***

Rainbow Dash readied herself and began her turn for the weekly Team Awesome meeting. “Alright, let me tell you all about our trip to see Pee Wee. Not every magical creature can talk to me verbally. Like phoenixes for example. And rocs.” She blushed. “But, I can summon Blitz. She’s like a trigger that lets them know what I am. So, that’s what I did, and Pee Wee suggested I ask his parents for the magic because they’re older.”

“Ah yes,” Discord interjected, “that would make sense. Magic of their nature is much stronger with age. Ancient magic in general works that way.”

“Thank you Discord,” Rainbow Dash replied. She went on to explain the mother’s terms and how the magic was eventually eaten from Rarity by using the crown.

“Did the mother phoenix go to sleep?” Fluttershy inquired.

“No, actually. The rules do work differently for these creatures. She looked tired, but she was awake,” the master mev answered.

Spike raised his hand.

“Yes, Spike?” Rainbow asked.

“Fluttershy’s magic,” he reminded her.

The canary-colored pegasus blinked. “What about it?”

“The phoenixes and I could understand each other pretty well after Blitz gave my title to them. I’m guessing that it’s because we had our flexchange the night before. The roc and I…not so much,” Rainbow told her.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Fluttershy agreed. She closed her eyes and gave a sweet smile.

“So what happened with the roc?” Applejack prodded, trying to get the topic back on track.

“Spike, why don’t you give everyone some background info on the molt first,” Rainbow Dash suggested.

“Certainly Master,” Spike agreed. He relayed much of the events regarding his stone scales and rough day up to the point of encountering the roc.

Soon, Rainbow continued the tale. “Spike hid behind me. Once we realized it was going for all of us, he and I distracted it away from Zecora and Scootaloo. We darted around, but then his molt was nearly finished, so he started glowing red.”

“Red? That must have been really confusing since that’s your magic aura,” Pinkie Pie observed.

“You’re right, that’s exactly what I asked,” Spike confirmed for her.

“At that point, I was able to use my eye enchantment,” Rainbow Dash explained to everyone. “So I kinda had it trapped, so long as I didn’t look away. Spike got off once I was close enough to the ground, and Twilight happened to find us right then.”

Her Rexa nodded in the affirmative and remained quiet.

“She teleported Spike away. Once they were gone, I was able to summon Blitz who did the same trigger she did for the phoenixes. The enchantment broke, which was fine. I felt released from it too. I told the roc Spike was my friend, and I needed to look out for him.

“The roc didn’t understand that, so I ordered him to go, figured he could understand at least that. You know, pointing and stuff. Then he actually gestured at me too. I got that he understood I could eat magic. He then actually offered it because he respected me as the winning predator in our situation.”

“Cool,” Starlight said with proud fascination.

Rainbow Dash blushed. “He did ask to see the bat wings as well. His magic makes him bigger, so when I ate it, he became the size of an eagle. Scootaloo and I took him over to Fluttershy’s, and as we all know, she’s looking after him.”

“I suppose this encounter was how Scootaloo got the idea of offering to be your bodyguard?” Rarity openly wondered.

“Yeah, I think so. She and I actually talked the day before about it. I wanted her to think about why she was thinking of becoming my servant. To find a calling. And I reminded her that I’m different, you know, more vampire me, at night,” Rainbow told everyone.

“So she was already looking for clues,” Fluttershy said, “and everything must have fallen in place after that.”

“Exactly,” Rainbow agreed.

“Can you tell us how you pulled off this mev bond?” an interested Twilight Sparkle asked.

“I will show you!” Rainbow Dash agreed with an enthusiastic smile. She projected the previous day’s events on the table with magic.

“How long did it take?” Starlight asked.

“A little over forty-five minutes,” Sweetie Belle answered for her master.

“I wonder how long an earth pony process would take,” Applejack admitted aloud. She thoughtfully rubbed a hoof under her chin.

