Half-Moon in Equestria 33

Two hours later...
Pulling yourself out of the moat, you see Twilight and Trixie performing a strange celebratory dance together. All of the guards, as well as Pinkie and Spike are cheering. As you stand, silence takes over, and the girls both look at you expectantly. "Congratulations. You both pass your first test." Looking up, you see a cyan and rainbow streak approaching "And it looks like we finished just in time too."
Dash swoops in a kicks up a small cloud of dust on landing "Never fear Dash is here!"
"Excellent timing Rainbow." Turning to the guards, you say "The reason I brought Dash here, is because she has many characteristics of a typical "Bad Guy". No offence Dash"
She glares at you and says "Explain."
You raise your hands in defeat "First, your average "Bad Guy" is usually strong, or fast. Sometimes both." Dash blushes a bit, and puffs up. "Next they are usually intelligent. They may not all be geniuses, but most are far smarter than wild animals." She is smiling a fair bit now. "And finally, many have some sort of ego." She glares at you and hits your shoulder. "Just saying."
"Yeah, yeah." She says, her smile returning "So what did you want me here for?"
Addressing the unicorn guards, you ask "Are either of you good at shielding spells?"
Shining steps forward, and Twilight giggles. "I believe I will suit your needs."
"Yeah, my big brother made a shield spell that covers all of Canterlot." Twilight chips in.
"All right then. About how long does it take for you to make an average shield?"
He ponders for a moment "Three seconds, give or take. It can be done faster, but the resulting shield is weaker."
You nod and turn to Dash "Now how long do you think it would take you to hit Shining Armor from here?"
"No way to know unless I try" She replies.
"Alright, but try not to actually hit him." Pulling out your watch, you say "On your mark... get set... GO!" Shooting off like she was fired from a gun, she easily clears him in under a second. "I am pretty sure we can all agree she would have hit him well before his shield got up. Now, at that range, even alchemy wouldn’t have stopped her, but that’s beside the point. Bring up a shield Shining."
A purplish pink bubble forms around him, and you address Rainbow "Think you can hit that with all you got?"
"No." She replies, shortly.
This takes you aback "Why not?"
"I am not going to hit Twilights brother or any other pony with a sonic rainboom."
Your palm meets your forehead "I can’t believe I forgot about that. Sorry, just hit it as hard as you feel comfortable doing."
"Can do." She says, before taking off straight up. Leveling off several hundred feet up, she comes in at a steeply angled dive. The shield buckles a bit as she hits it, but she ends up deflecting back upward when it is obvious it won’t break.
"Well done Dash. Now, I want you to do the same to a shield I will make, Alright?" She nods, and you take and draw a circle on the ground, before using it to force up a barrier of dirt and stone. With a dive almost identical to the one she made against Shining's shield, she crashes into your barrier, several cracks forming, but the overall barrier remaining intact.
"Excellent, both of you. As you can see, both barriers did their job, though Shining’s would last longer, and is easily mobile." Kneeling down, you draw a quick circle to collapse the barrier, before drawing a replica of the one you used to create the shield. "This is a basic barrier forming circle. If I was to simply activate it, it would raise a wall of dirt roughly 7 to 8 feet high, about a foot thick, and moderately dense. With direction, you can make it larger, harder, thicker or even differently shaped."
"Trixie thinks you should demonstrate. Perhaps Trixie could show them how it works?" Trixie says, stepping over.
"An excellent idea, please go ahead." She moves to the circle, and activates it, a round barrier springing up. "Well done. Now, this barrier is weaker than the one I created, as mine was a mixture of dirt and stone, but this is still strong enough to take the same hit." You say, rapping your knuckles on the shield. "Of course an alchemist can use things like this as weapons too, watch." Clapping your hands, you punch the shield and a spike of dirt shoots out the other side.
The guards look surprised and impressed, and come across onto the island, and examine the spike and barrier. One of the earth ponies asks "This is all well and good, but doesn’t it take too long to make the circle for it to be useful?" Several guards murmur their consent.
"A good question. The details will be dealt with later, but in brief, pieces of armor can be modified with circles to allow at will alchemy."
"Wait! You never told "Us" that!" Twilight exclaims.
You shrug "It hasn't come up, and besides, you have seen me use similar things quite often. All those circles on the paper, the mask had a circle in it, stuff like that." The girls nod slowly, not completely understanding.
"That’s fine," Silver Wind says "but why are we learning how to do it with circles? Can't you just teach us how to do it without them, like you can?"
Sighing, you sit down. "I was hoping to avoid this topic." Pulling out some paper and your pen from your pocket, you motion everypony over. "Consider this an extension of lesson 1. Alchemy is performed through circles. There is no two ways about it. Even with the alchemy you see me perform "Without" them, Still uses them. It’s not something I can teach, nor is it something I want you to learn." The guards look confused, but Twilight and Trixie are starting to get the picture. "I don't know if any of you know this, but this arm here" You raise your right arm "I have already had it destroyed once."
Shining nods "I remember hearing about that. You lost it using a forbidden alchemy to save a fillys life."
