Chapter 1: The Boat

The week passed far too quickly for both Twilight and Celestia. Neither wanted to part with the other, but the boat was leaving soon and Twilight had to hurry off. “I’ll see you again soon, right, Princess?”

“Of course you will, Twilight, and I’ll make sure to write you whenever I get the opportunity to do so,” Celestia said, helping Twilight with a relatively small stack of books she was taking, numbering around 20. “Also, remember my assignment for you. I especially want you to make some friends, and tell me all about them. It would be a shame if you got too homesick, going from one school to another. Don’t overextend yourself, and I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“I will, Princess. I’ll make you proud,” Twilight said with a smile.

“I know you will, my faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.” Celestia turned away, trying to hide a tear. “You’ll be amazing. Now go on, you have a ship to catch,” she said, walking away slowly.

Twilight looked ahead at the airship that would be taking her to her destination. It was bigger than any airship Twilight had ever seen before, even larger than the transports that took ponies between the continents. She saw ponies dragging huge boxes of cargo onto the airship. Apparently this Demongate Island was too small to support itself without consistent shipments from the mainland. She took a breath and stepped forward toward the airship. Spike hopped up on her back.

“Isn’t this gonna be so cool, Twi? I mean, so many ponies are going to be there. We’ll have lots of opportunities for making friends.” He smiled and laughed happily.

“Right, making friends,” Twilight said gloomily. Being such a bookworm really did have a poor impact on her social life. Even at Canterlot Academy, she had never really made friends with anypony. She could easily predict that this would be the single most difficult task Princess Celestia had ever given her. She laughed hollowly. Steeling her nerves, she strode forward to the airship, full of determination.

-----

That feeling of determination Twilight had felt dissipated very soon after the airship took off. Despite being a rather smooth ride, Twilight rather quickly discovered her stomach had quite an aversion to air travel. Spike had left to go find some help for Twilight when a bespectacled young earth pony mare with a deep orange mane and a cream-colored coat trotted over to her.

“You don’t look so good,” the ginger earth pony said sympathetically.

“Don’t feel so good,” Twilight groaned. “Can I help you with something?”

The other pony stepped closer. “Actually I heard about you from your dragon friend. He’s really concerned about you. Seems like a good friend,” she said with a smile. “Anyway, I wanted to see if I could do something to help you. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“No, by all means, if you want to help me, I’d be glad to accept your assistance.” Twilight smiled at this new arrival. Maybe making friends would be easier than she had thought.

The earth pony stepped over and placed a hoof on Twilight’s back, pressing gently. “Geez, you’re incredibly tense. Looks like somepony needs to loosen up a bit,” she said, continuing to apply pressure. After a certain point, something snapped in Twilight’s back. She yelped, startled, jumping up off the floor. “Are you alright?” the earth pony asked as Twilight crashed under the influence of gravity.

Twilight stood and brushed herself off, then paused for a moment. “Yeah, I’m… I’m absolutely fine. That even got rid of my airsickness! That’s incredible!”

The earth pony smiled gently. “It’s amazing what a little pressure can do to your body. It can cause all sorts of things to go crazy, but just the right amount in the right spot will fix it all. You can’t let your body rack up too much tension or it’ll lash out like that.”

“Wow, you sure know a lot about this kind of thing. So… ummm…. Thanks,” Twilight began, slightly unsure as to how to proceed. “I’m Twilight Sparkle.”

“I’m Ginger Snap,” she said with a smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Twilight Sparkle.” Ginger trotted over and settled next to Twilight. “I’m actually surprised you’re taking my presence so well. A lot of people get really scared when I’m around, so I don’t have that many friends.”

“Really? Why would anypony be scared of a kind and pretty pony like you?” Twilight asked, confused.

“You see, I’m going to Demongate Academy because I’m what is called a breath stealer. I can forcibly take spirit energy as well as powers from people. Almost everypony is… scared by that.” She looked rather downtrodden.

“I’m not afraid of you. Even if you have this power, you’re still kind. You helped me entirely out of generosity. If anything, I’m indebted to you.”

“Most people aren’t that forgiving once they see this,” she said, baring her teeth. They were long and sharp, very predatory-looking. “Even I admit I occasionally scare myself when I look in the mirror.” She pushed her glasses up as they slid down her nose.

“I can’t judge you for what you look like. Besides, I’m pretty sure you’re not the only one coming into this school that has something unnatural about their appearance. Heck, I saw a pegasus earlier with a rainbow-colored mane and tail. Pretty sure that doesn’t qualify as exactly normal.” Twilight chuckled a bit, trying to make Ginger feel a bit better.

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Ginger said with a giggle. “I mean, it’s a school called Demongate Academy. I don’t think most ponies on this airship would qualify as normal. Speaking of that, what kind of power do you have?”

“Well, the Princess told me I’m an ESPer,” she began. “I did a little research and—“

“Did you say the Princess?” Ginger asked incredulously, hopping up as quickly as she could. “THE Princess Celestia? What exactly are you to be told about your power by the Princess of the Sun herself?”

“I’m her pupil. She’s been teaching me magic for the past couple years.” Twilight shrugged, but immediately regretted it. She often took for granted the relationship she had with the Princess. Not many ponies ever got as close to her as Twilight had. “S-sorry. I guess that qualifies as not really normal, right?” She laughed hollowly.

“Oh… umm, sorry. I kinda freaked out there. That wasn’t very cool of me. But that is pretty impressive. I’m a little envious of you, getting to be with the Princess all the time. I interrupted you, sorry. Go ahead.”

“Actually, it’s probably a good thing you stopped me. I had done some research into what exactly being an ESPer was, but if I started talking I would bore you with the details for hours, bookworm that I am.” Twilight giggled a bit.

“We have plenty of time. Our destination is still quite a way away, so go ahead and tell me everything you’ve learned about ESPers. I might need to know this someday, if I end up stealing ESPer powers from somepony,” Ginger said, grinning.

“Well, alright. Here goes….” Twilight began telling Ginger everything she had learned from her ‘brief study’ of ESPers and what they could do, from the tell-tale extra-sensory perception to combustion to the multitude of kinesis types to teleportation, as well as the myriad of other abilities ESPers were thought to be capable of.

“So basically, ESPer powers imitate magic on a small scale, right?” Ginger said to summarize what she took from Twilight’s hour-long speech. “They don’t have access to a near infinite number of spells, but they can do practically anything a mage could do.”

“Precisely,” Twilight said. “Although, I would much rather just use magic, but that’s apparently against Foundation protocol.”

“I’ve heard this Foundation mentioned a lot, but I know next to nothing about it. What do you know about them?”

“Actually, nothing except what we’ve been told about them. Pouring through mountains of history books got me two mentions of it and no description whatsoever and I’d be willing to bet they have a contract in place that prevents anyone involved from telling anypony about it.”

“The more I hear about this Demongate Academy and the ponies that run it, the more scared I become of it. Groups like this have a lot of power. I’ll bet the Princess wasn’t too thrilled when she found out about this entire thing. Looks like they had kept it a secret from her as well.”

“Yeah, no pun intended, but she sounded royally pissed off about the entire deal. Seems it took her this long to come to terms with the fact that there was something she didn’t know about, and it must be really hard on her.”

Both of them were quiet for a few moments. The sound of clanging started in the distance, continuing and seeming to get closer every second. Twilight stood up, heading over to the door to investigate. “What in Equestria could that noise be?”

The door burst open loudly and Twilight saw Spike standing outside the door, completely winded. “Twilight!” he blurted out loudly. “Help me!”