Chapter 1: Petty Bounty
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Isaac slowly opened his eyes and became aware of his surroundings. Realizing that he was still in Equestria, he grunted and stood up. Based on where he had just woken up, Isaac concluded that he had fallen asleep while gathering information; this was supported by the fact that he had woken up with his head buried in an Equestrian history textbook.
Looking at a clock on the wall, he realized that it 7:47 in the morning and that he seemed to be the only one awake. Remembering the fact that he, Robert and Jack were to receive their apartment today, and that since today happened to be the date of Jack's first magic lesson, he and Robert would procure their new residence.
"Hey, what's up?"
Isaac immediately spun around, not at all expecting anybody else to be awake. Even stranger was the fact that he seemed to be the only person in the room.
"What the fuck…?" Isaac muttered under his breath as he looked around.
"Ahem. Down here, buddy," The voice said. Isaac looked down, and to his shock, there stood a short, purple lizard-thing staring up at him with an unsure look on his face.
"There we go," The lizard said, a smug grin on its face.
"Who the hell are you?" Isaac asked, resisting the urge to just punt the little fucker into the wall and be on his way.
"I'm Spike, Twilight's dragon assistant!" The little fucker replied happily.
'Okay, so not a big lizard, but a tiny dragon. Because those apparently exist too…fuck this world.' Isaac thought.
"So, I'm guessing you're one of the guys from that other world, or whatever it was?" Spike continued.
"Pretty much," Isaac replied, clearly not interested in conversation.
"So, why are you up so early anyway?" Spike asked.
"None of your goddamn business…" Isaac grunted. With that, he headed upstairs to wake Robert.
/
Robert and Isaac wordlessly walked through the streets of Ponyville, heading towards the apartment building in which they would receive their residence. The town had quieted down considerably since last night, with the news of Isaac's outburst all but forgotten by the populous.
"So…" Robert mumbled, attempting to break the ice. "You have a plan for gettin' us past the stage of living in a shitty apartment with no cash?"
Isaac thought for a few seconds before responding.
"I've got a plan," He replied with a nod. "I'll put the information I received during the fight to good use and build some weapon prototypes for the military."
"I heard that they haven't even discovered gunpowder here," Robert said, so far agreeing with the plan; Equestria's current military was centuries behind in technology, and with the constant guarding of the northern border against monsters, they would most likely jump on the chance to have more advanced weapons for the purpose of protecting the country more efficiently.
"Yeah…" Isaac muttered. "Even though they've already built fuckin' steam locomotives. Anyway, we'll hopefully get ourselves a contract to keep designing weapons for the military, which'll give us enough funds to get a better residence and more importantly, better equipment. The problem is going to be getting the initial amount of money necessary for constructing a weapon prototype of the type I'm thinking of."
"Ballistic weapon?" Robert asked.
"That's right," Isaac replied.
"Chemically propelled?"
"Yup."
"Mass-murder with the press of a button?"
Isaac nodded, a smirk on his face.
/
Despite his trepidation, Jack had found his introductory magic lesson somewhat interesting. Twilight had given him crash courses in magic-related concepts such as magical reservoirs (a unicorn's well of energy that they could draw power from in order to perform magic), mana particles (the magic-carrying particle that operates mostly on the quantum level), and how different formations of mana particles could yield different results on the macroscopic level. It was a far cry from Jack's previous vision of magic, with it being some kind of ridiculous, reality-bending bullshit that would probably piss Isaac off. Even though Jack was no physics expert, he was able to absorb most of the information due to it being pretty basic stuff.
"I think that will be enough for today," Twilight said, setting down her quill. The chart she'd been using was completely covered with small diagrams and charts. Thankfully she had accommodated Jack's preference to visual learning, or else he would have probably fallen asleep by now. "How are you doing? Do you understand all this."
"Eh, more or less," Jack replied, his attention span mostly used up. "Am I free to go now? Because I wanna go and check if Isaac and Robert got the apartment and shit."
Just as Twilight was about to give her response, her and Jack's attention was immediate directed towards Spike, who was clenching his stomach and looked as if he were about to projectile vomit.
"Hey Spike…You okay?" Jack asked, not really sure what was going on, and slightly unnerved by Twilight's fairly indifferent expression.
Almost as if on cue, the front door opened.
"Hey, what's going-wait, what the fuck?!"
Robert and Isaac stood by the front door with the papers for their apartment and confused expressions on their faces.
"Is he supposed to be doing that?" Robert asked, not exactly sure what to make of the scene. Isaac remained silent, somewhat amused by Spike's apparent agony, and waiting to see how it would all unfold.
