"...He's coming out of it! Pascal, Pascal!"

"Easy there. Don't shout at him, filly."

I opened my eyes to a bright flashlight being shined into my pupils. After a few seconds of disoriented vision, I came to realize that I was sitting on a raised cot in what was otherwise some kind of official-looking office. The decor matched that of the Canterlot royal palace. There was a name plate on the desk nearby that read, in part, 'Assistant Royal Physician,' and then a name I couldn't quite focus on from here. The flashlight was being held by a middle-aged orange unicorn mare, who seemed satisfied by my reaction.

"How're you feelin'?" the doctor-looking mare asked, hooking her stethoscope into her ears and placing the cold instrument on my bare chest. "Any pain? Unusual sensations? Fatigue?"

"Very tired, and... kind of embarrassed," I replied. "Other than that... feels like there's kind of a hole in my chest, that's... filling up?" It was a very odd thing to describe.

"Sounds about right," she quipped, nodding to herself and removing the stethoscope. "Princess Twilight tells me you're new to this whole 'magic' thing–" I looked around the room and spotted two other occupants: Derpy, standing anxiously next to the cot, and Twilight, staring out the window into the night sky. "–so I'll give you the kindergarten version: You've only got so much magic in you. Casting a bunch of giant spells all at once leads to what we call 'burnout.' That's when you run out of fuel for the spells and it starts to eat away at your vitality. You were this close to shaving off a year or two from your life, pal."

"Oh," was all I could say.

"Here, drink this," she then said, levitating a cup with a brown-colored drink into my range. I grabbed it, took a sip, and squeezed my eyes shut – it tasted less than pleasant. "Herbal supplements that'll help you recharge your magic faster. Drinkin' that three times a day for two days and bedrest, that's what you need."

"Thanks, ma'am," I mumbled, trying my best to be polite.

"Sure, no problem. Not like I was gonna head home or anything when you showed up." The doctor packed up her things and looked towards Twilight. "You know how to ping me if anything comes up. Lock the door behind ya." And she walked out of the office.

I looked over at Derpy. "Did I miss... 'agenda item number 2'?"

The pegasus drew up a chair and sat at my side, a sad smile on her face. "Yeah... She told them about the humans. They... They showed their 'full' forms. They even brought out some old records from the vault, stuff from Star Swirl the Bearded, to prove they weren't lying."

"Damn," I muttered. I should have been there, if only to provide moral support. "How did everyone take it? Lyra...?"

"She was devastated," Derpy said, pouting at the floor. "Accused Celestia of making a fool out of her and stormed out in tears. Bon Bon went to go comfort her. Spitfire was pissed off that she kept it a secret for so long. Moondancer... seemed conflicted. Like she's not sure whether to be sympathetic or mad too. I don't know about the others, but Rarity fainted as soon as she saw Celestia's... y'know."

"Good, so I wasn't the only one who blacked out," I joked. "How about... the thing I did? Do we know if it worked...?"

"The four of us were doing thought experiments for a while," Derpy explained. "Well, mainly Spitfire since she's not immune, but we also asked some of Celestia's staff. If you attacked someone, that'd be bad. Murder, no question. Rape, out of line. At least right now, it looks like all that stuff seemed to work."

"And... and the last one?" I asked.

Derpy sighed. "We don't know. It's a hard thing to figure out, what kinds of opinions ponies are making and whether you're affecting them. And everypony kinda split into their own camps after the meeting ended."

"Ditsy Doo?" Twilight suddenly said without turning around. "May I speak to Pascal, alone?"

The pegasus looked back at her and asked, "Are you gonna kill him?"

That got the Princess to turn around. "W-What?" she sputtered. "No, I... I just need to speak with him one-on-one."

"Why?" Derpy demanded.

"Because what I want to talk about is personal," Twilight insisted. "Is that a problem?"

Derpy gave the Princess her best grumpy glare, then patted me on the stomach. "I'll be right outside." She got up from her chair and stepped out of the office.

As Twilight approached my cot, I asked her, "So what do you think?"

"What do I think?"

"Yeah. About... the Princess, and humans, and..."

Twilight put a hand up to her forehead. "Ugh, I don't know. History got rewritten before my very eyes, Pascal. Can I be excused for not knowing how I feel about it yet?!"

"Yeah, yeah! Geez..." The Princess of Friendship now stood firmly just a foot or so away from me, looking down at me with a judgmental expression. I did my best to sit up, but my chest hurt doing so. "So uh... what about you and me?"

"That's exactly what I want to talk about," Twilight muttered. "You hid this from me, and then you used me."

A bit of old anger from barely a week ago resurfaced within me. "Gee, I'll give you one guess for the extremely strong reason why I didn't want to tell you."

Twilight groaned. "The mob..."

"Bingo." A bit of my fire dimmed and I said in a quieter voice, "...Yes, I was afraid if you found out, you'd take it away from me and we'd be back to square Mob. By the time I even knew what was going on, I... I didn't want to lose the peace I had finally gained."

"And you got me to jack you off, so there's that," Twilight grumbled sardonically.

The gaping sensation in my chest was joined by a chill of shame. "I-I really didn't expect that to happen."

"You sure did the second time. And you had no problems asking me to do surgery on your... your penis!"

"Actually, that turned out to be extremely necessary, so..."

"Excuse me?!"

