“Excuse me miss,” came the voice of one the three sisters that ran the flower stall, “what are you doing?”
“Ah, not much,” Vinyl said without really paying attention, “just following these human tracks...”

Chaos reigned amongst the ponies in the marketplace within seconds of the words leaving Vinyl Scratch’s mouth. Meanwhile, the Canterlot raised mare stood in the street, her head tilted slightly to one side, her face blank and more than a little disbelieving of the sheer panic in the admittedly small crowd of ponies.

“Seriously? I heard country ponies were flighty, but that’s just not right...” The DJ was speaking in the direction of the panicked ponies for all the good it did her, they were too wrapped up in their own fear and finding some place to hide to pay attention to her.

Figuring she had a couple of hours to burn and these ponies would be useless for a little while, she might as well see how far she could follow the tracks. After all, if she could rock with a minotaur, a human couldn’t be that hard to deal with.

It was easy enough to follow the trail of the human, his shoe prints were massive compared to the hoof prints of a pony and the ground was moist enough from the spring showers over the last few days to leave a good print.

Coming to a point where his tracks seemed to end, she noted the deep shoeprints in the dirt and a couple of handprints nearby - definitely NOT a pony - looking up from the prints, she blinked in surprise as she recognised the colors.

This - this was her house, in fact, it looked like he had sat there for a while, resting at some point last night, maybe even eavesdropping on her conversation with Bonbon!

Backtracking a little to the edge of her fence, she hunted around a little before she picked up the trail again headed in a slightly different direction. ‘I wonder where else he’s been,’ she thought, ‘this could turn out to be interesting…’

Iroh woke to the sensation that he was sleeping on the softest bed he had ever felt so soft in fact, that he could hardly even feel it. Yawning widely, he rolled over. That is - he tried to roll over, but he did not move. His brow furrowed in concentration, and he tried to roll over again.

“Mornin’” came a casual female voice, “nice night for a stroll wasn’t it?”

Iroh opened one eye, his blurry vision slowly resolving into a view of two large, half lidded red eyes set in a whitish face watching him from several inches away. Blinking a couple of times and opening both eyes as he did so, he came to the realization that yes, yes there was a red-eyed pony right in front of him, with a horn in the middle of her forehead glowing an electric blue.

A cautious look around told him that he was still in the same shed he had taken shelter in last night, and that he was currently floating several inches off the floor.

“Yesterday was not my day…” Iroh began, “Is today looking any better?”

“Depends… you as mean as you’re ugly?”

“You are no prize yourself, miss air bender. I am just an old man who seems to be a little lost.”

“Now that has got to be the most interesting thing I have heard in a long time.” She ended her levitation spell abruptly, causing Iroh to fall to the ground with a short cry and a thump, followed by a small wheeze of pain.

“Oh right… hospital escapee. You good?”

“I’ll live,” Iroh groaned as he sat up, massaging the small of his back, “but was that really necessary?”

“You dissed my awe inspiring beauty, of course it was!” Vinyl’s cheeky grin was growing again. “So. You got a name? Or do I get to give you one?”

“Iroh.” The old man announced as he turned and started fishing through his bag, keeping one eye on the rather forward mare. “Now for the important question, do you drink tea?”

Vinyl blinked at the non-sequitur, “Well yeah, but not much though. I prefer juice.”

“Good enough.” Iroh half muttered as he loaded several pinches of powder from different canisters into his teapot, followed by a good amount of water from one of his skins.

Retrieving a mug from his pack and setting it before himself, he gave a dubious look at the pony standing in the doorway in front of him before setting out a second mug.

“You drink your tea cold? I know its good like that in the summer when its hot, dude, but its way too cold out now… for…”

Vinyl trailed off as she watched Iroh pour the steaming tea into her mug.

“Woah! Magic teapot? That’s pretty wild.”

Iroh raised an eyebrow at this. “Considering there was only one known air bender in the world before I met you, I could say the same thing about you.”

“What’s an air bender?” This was of course asked at the perfect moment for Iroh to receive a lungful of hot tea.

