Chapter 3:

Touma, as he liked to be called, had surprisingly little difficulty settling into Ponyville. It seemed that he was actually quite accustomed to strange situations. His personality was pleasant and upbeat, allowing him to get along with many ponies, in spite of his strange appearance. To their relief, he seemed not to require meat in order to live and was actually able to subsist on a diet of fruit, vegetables, and baked goods (although, he had grumbled about missing something called "yakiniku," whatever that was). All told, he seemed quite comfortable amongst ponies.

Truly, the only real oddity about him, besides his Imagine Breaker, was his incredible streak of bad luck. No matter what he did, things often seemed not to go Touma's way. He'd had a flower pot fall on his head, he'd tripped into a ditch, gotten attacked by a swarm of bees, and generally been subjected to a host of minor disasters.

Something else that amazed the townsponies was that the pony who seemed to take to Touma the most was none other than Raindrops. When she wasn't working with the weather team on their latest storm or spending time with her family, she was showing the human around, helping him understand the norms of Equestrian life and generally just get used to being around ponies. More importantly, the past few days had seen a marked improvement in the notoriously surly pegasus' mood as she was often seen trotting side by side with Touma, an uncharacteristic grin on her face.

"It's weird I tell ya!" exclaimed Rainbow Dash as she and Trixie headed out from the latest town council meeting, "Raindrops hardly ever snaps at me anymore. It's like she's turned into a completely different pony." The human had been a point of discussion for many in the council. Quite a few ponies were understandably suspicious of him, Applejack in particular, but most seemed mollified by Princess Luna's assurance that he was not hostile. However, Trixie had opted to keep what Luna had told her about the spell that brought him here to herself.

Trixie frowned as she mulled the problem over. "I don't think it's that bad," she said, though her tone was still uncertain. As much as she wanted to be happy for her friend to have finally found something that helped her control her temper, she was bothered by the memory of the last time Raindrops' had seemingly dealt with her anger control issues. At least the Element of Honesty seemed more like her actual self this time, just...cheerier. She resolved to talk with her friends and see what their thoughts were.

"Well," said Ditzy after taking a bite of her salad, "I think she's having fewer problems because Touma gives her an outlet for her anger issues."

"Really?" asked Trixie, looking up from her lemon curd-gazpacho.

"Yeah," said Ditzy, "I actually saw them once..."

"TOUMA!!!"

Ditzy flinched at the sheer rage she heard in Raindrops voice. Quickly flying over, she saw the jasmine mare advancing steadily on the poor human, who seemed frozen in place, trembling in fear as she approached.

"How dare you touch me like that!" snarled Raindrops as she closed with him.

"I'm sorry," protested Touma, backing away from her and raising his hands in supplication, "I didn't know that was bad. Please forgive me!"

Sadly, such forgiveness did not seem to be in the cards. Ditzy winced as she saw Raindrops' hoof lash out and the cry of "Fukou da!" echoed around her.

Looking back at the confrontation, Ditzy saw that Touma was now laid out flat on the ground, his spinning eyes staring upwards while Raindrops turned away with an angry snort, before freezing, apparently realizing what she had just done.

Spinning right back around, she rushed to Touma's side. "Oh my gosh! Are you okay? I'm so sorry!" Her voice was tinged with panic, eyes wide with horror. Raindrops was terrified that she had just ruined her friendship with the human.

Slowly Touma managed to sit himself back up before shaking his head. "Uh yeah," he replied sheepishly, "I'm fine. I'm sorry I offended you like that."

Raindrops froze, shocked by his response. Ditzy was surprised too. This was not the first time that she had born witness to one of her friends' infamous explosions of temper. Usually, the object of Raindrops' ire was left traumatized and with a lingering fear of the jasmine pegasus' bad side. But Touma seemed to brush it off as if it were nothing.

"Um..." she said nervously, "You aren't mad at me?"

Touma blinked in confusion. "Why would I? I obviously did something wrong by touching you there."

"Well it's just..." Raindrops averted her gaze slightly, "I shouldn't have hit you like that. You didn't know what that meant. I just got angry and then everything went blank..." She looked up at Touma with tearful eyes, "I keep losing control like that and keep doing things I regret. Every time it happens, ponies are afraid of me and then they keep their distance from me."

Touma laughed softly. "Believe it or not, I'm used to this sort of thing," he said, "I'm just unlucky that way. So it's not really your fault."

Ditzy watched in awe as Touma continued to calmly talk Raindrops out of her depression, at one point resting his hand on the top of her head and then beginning to slowly comb his fingers through her mane. As their voices grew softer, it became harder for Dtizy to hear what they were talking about. Deciding that she had eavesdropped enough, she returned to her rounds, her heart feeling lighter than before.

"And he just took it!" exclaimed Trixie in shock.

"I don't think that was the first or the last time either," said Ditzy pensively, "The funny thing is, he didn't seem at all afraid of her after she hit him. Maybe that's part of the reason. Even among those of us who are her friends, ponies tend to be afraid of Raindrops' temper, especially after being on the receiving end of it."

