4. Brad as I Wanna Be
The Mixed-Up Life of Brad
by D. G. D. Davidson
IV. Brad as I Wanna Be
Brad stood with Twilight on the stoop in front of his house. His thick, heavy hands held her tiny, slender ones.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
She swiftly rubbed the tip of her nose against his. She was always doing strange things like that. “Not really. They’re your family, and meeting them is important to me.”
She stepped back and spun once to show off her dress. Her sequins and the glitter in her hair twinkled in the light of the porch lamp. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful. You’re really living up to your name.”
She laughed. Taking his hand again, she interlaced her fingers with his and sighed. “I’m going to miss these,” she said.
“Miss what?”
“Hands.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Yours, specifically.”
“Right. Let’s go in.” He pushed open the front door, but without taking his gaze from her bright eyes, her upturned nose, and her violet skin, which was smooth and pale like a freshly bloomed lilac. He was struck again with a sensation that unexpectedly came upon him from time to time—a sense of wonder and gratitude that she even existed at all. She was beautiful, smart, funny, and crazy. And Brad had decided he could live with the crazy part.
The evening before, after he’d taken her for ice cream, she had cried on his chest for an hour and told him she was really a pony with magic powers, that she had lost her magic and had to make friends to get it back, and that she had to win the Fall Formal princess crown and defeat Susan Shelby in combat or something so she could return to her own world and run a kingdom.
He had held her, of course, and wiped away her tears, because when a girl is crying on you, that’s the thing to do. And he had listened quietly and patiently to her confession because he had been too nonplussed to do anything else.
He had in the end decided that, if she wanted to believe she was a fairy princess from Fairyland, he had no right to say otherwise. And when he’d parted from her at her door, walked the dark streets alone, and taken in the evening breeze with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and the tingle of her kiss still stamped on his lips, he could believe it himself.
A soon as he pushed open the door, his mother pulled him from Twilight and hugged him. Then she took Twilight’s hands and the two of them giggled and jabbered and said things to each other that failed to fully register on Brad’s mind. For a brief moment, they shut him out. But that moment passed, and their sounds reassembled into recognizable words when his mother said, “You must be Twlight. Oh, Brad can’t stop talking about you. And—my!—aren’t you lovely? Come in, dear.”
Blushing, Twilight shot Brad a quick glance before following his mother further into the house.
Ewan ran up and threw his arms around Brad’s waist. “Is that your girlfriend?” Ewan demanded.
“Sure is, squirt. Now let go of me before I give you her cooties.”
“Yuck!” Ewan stomped off, but he didn’t leave. Brad’s mom seated Twilight on the couch before heading into the kitchen, and then Ewan tried to climb into Twilight’s lap.
“Don’t do that, Ewan,” Brad said. “You’ll wrinkle her dress.”
“Have you kissed my brother yet?” Ewan demanded.
“Your brother is a perfect gentlecolt,” Twilight answered, neither confirming nor denying the charge.
“He’s a what?”
“She means gentleman, squirt. She talks funny sometimes. Why don’t you, uh, run off or something—?”
“If you sit down right here, Ewan,” Twilight said, patting the seat beside her, “maybe I’ll tell you a story.”
“What kind of story?”
“Well, you’ll have to sit down to find out.”
He plopped onto the couch and kicked his little legs.
“Let’s see, this is a story about a girl who studied very hard every day because she wanted to learn everything she could. One day, a beautiful princess saw her and made her—”
“Boring,” Ewan said. He jumped up and ran into the kitchen.
Brad shook his head. “Never mind him, he’s—”
“He’s great,” Twilight said. “Back home, I foalsat my friends’ little sisters sometimes. Princess Celestia says foalsitting is good training for a princess because—”
“Twilight.” Brad sat down in the spot Ewan had just vacated and put his arm around her. “Maybe, while you’re here, you might wanna tone down the pony princess stuff. Just for my parents, I mean.”
She blinked. “But—”
“I don’t mind it, but they might think it’s weird.”
“Shouldn’t they know all about me? I mean, if we’re thinking about getting married?”
“Yeah, you might wanna tone down the marriage stuff, too.”
“But—”
Brad’s father walked in, and Brad and Twilight both jumped up from the couch.
Brad’s father put his arm around Brad and playfully punched him in the gut. “So this is the Twilight Sparkle I’ve heard all about.”
