Introduction Thread (private)

Fantasy wished she had a jacket right now. It was late Autumn with a wind chill, and the walk to Maretropolis's small beach wasn't exactly a sheltered one; it was more scenic. A walk through a lovely, open park with a few trees here and there, none of them with a spec of green to be seen. Few leaves littered the ground, and fluttered around in the near-constant, bitterly cold (at least, she thought it was) wind. She wouldn't have chosen to walk so exposed, but it was either a walk through the park or walking through the streets. The lively, hectic streets full of bustling, stressed Maretropolian citizens trying to do their daily things and yelling when something or somepony became a minor inconvenience to them. Even from practically the middle of the park, Fantasy could hear them.

So, a walk through the park. A cold walk through the park. It was sunny, and the sky was the bluest blue Fantasy had pretty much ever seen. But it was bucking cold. The sky lied. It promised a warm, sunny day, and only gave half of what it promised. And yet, Fantasy was on her way to the beach in this cold weather (60-degree weather!). She had good reasons, though.

Just a while ago, Fantasy hadn't existed in this universe. Her name wasn't even originally Fantasy. She was from another universe altogether. And thanks to... some... weird stuff happening, she was thrown into the... Maretropolis universe rather violently. Tore a hole in the fabric of reality, crash-landed with a bang, and ended up in the hospital and got out in a rather short time for such a crash. Fantasy put the pieces together: Maretropolis, superhero city. Supernatural items that dragged her through spacetime to a very magical world. Magical world, where few weird things happen without an underlying reason, or without consequences of some kind. Of course, Fantasy came to the conclusion one inevitably would: she now had powers, of some kind. Or maybe she was overthinking this to a rather insane and/or stupid level.

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Welp, Fantasy had no idea what to do. She was going to try to do whatever, but most thoughts of actual effort were drowned out by, Dammit, it's cold. She'd had ideas about what to do and try when she got to the beach, but she was shivering within five minutes of getting there. Now she was sitting under a big rock. It was a good shield from the wind, but it was still cold.

Fantasy sighed, and kicked some sand. She leaned against the rock, but sat straight back up. The rock was cold as ice! Fantasy snorted. Maybe something'll come (back) to me. she thought. She waited for her brain to be helpful.

Just on the other side of the rock, voices could be heard. "Hey..I...uhh..." the voice sounded nervous. "I...uhh got the bit's you asked for." The voice that was talking sounded like a young stallion. Soon after a stronger voice came out, this voice was much deeper. "Ahaha, perfect. Hey my pony, why the nervous look? No ones out over here. It's cold today, who in their right minds would come to the beach on a cold day?" he gave a laugh.

Shuffling off hooves on the sand could be heard as well. "Okay, okay. j-j-just give me the stuff and I'll be on my way."

"Woah, woah...hold on a moment. I need to make sure you're not trying to stiff me. You know the boss and I don't like to be stiffed."

"Oh come on...you know I wouldn't dare do that. That's suicide!"

"Haha...yeah, yeah. Anyways just give me a moment, it's not gonna take all that long, so just chill. Relax. I'm just gonna check the bits, and if it's all good, then I'll give you what you want."

"F-fine! B-but please hurry. I need it badly."

Fantasy's ear flicked. What was that? Two ponies, likely stallions, were talking about something. Smuggling something, obviously. Figured the beach on a cold day was the perfect place and time to conduct business without attracting unwanted attention. Yes, yes it is. Fantasy thought, slightly begrudgingly. In an odd way, she felt as if they'd stolen her new secret-stuff spot.

Of course she was going to investigate. One didn't hear that sort of stuff and not do anything about it. Unless one lived in a place where dangerous gangs and businesses did those sort of deals all... the... time...

Shut up.

Fantasy carefully stood up, doing her best not to disturb the sand beneath her hooves (luckily, sand was not very loud). She slowly turned around and tip-toed around the large rock, paying extra close attention to try and not accidentally reveal herself in case the ponies were closer than she thought. For a moment, she wondered why she was doing this in the first place; she could hear them fine from the other side of the rock, where she was.

