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Signing;
_i_n_
Location: Unknown
Date: June 14, 2012
Time: 7:52 AM
{log status = begun}
[recording = active]
Before I tell you this 'story', I'll just throw in a quick word: I hate changes in my life. Especially quick, sudden ones. Well, little did I know at the time, change was coming. A lot of it. Too much, perhaps... I don't want to give this account of events a bad label to start with, but it may as well deserve it. Because, to be honest, I was about to set foot in the greatest and deadliest quest of my life... If you could even call it a quest. Or, if you were willing to, you could label it like this: I was about to set foot in the Twilight Zone. Dammit, no pun intended.
I woke up with a jolting start. This was the first of many bizarre things that had told me that something (or everything, for that matter) was hideously wrong. As you might have guessed by the way I was treating this, I am usually not a "morning person". By any means. Example: You could probably jab me in the ass with a needle and I wouldn't wake up for another twenty minutes. Thank God I don't freak out easily too, or I probably would be right now. Recollecting my thoughts (barely), I took a look around. By doing so, I discovered abnormality #2: I was in an orchard. WTF. "Wasn't I in Arizona last night?" I heard myself mutter. I had no idea why I could remember that, but seemingly nothing else. My voice also sounded a little different... Couldn't tell how, though. I guess it sounded... Well, a bit squeakier. And smoother. And although I wanted to find out was going on, I didn't want to consider anything terrible. Thank goodness the worse I could come up with at the time was getting mugged.
That's when I realized that I was still lying down in the rich, black soil that held... Apples? This was too familiar, even though I was pretty sure that nowhere in Arizona could sustain this good of soil. I decided to try to stand up, and to my surprise, my legs stiffened up and I fell flat on my poor little face, sending a comical poof of pain through my head. At that exact moment, #3 had been unearthed. Literally. I had just discovered that my nose was... "Long and purple?" I muttered to myself again.
Just to make sure it was real, I swayed my head back and forth to find that it followed my every move. Great, another WTF moment. "Am I... Dreaming?"
That was almost instantly out of the question after I realized how complex my thoughts were at the time. And I don't know if you would call it a coincidence at this point or not, but I had crossed the line of sanity levels that went to 'dangerously low'. Instinctively, I then quickly wrapped together a couple answers using what little logic I had left spraying mindlessly around my brain:
I was not home.
I was not human.
I then tried to scramble back to my feet, only to find that I fell back down on my inhuman nose. I then ignored the following pain and just did what felt right. I got up on all fours. That's when #4 was discovered. All four of my limbs were exactly the same length. This was too much to handle. I just wanted to pass out from disbelief. However, panic almost turned to fear when I noticed how surrealistically colorful and undetailed my surroundings were.
Time-out. Yes, I am fully aware of the previous statement. But trust me: If you remembered almost nothing about who you were and you suddenly woke up in an eerily familiar environment knowing not even what you are, I think you would panic. Have I made a point here? Time-in.
Just when it seemed like fear was going to take over, all of my feelings suddenly turned to curiosity and intrigue when I regained a little memory and sub mindedly considered something that I wouldn't have on my own. I considered the impossible: Was I a... Pony? Was I in Equestria?
That's when some more of my memory returned. I remember being hooked on... a kids show. Don't remember how or when... Yet. I was probably lucky just to remember the name: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The words sounded dumb, even just in my head. But then I started asking things. Was I on the set? Was I one of the characters? More importantly, how is there a cast and a set for a cartoon? Useless questions flooded my mind until one of them caught my attention: Was I brought here for a reason?
I idled on that thought for a while until deciding that I would find out, even though I had no idea how to. Lucky for me, there was more memory flooding. I started remembering more about the show itself. Wait... Apples... Orchid... BAM! It all made sense. Well, some of it at the least. I was in Appleloosa, one of the towns in the show. I scampered to my feet, feeling like a total klutz, Derpy Hooves style. At least I could stand. I tried to walk. I could... barely. I probably ended up looking like Granny Smith after about three too many glasses of hard apple cider.
More random memory flood followed soon after. I honestly couldn't tell if this was exactly healthy for my mind... But if I was a pony, does that mean... I looked down, and almost shrieked in fright while doing so. Knowing that I probably would have looked and sounded like a dork, I tried to choke it down. It just ended coming out as a "GAAGH" instead. In place of my hands and feet... were purple hooves. Good hell, this was getting weirder by the second. This proposed an interesting idea to me: What kind of pony was I? Excepting that I wasn't a pegasus... Or was I? I would think that one could easily notice two extra limbs, but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened judging by the weird things that happen in a kid's cartoon. I glanced back to look for a pair of wings, but just found bare skin, er, fur. Well, excepting the bizarre formation on my rear... A cutie mark, if I remember clearly. I didn't bother to look at it yet for the reason that I desperately needed to know why I was here.
That reminded me that I vaguely remembered wearing a watch in my last moments of humanity. I looked at my left, er, frontal... Hoof? leg. Whatever. Sure enough, there was a watch there. 7:56 A.M. I then remember having my smartphone as well... but where would that have gone? I probably wasn't wearing clothes, so where was it? I scrounged around looking for it, while at the same time, discovering two things after pulling it out.
I still had it.
I wasn't wearing pants.
And while discovering that, I discovered several other things.
I just pulled something out of a pocket that didn't exactly exist.
I wasn't wearing any clothes.
I was now holding and using a smartphone. With a hoof.
There was now a phone in Equestria. Wat.
The smartphone had five bars of 4-G coverage.
The last three things mentioned probably had severe complications and consequences.
I tried to wrap my head around this. To put it shortly, I couldn't. Then, remembering my plan to get help, I put my phone back into my... um, 'nothing' and started walking. I had no idea where. I then remembered... the town was above and beyond the largest ridge adjacent to the orchid. This perplexed me: Why did I remember more about this cartoon then I did about me? Maybe it was because I was in it. I idled on that part. In it... Fuck yeah.
Anyway, I found an open patch, found the ridge, and made my way towards it. Eventually, I cleared the ridge and found myself staring at a bustling western-ish town. Except there was one difference: It was inhabited by several pastel-colored Equestrians. Er, ponies. Whatever the hell the proper term is.
Then, before I could figure out what to do next, I had a massive recollection. And to be honest, I hoped this would be my last. My head hurt by now from my mental wall slowly being torn down. But in a nutshell, every single thing about where I was and every single thing related to it came flowing through the mental wall inside my mind. All the episodes, the whole plot, all the fanfics I had read, and all the fanart I had seen... back. I guess it must have been just from looking at the town... Appleloosa. That's what it was called. However, I still couldn't pull up any more information on me or who I was before... At least I could be sure of the information I had of this world this time. I came to the sudden realization that there was a train in Appleloosa that went to a few of the other towns in the show. Canterlot and Ponyville, if I remember clearly. Such weird names... I guess I knew of a couple of 'ponyfolk' who could probably help me: Princess Celestia (leader of Equestria (the world that the show took place in)) and Twilight (her student). However, I they didn't live very close to each other, and that meant I could only visit one at a time. I walked up to the nearest pony, who was a brown earth pony. Earth pony... Earth? I got kind of confus.
"Umm, hello?" I stupidly muttered to him. The fact that I was talking to an animal that probably shouldn't be able to caused me to completely loose my cool.
"Howdy-do. What's goin' with you?" he said back with a heavy southern accent. Thank God he didn't seem to care about my awkwardness.
"Yeah, I was just wondering if you knew anything about the train that comes here?"
"Well, wadja wanna know 'bout it?"
"How much would it cost to get to Ponyville?" I made that statement up on the spot. 'Okay, I guess I'm going to Twilight's place...' I thought to myself.
"A good twenty bits," he responded.
"And where is this train station?" I still couldn't believe that I was talking to a horse.
"There." he flatly stated while pointing to a large building, on which it had a sign stating 'Appleloosa Station'. Derp.
"Thanks."
"Sure..." He gave me a suspicious gaze as he started trotting backwards.
I felt like a total idiot as I walked to the front of the station. There was a sign out front: "NEXT TRAIN DEPARTING AT: 8:15." I checked my watch again. 8:10. Good, that means I won't have to wait long... Then I realized that I didn't have any money. Crap.
I quickly decided to get on without a ticket. I knew this was the wrong thing to do, but since I've never seen anypony arrest someone, I just assumed that I would be fine. I started to make my way back into the train yard to find a six-car train being boarded. It was also then that I found a mechanic's hat that was hung on the back of the caboose. Perfect. I waited until the train started moving, then in one smooth motion, grabbed the hat, jammed it on, and leaped onto the back of the train. Mission accomplished. For now. I mean, how does one grab and jam a hat on with a hoof? My
I figured that my best bet for looking like a legit mechanic would be to walk (completely unsuspiciously) through the first few cars, then ditch the hat somewhere between cars three and four. It sounded perfect in my head, but then again, I hadn't let the idea of insanity go just yet. I was still a friggin' pony, for crying out loud.
As the train gained speed through the desert, I saw my window of opportunity. The caboose looked empty and the train had already left town. I walked through the door to find the familiar luxury car seemingly... perfect. I just realized how cartoony this place looked. I then spotted the bed on the side of the car and plopped down. Judging by how the train rode in the show, the best I could figure was that the ride would take about eight to ten hours.
Then I noticed a small mirror hanging on the side of the car, which made me realize that (1), I had no idea what I looked like as a pony, (2), I had no idea what I looked like as a human, either. All that I could seem to remember about myself was that I used to live in Arizona. Weird. I still wondered if that had anything to do with the fact that I was here in the first place. It probably did, but I didn't stress myself thinking about it.
I wandered over to the mirror and almost gave myself a heart attack. Standing in front of me was a deep purple cartoon horse with a frizzy light blue mane and a light purple horn sticking straight out of it. As for facial features, I had deep blue eyes and a short snout. That alone was too much for me to handle. And right there, in the middle of a train car, I passed out.
I really had no idea why that happened, but I'll say that it was almost a convenience for getting through an otherwise boring train ride. But all that I know was that I woke up to the sound of a screeching train whistle. I jolted upward, checked my watch (4:46 PM), and made my way out of the back of the caboose and into the Ponyville train yard. Walking for the first time in the so-called "fictitious" town of Ponyville was crazy. It was probably how you could have guessed it to be: Basically, MLP in first person. Very old-looking rustic buildings, but the several Equestrians wandering the streets acted rather modernish. And because I remember loving the show, I heard myself squee. This time out of delight, not confusion. I took some time to myself after that to walk down the streets, trying not to bump into anypony as to start an awkward conversation with a 'background pony'. Too late; I already shouldered somepony on accident while enjoying the scenery.
"Hey there! Sorry I bumped into yah... Guess I wasn't watching where I was going. You don't look to familiar... Traveling or settling?" He turned out to be a short pegasus stallion with a grey coat and a smoky voice. Kind of wired, especially because I never remember there being smoking of any kind on the show.
"Oh, sorry. Well, if you mean traveling as in having no idea where you're headed, then yes."
He gave a hearty chuckle. "Heh, well. What are you looking for? Anything, anyplace or anypony in particular?"
"Well, not really. But there is one pony I'm looking for: Twilight Sparkle. You know her, by any chance?"
"Of course! She's only the star student of Princess Celestia! Look for the huge tree in the middle of the town. That's her house."
"Thanks, bro." I let that last part slip.
"Say what?"
"Nevermind it... But thanks anyway."
"You're welcome to it." And with that, we split up and headed our separate ways.
I had to remember my mission: Find Twilight. Can do. I almost instantly spotted the only tree in Ponyville and started to walk over towards it, the entire way thinking of what I could say to make myself not look (or sound) stupid. Too late. I was already there, in the very house that held the icon of a cartoon... And you can imagine how that sunk in. In a split-second decision, I quickly settled on just telling her straight forward what had happened and what I needed from her. I needed the memory spell performed on me. I had seen her do it on the show, so I knew she could do it. The problem was, I didn't know if I could actually work up enough courage to ask of her that.
I knocked on the door with my purple hoof, my heart feeling like it was about to lodge itself in my gut. Not a good feeling, but strangely satisfying at the same time. Kind of like the feeling you get when you're at the front of the line to ride a roller coaster. Thinking of it that way cleared up some of my nervousness. Then, before I knew it, I was greeted by a small purple and green creature that I instantly recognized as Spike, who was Twilight's assistant dragon. How he came to be, I have no idea. He's just who he is.
"Hello? Can I help you?" I heard him say in his usual slightly raspy, childish voice.
"Um, hehee. Hi. Can I speak to Twilight?" I replied, resisting any brony urges of hugging the cute little guy. I could tell he saw a look of squee on my face.
He stared at me suspiciously. "I haven't seen you before. How do you know her?"
"I'm sure she will understand if you let me talk with her."
"Well, if you're sure, I suppose I can..." he started to say before he was cut off by another purple creature that had just stuck her head down her stairwell to see what was going on.
"Who are you?" she blatantly stated. Not the friendliest greeting I could have gotten, but I still took it. I looked up and was awestruck as the main character of my favorite show was staring at me.
"Um, uh, well, that's the thing. I don't really know." I said back, my heart pounding like a jackhammer.
"Okay, then what are you doing here?"
"Well, I know you don't really know me, but I was going to ask a favor of you."
"And what would that be?" She was getting impatient fast, so I had to get straight to the point.
"Well, you see, I've lost my memory and I heard that you are quite proficient in magic. Do you know how to help another pony regain memory?"
I could tell at this point that she was reminded of her little episode with Discord, and that caused me to bring another question into play: Was he behind this? She invited me in and shut the door behind me with magic, although she was slightly hesitant to help.
"Um... Sure, I guess? I'm confused. But do you at least remember your name?"
That one got me. I really didn't, so I just made one up on the spot.
"I don't know. I think. I guess you can just call me Bob for right now."
"What kind of name is that?"
"A random, short substitute name. I guess I don't really remember..."
"Okay. I haven't done this in a while, but here it goes."
She gently lowered her light purple horn as it started to glow. Then, without warning, the mental wall that was in my mind had crumbled. Everything came back in such a violent manner that I almost passed out for a second time. Wow. I looked back. Ever single memory, back. Thanks, Twi. Looking back a day ago, I remembered nothing significant that told me how I got here, so that means that I must have just... woken up in Equestria? This still made no sense. But I guess I must have looked shocked, because I then heard her say "Are you okay?"
"Uh, yeah. I think I should tell you why I'm really here."
"You mean that wasn't it? What is the real reason?"
"Well, that was it, but I guess you can help me further. Well, I don't even know a good way to say this, so here it goes. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not really a pony, and I'm actually a human."
"What's a human, and why do they look like unicorns?"
Her question shocked me. I didn't really know where to start.
"Um, well, picture Spike." She cut me off there.
"How did you know his name?"
"I can explain that later. Anyway, picture Spike. Umm... No tail, five fingers instead of four, and instead of purple scales think brown, soft, mostly hairless skin. And instead of those green blade looking thingies think basically a pony mane but dark brown."
"You're a pony. Are you... okay? Where do you actually live?" Her voice took on a less serious tone, hinting that she thought I was joking with her.
"I don't actually live on this... planet, I guess you would call it. I'm from a looong way away. And for some reason, I changed forms and came here. I really don't know how. I don't even know why I'm here."
"Really? Like, you just woke up as a pony? Are you sure there's not a reason you're here?"
"No and yes. And I probably shouldn't be, either. I don't belong... I don't even know why I'm here. I need help though, because it looks as though I'm going to be here for a long time. You see, I've never been a unicorn before... could you teach me some things about magic?" I found myself talking in a sadder tone.
Twilight stared at me. She knew that I couldn't answer any questions she had, so... "Sure. I'll always be happy to help a pony in need." Now there's the Twilight we know. And about time, too.
"Thanks. I just got here from my home, er, land, and I have a lot of things that you probably want to know, but is it okay to crash here for the night? I know this might not be a good idea, but I have a feeling that whatever I'm here for, it will probably involves lots of consequences if I don't get to know, well, me in time."
"I think I can understand. Magic, you said?"
"Yeah... I don't even know how this thing works, let alone how to use it." I said while tapping on my horn.
She suddenly perked up. "Well, since you don't seem to know really anything, I suppose i could tell you some basic things... But for everything I tell you, you have to tell me something." I could tell that she saw an opportunity to milk some information out of me while working on her teacher skills at the same time. But still... Dammit. There's always a catch.
"Okay, okay. I agree. But you go first."
"Fair enough." She lead me to a open spot in the middle of her oddly shaped home. "First, the most important lesson in magic: Levitation." She took a large hard-covered book from a shelf and flipped it open. Mindless mumbling came out of her mouth as she magically flipped around the pages until she finally looked up a good minute later. "It says here it should come naturally. So... I guess just try to imagine an object floating and it will work? Try it on this book."
I stared at the book, taking in every detail of its appearance. Cartoony, but still strangely detailed in texture and color. Taking her advice, I concentrated, then pictured the book floating to the other side of the room. I was shocked at what happened next. An eerie blue glow appeared above my forehead, and before I knew it, the large book was gracefully soaring across the room, illuminating the room with the same soft glow as it did so.
"Hah! I knew this would be cool!" I found myself blurting out after the book's flight had ended. However, it came with an odd feeling of tiredness. Manna usage IRL I suppose? We continued with this sort of thing, first with one book, then with three, then five, then she had me reverse the order of a stack of books, then eventually getting to the "hard stuff". She led me outside and out back, where we found a large rock that seemed as though it weighed a good 200 pounds. I instantly thought of Tom and laughed to myself.
"Now try it out on this." She suddenly sounded like a gym trainer. I almost laughed at the thought.