"Yes. The arm was my price. Not even Celestia's and Luna's combined magic could regenerate it. Oh, but don't worry. You won’t start randomly losing limbs using alchemy. I performed one of the taboo alchemies, which brought my mind to a place called the Gate. The Gate is an alchemist’s source of power, and a vault of near infinite knowledge." Drawing a rough sketch of the gate and gatekeeper, you pass it around. "The black thing is the gatekeeper. It is said it is the inverse of whoever is at the gate. To gain knowledge from the gate, an equal value must be lost. For the single piece of information to save her life, it cost me my arm. I was lucky, when you think about it. Imagine if the price was some other part of my body, like my stomach. How about my lungs, or maybe my heart or brain? It’s not easy to think about, I know."
Standing, you ease some of the kinks from your muscles before continuing. "A side effect of seeing past the Gate is the ability to perform alchemy using your body as a circle, in a sense. Now, Twilight, do you have some of your notes from the first day?"
She levitates out a notebook, and flips through a few pages "Yep, why?"
"You and Trixie are going to spend the next few hours training them with the glowing circle. Try to get their times as low as possible. I have dinner to prepare for you two, and whoever does the best on this test."
"Okay Anon." Twilight says.
Trixie scowls "Trixie did not agree to this."
"Fine by me. I guess Twilight can have the extra dessert I planned on sharing between you two."
You see her eyes go wide, and her mouth water a bit before she replies "Fine, Trixie will help. If only to prove she is better at everything."
Smiling you turn to leave, the girls prepping. If they could get past their differences, they could make great friends.

You are Trixie, and you are going to prove you are better than Twitlight at teaching.
"Alright, split into two groups of four" Twilight says "One group with me, and one with Trixie." The guards quickly spit, and one group heads to you. Much to yours and Twilights surprise, Shining is in your group. "But big brother, why would you want to learn from 'her'?" The last word is laced with malice.
"As much as I would love to work with you Twiley, it will help keep everypony focused if we aren't distracted by family time."
You allow a mental cheer 'If I can teach Twitlights brother well, and have him get first, She will have to admit I am superior.' "Alright, Trixie believes we should get started."
"For once Trixie, you have a good idea." Twilight retorts sharply. "I assume you have a copy of the circle, right?"
"Of course Trixie does. She uses it for practice all the time. Trixie can get it to go in under a second easily."
Twilight scoffs "Well then, you should have no trouble teaching your group."
"Humph." You turn, and take your group to one end of the island, while Twilight takes hers to the other. Taking off your hat, you pull out a copy of the circle from it. Using a stick, you copy the circle on the ground, once for each student. "Trixie is going to give you a few tips she learned. Relaxing before you start helps; it makes moving the energy easier." The four look at you confused, and you rise your eyebrows "Anon did explain how to do alchemy, right?"
"Not really" Shining explains "He gave us a rough idea and told us to go for it."
*Sigh* "Trixie guesses he must have been too busy to explain, or it was part of the test." Stepping over to one of the circles, you stand on the edge. "The way to do it fast is to flow energy in a circle. Start in your chest, down one limb, through the circle and up the other. Watch." Focusing, the circles flares into light and you stop, before stepping back. "All of you give it a try."
They all step up to a circle, and take a deep slow breath. Shining tries first, and his horn starts glowing while he tries "No, you are going to have to learn to channel without powering your horn." The next pony, an earth, does it successfully in eight seconds or so. "Not bad. More practice and you may end up as good as Trixie someday."
Encouraged by the occasional compliment or tip, your group rapidly drops their times near the five second mark, a few even approaching the three second mark. Even Shining gets the hang of focusing energy without using his horn.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Anon approaching, and you address your charges. "Anon is coming. Remember everything Trixie showed you, and you will do fine. “As they group up, you flick Shining with your tail. “Don’t forget to keep that horn in check." A faint pink blush crosses his features, and the others laugh a bit. You laugh as well, and walk over to Anon, and stand on the opposite side of him from Twilight.
"How did it go girls?" He asks, looking over the guards.
"I had a little trouble, but I think I got my group trained better than Trixie did." Twilight says, puffing up a bit beside him
"Trixie’s group learned exceptionally well. Trixie feels they will easily exceed Twitlights group." You retort.
He chuckles "Maybe you two should make a bet? Whoevers student wins get something."
"Trixie can deal with that. What about you, Sparky?"
"It’s Sparkle, and yeah, I can do that. How about the winner gets carried home by Anon, while the loser has to carry the winners stuff back?"
A blush flickers across your cheeks as you think of Anon carrying you, and you reply "I agree."
"That makes it official then. I'm stuck in the middle of a love triangle." Anon says, throwing his hands up. You and Twilight go crimson, and the guards are doing their bests to keep from laughing.
"I don’t... Trixie doesn't care about you like that. All she wants is to be carried like a princess while Twilight over there has to carry all Trixie’s stuff." You say, suppressing a blush.
