Her favorite food...

Shala was nearly skipping by the time they got to her house. She already was thinking in her head what she wanted to make. Something she had been saving up for a long time. Nearly giggling to herself she opened the door and trotted in.

Never before had she felt so giddy, but tonight she was having dinner with Intel at her own home. It felt like ages since she had a chance to have some personal company. An outlet that was a pony she enjoyed. There was a chance for her to learn a few things from him, but her ultimate goal was a bit more personal.

"Care for a drink?" She said, beaming at Intel as she turned on the stove with a pot of water.

"You'll probably give me something even if I say no, won't you?" Intel said dryly, looking about. His mind was far from actual romance, though, and his hooves were fidgiting. A multitude of neurons were firing inside his skull, trying to work out the various questions he was trying to answer.

To say he was distracted was probably an understatement.

Shala smiled and nodded. "Unfortunately. But i know you don't like heavy stuff, so i bought some in mind for you." She pulled out a bottle by her mouth and set it before Intel. "I can't pronounce it, but its a rather nice wine so i hear. Feel free to be the first to uncork it."

Shala tended to the stove. She quickly started to chop up some spinach and got out some cheese and pasta wrap, taking pride in her work.

Pop

"What are you making, anyway?" Intel asked. He'd never tried cooking until he came to Ponyville, and his first couple of attempts were not things a pony would call edible. However, he'd learned quickly and was able to make a nice meal for one if he didn't try to experiment. Or get distracted.

Shala had obviously been anticipating this moment. She turned to Intel and smiled with her chin up. "This is none other than my absolute favorite food. Spinach Ravioli!" She chuckled, having never sounded so happy before. It was unlike her.

Her attention returned to making the food, riding the high of the moment. "So, pretty wicked fire you made today. That pony on fire was crazy."

Intel was a little taken aback at her enthusiasm, but it was nice that she could be...passionate about something. Even her tendency to drink didn't summon such a positive response. He couldn't help but smile back. "I'm looking forward to it."

He sat down and stared at the bottle and his empty glass.

"It wasn't as if I meant to do that..." he said quietly, "It was something that just happened. A byproduct of making something into nothing."

Shala laughed and cut the spinach into finer pieces before throwing in the cheese. "No kidding. You were making plenty of things into nothing. Almost made that pony into nothing. Good thing you didn't get any on me, or I would be smashing your face in." She said smiling with humor.

She noted the empty glass and used her magic to pour him a glass. The bottle wavered a lot, spilling some but mostly got the job done. It was repeated for another glass. "Ugh. That magic hasn't sorted itself out yet." She sighed, rubbing her horn.

"Actually, we could have left him on fire and he would have died of starvation or exhaustion or simple pain," Intel mused, "But the false fire itself didn't do any actual physical damage, like a normal one would've. The trees and such were completely whole, not even a mark from where the lightning struck."

Then he frowned. "Shala, did you experience any relapses in memory back then? Like someone skipped a whole paragraph of a story or something?"

Shala blinked, thinking for a moment. She searched her mind and recalled the days events. "Well...there was that moment where there Quill was suddenly on fire. And that other pony was with him. I don't remember how they got there. Pretty sure they were somewhere else, and the fire spread around too...." She narrowed his eyes at him. "...Did you do something to me?"

"No, you did something to yourself, I think," Intel thought out loud, "You rushed in to try and stop the false flames like a normal fire, got set alight, then the pegasi tried to restrain you and put it out with water, despite my protests. It went horribly wrong, and then..." He frowned. "You blurred, and suddenly appeared next to me."

"You had no recollection of the events immediately preceding beforehand, and you were completely free of magic effect," he muttered, "It was quite strange, I meant to question about it right there and then, but there were more immediate matters to address."

Shala thought Intel was simply losing his head at first, but as she listened and sipped her wine, she began to express recognition.

"Oh...I think I know." She put her glass down and began to portion out the spinach on the pasta sheets. "Its...Well..part of my cutie mark talent..." She said hesitantly, feeling iffy about the topic of her cutie mark. Shala knew this would happen one day. There was going to be a lot of questions to follow.