“Not all about,” Twilight mumbled, scowling and looking away.
Trying to come up with some words of consolation or apology, Brad reached toward her, but his father clapped him on the back and squeezed his hand tight. “I hope Brad here looked your old man right in the eye and gave him a firm handshake. You can tell a lot about a man by the feel of his hands. We used to have a woodstove in here before we put in the central heat, so Brad grew up chopping wood, and you can see it in his hands, feel it in his grip—”
“Actually, he hasn’t met my parents yet,” Twilight said.
Brad’s father frowned. “You two are doing things backwards.”
Brad’s mom sashayed back in with a plastic container holding a small, neatly arranged bouquet of aster and African lilies surrounding a single crocus. She popped open the container and held the flowers up. “Now, I want you to know Brad picked this out all by himself—”
“Let him put it on her,” Brad’s father said. “He’s a man.”
“Dad, please—”
“Oh, they look delicious,” said Twilight, taking the flowers in her hands.
Brad gently pulled the flowers away before she could eat them. Then, fumbling, and keenly aware of his parents watching him, he attached the flowers to her forearm by a bracelet.
She held up her arm and turned it back and forth, marveling. “I see! So it’s sort of like an all-day sucker—”
“It’s a wrist corsage, Twilight,” Brad muttered. “It’s just for looks. I hope you like it. I didn’t know if it was right, but I figured, hey, it’s purple—”
“It’s beautiful,” said Twilight. “I love it.”
“Oh, I need photos!” Brad’s mother cried. “You two stand right there, and I’ll go get the camera!”
By the end of his third day as a “guest” in the Crystal Palace, Brad was going stir-crazy. He spent most of his waking hours pacing the room, doing pushups or sit-ups, and playing his guitar.
He tried to read the books Cadance had sent him, but quickly gave up. The books she’d sent all turned out to be romances or marriage guides. He thumbed through the first few pages of novels with titles like Of Ponies and Prejudice, Jane Neigher, Withers Heights, and Horse Sense and Sensibility before he tossed them aside. He wasn’t interested in stories of leisure-class ponies trying to contract marriages.
He hesitated before picking up any of the nonfiction works, as he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to confront what they contained. But after a day, curiosity got the better of him, so he grabbed a few and thumbed through them.
To his surprise, they were all quite mild. He skimmed through Rearing Foals Right, Cooking for Your Family, The Mare: Head of the Household, and Treat Her like a Princess. The most salacious title in the collection was How to Nuzzle a Mare, which was about exactly that, and he couldn’t help but think Cadance had stuck such a book in there for a reason. In any case, the information it contained was irrelevant to him: his lips simply couldn’t move that way. On the plus side, however, it taught him a few interesting factoids about equine facial anatomy.
It also made him anxious; clearly, he couldn’t kiss like a stallion. He wasn’t sure if Cadance was trying to point that out to him or just trying to give him some advice.
After he gave up on reading, he tried to write a song about Twilight, but it wouldn’t come out as he wanted: he was a poor lyricist, and he couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with “Sparkle.”
Besides that, romantic songs weren’t his style. Brad loved Twilight madly, but his first love would always be metal—the heavier, the better. His favorite bands had names like Splattered Cross, Blistered Mister, Bob Crombie, Smooch, Steely Girlfriend, Kanabis Kanabal, Hellbound Hellhound, and Scimitary. However, Brad had never been able to convince Twilight to enjoy rock music even though she had hung out with Roxy Dodgers, the school’s tomboyish soccer star, who was also a metal fan. Brad and Roxy had often swapped CDs.
As it turned out, going three days without listening to head-splitting, nerve-jangling, pulse-pumping rock music was hard on a man. He wished he’d at least brought an MP3 player he could have used until the batteries went dead.
To Equestria, he had only brought his acoustic guitar, which wasn’t quite the same as the Fender Stratocaster he’d left behind, but he could still shred some hot licks. Imagining the thud of the drums, the hum of the bass, and the thrum of the rhythm guitar, he stood in the middle of the room and banged his head as he played the opening to Kanabis Kanabal's biggest hit, “Crack Pipe Organ.” Then he moved into an improvisation, after which he raged the face-melting guitar solo from the middle of Hellbound Hellhound's “Route Six Sixty-Six.”
After that, he knelt in front of the coffee table and again tried to work on a song for Twilight. Heavy metal just didn’t sound right on an acoustic.