Now I'll admit that i was skeptical. I wasn't sure if someone had just found out he was a unicorn eleven hours ago could do this kind of thing. I thought about it, then after a burst of determination that came from nowhere, lifted the dirty boulder straight out of the ground, crumbling with bits and pieces of dirt and root as it floated up, hovered for a second, then returned to its earthy home.
"Now it's your turn." she flatly stated. We made our way back inside to find that Spike had made us dinner. Hay. Where he prepared it, I still do not know. Can't say I was excited, but I did my best to hide that feeling.
"Are you okay?" Spike said. I had just realized how disgusted my face looked. Whoops. I snapped it back to a less grossed out look and tried to play along with it.
"Yeah, sure. Just had something caught in my teeth." I replied.
Spike gave me a suspicious glare, probably knowing that I had eaten nothing in Equestria yet until I got here. "Sure... Anyway, this stuff won't eat itself."
Spike lead us through the basement door and into what appeared to be a makeshift kitchen, and that's when I realized that I had never seen any of the characters of MLP eat food inside their own houses. Weird. Anyway, Spike set up a small table and put some plates down with the (mmphffph) hay on it. I can say if I knew this was coming, I don't think I would be excited for the food part of this. I was actually surprised when I took my first bite of it and... liked it. I guess a ponie's taste buds perfer different things. I found myself smiling.
"So, are you going to sit there or tell me stuff?" I finally heard Twilight say.
"Oh. Well, what do you want to know about?" I hastily replied.
"This place you come from... What's it called and what's it like?"
"That's basically everything I can tell you."
"Just... tell me."
"Well, it's called earth." I paused to let myself think about what to say. "As far as I can tell, it's a lot bigger than Equestria, and we have lots of different languages we speak that come from all sorts of places. We wear clothes all the time, and although we can't use magic, we have lots of technology to compensate for it."
"What do you mean, 'technology'? We don't use that term here, I guess..."
"Well, think of it this way. A technology, well, is kind of like a skill that a group of people master, and then share it with everyone, or in your case, everypony else. A good example is trains. You guys have trains powered by coal, while we already have electric and magnetic trains. So we have more railed technology."
"What does 'magnetic' mean?" I knew that it was going to be a long night, because I had realized how many of the terms and words I was using weren't used in Equestria. We went on like this for a good two hours, until both Twilight and Spike knew pretty much all I knew about education, music, nationalities, medicine, media, TV, and computers. She didn't believe me about the computer part until I whipped out my smartphone and showed her. That's when she found Minecraft.
That was officially the worst night I have ever endured for the reason she kept commenting on it.
"Why are these blocks floating?"
"How come punching trees doesn't lower my health?"
"What did I ever do to that skeleton thing?"
"How come I can punch a sheep with shears without killing it?"
"This makes no sense."
Not only that, but the other struggle with the night was getting the damned thing back from her. That was a fifteen minute guilt trip I certainly don't want to live through again. And how about I don't tell you the details. You're welcome.
Anyway, after much struggling on my part and much laughing on Spike's part, both Twilight and I were exhausted as can be. "How about we continue tomorrow?" I finally heard her say with a deranged smirk. Lesson Zero much?
"Yeah, sure. Just no more phone hogging. What else is worth learning in terms of magic skills?"
Her response totally threw me for a loop.
"Electricity."
"Wha...?"
"Well yeah, that's your special talent isn't it?"
That's right! I just remembered I had not seen my cutie mark yet. I whipped my head around to meet, head on, a heavenly white lightning bolt seamlessly tattooed on my rear. Hell yeah. That is badass. I squealed anyway.
After Twilight was done staring at me like my horn just fell of, she finally spoke. "You must really be excited."
I replied with a bouncy "Yup!" and she almost looked surprised.
"Okay... Well, it's far past sundown, so I'll set you up a temporary place to sleep." She conjured a large bed in the middle of the room. I guess it didn't occur to me that I was a colt, and therefore taller than most everypony. I was already used to that IRL. If this wasn't it...
After she was done setting up for the night and left the room with a 'Good night', I leaped into bed and almost instantly fell asleep. But before that happened, I had a thought: I'm a fan of Infamous, that crazy-superhero game, but... wow... tomorrow... Friggin electricity. Hell yeah.
{log status = idle}
[recording = false]
Location: Ponyville, Equestria, Unknown
Date: June 15, 2012
Time: 8:45 AM
{log status = begun}
[recording = active]
I awoke. Well, kablooey goes my 'I hate morning people' attitude, because I was wide awake from the start of the day. Maybe it's just a pony thing? Anyway, I was psyched from last night. Friggin' electricity? I couldn't wait to see how creative I could get with this. After all, physics in a videogame couldn't be too far off from the physics in a cartoon, right? Right?
I figured Twilight stayed up later than me, so I decided to explore around Ponyville. After all, I hadn't met any other ponies, so I got out of bed, stepped out of the basement and stretched my legs. And just as though I had accidentally had summoned my favorite character of the show I was in, Pinkie Pie came bursting through the door. Now, I know you've probably never seen her in real life. Because if you did, your eyes would probably be stained pink. I say this because she is literally the pinkest thing that has ever waddled into existence. I'm not going to go into detail, but I'll say this: Wow. I love her and all, but that was a tad crazy for my liking, nearly breaking the door down and yelling in my face shortly after.
"HEY! Who are you? I've never seen you before. Are you Twilight's coltfriend? Have you seen her? TWILIGHT?" she bawked (almost literally) in my face.
"Pinkie Pie? What are you doing here?" I heard a familiar voice from upstairs that sounded a little too tired for company.
"Umm... Oh yeah! My nose twitched after my foot waggled. Do you know what that means?"
"No." I almost laughed at Twi's unusually flat response. She obviously remembered her rage from the last "Pinkie sense" incident.
"It means that somepony new is about to move in here-" She cut herself off with a long gasp as she slowly turned towards me. "Are you moving in?"
"Um, well, not that I know of..." I admit I was surprised by Pinkie's little analogy. Thanks for making me feel stupid. "Well, I might... I mean, I really don't know, but I suppose there's no other option for the moment." I then said after recalling that as far as I was concerned, I wasn't going home anytime soon.
"YAY!"
Thanks Pinkie. Squealing in my face was apparently not the right thing to do at the time on her part, because by instinct on my part, almost without knowing it even, I shocked her. Okay, I know what you're thinking. Static electricity. Bluhbluhbluh. Not this time, because it came out of MY FRIGGIN HORN. Yeah. Pretty flippin' sweet. Well, it would be, if I wasn't on a kid's show. And it came out of a unicorn horn. And it only shocked her. But still. I was somewhat proud of myself.
"OW! What was that? *GASP* Did that come out your horn? COOL. I wish I could do that."
There was a bizzare moment of silence afterwards. Well, it wasn't total silence. I could hear Spike laughing upstairs, obviously hearing what was going on. Thank gosh Pinkie was the one to break it.
"*GASP* WHOAH. TWILIGHT! COME HERE!"
"What?" I heard Twi mumble as she wandered down the stairs, obvious that she didn't really care at the time. She stared at me and gasped. What was it with ponies gasping today? How does one do that in Equestria, anyway?
Then I realized what she was staring at. My horn. I looked up. Dancing inches above my face was a crazy show of bright white electricity. Essentially it looked like i had stuck my head in an electrical outlet. Yeah. You get the picture. Eventually it got a little too bright for me too look at, so I shut my eyes and tried to stop it mentally before it hurt somepony. Too late. I heard a massive roar of what sounded somewhat evil, and then what was as close to a full bodied explosion as possible happened right in the middle of Twi's library.
I'm not sure what quite happened afterwards, but all I know is that I woke up to the sound of moaning ponies and destroyed books slowly fluttering to the ground. I surveyed the damage around me, and then said the first sentence that came to mind.
"Good frackin' hell..."
There was chaos every where. Not the Discord kind, but it still took its toll on Twi's usually well organized library. Still, there was a mess of books on the floor (several of which were charred) and two ponies on the floor (both of which were charred), and nothing looked like it was supposed to. In a nutshell, chaos. I ran over to Twi.
"Holy bit, are you okay?"
"What do you think."
Well, me being one not to remember much sarcasm on the show, was at a total loss of words.
"Well, you're charred, so I guess..."
"Well, yes I am." Zinged again by the star of a kid's show. Not helping with my dignity level.
"Sorry... Need any help?"
"I don't think so..." Twi tried to stand up. She couldn't even move a hoof. "Crap. I can't move. What the hey was that even?"
That's when I realized I was the only pony in the room that had gone unharmed. I guess it must have been some sort of EMP that disabled creatures instead of electronics. I pulled out my phone just to be sure... Yep. Still full battery and working fine. Weird. Then I remembered about Spike. Double crap. And then Pinkie. Triple crap.
"Spike? Pinkie Pie? Is everyone okay?" I called out.
There was a simultaneous "Mrpfph" from the upstairs room and a "No!" from the doorway. Well, there's my answer. Fair enough. I had no idea what to do until the name of another pony came to mind: Fluttershy.
"Hold on, everypony! I'm going for help!"
I could only hear groans behind me as I was bolting out the door. Good enough for a green light for me, so I took it and took off. It wasn't until I was about fifty feet from Twi's 'treehouse' that I realized that I would have to explain all of this to Fluttershy. Again. And probably everypony else, for that matter... I wasn't looking forward to it, either.
I tried to remember where her house was. And to be honest, I had never once seen where it was in perspective with anything else. So I decided to ask another pony in town: Rarity. Could be a bad idea, but who cares, her house is easiest to find. Mainly because it's a freakin' giant tent thing. Well, guess who found that in ten seconds flat? I started jogging towards it, and before I knew it, I was faced with the bizarre demon child of a carousel and a tent that also doubled as a purple house. That's what I thought it looked like, anyway.
I knocked on the bright white and purple wooden door with my hoof.. Seconds later, it burst open, with a bright white and purple unicorn standing in the doorway. "Hello. Can I help you?" a familiar British voice said as she winked. That honestly looked weird, at least coming from a pony. Like it didn't coming from anything else for that matter...
"Um, yeah. Do you know where Fluttershy lives?"
"Wait... Who are you and why do you know who she is?" Her tone of voice went from happy to serious in ten letters flat. Booyah.
That threw me off track. I still didn't really have a pony name, so I just made a story on the spot. "Thunderbolt, thank you. And I am an old friend of hers."
"Well, if you insist, she lives near the entrance to the Everfree forest downstream of the valley. Will that be all?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
I stepped out of the doorway as Rarity slammed the door behind me. What a weird pony. I guess girls were just as hard to figure out in Equestria as it is for Earth...
I headed off towards the river. I could see it from Rarity's house, so it wasn't hard to get there. Now, downstream... It didn't take much walking alongside the river to find where it lead into the spooky forest that held all sorts of crazy stuff. Hey, maybe I'd get a chance to meet Zecora... Then I realized how much Zecora's house reminded me of my Nether house in Minecraft. Heh. Whatever.
I turned right at the edge of the forest, and sure enough, there was a small, overgrown cottage standing in front of me. Reminded me of my aunt's house in Oregon... Kindof had a 'hippie' vibe to it. I walked up to the door and knocked, hoping that she was home. "Who is it?" I heard an almost inaudible squeak from inside.
"A friend of Twilight's." I (regrettably and hastily) replied. I guess my response must have intimidated her, because it took a while for her to unlock and open the door. I could wait, though, even though it took me a while to realize that I was about to meet the most adorable six-limbed (wings count, right?) creature to ever waddle into existence. And as one bizarre moment, she swung open the door as I instinctively hugged her. Okay, I had my brony moment. Wouldn't you have? Don't ask me how hugging works in Equestria, because that would take up a half of a chapter on it's own, and I'm writing this on my phone (long story, it follows though). Anyway, it was a good ten seconds before I realized that I probably just scared her, and that I had to set her down. It was worth it, because after I let her go, she was blushing. (DAAAAWWW *gack*)
I knew at this point that I had my fun and that I needed to get to business. "Sorry about that... I could resist. I wanted to ask you something. Can you help Pinkie and Twi? There in... well, you'll see."
"Oh! Where is this?" The seriousness in her voice almost scared me, even though it was still squeaky.
"Um, Twilight's library." And just as she heard that, she took off. Literally. Pretty cool. But since I was stuck on the ground, not so much for me. So I tried something. Something that I never thought about until now... Teleportation. The thought in my head sounded absurd, because I was used to daydreaming about this kind of stuff, but I thought I'd give it a shot. And from what I saw of magic on the show, it looked like all you had to do was think about it and concentrate, so I gave it a shot. Think... Think... FRIGGIN THINK... Eventually, my horn engulfed me in a flash of pure white, and I was gone.
And what was only perceived as about a half second later, the flash died down and I was back in Twilight's library. No jet lag, no nausea; but there was that odd sense of mental tiredness again. Still: SIIICK! I had just defied pretty much all of my homeworld's laws of physics. In two days. Like a BOSS. But much to my dismay back in Twi's 'treehouse', the library was inhabited by two drunk ponies. Or, at the least, woozy. Either way, they were acting crazy. It would have been hilarious if it weren't so sad. Pinkie Pie was on the edge of throwing up from chasing her tail while singing, and Twilight was bonking her nose on a book, almost as if she was trying to read it with her nose. WTF.
And that's when Fluttershy came in. The look on her face was literally drawing the line between confusion and worry when she saw the three of us. She looked at me first. "How did you... I thought only Twilight could teleport..." Her voice trailed off as I threw in another question.
"Do you know how to help us?"
Fluttershy darted her eyes across the room. "Well, I really don't know, but I suppose I could try..."
Fluttershy surveyed the room with a look of sadness on her face. I tried not to hug her again. "I don't think I can help you very much. Just try to give them some water and rest."
"Do you even know what happened to them?"
"I've never seen anything like it before..."
"So, no."
The conversation stopped when I decided to head upstairs to check on Spike. Walking upstairs, even then I knew that what I had done affected Spike... er, differently. And that was most certainly in a bad way.
When I saw him, he was in a bizarre trance-like state. He slowly turned his head towards me, and in a menacing voice that was certainly not his, three words that would tell me that I did not want to be in Equestria anymore.
"I have returned."
Good. Friggin. Hell. Whatever the hell was possessing him was probably out for revenge, and the fact that it was Spike that was affected creeped the hell out of me. Entirely. I raced back downstairs to tell the others.
"GUYS! COME QUICK!"
It wasn't until too late that I realized that none of them were in there. Crapola has been established. I ran outside to find... Nopony. Extra crap. All of the buildings seemed to be... Vacant. That wasn't creepy at all... I saw a pony head pop up, and then back down when it saw me looking at... Her? I couldn't tell. Hell, it may not even have been a pony. Heh. Sounds like Myspace.
Anyway, I was really spooked about this whole thing... A possessed Spike? Overpowered magic me? And the fact that the clouds were quickly flooding the sky with no pegasus behind it was not helping the situation. I slowly walked down the vacant street, looking for clues that could point me in he right direction. And just like a good horror movie, I spotted an arrow scrawled in the dirt in front of me. Pointing towards... The cloudiest part of the valley? No thanks. I was ready to turn back when a disembodied voice hissed in my ear: "Just go." I honestly almost wet myself when I turned around to find no one there. I hesitantly turned towards the clouds and headed off.
I eventually reached another arrow in the dirt road, this time pointing to the left and saying "Beware". I still went against all of my previous decisions, but I suppose that you shouldn't question a voice you can't see the body of. Wait. That explains everything...
Discord.
But wait... Did that arrow just point to... Sweet Apple Acres? This was where Discord was messing with Ponyville... I wondered if this could all tie together.
I started running in the direction of the arrow to quickly find myself in front of a farm. Certainly not good, especially that it was (you guessed it) vacant. WTF. Again. Well, that was scary. Again. Well, there was some hope of life, because there was a barn up ahead.
I peered inside the barn to find what was honestly the most scream-inflicting moment of my two crazy days in Equestria. I tried to resist, but screaming came out anyway. The entire Mane 6 was tied up against the walls of the barn, almost looking like torture. And none of them were talking. And just as I realized what was happening, a bizarre figure appeared in front of me. Looking like the Frankenstein of the cartoon animal kingdom, I knew instantly who it was.
"Discord."
"That's my name, don't wear it out." he said in an uninterested tone of voice.
"I knew you were behind this. What are you doing here?"
"Oh, you know... Just dropping by for some tea and a visit with some old friends." Sarcasm at its best. Or worst. Depends on how you look at it.
"What did you do to us?"
"I suppose... If you really want to know, I had a little, if you may, dying wish. That brought you here. Humans cause chaos, and where there's chaos, there's me. That brought me back. Then I took out these guys, and now we are here. Genius, if I do say so myself."
"So that's it? Just chaos?"
"Ahh but that's where you underestimate this kind."
"What do you mean?"
"You'll see. But how about a little spoiler alert: I know what a human is. I used to... How about I just tell you this: More of you will come. And that means I don't have to do a thing this time!"
"What do you mean, 'this time'?"
"You know what I'm talking about. That kids show that you watch... I know you've seen me there before. Tata!" he said hastily before vanishing.
I could almost not comprehend what had happened. He knew? About MLP? HOW? Gaah. I couldn't take it anymore. I walked over to where Twilight hung on the wall.
"Can you hear me? Twi?" She slowly slid into a state of consciousness.
"Wha..? What is this? Where are we? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?"
Her response scared me. I had never heard anypony curse before. But now that I think of it, she kind of sounded like GLaDOS freaking out in Portal 2. It's a human thing. They wouldn't understand. But then again, something was certainly wrong. I decided to ask a more logical question.