"I must have time traveled." She took a large sip of her wine a bit eagerly before going back to the spinach. "Reversed time on myself...."

Intel sighed. "Just when you thought you seen it all... You're a very special pony, Shala. Just though you ought to know that. It's a pity, really." He shook his head.

Intel looked at the roof. There were so many questions he did want to ask. So many details he wanted to wrestle with. So many things that he wanted to understand, to forward the knowledge of ponykind. But...

"This doesn't usually happen obviously. Must be a result of trauma and your damaged horn."

Shala stopped for a moment, her hooves holding over the packed ravioli. She took a deep breath, many thoughts racing and fighting in her mind. Her usual response to this was always so simple. But every day in this town made it seem more and more futile. For a moment, her defences, her fortress she built in her mind back in Manehattan, cracked.

"...Its the opposite if anything...I...can do it freely....with effort. The trauma-" She closed her eyes and paused before putting the ravioli in the boiling pot. "Food will be ready in-" She quickly grabbed her glass and finished it. "...T-ten minutes...roughly...."

"You don't have to force it," Intel warned, sipping his own wine. He wondered how she dealt with cooking, and all the timing involved. It truly was a wonderous ability. He could barely comprehend why one would hate having it.

"Must be nice, having the choice. Knowing that if you screwed things up, far beyond repair, you can simply...erase it all."

Shala felt like she did want to force it. To ease the floodgates. Her impulses screamed at her to say no. Fidgeting, she stirred the pot.

"Its....Doesn't work like....It..." She felt her eyes begin to water up. "I...Usually don't remember...And hardly ever use it since I was a little filly...I couldn't....fix..."

The room was around her, clocks ticking on the wall. No way out. There was a banging on the door with muffled yells.

"I...Just...want to forget it..." She scrambled her hooves to her mane, grabbing her flask with a shaking hoof. She upturned it to her mouth, but it was dry. Almost nearing panic, she dropped the flask and went through her cabinets, searching for her one relief she knew would work in the right quantity.

Where is it? I need something stronger! Subconsciously, she was muttering the time to herself, and the ticks. Her search was starting to make a mess.

Intel was sure there were many more ponies out there more suited to dealing with this. There had to be. But he was here, it was now, and there was no pony else. Sighing, he walked into the kitchen of chaos.

For several moments, he just stared at Shala's state of mind and the way it was expressed.

There was one, obvious, if only temporary, solution. He walked over to her and held her.

He really didn't know what to say. It was times like this he wished he understood other ponies minds.

Shala was scrambling, finding the places she thought she had put her bottles to be vacant or full of anything that that. She spoke to herself fearfully. "Tick tock, goes the clock."

She was on the verge of a mental melt down. Old memories. Clocks ticking in her head. The timer on the boiling pot counting down in her mind. The sudden interruption of hooves around her caught her by surprise. At first she was resistant, but the world around her began to change with those hooves.

The worries of time and ticking seemed to melt away as another pony embraced her. Everything changed and felt better than as it was before. Even the dull throb in her head went away. The tears came next.

Shala bit her lip but could not contain herself. She whimpered before sobbing against his chest, putting her hooves around him. All her pent up anguish and anger poured out of her, running down her cheeks. She had no pony ever give her any intimacy like this for such a long time. Even when she was with friends she felt she had things out on her own. In this moment, she felt like some of that was healing.

The moment lasted several long minutes, being nothing but her soft sobbing. Only after a while could she find words. "T-the....clocks....ticking....they remind me...I hate using it...because it reminds me..." She sniffled and buried her head into Intel's chest.

Intel blinked back his own tears from the emotion of the moment. He once read that the simple questions were always the hardest to answer, and right now the question of "What do I do now?" was flaunting this fact. He only thing he could think of letting her continue letting it all out.

But the best laid plans of go astray. This time round, it came in the form of smoke.

"Say, is the spinach ravioli supposed to do something like that?"

