(POV - Jason)

Pain. All I knew was pain, and my world was dark. I floated through a void of nothingness, deprived of all senses. It was a few moments later that my faculties started to come back to me. The first thing to return was my hearing, for which I was glad, as I heard someone pacing around, muttering to herself(?).

"Ooohhhh, what am I gonna do? Should I inform the guard? No, wait, then they'll just lock it up without question. But if I take it to the hospital, there's no telling what'll happen to it over there either. Oh, I wish Bon Bon were here to help. She'd know what to do with it."

Next to come back was feeling, and my head fucking hurt, a lot. Then there was smell, touch, and finally, sight. While I got my senses back, the unicorn continued to pace and think aloud to herself. After a few more seconds, I couldn't take it anymore, and decided to interrupt her ramblings by getting up.

"Ow, my fucking head. Next time, just pin me to the wall or something; you're lucky you didn't cause a concussion, or fracture my skull."

It seemed I surprised her, because she screamed again, "Aaahhhh! What are you!? Why are you here? How'd you get into my house? Are you going to - " I put a finger on her lips to shush her so I could think clearly without getting an even bigger headache.

"One, I'm a human. Two, I'm not sure why I'm here. Three, magic, I think. Four, no, I'm not going to hurt you. Just don't smack me with a frying pan again and we're all good." The unicorn looked at me sheepishly, her beautiful amber eyes clearly conveying the regret and sadness she felt over the action.

"I'm sorry, I just reacted, and grabbed the closes thing to use, which incidentally was the frying pan. I was just really scared for a moment. You'd be too if some unknown creature came into your house suddenly."

"Yeah, I guess I would..." I trailed off as I looked around what seemed to be a living room, or common room to all the weird people. There was a bookcase off to the right side of the room, a few pictures hung up on the walls around the room, and a window to the left of the room. I plopped down on the couch that was behind me, where the unicorn currently had herself curled up on, on the far left side. I politely gave her most of the couch as I sat down on the far right side, leaving the middle cushion empty. A coffee table sat just in front of the couch, and what seemed to be a cedar chest with a record player and radio built into either side of it sat in the center of the wall opposite to the couch, flanked by two more bookshelves. All of them were stuffed with what seemed to be varying degrees of books, if I could read them.

"So, one question: where's my bag? The black thing I had on my back with two straps on it?"

The unicorn's eyes lit up, "Oh, that thing. I moved it into another room for safe keeping until I could figure out what to do with you. I still don't know what to do about you."

"Uh, that's got all of my belongings in it. As in literally, all I own is in that bag. I have nothing else to my name. For all I know I'm stuck here, and I have no idea how to get back."

"For not being able to go home, you seem pretty calm."

"There's not really much for me to go back to, aside from failing out of college, and no one else in my family. I'm the last of them. The way I see it, I'd have a much more interesting life here than back home anyway, so not being able to get home doesn't really bring me down."

She scrunched her nose at me in confusion, which looked absolutely adorable. "You're weird."

"Well if I wasn't weird, I'd be having a very different reaction to being here, and I don't think either of us would like it."

We both shared a laugh at the thought, and I held out a hand to her after we calmed down, "I'm Jason, and it seems that you have me at a disadvantage, miss..."

The unicorn looked at my hand with trepidation clearly on her face. She seemed calm before, though that could've just been her feeling that I wasn't deceiving her while talking. Giving a hand (hoof?) shake was on another level, as she had yet to physically come into contact with me. She still seemed a little shaken up from not knowing what to do with me, though talking did seem to be helping a little bit with that. It looked as though she still didn't know whether to trust me, but also looked as if she wanted to at least try.

Finally, after several seconds, she slowly sat up on her haunches and extended her right foreleg to my hand. She jumped a little when I grasped her hoof in my hand, but caught on when I slowly shook our appendages up and down. When she seemed to be calm enough, she finally gave me a name. "Lyra, my name's Lyra Heartstrings. Do you have a surname, or is that even a part of your culture?"

"Oh no, I have a surname, it's just too complicated for even me to pronounce so I just don't bother with it."

I let go of her hoof, which she just noticed I had still been holding, and blushed a little, "Come on, it can't be that bad."

I sighed and slumped a little, "Ok fine; my surname is Kakukiyashi... Holy crap I managed to not butcher it this time."

Lyra laughed a little, "Yeah, I can imagine why you choose to not say your last name. That would be a nightmare for me to remember how to pronounce."

A couple moments of silence passed between us, though neither of us minded. It was a minute later that I had decided to say something. "While I was coming to, I heard you mention some sort of guard. Judging by that, one would expect it to either be a stand-in for a police force, or actually be some sort of royal guard. Going from there, this country or whatever you want to call it would then be ruled by a king and queen, or something similar. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were considering handing me over to the guard, but were afraid of what the rulers would think of me, right?"

