//------------------------------//
// [1] Let It Begin... 
// Story: Another Displaced Human Dilemma 
// by The Grey Pegasus 
//------------------------------//

Disclaimer: This story starts out with a wham (almost literally... spoilers?) but considerably gets more normal. Trust me. Stick around, yo, at least to Chapter 5! Alternatively, just skip to Chapter 4 and come back later. 






Another Displaced Human Dilemma

= 1 =

Let It Begin...



Ground. Cold, hard ground. Flat, but not smooth. Stone.

The weather itself was cool. The sun was out, however, as I felt its warmth on my body.

I opened my eyes. 

'Wha—what? Where am I?' I looked around at my surroundings. A derelict old castle. Ruins all around. 'Wait a minute...'

Hooves. Oh geez, hooves. And I felt new muscles too. On my back. I flexed them.

Wings. 

"Oh geez. Am I in Equestria? No other explanation than that, right?" 

No answer. I didn't know what I was expecting.

"... Well, an explanation on why I'm here would be convenient." And convenience revealed itself, in the form of a small glowing crystal on the ground. The stone-sized chunk of crystal was glowing a bluish-white color. I picked it up in one of my hooves. "Uh... hello?"

"Greetings."

I yelped, jumped back from it, and dropped it on the ground in surprise.

"Perhaps you should just sit," the voice suggested. I didn't know where it was coming from. The stone wasn't actually talking to me... I think. It was sort of... omnipresent.

I got a hold of myself and approached it once more. "No... I'm fine. Just... startled." I picked it back up and decided to compromise. I sat on my haunches, holding up the thing in one hoof. To think of it, I didn't even need to hold the darn thing, but I kept doing so anyways. "Are you going to tell me why I'm here? I'm suspicious enough as it is."

"Yes." A pause. "There was a... we shall call it an entity or force in the universe. It is like a plant—it gets what it needs. All you need to know for now is this—it does so by consuming lives. It moves along a path, taking millions of years to reach a full circle. It has already passed over Earth before.

"In what could be considered fortunate, the orbit and timing of Earth was enough that it barely missed the planet—"

"But what about me?" I asked the rock.

"It is persistent. It has, say, a natural instinct that tells it when it is close to something it can feed off of. You were one of the closest to it, as that was how the Earth was positioned. Everyone else in the region was able to be protected, but it was able to manage to 'grab' you—"

"What?! Why me?!"

"Unfortunate circumstances... relatively speaking."

"Relatively speaking," I echoed incredulously. 

"When it takes something, the object in question is phased out of their regular plane of existence."

"Person is consumed. They end up in a different dimension," I said, guessing what it meant.

"Correct. Now, the most that could be done for you at that point was to knock you out of its grasp rather inaccurately. This spot in time was the one found to be within reach and the most stable point to drop you in safely."

"You couldn't just land me back home?" I asked.

"The inter-dimensional void is a complicated matter; all that you need to know is that it would have been impossible. Better to land somewhere else than to end up taken by it. If you were taken into it, retrieving you would be impossible, and the fate you would be resigned to is a horrible one."

I zoned out. Really, I guess the facts were all I needed. The 'why', I reasoned, was some crazy thing that couldn't be helped by this point. In a way, it was comforting. Finally something went wrong without a chance for me to do something different. I've finally landed in a situation where I know what happened wrong, and there's nothing I could've done about it. That's actually relieving, coming from a life where if something goes wrong, you either don't know what happened, or you know you could've done something about it.

"Any further questions?"

I thought for a moment. But really, I felt like I knew all the answers anyway; maybe the rock projected all the knowledge into me whether I asked or not, and it's just talking to me to make me feel comfortable. Or it's making me imagine that it's talking with me, and that whatever the cosmic force thing is, it's just spiritually connecting with me or whatever. Since this is Equestria, I wouldn't put it past that.

I shook my head. "No. I think I got it." The stone-sized chunk of crystal stopped glowing, reverting to something that looked like a smooth stone made of quartz.

With that ordeal over, now I actually had to do stuff. But hey—I got no past, so it's a fresh start. Whatever that means. First of order for being able to do stuff was being able to go somewhere. I looked down at my hooves. "Well... this shouldn't be too hard..."

After a little bit of practice, walking actually wasn't that hard. It turned out that being dropped into Equestria in a matured stallion's body meant that my brain also had the ingrained instincts on how to walk. In fact, it was more of suppressing the human part of my brain on how to walk was the trouble. As long as I didn't think about it too much, I could—

"Ow," I said as I tripped and fell to the ground. Yeah, the conflicts between my instincts was something that needs to be worked out. But flying—that was something I still needed to try.