"Who do you think you are?"
"Alex. Who the hell are you?"
I had one thought at this point: Fuck. Discord's plan was already starting to unfold.
"Are you a human?"
"Yeah, why?" He instinctively looked down, finding himself to be a poor little purple pony tied to a wall. "GAAH! WHAT THE HELL?"
"Calm down. Freaking out is not a good thing to do right now."
"Wait... are we in... PONYVILLE?"
"Yes. Are you a brony?"
"Yeah. Seen every episode up to date."
"Good. That means I won't have to explain much when I say that you are in Twilight Sparkle's body."
He rolled his eyes. "What the fuck. Who did this?"
"Discord. He has some sort of bizarre connection with our world."
"Wait... So you used to be a human too?"
"Yes. Now do you promise to stop freaking out and swearing?"
"Sure. Just help me down. What happened to the other Mane 6?"
"Out cold. They could wake up as humans too."
I magically untied the rope holding him captive as he (hard to call Twi that) fell to the ground. Weird thing is, he even sounded like her. Even weirder, I noticed that I didn't sound like myself anyway.
And I did not like where this was going at all.
Like thinking of it would have made it better anyway. I went over to, er, Alex to see how he was.
"You... okay?"
"Shaken, but fine. I'll be... fine. Wait... If I'm Twilight, does that mean that I'm really good at magic?"
"Yeah. Just concentrate on whatever you want to happen and it will. Stuff works weirdly here."
"Thanks." He tried it out on some stuff by opening and shutting the door and summoning some random things. He looked impressed with himself. "Wow... Crazy. But what do we do now?"
"How the hell should I know."
"Well, you've been here longer... but the show exists... amazing..." His head was obviously plagued with crazy ideas. Most likely none of them were good.
"I've only been here since yesterday."
The look on his face was one of complete sickness.
"So that means we should just find the real meaning behind this and GTFO, right?"
"I have no idea."
And that's when the rest of them woke up. It took a good half hour to explain to all of them what happened, and thankfully all of them were bronies. I can just say this: RD was a guy named Bill, Rarity was a girl named Steph, Pinkie Pie was a girl named Francine, Applejack was a guy named Walter, and Fluttershy was a girl named Jackie. There, I spared you the details. Happy?
It took everypony another hour for everypony to get used to their new bodies and abilities. I had to help Steph (aka Rarity) get used to her magic, while Bill (RD) and Jackie (Fluttershy) pretty much learned how to fly on their own. And in their little corner, probably envious of the rest of us, were Walter and Francine. I pulled out my phone. I really wanted to see what I could do with this... So I decided to call my girlfriend. And much to my dismay, it didn't even ring. I tried my mom. Same there. Dad? Nope. Apparently I could only use the internet. Useful, but not terribly, because I couldn't have real time communication. Eh.
After the other ponies were done horsing around (no pun intended), I decided to get everypony together on the same page. My mistake. The conversation went nuts from there.
"So what do we do now?"
"How the hell should I know."
The conversation continued like this for a while until I spoke up.
"Listen. I know that none of know what Discord's plan really is, so for right now, we just have to work with what we have."
"And that would be?" I heard Jackie squeak.
"I don't know yet, but I have an idea. Everypony should just try to master some skills. We don't really know yet whether or not they could come in handy, but it's worth it until Discord returns."
Everypony went about their own means of training, while I pulled out my phone. Still full bars, and full battery. Then I got an idea. Well, not an idea, but at least two concepts.
1. I was subconsciously charging and covering my phone.
Or, an even crazier idea.
2. Equestria has a link with the human world.
Either way, that would explain why Discord said what he did. And after my little moment of dawning comprehension, I got an even crazier idea, this time to see if I could directly communicate with my phone. I placed the phone on my hoof and held it up. I started to feel electricity coursing through me, going directly into my phone. And just like that, a wall of information smacked my brain, and all of the things in my phone and all the things it had access to were in my head. Basically I just had a crazy idea and went through with it to shove the entire internet into my head. Well, that was interesting.
When I looked back at my hoof, I nearly had a heart attack. My phone was gone. Had I absorbed it? Holy shit. That is badass.
With that out of the way, I decided to see what else I could do with this electricity of mine. Remembering back on where this all started, I decided to run through all of the thoughts that had caused it all... And then I remembered that Pinkie Pie set it off on accident. So I just tried to get my horn sparked up again. Worked on the first try... Well, that's handy. I tried to see where I could send it, and although I really wanted to summon it to my hooves (Infamous much? hehe.), I could only seem to shoot it out of my horn. Usually destroying something. Oh well.
But then something happened: The electrical currents that were in my head arced downwards into the rest of me. It felt insane, almost like I just had shoved concentrated Red Bull down my throat, but without the medical hazards of it. This was insane, and I only had one thought after it: Woah. I need to see what I can do with this. The truth was, though, that I almost couldn't control it. I had started to powerfully. The ground shook, and before I knew it, I was engulfed in what I could only recognize as pain. Shortly after, I was thrown to the ground and it hurt. A lot. But when I looked up and surveyed what had happened, I gasped. My arms, and for that matter, everything of mine, was visibly flowing about with bright white lightning. It had worked. I liked magic.
I cast out my hoof in a forward motion as if trying to shoot out something. And almost to my surprise, a small ball of pure electricity was summoned at my hooves and was thrown forward, knocking open the door that was in front of me. And standing behind the door, who was clearly shocked by my appearance as a sparking pony and what I had just did, was Bill.
"Whoa. Did you just... what?"
I could hardly contain my own excitement.
"Hell yeah I did!"
"How did you even do that?"
"Not totally sure, but still... probably really useful."
"Sweet. What else can you do with that?"
"Well, to be honest, I have no idea yet. I'll figure out how to control it soon enough, though."
It was a while before I could muster up the mental energy (literally) to spark up again. But after a while, I eventually figured out how to control most of it. I still couldn't figure out how to use it to my advantage in movement... Just attack. Weird. Again. I wasn't bothered by it, though.
It was took a lot longer than expected to get our group back together again. But when it did, there was a lot of good news that flowed throughout the conversation.
"Check this out!" Bill said excitedly as he walked across the ceiling of the barn, using his wings.
"You got nuthin' on this, punk." Alex backtalked as he teleported to the other side of the room and back.
More of this kind of boasting continued until Jackie (being the Fluttershy that she is ) spoke up. Quietly. "Umm, shouldn't we be planning something to help us?"
I was the first to reply. "Yeah. I've been thinking of what Discord was doing in episode 2 of season 2, and I was wondering... Where does he go when he teleports away from the rest of the characters?"
Nobody else knew, but Walter was able to contribute to my point. "Discord used to be the ruler of Equestria... Right?"
"Well, yeah, but what's your point?"
"We could find out where he lived when he was a ruler. That could point us in the right direction."
"Nice... Maybe we could start searching in the ruins from the pilot of season one?" This internet database of mine was proving useful.
Everypony agreed to that and started out of the building and downstream to where the Everfree forest was. And it was at the edge of the forest that all of the mysteries of the situation suddenly were solved. Remember how I awoke in Appleloosa? Yeah, I live in Arizona. They have a direct connection. So do (as you might have guessed) Manehattan and manhattan, as do several other towns in Equestria. That also explains how I got internet coverage here, even though I was in a supposedly fictional land. I was the original connection between Earth and Equestria. The chaos was because of me, and chances are, if we don't stop Discord, a direct connection could come up between Earth and Equestria that both humans and ponies could come through. So in a nutshell, it sounds like a good thing, but when you complete the prediction with all of the haters, trolls, and nincompoops out there, that could ruin everything. Not to mention that the interdimensional connection sounds like a wormhole to me. And nobody (or nopony, for that matter) knows where that will lead. But we were already on our way to where Discord had a good chance of hiding, so it's okay. For now.
As we neared our way towards the Everfree forest, we could see why everypony was scared of it. Everywhere you looked, there were trees shaking and groaning in the slow but strong breeze, moss covered everything as if it was slowly eating the ground itself, and of course, there were animals and insects making noises that not even I had heard before. Yeah. Even on the show.
I could tell that everypony was having second thoughts about this. As we skittered along the barren trail that lead through the woods, I tried to remember what happened in the show when the Mane Six took this very path. I suppose that the trail just went to the ruined castle, but then I remembered the little 'cliff' incident with Twilight. That got me thinking. Did Alex remember any of that along with him being in Twilight's body?
Thinking more about that got me thinking on another 'OH Shit!' scenario: Were the Mane 6 in human form right now? I tried not to think about it, but it brought up an important question. "Hey Bill. Where did you live?"
His response made a little too much sense. "Silverton. It's a small Colorado town that lies in a valley next to a forest." I think we both were shocked by his answer, because he slowed down a lot by the end in speech and movement. Well, that proves it. Earth is linked to Equestria. Bill went too sleep in Silverton and woke up in Ponyville. And so did everypony else. Woah.
I asked the rest of them about where they lived. Everypony was from Silverton. And since I lived in Glendale Arizona, I can remember it. There was a train that went through Glendale and went right into Colorado. This all makes sense... too much so, even. Another bizarre conversation swung into play.
"Hey Alex... Didn't you use to work down at the bike shop down in Silverton? I remember your attitude." Walter said, almost excitedly.
"Yeah... Yeah I did. Weren't you the regular down at the bar?"
"Yeah! Hey Steph! Weren't you the lady who waited tables at the diner across the street from the library?"
The conversation continued like this until it got to me. "Hey, um... Wait... You haven't told us your name yet..." Francine finally spoke up.
"Well, it's Tyler. I was going by Thunderbolt to everypony else... I guess." And that's where 'OH Shit' momento numero four (three?) came in. I had completely forgotten about Spike until just now. I jumped in the air and started skittering around (counfound these physics, they drive me to confuse myself) as I was yelling "Shit! I FORGOT ABOUT SPIKE! BRB!"
I started scampering to the edge of the forest and I got to the edge of it when I realized that I could teleport. D'oh. I flashed back into Twilight's upstairs room, where I immediately spotted the poor dragon in a heap on the floor. "OMIGOSHAREYOUOKAY?" I think I might have been talking a little too fast.
"Uhgh... What happened?" he finally replied.
"If I told you, you wouldn't believe me." That's when I heard footsteps climbing up the staircase into our room. And a small, purple, pointed head came into the room. My jaw sank. It was Twilight.
"How did you teleport up here? More importantly, you could have just walked. Are you... okay?"
I had so many questions mindlessly spraying around in my head that I could only mutter one word. "Ah... Alex?"
She gave me a confused face. "Who's Alex?"
Fuck. This is not good. There were now two copies of the Mane 6. In the same town. I knew I had to think fast to get this mess haul sorted out. Could it have been a hallucination? "Hold on. BRB."
I could only hear "What does BRB..." before I had teleported back to where the humans were. Standing right in front of me was, again, the human group.
"Alex. You can teleport. Imagine Twilight's library and I'll meet you there.
"Why?"
"JUST DO IT!"
I teleported to Twilight's library, where a few seconds later, Alex appeared. This was my chance. And I had no idea what would happen. I didn't even know what to tell Twilight. "Um, Twilight, this is Alex."
"What the hell are you doing? We can't tell her this!"
"We have to."
It was too late for second thought. Twilight was already walking down the stairs. "Who's that? Her voice sounds like mine..." She looked up. Her heart was pounding out of her poor little chest. She started breathing heavily. And through that, she muttered one word. "Wha... What?" I had to tell her fast.
"Discord's back. He's bringing more humans into Equestria. This is Alex. And it's a 'he', thank you." Her jaw dropped as low as my heart sank. I regretted telling her instantly.
"Why does... he... look like me? And you're telling me that Discord is BACK? HOW?"
"I can explain! Just calm down. It was Discord's last act of chaos that caused me to be summoned into Equestria. Discord has some sort of link with Earth."
"But... You just got here yesterday! And Discord's been gone for months!"
"I know. Remember that EMP I let out?"
"Yeah. It happened, like, 10 minutes ago."
Nooow it all made sense that we didn't see anypony but ourselves for the last (what seemed like, at least) three hours. Kind of like a time-lock... That we were in. Oh, Discord... Wait... If that was the case, that means that... Discord made us thought that he had lost the battle with Twi. Oh, I hate evil geniuses. In a good way.
"Oh... Well, those ten minutes were about three hours for me..." I told her the entire story, but not without several interruptions from Twi.
"What?"
"So there are two of all of us?"
You get the idea. Pretty annoying. I just hoped that for the moment no more humans would come. And just as I finished my story (which, by the way, took very long to say, and requiring Alex to help), a few surprise visitors came in. And they were surprised themselves. The rest of the Mane 6 'clones' came in. Twilight went nuts over them.
"Did you really wake up in Applejack's barn? Did you see Discord?"
Honestly, all of this just led to Twi not believing me. At all. It took a long time to get everypony sorted out, and even then, I remembered that Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie were gone.
"Wait... Twi, where is Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie?"
"Wait... The real ones? Umm... Oh, crap. I have no idea." And before I could even care that there was a problem here, she teleported out of the room. Well, that was unexpected. I turned back to the others.
"Um, do you guys want to bother going after her?" Everypony shook their heads.
We decided to stay in the room just telling everypony about ourselves instead, almost appearing to be more interested in the social aspect of this situation than the actually important part. And Francine went first.
"Well, what can I say. I was working a seemingly dead-end job at a bakery for years before I was introduced to ponies. I was 28 before it happened. You could have guessed where that would have gone. I always related to Pinkie Pie... Not just in the personality similarities like that we both work in a bakery and have ADHD, but in the sense that she was my missing purpose in life. I wanted to be her. So I started working part-time as a party specialist and got myself into DJing and that sort of stuff. After about a half of a year of that, I woke up here."
Everypony seemed impressed by how much Francine related to Pinkie Pie. "Well, does anypony want to go next?" I finally said. Steph sheepishly raised a hoof.
"Um, okay. I'll go. I wait tables at the diner downtown, and it was six boring years of that as a poor 26 year-old. It wasn't until the Hub accidentally aired inside the diner on a sleepy Saturday morning that I found out about the show. It was already half-way through season one, so I didn't get it, but it still caught me. And sure enough, I found a massive fanbase behind it and I joined. I was a regular to all of the sites, and I was watching new episodes weekly. It was about nine months afterward that I just randomly woke up here. And yes, Rarity was my favorite, but I guess I didn't relate to her, like Francine and Pinkie did."
My mind was racing. I tried to put the pieces together and tried to find correlation between Steph's and Francine's stories, but I just couldn't. Defeated, I asked for another story. "Jackie? How about you?"
Her response was unexpected. Well, by some means. "How about you?"
Suddenly everypony's eyes were on me. I blushed, then gave Jackie a quick death glare. "Well, I guess I haven't told you guys much. I'm actually only 15..." I paused. Nopony seemed shocked. Seems like all ages look the same here. "And all I was was a high school student in Arizona with no social life. I almost became addicted to the internet and playing my bass guitar when I discovered the fanbase of MLP before watching the show, and sure enough, I became hooked. Because I had no social life anyway, I decided to openly flaunt about being a brony... And then I suddenly had friends. After a good three months of that, I wake up in Appleloosa. That's why I'm pretty sure that Equestria has a connection to Earth, because Silverton resembles Ponyville a little too much. and Appleloosa resembles Phoenix a lot."
"Wait... You've been to Silverton?" Walter spoke up.
I remembered that I had never been there, but rather... just seen it in my head. That phone thing was freaking me out. I had to lie fast. Lucky for me, I had access to pretty much everything about the small mountain town. I found out they had a famous Independence Day firework show... "Yeah. I went there last year for the Fourth of July. Anyway, now that I'm here, that's the reason Discord is here. And I have no idea if that's my fault or not. So, that's my story."
Everypony seemed a little dismayed by the fact that I knew a little too much of everything by now, because by the time I was done, everypony was just staring at me.
"Okay, fine. I can tell you a little more. In case you're wondering why I've been acting weirder and weirder since you got here, it's because I was experimenting around with my phone and accidentally the whole thing."
... And nopony knew what that meant. Damn, I have to stop making these obscure internet references.
"Um, I mean, I absorbed it's database of the internet in a somewhat failed attempt to experiment with magic. So I haven't been to Silverton, but I still know everything about it."
Nopony believed me on that one, either. And it still took a while for somepony to speak up. And sure enough, Bill was the pony to do it. "You had a phone?"
It took me a while to realize that they probably hadn't checked their 'body pockets'. That was a trip to explain. "Well, yeah. Supposedly, whatever you were carrying when you got here is what you have now. Just think about it and reach down, and pull back up with what you had." I demonstrated by taking off my watch and putting it into nowhere and pulling it out again. Everypony tried that, and I wasn't surprised to see what everypony pulled out. Walter pulled out a couple of coins. Steph had a comb. Alex had a pair of sunglasses (which no longer fit). You get the idea.
"Well, anyway, that's my story. Anypony else want to bother speaking up?" I finally said. And just when I had my hopes at highest for finding new clues on where Discord was, the door burst open to Twi's library. And standing in front of us was the real Mane 6, and everypony except Twilight had a blank stare on her face. It was a good ten seconds of awkward silence before Rarity broke it up.
"What is the meaning of this?"
"I thought Twilight would have told you!" Steph said.
It was a good two hours before everyone would believe us. And even after Twi, Alex and I wasted a good half-hour on the rest of the real Mane 6, even their faces still showed doubt. The other five humans tried to contribute, but even their points confounded them. And by the time we were through, questions were already pouring out of them. I won't go into details, but it was dark out by the time we were done and just about everypony was exhausted. Walter was the first to change the subject. "Has anypony seen Spike around?"
