The pony in her hooves relaxed, inhaling the scent of her mane.

Author's Note:

Editted: I came back and fixed some minor issues with this chapter.

Comments

[Sporkz]

Well, at least Twilight's having a minor breakdown now rather than while trying to rescue Winona from the underworld or something.

[John Tannius]

Seriously, why did Celestia leave the elements where anypony could stumble across them?

[Neutral Mike]

Whew. Just reached the halfway point of the marathon. Gotta get some rest, I'll finish my run later.