-_-_- + ^ |*| ^ + -_-_-
I wasn’t sure how long I could’ve held on to that leg. However, since I was hoping she’d pull Flutterguy on us and never speak another word, I let go at the first kick to the ribs. It was a gentle kick, no broken bones, only pain. Thank goodness she didn’t turn out to be the most talkative of ponies, yet everytime she opened her mouth I had to cover my ears and start singing Winter Wrap Up in my head (French version is best version).
It wasn’t just that her voice was torture, but she also had the strangest accent. Like an Eastern European who’d learned English in Little Italy. I asked AJ about it.
“Why are you asking me? Ria’s right there.” Have you ever heard her talk? is what I wanted to say, but I was raised to behave politely. I braced myself.
“Stranger, my accent” – l’hiver s’enfuit, l’hiver s’enfuit – “is Germaneyan.” Huh, Germaney existed. Who would’ve guessed? But then...
“What accent did Photo Finish have? Certainly wasn’t the same as yours,” I said, hoping somepony else would answer.
“That was German,” Twilight quipped. “We don’t do the voices, remember?” I facehooved. Of course, that even made sense. However, there were still lots of things that didn’t, but it seemed like some unknown force made me learn about these things one at a time in slow succession. It made everything sink in a little more easily, sure, but I had been with these ponies for almost three hours, still not knowing a load of things I probably should. Like everytime I get somepony to answer me something, she or he gets interrupted or suddenly shuts up. Like I was being kept clueless on purpose.
The situation called for a plan. If I could isolate one of the group, I might be able to create a closed environment with just the two of us. I could eliminate the possibility of interruption as well as keep the other from backing off. Deciding who’d be my target was difficult. I had to weigh their personalities and characteristics carefully in order to be able to make the best decision. Naturally, I picked the weakest.
“Spike, can we talk in private?” I asked.
“Why?” he replied nonchalantly.
“I have to... It’s a guy thing.” My unexpected brilliance almost made me smile a little, but I was able to cover it with a cough. Spike wiggled his hairless eyebrows at the mares.
“Sure, let’s go around back,” he said and hopped to his feet. He was surprisingly fast for being such a round ball with two legs and a tail. A little like the Gnomes in World of Warcraft. We skirted to the sunny side of the tree.
To my surprise, Spike began immediately: “Okay, Agent Orange has been with the same guy for over ten years, Hillah only goes out with other drunks, Mara doesn’t do guys, and Talia is into some really really disturbing things...”
“Wait, what–”
“...That leaves you with Ria, but it looks like you’re scared of her ‘cause she’s Germaneyan.”
“Wha– I don’t care that she...” I tried to grasp my wavering plan but realised I had no fingers, and it slipped away like buttered soap.
“Don’t worry, you haven’t met them all yet,” Spike said like a wannabe Jamaican surfer.
“That’s not what I wanted to talk about!” I yelled, getting a confused look from Spike.
“What? You need help in the bathroom? Eric, you don’t need a penis to see that you’re better off asking the ladies about that.”
“It’s not about that either!” Though asking would probably make it easier. Could save some time too.
“What’re you guys talking about?” said Twilight from behind me, the rest of the gang on her tail. They’d heard us, obviously. They interrupted me, and devastated my plan. My plan to bring some sense to this... This bucking mess of horseapples and other crap.
Eloquently, I said: “Why are you doing this to me!?” Or more importantly: “What makes you do this to me!? Every word you say makes me more angry and confused!”
“You sure it’s not just puberty?” Spike quipped, making the mares guffaw briefly. I found no way to answer him without resorting to violence so I stayed silent, my face contorting more every second.
“Ease up, stranger. Let us get you a latte from the new coffee machine,” said the Germaneyan. The smile on her muzzle was warm, but the voice still burned as hell. However, there was a certain ring to the message that almost made me calm down – almost.
“There’s a coffee machine,” I said. There was no point in asking anything anymore.
“In the studio. It’s brand new,” Dash chimed in. The phone had finally changed hooves-to-hands.
“WHICH WAY TO THE STUDIO!?” The unbelievable spirit in that exclamation alone would’ve got me in the cast of every cartoon from Dreamworks to Disney.
