Take On Me

by Rustling Leaves

Pipe Wrench Fight

The world around me was suddenly like the unfinished comic—everything was a jagged, undulating outline of itself, only seeming to harden into a semblance of constancy when I looked directly at it, then leaping back into a twisting, sketchy set of random lines at the corners of my vision. To keep my footing, I kept my eyes affixed to the bouncing, pink pony. There was nopony here but the two of us.

Good grief, that came right out of my pen, unbidden. Nopony.

She too was expressed in simple outline, a jarring effect for eyes that have only ever seen the real world. I looked at my hands and saw that no matter how I looked or how I shifted them, they seemed to have been drawn in quick pencil, sometimes crossed by a jagged line or squiggle that served no purpose at all. The entire world was a black-on-white outline, except for my guide; who's outline insisted, somehow, on a vivid pink.

Pinkie Pie giggled and twirled as she spoke to me, literally running circles around me. She sidestepped and bobbed under lines extending through that odd, white space as though she knew where she was going.

I was subjected to a barrage of questions about myself. What was my name, where did I live, did I have family in the city? I answered each as we walked (she was more dancing, really, than walking). She was shocked and pretty sad when I told her about my family—all gone, the ones I'd been able to keep in touch with. My sister was the last of them, died just recently. I hadn't been able to get time off for her funeral across the country. It seemed that after enough of my questions had sad answers, she stopped asking me about my life and started asking about mundane, happier things: the kind of music I liked, interesting places I'd been, hobbies.

All the time we were having this conversation, we kept a brisk pace in the same general direction, forging ahead to some distinct destination. I interrupted a long response about waffles (when did we start talking about waffles?), and I asked her where that destination might be.

"Equestria, silly. Everypony there is friendly...mostly, and I'm friends with all of them! I'm sure you'll make lots of friends and have a super-duper-ultra-fun time!" She then began to regale me on the finer points of equestrian cuisine. I wasn't listening; I was doing the rational thing, finally, and reeling at the idea of inter-dimensional travel.

I could scarcely believe it. I suppose I've been quasi-religious my whole life---my mother's influence, may she rest in peace---never really doing much about my half-formed faith, but hoping, somehow, that some benevolent force was watching out for me. Now I had actual, bizarre cause to suspect it was true: Something had seen me, and come to help. My own, pink, equine angel.

I wondered at that---had some god seen me? Or was it only a good-hearted mare that had seen me, and come to my aid. A voice in my heart, that felt an awful lot like my late mother's, seemed to say it was both.

But Pinkie was talking to me again, calling me from my sudden reverie.

"Hello? Anypony home?"

"What? Er...no. Just a human."

I thought my pun was clever. She thought it was hilarious. Instantly she was on her back, holding her sides with her forelegs, kicking her hind legs in the air, and practically whinnying (heh) (sic) with laughter.

We continued our walk through the odd world, and at one point, Pinkie stepped past the border of a squarish scribble, and beyond it, she was no longer an outline. She was still unlike an actual horse, far closer to the cartoon representation, but apparently, even that had been some kind of lens, doing no justice to the complex detail and alien beauty she posessed. She must have heard my gasp, for she turned back to me and smiled again, this time through the strange looking glass.
The look was almost a romantic one, but it exploded into giggles. Still, for an instant, hadn't there been some smouldering fire under that tangle of cotton candy she wore her mane in? Could any of it have been for me?

Mane.... I really am pretty far gone into their world. I'd have said hair automatically, once.

Pinkie giggled at my confused expression, then suddenly looked up. Two figures, scribbles themselves and indistinct at first through the haze of sketch lines, were approaching fast.

The changelings (there were two, though I hadn't guessed that from my proofreading) from the comic draft. They'd gotten here and found us somehow. The personas (ponysonae?) they'd adopted for the race had been shed, except for the helmets that were apparently real, and each of them brandished a long pipe wrench in their fingerless hooves.

Pinkie guessed their intentions immediately. I would have—the pipe wrenches were pretty threatening—but I excuse myself based on the novelty of the experience. Pinkie grabbed my hoof hand (sic) and dragged me through the forest of squiggly walls. The changelings took to hovering after us, wings buzzing loudly and clacking against their chitinous hides. I lost all sense of direction (gaps looked the same as walls) but Pinkie kept going, making precision turns and moving faster, almost, than I could keep up with. The whole time, she never let go of my hand.

"We'll have to use this one—back to your world. Quick, jump through here!" Pinkie called over her shoulder. From what I could tell we'd reached a dead end. I couldn't see the changelings behind us anymore, but I could hear their buzzing and hissing getting louder.

"Through here," Pinkie said, and as she said it, she touched both her forehooves together against the wall and pulled them apart vertically, dragging a square hole into existence between them as though she were lifting the blinds on a window. There was only darkness on the other side.

I paused. I'd found a new world, and a new friend; I couldn't just leave.

Pinkie seemed to understand my hesitation. "Don't worry, silly: I'll be right behind you, hurry!"

I looked back once, the changelings were both there at the entrance to this hallway to nowhere, then I braced myself and jumped, headfirst, into the darkness.

---

"Nowhere to run, my little pony~" one of the changelings sneered in a sing-song voice.

Alone in the sketchy limbo, Pinkie Pie still stared at the now-closed hole in their between-realm comic book world, watching something only she could see. The changelings drew closer...

Unseen by her new, human companion, the bubbly, chaotic, happy attitude fell away from the little pony all at once. She rounded on their pursuers in the narrow corridor, seeming to be a different pony altogether. Her smile was gone, replaced by a weary frown. Her normally sapphire eyes were a cloudy grey and half-lidded. Cotton candy hair was now hanging limp and straight as though driven downward by unseen rain.

From nowhere at all, Pinkamina—for Pinkie was gone—drew her own pipe wrench.

Author's Note:

Chapter title came from this masterpiece (PG for mild language)
(Seriously, watch all the literal music videos. They define awesome.)

Before anypony asks, I do not know, nor do I want to know, what happened to the changelings. I was simply at Sugarcube Corner the other day, this story was told to me (well, more in my presence than to me, I guess).
Sugarcube Corner is an excellent place to write, to get ideas for my writing, and to get half-baker's dozens of impossibly delicious writing fuel (boxes of exactly 6.5 cupcakes). I should be working on my other stories, but I was so entertained by this one that I got permission to record it, interviewed Pinkie and obtained some journal scraps from the other party in the story, and I've been feverishly compiling it since I got home last night. I intend to continue the story as it was related to me, wherein no details of what happened to those two changelings were related.
I need fuel.

These cupcakes are terrible.
...you don't think...
No.
How could I?

What a terrible thing to think of a friend.

...Still...