Twilight turns her nose up at your comment before saying "Well I for one enjoy being carried by Anon. He is strong and smart and kind, and I would love to have him... er I mean somepony like him as a special somepony." She blushes an even deeper red, and hides behind Anon's legs.
"Alright, alright." Anon says, making a weird motion with his hands "Let’s get this over with. I assume you can split into your two groups." The guards nod, and split into their respective groups. You go and stand in front of yours and Twilight slinks over to in front of hers, her face and coat still tinged pink. Anon does a double take when he sees the groups, and says "Shining, you went with Trixie instead of Twilight?"
"Yeah, I figured I'd see what Twilights rival was like firsthoof." He replies, sparing a glance at you.
Nodding, Anon asks "And what’s your opinion of her?"
"She's a little arrogant and self-absorbed" He starts and you glare at him. He shrugs it off, and continues "But she does have what I think is a good understanding of alchemy basics, and she isn’t a half bad teacher."
You feel Twilights scowl, but you just smile and motion for Anon to start the test. "We should get started Anon. I'm sure the students are raring to go as well."
He nods, before moving a little bit away, and creating a box room with alchemy. "Alright, first up?" One of Twilights, an earth pony heads in first. Two minutes later, he leaves, and you raise an eyebrow and smirk at Twilight. "Next" Anons voice calls out, and Shining heads in. Another two minutes, and he comes out. This process repeats, and you quickly realize Anon is keeping them in there for a set period of time to avoid giving anything away.
When he steps out and collapses the building, you can feel the tension in the air. "First, let me say this. I am impressed. All of you managed to get a time of less than ten seconds, several of you even making it under the five second mark. For this little training that is excellent. Of course, that’s not what you are wondering about right now. The pony with the lowest time, a time of 2.7 seconds is..." Everypony is on the edge of their seats, leaning forward "Shining Armor, Congratulations, and well done all of you." Many of the guards stomp their congratulations, and Twilight makes a happy squeal before running over and hugging her brother.
"Now, since you all did so well, any objections to hitting the bar sometime this week for a round or two? No getting drunk, but a light buzz never hurt anypony." The cheers get a lot louder; before Anon silences them "I will decide on a day over dinner, so that means you are on your own for it." Taking out a bag, he tosses it over to the unicorn, who catches it in his magic. "Remember, that is for all of you for the rest of the week. Twilight, Trixie, Shining, shall we go?
The others nod, but you say "Don't forget our deal. Just be glad I didn't bring anything Twilight." Anon nods, and steps over before picking you up and cradling you in an unusual manner. Your back is to the ground and your stomach facing up. Tour tail is up, covering your bits and his arms are under your flank and shoulders. It’s a little strange, but feels nice and you lean into him with a sigh.
If looks could kill, Twilight would have sent you to the deepest depths of tartarus, but you could care less. You are way too comfy. As he starts to walk, it feels like a gentle sway, kind of like a boat. Your eyes drift closed, until you hear Anonymous speak. "Hey Shining, so how did Trixie teach her group?"
"To start, she explained about moving energy in a circle. She was a little cheeky when my horn powered on my first try, but after that, she provided some encouragement and tips as we went." You hear him say, trotting along behind Anon.
"Ugh! Why didn't I think of that!" Twilight exclaims, making a sort of cute grump noise. Well, you know, cute for an annoying purple pest.
"We are here!" Anon says, and you look over. You are in front of Twilight tree thing. Lowering you down and righting you, he opens the door. Everyone steps in, though you still wish he was carrying you. Not that you would tell him that.


You are Anonymous, and this is a little awkward.
Okay, scratch that, this is a lot awkward. Twilight and Trixie sit across the table from each other, and you and Shining are much the same. While this in itself isn’t awkward, the death stares they are giving each other and the tiny magical duels they have been having over food are.
Twilight levitates tongs to get more salad, and Trixie’s magic interferes, nullifying them both and making the food and tongs clatter to the table. "THAT’S IT!" You yell out "If you two can solve your fucking differences and stop it with this stupid petty fighting... Fuck." Storming out, you slam the door behind you and march off.
Just like back in Canterlot, the pony’s can sense your aggravation and avoid you. At least, most pony’s do.
"Hey, Anonymous?" A voice calls out to you, and you turn to see its owner is Lyra.
"Oh. Hi Lyra." You say, temporarily stopping you rage through town.
"What’s wrong? You seem kinda stressed out."
You release a sigh "Twilight and Trixie are at each other’s throats again." Lyra gasps, and you quickly add "Not literally, it’s just a human figure of speech They are just being hostile to each other, and all for pretty much no reason."
She visibly calms "Oh, well they do have a history. Maybe you should come over to my place and give them time to cool off."
This brings a small smile to your face, and you give a soft laugh. "I suppose I could, though I think you have some personal reasons for wanting me over."
A faint blush crosses her features and she says "Well, work has been really hard these past few days for Bon-Bon and I and the massage I asked for would really help."
"I guess I can come though I can’t promise I will be good at it" he makes an adorable *Squee* and a small jump for joy "And remember, no funny business." She grabs hold of your sleeve and begins tugging.
You seriously hope you don't regret this.