It took a minute for him to get over his coughing fit, cursing himself for being taken by surprise so completely. “If…” *ahem* “If you were not floating me by using air bending, then what were you using?”

“Uh… magic? You know? Levitation?” Vinyl didn’t know whether to be amused or concerned. Here she was talking with a human who used a magic teapot, and he didn’t know about levitation?

“And what is this ‘air bending’ anyway? That's the third time you have mentioned it, and I still have no idea what you mean.”

Iroh stopped and tried to think this through logically. “Do you know anything about bending? Anything at all?”

“Um… I know about benders, I go on them every now and then with some of my friends to ya know, get drunk and stuff, but I get the feeling that that is not what you are talking about at all.”

Iroh took a slower sip of his tea as he collected his thoughts. “Among my people, there are those born with the ability to manipulate one or more of the four major elements - fire, water, earth and air. Sometimes small variations in these abilities arise, such as sand or mud bending, but we will ignore them for now.”

Slipping into his lecturing mode, the words came more easily to Iroh now, “To bend an element means different things to different users. To some, it is a partnership, to others, they command their element by forcing it to obey their will. For most, it is somewhere in between. To all of them, it allows them a degree of control with their element that can be used for many things.”

“Right,” Vinyl drawled, “So its magic relating to a certain talent.”

Iroh pinched the bridge of his nose. “I get the feeling we are painting with different brushes.”

“Painting what now?”

“It is a metaphor, we each have knowledge the other does not and it is confusing us.” Iroh dismissed, “would you care to come into sit and discuss? I suspect this conversation will take some time and patience on both our parts.”

“TIME?!” Vinyl backed out slightly to turn her head and look at the sun steadily rising in the sky. “Oh man, I was supposed to do something, and I’m gonna be late!” She looked back and forth between the direction of town and Iroh, dancing on her front hooves.

“You stay here, or better yet, go into the house. The donkey who lives there is away on vacation, I think, and it’s nicer in there. Just don’t mess with her stuff. I’ll come back and jam with you later.”

Before Iroh could open his mouth fully to agree or disagree, Vinyl raced away from the shed and back in towards town.

Blinking a couple of times at her speedily retreating form, only one thing seemed to pop into his head, ‘What is a donkey?’

It was shortly before noon when a haggard Zuko stumbled into a village on the shore of West Lake. It was one of two lakes that bordered Serpent’s Pass, the thin strip of land connecting the Northern edge of the Si Wong desert to the territory dominated by the great walled city of Ba Sing Se. His tired eye glanced over the shop fronts that made up the main street of the small fishing village.

Pausing a moment, he looked at the last few shops he had passed a second time. That last shop he had passed was a tea shop, much like the one his Uncle Iroh had been so vocally dreaming of opening scant moments before his disappearance almost two days ago now.

A wave of nostalgia for his uncle hit him, shortly by a half forgotten memory of several sessions of seemingly nonsensical training. With a grimace at what he was about to do, he turned back and walked into the tea shop.

Nodding faintly at the gaunt man at a pai sho table who had looked up at him as he passed, he approached the old man sitting behind the counter where several kettles sat steaming slowly over hot coals.

Zuko looked at the small list set on the wall, proclaiming around a dozen varieties of tea and their prices. Making a choice, he slid a couple of coins onto the counter. “Keemun tea, please.”

The coins were scooped up, and the man wordlessly turned, filling a wooden cup with the sweet tea that smelled slightly of plum, and placed it on the counter before him.

Zuko nodded his thanks as he took up the cup and wandered back across the teahouse to gaze at the pai sho board that the thin man was studying.

“You play pai sho, boy?” The words of the man were gruff, yet friendly at the same time, somewhat matching his rail thin figure and wild, spiky brown hair.

“A little,” Zuko admitted, taking a sip of.his tea. ‘Hmm, not bad. I wonder why uncle doesn’t keep any of this tea in his stock?’

The older man eyed him speculatively. “Care for a game then? I’ve met precious few players here these days.”

At Zuko’s nod of assent, the older man made a few markings of a sheet of parchment that had been sitting to his side and then cleared the board for a new game.

Placing a box of pieces in front of the seat across from him, the man made a slight sweeping gesture, as though he was being very generous, “You may make the first move.”