“Care to indulge us Master?” Starlight Glimmer pried.

“You all know how much I love to, but when it comes to these special outsider mev bonds, I can’t. It’s an instinct thing. I need to understand the nature of the existing bond and the proposed one,” Rainbow confessed.

“Oh, I suppose I understand that, and it’s for the best,” Applejack replied, shoving the thought away.

Next, Rainbow announced Scootaloo’s upcoming little stunt show for the next day. While it was not mev-related, it was a good time to alert her friends. “I ask this as Rainbow Dash, not Master, of course,” she said.

Her friends smiled and nodded to indicate they understood and would do their best to be there.

“Anything else on the rest of the agenda, Rhezenda?” Rainbow Dash asked with a wink.

“That’s all, Master,” Sweetie Belle happily said. She took quite a liking to her charge for the moment.

“Actually, Master, before we all leave,” Twilight Sparkle began, “you should test out the chaos magic you can add to our powers. Just something quick to add to what we can already do. We want to make sure they won’t somehow clash.”

“We can test mine during the lesson,” Starlight Glimmer offered, “so go with Fluttershy for now.”

Rainbow Dash blinked momentarily as she considered the idea. She soon gave a little nod in agreement. “Yeah, okay. Segunda, you ready?”

Fluttershy nodded as well and blew out a gust of wind. The master mev activated her magic with her red-on-yellow eyes and turned that same gust into a far more powerful blast. The wind whirred around the table and became a harmless, miniature tornado. Not long after, it finished and disappeared with an eerie crack.

Rainbow glanced up at her chaos magic teacher with an uncertain look.

“Well done,” the draconequis teacher declared with a pleased and proud smile. He was in no way fazed or bothered by the sound. After all, it was his chaos magic, so that give it a little extra something. And if she didn’t want it, it would be easy to remove.

Rainbow Dash returned that smile and modestly shrugged. “It’s a gift,” she admitted.

“Mitria,” Fluttershy said quietly.

“I guess we can just pretend for me,” Rarity declared. She blew out a breath where Rainbow Dash made a towering pegasus figure out of rock. Rainbow turned that rock into a diamond, then a lightning bolt, then a butterfly. “Perfect, darling,” the white unicorn said in approval. The figure whisked away into dust, made a rumbling sound, and disappeared. “Your turn, Fyra,” Rarity said sweetly.

Applejack’s eyes lit up with eagerness. “Here goes.” She breathed out a full pony size of fire that flickered in place.

The sight reminded Rainbow Dash of Daybreaker, a nightmare version of Princess Celestia, from Starlight’s own imagination. As such, the master mev aimed to make the figure Celestia’s size. It worked perfectly. She doubled it after that and split it apart into three apples before having it entirely dissipate with the same eerie crack as the wind.

“That’ll do the trick, Master,” Applejack said. She tipped her hat as her own sign of approval. Then she glanced over to Pinkie Pie and gestured with a hoof. “Quintaza.”

“You can’t really extend Penny,” Pinkie Pie warned her master.

“No, she can’t,” Discord agreed with a firm voice, “but she can conjure her own water to flow with Penny just like she did with the rocks for Rarity.”

Pinkie whistled out Penny again and explained the plan. Penny bowed and turned herself into a stream of water.

Discord entered a teacher mode, going so far as to materialize a chalkboard behind him. He wore a pair of thick, black-framed glasses. Holding up a piece of chalk, he lectured, “Remember to think exactly what you envision and want the magic to do.” The piece of chalk grew into a strange water whip that curled briefly around the stream that was Penny before it flashed into nothingness.

Rainbow nodded to acknowledge his words and demonstration. She conjured some water of her own from his magic. At first, it surrounded the Penny water form and looked like a thicker stream. Then it extended several coils upward to fill the air and evaporated. Unlike the other elements, it made no unusual sound since Rainbow was making a conscious effort not to this time.