- - ö_~~*A*~~_ö - -
Everything I had seen in Equestria so far had been more or less pretty and colourful, and then I saw the studio building. The boring paint made it look like it was made of cardboard, flat roof, and those edges must’ve cut everything from rock to bone. It was basically a careless and uninspired version of the studio back in L.A.
But it had coffee. Twilight buzzed us in, and it didn’t take long to find the apparatus in the end of the first hallway I entered.
“Neighstlé? Seriously, Neighstlé? Who the hay makes up these names?” I said while jogging towards the machine.
“The producers must have a wicked sense of humour,” Twilight said from behind me. Though she’d previously sounded almost like Tara Strong, some of her facade was beginning to fall apart into some infinite void of darkness.
“When am I going to meet these producers of... Really, neighspresso? At least coffee is still spelled coffee.”
“Cry me a river,” Twilight said, but I didn’t really pay attention to her. I was looking for the money slot. Maybe there was none, maybe it would make coffee from my blood. I didn’t care.
“How does this thing give me coffee!? I need to be artificially stimulated by caffeine!” A little bit of desperate rambling wouldn’t hurt. Twilight along with the Germaneyan had settled behind me possibly amused by my antics or something. I still couldn’t find a way to get that hot beverage. I turned to the two ponies.
“Flutterbeast, you said you’d get me the coffee. You promised!”
“What did you just call me?”
“Flutter–” Her vicious stare (The Stare!) turned the words into concrete in my mouth, and they tasted bad. If I could just pretend I’m talking to something else in a completely different situation... Like an old homeless lady, for example. “Ria,” I managed to say after a few seconds of silence – my eyes firmly closed.
“It’s free. Just push the button,” said the homeless hag. In these kind of things I need not be told twice. Thank goodness the buttons were hoof-sized – I couldn’t afford to waste any time waiting for a wrong order. Coffee with cream and sugar, ‘cause that’s how I roll. As they say, I’ve had my coffee now and I feel great!
I tossed the plastic cup to the bin but missed and had to pick it up. Apart from the three of us, the hallways were empty, Nicely wide and nicely lit, but empty. I looked at Twilight and Fluttershy – Talia and Ria – with newfound vigor. “So... If this wasn’t everypony’s day off, this place would be full of people, right?”
They both nodded and mumbled something affirmative. I went on: “Who else would be here that I should know about?” They glanced at each other. Talia just rolled her eyes and let Ria do the talking. Oh, my ears.
“There are the rest of the actors, the director, the executive producer, also a few cameramen you should know...”
“Cameramen?” I asked, gritting my teeth.
“The lizardmen do most of the technical work. Spike is the exception, though we had that band, The Zards, to cameo for that one episode.” My vision ran along the walls, out of the farthest window and into the landscape.
Spike wasn’t a dragon. He was simply just an anthromorphic talking lizard.
Meh. Whatever. We began our way back to the front door.
“What’s so special about those cameramen?” I asked.
“Ooh... Nothing much,” said Talia, “just a little something about the colt you know as Big McIntosh.” Cool, I got another wild guess to make. Could he be Bob? Or maybe Larry? Or Larrybob? Maybe this would be really screwed up and his name would turn out to be Frodo or Pippin or–
“Gilliam is a real special case. Agent Orange–”
“AJ,” I corrected, only getting Talia to momentarily laugh at me. She cleared her throat and continued.
“Agent Orange, told you about male actors in Equestria. Our Gill isn’t one of them. He is a genuine apple farmer, about as redneck as they come.” She gave me a wide – half-insane, half-manic – grin. At least I couldn’t be very upset about the name.
“You shoot him in secret?” I asked.
“Best ‘acting’ you’ve ever seen, isn’t it? Too bad they only hand out awards for the best actresses.” Right, who would’ve known Equestria was sexist? Besides that there seemed to be five mares to every stallion, no, I didn’t see that coming.
“Is that the only candid camera they use?”
“Could be...” Talia managed to say, but the sound of a thousand corpses interrupted her.
“Yes, Eric. They recycle actors all the time, but they are a reliable bunch. You’ll meet them eventually, though I’m sorry about Dave. Stuart is the one you should keep an eye out for. He used to be a brony too.” Cue a tear of joy from my left eye.
“Ohh, Stuart. The bad boy!” Talia said with her eyes closed obviously reminiscing something pleasant to her and terrible to anypony else. “Ohh, yeah...”