We heard a voice coming from the upstairs room. "Sorry guys, I was just taking a nap." Yeah, right. All of us knew right off the bat he was lying.
"Spike, we know you're lying. You've been eavesdropping, haven't you?" Twi spoke up.
"Okay, fine. You got me there. But shouldn't you guys be doing something to fix this mess?"
"Come down here first, then we can sort things out."
Spike wandered down the steps of Twi's staircase until his poor little green eyes met one of the weirdest things any of us had probably ever seen: Two sets of the Mane 6 and me. His words after that almost made me laugh. "Wow. Two Raritys?"
A couple of us humans laughed before suddenly realizing the situation was serious. "Well, are you going to help or what?" Twi said.
"Um, right. Well, as said by these guys, er, girls, we should probably go see what's going on in the barn." And just as though our prayers had been answered, (LOL not.) we all jumped at the sound of an explosion and the sight of a bizarre cloud formation over Sweet Apple Acres out of the library window.
"C'mon! We can't just wait here!" Bill chimed in.
Everypony raced out the door to find that the cloud formation was really compiled ash. Even worse. As we neared the barn in the dark, it looked fine. It would have been completely fine with all of us if it weren't for the fact that a creepy (and loud) whooshing noise was coming from the inside. A brave Applejack bucked open the door to find that the entire inside of the barn was a massive vortex of black and purple, and nopony approved of that. Especially Applejack, who kept gawking at it.
But before we could figure out what to do from here, we heard an all too familiar voice behind us. "Have fun." And just like that, all fourteen of us were sucked into the vortex and all was black. Now I know what you're thinking. Discord. Eeyup, he pushed us in, and now we're swirling in the interdimensional portal between Earth and Equestria. But something happened that made all of us question his plan, or what we thought it was. He came with us.
It wasn't until we found ourselves all in a swirling blue tube similar to the one in the intro for Doctor Who that we noticed he was in there with us. "Hello again!"
"Discord! What are you doing in here? What the hell is even going on here?" I found myself speaking up.
"Listen to me! We have a few minutes in here before we get to Earth, so I might as well explain to you what's going on."
"So you aren't trying to kill us?"
"Don't get crazy ideas! I never actually hurt anypony! Anyway, let me explain the reason you're in here. It's Hasbro. I used to work for them a couple of years back when FiM was in development."
"A couple of years? Hasbro? So you are a human... But you were have supposed to be imprisoned for thousands of years!"
"Time works differently here! Ever read the Chronicles of Narnia?"
He got me there. Narnia was a fictional place where time was perceived much faster, so that the characters of the story could be gone for years and neither their parents or siblings would have noticed a minute of it. This was all making sense, and maybe a little too much so. "Yeah I have. What's your point?"
"TV stations and animators are really hired by the government to explore alternate dimensions, and document their findings. The more interesting ones make it to the public disguised as comedy. Twisted, if you ask me. I was one of the luckier ones to be sent to a more friendly environment. Unfortunately, through a little too much exploring and expirimenting, I modified the world to the point where ponies became afraid of me, then eventually terrified. To pacify them I had to create new characters to defeat me, and those were Princess Celestia and Luna. They turned me to stone for about four thousand years until the Mane 6 showed up. I didn't create them, they were perfectly natural. I knew they would defeat me shortly after I awoke again, so I had to put off time to experiment more, so that's where that delusional maze came from. That's when I discovered that TV studios are really ripping apart our universe from the inside out, and it has to be stopped. So I brought in you, and the link between Earth and Equestria slowly turned into this wormhole that we're in now. Make sense?"
Everypony was astounded by Discord's story, and not one of us knew how to respond. Eventually a timid Fluttershy stepped in. "So... You're a good guy?"
"Now, I don't quite know about that, but right now, I am fighting for a legit cause."
None of us knew how to respond to that, so Applejack stepped in. "Hold on, everypony! Here we go!"
We could all see that the wormhole was ending, and we still had no idea what to expect from this. For all we knew, it could end in a lot of pain or even death. Suddenly, the end of the tunnel stopped, and all fifteen of us were tossed into the portal. And a couple of loud, dark seconds later, we found ourselves thrown into the living room of a small house, which later turned out to be Bill's. On our backs. It hurt.
I raised my head to look around the room, and to my sort-of-surprise, all of us had turned into humans. I could only trust that us real humans were in our own bodies. Remembering how to stand as a human, I quickly got to my feet. "Is everyp... I mean, is everybody okay?" I heard muffled curses emerge from the heap of people in response.
"What happened?" A voice that sounded like RD said. She stood up to find that she was now a scrawny teen girl with orange hair and a tomboyish face. Surprisingly enough, she had clothes. And she freaked out. "GAH! WHAT IS THIS?"
My response? "You. A human." She took it surprisingly cool under the circumstances. She took a quick survey of the room, which looked like a lodge. There was a nice stone fireplace on one wall, where the opposite wall had an arch leading to another room. I was honestly surprised that they could stand up, let alone walk, which is what RD did shortly after the rest of us got up and examined ourselves. Luckily, Walter had the idea for everyone to stand up and state who they were. Applejack was a highly freckled, stout girl, which I would have guessed, Rarity was a chubby, pale girl with a slightly snooty-looking face (which some of us honestly laughed at), Twilight and Fluttershy both were nerdy looking scrawny girls with fairly long brown hair, while Pinkie Pie... Who we found hiding away below us... well, she was still herself.
She soon found everyone staring at her. Discord spoke up first, who by the way, looked like a stereotypical businessman with a bald head and one of those 'professional' faces on all the time. Kind of like my freshman English teacher. Or pretty much every other male teacher, for that matter. "How are you not human?"
"Well, I didn't want to be a human, now did I?"
I had no idea if her breaking the fourth wall this time would help us or break us (Maybe it's the fifth wall. I don't know.). But, she was proof that it had happened, so that could help us. It was certainly interesting to see a pony compared to a human side-by-side, mainly because there was a drastic height (and color) difference. She was only about three feet tall when standing up straight. And naturally, I, again, was the one to break the awkward silence.
"Can... we continue?" It must have been weird for the other humans to find out that the person that was suggesting to them what to do all this time (me) was a scrawny teenage boy with fairly long brown hair (still me). And as it turns out, Alex was a teenager that looked a lot like me, except blonde hair. Steph looked like the stereotypical diner waiter with her curly black hair. Walter was a scruffy, but not short man that looked like a lumberjack, Jackie (honestly) looked like a hippie (no further comments, except that she didn't act like it at all), and Francine was a bubbly African-American lady (OMGLOLWUT). And what I thought was the funniest part was that Bill looked like a younger version of Bill from Left 4 dead. I made no comment.
"Well, what now?" And sure enough, nobody knew what to do. The other six humans and Spike (who was a short, lean cute Latino boy (WTF) with short, dusty hair and a round face, BTW) seemed relieved of that. I had no idea what any of the Mane 6 could do here pertaining to their abilities in Equestria, so I asked them to give it a shot. I had another WTF moment, officially making this the craziest couple of days in my entire life. Bill, Jackie, Dash and Fluttershy still had their wings. Instead of being small and sleek, they were surprisingly large and feathery to be coming out of their backs. Of course, human physics is much different than Equestrian physics, so they probably couldn't fly nearly as fast, but that's going to come in an insane amount of usefulness. If we ever find out what to do. And Steph, Alex, Rarity and Twi could still use magic, to my surprise. They found themselves easily moving objects around the room. However, Francine and Pinkie's 'pinkie sense' didn't work at all and Discord couldn't do nearly as much as he could before, sadly. On my own note, I tried to conjure some electricity to my hands and soon found myself looking like a mage in Skyrim. Still friggin' badass. But still... You'd be surprised at how fast one gets used to the surprises of magic.
Although I was confused about why we could still use magic and wings, I didn't question it. We were going to need it, no doubt. I still wanted to know what we were going to do from here... "Discord. What now?"
"Um, could you turn off those... hands of yours? You're kind of freaking us out." I looked down to find that my hands were still sparking with blue lightning.
"Oh... yeah. Sorry. Heh." I shut off the power to my arms. "So, seriously. Where do we go from here?"
"Right. I may need to have some thinking time before I can plan this out, but I know that we need to destroy or at least disable the machine that's opening up these wormholes." I was interested to know if Twilight had done any research on this area of space-time physics.
"Yo, Twi! Do you recall learning about this stuff?" I asked her.
"It's not just stuff, but yes I have. I got a lesson a couple of months back from the princess... *GASP* WAIT A MINUTE! Did she know about this beforehand? Did you?" She pointed a hand at Discord.
And Discord, being the sly little mother hubbard he is, said "Yes. I subliminally altered Celestia's thought process to give you the 'wrong' lesson and foreshadow you on what could be next. But you didn't bring that to concern, didn't you?"
"Not really... But altering the princess' thoughts? You're more powerful in magic than I expected..."
"Yeah, well you didn't seem to think much of it when you used the Elements of Harmony, now did you? You could have killed somepony with that, and I'm sure as hell that you could have done a lot more damage than just turning me into a stupid statue. Well, I suppose your intentions with it weren't to harm, so I'm safe there."
"But who originally made the Elements of Harmony?"
"I did, along with making the two princesses. I knew that Alicorns were powerful, but they would need something else to help."
"So you made the original Alicorns. What the hay now."
"Well, I did make the two most powerful, but Alicorns actually occur naturally. You see, breeding works very weirdly in Equestria. Because there are three different outcomes on what the breed of pony can be, there are three different chromosomes..." He continued screwing with our heads using genetic science until our heads were about ready to explode. I can wrap up what he said in a nutshell, though. Alicorns are a rare output of a male unicorn and a female pegasus. There.
"Wow... I had no idea." Twilight seemed rather dumbfounded, which in return made me feel rather smart. I was surprised that she didn't know much of it.
"Of course you didn't, dear. I never told you."
It was around this time that I had only eaten twice since this entire ordeal started. "Hey Bill. Yah got food? Ahm stavin'..." Well, there's my inner Applejack.
"Uh, yeh. Wait right here guys." Bill wandered over into the next (far less crowded) room, that was supposedly the kitchen. And about twenty minutes later of Twilight and Discord pointlessly arguing, Bill eventually came back out with a huge pot of pasta. "Come and get it! Bowls and spoons are on the counter in the kitchen."
Us humans welcomed the food, but the ponies were reluctant on finding an appetite for the stuff. Even Pinkie Pie, who eats human food all the time. She said it looked too... noodly for her. Well, guess who made up a word today.
After all of us chowed down (and liked it, I should add), we tried to get Discord to talk about his plans for the next few days. His response was to train ourselves for the next few days and to try to get to know each other. He didn't seem interested in what we were doing, so the rest of us just went into the other room to discuss what to do.
"Alright everypo- I mean everyone, we need to split into groups to find out what we can and cannot do here." Twi said with a strict tone. Since everyone knew that she was the best at magic and group leading, nobody had a problem with her being our temporary 'leader'. After a few short minutes of conversing and arguing, we split up into groups outside depending on what type of pony we were in Equestria. So I got stuck in a group with Steph, Alex, Twi, Rarity, and Spike. Not that I'm complaining or anything.
"Well. Does anyone know where we can train?" Rarity spoke up. This is about the time that I wondered if I could still use my internal phone. You'd expect someone to go insane with that kind of knowledge, but it was nice to be able to look up things only when I wanted. In response to Rarity's request. I launched up Google Earth (like a baws, I might add) and instantly found a small, uninhabited valley adjacent to where we were. Ended up just east of where we were now.
"Alrighty then, I just found a small valley just east of here. Uninhabited. How's that sound?"
"Fine with me. It's dark out though... How do we get around?" Steph asked. It was a bizarre moment after she said that that both Twilight, Rarity and I made our own means of unnaturally bright light. Twi and Rarity flashed up their hands (which looked surprisingly like flashlights built into their palms), which were now glowing, while I re-sparked my hands up. There was a couple muffled laughs afterwards, and just like that, our point had been made.
We started east out the back door, with me leading and Twi in the back of us. Finding direction was fairly easy, mainly because most phones are directly connected to satellites, and because I pretty much am a phone right now, you can see where that'll go. I can explain it as this: When I want to pull up something, a mental overlay above my eyes happens, so I can see it, but nobody else can. That reminded me... I hadn't used the real-time communication on my phone since I was in Arizona. Which legitimately felt like a week, even though it was really three days. I tried pulling up Facebook first, but then regretted it right away and pulled up Youtube instead realizing that I was probably being searched for. I hadn't seen anyone that I actually knew in... Well, on Earth, just about a day. I went over to the Upload page to see what I could do there... And supposedly, I could actually upload my memories. And it wasn't until I accidentally did that that I found that out. Long story short, I immediately erased that sucker. Going back to reality, I was surprised to find out that no time had actually passed. So I guess I can't mentally call anyone after all. I couldn't tell if that was good or bad... Or friggin' awesome.
Still realizing that I was in Bill's grassy back yard, I saw a brick wall that separated the yard and a mountain, which had the valley at the other side. I realized that I had an opportunity to show Rarity, Twi, and Spike a little of my own skillset. I lived in a very dense neighborhood, so the only shortcuts that we knew about were the ones over fences and walls. "Watch this. Just a useful trick to getting around as a human that you should know... It's called freerunning. Essentially getting from point A to point B in the fastest, most boss-like way possible on foot. Taught me some stuff, like this." I started running towards the brick fence in front of us as Twi and Rarity looked on in worry. Spike was egging me on, and the two humans didn't seem to care at all.
It wasn't until just before I started to jump the wall that something absolutely insane happened. Now I've had some crazy rushes and adrenalin surges before, but this was an exception. Mainly because both of my legs exploded in a fury of sparks as I soared up and over the wall, without swinging my legs over as I usually did while jumping crazy things. It wasn't until I crashed into a mound of dirt that I had realized what had even happened. That certainly must have been a spectacle for the bystanders, seeing a human launch himself up and over an eight foot fence without touching it.
"HAH! DID ANYONE SEE THAT? That TOTALLY wasn't what I meant to do, BUT WHO THE HELL CARES! THAT WAS FRIGGIN' AWESOME!" I guess I noticed my legs were still flowing with power, so I tried to do it again as I jumped back over the wall, again with a little too much ease. This time I ended up on the roof of Bill's house on accident with a loud crash. I found everyone in my group staring up at me with a rather dumbfounded look on their face. Rarity was the first to respond to that one.
"What the... How is that even possible?"
"Who cares. If he can teach us how to do that, we'll be useful as hell." Alex replied.
I leapt down from the roof and let out a small wave of sparks that fried the nearby Twilight. Although I was shocked by what I had done (dammit, no pun to see here), Twi was the one to respond with an impressed tone of voice. "Wow... Well, you're one to pick up on magic like no other."
I smirked and replied with a smartass "I know." I still love magic. More so now, though.
As we started our ascent up the mountain, I still wanted to see how much light that I could generate from myself. I re-sparked my arms to try it, and BAM. The entire side of the mountain was engulfed in an unearthly glow, as if part of a light show. I immediately realized how painful that must have been for the rest of us after the vulgar responses from my group mates (Example. Alex: "Dammit Tyler, if you can't keep that wretched fancy-pants magic of yours under control, imma end up stapling you to a wall!") were said, and downed it to just a glow.
From that point on, it was really easy to get up the mountain for some reason. I couldn't figure out why a lot of energy was coming to us, let alone to me to be able to blow up Twi's library and all of that stuff, but I was just wondering how it was 8:00 and all of us were still wide awake. After trudging through tons of weeds and trees to get to the top of the mountain, we were greeted by a small, enclosed valley, just perfect for what we were about to do to it. As we descended some twenty feet into the valley, I brought the group back together. "Should we get started?"
I heard a few murmurs of agreement to start with our self-training. Since we were in a small valley, there was plenty of room to spread out, but everyone was more interested in what I had done with my newfound electrical power. Of course, I had no interest in telling all of them about my 'techniques', and just ended up shunning them off. Mainly because I had no idea what to say to them. It really made me wonder from that point onward how exactly Twilight 'studied' about spells. All I could guess was that the books helped with concentration with the spells. If you even have the guts to call it that.
But then I had a rather interesting idea... I recalled seeing a couple of episodes of the CMCs trying to get their cutie marks and remembering that Twilight tried to help Applebloom get hers with magic. I knew it didn't work then, but I figured that now that we were on Earth that a different story would emerge. But before I called Twi over to see if that would work here, I absentmindedly decided to look down at my side to see if it was still there. I ruffled up my shirt (black, BTW) to find a white lightning bolt still just above my waistline. OHGAWD WAT. I had to tell the others, who were still finding a place to practice about fifty feet away from me. "Hey guys! We still have cutie marks!" I guess you could say... *sunglasses* They were just as shocked as I was (YYYYEEEAAAA).
I saw the others look down their sides to find that they really did have theirs. Except Spike. Poor Spike. I couldn't see them with my distance, but I had a split second thought to try to see if I could still teleport. And before I knew it, a flash that I didn't even know happened had died down as I found myself standing next to Alex. With clothes still on. Like a baws. He squealed out of shock before jumping back and then letting me ask him what I was going to. "What's yours?"
"My what?"
"Your cutie mark, of course."
"Oh..." A telltale 'derp' expression found its way onto his face. "Right. It was a cloud. No idea what it could mean, but I wasn't a pegasus, so it could mean wind, or maybe weather... Idk. I'll find out."
I walked over to where Steph was to find her trying to summon some random stuff. She already ended up with a few coins. "How about you?"
"I don't really care. It sucks anyway."
"That still doesn't tell me what it is."