"No, really! If I hadn't been operated on, I probably would've died Saturday of a heart attack, or been turned into a stallion. And all this human stuff would still be one of Celestia's dark secrets. I'm so, so sorry for using you like that, but I don't regret the operation. Or the party. I mean, what happened to you at the party, I deeply regret, but it also gave me the first sense that there was something really suspicious about my semen... What I'm trying to say is, I needed both events to survive what went down Saturday."

Twilight shook her head, gritting her teeth. "I can't believe this... You really think you did nothing wrong."

"I did plenty wrong! But I was panicking! I was gonna die, Twilight! I almost did, many times! But now I want to make amends!"

"Sure had a lot of fun for a man supposedly in his final days!" Twilight snapped back.

My eyes widened in horror. "Oh my God... You really need to believe I'm a villain, don't you?" Twilight's face started to turn red, but I kept it up. "That's the only way this makes sense to you. I have to be the pervert who betrayed you, strutted into the palace, and perverted Equestria under your nose. It can't be because some damage was already done long before I got here, oh, absolutely not!"

"You...!" Twilight's fists clenched and unclenched, and her horn sparked with potential energy. "RRRGH!" She turned away and stomped off to the side of the room.

"I'm sorry, Twilight," I repeated as earnestly as I could. "I'm sorry. For everything."

The purple alicorn seemed to compose herself, and was silent for a few unbearable seconds.

"At least one good thing came out of this," she said in a mysteriously calm voice. She turned around, holding her hand out – cradling a matrix of glowing blue magic. A very familiar blue. "Your magical signature."

From my perspective, the whole room seemed to darken. Twilight. Had access. To my magic. Can you say 'This is bad'?

"When your third spell fizzled, it left this trace–"

"It fizzled?!" I shouted, grabbing at my hair. That was way more important! Was that why I'd blacked out? My attempt to protect the others from suffering the backlash of resisting the Normal... completely failed?!

"...Yes, the spell failed for whatever reason, and when it did, I was able to analyze the traces of your magic left behind before they dissipated. So now..." She crushed the magical lattice in her hand, and her horn glowed the same color. It cast a cone around the room before settling on me, revealing a faint blue glow around my body. "Now I can detect your direct influence. And not only that..."

Twilight lifted her head, her horn pulsed, and a wave of blue magic passed over her from head to toe.

"...I can enchant anyone I want with temporary immunity," she declared, grinning.

My response was, even to my surprise, neutral. "Oh."

"'Oh'?!" Twilight echoed incredulously, re-clenching her hands into fists.

"Well yeah, that's a good thing, isn't it?" I took another sip of my disgusting brown herbal drink. "That means you have a counterspell for me that doesn't involve ripping the magic out of my soul... like I just tried to do, apparently. So now you have a way to check my actions and make sure I'm not crossing any more lines. That makes me less dangerous, and you more comfortable. Tell me that's not a win-win."

Twilight's eye started twitching. "What– You– How can you..." She marched on over to the door and gripped the handle firmly. "I'm going to use this spell on the other Princesses and my friends, see what they REALLY think of you. What do you say to that?"

"Uh... Well... Go ahead, but..."

"Buuuut?"

"Just don't say I didn't warn you about Celestia. Taking off that spell won't be pretty."

"I'll be the judge of that," Twilight grumbled, then yanked the door open and marched out. Derpy watched her leave, then stepped inside to keep the office door ajar.

"The third spell fizzled?" my marefriend asked worriedly.

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and slumped back to being horizontal. "Yeah..." It boggled my mind. It seemed to be the first time I had outright failed at something since getting this power, instead of making a critical misstep or having a curveball thrown at me. What had been the problem? Trying to do too much at once? Attempting to subvert the very nature of my power? I couldn't be sure at this juncture. But I tried to stay positive for Derpy's sake. "Two out of three ain't bad, I guess. Unless you count Twilight having a counterspell now as number three."

Derpy pouted as she stepped up to the cot. "I didn't want to say it while she was here, but... Twilight's probably taking everything the worst of anypony. I can see why, it's her mentor and all... People say she practically worshiped the ground Celestia walked on."

Frowning, I added, "And she was my warden for a whole three weeks. She knows me better than anyone else. To find out I went behind her back and did all this crazy stuff... That one-two punch couldn't have been easy to take."

"I don't know about her knowing you that well," Derpy muttered. She sat down next to me and said, "She knows the version of you that landed in Equestria, the one that was scared and horny all the time. But... well, would you agree if I said you're different now?"

"That's the whole crux of my argument to stay," I replied, waving my hands. "This 'reborn' Pascal is the kind of guy who would lay down his life for the pony who hates him the most. I'm still kinda coming to terms with that myself..."

Derpy sighed. "Are you really fine with her having some kind of power over you?"

"I kinda have to be... But yeah, I think it's good. Society works because we're all supposed to be watching each other, right? But the power puts me in this space where I'm practically immune to judgment. That's a scary place to be."

"Yeah, I saw," Derpy said with a little laugh, referencing the first time we met.

"It's out of my hands, but I really do think it'll help in the long run," I added. "Whatever makes it possible for me and ponies to live in peace without... well, me no longer being me."

Derpy nodded, and reached under my body with her soft but surprisingly strong arms. "C'mon. Let's get you back to our room."

"Just in time for a mob of angry mares to kick down the door," I said, only half joking.