Chapter 10: Back in Action

Flamingsteel's house, Ponyville
Local time: 0530
Sixteen days since arrival

"Uh…" I opened my eyes, but instantly regretted it when the sunrise came into view. "Damn. Worst. Hangover. Ever." Once I my eyes adjusted to the light, I attempted to get out of bed. However, I stopped when somepony wrapped their hooves and wings around me. I rolled over, still in their embrace, and saw Luna in the bed next to me. My eyes widened in surprise. "Oh no, this is not good." Oddly I didn't find this the least bit uncomfortable, I fact I kind of enjoyed it, and that's when I can to a realization. "Wait… the unexplained feelings and now she's in my bed with me and I don't mind." I thought. "Am I falling for Luna? But she's an alicorn and I'm… was a human. Oh no… Me plus Luna plus alcohol plus a bed equals… oh God, I hope we didn't…" Before I could think about it any more Luna started to wake up.

We sat there looking at each other unsure what to do. Luna was blushing and looked embarrassed, when finally I decided to say something. "Um, Luna, not that I don't enjoy hugging you, but could we do it, I don't know, not in my bed." Her blush intensified as she removed herself from me allowing me to stand. As I stood up I noticed that my poncho, which I still had on, had a hole around where my cutie mark would be. "So, uh, how are you feeling?"

She tried to stand but started to fall, luckily I was able to catch her. "Well, that answers that question." She attempted to stand on her own again but leaned on me for support. "Ok, just keep leaning on me we're going to go to the kitchen."

"Any particular reason we're going there?" she asked. "One of the ways to get rid of a hangover is to drink a lot of water." I started to walk to the kitchen with Luna leaning on me for support. When we got to the living room we saw Vinyl asleep on the couch. Luna sat on the couch, waking Vinyl up in the process, while I went to get some water.

POV change: Luna

As Steel went into the kitchen I started thinking about last night. "Uh, I wish I could remember what happened last night. But I guess it's not that important, what's important was what happened before. I can't believe I just wrapped myself around him, although he did seem to enjoy it even if he was surprised by what I did." I started to mentally scold myself for acting without thinking.

"You like him, don't you?" said Vinyl, I started to blush. "I don't know what you're talking about." I started to chuckle nervously, and I could tell Vinyl saw right through my lie. "Oh really, than why are you blushing? Besides I already know you like him just by how you acted at the club. You like him and I bet you want to be more than just friends with him."

By now my face must have looked like a tomato. "Yes I like him and I want us to be more than friends. But what did you mean by 'how I acted at the club'?" She started laughing, "Well after about twenty glasses of hard cider, you were drunk and Steel was almost drunk. You were leaning on him and you kept staring at him, and when Berry Punch started hitting on him, you almost got into a fight with her."

"Luna almost go in a fight with who?" asked Steel. I was so surprised, I fell off the couch. While we were talking, we didn't notice walk back into the room. "Berry Punch, they were lucky Mac was still sober enough to keep them from fighting."

POV change: Steel

(A/N: I am no longer going to write out Steel's full name unless it's the first time he's meeting somepony.)

We all started drinking water and I felt my hangover starting to dissipate. "Hey, do you guys mind if I put on some music?" They shook their heads and continued to drink their water. I walked over to my record player and played Brick by Brick by Train. As I walked back to the couch Luna asked one of the few questions I didn't want to answer. "Steel, I've never seen you use magic and I was wondering why you don't."

I made it look like I was upset, "I don't want to talk about it." We sat there drinking water until I felt good enough to go on my daily run. "Well, I'm going out. I'll be back in about two hours." I opened the door and went outside. Just as I was about to shut the door, Luna came outside as well. "So, where are we going, Steel?"

"Well, I'm going on my daily 5k run and I'm going to assume you want to come with me." She nodded, "Ok, but I'm warning you we're taking a path trough the Everfree Forest." I went toward the beginning of the trail and Luna followed me. By now it was about nine and most of Ponyville was awake. As we walked down the street, everypony stopped and bowed as Luna walked past them. As we passed Sugercube Corner, I had the misfortune of walking into the path of a scoter carrying the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

"Uh mah head. Oh no, are you alright Mister?" asked Apple Bloom. As I started to stand they gasped and stared at my flank. I followed their gaze and saw that my poncho's condition had worsened and it now revealed enough of my flank for everypony to see that I was a blank flank. "Are you a blank flank?" asked Sweetie Bell.