Then she reasoned with herself she couldn't see through rock, and they could potentially be smuggling more than drugs or fake money or something and she should know what that something was (and it totally wasn't because a lot of people in movies did this, too; nope, not at all). Besides, they might start whispering. She could hear them better if she were closer. She stopped when she was about half way around the rock, hiding behind one of its curves just in case one of them decided to start walking in her direction. She wasn't sure what good it'd do thirty seconds into that walk, but at least it'd buy her a few seconds of time. Enough to teleport. Several times, if need be.

The more gruff sounding pony took his time while counting the bits. You could hear the clinking of the bit's as he counted. For this short time, it felt like it would stretch forever. "32...33....34..." he would say, his tone sounded so leisurely as if this was just a normal day for him. Fantasy kept herself successfully hidden from the two stallions, they didn't hear her walking on the sand. The counting went on for a while until the other stallion spoke up, this time he sounded annoyed. "Oh sweet Celestia! Can you count any slower! There is all that you asked 150 bits. Please, just give it too me!"

The other one had stopped counting and gave a chuckle. "Alright, alright, I got it. You're far too tweaked to even bother trying to lie to me. Here." He laughed for a bit longer before he gave the other stallion what he wanted. "Now, my advice to you is like last time. Don't use it all at once and don't go showing it off to everybody and careful now this dose is stronger than last time and if you know anyone that would be interested in getting some Horn, then just send 'em my way."

You can just hear the other stallion fumbling around with something in his hooves, it sounded like something hard that 'clacked' against his hooves and his ragged breath. "Oh sweet Luna, thank you, thank you." If Fantasy were too look around the rock to see, she would be able to see two stallions. One is a pretty bulky unicorn with a dirty grey coat and wearing a trilby hat, which has a hole in it for his horn to stick through. His mane and tail are both black in color. The other stallion is a small stallion, an earth pony to be exact, with a cream colored fur. His mane and tail color is red. Both stallion's wore coats, the bulkier stallion wore a black cloak and the smaller stallion wore a brown coat. What had been handed to the smaller stallion by the bigger stallion was something that looked like a hollowed out horn that was something carved into it's outside, from her current position it would be difficult to make out exactly what was carved into it.

But the younger stallion who jumbled the horn in his hooves would look around quickly before he would hide the horn in his coat pocket. "y-yeah, yeah I know. I know."

The bigger stallion would chuckle and keep a smug look on his face. "Hey, hey, relax, i'm just statin' protocol. I can't be held responsible if I warned you about it. The rest is all you, pleasure doin' business with you, Hip." The bigger stallion put the bag of bits away into him coat.

Fantasy pressed herself against the curve, listening closely to the stallions. She didn't think anything of how the bigger one used the word "tweaked"; she didn't even notice the word, really. She did, however, take note of what the big stallion said. Horn? Did he just say "horn"? As in... unicorn horn?! Carefully, Fantasy peeked from behind the curve just in time to see this "horn", and what details she could make of it: hollow. Decorated.

Fantasy ducked back. What were they doing? What were they up to? Were those normal drugs, or magical drugs? Pony-steroids, using unicorn magic to enhance non-unicorns' abilities; or perhaps give them some new ones. That smaller pony sounded pretty addicted, so it could be an addictive magical drug that needed re-applied after a certain amount of time. Or, again, it could be normal drugs. Given what this place was, though, Fantasy doubted it. She continued listening for any clues and information about this "Horn".

With that the 'business transaction' was completed. The larger stallion merely waved to the smaller stallion. "Well see yah, I got business else where." he stated his good byes and his horn lit up and 'poof!' he teleported away leaving the earth pony behind. The Earth pony, called Hip, would nod his head and leave just as the larger stallion had teleported away.

Hip would now walk, rather quickly, alongside the rocks as he had the horn in his right pocket. In order for him to get out of his beach area, he would have to walk around the rocks, the same rock which Fantasy was hiding behind. He'd kept mumbled under his breath. "ahaha...finally...I got it." and just kept mumbling 'I got it' over and over under his breath. What the horn actually did was a mystery, but it was a recently created new drug that relies upon magic that is stored into a specially constructed unicorn horn to induce it's effects. This was something that was popular amongst some of the younger teens and young adults, but it was still new enough that not many ponies really knew anything about it.