After one final gag, Spike reared his scaly head back and burped out a torrent of emerald flame, a sealed roll of parchment coming out with it. Spike coughed before nonchalantly picking up the scroll. "Jeez, that could've come out easier…"
Three pairs of eyes immediately looked unto Twilight.
"Twilight?" Robert asked.
"Yes…?" Twilight asked with slight trepidation.
"What the hell was that?"
Twilight's expression immediately lightened. "Oh, that!" She chuckled. "Well, my assistant Spike here has the ability to use his dragon fire for the purpose of magically transporting objects over infinitely large distances!"
"Duh." Spike said, rolling his eyes and scoffing at how the former humans couldn't understand something so blatantly obvious.
"Don't lie to me, you piece of-"
"-What's the scroll say?" Robert interjected quickly, cutting off Isaac.
Spike opened the scroll and started reading it out loud. "Hear ye, hear ye, Her Grand Royal Highness Princess Celestia of Equestria, is pleased to announce The Grand Galloping Gala to be held in the magnificent capital city of Canterlot, on the 21st day of, uh, blah blah" He said skipping over the little details. "Cordially extends an invitation to Twilight Sparkle plus on guest!" Spike took the two tickets from the page, and put them on the table.
"The Grand Galloping Gala!" Twilight said excitedly.
"What the hell is-" Isaac stopped himself after realizing something. "Wait, why do I even give a fuck?"
"Sounds lame," Was Jack's reply; it didn't strike him as the type of event that would feature heavy drinking and gambling.
Robert contemplated playing the Devil's Advocate before deciding on the position of apathy.
"Let's just go to the apartment," Isaac suggested, having already forgotten about Twilight and her inane ramblings centering around the Gala.
And with that, the equine douchebags swiftly left the library, leaving a miffed Twilight and bored Spike.
/
For the past twenty minutes or so, the former humans had been preoccupied with arranging the preexisting furniture in the apartment to the optimal arrangement before being interrupted by frantic knocking emanating from the door.
Isaac's head snapped in the direction of the door, and hastily approached it with an annoyed grunt with Robert and Jack following suite.
"What the hell do you want?" Isaac said angrily as he opened the door, revealing a concerned and out-of-breath Spike.
Spike proceeded to go on a fast, frantic rant on how Twilight was doing something stupid, and that other ponies were arguing about something. Isaac promptly smacked Spike upside the head mid-rant.
"Use your fucking words," he deadpanned. Spike, although taken aback slightly, nodded and took a deep breath before continuing.
"Twilight couldn't decide who to give the extra ticket to, so she asked her friends why they would want to go to the Gala, and now everyone knows about her ticket, and now everyone's stalking her and trying to bribe her for the ticket," Spike inhaled deeply, "And now everyone's arguing with each other and it's really annoying!"
The former humans exchanged confused glances. "What's your point?" Isaac asked.
"My point is that she needs your guys' help!" Spike replied, dramatically throwing his arms up.
"Fuck no!" Isaac replied, having no intention of ever helping Twilight again.
"What if I paid each of you twenty bits?"
The demeanor of the former humans took a complete 180, with pure determination engraved in their facial expressions.
"Where are they?"
/
"Why the hell did you let Spike leave us?"
The three douchebags trotted down one of Ponyville's primary roads, attempting to find the location of the six idiot ponies. This task was made exponentially more difficult due to the fact that Spike had run off on a self-described 'errand' as soon as they left the apartment building.
"I didn't, dipshit," Isaac retorted. "If what you told me about Spike only being here for less than two days is true, why would anyone assume that he'd know the layout of this place better than us?"
The former humans stopped in their tracks as they prepared to partake in the activity that had consumed the vast majority of their life; standing around and going off on huge tangents while simultaneously arguing with each other over trivial things.
While Isaac and Jack flung profanity-laced logical arguments at each other, Robert caught something in the corner of his eye.
"Is that Big Macintosh?"
Isaac and Jack immediately turned to face him.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Jack asked, Isaac's perplexed expression leaving no words to be said.
Robert pointed to a large red pony walking down the middle of the road. "He's the brother of one of the ponies from the party, so he might know where she and the others are."
Isaac nodded and cleared his throat, "Hey, Macintosh! Over here!"
This got the stoic horse's attention immediately, and he walked over to them.
"Hey, do you know where we-" Isaac was cut off by a loud rumbling sound and panicked cries of several ponies.
They looked over at the road only to be met with the sight of a large wagon filled with an indiscernible cargo racing down the slanted dirt road, the ponies in the street quickly getting out of the way.
They were surprised; due to the relatively low amount of noise the cart had made prior to barreling down this particular street, Macintosh would have most likely neglected to hear it and possibly have been hit by the speeding cart if Isaac hadn't gotten his attention, which had caused him to move off to the side of the road.