"Okay, fine. It's a plate. Whoopdeefrickindoo. Just means that I wait tables."
I could tell by her tone of voice and posture that I wasn't wanted there, so I just walked up to where Twilight and Spike were trying to see if he could still breathe fire. He lit part of a tree on fire, so there's your answer. Seeing what Steph was trying to do with conjuring and summoning sparked some interest in me towards it. "Hey, Twi, how does one summon things?"
I was glad to see that she wanted to help. "Well, since I see you've got the teleportation aspect down, it's pretty much just that, but with differet objects other than you. So think of an object, its location, and bringing it to you. In that order. It basically brings you a temporary copy of the item, which is very useful for tools, but basically worthless for food and other disposable things like that."
"Thanks." I wondered if that would work with toilet paper. HEH! I turned away to find an open spot to practice this when I realized how nicely lit the small valley was now it was in the moonlight. Thank goodness for that, or else Twi and I would have to teach the rest of them how to provide their own light. I walked to a small opening in the forest to find a small pond in it, and decided that it was the best place to start practice. I still didn't know where to go with this, but I had a little logic left from what Discord told us... A machine was tearing apart our universe. A machine! Bingo. Remembering my incident with the phone, I immediately wanted to see what else I could do with electronics. I remember my dad owning a laptop, and I also remembered that he kept it underneath his bed in a satchel. Object, location... Teleportation. I quickly imagined the laptop being in front of me. A subtle flashbang filled the dim valley and I soon found a laptop sitting in front of me in the tall grass (A wild laptop appeared!). YEA, I JUST FREAKING DUPLICATED A FREAKING LAPTOP. Your argument has officially now been rendered invalid.
It wasn't until I got over the thought that I had just done the impossible about nine times today that I realized what I could do with this. I recall watching Heroes... A show about these average people getting these weird powers... And how one of the characters could communicate with circuitry and technology. I wasn't that good with computers (the geekiest things I have ever done with computers were counting to one thousand in binary and making a web browser in Visual Basic), but I figured it wouldn't be too hard now that I already had a built in phone. Literally.
I picked up the laptop and held it out in front of me, not exactly sure where this would (or could, for that matter) go. I wasn't sure if it was a coincidence or not, but right as I was about to try and tap into the laptop, RD came soaring up and over the west ridge of the valley. The sight of a human with wings and flying was crazy to see, but I had no time to admire it. We could tell things were getting urgent, mainly because she looked very frantic. "GUYS! I'VE BEEN LOOKING ALL OVER FOR YOU! COME QUICK TO THE LIVING ROOM!"
There certainly was no hesitation on our part, because I think everyone knew what the problem was. As far as we were concerned, the link between Earth and Equestria hadn't shut down yet, and we had no idea who (or what) else could have gone through. Twilight, Alex and I instantly teleported into Bill's house (bringing my laptop too), pretty much not caring what Steph, Spike and Rarity were up to. But when we arrived in the living room, we were greeted by a new person. She had pale, white skin and was shaking while sitting quietly next to Discord. She also didn't seem alarmed when we teleported, so I think I knew who it was right away, which (of course) had a following 'OH Shit' moment. "Celestia?" I heard an equally stunned Twilight mutter.
"Sadly, yes." Discord was actually the first to speak up. "She's a little shaky and very emotional right now, but she will be fine."
"Can she talk?" Twi said.
"I'm not sure. I know she can hear me, though. I haven't explained anything to her yet, though. I'm afraid of what she would do." Discord nudged Celestia in the shoulder. "Can you speak?"
"Y-yes. N-now... I have q-questions. What am I?"
Figures. First question. Discord nodded at me. "A human. You're on Earth now. If you can use your body, you'll be just fine." I answered.
"And how do you guys know who I am?" I wasn't surprised to see that Twi was the first to answer to that.
"It's me... Twilight." Celestia's eyes widened in fear. "Discord and the rest of us are here."
"IMPOSSIBLE!" She swung an arm in my direction. "How did he get here, and where is he?"
I stammered into the conversation. "Same way you got here, through the wormhole in the barn. And Discord's the one sitting next to you."
Celestia jumped up from the couch and started to freak out. "Worm-what?"
Dammit, this conversation was going to hell. "Worm hole. Don't you remember when you came through the barn to get here?"
"How do you know I went through a barn to get here?"
"I was in Equestria earlier today."
"Then what is your name? Prove that you were once a citizen."
"My name is Tyler, and I never was a citizen, dammit! Sit down, stop asking questions, and cool your jets! Nobody's going to get anything done here if you don't listen to what we have to say."
She reluctantly sat down next to her former enemy and heard us talk about how I originally came to Appleloosa and started this whole damn thing. Although RD got the rest of the party in with a massive interruption, it wasn't until Celestia saw Pinkie Pie that she actually believed us. Explaining everything took a lot shorter from then on. And now since I've evaded enough details for now, I'll explain why I am doing so. Remember the cell phone incident? Yeah, I'm writing this entire damn thing on Notepad. After everything happened. Well, not everything. I'm on a bus right now. Technically. And I don't know where this information will end up if it ever makes it past me (literally), but if it goes to someplace like Deviantart, congats. I just saved your asses via a sci-fi fanfic.
After Celestia was done shaking and generally being creepy like that, she spoke up to Discord. "You... created me... I don't know if I can believe that. How...?"
At this point I wanted to step up and yell 'Bitch, you're on Earth right now. Everything's possible.' Luckily Discord broke temptations by basically making the same point.
"Anything's possible right now. But that's not important. What is is that you are alive and well. Anyway, I have been observing the others and found that the former pegusi and unicorns still could fly and use magic. Can you do either one? Both, I hope?"
Celestia (supposedly) tried to levitate some random objects across the room. But, as fourth-wall foreshadowing may have told you, nothing happened. Question for you bronies/g-men out there: Exactly how many 'OH SHIT'/'WTF'/'FUCK' moments have we had so far? Yeah, I'll call it out at around nine. Smacked down into single digit history though when we discovered she had no wings either.
"What the hell happened? We all got ours..." Bill said through all of the mass confusion/chaos. Okay, maybe not mass confusion. More like group-wide infectious stupidity.
"Well, calm the fuck down and get this sorted out so we can at least start to do something about the damn situation!" Thanks, Alex. The conversation needed that.
"QUIET!" Discord finally ended up being the heroic savior of annoying conversation. *awkward silence while everyone stares at Discord* "Great. Now does anyone have a contributing point to add?" *more staring and silence* "Very well. Now that we pretty much can't do anything about Celestia, I shall come back to the real situation at hand. I recall the so called 'studio' of MLP being somewhere in Northern Cali, so now I have a plan. But first I should probably suggest you get some rest."
The rest of us agreed reluctantly as Twi conjured some sleeping bags (dammit, I hate that phrase) and us humans and mane characters went to sleep. I trusted to have Discord help us, so we just ended up sleeping like babies. Well, that's what universe-jumping and a hellova lot of magic use will do to you at the end of the day, and sleeping felt unusually satisfying for that reason. At least this time. And I remember having the strangest dream that night.
{log status = idle}
[recording = false]
Location: Silverton, Colorado, USA
Date: June 17, 2012
Time: 8:30 AM
{log status = begun}
[recording = active]
I woke up in Twilight's basement again. All of it seemed real at the time, but this time I was still human. Twilight came down the set of stairs leading to the weirdly shaped room to greet me, but when I tried to wave at her, I found my hoofs to be hands. I saw Twilight with a look of bizarre shock on her face for a couple of seconds, but that slowly turned into a wretched smile as she slowly walked out of the room, still staring at me with a 'lesson zero'-ish look. Genuinely creepy, but just wait. She came back a couple of seconds later with a fucking knife. Cupcake much? She ran towards me, the knife magically levitating just in front of her deranged face, and just as I tried to get away (of course, knowing all bad nightmares, I couldn't), she lunged towards me and stabbed.
And I woke up. Yeah, I'm never going to look at Twilight the same way again. Heart beating out of my damned chest, I stammered in a ball of sweat right on the floor of Bill's house only to find that most of the group had left. I checked my watch (8:36) and took a break in the kitchen for a glass of water and some chill pills. Well, at least I wasn't too late to wake up. I went back to the living room and surveyed the room to find that Fluttershy was sleeping on the couch in a ball of cute and Alex was lounged out in front of the fireplace, among a few others. I walked up to the couch to see if anyone else was up for waking up.
"Flootershai?"
She tossed a little bit before opening her eyes. "Tyler? What time is it?" Well, at least she didn't seem to be bothered.
I checked my watch again. "8:37. Do you know where everyone else is?"
She looked around the room as a look of dawning comprehension shadowed her face. "Oh dear. I don't know..." Well, that settles it. This day already sucks.
"Um, okay. Thanks. You can go back to bed now." She quickly drifted off to sleep (SQUEE). Recalling the episode from last night, I realized that my laptop was almost useless. Well, to me at least. But that got me to wonder if I could bring back my phone... I wanted to try. And just as my sub mindedness took over, a small flash appeared in front of me and in my hands was now an iPhone. OMGLOL. I tried the phone's overlay again with my vision, and of course, it didn't work. Now I really wanted to know if I could still use my 'nothing pockets' anymore... I'll spare details, but I can just say that it worked. In a weird way. Well, I pulled back out my phone and quickly reabsorbed it, this time along with the laptop.
I wandered out to the front yard of Bill's house to see a few more members of the group outside in a circle right in Bill's driveway. "Uh, hi. Might I ask what are you doing here?"
Discord spoke up. "Oh, we wanted to have a talk without disturbing the others, so we went out here."
I walked into the circle and tried to be part of the conversation. "So, now what are you plotting?"
"Actually, we were wondering if anyone knew how to summon a bus. Could you?"
I laughed. "Yeah, sure. I already did it with a laptop last night, so how hard could a fuckin' bus be?"
Pretty much nobody appreciated my sarcasm, but at least RD stifled a laugh before getting elbowed by Steph. And of course, Discord was the one to break up the awkward silence that followed. "Just do it."
"Okay, fine." And then I manned the fuck up as I walked down the driveway to make sure that none of the citizens around me would see. I recalled there being a charter bus being parked at my church last sunday, so... Location. The charter bus was also grey with a blue interior. Object. And... Teleportation. I concentrated hard as a whooshing sound came around me... And sure enough, just seconds later, there was now a random bus parked in front of me in the street. I heard scattered applause. "So, now what?" I asked.
"Well, we can start by getting the rest of us woken and fed so we can leave to shut down the generator thingy." Applejack said.
"Generator thingy? Oh man. That's descriptive."
"Lookie here. I don't know what it's called, so I'm just gonna leave it at that."
"Well, if we argue about stupid things like this, we won't get anything done, now will we?" Discord... Breaking up an argument. C-c-c-combo Breaker!
"Just get everyone out here!" Twilight yelled.
We mindlessly wandered back into the house as a group, probably waking up everyone else in the process. Well, mission accomplice. An oblivious Fluttershy spoke after our stampede inside. "Hi... What are you doing?"
"Most importantly getting you guys up and away. Do you know where Celestia is?" Jackie asked.
"That's Princess Celestia to you, thanks." A head poked up from a sleeping bag across the room and squawked at us.
"Well, I hate to break it to you, but here, you're just another human." Jackie backtalked.
"And what do you have on me?" I'm sure she immediately regretted that statement of hers, especially after Jackie flashed her wings at Celestia. "Oh. Okay. I see how it is. You were saying...?"
"I was saying that we need to leave. So... Everyone up!" More moans and tired noises came from the room as more and more people (and a pony) sat up and got out of their makeshift beds as Twilight desommoned (unsommoned? Are those even words? IDK, LOL) them.
"So. Shall we hit the road?" Walter said.
More weird murmurs. Mostly in agreement. And we, as a group of sixteen, packed up some of Bill's stuff and loaded on the bus.
"Does anyone consider themselves a... Good driver?" Discord said from the inside of the bus. All of the 'mane 6 clones' hands went up. "Well, we have a start. Anyone up for the driver rotation idea? Every, say, hour and a half?" Well. This was actually going smoothly. Alex was the first volunteer. And before we knew it, Steph summoned a map, and we were off.
Finally on the road and rolling, I wanted to know what else the laptop could do. Turns out, it still had a couple of old games on it, so I spent what seemed like an hour on Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 before realizing that it was still in my overlay and I couldn't tell time outside. So when I went back to the real world, we still weren't even off of Bill's street. Eeyup, imma genius. But at least we weren't doing harm from this... So then I got another idea. One, that, as far as I'm concerned, is the weirdest yet. And so I thought to myself, I'd create a log. Real time. So, I linked up my actions to a Notepad app... And here we are. Now. Everything I do is now documented on my phone. And after recalling the last two days, that came on here too, so I can document a log on my phone while using internet and various things over nine thousand on my laptop. There. Does everything make sense now? Yes? Onward!
{log status = idle}
[recording = false]
Location: Silverton, Colorado, USA
Date: June 16, 2012
Time: 8:48 AM
{log status = begun}
[recording = active]
On the road, it was a lot easier to get acquainted with the others. So even though we could be really spread out, we just crammed ourselves in the front of the charter bus, now on our way to Sacramento, CA... Home of the MLP: FiM studio. I got a spot next to Dash (My face: /)*3*(\ ). Win. "So, Dash, umm... What do you think of Earth so far? I mean, I know it's not that different in terms of landscaping and wildlife, but what about stuff like physics? Coping well? And how did last night go before the Celestia incident?" I said to her.
"No. Not coping well. I was a lot... Freer in Equestria. Or more free. Whatever. It just seems like I'm so... Limited here. Physics are dragging me down... And now that I think of it, I realize how structured the way Earth works is. It's like everything has rules and nobody breaks them. In Equestria, compared to here, it's almost like we just... make up everything as we go along. I mean, for example, pegasi could walk on clouds... And unicorns/Earth ponies couldn't. Nobody questioned why, it just... happened. And about last night, we learned how bizarre the world can get. Flying is a lot more... Satisfying here. There's a good breeze in your mane... I mean, hair instead of the hurricane speeds tearing through your hair that I'm used to, being a racer and all. We were all out front of Bill's house before we got interrupted by Pinkie and all hay broke loose... But that reminds me... Nothing in Equestria was really ever explained. And, I might add, now everything in Equestria seems so... undetailed. Like... Well, a human cartoon. And here you have to use... Fingers." She held up her hands. "So complex compared to a hoof, and yet, can do the exact same things. Like a few Earth ponies can... Wait a second. Earth ponies. Earth... What the hay. This makes no sense."
"Well, everything does make sense here, but you don't have to question it. Discovering that kind of stuff along your lifespan is one of the things that makes life worth living. Among many others, of course... Anyway, you were saying?"
"Earth ponies... In Equestria. AAUGGH! WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN? Hay! Anyway, some Earth ponies can play piano. That doesn't make sense now..."
"Yeah, I guess you can compare being a pony to being high. Everything makes sense until you're... Well, not. Knowledge falls apart, and all that you're left with is a yearning to go back to the state from which you came."
"High, huh? Never though humans could get high."
HOLD THE PHONE, BITCH! "WAIT A MINUTE! Are you telling me that there's a... darker side of Equestria? Like, bad stuff and crime you don't see in MLP?"
"MLP? What the hay is that? And yes, I have learned that there is a darker side to everything."
"Dammit, I thought Discord told you. MLP is the show that we watch. It's just you guys, just the stuff you do. It's what Discord was a part of. It's a good show, but the fanbase that us original humans were a part of... That's what everyone liked to be a part of. We drew pictures of you guys, although some sexual, we wrote stories about you, and in some cases, even pretended to be you. There are a lot of people here that would kill to be you. So what I'm getting at is that here, as well as in Equestria, you are pretty buckin' famous."
"Show? Prove it. Prove you've seen me before."
"Okay, let's see. You got your cutie mark by breaking the sound barrier."
"Holy bit..."
"And you still have it too." She lifted up her shirt just enough to spot a rainbow storm cloud on her side.
"Wow. I guess I have no choice but to believe you... So what else have you seen us do?"
I told her everything about the show. Everything from the 'fight' with Nightmare Moon, to AJ's insomnia, to the CMC, to Pinkie Pie's funk, to Twilight cracking. It must have been an odd realization that their entire world was a source of entertainment for humans. Oh yeah, I didn't forget about the fanbase. Told her about that, too. She didn't believe that ship-pics existed until I whipped up the laptop and showed her that. More awkward reactions. The worst ones came from the ones with her and Soarin'. But still, it must have been another odd realization for RD that some humans take enjoyment in portraying her and AJ as naked human lesbians. Well, she was bound to see it eventually. But what alarmed me was what she said afterwards...
"We do this too... Porn, you would call it. We don't have a name for it, though. Kind of sad... But different. I don't want to explain." RD looked suddenly sad.
"That's okay. I can understand. Or at least try too. But that saddens me too... Just to find that the being we long to be are just as flawed as we are. Wait a second... That means there could be truth to some of the darker fanfics out there. Cupcakes..." I regretted saying that instantly, because I knew she would ask about it and I would have to answer.
"Cupcakes?" Here we go.
"Yeah... It's a famous fanfic where... Yeah, Pinkie Pie goes crazy and brutally murders you. I have not read it and never plan too."
"Ugh. I disapprove. But if anybody goes legitimately crazy, I guess it would be Twi or Rarity. Something about unicorns... I don't get them. But I just wanted to bring something up that you could take interest in. We actually swear on the show. Though as far as I'm concerned, we've only used 'hay' in front of you. Equivalent to hell. And in some cases, 'holy bit' means the same as 'holy shit'. Same thing with 'buck' and 'fuck'. Make sense?"