It was a strange sensation, having wings. My mind, being used to controlling only four appendages and now having six was... well, again, it felt natural, but at the same time not. I suppose the solution was to stop my inner human from thinking 'how do I do this', and instead let the new inner pony start thinking 'fly'.

Hopefully, after a while, the human that remained in me would get used to this.

For now, though, I'd have to force commands through, and attempted to fly. It was working!—"Oh god, the heights."

I dropped back down to the ground to catch my breath. Obviously not being born with wings has the disadvantage of being more prone to fear of heights. But I liked the idea of flying. Aviation was cool. So I might as well accept the fact that my wish was answered and I was a pegasus.

Being a pegasus, I assumed my eyesight was better than other ponies. Definitely better than when I was human. Now I have the natural 20/20 vision I always wanted. Probably even better than it.

If I flew high enough, I suppose I could find the direction where Ponyville was. I looked up, at the same time jumping and flapping. I flew out of the roof of the castle and looked around. It was as I expected—and as I wrote originally, a very long time ago—my arrival in Equestria was in the castle in the Everfree. Pretty cliche, but why would that matter? Off to one side of me were mountains, and gleaming buildings jutting out from one of the sides—Canterlot. 

And it was in the half-second afterwards that I noticed something very wrong.

"What the fuck is up with the sky." Before this, I didn't pay much attention and just assumed it was sunset or sunrise. But now I saw that half of it was daytime, and the other half was night. Divided vertically. Like someone took dusk or dawn and yanked it back six hours. Instinctively, I gave a wary aside glance, because it felt like one of those appropriate moments.

Which lead to a different problem.

"... No. Can't be. NARRATION?! NO! NO!" I screamed in frustration at this small spot that looked like bits of everything I was saying and thinking. "So let me get this straight. Not only am I stuck in Equestria, but the adventure's being followed?! And... it's FIRST PERSON NARRATION. Wonderful." I facehoofed while hovering in place.

"So, if this is a story... then... wait a minute... then none of this is actually real! That was some interesting effort you put into an attempt to justify me ending up here, author. I'd even call it pretty stupid."

Nothing. I was just screaming at the air again.

"Are you going to respond? I know you're up there! And the audience too! I bet you're all thinking 'Hey, really? Random guy ends up in Equestria and has the power to break the fourth wall? That's ridiculous!'. Yeah, well, guess what? I do. Deal with it."

I waited a few moments, but still nothing.

"Are you ever going to respond?! You've got quite the restraint! I know you're fucking there!"

<Yeah. Hi.>

Whoa. What the fuck? Hey... wait a minute...

<Yup. Congrats. Finally in Equestria.>

"Oh. Wait—this is being seen through the cover pic area. Couldn't you have picked a better scene to use as the cover?"	

<Nope. So much better this way. Very natural. Actually, that's not the only thing that has to be done. I have control over your fate. So you know what? Go do the description.>


<<+>>


"—at." 

I blinked. Well hey, look at that. Knocked back to the narrative. 

<Neat, isn't it?>

"So..." I started out loud while flying back to the ground, landing back on the stone floor of the derelict castle, "Who's in control of the story? You said you have control over my fate."

<You still are. I also am. We're the same. Except I'm still human and typing, and you're a pony now and narrating.>

"So I can do my stuff, but you can intervene-slash-screw with me."

<Correctomundo.>

"So what about the whole universe-dimension-anomaly thing?"

<Oh yeah, that's your backstory.>

"My backstory."

<The other half of your backstory. Your in-universe backstory. It's what makes your reality, reality.>

"While the other half of my backstory is 'I sent myself to Equestria because obligatory self-insert'."

<Yup.>

"And the audience thinks what of this whatever-this-is?"

<Hell if I know. This is just the first chapter. Some guys I asked are split on it though. But they sort-of agree it's insane.>

"No doubt." I sighed. "So this is all real."

<That's right. This is your reality now.>

I found the piece of crystal that exposition-dumped my new reality to me. Well, I guess all things considered, everything that it said was factual. And for some reason now, it felt depressing.

<You gotta admit it's a pretty neat rock.>

I looked at the crystal. "Yeah, you're right. It's a pretty neat rock. I think I'll keep it." 

Even though this was basically a clean slate in terms of my life, I still had to start it off first. Since I think that author-me is done for this moment, I decided that I should leave soon. 

Before I left though, I decided to wander around the castle for more answers. Simple answers. The first one was this broken mirror. The answer it gave me was a light grey pegasus with copper eyes and a dark grey mane.

"Huh. No cutie mark. I guess that means I've yet to define myself in this universe." Knowing what I created as my pony persona back on Earth though, I had a pretty good idea on what it was going to be. Details were consistent so far.