As he scribbled, he brooded, wondering if he could somehow break out of this room. But the door was sturdy: he could do nothing but pound on it, and pounding always brought an impassive but deferential guard. The room had no windows, only a transparent, curving ceiling: he had thrown several things at the ceiling to see if he could crack it, but everything he’d thrown simply bounced off.
And he didn’t know what he’d do if he escaped, anyway. Perhaps he could find that magic mirror again, but he’d seen it shatter, so it probably no longer worked. Perhaps he could find Twilight, but what would he do with her? Run off someplace? Spend the rest of his life with her on the lam?
Besides that, he had no idea what these princesses could or would do to him if he escaped. For all he knew, he was facing a guillotine or torture rack if he stepped too far out of line.
A single tear fell on his sheet of paper. “Mom, Dad,” he whispered, “I think I’ve really screwed up this time.”
He slowly rose to his feet when he heard a commotion in the hall. The guards outside were shouting, and their voices, though muffled, carried through the door.
“Don’t come any nearer, Your Highness! We have orders!”
“Please, Princess, just turn around, and—”
“Out of my way! I’m warning you!”
Brad’s heart leapt into his throat. That last voice had been Twilight’s. He ran, dropped to his knees, and slid across the floor to the door. He pushed his ear up against it.
“Stand down!” a guard shouted.
“Move aside,” Twilight answered, “or I will not hold back!”
“Twilight!” Brad yelled. He beat a fist against the door. “Twilight, is that you?”
A piercing whine set Brad’s teeth on edge. Then came a confused din full of animalistic snorts and whinnies as well as human-sounding cries. Something slammed hard against the door, splintering the wood and rattling Brad’s skull, sending him toppling backwards. After that came silence.
Lifting himself up onto his elbows, Brad breathed hard as he stared at the door. He expected, any second, to see it blow off its hinges, after which Princess Twilight would step in through a cloud of dust and say something like, “Sorry I’m late.”
Instead, he heard a faint, timid knock followed by Twilight’s voice. “Brad?”
He slid to the door again and pawed at it. “Twilight! Twilight, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“I’ve missed you so much!”
“I’ve . . . missed you, too.”
Silence followed.
Brad pounded the door again. “Twilight, what’s wrong? Open this.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t? What, has it got some magic lock, or . . . ?”
“No, I can open a magic lock. It’s not that, Brad.”
“What? What is it?”
“Do you know why you’re in there?”
“Because I don’t have a visa? Because they think humans are scary freaks, maybe?”
He heard Twilight give a low, melancholy laugh. “No, Brad. You’re not being punished. They’ve locked you in there to protect you.”
“From what?”
“From me.”
Silence followed again.
“I would have come earlier,” she said, “but I didn’t know where you were. It took me time to find out, but I know a lot of the crystal pony guards, and one was willing to tell me. Cadance knew that, if I could find you, nothing could keep me away from you.”
Brad could hear his pulse thudding in his ears, and sweat broke out along his spine. He pulled back from the door and planted his feet on the ground as adrenaline coursed through his veins. “Twilight, what are you saying? If you’re dangerous, why didn’t they lock you up?”
“Because I can’t be locked up, at least not in the usual way. If they decide I have to be imprisoned, the prison will be something more extreme. Celestia and Luna don’t control the Elements of Harmony anymore, so they can’t lock me in ice or stone, but there are other ways.”
“What are you saying?”
“I messed up, Brad. The Cosmic Council will convene soon, and they are going to treat this as a case of foalnapping.”
“What?”
“In your own world, you’re considered a child, so when I brought you here, it’s sort of like I abducted you. Do you understand?”
Brad’s heart slowed and his shoulders slumped. “But you and I are the same age.”
Almost a minute passed before she answered, “No. We’re not.”
“What? Wait, do ponies age like humans do or not? Are you really, like, only five years old or something—?”
Twilight laughed again. “No, we mature the same way, more-or-less. But I turned into a human youth, though I’m not sure why. Here, I’m older.”
“How much older?”
A pause. “I’m twenty-three.”
Brad blinked. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Holy crud, Twilight. Kinda robbin’ the cradle here, aren’t you?”
“What? No, it will probably be years before I take a protégé, even if I’m not imprisoned.”
“Huh?”