"Yeah. But on a happier subject, I'm kindova thrill junkie. Coaster enthusiast... Did you have anything like that in Equestria?"
"Yeah, of course. We have amusement parks, if that's what you're looking for. Some have roller coasters... Giant wooden creations that send a special train screaming over rails. I've never been on one, but supposedly Pegasi get a similar feeling with flight. So I don't have too much use for them."
"Hah! Wow... Only wooden ones, huh?"
"What do you mean, 'only'? What else would you build it out of?"
"Steel. Apparently humans have better ways of getting resources than ponies. Here, look at this." I pulled up Roller Coaster Database on my laptop and showed her some of my favorites (Magnum XL200, Maverick, Rip Ride Rockit, etc.). She was really interested after she found out that the steel ones could invert. I showed her around some parks on Google Maps, then that sparked some obsession. Good, at least I'm not the only one here obsessed with them. After a while, she got a little crazy and told me we had to go to Cedar Pointy (as she called it) after this ordeal was sorted out. I agreed. Again, /)*3*(\.
And then it was time for Alex to turn the wheel over to Steph, and that meant a breakfast, finally. I reclaimed my laptop and pulled up my phone to see where we were, and as it turns out, we hadn't gone far. We were only on the road for two hours. I was never happier to go to McDonalds, to be honest. BREAKFAST BURRITO FTW. I don't know who (or what) was paying for a group of sixteen humans (half of which, I might add, had only been human for a mere fourteen hours), but all I can say is that I was greatful. I plopped down next to Jackie (who had pancakes) and tried to spark a conversation. Regretted that shortly after we found out that her table wasn't big enough for two smartasses (morning person FAIL.) and just decided it was best to go to where AJ and Walter were.
"Hey, Tyler. What's happenin'?" Walter said with a very welcoming tone of voice.
"Tiredness. And frustration, you could say." I replied.
"Why is that?"
"Trying to explain everything to Dashie while she tried to explain Equestria. Wore me out..."
"I heard yah. Sittin' behind you the whole two hours we've already been on the road. I never thought you would have the nerve to bring up Cupcakes. I even shudder at that thought..."
"Anyway, how did last night go for you?"
"Interesting. Pinkie Pie went a little nuts with the human variation of cookies and wouldn't stop tearin' up the kitchen. Took a half an hour to pry her away from that, and then Celestia showed up. Pinkie dashed out to the Pegasus group and let them know, who supposedly let you know." Applejack chimed in.
"Well... Sounds funnier than what happened to the rest of us."
"And what would that be?" Both of them said in near-perfect unison. I told them about my real power with electricity, then the cutie marks (Walter's was a bike), then the pegasus part of the story before getting to the Celestia. Dammit, I need to stop calling it that.
"Well, can't say it was bad. Well, I'm done here. How about you, AJ?" Walter said finally. Applejack agreed, and soon all of us were back on the bus waiting for Steph to drive. And this time around, I got stuck with Flootershai. You know, I'd call this whole ordeal a dream come true if it weren't for the fact that the fabric of the friggin' cosmos was in our hands.
"Hai." Well, it was a start.
"Uh, hi. What brings you over here?"
"I dunno, I guess I just wanted to try and start a conversation about your thoughts on where you're from and Earth."
"Well, I trust Rainbow Dash told you that Equestria isn't as good as you may think... So I might as well tell you what I think of Earth... Almost the same in a lot of ways..." She rambled around with that until I realized that she basically just said the same thing as RD. It was worth it just to hear it in her voice, to be honest. But by the time she was done, the other thing that dawned on me was that I was leaning on Fluttershy. And to be honest, I really only found that after Bill and Francine (who were sitting behind us, BTW) daaw'd in sync at us. I quickly backed away and told her I wanted to show her something. I recalled my laptop and pulled the memebase site for MLP and showed her all of the memes for 'flutterwry' and 'flutterrage'. She was a bit embarrassed about it at first, but then found it funny after I showed her the remix for the 'your face' incident on Youtube.
After another hour or so of derping around on memebase, it was around 11:30 and so we decided to go for an early lunch in Laughlin, Nevada. There were casinos everywhere, so finding a restaurant wasn't hard either. And therefore we went to a buffet. HAH! Victory. Well, it wasn't much for socializing, but at least the shrimp cocktail was good.
Back on the bus, Walter was up for driving, which meant I was with Celestia this time. That was an interesting conversation, mainly because she kicked it off with a bizarre question.
"How does Earth's government work?" Okay not bizarre, just a weirdly legitimate question. And knowing very little about how America actually works, I almost didn't know how to respond.
"Well, it's kind of weird. It's called a democracy, and rather than having one or two royalty figures, we have a president running the country, and that person changes every four years. The citizens vote who gets to be the next president rather than the president. We think it works better than a despotism or a monarchy, so that means that our country is rather new. How does your country work?"
"Well, things are bizarre like that. The history of Equestria is rather... Well, interesting. Earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns weren't always united."
"Sorry to bust a bubble of yours, but I've already known that. Season 2, episode 11. Bazinga."
"What? How do you know?" Here we go AGAIN.
"DAMMIT! WHY DIDN'T DISCORD TELL YOU THESE THINGS?"
"Calm down! Nothing is accomplished with yelling!"
"Augh. Okay. Remember how Discord told you about him actually being an interdimensional explorer?"
"Yes..."
"Well, his discoveries came through to Earth and some of Twilight and her friend's adventures made it to us in the form of entertainment. That's why we knew a lot about Equestria before we even got there. So pretty much nobody here knows you actually exist. Make sense?"
"Us? Entertainment? This is an outrage! Some of the little 'adventures' we had were downright dangerous! Serious as can be... And nobody thought we existed. Fools." She stuck up her nose.
"Celestia, listen. For most of us, having it called entertainment would be an insult. Fun fact: Even this 'show' was supposed to be for females aged eight to twelve, 80% of the audience is over the age of fifteen and is male. Even crazier is the fanbase." Again, as I was compelled, I pulled out the laptop and showed her My Little Brony. I was alarmed to find out that she actually found it funny. Although I didn't explain Rule 34 to her (You're welcome, dammit.).
After much time spent being generally weird, I took a leap forward in seriousness when I decided to show her the actual show. I figured episode 4 of season 2 would be a good one. After finishing the episode, I realized what a look of shock Celestia had on her face. It was a while before she would say anything. Eventually it came to this: "Wow. That really happened. And is it really true that..." She looked at the bottom right corner of the Youtube player. "Is it true that exactly 63,596 people have seen this?"
"I'm as sure as you could ever be. The point is, everyone in Equestria is well respected. You most of all."
"Wow... Thanks. I don't know what else to say."
"Don't mention it." And with that, I decided it was time to talk with someone else. But it wasn't a good time, since we were about to switch places and drivers (Francine was next up) while fuelling up our bus. So, in a nutshell, nothing interesting happened. And again, we made our way back to the bus, where it was announced that our ETA was in two hours, meaning no more stops and one more social visit. I had to choose fast this time, so I figured, why not Pinkie Pie? I had just realized how much she reminded me of myself in the way that nobody really knows how or why we do things. E.g.: A few days ago (Earth time), I found a way onto my roof without using a ladder and cranked out four free-verse poems in ten minutes when I was up there. That let me go off on a tangent with myself, making me realize that all of my weird ideas come to me when I'm in the shower with the heat turned up as high as I can bear it. NVM.
Once sitting next to the small pink pony, I laughed at how silly she looked sitting down. Kind of like a cat sitting up, but more comical. Actually, just picture the Sitting Lyra meme.
"What?" She yelled jokingly.
"Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to ask a question."
"What would that be?"
I dropped the bomb. I needed to... "Did you know what a human was before getting here? It's because of MLP... The show you were on. You seemed to interact with the audience. We called it you breaking the fourth wall, but I don't know what you would have called it..."
"Interacting... Yeah, I did know about humans here. It was weird though... All that I saw was one in a chair in an office. That started everything. It was after we were leaving Appleloosa after that crazy incident with the buffalo. I noticed a small glowing portal-thingie in front of me... It was closing slowly... I remember saying something, then sticking my head into it. Everything was dark in there, but then something happened. A human's face appeared in it... Then after that, the next few nights were plagued with dreams of more of them watching me. But when I woke up, none of them were there in real life. Then, every single 'episode' we had every single week, I would see that first portal-thing everywhere. I guess, talking about that show, that face was... filming me. I was scared at first, but then I started screwing around with it just for fun. I never thought that would mean that humans would think I was interacting with them... I'm sorry." The sadness that showed on her face scared me.
"No, don't be sorry. That's one of the main reasons humans love you so much." I whipped up the laptop again and googled 'pinkie pie fourth wall'. It relieved me to see she was in a better mood afterwards. And for a long time afterwards, knowing that she, a previously normal pony, had turned into a human icon, brony or not.
Knowing that she was happy made me probably just as happy for the rest of the bus trip. Which, by the way, was spent with Twilight trying to explain the concept of movies to her. And believe me, that was hell. Not as much as the 'minecraft affair', though.
"So people actually just watch these with friends? In a theater? This makes no sense."
"Twi, it's entertainment. It doesn't have to make any sense. Like, to us humans, you are entertainment to us, and you definitely don't make any sense here on Earth."
"But still, you call going to a theater with friends a social outing, even though you don't really socialize with each other."
"Well, we yell at the screen and do mad-libs and such. So there. Close enough."
The hell was stopped when a pissed of Fluttershy started the quiet game and I agreed (she was still cute as a human, what else could I do?) while Twilight disagreed. We went our separate ways, while staying in the same two seats. It was one hell of a long ride from there. But, like everything, it came to an end as a tired Francine pulled up at a motel after being guided by a GPS that I had summoned back at Bill's.
"Well everyone, it would appear as though we are here. If you had anything with you when you got on here, please be sure to take it off." Bill and Alex were the only ones to move at this point. Bill pulled out a duffel bag while Alex conjured a bicycle. Winning.
As it turns out, we wouldn't be staying here yet. At least not for the night... A crazy idea waddled into my head and made me walk up to Discord with a question.
"How did we get from Silverton to Sacramento in only eight hours? Were you speeding?"
He smirked. "You'd be amazed what some simple enchanting will do to human items."
I cringed and said no more as I walked back to the bus, but before I could make it, Discord made an announcement to all of us: "Oh yes... One more thing. We need to do a little... Surveying of our target location before shutting down the generator. We can do it easiest now, while nobody is working."
We reluctantly agreed to it as we loaded back into the bus once again. Luckily, it wasn't that far to the MLP headquarters, so we were there in about five minutes. Well, not really there... but on the pretty-damn-close lookout nearby. I call it close enough. Once there, Discord gave us instructions to try and locate the machine, then find a path to it. "Use these." He then conjured several pairs of binoculars and told us to look around. The facility was rather bland, with the notable exception of an eight-story tower in the middle of it, surrounded by power lines and studio warehouses. Gee, I wonder where all that electricity is going. By now, everyone else was using their binoculars, while mine were still sitting beside me. And being the crazy idea maker that I am, I got another wicked idea of what else I could do with magic from a Harry Potter book. The phrase? Extra-sensory charm. The purpose? Duh. Increased vision. And, of course, I needed to try it. And although I have no idea how, I did. And it worked. Everything went sharp as hell, and suddenly, I became instantly aware of everything around me. Everything was louder, felt better, and looked way better. Using this, I quickly located what looked like a dangerous generator (villainous cliché?) through a window in the tower. Bazinga. My work here is done. AnI let Discord know, and soon enough, we were back at the motel. At this point, I figured: Tomorrow's gonna be crazy.
It was a quick ride back to the motel, mainly because of the fact that the bus was buzzing with excitement the entire way back. Kind of like an amusement park ride station. Except more canned... Literally? I don't even know what this bus is made out of, and I was the one who summoned it. There's Equestrian logic for yah.
I knew that Discord's intentions for this were good, but I still think there were a few of us still suspicious of him. The way he controlled everything with a little too much ease probably creeped out some of us. I mean, in two days, he got us all to follow his lead instead of our own. I dunno. Just a thought.
Although the ride back to our 'base' was short, I still managed to fit in a decent conversation with Discord about what we were doing. I sat down next to him while Francine took off with the bus.
"Yo."
"Hello. What can I help you with?"
"A question."
"Okay, throw it at me. I'll see if I can answer it."
I chuckled at the way he said that. "Heh. I wanted to know: You got a group of fifteen people, all of which were ponies yesterday, to follow your lead into this plan of yours. Are you sure you really know what you're doing? Because I don't want a disaster happening in two dimensions."
"I see where your point is coming from, but I'm certain I know what to do here."
"I know, sort of, but really. Do you know what will happen after we fix the problem on Earth? You said time works differently here, so I'll bet that years have already passed by in Equestria. Everybody here has a home, you know."
"I don't. And to be perfectly honest, being around a population of annoying equestrians really had gotten on my nerves. I never developed feelings for anypony... I've lived my life, and I just want to make things right here before something... happens."
"Something? Happens? Really? You're making me ask more questions than you'll answer."
"Sorry. Since I am the original link between Equestria and Earth, I'm unstable in the fourth dimension. I'm a time jumper, and that means that... Wait a minute. Have you ever heard of Schrodinger's Cat?"
"The quantum physics experiment for the cat that's locked in a potentially lethal box is neither dead nor alive until the box is opened?"
"Yes. I am sort of like Schrodinger's cat in the sense that I have no idea how old I am until I die, so I'm unstable in the fourth dimension. I really have no idea how long I have left on Earth... Could be anywhere from a thousand years to a day... So in answer to your question of why I appear to be acting 'bossy', it's because I need to be hasty about solving this problem, and I'm the only person I can trust."
"Well, if I want to complicate the way I think about the universe any further, I'll just ask you."
"You're welcome to it." He said sarcastically.
After the bus stopped and parked back at the motel, it was a very busy two hours before everybody (Everypony, maybe? Damn.) would even try to sleep, and then another hour before everyone actually went to sleep. Essentially, it seemed as though we treated it like a sixth-grade overnight field trip. Not that I had a problem with it, or anything. Especially because I was in a room with Francine, Stephanie, and Dashie. The check in to the place was kind of hilarious, because of what Discord did to get us in here.
When we first stepped into the puny office for the place (All sixteen of us, like a boss), we were greeted by a short Hindu-looking guy. "Hollo and walcum to de Starright Motel. How mey I asseest you?"
Discord (naturally.) was the one to talk for us. "Thank you. How many rooms do you have available?"
"Well, how meny does you need?"
"Four. Adjacent if possible."
"You are een luck. There are fuur at the buttum rieght hand cornehr of de complex. Each room cawsts therty nien a night, so four of those meens you are going to pay..." He pulled out a small calculator from underneath the desk he was sitting at and punched in some numbers. "One hahndered and feefty nien dollors."
"Thank you." He put his right hand behind his back and summoned a billfold. That sneaky bastard. "Is it okay to be in cash?"
"Yes. Dat would be fine." Discord pulled out the billfold into clear view and counted out the money, then handed it to the man behind the counter, who in return handed us a set of four keys. "Thenk you. Your rooms are numbers eleven through fourteen."
We filed out of the office and into the rooms. It was a slow process getting to bed, mainly because Steph and I had to summon everything for the other two and ourselves. It was also a silent process getting into bed, and that was for the fact that everyone had a little bit too much time to converse with each other on the bus. I just ended up whipping out my laptop and playing Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 while the others found a rerun of Applebuck Season on the Hub. Dashie was a little stubborn to believe that it actually happened until she got to the ending where AJ apologized to her. It was hopeless by that point, especially by the way she let her comments loose. I'll just not go into the details.
By the time everyone was both tired and bored from arguing with Dash, it was about half past ten, and we all figured that we had stayed up a little late for the circumstances. However, the sleeping situation was far more awkward than anticipated. Because nobody really knew each other, nobody was willing to sleep in the same bed together. Even Dashie, whose only comment on the subject was "Eew". And so it ended up that Steph and I wound up on the floor with Francine and RD's extra sheets. Phfft. Unicorn humility FTW.
{log status = idle}
[recording = false]
Location: Sacramento, California, USA
Date: June 17, 2012
Time: 12:05 AM
{log status = begun}
[recording = active]
It was a relatively nice rest, but only for half of it. For the first half of the night, I vividly recall having the exact same dream the night before. Remember the Psycho style Twilight? Yeah, that's the one. Although I still had no idea how this correlated to my real life, I still had a feeling that this would, indeed, become a reoccurring nightmare. After waking up in a sweaty, sleep deprived state, I staggered to my feet on the cold carpet (Fucking motels... How do they work?) and made my way to the sink in the bathroom. The problem was, by now I was wide awake. And if anybody knows me, they would know that I pretty much have no chance of going back to sleep after waking up. I checked my watch as I got myself a glass of water. Only midnight. Damn it. This could be a long night. And that it was. I ended up laying in my makeshift bed for around two hours before I guess I just dozed off back to sleep.
{log status = idle}
[recording = false]
Location: Unknown
Date: June 17, 2012
Time: 2:36 AM
{log status = begun}
[recording = active]
Have you ever had one of those dreams that seems like you can control, to the point where it seems real? You don't come across those very often, but when you do, it seems like they last for eternity. Until you wake up, which I guess is the part where you try to recall what the hell just happened and end up realizing that it was just a dream. One of those happened that night. Well, sort of...
I awoke. As my eyes adjusted to the newfound light of the room, I could get a rather good glimpse of where I was. Doing that resulted in a hardcore double take on my part, because I found myself in Twilight's treehouse.
