Things improved after that, mostly because Jack just got on with it.

The next stage of Twilight’s masterfully crafted plan - which she still didn’t let him look at, still wounded from his making fun of her bullet points - apparently needed to wait to happen, so in the time this gave him Jack just took to being helpful when he could.

He helped around at Sweet Apple Acres again a fair few times, he helped Rarity out when she went to go dig up gems, he helped those three little kids (whose names he still couldn’t quite pin down) expand on their natty treehouse. He even helped Pinkie by holding her above his head and running around town while she held her legs out by her sides and went ‘Whee’.

That last one was likely stretching the definition of help, but he’d been available and had seen no reason to say no, so why not?

There’s even been some kind of local event - some weirdo Equestrian knock-off of Valentine’s day, much to Jack’s amusement - that he’d assisted with, pitching marquees and the like. For the day he’d even gone so far as to mockup a very crude toga alongside a bow he’d fashioned out of a stick and string dipped in glitter and went around insisting to everyone he was Cupid, much to their bewilderment.

Pinkie at least had appreciated it, even if she hadn’t understood it.

All of this went a long way to helping him slip fairly comfortably back into Ponyville. Most of the residents hadn’t been especially ill-disposed to him to start with, given that his ‘monster’ phase had primarily consisted of not wearing clothes, fighting things in the forest and sometimes annoying Twilight and her friends.

Nowadays, his incredibly helpful attitude and benign, idiosyncratic behaviour combined to make him a rather appreciated local oddity. If you wanted something heavy moved or any other kind of help that wasn’t especially delicate and sure-as-shit didn’t involve magic, Jack was your guy.

Jack could not have hoped for better. He even had clothes now!

There was even an actual, bonafide monster attack he helped to thwart by walking up to the thing - some rampaging forest-beast of dubious origin - and grabbing onto it before carrying it back into the woods, a resolution as anticlimactic as it was effective.

“What?” He’d asked, on returning to find everyone gaping at him. “It worked, didn’t it?”

After perhaps a week or three of these kind of relaxed happenings, a gap opened up in Celestia’s schedule and so Twilight’s plan could move forward to its next step: Jack apologising for wandering in and disrupting court while stark naked.

Thinking on this, Jack couldn’t for the life of him work out where the plan was meant to go from there. He’d already made it up in Ponyville fairly conclusively, and he hadn’t bothered anyone else that he knew of. After Celestia what was left?

“There aren’t a whole lot of steps in this plan, are there?” He’d asked Twilight, who’d shuffled her hooves.

“...no,” she’d said.

“It is written down, isn’t it?”

“...yes.”

He probed no further

All of which was why Jack found himself spread across a row of train seats opposite Twilight, tugging irritably at the collar of a suit he’d just about managed to squeeze himself into while they rolled up to Canterlot.

It had been Jack’s idea to be a little more formal about it, to Twilight’s surprise. He’d felt - and explained to her - that given the circumstances he should probably look as though he was trying to make an effort. Royalty and all that. Would be appropriate to look smart.

Rarity hadn’t minded the extra work. If anything she’d relished the opportunity.

By human standards the suit was perhaps a little loud. Liberace would have felt self-conscious. Jack rather liked it, finding its utter lack of subtlety looping all the way past ridiculous and coming back around dangerously close to actually pretty neat. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite as comfortable as it had been.

“Rarity just made me this damn thing and already it feels like it shrunk…” He grumbled.

“Just unbutton the collar, Jack,” Twilight said and he paused.

“...why didn’t I think of that? Ugh, it’s been a while.”

“You look nice, by the way,” Twilight then said. She’d already said this, but felt the need to say it again.

“Thanks. Not as nice as you, though,” Jack said without thinking.

Thankfully, whatever fumbling awkwardness would have resulted from this slipup was interrupted by the train coming to a sudden, tooth-rattling halt. Twilight was almost launched out of her seat but Jack caught her in time, himself barely having shifted. He had the mass.

“I always loved this stop,” he said, looking out the window at nothing much of interest at all. Twilight straightened herself out and looked too, befuddled. There were trees some way distant and some grass and not a whole lot else.

“Maybe something happened,” she said, glancing around to see if any of the other passengers appeared to know anything. None did, all being just as confused as her and Jack.

“Guess we just wait, huh?” Jack asked.