Expecting some kind of reaction, the trio was slightly confused at the sight of Macintosh's stoic expression, but dismissed it quickly.
Isaac turned to Macintosh and cleared his throat. "You know where your sister and her friends are?"
Giving no verbal response, Macintosh simply gestured towards the area that the downhill road led. Upon closer inspection, one could see and hear small crowd of ponies arguing. Seeing that the trio noticed them too, Macintosh continued down his path, giving the impression that nothing had transpired at all.
"Well, at least he's not fuckin' annoying like everyone else here," Jack remarked.
With that, they ran towards the small mob.
/
As Twilight clenched her ears in a futile attempt to drown out the sound of intense argumentation that surrounded her, an unfortunately familiar voice came right out of the blue.
"FOR GOD'S SAKE, SHUT UP!"
The bickering between friends over a ticket was stopped dead in its tracks with the sudden interruption. The six ponies turned to be met with the sight of the three certain individuals, their expressions automatically becoming those of restrained contempt, save for Rainbow Dash, whom let her animosity towards one of the individuals be read loud and clear.
"What the hay do you want?" Rainbow Dash spat.
"Spare us the bullshit," Isaac muttered under his breath before clearing his throat and continuing in a more level tone. "Your compatriot Spike hired us to assist the six of you with your problem regarding the Gala ticket."
Some of the ponies looked surprised at this revelation, Twilight included.
"Okay…" Twilight's tone was one of uncertainty. "Then what do you suggest I do?"
"Just return the extra ticket and let some other fucker buy it," Robert suggested bluntly, much to the approval of his two peers.
The ponies murmured amongst themselves while Twilight appeared to be deep in thought.
Suddenly, Twilight's expression became one of optimism.
"I've got it!" She declared with a wide smile.
Before anyone could ask, she teleported away in a flash of light, presumably to the library.
The remaining ponies exchanged blank glances, before simultaneously making a beeline towards the library.
/
Barely managing to keep up with the obsessed ponies, Isaac and his compatriots followed them to the library, where Rainbow Dash unceremoniously kicked the door open and entered. The others followed suite.
Upon entering, they noticed Twilight and Spike standing in the middle of the room, both of them looking rather damn pleased with themselves. The smell of smoke and wisps of green flame were present near Spike, a sign that he had just sent off a letter.
Pushing his way to the front of the crowd, Isaac hoped that Twilight had done the sensible thing and sent the ticket back so he could get his fucking money and never have to speak to her again.
"Did you send it back?" He inquired, everyone awaiting an answer.
"Even better!" Twilight said, beaming.
Before anyone could ask what she meant, Spike interjected by vomiting green flame across the room, followed by a sealed scroll that Twilight plucked out of the air and opened telekinetically.
Out of the scroll came nine tickets labeled 'Grand Galloping Gala', eliciting cheers from the idiot ponies as Twilight distributed the tickets amongst them, Spike and the trio receiving tickets as well.
"You just asked for more tickets?" Jack muttered, looking at the ticket in his hoof. "I could've thought of that…"
"Keep dreaming," Isaac snarked.
"So…I guess we're going?" Robert asked as he observed the mares rambling on about what activities they would partake in during the Gala.
"It's free, so why the fuck not?" Jack said with a smirk. "It's either that, or we sell our tickets for a shitload of cash!"
At the mention of capital, Isaac remembered their deal with Spike.
"Hey, Spike!" He said loudly, catching said dragon's attention.
"Hm?"
"Pay up." Isaac deadpanned.
"Oh, that!" Spike went and retrieved a moderately-sized sack of bits, proceeding to hand it to Isaac. "Sixty in total."
"Good." Isaac replied in a flat tone.
"So…yeah," Spike said awkwardly. "In the future, would you and your friends be willing to help me and my friends if I paid you guys the right amount?"
Isaac pondered this for a moment.
"As long as the pay correlates with the task," He replied with slight trepidation.
"Awesome!" Spike said with a grin as he held out his hand, Isaac reluctantly shaking it with his hoof before quickly returning to the marginally superior company of his fellow douchebags.
"So, I guess we've finally got a way to get money?" Robert asked, eyes never leaving the bag.
"That about sums it up," Isaac replied.
Jack looked around the room, everyone else occupied with their respective conversations. "We should go ahed and leave. Y'know, to get the money secure and shit."
"Good idea," Isaac replied with a nod, quickly following Robert and Jackson out of the library and towards the apartment, eager to store the money and brainstorm ideas of how to quickly get more. Isaac thought of Equestria's seemingly nonexistent demand for energy, and a brilliant idea tore through his head.
Step one of his plan was about to be in effect.
/
While this chapter is short relative to the prologue, they will increase in volume.
Please comment, review, and give your earnest feedback.