"Again?" I asked myself. At this point, because I was aware that I was actually in what appeared to be a dream, I could figure that this was either a very elaborate dream or another reality. I hoisted myself off the wooden floor that I was laying down on. To find myself fall on my sad purple nose again. Fuck, I was a pony again.
But to be honest, I didn't know if that was a bad thing or not, so I tried calling out for somepony to help. I rolled over into a standing position to get a clearer view of the house. Nopony home...
"Twilight? Spike? You guys home...?" No response. Yeah, that was probably a bad sign. I found the door leading into the basement and opened it, taking another look. Still no Twilight. I walked out of the house to see if I could find anypony willing to help. And much to my dismay, I saw no pastel cartoon characters wandering the streets. Well, thanks! That helps a shitload. Remembering the first appearance of Zecora on the show, I could guess that there was at least a few ponies in this town... So I went to Sugarcube Corner. To be truthful, I was panicking. Mainly because I strictly remember being in Northern California literally what felt like minutes ago.
It wasn't really hard to find, mainly because I was blocking all other thoughts out of my head. My head was cloudy, just like the sky. And although it may not have seemed like it before, I was freaking out. I mean, it's one thing to be a pony again, but seriously. At this point I think life was just screwing with me. Especially when I saw a pink head pop up from the window in front of me. It was a quick sight, but the pony responsible was clearly evident: Pinkie Pie. Although she gave me a startled look when she first saw me, her look switched to somewhat joy when she saw me... I guess she remembers me. She also made a 'Come here!' gesture to me, proving that not only something was wrong, but that I was a crucial key in solving the problem.
I bolted over to the giant gingerbread-looking house before realizing what I could have done to get here: Teleportation. Derp. Well, now I remember that. And now I don't blame Twilight for walking pretty much everywhere. It's kind of hard to remember those kind of things, believe it or not. I still opened the door to get in, which I can only assume was only unlocked for me to get in, while at the exact same time being greeted by fifteen familiar faces.
The first one to regain speech and talk to me was Applejack. "Yer' late. A'hm assumin' you didn't get to sleep until about two in the mornin' then?"
"Bingo. You know, this situation is only going to get more and more awkward until someponies point is made, and therefore I have to ask you: What the hell is exactly going on here?" I asked through uneven breathing and wheezing.
"Well, we're back in Equestria, for starters." Alex said.
"Besides the obvious, Alex." Celestia objected, who (thankfully) had her wings and horn back.
"Either we're in the Machine's joke of the Matrix, or we're switching between realities. I honestly didn't believe that this wasn't a dream either until-" Francine started to say before I cut her off.
"Look! I know what's happening with us, but what's happening out there?" I swung a hoof at the window to emphasize my point. "I mean, who knows how much time has passed since we were last here? It could be years!"
I got my point across, but nopony seemed to have an answer to my question. So with that, everyone scattered around the building to find evidence that could prove the date. Within about five minutes, Applejack's faint voice came from upstairs, instantly hinting that something was probably very wrong. "Good hay... It's only been two days... Discord! What could that mean?"
The look on Discord's chaotic little face could have been considered 'priceless' if it weren't for the thing that he said afterwards. "Oh God... The two universes... Ours and yours... Are merging."
There was a long time that nopony would talk until Alex tried to brighten the conversation. "Why would that be a bad thing?" My guess is that he regretted saying that directly after it came out of his sorry purple mouth.
"Why wouldn't that be a bad thing? Look, only about one out of every thousand on Earth knows what MLP is, and half of those people are trolls. If ponies started coming to Earth, or we started coming here, hardly anybody would know what to do with each other, probably involving in conflict. Major conflict, too. And that's only in the case that just the ponies and humans collide. What about the worlds themselves? It would be pure chaos. And not even the kind Discord could handle." Jackie said before getting interrupted by an angered Discord.
"Listen, young mare. There's no kind of chaos I can't han-"
"Guys! Arguing does NOT help right now!" I intruded.
"Then what does?" They both yelled at me in unison.
I gave them my 'Seriously?' face to get them to shut up. "Well, first of all, finding out where everypony went, and why they went there..."
Everyone cut me off with those annoying parting words (Examples: 'On it!' 'Gotcha!') and stormed out the door, obviously not wanting to hear the rest of the bickering between Discord and Jackie.
I left with the majority of them to see what was up, but I stopped dead in my tracks and headed upstairs, realizing that Applejack hadn't come back down after she started this. I went down the short hallway and into the only open door. Inside, she was sitting wide-eyed on a bed, looking out the window that pointed north in the room.
"AJ? You okay?" I asked her.
"No." She pointed at the window slowly. I peered over her shoulder to see what was up.
"Holy shit..."
There were no words to describe how we were feeling, but there were several to describe what we saw. Outside the window, clearly visible from the bedroom, was Canterlot. That wouldn't be too shocking if it weren't the fact that it was in flames. Smoke was also billowing above the castle, forming a cloud of smog similar to the one generated by the dragon in episode eight of the first season.
"Well, now what?" AJ finally said.
"We get the others. GUYS! COME QUICK!" I yelled. There was a quick response from the others, which came in the form of a stampeding herd of ponies and a dragon. Discord and Twilight screwed the thought of walking, and just teleported up here instead.
The look on everyone's face was just plain depressing when they looked out the window. It was even worse when Walter tried to get an answer out of this mess. "So now what the hell do we do?"
"I have no fucking clue." Alex said a moment later.
"Should we go there?" Celestia asked.
"I guess we have no other choice. Discord? How good are you with teleporting multiple things?" I replied.
"Pretty good. See for yourself." And before any of us could realize what he was doing, he did it. Nearly instantaneously, all fifteen of us were directly in front of the Canterlot Palace. The normally bright and cheerful palace grounds were now gloomy and dark. A frightened pegasus bolted from the door and started flying away from the front gates, only to be stopped by Discord, who hoped to collect some answers from him.
"Just where do you think you're going?" Discord inquired.
"Oh, come on! Do I really have to explain this again?" He didn't seem to be too shaken up by the fact that he was talking to the former enemy of Equestria. This couldn't mean anything good at this point.
"To us, yes." Celestia said.
"Celestia? Where were you?"
"It's a very long story that I do not have the time for. First, you tell us."
"Okay, fine. Ever since you left, Luna assumed the role that you did while she was on the moon, raising both the sun and the moon. Basically a queen. But that's not all. Ponies have been waking up who think that they're something called a human."
I couldn't help but cut him off there. "DAMMIT! WE'RE TOO LATE!"
"LET ME FINISH! Anyway, several of them don't remember who they were, but a few actually recognize this place. Those are the ones who are peaceful. Can you explain this?"
"Yes. Where the humans come from, there's this fanbase..." We all pitched in to explain what was going on, but it took about ten minutes. Too long.
"So you're telling me that they're all from a different universe?" He yelled.
"Basically. Watch out for the others; they may be very aggressive."
"We already knew that. Some of the 'Anti-Bronies' you mentioned earlier are the ones responsible for this." He swung a hoof at the cloud of smoke coming from the fire in the castle.
"Oh my God. You're kidding me..." Bill said, staring wide-eyed at the pillar of smoke.
"I wouldn't. I have no reason to kid at a hectic time like this."
"One last question," Celestia piped in, "How long was I gone?"
"Couldn't have been more than two days. Why?"
"This is worse than I thought... The two universes are literally colliding within the fourth dimension..." Discord said.
"Thanks for the help." I said as I turned back towards the rest of my group. "Any more ideas?"
Discord's answer alarmed me, even though it sounded legitimate. "Find Luna, then get back to the barn."
It didn't take long for Celestia to find Luna. She ended up cowering in her bedroom, in her bed, at the end of the left staircase, just as she predicted. It was quite a sight to see the indigo princess of Equestria on the verge of tears.
"Holy bit! Are you okay?" Francine blurted out.
"N-n-no... The Humans are t-taking over. And there's n-nothing we can do..." Luna's voice was shaky.
"Sister, please. Come with us. We need your help." Celestia pleaded.
"W-what for? There's n-no use..."
"We can explain. Just come with us."
"I c-can't let my citizens j-just go like this."
"There's nothing else you can do here. Follow us."
"To where?"
"Earth. It's our only hope."
Luna reluctantly agreed to it as Discord teleported us all back to Ponyville. Luna was alarmed by the fact that Ponyville was completely abandoned.
"So, to the barn then?" I suggested. The rest agreed, and soon we were all on our way to save Equestria. And probably Earth, too. It was a rather grueling walk to the barn, mainly because of how friggin' scary Ponyville looked with nopony there.
When we found ourselves in front of the barn, nothing seemed unusual. We all knew it was too good to be true. A brave Applejack bucked open the door to see what was inside and was shocked (as all of us were) at what was in front of us. Replacing the usual hay and straw on the ground, was Bill's living room. It was almost as if we just all walked out of Bill's kitchen and never went to Cali in the first place... I stepped forward into the room. After a split second of complete disorientation, I found myself to be a human on all fours again. Whoa. I turned around and got to my feet.
"You guys coming?" I found that everypony was looking up at me, which was a little awkward, given that I was six feet tall and they were only around three. "Oh, sorry."
The rest walked into the room, revealing the human version of themselves. Two new faces were revealed this time, in which Pinkie Pie was a artsy-looking, poofy-haired teenager, while Luna was a tall, thin, dark skinned woman. After they were used to their newfound universe, we could get back to what we were trying to do: Get back to California.
"Any ideas for what to do next?" Francine asked.
{log status = idle}
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Location: Silverton, Colorado, USA
Date: June 17, 2012
Time: 8:39 AM
{log status = begun}
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We started at each other for a good fifteen seconds with dumb looks on our faces, resulting in one answer coming out of Jackie's mouth: "Nope. I'm out." I could tell that everyone was a little shocked by whatever the hell just happened, so the silence continued long after Jackie's response.
Naturally, Discord and I were the first ones to make a legitimate comment.
"Discord. Do you think you can do that mass teleportation thing again?"
"I doubt it, but it's well worth a shot..." He went into a trance-like state before we all were given a feeling that was not only disorienting, but oddly ticking at the same time. I had no time to dwell on the thought, mainly because we were back at the motel parking lot in a flash. Literally. Bazinga.
"Please don't ever ask me to do that on Earth ever again..." Discord said after being seemingly shaken up from what had happened.
After Luna had time to recover from what certainly appeared to be her first teleportation stunt on Earth (which is much more intense, btw), we all regathered in the middle of the parking lot at what appeared to be sunrise. I could only pray that it was the same week.
"Well, that was interesting. Shall we head over to where we should have been in the first place?" Everyone knew what Bill was talking about, so we clamored into the bus. Several of us wanted to sit next to Luna, but Celestia had the last say in that, and sat next to her before any of us had a chance to. Not that I'm complaining; I'm sure that Celestia explained everything to her a lot better than we could have. You know, being her sister and all.
{log status = idle}
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Location: Sacramento, California, USA
Date: June 17, 2012
Time: 8:42 AM
{log status = begun}
[recording = active]
It was a long and awkward drive sitting next to Spike. You think that us being only a couple years apart in age would make up for some good times together, but nope. That probably made it worse. Somehow.
"Hi." I tried. That was as good as I could do, though.
"Um, hello."
The rest of the bus ride consisted of complete silence between us. And even though that time was only about five minutes, it felt like way longer.
The bus finally stopped in a large, mostly vacant parking lot, which lined a large array of studio warehouses. And in the middle of it all was a tower that closely resembled the one from Half-life 2: dark, metal, and sinister. Sadly, not as tall. That would be pretty boss.
We all climbed off of the bus and formed a small circle in the parking lot in an attempt to collaborate ideas.
"Alrighty then, I have a basic plan, but feel free to jump in and add suggestions as I go along. Basic plan is this: Because this is a high security area, the pegasi take the rooftops, while the earth ponies scout forward on the ground, backed up by the unicorns. Spike, Celestia, Luna and I can alternate or back up the unicorns. Wait... Luna, do you have wings?" Discord asked.
Neither Celestia nor Luna knew if they had magic or wings, so they had to check while the rest of them wondered why nobody asked that in the first place. To make an awkward story less so, they both had their abilities back. Thank God for that, because that probably would end up in much frustration if not.
At this point, we almost thought that seventeen of us was overkill, but we didn't know that yet, so we had to go along with it.
"So, remember. Get in, destroy the generator, and get out. Do as little damage elsewhere as possible." Discord finished.
Fluttershy sheepishly raised a hand. "What if we bump into someone?"
"It depends. If they appear to be friendly, act casual and let them be on their way. If they do not appear to be friendly, knock them out."
Fluttershy gave Discord a look similar to a Fluttercry IRL.
"Okay. Any other questions? If not, we enter through the front gates in ten."
There was a quiet murmuring from the circle of people before everyone broke up to try and prepare themselves. I wasn't too concerned with getting ready, mainly because I couldn't take my mind off of what could happen after this was all over. I had no idea what was about to happen, but what I know happened happened a little too fast for my liking. Let me put you in my shoes: You wake up away from home as a friggin' cartoon character with amnesia, find the star of your favorite TV show. The next day, meet her friends, meet the enemy of the show, meet more humans, get both groups together, go to Earth, discover magic, meet Celestia. The next day... You know what, you get the point that all this shit happened in three and a half days.
Most of us were rather hungry, so I tried summoning food. Twilight said earlier that it was worthless, but I knew I had to give it a shot because we had no breakfast. So with that, a large box of energy bars and a couple bunches of bananas were soon in front of us.
{log status = idle}
[recording = false]
Location: Sacramento, California, USA
Date: June 17, 2012
Time: 8:55 AM
{log status = begun}
[recording = active]
A while after, when everyone was supposedly ready, we started making our way towards the front gate of the fenced in studio. It was fairly dramatic, but for some reason, was just downright weird. Well, I had never done anything intentionally illegal before this, so that could contribute to that feeling. I ignored it and kept walking.
Before I knew it, I was at the edge of the fence. There was a small white control booth at the right side of it with nobody inside.
"Tyler. Get in there and see what you can do to open this thing." Discord asked.
I had no problem getting inside the booth with teleportation, but when I was inside, I was shocked at the fact that there was nothing inside to open the gate. Was this a trap? The entire concrete ground shifted, then slid down a couple of inches. Shit! It was! I teleported as fast as I could out of the booth to find that the gate had actually opened, but a loud alarm had gone off throughout the studio.
"LISTEN! People are probably going to try and kill us VERY soon, so remember the plan Discord told us! PEGASI! TAKE THE ROOFTOPS! EARTH PONIES! SCOUT THE GROUND! THE REST OF US WILL BACK YOU UP! GO!" I tried to rally up the rest, and it actually seemed to work. The Pegasi were surprisingly prepared for this, for they had cut holes in the back of their shirts for their wings. They unfurled them and took off, all of six of them (even Woona) veering sharply to the left like a fighter wing, landing all of them on the curved roof of a studio directly to the left. The rest of us charged forward, blindly barreling towards an entrance to the tower. I heard a shouting voice above me as I was running.
"WATCH YOUR LEFT!" It was Dashie, supposedly warning us of a group beside us. We were almost at an intersection, and I had a perfect plan for getting past them. Well, at least a good plan for some of us. Run like Hell. The guards, who were in full black riot gear, about six of them, lowered Plexiglas shields and pulled rifles out right in front of us.
It all happened like a slow-motion, professionally choreographed dance. In one fluid motion, my entire lower half exploded in a fury of lightning again, sending me soaring over the line of guards as they opened fire on us. Meanwhile, below me, Applejack jumped about a foot in the air while turning around backwards and bucking the middle one in the face, sending him straight into the ground and his gun spinning. Walter, not being one to be fancy, simply tackled another to the ground as Walter did a parkour roll over him, probably breaking a couple of the guard's ribs, but definitely sending Walter back into sprinting across the concrete. I'm not sure what happened to the rest of them, but I know for sure a couple of them escaped unscathed, because the intimidating sound of rapid gunfire echoed the street behind us. I did hear a couple short bursts of flame, though, hinting that Spike may have had a part in the group's escape. My spark trick launched me ahead of the group, but that didn't mean that I didn't care about the rest of them. I looked back up at the rooftops to our left just in time to see the small group of six jump and glide diagonally across the street, landing with a "BOOM" on top of the studio to our right.
"How are you guys doing up there?" I asked them.
"Other than exhausted and horrified, absolutely fine." Celestia smartassed me. Huh. There's a concept. I made no response.
Back on the ground, all of us were still sprinting for our lives. We saw the tower come closer to us, but that raised few hopes, especially after Jackie spoke up. "GUARDS! SIX-O-CLOCK!"
We all looked behind us to find that a larger group of about ten was trailing us, and they were gaining. Luckily for us on the ground, the pegasi had a plan. Just as the guards had their guns out and were about to open fire on us, the pegasi jumped off of the roofs to our right, turned hard left, dived, and whooshed past us going in the opposite direction, plowing over several of the guards and stunning the rest, buying all of us time.
We kept running. It was hard for all of us to keep up with the pace the pegasi had set for us, but luckily, ponies must have had much more endurance than us humans, and we picked that up somehow in Equestria. I checked my heart rate to find it alarmingly slow for the amount of distance we were putting behind us. I impulsively wanted to shout "I'm not even winded!" in a Brooklyn accent, but that lead me to a much better idea from thinking of Team Fortress Two. The gun. I had seen one sliding across the ground when Applejack bucked one of the guards in the face at the first intersection. Location. The gun was flashy, automatic, and black. Object. I concentrated, and for one brief moment, everything in front of me went white.
After what seemed like minutes but couldn't have been longer than a second, the white faded and I was left with an assault rifle in my hands. Words cannot describe to you how badass I felt just then.