Trixie nodded. After all, she had plenty of experience with Raindrops' anger management issues. Even though she considered the Element of Honesty to be one of her closest friends, it didn't change the fact that she treaded just a little more lightly when Raindrops was around.

Ditzy continued. "But Touma doesn't seem put off by it at all. After it was over, he just went back to talking to her like everything was normal. It's like he didn't mind at all. Either that, or that kind of thing happened to him a lot back in his world."

Trixie grimaced. Just what kind of life would Kamijou Touma have to have lived to make a patented Randrops explosion seem normal to him?

"So you don't have any control over the weather in your world?" asked Raindrops, stunned by the revelation. In her mind, and the minds of most ponies, the thought of a place where the weather wasn't under control was abhorrent to them, which was why the Everfree Forest was regarded with such trepidation.

"Not really," replied Touma, "I mean, humans can do things to affect the weather, but it's usually a side effect of something else they're doing." He went on to explain about phenomena such as acid rain and global warming. Raindrops listened intently, the mechanics of weather having always been a source of fascination to her.

"So if everything is so chaotic, how can you get anything done?" she asked. How did humans grow their crops when they couldn't schedule storms regularly? How did they change their seasons?

"It's not all that chaotic really," said Touma, "Actually, it's more like a giant equation with a huge number of variables. We can predict what's going to happen by plugging in known values for the variables and the only inconsistencies that occur are because of the variables we haven't found yet. For example..." he went on to explain how the tilt of the Earth's axis affected the seasons in his world and how they predicted weather by reading the fluctuation of pressure and temperature in the atmosphere.

"...In fact, in Academy City, they created a powerful computer and then installed it on an orbiting satellite, where it could read the movement of air molecules to perfectly predict the weather. In fact, the Tree Diagram was such a powerful computer that it can be used to run calculations for complex scientific experiments. It's incredible but..." Touma trailed off, a shadow falling across his face.

"But what?" asked Raindrops, leaning closer to him.

"But humans can become too dependent on machines like that. If the machine makes a prediction, scientists would try to follow it for the sake of their research, even if that prediction required them to do something horrible, like order one esper to kill twenty-thousand others in order to increase his level." Touma clenched his fist in anger.

Raindrops paled and gulped. She couldn't imagine such a horrible thing. Touma had already explained about his hometown and espers as best he could, though it was quite a ways above her head and even a ways above his own head, seeing as he was what he referred to as a Level 0, or someone with no power whatsoever. It seemed that the system employed by the place he called Academy City didn't recognize the strange power of his right hand.

In Raindrops' mind, she had difficulty thinking that even Corona, in all her madness, would do something as hideous as order the extermination of twenty-thousand ponies just for the sake of increasing the power of one pony. But then again, she'd seemed perfectly happy to inflict death on even larger scale for much pettier reasons at times, so perhaps it wasn't so far fetched.

During their time together, Touma had explained the nature of magic in his world as well, though it seemed quite different from how magic worked in Equestria. If anything, Raindrops and Touma thought that Equestrian magic tended to more closely resemble the esper powers he had described among the inhabitants of his hometown.

Seeing that Touma was troubled by his recollections, Raindrops gently leaned against him, rubbing her head against his shoulder. She didn't really like Touma's more pensive moments, when he seemed troubled by the problems he had faced in his world, or worried about the situation he had left behind. Even though he seemed somewhat anxious to get back, Raindrops found herself sometimes wishing that he could stay. If she was honest with herself, and she usually was, she understood that that wish was as much for her own sake as it was for his.

She'd never felt so at ease around anyone as she felt around Touma. Sure, he did stupid things that got on her nerves and caused her to blow up at him, as did almost everypony she knew, but he was different in how he handled her explosions. Touma never seemed to hold Raindrops' anger control issues against her. Instead, he'd lament his own misfortune a little and continue on as though nothing had happened. He explained that he was used to making girls angry and getting punished for it. Just having someone who could deal with her so easily made Raindrops feel all that more at peace.

Even now, the two of them were seated in the shade of a tree at the park. Touma had rested his back against the trunk, staring out, watching a group of foals at play. He'd been an object of intense interest to them. The foals had spent a great deal of time asking the strange human questions about himself, his world, and his own life. Touma had answered as best he could, though some questions he felt required answers that the foals should probably ask their parents for. Dinky in particular seemed quite enamored with him, having been one of the first foals to make his acquaintance.

Touma chuckled to himself as he relaxed. It was ironic, for all the differences between ponies and humans, he kept finding familiar things and situations in this strange new world. Several cities and towns had names that appeared to be variations of the cities and towns in his own world, for example. Even ponies weren't all that different from humans. Raindrops' description of the machinations of the Night Court vaguely reminded Touma of the things the leaders of Academy City were capable of.