"Yes and I don't like it when people stare." I then checked to see if the rest of my poncho was ok. "How come you never found your special talent?" asked Scootaloo. After finding nothing else wrong with my poncho I started walking away. "I never found my special talent for the same reason I don't know how to use magic. And I don't want to talk about it."

I could tell from Luna's face that she was concerned, but she didn't ask any questions. We arrived at the forest and began the 5k run. After about an hour into the run I started to get a feeling something was wrong. I looked behind me and Luna was still there, then I took a look at the surrounding area. "Uh oh."

"What is it Steel, is something wrong?" I slowly scanned the area looking for any threats. "Well, uh, it appears that we might be, um…lost." Luna immediately started to shake. "But its ok, see that cliff in the distance, that's the half way point. Once we get there I'll be able to get us back to Ponyville." We started to head for the cliff. Once we got there I noticed we were about half a click off to the left of where we were supposed to be.

"Well it looks like we accidentally went to the left instead of the right at the point the path splits. As long as we go north we should be back in about five minutes." Luna seemed to finally relax. We started walking back to Ponyville when Murphy's Law once again slapped me in the face. As we walked along a steep slope Luna accidentally slipped. I tried to keep her from falling, but I ended up falling with her.

"Uh, Luna, are you ok?" She looked at me and smiled. "I'm fine, Steel." She was about to say something else, but a growl from behind me interrupted her. I turned around and found myself looking at a manticore. Normally, I would have stood my ground like they trained me to do back in basic, but with Luna behind me I panicked and said the first thing that came to mind. "Run!"

We ran in the direction of Ponyville hoping the manticore would give up once we reached the edge of the forest. We were about halfway to Ponyville when I crashed into a stone statue of a timber wolf. As I stood up, I saw several more of the statues. The manticore reached us just as I saw some strange reptilian, chicken thing. "Oh no, it's a cockitree," said Luna. "They can turn ponies to stone."

"Great, now we were stuck between a manticore and a cockitree. Luna go to Ponyville and get help, I'll hold them off." She was about to say something when I cut her off. "There is no time to argue. Just go." I could tell she didn't want to leave me behind, but she left anyway. With Luna out of harms way I returned my attention back to my enemies. I always hated this part, whenever I would get in a fight it would feel like hours before someone made the first move, when in reality it was only a few seconds.

The manticore lunged at me and I managed to dodge its attack. It came at me again and again. Unrelenting with its blows, I dodged and blocked almost all of them, but I was beginning to become fatigued. We fought all over the clearing destroying trees and stone timber wolves; everything else in our path was destroyed. For fifteen minutes, I fought and only got scratches, but it was not to last.

The manticore attacked again and I sidestepped left in order to give it a hoof to the face. However as I hit it in the face, its tail found its way to my shoulder. I was able to grab it and break its tail, but by then I knew I would lose this fight. I tried in vain to fight back, which only bought me time. It came at me again and slashed my back with its claws destroying my poncho and creating a long and deep gash in my back. It hit me and sent me flying into the trees at the edge of the clearing. I landed under a dead tree that was being held up by a living tree.

Looking at the trees gave me an idea, a crazy idea, but an idea. I positioned myself in front of the living tree so that the dead tree was on top of me. I stood still as the manticore charged and at the last second I jumped out of the way causing the manticore to break the tree behind and the dead tree it was holding up to fall on the manticore. The manticore howled in pain, pushed the tree off its back, glared at me, and left to fix its wounds. I had beaten the manticore, but at a price. I looked like shit, my back was covered in blood and the wound seemed too deep for it to heal on its own. Multiple pieces of wood from the tree the manticore had crashed into had lodged themselves into my side and hind legs, one particularly large piece had gone trough my entire left hind leg.

In pain and covered in blood I tried to limp in the direction of Ponyville, but then the cockitree, which I had forgotten about, decided to finish what the manticore had started. It jumped in front of me and stared at me, I started losing feeling in my hind legs, I thought it was just due to blood loss. But as the feeling moved from my hind legs to my back, I knew something was wrong and it didn't take me long to figure out that the cockitree was the cause. As I limped towards it I felt my strength diminishing with every step I took. Unable to continue walking I collapsed no more than three feet in front of it. As I attempted, in vain, to crawl towards it I started to lose consciousness and the last thing I saw was its eyes.