“Look, Brad, it’s for the best—”
He ran to the door again and punched it several times. “Hey, don’t give me that! You came all the way down here, and if I understood what was going on out there a minute ago, you just kicked major ass. Don’t tell me you’re going to turn around and leave!”
“Brad—”
“Twilight, I want to see you. You’re already here. Is it such a big deal to open the door?”
“Yes. I’m not the girl you thought I was—”
“Baloney.”
“Brad, I’m an alicorn, and you’re sensitive to magic! If I just walk in—”
“So what? So you’ll make me sweat or feel lightheaded. Well, you do that to me anyway! Do you understand? I love you.”
“But I’m a pony—”
“I know. I saw you. I wasn’t impressed. Open the door, dammit.”
“Calm down, Brad.”
“I can’t.” Leaning his face against the doorframe, he slumped to his knees. “When I’m not with you, I can’t be calm. It’s not just now, either. I’ve been that way since I met you.” He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists against his knees. “Twilight, I don’t have your way with words, and I don’t know how to say what I feel, but when you’re not with me, I feel like I’m cut in half, and the other half’s somewhere else. I feel like there’s this walking void following me around, and it’s shaped like you. Anything I do, anything I see, anything I think, I think about what you might think of it, and it reminds me that you’re not here. It’s like—”
“Brad.” A sob entered Twilight’s voice. She sounded closer, as if she were leaning her face against the door the same way he was. “Don’t make me do this, please. I’m afraid—”
“Of what?” Tears streamed down Brad’s face. “You think I won’t like you anymore?”
“Yes!”
“That’s not going to happen. It can’t happen.”
“Brad.” A wet chuckle appeared behind the sound of Twilight’s crying. “I don’t know how to describe how I feel right now. Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“When I was human, I felt very weird without clothes. I was embarrassed in the locker room, and even a little bit when alone in the bath. It was almost like I was ashamed of my body. As a pony, I’m usually unclothed, but as a human I felt naked, as if I’d never realized before what that word really meant. I thought maybe it was because I was new to being human, because I wasn’t used to it. But is that . . . is that normal?”
“Yes, Twilight. That’s normal.”
“That’s awful,” said Twilight.
“I know. What are you trying to say?”
“What I’m trying to say is, I feel a little like that now.”
“Don’t. Twilight, I fell in love with you. With you. And if what you are is a pony, then, well, I’m in love with a pony, and nothing’s going to change that. You don’t ever have to feel ashamed with me.”
A long time passed before Twilight said anything, and Brad wondered if she had left, but then her voice came again:
“Go to the other side of the room, Brad. I’m coming in.”
Obediently, he stood and walked behind the bed. His heart began pounding again. He clenched the bedclothes until his knuckles turned white.
A high-pitched whistle hit his ears and made him wince. The door creaked, and its hinges gave off the melancholy whine of straining metal. Then all at once, with a crack like that of a falling tree, the door burst, sending shards of wood, fragments of metal, and dislodged gems flying around the room. Brad ducked and turned away.
When he dared to look again, he saw a great cloud of dust billowing into the room, and in the midst of the cloud he beheld a dark shape. That shape, with the steady sound of hooves on hard stone, walked forward as the dust parted.
Encircled by a shimmering glow, Twilight Sparkle stood with wings spread wide and feathers fluttering in a faint breeze sweeping in from the hall. The horn on her forehead shone with otherworldly light, and her eyes were balls of white flame. Slowly, with his mouth hanging open, Brad fell to his knees and lowered his chin to the bedspread.
The glow faded. Twilight’s violet eyes reappeared, and Brad could see that they were rimmed with red. Like rivulets in a dry valley, tearstains crossed the fur of her cheeks. Her eyes welled afresh, and new streaks of tears appeared as she gave Brad a weak but happy smile.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said.
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2639853
Is this a case of "I don't know what I expected"?
Hormones really make it hard to think level headed. Meanwhile on the other side of the dungeons Twilight is frantically pacing on how she screwed up.
Rereading this over.
And over.
And over.
Dammit, Brad.
Princess Celestia:
Is she an enormous bitch, or misunderstood and merely a huge one?
Let's watch Brad find out!
Jane Austen? Cadance has good taste, and Brad is missing out.
