The walk had not been a comfortable one thus far.

Both parties knew what subject needed to be broached, but neither was willing to be the one to say it, the Pegasus due to nerves and the Human because if she didn't actually know what Hazama thought she knew, then him revealing himself as intelligent would only confirm her fears.

And hell, he didn't even know if she knew what he thought she did. Her suspicious glances could have been for an entirely different reason as far as he was concerned.

Out of habit, he closed his eyes and rested a hand upon his hat, slipping the other one into a trouser pocket as he walked by her side. The horse glanced at him again, unsure whether or not he could actually travel with his eyes shut like that. When he didn't bump into anything within a few minutes, she uneasily left him to it.

They'd made their way past the market, the horse having lead him skirting around the edges to make sure they didn't come across the scene of the attack, though she did stop briefly to pick up an apple from the basket Hazama had placed on the floor earlier. He didn't know whether the avoidance of the market was because of her squeamishness, or the questions they might get asked by the Guard.

He had thought he'd covered his actions so well, too, but he hadn't at all considered the fact that a whole squad of armed horses would show up. In retrospect, it shouldn't have been surprising, but Hazama had thought the technology level of the world too low to get a message out in times of duress.

Should have known those winged horses would have had their uses, as well as the magic that thirty-three percent of the population seemed to have. It was a tad jarring to have so many regular citizens be adepts in certain types of magic, whereas people in his world considered it fairly exclusive to have enough aptitude to wield an Ars Armagus.

That was another thing. Outside of the massive crystal-whatever-it-was, the town looked like a generic small hamlet. If the residents here had magic that was decently strong, he imagined the people powerful enough to live in the city up on that cliff in the distance would be a larger concern.

And it also reminded him vaguely of the Hierarchical Cities of his home-world, so going up there would have to be written down in the calendar in order to check for other similarities.

He noticed that the yellow horse he'd been following had stopped in the middle of the road, squinting up into the sky. Following her example, he glanced up, and saw nothing but sky. The clouds were a bit close to the ground, but nothing out of the ordinary. Yet the Pegasus seemed to hum and frown as she examined whatever she'd seen more closely.

She eventually decided that whatever it was didn't concern her, and shook her head, continuing on her path but only after sending another look back in his direction.

He wished she'd stop doing that and actually get to the point of what she wanted to know. That way he could decide if she needed to be silenced or not, or if an escape needed to be made.

Silently, Hazama hoped that it wouldn't come to murder on his first day in a new world. The whole point was to start anew, damn it!

But if the horse showed any signs of trying to purge him from the world as a freak of nature, he'd gladly show her why she had every right to be afraid of an intelligent Human.

She'd stopped again, annoyingly. Right in his way, causing him to bump into her side. She froze up when he did so, turning her head slowly to look up at his bemused expression.

Right after he took a step back to break her free of whatever spell she'd just come under, she gawped in his direction, swiftly correcting herself when she caught him staring.

Hazama grew somewhat concerned when she turned around fully to face him.

They were in the middle of the road between the house the horse lived in, and the town they'd just left. Nobody was around as far as he could tell, and he could tell quite a lot. So no ambush… It was just them, the sky, and the ground beneath their feet. The wind caused the coat-tails on his suit to flap aimlessly as silence pervaded the space around them.

Without a word, the horse drew the apple she'd taken earlier out of her bag and, retaining purposeful eye contact with him, grasped a nearby leaf and placed the fruit on top of it. She put the makeshift plate onto the floor between them, backing away once the work was done.

Hazama cocked his head to the side, eyes opening properly as he wondered what exactly her game was. This could be a trick of some sort, but what? Obviously she expected him to take the apple, but why the leaf? An animal wouldn't have cared if the fruit was slightly dusty or not.

He took a step closer, carefully watching the horse's expression as he bent lower to the ground, hand hovering above the apple. Not wanting to look too cautious, he quickly swiped the apple, holding it up in front of his face.

The Pegasus seemed to be holding her breath, waiting for him to do something, so he took a bite out of the side, humming slightly when he confirmed that it was as juicy as the last two he'd eaten. Still no change in her demeanour, so he took another bite. Then another.

And he kept going until the apple was just a core, but the horse still seemed expectant of something. Clearly expecting him to do something that implied intelligence or a civilised nature.

So instead what he did was absently drop the core to the ground, letting the slightly browning fruit land on the dirt. The horse exhaled, and looked down at the apple core. Then back up at him, taking shuddering breaths.

"Y-You… You d-didn't eat the core."

'Oh shit.'

"You seem to understand everything that's going on…"

'Fuck.'

"Y-You're comfortable with clothes..."

'Fuckfuckfuck' Hazama hissed internally, legs tensing as he prepared to make a break for it, into the treeline that wasn't too much of a distance away. He had no doubt that he was faster and stronger than this horse, or any other horse for that matter.