Penny herself reverted to pony form. “Great job Master!” she said and offered a hoof bump, which the master mev happily bumped back. The water clone allowed herself to be sucked back into Pinkie’s body since she understood that the experiment was over.

“Your turn Rexa!” Pinkie Pie said with anticipation.

Twilight nodded and blew out a pony of light. Rainbow simply copied the fire idea to make it Celestia’s size, doubled again, and then split it apart to copy Twilight’s cutie mark. Just like the fire, the light dissipated away. And like the water, it made no unusual sound. “I believe the word we’re looking for is ‘awesome,’ Team Awesome,” the sixth fledgling told everyone with evident pride.

The Awesomevs giggled and chuckled as they finally dismissed themselves from their weekly pack meeting.

Starlight Glimmer, Discord, Sweetie Belle, and Rainbow Dash made their way to the library. After a quick lesson on multiple teleports, Discord began to explain inanimate liveliness.

“Relics hold deep magic. There is condensed energy inside. While Grant himself is not a living griffon, their kind has touched him, physically and figuratively, for eons. There is energy not just within but without. That is the shared memory, so to speak. Bonds.”

“Bonds? Like mev magic?” a very interested Sweetie Belle asked.

“That I cannot tell you,” Discord confessed. “But all the same, for this magic, you, Master, must draw from within your energy, your core, and you demand that a life imitation make itself known.”

“Demand?” Rainbow asked, taken aback.

“Fret not,” Discord assured her. “An essence like Grant cannot and will not be offended by you doing such a thing. It’s more like a way of getting noticed. Your energy is reaching out to his, and it will connect very briefly. You don’t even sense it until he responds. I haven’t met an object yet that refused temporary liveliness, at least on first contact.”

Rainbow stroked the back of her mane with uncertainty but did not argue with her mentor. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and sent forth the commanding thought.

“Hello?” Grant asked.

“Hello again, Sir Grant,” Rainbow replied with a smile.

“Ah, Master. Greetings. Well done. I am most pleased to see your efforts are working,” Grant said.

“As am I,” Rainbow noted.

The idol was just as friendly and agreeable from earlier in the evening.

“He doesn’t sound tired at all,” Sweetie Belle quietly observed.

“Well, of course not,” Grant began to boast. “I have a lot of magic in me, and the permanence is still intact.”

“But would a different object be tired?” Sweetie Belle asked him.

“I…don’t know,” Grant confessed.

After a little more conversation, Grant was dismissed as Rainbow learned how to turn off his liveliness.

“So, turning off is something I have to do?” Rainbow inquired to Discord.

“No no no. It would go off after about hmm…one hour,” Discord told her.

She nodded in acknowledgment and said nothing else on the subject.

The next lesson was Rainbow and Starlight practicing an extension of Starlight’s own newfound darkness power. Next, Rainbow conjured up natural elements to toy with ideas of how to manipulate them for the song Sweetie Belle was going to write.

“We sure have covered a lot tonight,” Starlight said with a smile. “Anything else, Master?”

Rainbow hovered contemplatively in place, thinking hard on her upcoming trip to the Dragonlands and what she might need. “Fireproof,” she muttered.

The two instructors blinked.

The master mev met Discord’s eyes. “Can I make my servants fireproof? It would help make this trip way safer for them.” A thoughtful pause. “Me too.”

“But dragons can’t burn you with their fire since that’s their magic, and you’re immune,” Sweetie Belle reminded her. “Right?” Maybe it was one of the exceptions.

“Yeah, well, the lava in the Dragonlands is another story,” Rainbow explained.

Discord stroked his beard in contemplation. “Yes. Very well. But do remember. Temporal limit. It will serve you as long as it needs to for the day.”

“And that’s perfectly fine,” Rainbow replied with an approving bow of her head.

The last lesson ended before the night did, as usual. Rainbow Dash and Sweetie Belle returned home. They worked on the song a bit more before they took their small bit of rest for a Tuesday night.