And wait they did. Minutes crawled. No-one even came by to explain the delay. This was really what broke it for Jack. At least back home there’d have been a clipped, difficult to make out announcement half-explaining what the problem was. After a few more agonising minutes with no progress Jack could bear it no longer.

That, and since they’d stopped the train carriage had rapidly become sweltering for him in his gaudy finery, and he needed air.

“That’s it, I’m going to go see what the fuss is. Hold my drink,” he said, getting out of his seat. The carriage was too small for him to stand up in so he had to kind of bend awkwardly and shuffle sideways to head towards the nearest door.

“You don’t have a drink,” Twilight pointed out.

“It’s a metaphorical drink, Twilight, get with the times. Alright, I’ll be back.”

Grateful at being able to stand fully and tugging his collar further still Jack strained to see anything of what might have stopped the train. He saw activity, but at the distance could make out no details. Something was happening, that much was clear. But that was useless.

“See anything?” Twilight asked out the window. Jack squinted.

“There’s some sort of ruckus up ahead. Hmm, I’m going to take a closer look,” he said, making to squat down in preparation for a train-clearing leap.

“Jack!” Twilight said and he paused, already half-squatting, looking back at her. “Just walk up there, don’t jump. You’ll damage the suit.”

“Jump? I wasn’t - you don’t - how did - ?” He fumbled but couldn’t in good faith say that she was wrong. Grumbling, he stood up straight. She had a point, not that he’d admit it.

By way of compromise he power-walked up, which still made devastatingly good time.

The cause of the train stopping was pretty damn obvious. A massive tree had fallen on the line. Its sheer massiveness was the main issue. A smaller one could presumably have been hefted out of the way by some unicorns in unison, but this thing was significant enough that that apparently wasn’t an option.

A fair few ponies were already trying to break the tree up, not apparently having met with much success so far. A pony in a very fine engineer’s hat was being yelled at by another pony in most of a suit when Jack approached, though the yelling tailed off when they noticed him coming up.

The yelling pony, Jack noticed, had what appeared to be a bar of toffee as his weird little butt-mark thing. What that meant was anyone’s guess, but now wasn’t that time. Striding up to both of them Jack put his hands on his hips and asked:

“What’s the problem?”

They looked at him as though he was an idiot and then, apparently struck dumb by Jack’s fabulousness, pointed wordlessly to the tree that had fallen across the tracks. Jack clucked his tongue.

“See, this is what you get when you skimp on keeping the lines clear. And anyway, this isn’t a problem, give me a second.”

Jack moved then to the tree and sized it up. Those ponies attempting to hack it up were somewhat taken aback by this giant, sparkling thing coming looming up at them and stumbled away to see what exactly was going to happen next.

What happened next was Jack deciding that this big tree wasn’t all that, heading over to where the roots had come free of the earth, squatting down and grabbing the tree by the base

“Alley-oop,” he said and with a sharp lift tossed the tree clear of the tracks and a considerable way into the distance. Those ponies gathered - who hadn’t really been paying the human much attention - turned and goggled as the tree turned end over end through the air, landing with a resounding crack and crash behind a hill.

“Hah, how unlikely was that? Worked out though, wouldn’t you say? Those tracks look alright to you?”

The lack of an immediate response from the ponies led Jack to click his fingers and wave his hand at them, which snapped them out whatever daze his displayed had got them into.

“Uh, oh, right, yes. Uh, engineer, do please check the tracks for damage, would you?” The pony in the half-suit said, moving to exert some control over the situation.

“You ain’t my boss,” the pony with the hat growled.

The half-suit pony did not appreciate this one bit and stepped in close to deliver:

“No, but I know your boss and his boss too, so if you wouldn’t mind…?”

Jack had no idea what sort of power-play was going on and left them to it, sauntering back up the train and retaking his seat opposite Twilight.

“What was the problem?” She asked.

“Leaves on the line. Ha! Ahaha!”

Twilight blinked at him.

“Because it was a tree? And it still had leaves on it? You know if I’d made this joke on Radio Four back in the early oughts I’d have been lauded. Lauded I tell you!”

She blinked again.

With a jolt the train started moving again, some ragged cheers rumbling up and down the carriages. Twilight continued to look blank, though by now she was also starting to smile from just how nonplussed Jack looked at his jokes falling flat.

“Tough crowd,” he said, watching the landscape roll past.

Author's Notes:

Man, I just love events happening in sequence. Don't you?