POV change: Luna

After Steel told me to get help, I ran as fast as I could toward Ponyville. I exited the forest on the boarder of Sweet Apple Acers and saw Applejack and Rainbow Dash on a hill off to my right. I galloped over to them and broke down in front of them. I just couldn't stop myself from crying, I couldn't even stop long enough to tell them why I was crying. While I was crying, Rainbow Dash went to get the others while Applejack stayed with me. I didn't realize that Rainbow had left until I saw what appeared to be Twilight and everypony else standing in front of me

"Princess Luna, are you all right, what's going on?" asked Twilight. I looked at her and tried to tell her what happened, but barely anything I said was distinguishable from my sobs. "Steel… in the forest… manticore… cockitree." I burst into tears again and they all gasped. "Princess, can you lead us to where he is?" I nodded and galloped toward where I left Steel with the other right behind me.

We arrived at the clearing and saw it was totally destroyed. But the worst part was that it was covered in blood. We searched the area for any sign of Steel. Rarity was able to find his poncho, but I was losing hope. I was just about to give up when I saw something near the edge of the clearing. I walked over to it and found Steel. One of the things I was afraid of had happened. He had been turned to stone. "NO! Steel!" I collapsed on top of him and cried. The others galloped over to me and when they saw him, they all began to cry too.

Twilight was the first to compose herself enough to think. "Maybe… maybe we can fix this. Fluttershy, Applejack, you go see if you can find the cockitree. Rainbow Dash, go to Zecora's and see if she has anything that could help. Rarity, go get nurse Redheart and have her meet us at Steel's house. The Princess, Pinkie, and I will carry him back to his house." As everpony else left, Twilight and Pinkie lifted Steel and started walking back to Ponyville. I followed them lost in my own thoughts, "I never should have left him. This is entirely my fault. Steel's been turned to stone and I can't do anything to help. And the worst part is that I never even got to tell him that I loved him."

Once we arrived at Steel's house, we put him on his bed. Twilight and Pinkie waited on the couch for the others to arrive, while I went into the guest room and cried. I sat in the guest room for about two hours crying and thinking about what I should have done instead of leaving Steel. I just stayed in the guest room until Vinyl cane to talk with me. "Are you ok, princess?"

"No… it's my fault, I shouldn't have left him. Because of me Steel has been turned to stone." I started to cry again and Vinyl sat down next to me. "It's not your fault, Luna. He stayed behind so you could get help." I just continued to cry, still thinking that it was my fault. "It's ok Luna, the others are trying to help him, and they'll have him back to normal in no time." As she continued to try and cheer me up, Twilight came into the room.

"Princess, Vinyl, we did it. Steel's back to normal. Nurse Redheart and Zecora are healing his wounds right now." We all left the room and joined the others just as Nurse Redheart and Zecora exited Steel's room. We looked at them waiting to her about Steel's condition. "Well, Steel is going to be fine," said Nurse Redheart. "But there is something you all should see." Happy that Steel was alive yet worried about what they found, we followed Nurse Redheart back into Steel's room while Zecora went home.

As we surrounded Steel, we didn't see anything wrong, but we all gasped when we saw that he had wings. "He's an alicorn, but only ponies related to the princesses are alicorns. This isn't possible." As Twilight and the other tried to figure out how it was possible for him to be an alicorn, Nurse Redheart revealed another shocking revelation. "I don't know, but that's not what worries me. He has multiple scars over his body and they appear to be about a few months old." As the others looked at his scars, I looked back at his wounds and noticed that his wings kept twitching.

"Hey, Rainbow Dash…" She looked over at me, "What does it mean when somepony's wings keep twitching?" She looked confused, "What do you mean, princess?"

"Look at Steel's wings, is it normal for them to be twitching constantly?" She hovered over him and looked closer at his wings. "The only reason his wings would be doing that is if he never used them. But that doesn't make any sense, why wouldn't he use his wings?"

"It seems the more we know about Steel the more mysterious he becomes. I can't help but feel sorry for him, while he has the ability to fly and use magic, he doesn't know how to use magic and he has never flown." Before anything else could be said, Steel started to wake up.

POV change: Steel

As I regained consciousness, I heard voices but couldn't make out what they were saying. "…aking u… t some wat… eel can y… me. Ste… k?" My vision started to return and I saw multiple multi-colored blurs around me. I shook my head trying to clear the fog that surrounded my mind. Eventually, I was able to regain my senses.