Interesting chapter, nice start with a flashback with the Brad taking the human Twilight to his parents place, it's funny to see more awkward scenes with Twilight (like her choice of words). Good to see that, despite being trapped in a bedroom for 3 days, Brad's becoming more healthy with nutritious foods and exercising, although tortuous as he's more awake and energetic as the result. Nice touch that enough though that Brad's talents is with a guitar, he has a flaw with producing his own lyrics for a song, but seeing that he's spending his time with reading I'm sure that'll change.
It's sad that Brad's becoming more and more frustrated being trapped and confused with little information about what's going on and not having comfort by not being with Twilight. Definitely it'll be interesting to see what happens next, as Brad seems to know and befriend the human counter-part, as evident when he confused Rarity as Rowellina, who happens to share the same dreams. Following that thought, I assume that Roxy Dodgers is RD, can't imagine the encounter when RD meets with him.
Overall, great chapter man, can' wait to see more. Keep up the good work man
this is amazing hurry up we must see more!
2640766
I think this story around it's quite likely that noone's called Celestia on her bitch-ness for hundreds of years. And here comes Brad...
Matriarchal rhymes with Sparkle.
The scene with Twilight meeting Brad's parents was really cute, but was also a poignant reminder that Brad had a family which he was probably never going to see again. Twilight had the best intentions, but she really screwed up this time.
Normally I wouldn't have much patience with the sort of behaviour that Brad is exhibiting, but he's been locked up for three days with minimal company, and the whole reason he came to Equestria was to be with Twilight, whom he hasn't seen at all. I'm willing to forgive some yelling at Rarity over that.
So,
Brad literally gives up everything, his life, his family, his friends, his future in human society, to pursue his relationship with a purple pony princess, and was even prepared to give up his very BODY. And upon following her to his home, he is locked up, treated like a criminal, and to top it all off, the person (pony) he loved no longer wants to even speak or see him, either out of shame, guilt, or regret. Oh, and he cannot take his decision back and is apparently stuck in Equestria forever.
Holy shit. Talk about getting royally fucked. If I were Brad, all of that 'love' would very quickly be turning into hate.
2640948
Hasn´t Brad figured out that maybe one of the reason Twilight is forbidden to be near him is because, as an alicorn, she is kinda thaumo-radiactive to him?
I know the author want to make things very difficult for the pair, but making humans extra-sensitive to magic is too much of a handicap when living in Equestria.
2641865
Actually, that magical sensitivity is precisely the sort of obstacle that makes for exciting reading. It's just that most authors can't quite muster the cajones to actually put a genuine, difficult obstacle between the love interests that they have to actually work hard to overcome. That they might not be able to overcome at all.
The key to dramatic tension is exactly this kind of thing. The kind that makes you think "Well... crap, he/she/they are really screwed, aren't they? How could they possibly get out of this one?"
Giving a human OC random magical resistances and incredible powers doesn't make him/her cooler. Rather, it actually makes the story less interesting, because their advantages make everything easier for them. They stop being a scrappy underdog you want to root for and become just another character with super-powers.
Having it be easy or knowing, as a reader, that they'll inevitably win kills the suspense, and very quickly becomes fluff. Don't get me wrong, those kinds of stories can be great if done well... but that's clearly not the theme here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
On that note: Good on you, author.
While I was initially leery of the character choice, you've actually bothered to develop Brad into a full-fledged character independent from Twilight Sparkle. He has goals, motivations, and genuinely difficult trials that he may or may not be able to overcome. And you've made me care about whether he can do it.
The pony world itself seems fully fledged, not just a cartoon, and I'm already catching the signs of a good fish-out-of-water story. A stranger in a strange land... of magical ponies.
So far, I've been pleasantly surprised, and I'm hoping to continue to do so.
Such DRAMA!
2641727
He has already started to hate...he hates Celestia and Cadance and all of them for keeping Twilight away from him.
2647949
cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/33989933.jpg
But seriously, three days of reclusion and none has ever tried to give Brad a full, mature explanation of what is happening? If Celestia really plans to allow him integrate into society, she should put somepony in charge of taught him about the world where he is trapped.
Very interesting story so far! I also love how you put "Brad' into every chapter name X3
That's so sweet
Ha, I really enjoyed the flashback with brad's parents.
Really shows twilight's quasi carelessness: as smart as she is, she generally isn't all that wise, and does things without thinking sometimes. Which seems to summerize her issues with brad: since it wasn't books or a clear goal, she acted impulsively and without forthought.
very interesting.