Butterfly in the Sky, I Can Go Twice As High

[elementofloyalty]

Characters: Rainbow Dash, Ed Elric, and Twilight Sparkle
Location: Twilight's room to start
Rating: PG (Ed is kinda foul-mouthed)
Open/Closed/Finished: Closed
Summary: Rainbow and Ed have a deal. Ed, if you will forgive the term, is ponying up his part first.



Knock knock knock. There's a Rainbow at Twilight's door.

"Twilight! Hey Twilight! I need your magical expertise!"

The pegasus pony practically radiated delight. She'd been looking forward to this for some time, now, and finally having the chance to put it into motion meant she was just plain thrilled.

Comments

[marearcana]

"Yes, I am. It would be better to find someplace more secluded to actually do it, though." After all, there was a statistically significant chance of them being seen in the corridors.

[rewritethis]

"Why? Someone in there already?" He craned over, obviously trying to get a better look at the room behind Twilight. But then his face fell even further, and he stopped. "Oh, don't tell me. You're gonna need the space." Which would, of course, make the whole thing much easier for just anyone to stumble across... That was how these things seemed to work for him, wasn't it?

[elementofloyalty]

"Quit worrying and let's do it!" Rainbow said, spinning a circle around the two of them impatiently. "Where do we need to go and why aren't we going there right now?"

[marearcana]

"I did get a roommate not too long ago, but she's out right now. The problem with doing it here would be getting you out of Garden without being seen."

[rewritethis]

"That'd help," he said dryly, turning to stride back out of the corridor for the second time today - although his air of resignation this time suggested that escape wasn't the first thing on his mind any more. At least, not for now. "Let's just get this over with. Look for a field outside or something so the monsters can gawk.

"...Unless you got any better ideas." The clear implication in his tone of voice: no, they probably didn't.

[elementofloyalty]

Rainbow, meanwhile, turned a twist in midair out in excitement. "All right! Let's go introduce the sky to an alchemist!"

[marearcana]

Eventually, the three had found a suitable secluded spot for spellcasting - a clearing out in some rather conveniently nearby grove.

"This should do pretty nicely," she said, having observed the area.

[rewritethis]

Sure, this place seemed sufficiently out of the way for their purposes. Ed still looked like he would have preferred it to be used for anything other than magic, though. And they were close enough to Garden that he wasn't entirely sure someone with good eyesight wouldn't be able to recognise him... the day was getting on, that was true, but the sky wasn't yet any colour he'd blend into particularly well.

But hey, he could always hope the actual magic part of this took long enough to improve his chances. And then maybe he could pretend to fall asleep or something, so they wouldn't expect him to do anything.

He gave the clearing another once-over, and, finding no sign of any potential distraction Twilight could have missed, flopped down next to the closest tree with a disgruntled sigh. "So what happens now?"

[elementofloyalty]

Rainbow opened her mouth and lifted a hoof to respond -- then stopped. "I don't know," she said, looking at Twilight. "I never actually saw you cast this spell."

[marearcana]

She remembered that day, and she remembered the shriek Rarity had let out as the spell was finishing...

"It sounded a little uncomfortable when I did it for Rarity, so I'll need to ask you to try not to squirm too hard. Are you ready?"

[rewritethis]

"Pain as well?" He laughed. It didn't sound like there was much humour in it. "You guys just keep making this sound better, don't you?"

But pain would be fine, he thought - especially compared to his discomfort with having any magic done to him in the first place. He was practically an expert. Two of his limbs were pretty much a testament to that.

Guessing that if Twilight was asking now then she was probably ready to cast the stupid thing right away, he began to get to his feet again. "Yeah, okay. Ready as I'll ever -" But he paused halfway through straightening up. "Wait. Where are these gonna attach, exactly? It's just..." Did Twilight know about his situation? He glanced at Rainbow. She knew, so maybe she'd mentioned it... Though, unless she had, he wasn't planning to elaborate. "If it's onto the skeleton, you might have a problem."

No, for once, he wasn't deliberately stalling. If someone were to try this kind of thing on an animal using alchemy, a question like that would be a fairly big deal. ...Not that this crap was like alchemy in any way, but he had to be sure.

[elementofloyalty]

"They aren't pegasus wings," she said, spreading her own by way of example. "No bones or muscles or anything. So that shouldn't be a problem."

She hadn't known about the potential for pain, and briefly felt guilty -- but then again, Ed was openly masochistic anyway, right? (He hung out with her after all.) She wasn't gonna say a thing about that.

[rewritethis]

That's not the kind of question he'd be comfortable with anyone asking, never mind a pony...

"Well, okay." He yawned. His lack of enthusiasm was almost impressive in its totality. "Enough with the suspense. Just do it."

[marearcana]

"All right then," she said, shifting into a more grounded position.

Twilight gathered her focus and energy into a bluish-white curtain which began to extend from her horn and around Ed's feet, slowly spiraling upwards. Not only can he see it clearly, he can also feel it, and while not painful, it's rather constricting.