"Steel, are you ok?" Luna asked. I looked at her and, even with my vision still blurry, from the tears in her eyes I could tell she blamed herself for what happened. I opened my mouth to respond, but found my throat too dry to say anything. I noticed a glass of water on the table next to me and tried to grab it, but Luna stopped me and levitated it over to me and I quickly emptied the glass. "Yeah, I'm fine Luna." I could tell they were all relieved to hear me talk. Then I noticed another pony in the room I didn't know. "I take it you were the one who patched me up?" She had a confused look on her face. "It's an expression. It's just means that you healed me. Anyway, I'm in your dept miss…" She smiled, "Redheart, Nurse Redheart. And there is no need to thank me, I was only doing my job."

Luna then put her head on my chest and started to cry. "I'm sorry Steel, it's all my fault. I never should have left you in the forest. I should have helped." She said between sobs. I could help, but remember all the time I could have done something different that could have saved a fellow soldier's life.

"Stop saying that, Luna. It isn't your fault." She looked at me confused with tears still in her eyes. "I told you to go get help, I told you to leave. If it's anyponies fault, it's mine." She stopped crying and looked at me and smiled. Unfortunately, I could see through her smile and knew she still blamed herself. I tried to get up, but Luna pushed me back onto the bed. That's when I noticed that my wings were exposed and tried to use the blanket to cover them.

"It's ok, Steel we know." said Twilight, I looked at the ground thinking that they would be pissed. "Steel, it's ok, we don't feel any different about you. We just want to know why you didn't tell us that you were an alicorn." I sighed and looked out the window. They looked sad that I wouldn't tell them and they started to leave before I spoke up.

"I didn't tell you for one reason, it's the same reason I haven't told you about my past… I just didn't want you guys to treat me different. You are the first ponies in a long time that I could call my friends." They all looked at me like I was crazy. Rarity was the first speak up. "Darling, why would you think we would treat you differently? Yes, we probably would have bowed and treated you like royalty. But if you asked us to stop we would have."

"Yeh, we don't care what ya look like. But ah have to know, where did ya get them scars?"

"I'd rather not tell anymore ponies than necessary, so I think I should tell Celestia first, and then she can decide who else needs to know. Besides one of you are going to tell her I'm an alicorn, so I'm going to meet her anyway."

"Twilight will send her a message later and knowing my sister she'll probably want to meet you tomorrow." said Luna. "But for now we should make sure you get better." Eventually the others left leaving me and Luna alone. Every time I tried to do something, she would push me back on the bed and do it herself. Twilight had sent Spike over to tell us that Celestia did indeed want to see me tomorrow. At about ten, I decided it was time to go to bed. As I got ready for bed I noticed Luna had a look on her face that screamed, 'I want to ask you a question, but I'm too nervous.' "Ok, Luna what is your question." She scratched the back of her neck with her hoof. "Well, um, since you're hurt I was wondering if I could, um, maybe… sleep in here with you? You know, just incase you need something, or anything."

"Fine, but only if you're sure this would be ok with your sister." She was confused by my question and she got even more confused when I moved to the right side of the bed. "Um, Steel, what are you doing?"

"Well I can't let you sleep on the floor, you'd never fall asleep on that. Besides you're a princess, you should get the best I can offer and since you want to stay here with me this is the best I can offer. What did you think I meant when I asked if it would be ok with your sister?" She blushed and lay down on the left side of the bed. "Goodnight Steel."

"Goodnight Luna." As we fell asleep I kept thinking. "I just hope Celestia doesn't over react to my past."

Canterlot castle, Canterlot
Local time: 1200
Seventeen days since arrival

As the doors to the throne room opened, I thought back to this morning. I woke up at my usual time and tried to do my morning workout, but my wounds prevented me from doing anything more than walking. Luna had left before I woke up to attend to some royal duties or something, so I went to the market and finally bought some food and put in my cabinets. At abouteight, Celestia sent a chariot and a squad of guards to pick me up. Just as the chariot landed Derpy gave me a letter from Octavia saying that my instruments were built and to go to Canterlot to pick them up as soon as possible. Along with the letter was the address of the place where my instruments were. We arrived at the castle and as I was lead trough the castle I noticed the vast amount of guards that were there, to me it seamed like overkill. As we walked down multiple hallways and passed an unknown amount of doors, I noticed there were only guards in the hallways we went down, making me nervous. As I walked into the throne room all I could think was, "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea..."

Authors Note: Next chapter Steel's past will be revealed and there will be a few surprises you'll never see coming.