In fact, the only thing I didn't know about me was what was going to happen for the next few months; I never wrote up a definite storyline, only tons of random ideas and possible stories. As if I left that hole blank for me to find out. Clever me. "I wonder which plot path I'm taking..." I wondered out loud. I was used to doing so; force of habit.

<You're not allowed to think about that.>

"What?!" What the heck did that mean? I tried thinking about all the possible plotlines I drew out before and... "Dammit. I can't remember any of them." I grumbled in frustration. I just wiped out my own mind. Screw you.

At this point, I figured there was no point in waiting anymore.

<Yes, go. Go do something more interesting. Get the story moving. Actually, before you do that, describe the story so far in one sentence.>

"Describe the story in one sentence? Why?" Oh wait—

<Start now.>


<<+>>


<And done! Back to the narrative, and it was as if you didn't feel a thing.>

I glared to the side, where hints of narration were visible to me. "You're just stress testing the fourth wall, aren't you?"

<Yeah. Mostly. This one works fairly well actually. I can lock you out whenever I want.>

And just like that, I felt alone again. Like shutters were just closed in my face. Man, this feeling sucks. That feeling when you don't know if someone's watching or if you're in the middle of a time-skip. But it seemed too early for time-skips in the story—it's only been a few minutes into the arrival. 

The only solution in breaking the fourth wall now was just to keep screaming at the sky. Fake it 'til you make it! I'd imagine it's like if someone keeps knocking on your door regardless if you answer or not. They have nothing to lose, but you're going to be irritated by the constant knocking.

"Well, anyways, as I said, I'm going to move on now. I could go to Canterlot and hit it up with immigration services, or whatever they call it here, but I've got a story to lead. And I think I should go to Ponyville and avoid as much cliches as I can. Barring, of course, the arrival in the Everfree part. Apparently that was unavoidable. You know what? I should even make a list."

I tried to mentally come up with a list, but it turned out I was too lazy to do that at the moment. Guess I'll just deal with it later.

The exit was all the way back up at the top floor, where the roof was destroyed. I remembered the direction of Ponyville, catching a glimpse of it during my initial search. Besides, I was going to have to fly anyways, so I would find where to go matter what.

I set off in the direction of Ponyville, where my future awaited. I'm sure I still wasn't in a time-skip, so I kept speaking my thoughts. "So I'm a human. That ended up in Equestria. For some unknown reason plus destiny. What a dilemma I've found myself in. As if this wasn't done before. As if the idea was never mocked before. Why are you following me. This is basically a dead horse story—literally, too, I guess. I'm now an equine, but I'm also dead. As a human, at least."

After that short thought, I decided to land back on the ground. Really, this flying thing was going to take a bit of getting used to. Geez, I almost feel bad for being like Fluttershy.

I looked up at the strange sky once more. The split sky, between night and day. "Heh... twilight." I felt like I should've been remembering some important details regarding it, but I couldn't, as hard as I tried. Something I suspected outside interference was responsible for...

The Everfree forest was right in front of me. You know, it actually is pretty creepy. That sky looked so much more welcoming now. "God I hate myself... damn self-insert..." I took off again, aiming to make it to my destination this time.

This entire thing was ridiculous. Under more... normal circumstances I would probably be thinking, "Oh hey, I'm in Equestria! Neat!" but with the current circumstances, why the heck would I do that? I'm just another story after all. What makes this one so—

"YOW!"

I jolted and lost some altitude in the literally shocking surprise I felt on my flank. I looked back. "What the hell is up with that cloud?!" Instinctively, I took 'evasive' maneuvers. That being a combination on focusing to keep flying, focusing on ignoring myself on thinking how to fly, a thousand other redundant thoughts thinking in a circle, and to stay away from the black angry cloud.

"OW!"	 Evidently, it didn't work, as another one shocked me from the side. I looked around; I was boxed in.

This was going to hurt. "I hate—"

The next thing I could coherently describe was a thud as I hit the ground.

"... Ahhhh..." I groaned on the ground. That really hurt. "Well... this definitely isn't a dream." It hurt so much, the only thing I could do to occupy myself while I tried to get up was wonder whether I should've capitalized that last bit or not. 

I shakily got to my hooves... and then my ears perked up at these sounds. Wavering in my stance, I looked around. It was coming from fucking everywhere, and it was damn scary.

And that's when these giant plant things came out. "No... please... not the plants... oh god, not plants..." They started spraying this strange gas that I inferred was toxic; what else could it be? Now I definitely hated those cloud things for shocking me so much. I could still feel my muscles trying to recover from all of the electrocutions.

Yup. I was screwed. The plant-things were closing on me, still trying to gas me. "Stupid magic monsters, this is going to suck... I don't—" I coughed, fearful of the end. Oh right—the end. I wonder if that meant the story would end soon. 

"I..." Fading. Can't stay up. '... don't want to get raped by plants...'