“Talia, you’re creeping him out.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“No problem, stranger.”
\0/*\\\+<|>+///*\0/
We got outside to nopony waiting for us. None of us had a smartphone, but Talia had an old Nokia of the indestructible 3310 variety. She called Spike, who said he was at the library with AJ, Mara, Hillah, and a new arrival: Jetta. They were waiting for us as well as Stuart. Naturally, we took our way there.
I spotted the four of them outside the tree; no sign of the new mare. I looked at Talia and Ria, but they both at least pretended cluelessness. There was strange tension in the air, and it seemed to affect us all. I was maybe thirty feet away from the tree, when I spotted a majestic figure standing in the shadow: Princess Celestia in all her magnificence.
“You must be Eric,” she said. Time was considerate enough to slow down for me to think up an answer.
“I must.” The Princess flashed a smile.
“And I bet you already know who I am.” If today had taught me anything, I sure as hay didn’t know who she was. Though she did have the horn, and the wings, and the mane. If she wasn’t real, how could I recognize the one who is?
“Your Majesty, I–”
“BOW BEFORE THE SOLAR TYRANT OF EQUESTRIA!” her voice boomed. Kind of a bad joke, to be honest. I turned to the rest of the gang, sighing.
“Come on, Jetta!” yelled RD with her raspy... Mara with her normal voice. “You only had him for five seconds.”
“I never fell for it at all,” I chimed in for a superlative effect.
“Don’t blame me for something that wasn’t my idea in the first place!” The fake monarch’s cultured accent broke down into overly punctuated TV speech.
“Says the one who brought the stilts herself,” Mara continued. Celestia indeed revealed herself to be just a normal little pony on stilts and in royal cosplay. She shrugged one of them loose, almost toppling down, and jump-kicked the other three off. Then she quickly removed the crown, her horn, the rig holding the wings, the cutie mark stickers, and finally some kind of a glittery hair net she had in her mane. Instead of the ethereal glow ‘n’ flow, the mane was grayish pink and reached down her shoulders.
“So how’re you different from your character?” Odd circumstances beg for odd questions. Little Celestia looked unsure for a moment. Oh boy, was it strange to see her face at eye level.
“Celestia is a wonderful character, strong, mysterious, and a little mischievous. And do they like her in the internet!” I was about to shake hooves with her, but instead she glomped me! It had taken this long – the whole day apparently, dusk was setting in – for me to get hugged once. I hadn’t even thought about it: a brony goes to Equestria and doesn’t even get any hugs! Any reasonable fanfic writer would’ve already had me romance half of the mane six, but noooo...
“Are you okay? Eric, wasn’t it?” said Jetta. She had taken a step back. “You look a little distant.”
“You hugged me.” And I’m a freakin’ genius.
“I did, and I’ll gladly do it again.” She hugged me again.
“Y’know, Jetta, he probably collects those little dolls they make of us and masturbates to them,” came Talia’s voice from behind me. It was a good thing for her that I hadn’t accumulated much rage inside me – I was more confused than infuriated. However...
“Take that back, or I’ll shove it back.” My flat-out menacing delivery almost startled me.
“Everybody shut the hell up!” Mara interrupted before Talia got another word out. Naturally that got every muzzle pointed towards her. “Uh... Stuart is coming.”
And his coming, woah. I was already quite sure that Stuart would be Shining Armor – no surprises there – but his entrance was a whole nother thing to gawk at.
First of all, he descended from the sky in a royal red hang glider while wearing nothing but a pair of deep orange shades.
Secondly, upon landing the glider folded itself to a neat little package leaving a small bottle of sparkling wine and two glasses hanging from its side.
Thirdly, while the white baron was filling the two glasses Talia sprinted to him with the plastic horn in place once again (the cutie mark too). “You rock, Stu!” she yelled.
“You’re forgetting yourself, Twily!” he yelled back in a disturbingly similar tone to Andrew Francis’. They both took sips from the glasses.
“I’d cover my eyes now if I were you,” retorted Spike who was standing arms crossed next to me. I momentarily glanced at him, but as my vision returned to the other scene it froze, I froze. Talia and Stuart were engaged in a passionate French kiss that went on...
And on...
And on...
I had the context to make it a-okay, but it felt so wrong still...
And it went on.