He had no sense of drama when it counted, that was true, but this time it was the universe's fault.

Shala sighed and nuzzled into Intel. She was enjoying the embrace, not wanting to let go. Though fate seemed to come in once again.

"Mmm...No it should....Shit!" Shala quickly darted over to the stove and killed the fire. "Oh no no no no. It can't be ruined." She searched her mind for the time elasped. "Thirteen minutes and..." She stoped. It was rare she had to think about what time it was. For some reason the ticking in her mind was not there. And the internal clock was in the back of her mind. It took liberal amounts of alcohol to ever achieve that level of comfort.

"...It should be alright." She said solemnly, her mind quickly returning to the events moments ago. She wiped her eyes and let out a sigh. "It will taste fine...It was just boiling over.."

Wordlessly, she went to the pantry and took out some dishes and strainer spoon. "Dinner..." She said, putting them aside and letting Intel go first. She stared at the ground blankly. A million thoughts running through her head.

Intel wordlessly got some of the meal, and started eating. It was...alright? Nice, but not OH PRAISE CELESTIA levels. Then again, no food was quite like that. He ate in silence, not wanting to break it.

But it eventually got to the point where it was too much.

"Hey," he said quietly, "I suppose you want to know what I'm actually doing here. In Ponyville, with all these experiments and trials."

Shala was at the table next to Intel, munching on her food. It did not taste as good as she remembered it, but the wake of emotions was still in affect. Despite its lacking flavor, she ate it quickly, almost finished by the time Intel broke the odd silence.

"...It occurred to me." She stared at her plate. "...What are you trying to do?"

Intel took a deep breath, hoping that it won't be as painful as he feared.

"You know how Icarus wants to provide wings to every pony? I'm a bit like that, except instead of wings, I want to make magic, in all it's forms, availiable to every pony. I don't know why this idea got so transfixed in my head. Maybe it's because I've never been magically powerful like my classmates. Had to work on efficiency instead of strength.

As I studied, I realised it all broke down into energy. Every single spell, enchantment and feat was limited by energy. If I could find a way to tap into unlimited energy, or something like it, I could do just about anything, and so could everypony else.

The only field that provided anything close to what I wanted was Ambience Theory, that everything that existed had to expend something to continue existing. If I could harness that existence itself, I could reach my goal. An unlimited, free energy engine. The Ambient Magic Engine, or AME."

Intel paused, unsure whether to continue.

Shala nodded as he went on, still very deflated from the events earlier. She had a feeling that this was leading up to something though. He wouldn't just tell her out of the blue like this after keeping it to himself.

"So you need to learn more about magic and its effects...." She didn't know the fine print of things, but she knew there was a lot of explainable magic. And then there was her magic.

Intel closed his eyes and breathed.

"They said I learnt a bit too much," Intel murmured, "I fucked up, and when I fuck up, I fuck up big. Setting a pony on fire? Hardly anything at all. A statistical blip. An anomaly."

Intel looked at Shala seriously. "You don't remember this, because of your time trick, but when I first set the wood on fire, I just watched and took notes, even as the blaze went towards Ponyville. I didn't even care. I didn't care until you caught fire."

He looked downright ill. "And now, all I can think about the effect your power has on the timeline of the universe, and devising all these experiments that are horrible and evil and..."

He trailed off.

Shala knew that he was going to say something like that. But at the same time, she could draw some similarities to their situations. At least a little.

Shala came from a very dark and terrible background in the criminal underground of Manehattan, something she was ashamed of now. Intel has his own reasons to feel shame for his origins and his want of magical knowledge.

She was touched by him caring about her. Granted she had to be on fire before that happen, but still touched. It was not often she got that lately.

The real question here though was what Intel was proposing. And then an idea came to her.

"....Help me....forget, and I'll help you." She didn't really know how that would work, or if that was even a fair trade, but she was at her best. Her hooves went around him and clutched him, wanting to feel that relieving feeling from earlier. "At least stay here tonight....I don't want to be alone."