It seemed I had broken Lyra, as she just sat there with her mouth open. I couldn't help myself and brought my hand over to just under her jaw, and closed her mouth. "Don't do that, you'll catch flies." Lyra just continued to stare at me for another few seconds before she started sputtering what seemed to be an attempt at a response. She finally nailed it after a few tries.

"How? How were you able to come up with that from just one thing?"

I patted her on the head, "Elementary my dear pony friend, elementary." She scrunched up her nose in frustration and I just laughed, "Ok ok, no, it was lateral thinking. Normally, one wouldn't have guards in a town unless it's close to the capital of the country, which in turn facilitates that there is a ruling body instead of another type of government that doesn't involve royalty."

Lyra moved her head away from my hand, "I guess that makes sense when you think about it, but it's still crazy that you picked up on all that from a single thing."

I pulled my hand back to my side and put it into my pocket. "Human intelligence can be a scary thing sometimes, but that doesn't automatically mean that I'm evil. Like the saying goes: "It's not the power you have that makes you evil, it's how you use it that does." What if I were granted an audience with the ruling bodies? Then we wouldn't have to dance around the issue of whether to trust me or not."

"But what about the guard, or or," I put a finger on her lips again to stop Lyra from panicking and going into a spiral with her thoughts.

"It'll be fine; just go grab a guard, tell them that you have something to show to whoever rules here, and make sure to tell them that I'm intelligent so they don't do something stupid." Lyra nodded, and I took my finger away from her lips... which were incredibly soft. I wonder if that's a trait of all ponies, or something that she does with her coat or whatever. It felt really nice.

Lyra got up from the couch and walked to the front door. "Oh, leave your bag here when we go to the captial; I don't think you'd want the royal sisters going through your personal belongings," She called behind her as she walked through and closed the door to the house.

(POV - Lyra)

I walked out the door just after I advised Jason to leave his bag where I had put it while we're out having an audience with the princesses, if we even manage to get one that is. I still don't know what to do about this whole situation though. Sure, I've talked with him and he seems nice enough, but I don't know how to deal with what's going on overall - I have no idea what's going to happen with the rest of the town, whether or not I'm going to be either punished or commended for attempting to befriend an unknown creature that just happened to pop into this world and right into my house without any forewarning or fanfare. I'm still hesitant on asking for an audience with the princesses, but it seems to be the only logical thing to do in order to ease tensions the fastest without any misunderstandings happening.

I shook my head to clear myself of the negative thought spiral I was about to get myself into, 'No Lyra, getting into those thoughts will do you no good. Just get to a guard and see what can be done.' Without another thought, I started to gallop into the direction of a guard that seemed to be quite bored. After a second I thought better of the action and slowed my pace down a bit before he noticed my hurried pace - wouldn't want a guard thinking that there was any actual trouble going on, or things could be a pain later. With a smile I trotted up to the guard and greeted him.

"Hello, I'd like to speak with you for a minute." The guard took a second to see if I was talking to anyone else, and then gestured to himself.

"You're talking to me?" The royal guard looked a little confused, as if no one had even bothered with his existence let alone at least give him a friendly hello.

"Yes, I was talking to you. I have a bit of an issue - it's nothing bad! It's just that I've come into a situation that would benefit from having one of the princesses give their opinion. If you would follow me, I'd be able to give you a little more insight into what's going on before anything else is done."

The guard took a minute to weigh his options, and eventually agreed to follow me back to my home, "Alright miss, lead the way."

With the guard following, I made my way back home. Ultimately, the whole thing still made me a little nervous, but it was a better idea than to just barge into the castle and have Jason in tow. Who knows what would've happened if we did that instead. Teleporting itself isn't a difficult spell, but the power requirement grew exponentially base upon distance in all dimensions; this is why most unicorns don't bother with learning how to teleport. They're just incredibly lazy when it comes to exercising their mana capacity.

Eventually we reached my home, and I turned to the guard before I opened the door. "Just promise me one thing: before you do anything, think and use your common sense."

The guard shifted uncomfortably, "Ma'am, what is it that you've got in your home? If it's a dangerous creature, then I'm going to have to arrest you for attempting to bring harm to a guard."

I shook my head at the statement, "No, it's not a dangerous creature... As far as I can tell... But it's something that Equestria hasn't seen before, and I just wanted your word that you wouldn't unnecessarily try to hurt him as soon as you see him."

The guard raised an eyebrow, "Him," he asked questioningly.

I sighed and opened the door, "Let's just go inside. It's easier if you just see him first before I try to explain any more."

The two of us walked inside, and what we saw would have been funny if it weren't for the current situation at hoof. Jason sat on the couch, feet kicked up on the coffee table as he munched on an omelet with what looked like provolone cheese, green and red peppers, and spinach. He swallowed what he was currently chewing on, and put down the knife and fork as he smiled and waved at us from the couch. "Oh hey, you're back. And you brought a friend along, how cuuuute!~"

The guard facehoofed, "Sometimes I feel I don't get paid enough to deal with some of the stuff that happens in this town..."