Zuko flicked through the round chips, looking at several carefully for a moment before placing a chip with a stylized lotus bloom in the centre of the board.

The man frowned down at the board before raising a shaggy eyebrow at Zuko.

“I see you favor the White Lotus gambit. Not many cling to the ancient ways.”

The boy gave a shrug, “My uncle taught me that those who do can always find a friend.”

The man’s frown deepened into a scowl for several seconds as he considered the words of the young man in front of him before a slow smirk creased his features.

Without breaking eye contact with Zuko, he reached into his own box and withdrew a piece and very deliberately placed it near the edge of the board. “Then let us play.”

The quiet clicking of pieces was the only sound in the shop for the next several minutes, sweat forming on Zuko’s brow as he concentrated on mimicking the pattern his uncle had drilled into him with surprising ruthlessness, despite never completely answering his reasons for doing so.

The scarred young man gave a sigh as he placed a final piece, completing the image made from pieces on the board. It resembled and eight pointed star, or more precisely, the picture of the flower bloom on the White Lotus piece still sitting in the middle of the board.

The old man stared at the board for several seconds, glancing up a few times at Zuko’s weary face.

He stood from his seat and growled out “Come with me.” before turning on his heel and striding out the door, not even looking back to see if he did follow.

Zuko blinked in surprise for a moment before scrambling to snatch up his backpack and dashing out the door to follow the man out the door and village.

Zecora walked into Ponyville to find the streets almost deserted, shutters on windows closed and a nervous energy in the air.

She eyed her surroundings cautiously as she made her way to the marketplace. There she found very few ponies out shopping and all with frightened looks on their faces.

Making a decision, she trotted over to the trio of sisters tending to the flower stall she needed to visit for some potion ingredients she could not normally gather in the forest.

“Very few ponies I am finding here, what is it that has you gripped with fear?”

“A monster fell out of the sky yesterday! It’s been stalking the town all night.” came the nervous explanation.

“It was bigger than a minotaur, and it breathes fire!” the second sister blurted, a gleam of terror in her eyes.

“Bigger than a minotaur and breathes fire? Would it be a dragon, I must inquire.”

“Ah heard from my sister who was there when it landed that it wore armor of some kind, and it had a big hairy head!” A nearby shopkeeper butted in, eager to share his gossip.

“I saw one of the mares who moved out here from Canterlot tracking its hoof prints this morning. I hope she’s ok…” the celery seller on the other side of the flower shop added.

Of course, it was at that moment Vinyl Scratch came racing down the main road, galloping like the hounds of Tartarus were snapping at her tail. She sped through the market, not even acknowledging any of the ponies calling out to her.

“IT’S CHASING HER! IT’S GONNA EAT US!” One of the more panicky mares screamed, immediately setting the rest of the market to terror again and causing all who could to leap for cover behind the nearest carts or shop fronts. One earth pony mare somehow ending up hiding amongst the leaves of a nearby tree, her tail hanging conspicuously below her bolthole.

Zecora scanned the suddenly deserted square with unrestrained scorn. “This song and dance I have seen before, but to make me cower, I need something more.”

Swirling her cloak around as she turned, she allowed the hood to cover her head, staring in the direction that the blue-maned mare had come racing from and waiting to see what had the locals just as afraid, if not more so, as when she had first come to town more than a year ago.

After almost a minute of silence and ponies nervously peeking out from behind their carts, Zecora decided nothing was coming and turned to coax the stall keepers out from under their carts and into selling their wares.

Chasing the imaginings of these ponies could often be a fools errand, better to stay alert and help out where she could, and for that, she would need ingredients. *Sigh* ‘A zebra’s work is never done, not even with the setting of the sun...’

Author's Notes:

Thanks to Avatar of Madness for proofreading/editing.

EDIT: OK, no idea how to make a poll so I will ask here instead. In a future chapter I have planned, I will be including a scene that includes interaction with Scootaloo and talking about her history. Is there already something canon out there I have missed? If not, should I give her Earth Pony or Unicorn parents? Note I am specifically excluding her having Pegasus parents.