The horse sucked in oxygen again, and pointed a shaky forehoof in his direction, taking a step back, and then another.

"You're a Changeling!" She cried out, looking as though she was about to bolt in that very instant.

'Time to get the hell out of- wait, what?' Hazama paused, processing just what had been said.

What the fuck was a Changeling? Judging from the name it was… Something that changed. And was also a ling. Hell if he knew. It was obvious that whatever a Changeling was, it scared the living daylights out of the horse, given how she was shuddering so hard that it looked like she was vibrating.

He assumed a Changeling would shapeshift in some way, so apparently she thought he was disguised as a Human to murder them in their sleep or something. He could do both of these things quite easily if need be, so she was half right, at least.

"T-That's it! You're here to e-eat our love!"

…

'Excuse me, I must have misheard that. Thing with my ear, been with me all my life. It has the tendency to flare up whenever something retarded happens. What manner of bullshit did you just say to me?' Hazama groaned audibly, rubbing his left temple with two fingers.

'Eat our love'. That was just… So unimaginably fitting with his perception of these fucking horses.

Of course, something that can disguise itself and slip around unnoticed does not kill in this world. Nope, they 'eat love' and that's what they're scared of.

He just… Needed a minute.

He got to five seconds.

Then his head tipped backwards, causing him to have to hold his hat atop his head. He took a deep breath. And then he started laughing his ass off.

It took a lot of Fluttershy's willpower to not scream in fear when the disguised Changeling started guffawing.

The sight was terrifying. Humans should never be able to laugh, and this confirmed her Changeling theory.

Rows of teeth, unlike any set she'd ever seen on a Human. As white as she'd previously seen, but now she could make out different shapes, much different than that of a normal Human. The middle group of shapes and the teeth next to them were serrated and pointed, respectively, designed for biting and tearing away at meat rather than plants.

They were wide open with the force of the creature's laughter, and it frightened her to death.

That sound just didn't fit with anything she'd ever heard before. It sounded… Manic. Like someone had just heard the biggest and greatest joke in the world. It was high pitched and very loud, making Fluttershy wince whenever its voice peaked.

There were tears leaking out from the sides of his eyes, and while she took it as the thing disguised as a Human expressing even more joy, Hazama was in fact crying while laughing, lamenting the fact that this was the type of world he was stuck in for his new life.

Where pastel coloured horses were scared of the love-eating boogeymen.

She didn't know why she hadn't run, yet. If she was still around when it stopped screeching in laughter, it would surely attack her, hypnotise her, and take her away to its hive where she'd never escape and be trapped forever and she wouldn't know because she'd be slowly getting all the feelings drained from her body and oh Celestia why did this happen why did she not tell the others what she suspected she was going to die.

The laughter had stopped during her panic attack, and she noticed that the thing was looking at her with an odd expression, like a teacher looking with false interest at an awful drawing that a child had made.

Another last bout of chuckling escaped its lips, which was far more manageable than the uproar from earlier.

It seemed to be looking around for something, patting the pockets on its suit until its expression finally brightened, dipping into the pocket on its torso and pulling out a notepad and pencil.

What was it doing? Was it scribbling a crude diagram of what it was about to do to her? Oh Celestia, that was it, wasn't it!? It was going to taunt her with pictures of her crying friends never being able to see her again, the fiend!

With one last private giggle, it tore the small sheet of paper from the spine of the bad with a ripping sound that made Fluttershy flinch again.

When it handed it to her, she read words that she absolutely wasn't expecting.

'My name is Hazama, thank you very much, and I assure you I'm definitely a Human. Also Changelings sound… really stupid, just thought I'd throw that out there.' It read.

She looked up at the Human, who had an utterly bemused expression on his face, the ghost of a frenzied grin quirking the left side of his lip.

Just as she made to comment on the absurdity of a Human that could write, she spotted a blur approaching from above and behind him, out of his line of sight.

It was Rainbow Dash. So she had been hiding on the cloud she'd spotted earlier! She didn't trust her to make it home safely? That was a little presumptuous of her.

And then she realised that she'd shouted her suspicions to the sky earlier, believing the two of them to be outside of the earshot of any listeners. Her jaw dropped open.

The Human's expression quirked awkwardly as she stared in horror, until he focused more on where her eyes were facing. He let out a loud groan, rolling his amber eyes.

And then he promptly jumped to the left, just as Rainbow Dash came shooting past him with a cry of 'Gotcha now, dirty Changeling!' and then promptly impaled herself into the ground like a javelin.

Fluttershy shouted her friend's name, and held a hoof out in surprise, unable to do much more thanks to the combined shock of the past three minutes, when a slip of paper was again pushed into her view.

'If she asks, there was another butterfly.'

Now it was Fluttershy's turn to giggle.