The tower was getting closer and closer by the second. By now it was fairly close, but I really couldn't tell how much longer it would be. It certainly wouldn't be short, though. We didn't even know where the entrance was...
"ON YOUR RIGHT!" A loud Jackie derailed my train of thought and sent it screeching to a halt, catapulting my mind into IRL awareness. Thank goodness for that, or I don't think I would have noticed the pack of intimidating guards charging at us from our right. Thankfully, I was still fired up (literally) and at the front of the group. The pack of enemies stopped in the middle of the intersection and ducked down into a defensive position. I loaded the gun I was holding and opened fire. I had good aim with haywire guns, with the practice gained through Nerf wars and paintball with geeky friends of mine. I managed to puncture the upper halves of several shields, giving the guards an unexpected retaliation and knocking a couple to the ground. Yes, I was trying to do that.
"Where the hell did you get that?" I heard a voice behind me say. I turned around to find that it was Alex and smirked at him.
"Found it." I replied.
Just because I had stunned a few of them didn't mean safety on my part, because that just gave the rest of them a green light to fire back. Thank god I wasn't the only one prepared for this wave. Twilight had some tricks up her own sleeves, and was already working on something else. I could only tell this by the over-determined look on her face and the sound of magic coming from her. Since I had a gun and a plan to run like hell, I had no interest in dealing with the rest of the guards, so my legs were sparked up once again.
I was about to perform another daring leap over the wave of baddies before I had actually noticed what Twi had did. As the guards pulled out their guns and were about to fire away, I saw the guns themselves. Twilight had summoned metal plugs directly into the barrels of the guns. And with a careless trigger pull on their part, the entire line of men in front of us had small explosions directly in front of them, followed by smoke, fire, and several destroyed guns and riot shields. Damn... Twilight just did something badass. I am proud.
"Nice work Twi!" I shouted behind me.
With their guns out of the way, they were easier to get past. I simply launched myself past them, while the rest of the group dealt with them in ways that I didn't see, mainly because I was still so far ahead.
We were close to the tower by now, and in the shadow of all its creepy steel evilness. There appeared to be a set of double-doors on the front, so we kept running towards it. The pegasi finally leapt off the roof and caught up to us again, looking just as exhausted as everyone else was. We all slid to a stop in front of the doors. Well, everyone except for me. I knew they weren't going to open easily because I saw an electronic lock on it just seconds before.
I sprinted towards the door. I got several looks from my fellow partners as I jumped about two feet in the air, braced for impact by putting my arms in blocking positions, and completely obliterating the doorframe in front of me. There was an explosion of glass and metal shrapnel in front of me as I barreled through. After I rolled out of my sprint, slid to a stop at the other side of the linoleum lobby, and the loud sound of glass scattering around the room stopped, I looked up to find that the entire rest of the group was gawking at me.
After a solid ten seconds of gloriously awkward silence, a voice finally spoke up. "Whatever happened to trying to keep the damage too a minimum? Besides, there was probably about infinity other ways that you could have opened that door." It was Bill.
"Yeah, but none of them were nearly as fast or badass." I replied through uneven breathing.
Bill rolled his eyes at me and looked backwards to find that although there wasn't as much commotion as before, the guards who weren't injured were coming at us. Fast.
"Shit! Quick! Find the stairwell!" Bill shouted at the rest of us.
I stammered back up and quickly surveyed the room for a way up. As I looked around the square lobby, I noticed a desk to my right and a waiting room to my right, and behind that was a small white door that read in small letters, Stairs.
I alerted the others about it and opened the door with magic, and soon we were in a grey and white, poorly lit stairwell.
"Remember, it was on the eighth floor!" I reminded everyone as we started our ascent. It was only after a single flight of stairs that the rest of the guards got into the shaft with us.
"Shit! GO! GO! GO!" I screamed at the rest of the group. It may have been too late. The guards were much faster at climbing stairs than we were, and within seconds they were directly behind us. The group clamored in chaos as the men took out guns and loaded them. And what seemed like several seconds of pure panic later, the first shot was fired. It was emotionally sickening to watch as Rainbow Dash, who was behind the entire group at the time, get struck in the shoulder by a devastating shot. The entire thing seemed to happen in slow motion, although seemed might have been a lie because I had no proof against the theory that I was witnessing it slowly; blood exploded out from behind her as it splattered on the wall behind her and she tumbled to the ground in pain.
Little did I know that I was next. I didn't realize how far behind the group I was at the time, and I suppose I just let the thought slip.
A second shot was fired. I heard it whizzing by me, just barely skimming my ear but drawing lots of blood.
A third shot was fired. This one drove straight into my gut, wrenching intense pain throughout my entire body rather than just my ear, making the first one feel like a warning shot. I suddenly couldn't breathe. I grabbed where I felt the shot to find warm blood seeping out of the wound. And I almost fell at the feeling of my own pain.
A fourth and final shot was fired. The target this time had it worse: Rarity... The other one at the back of the group. I almost felt time stop this time, but it wouldn't have made any difference this time. The shot screamed through the air and made its mark directly in the middle of Rarity's chest, hitting her heart and causing her to slump to the ground dead before she even had a chance to survive, leaving a crude stain of death on the wall behind her as I witnessed the last few moments of her life.
I did the first thing that came to mind. It was out of pure rage, but it bought us loads of time. The first thing I remember was pure hatred, followed by me screaming "YOU SON OF A BITCH!" and me suddenly going into a deep state of mental concentration, despite the intense emotional and physical pain I was going through at the moment. I remembered seeing a small car today. Object. It was in the parking lot of the motel. Place. And then thought. A massive crash echoed throughout the entire building as a car was summoned from nowhere and crushed the group of guards following us, plus the two sets of stairs beneath them as the car crumbled the concrete below them and landed with a few bursts of tortured screams and a deafening 'BOOM' below us.
I was shaking with pure rage at what had just happened. I wanted to collapse then and there, but there was still much to do. I did the first thing that came to mind from there. I turned backwards towards Dashie and dove at her. I flew down a half of a flight of stairs and parkour rolled out of it, which landed me next to her. I had no time to tell the rest of the group what I was about to do, so I did it. I embraced Dashie and teleported the fuck out of there.
We found ourselves in the motel again seconds later, on the bed in our room, with me beside her.
"What happened?" she cried out through trembling lips and a wobbly voice.
"Calm down and let me get you a bandage for this." I replied as I ran into the bathroom, got a towel, and ran back out to her. I wrapped her shoulder in the makeshift bandage after checking if the bullet was still in her. Luckily, it wasn't, but that meant that the wound went straight through to both sides.
"T-thanks..."
"No problem. Stay here."
I ran back to the bathroom in a desperate scramble to try and get the bullet out of me, which I knew for a fact was still in there. I quickly took my shirt off, noticing how bad the wound was already. I didn't know how to heal using magic, but I had to do something with what I already knew. Levitation.
It started with a stabbing pain as I tried to move the bullet out of me. I screamed and clenched the sink rim with a white-knuckled grip. I moved it another centimeter. It twisted the invisible knife, only worsening the pain and making some of my own blood to flow into the sink, making me gag with disgust and pain. I moved it further, just barely getting enough courage to take it out all at once. With one searing moment of pure hell, I ripped it out of me with full force as I nearly broke the ceramic sink out of intense pain.
It took me at least another half-minute to regain a proper breathing pattern and realize what I needed to do next: Patch my self up and get back to the rest of the group. I flung a towel behind me and tied it up in front of me, making a makeshift bandage in about ten seconds flat.
I teleported back to the stairwell to find that my group had risen four flights in the time it took me to patch up Rainbow Dash and myself. I met up with the rest of the group to see what was happening. They were walking, as it turned out. And everyone was fearing the news of Dashie and I, along with being completely traumatized about what happened to Rarity.
Francine noticed me behind the group and looked back with a frightened appearance. "What happened to Dash? Are you okay?"
"She's patched up and healing as we speak. I'm in a lot of pain, but hopefully I can push past that. We need to keep going for the moment though." I replied. There was an awkward moment of agreement on the group's part as we slowly continued up the stairwell.
Once the eighth floor was finally reached, we pushed open the door to find two things: One, we were now in a long, curved to the left hallway, and two, the hall was densely lined with guards.
"DAMN IT!" I shouted as I realized what I was looking at. My heart raced again. This time faster than ever, and I could tell that I would need it.
Pony instincts got the better of me in this situation. I had still yet to find out what those actually were, but for the moment, they were pretty damn useful. Almost unwillingly, although I had no problem with it what-so-ever, I used the mass levitation trick that Twilight had taught me to raise the guns of the twenty or so guards straight out of their hands and into the air above them. They were shocked by what had just happened, but that didn't stop them from trying to kill me. They knew for sure at this point what we were up to.
It started as one but quickly went to all of them. The man closest to the front of our group got up and charged at us, obviously ready for some good old-fashioned hand to hand combat. You'd better believe I was ready too, because before I knew it, I was at the front of the group and fighting. He swung his fist at me from my right; but I appeared to be faster than that to him after ducking and returning with a jabbing kick to the knee. He buckled down slightly, but that didn't mean that he had given up. By now, the rest of the guards were charging, and the group was flowing in beside me to counter them. However, I had no time to think of my friends, because I was dealing with my own problems. The guard in front of me stood back up and went into a blocking stance. I decided to screw with him a little by teleporting behind him and knocking him out. I watched him slump down to the ground. That wasn't very much of a challenge, but I didn't care; I was here to shut down the generator, and nothing else.
The hall was crowded with brawl, and there probably wasn't a square foot of the place that wasn't covered by a fight. Even the more timid characters got in the act, including Fluttershy and Twilight. Both of which, I might add, were kicking flank.
I had to find a way through. Teleportation was almost out of the question because I couldn't see an open spot in the hallway, so I tried something a little fancier. If you wanted to call it that, at least. Parkour. The densely populated neighborhood I was in provided several opportunities for freerunning, and I took full advantage of them. The thought of what to do next was a weird one, mainly because I didn't really have one. I had noticed that over thinking some things leads to self-doubt, and jumping into it usually just doesn't give you time to worry about your confidence.
I ran. It was only an area of about five feet that I had to use to accelerate, but it appeared to work, because I had some pretty good speed going before I jumped.
I jumped. It wasn't very high up or intense, but it gave me a good landing point directly on the helmet of the guard that Jackie was fighting, sending him tumbling to the ground.
I jumped again. This time I angled myself towards the right wall and ran alongside it, using the left curve of it to help me with running on the wall.
I ran again. This time my feet were conformed to the angle of the vertical wall, so it wasn't as painful as I anticipated. I careened over the heads of several people, eventually landing at the other end of the hallway with a thumping sound and the quick slap of feet running. I still had to find out where the room to the generator was, so I started frantically checking doors. And after what seemed like minutes of hectic searching while a full-out brawl was going on behind me, I finally found it through the door second to last on the right.
I kicked it open to find the room was set up like a control room, with some chairs and complicated electrical wires and equipment to the right, and the entire left side of the room was occupied with a dark, metal machine. The generator.
Still standing in the doorway, I turned around and called out to the others. "YO! IN HERE!" I had to scream at them just to get their attention. But soon enough, everyone had finished their fights and were in the room with me. Even Flootershai, who was quivering in fear at what she had just done to one of the guards.
I had apparently done a good job of rallying them, because in less than ten minutes, we had all badly injured a total of about thirty people and killed about ten. Not that I'm bragging or anything. But we did just kick some ass.
Discord had an idea to present to me. "Tyler. I trust you recall the EMP incident?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Try that again. But this time, think of disabling machines, not creatures."
"I can try..."
I focused as hard as I could at just destroying the generator. What happened next was quick, almost to the point that I couldn't perceive it. Just a split-second after I realized I was about to explode in a shock of lightning again, I heard the sound of a helicopter above the rooftops. I knew for sure I would have to hurry at this point, but that was no matter, because I already had my hands pressed against the machine and had lighting arcing through it.
It happened. First the air blast that directly followed the initial shock sent everything and everyone in the room away from me. Second was the machine rumbling completely out of my control. Third was the sight and the sound of a helicopter spiraling past our window and crashing to the ground a hundred feet below. Fourthly, and finally, the explosion that followed all of that.
I can safely say that I had never been blown up before. Because if I had, I would have certainly remembered it. First your hair slaps the back of your neck from the unrelenting and unexpected thermal wind coming from the fire. Then the sensation of speeding wind hitting your face with full power. Then the acceleration you feel from being catapulted backwards, directly followed by a burning feeling I can safely say that nobody wants to go through. All of this is followed by the unforgivably intense pain of feeling everything behind you being broken by your back as you are shot directly away from the explosion. And it hurt like a bitch.
The excruciating pain was also accompanied by the sight of you falling. And falling. And falling. Oh yeah, and blacking out. After, of course, landing.
It was an odd sight seeing your own point of view tell you that you were just shot out of a building. Even weirder was seeing all of my group mates join me in destroying walls with our bare backs, causing them to fly out of their own separate holes in the tower caused by their paths of destruction.
And the most bizarre thing I saw in the last few seconds I thought I was going to be alive? Watching the building that I was just in erupt in flames as the entire top three floors were obliterated with fire.
And THEN I blacked out.
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Location: Sacramento, California, USA
Date: June 18, 2012
Time: Unknown
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Several hours must have passed since I was knocked out by the intense jolt of landing on your back from eight stories up. I knew this because I was back on the bus once again. My eyes slowly crawled into a state of awareness as I found myself next to Pinkie Pie.
"Holy shit. What the hell just happened?" I absentmindedly asked her.
"OMIGOSH! HE'S UP!" she replied.
Before I could comprehend what was going on, the entire bus erupted in applause and cheer. Smiling and shy as can be, I slumped back into my seat. And for the first time in an entire week of insanity, right in the middle of the bus, I celebrated. Because we were alive.
I laughed and turned to Pinkie again.
"What happened after we landed?"
"It's a really weird story. The top of the building was blown up and we all fell from the tower, so some of us blacked out but all of us were hurt. You the worst, though. You were the last one to wake up, which is what just happened. But guess what!"
"What."
"Rainbow Dash is okay!... But Rarity isn't... I'll miss her." A tear rolled down her cheek.
I hugged her. "I will too."
"I guess it will be okay... But especially now because the humans invited us to stay with them in that cool valley town in the mountains!"
"Silverton? Really?"
"Yeah! Isn't that great?"
"It sure is."
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The Aftermath
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It's been a month since the adventure ended, but that doesn't mean anything. The collision between worlds may have been stopped from doing any real damage, but what was done could not be undone. And in this case, it was a lot. A ton, actually. You see, the entire race of Equestrians woke up as humans, and the entire race of humans woke up in Equestria. It's obvious how we know the first one, but about the second...
All seventeen of us are living in Silverton. I personally live in Bill's house, which to this day, still has the portal to the barn in Sweet Apple Acres. Cool part is, we seem to be the only ones to see it, let alone be able to use it. Which is nice, but I'd like to spread the peace of mind. Which I can't.
Thank God we can still use magic and fly. I never knew how I lived before it. Everything appears to be much easier now, although the problem is, we might not have been able to survive without it. The disappearance of humans on Earth led to a shortage in electricity and water, making us live off of the town stream. It's also nice to know that ponies can handle these kind of situations well.
Back in Equestria, the humans have brought on much of the heavy-duty Discord-grade chaos. No real government has been formed, leading everything to insanity. Luckily, they are surviving. And soon, (i hope, at least) a sense of order will appear.
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It has been an entire year since 'the incident' happened, as it later became to be known as. The ponies have already established a few governments, but that also means that a lot of cities and towns worldwide are abandoned.
However, back in Equestria, that meant overpopulation. Ponies have been dying frequently, and although I'm not for it, I think it is doing good. I say this because a democracy has been established in Canterlot!
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Two years have passed. The governments have helped tremendously in both Equestria and Earth, meaning that it's safe to roam between the two. I still choose Earth. Equestria has been kind of messed up lately. Some brony found Twilight's house and turned it into an internet shrine, but that went downhill fast after Twilight found the person who started it.
In other news, Princesses Celestia and Luna are finally taking over again, finally bringing total order to Earth again. Equestria has some catching up to do...
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Three years have gone by quickly. The governments have grown strong in both worlds, but especially Earth's. Electricity was rediscovered, and with that, the power plants and water treatment plants were reopened.
I recently had an awkward reunion with my parents in Equestria. The order has increased there, letting more and more citizens get to know each other. The day that ponies were required to wear nametags was the day I found my mom. And there was much rejoicing.
With electricity in Earth also came more sophisticated forms of entertainment. TV and radio stations slowly started coming up from there.
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Four years. The rediscovery of amusement parks led to Dashie riding her first coaster at Cedar Pointy. The name? Corkscrew. Happened to be my first inverting coaster. That was soon followed by Mantis, then Wicked Twister, then Magnum XL-200, and finally, Millennium Force. So it's official; I made a coaster enthusiast. /)*3*(\
Equestrians tried out their hooves at electricity and skyrocketed their expansion rates of the cities in their world. And speaking of electricity, parts of the internet have started going up recently. Again, /)*3*(\.
I still visit my parents in Equestria almost daily, but it's become hard to detain them from where I've been going when I'm not in Equestria.
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Five years. It's been one hell of a ride to get here, but it happened. The economies of Earth as well as Equestria have been mostly restored, letting each race work out every aspect of the other's culture, religions, and trades. Through this, we found out that ponies were spread out entirely throughout the world, as well as humans throughout the MLP planet. Equestria was just one country out of the hundreds, like the U.S. is too the world. And even though that my life is barely over, I still feel as though I have probably had enough adventure for a lifetime.
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Signing;
_o_u_t_
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