//------------------------------// // Interstate 71 // Story: Similar and Different: My Days as Ditzy // by house932 //------------------------------//         “Wait. I thought it was New York you ponies were going to.” Mom had a point.         “The press conference said nothing of anypony that isn’t an Element of Harmony, so I decided to not go there,” I said. I always preferred Boston anyway.         “How did you get from ‘Don’t have to go to New York’ to ‘Let’s go to Cincinnati!’?” Mom had a pensive look on her face.         “Because birds fly south in winter.” Ditzy butted in. “Chris, stop with the inane jokes. This really isn’t the time.” It hit me: I am in the body of a silly pony.         “It wasn’t me this time, I swear.” I can handle silly ponies, though, for I am a silly human. Or was one, at any rate... Not the time for this, I have places to go. Self-imposed places, but still places.         “Sure, and I’m a zebra.” She snarked. I knew I got it somewhere.         “Don’t give him ideas!” Ditzy suddenly yelled. The antics going on in this body must be confusing to any observers.         “Sorry about that, it’s just that somepony can’t keep quiet. And besides, I would refrain from saying anything like that until Discord is gone.” Oh no. I sure hope he doesn’t work like that.         Even if he does, he probably doesn’t care about us.         “Well, we should get going. We don’t want to fly in the dark.” Ditzy said.         What’s wrong with the dark?         It’s hard to see in. Besides, LaRosa’s sounds good to me. For those who have never been to Cincinnati or Dayton, LaRosa’s is an excellent pizza restaurant. Not a sufficient reason to leave home possibly forever for, though.         Why are you going through my memories still?         It’s my body, I do what I want.         The memories aren’t yours, though. They’re mine. You can’t have them.         Try and stop me from waltzing around them.         “Yeah. Come back as soon as you can.” She scooped me up and just held me for five minutes, tears in her eyes. “And, please, come back.”         “I will if I can.” Then it hit me: She saw it as me leaving, possibly never to come back. “No, scratch that. I will be back. Mark my words: I will come back as soon as I can.” I hugged her. I’m well aware it’s impossible, but I don’t care at the moment.         “I will see you when you do.” She let me go.         “Don’t worry, I will see you again.” I flew away, tears in my eyes.         We have to do this. We would have anyway, at some point.         That really doesn’t make me feel any better.         I don’t know about this world, but in mine, almost everypony leaves home sometime.         I doubt that it’s that sudden, though. Here, it almost never is. In fact, most humans don’t turn into ponies and leave the same day.         Okay, okay. I get that this is sudden. I think, while I’m here, I should learn what exactly you ar- were. I directed our flight southwards on State Route 315, a convenient highway that leads to I-71. I-71, in turn, leads straight to Cincinnati.         I was a human. Humans are bipedal primates with a penchant for messing with things not meant to be messed with. Fortunately, ‘not meant to be messed with’ simply makes one overpowered if one messes with it.         What do you mean ‘overpowered’?         Do you see the road below us? She nodded our shared head. The machines on it are moving many times faster than any human can. I felt a ‘Wat.’ reaction from my headmate. Well, about three times, but Usain Bolt is hardly ordinary.         ...So you make things in order to fill up inadequacies?         A pretty good way of putting it. Not a full way, but mostly accurate. We soared over Grove City, still over the highway. I like this new ‘flying’ thing. The pony controlling the flight was keeping up with the cars, which was odd because the stretch between Columbus and Cincinnati is full of speeders. How fast can y’all go, anyway?         This is the fastest I can go without pulling something.  I could’ve sworn that Rainbow Dash was at least ten times this speed, conservative estimate... No matter how much I wanna be Rainbow Dash, I’m not. I’m an average pegasus, discounting outliers like her.  From what you're saying, Rainbow must be off any conceivable scale... Athletes....         Are athletes absurdly capable in...What exactly is Equestria? I simply wasn’t sure of what, exactly, it was. Is it a country, or a world?         A country. An extremely important one, but still a country. Oh. Of course. That would be why it was a ‘land.’ I can be such an idiot sometimes... No, just daft.         Oi! You calling me daft? I thought in my best English accent. Needless to say, it was a terrible one.         Yes, I am. I did so because you are.         Gee. Thanks for the vote of confidence. This sort of thing continued for about 40 minutes before we landed in the rest area about a third of the way to Cincinnati. I decided to notify my grandparents that I was coming down, so I grabbed my phone and started typing.         Ten minutes later (Hooves are not for typing. I had never been a fast typist anyway, either. Hooves make it even worse.) we looked over the message. It read “Coming to Cincinnati. Meet you at LaRosa’s. Bring Samantha.” Some typing speed, no? Samantha is my cousin; she likes the ponies as well. If all else fails, we can stay in her dorm room at UC. It even has free wifi! I have great priorities, don’t I?         Well, let’s get going. We’ve been grounded long enough. She lifts us off of the ground and continues south over the corn fields. The journey is mostly uneventful until the Little Miami Valley. I decide to have a look at the bridge. Ditzy, however, has other ideas, and kept high above the ground. The stubborn jerk that is me takes matters into my own hands (Probably hooves now, but it's my conciousness, I call ‘em what I want) and forces a dive.         WHAT THE BUCK ARE YOU DOING? Forcing a dive probably was a bad idea. The trees probably agreed with that, because a pony pulling seventy while crashing into them would be bad for them. At least, I think so. Luckily, at the last moment, she pulls up and stops in midair. Now, if you tell me what the hay you were thinking, I may one day forgive you for that little stunt of yours.         I wanted to see the bridge. Honesty is probably the best policy to deal with someone who is in your head and can easily find out what really happened... I’m sorry I almost killed both of us by being an idiot...         At least you admit it... You can’t keep doing stuff like that. We can’t die. Derpy may need us. Or at least me, seeing as how she’s my sister. Scorn was mostly absent from her voice. Funny, you’d think that she’d be a bit angrier that she nearly died of my stupidity. Oh well. We did, however, decide that we needed to recover from our brush with death. We settled in under one of the picnic table, and checked my phone. Two text messages.Both from my grandmother.         This can only end well...right? Receiving no answer from my cerebral roommate, I read the first one. It said ‘Monfort Heights good? See you soon!” Encouraged, I read the second.         It merely read ‘We know what happened.’