[elementofloyalty]

She lifted a hoof to her eyes to shield them from the glare, but no WAY was she looking away. She wanted to see this!

[rewritethis]

The odd tightening sensation - initially only in one leg, but then spreading to the other as the light curtain climbed past his knee - was distracting enough to make him look down, and not a particularly enjoyable feeling. He remained silent, though.

This couldn't be the pain she'd mentioned, could it? This was nothing. Which meant he should probably have been mentally bracing himself for whatever came next, and part of him was, but it was a little difficult to keep the rest of his mind from wandering when faced with something he didn't understand. For a start, why the feet? What did they have to do with anything? Never mind that a detached part of him was still trying to remember the structure of gossamer, which he hadn't had a chance to look up...

[marearcana]

The wrapping continues to rise, and soon enough the binding is up to his neck.

It doesn't show signs of stopping, either.

[elementofloyalty]

This wasn't going to change Ed's opinion about magic at all, was it.

Lucky for Rainbow he was so stubborn that he had to go through with this because he agreed to it. She watched curiously, waiting for the wings to pop up.

[rewritethis]

Hey, this was no time to start assuming things about anyone's stubbornness! ...Although in this particular case, yes, stubbornness was at least half the reason he still hadn't tried to step away. The rest, well - would anything ugly happen if he did squirm too much? That was the sort of open question he'd rather investigate from a distance.

He was getting more uncomfortable by the second, though. No two ways around that. No matter how incorporeal it looked, the binding felt enough like a normal (and, under the right circumstances, perfectly lethal) rope to make him apprehensive. And at this point, he couldn't really get a clear look at what it was doing...

"Cute light show," he said, through gritted teeth. "Is it for anything, or do you just like watching me stand around?"

[marearcana]

And then in not a lot of time at all, perhaps as a response to that last bit, it quickly wraps around his head and starts squeezing very hard.

After a few seconds of that, it bursts away, revealing a pair of translucent red butterfly wings with splotches of a few other colors attached to the back of Ed's jacket. He can't feel them, other than in the place on his back where they otherwise would have been, but with a little thought he can control them fairly easily.

"All done. It usually does take a while, to answer your question."

[rewritethis]

No sooner does the sensation tighten enough to finally elicit a grunt from him than it evaporates, leaving him - well, disoriented might be too gentle a description. Having his sense of proprioreception thrown completely off balance isn't a situation he often needs to put words to. Sure, he used to have four limbs, but...

He rubs his eyes, mentally shaking off the vestiges of the pain, then gingerly cranes his neck to look over his shoulder. Or, more accurately, just between his shoulders.

"Insect wings...?" There's probably a short joke in there somewhere, but for once he's too distracted to latch onto it.

Experimentally, he essays a little wave of one of them. It glitters slightly as it moves.

To be honest, he's not sure what he was expecting. All either of the ponies had said - implied, really - was that they'd look dumb. And they do, it's true - but after all this trepidation, seeing the real thing feels almost anticlimactic. Hell, he even likes red.

Still, the shape could stand to be cooler. Happily, Twilight already helpfully told him what they were made out of. He looks down at his hands, furrows his brow briefly in concentration, starts to bring his palms together -

- and notices his feet are several inches off the ground.

"What the -" He tries to twist round again, only to belatedly realise he has no idea how to manoeuvre when more or less suspended in mid-air. "What the hell?! I didn't do that!"

[elementofloyalty]

Rainbow had promised not to laugh, and she wasn't -- not even with delight, as she shot up into the air with him. "It's that EASY, Ed! When did I ever make flying look hard?"

She spun around him, not thinking that he could probably use with fewer distractions than more. "You actually made 'em look pretty cool, Twilight." For butterfly wings. "Was that on purpose or did it just happen?"

[marearcana]

"I think it just... happened. The book I originally got it from didn't go into very much detail about how the spell generates their appearance."

That might be something for her to look into later, if she ever got around to it. She doubted she'd have the need to use this again, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to keep it.

[rewritethis]

From Ed's direction came the sound of the hand clap he'd attempted just a few seconds ago, followed by... no glowing or crackling, but there was a surprised yelp as he reached too far over his shoulder and inadvertently rolled backwards in mid-air.

(Would that have counted as human transmutation if he'd been a bit more coordinated? Maybe that was why they were more difficult to catch than they looked...)

He steadied himself with a couple of slow wingbeats, then immediately wondered how he'd known to do that. Oh, this was stupid. Rarely in his life had he ever wished he was any closer to the ground.

Frustrated, but still a little too dizzy to try again right away, he sighed and let his limbs dangle uselessly beneath him. "Great," he said. "What else didn't it go into detail about? Anything like 'how the hell to get down'?"

[elementofloyalty]

She swooped up to Ed's side, patting his shoulder comfortingly. "They're just like any other limb, Ed, you don't 'think' about it -- you just do it, and they respond. You should have all the instincts built into you from the spell. Here, follow me!"

Down Dash dropped to the floor again.