Sometimes, the similarities were downright uncanny. When Touma had been speaking with the orange pegasus filly and describing some of the incredible powers people in his world had exhibited, she had excitedly pressed him for more details, getting more friendly with him all the time, to the point of sitting in his lap even. While that wasn't strange in and of itself, what really struck Touma was the glare he had received from the pink earth pony filly watching them. Her behavior reminded him quite firmly of a certain twin-tailed teleporter girl of his acquaintance whenever he was seen getting to close to Misaka. At least the pink filly hadn't gone as far as kicking him in the face.

His thoughts turned to the pegasus leaning up against him. Raindrops was unquestionably the closest friend he had in this world. While many of the other ponies, especially Ditzy, Cheerilee, and Carrot Top had been quite friendly and polite with him (Carrot Top even going so far as to allow Touma to stay in the guest room of her house), Raindrops had gone the extra distance, spending a great deal of her free time with him. She had put all her efforts into helping Touma learn to deal with ponies. He was surprised by all the little nuances that went into their social interactions. It was nerve-wracking when he had touched Raindrops between the wings at one point, only to have her snap and hit him. It had been the first of many instructions of where ponies considered physical contact appropriate.

What struck him as one of their oddest social traits was their habit of seeking shelter at around noon. When the sun rose to its zenith in the sky, Touma had been surprised to see the entire town grind to a halt, ponies closing up their stalls in the market, or quickly heading into their homes for an hour before coming out again. When he had asked Raindrops about it, she told him the story of Corona and even the story about how the madmare in the sun had returned not too long ago and tried to take over Equestria again. Raindrops and her friends had defeated Corona, but the crazed alicorn had escaped to recover her strength.

Having met Princess Luna for himself, Touma was fairly certain that the story was not an exaggeration. He wondered what could have driven the powerful and once benevolent princess to become a tyrant. The way Raindrops had described it, it sounded as though she had become so overburdened with protecting her country that she had eventually snapped under the strain. There was something strangely familiar to him in that story, but Touma couldn't quite place what it was.

Leaning back, he turned his thoughts homeward. He had been gone from his world for quite some time. Was everyone alright? Surely GREMLIN had taken advantage of his absence. Was anyone remembering to feed Index? Touma pictured returning home after being gone so long to find her waiting for him...hungry. That thought almost always seemed to cure his homesickness a little.

"Thinking of home?" asked Raindrops.

"A little," admitted Touma, "I just remembered that I have a very dependent freeloader staying with me. If I don't fix her meals, she gets hungry and then she gets angry."

"Angry how?"

Touma turned his gaze upward. "Well...usually she'd start with this low growl. Then if I asked if she was angry that I hadn't fed her yet, she'd usually start saying something ridiculous about her being a devoted follower of God or something like that, and that it was ridiculous for her to be tempted with thoughts of food. And then, if I joked about not having to feed her then, she'd get this ugly look in her eye and start going 'Tooooooooouuuuuuuuuma!' And then...CHOMP!"

A snort exploded out of Raindrops before she could stop herself. "You're kidding right?"

Touma raised his right hand in a self-righteous pose. "Kamijou Touma would never lie about the hardships he has suffered living with that crazy freeloading girl. Not only that, he has people telling him stuff about how it's supposed to be a man's dream and that I should be rejoicing to be in such a situation." He slumped back down. "Fukou da." He let out a despondent sigh. "At least she wasn't as bad as Birdway."

"Who?" asked Raindrops, coking her head slightly.

Touma seemed to be ignoring her. "She's always torturing me for no real reason than for the fun of it. First she..." His voice trailed off inaudibly as his body quivered and his skin paled. "And then she..." He began to shiver. "And there was the time that..." Touma curled up into a quivering ball on the ground, no longer seeming to remember where he was. "I don't care if you are the leader of the largest golden-style magic cabal. A twelve-year-old shouldn't be waving around a flintlock pistol and bragging about it all the time! No! Please! Not the white bunny thing! At least give me the kind of death that'll be talked about in cheap bars and make girls fall in love with me!"

Raindrops couldn't help herself. She keeled over laughing harder than she ever remembered herself doing. That was something she liked about this human. Even though he was earnestly complaining about the indignities he had to put up with, he did so in such a way that it always made her feel much better about herself. Moreover, even though he complained, she could see, from the nostalgic look in Touma's eye, that he really did care about the people he was complaining about. He was worrying about them even now. It was one of the many things that drew her to him, this strange creature from another world.

Author's Notes:

Yeah...not so sure about how well I got Raindrops' characterization. She's...She's a tricky one to say the least, to say nothing of the fact that one of the central fics regarding said characterization, InsertAuthorHere's Eye of the Hurricane isn't finished yet. So my apologies if I flanderized her a little.
This chapter was mostly for transition purposes 'cause I couldn't simply skip ahead and have Touma hanging around with ponies like nothing was out of the ordinary, but I didn't feel like spending three or four chapters going into detail about his adjustment process. Plus, there were some parallels that were just too fun to draw up.
Next chapter, things pick up a bit.