Ponyville

by milawynsrealm

Chapter 6: From the Shadows

“What just happened?” Spike asked as he approached Twilight from the door. Twilight was still speechless. The crowd, apparently still confused at the sudden outburst from the blue stallion. They just stood there, talking amongst themselves, trying to think of some explanation of what just happened. Some were worried about the emotional outbreak, while others felt sorry for whatever he was going through.

Roughly a minute later however, the crowd dispersed away after the Pegasus was taken back to the refugee camp. There was nothing really left to see.

“I-I don't know. One moment, he was acting calm, the next, he was bursting into tears and yelling at everypony.” Twilight said as she just stood there dumbfounded. She sighed as she tried to come to some sort of conclusion on what happened.

Could have the crystals that's used to calm down the refugees have anything to do with it? 'Not likely,' Twilight thought. The purpose of those spell infused crystals were not to suppress a pony's emotion, but to give the patient a way to release them in a way that doesn't involve screaming or crying. In fact, the patient rarely feels the effects, just notices the outcome. Even though she didn't know how the spell exactly worked, Daniel's emotions should have been safely released with no serious side effects. But then again, we're talking about somepony who used to be another species.

Hoping that Daniel was coming right back after his emotional episode, as she was initially hoping, she scanned the landscape. But something barely noticeable at first appeared while she was looking around. However, as she focused back onto it with her eyes, it instantly vanished before she could get a good look. Whatever it was, it seemed to be a tall, dark figure, at least in her mind. Twilight quickly shook off the notion, believing that her mind was playing tricks with her. Probably some sort of aftermath to the event.

“Come on Spike. We need to set up a search party to find Daniel.” Twilight stated flatly as she started heading towards town hall. Spike closed and locked the door before catching up to Twilight.

Little did either of them know that three sets of eyes were watching them from behind a nearby bush.

---

Rule number one when you find yourself lost, is to stay in the same place so you don't get more lost than you already are. Something that I was taught back when I was in Boy Scouts. Had I remembered that one simple rule, I wouldn't have tried to retrace my steps, which I quickly found out that I was even more lost then I was before.

But instead, I find myself in the middle of a dark forest with no clear way out. The cold and soggy ground not only made it harder to retrace my steps, but the sensation of the coldness of the ground to my hooves only stood to remind me once again that I am a midget blue horse with a horn sticking out of my forehead. And aside from making scorch marks on ceilings and barely lifting a feather, my horn was totally useless. Why did life have to be this cruel to me?

And why does this body feel so natural to me? That was a question that continued to nag me no matter how long I think about it or even when I'm trying to think about something else. Here I am, standing on all fours and my mind treats the situation as though I was standing back on my old two legs. Yes, my center of balance has been changed. And yes, my mind recognized my new quadruped layout. I tried to stand upright a few times on my hind legs, but I kept falling forward every single time. However, every time I walked around on all fours, it's like my body doesn't miss a beat at all.

But when it came to actually doing something that I would normally do with my hands, it's like I'm learning everything I took for granted all over again from scratch. Sure I now know how to grab things with my hooves from what Twilight taught me, but even then, it had it's downsides. I could grip things, but manipulation was fairly limited from what I could tell.

If it wasn't for the fact that I was in the middle of a dark and misty forest that I knew was dangerous, I would have tested out a few theories and assumptions I was having about my new body. As much I wanted to experiment, I decided that my life was far more important.

Dealing with a cockatrice was a simple matter of closing my eyes if I saw what looked like a chicken, and with timber wolves, I just had to watch out for some sort of putrid smell. But anything bigger, I had to be extra careful and try to avoid any way I could. How hard could that be?

A distant howl made me freeze in my tracks. I quickly looked around to determine the source, but could only tell the general direction of it. My heart was racing, but there was no immediate danger after quickly scanning the environment. Boy was I getting jumpy. When I breathed out through my nose, it came out as a snort. It felt weird knowing that the snorting sound came directly from me. But at this point, I didn't like being constantly reminded about my new body. But not from hatred or discontent, but from the sheer repetition itself. In other words, it got a little annoying after a while.

The Everfree Forest wasn't as dark and sinister as I initially imagined it to be. But then again, it was still daytime, and cartoons do have a knack for exaggeration. In ways more than one.

Looking up, I could tell that it was overcast. The ground had a slight haze to it, not enough to cover the ground in any sort of ground fog, but enough to silhouette the surrounding vegetation slightly. It was only then that my stomach started to growl loudly. I was guessing that by the time I had my emotional episode, it was getting ready for lunchtime.

I looked around to find that there was nothing immediate that I considered to be food. But then a thought crossed my mind, again. I'm now a pony. That means that a lot of the plants are now considered food and there's plenty of it. But the idea of eating right off the ground without any plates or picking involved seemed to be a foreign concept to me. It was something that I would expect an animal to do, but not from me.

I was a firm believer in accepting the reality as it currently is, as it hopefully reduces stress in the long run, but my mind had a hard time accepting the idea of grass, hay, and flowers to be a legitimate food source. The hay pancakes this morning was easier to eat, because at the time I just kept reminding myself that it was just pancakes. Sure it tasted great and the crunchiness added an unusual, but satisfying flavor to it, but this was different. Eating grass straight from the ground was just as absurd as eating a tomato straight from the vine without first picking it. It was unsanitary and it looked weird if you saw someone do it.

But I reminded myself that this was a survival situation, and it wasn't like I could just pick the grass first. By demonstration, my hoof could only tear off a few blades at a time. It was hardly worth the effort to continue doing it. That and coupled with the thought of eating something that was attached to my hoof that was in constant contact with the dirt ground made the grass even less appealing to eat.

After I spent a while longer thinking this over, pacing a little bit back and forth even, I finally got fed up with myself and decided to just get on with it. I was hungry, and I had no idea how long I would be in these woods. At least if I had something in my stomach, then I at least could better focus on finding a way out of these woods and hopefully back to civilization.
Pushing aside whatever pride I had left, I took a deep breath and craned my head forward. Which from my perspective felt and looked a bit weird since I was not used to my neck being so flexible. It wasn't until I had my face touching the ground that I realized that I forgot to open my mouth.

Pulling back my head a little bit, I was able to look back at my target, which was the grass that was right in front of me. This time, I opened my mouth and took a bite. The first mouthful was small due to the fact that my first try only got up a little bit of grass. Allowing my mouth to savor the flavor, I noticed that while it tasted differently than hay, still held a surprising flavor appeal to it despite the fact that I kept thinking to myself that Humans don't eat grass. It got to the point where I had to keep reminding myself that I was now a pony as I continued to graze. It still felt awkward eating like this, but both my taste buds and stomach certainly weren't doing any complaining.

By the time I was done eating, I set about the task of searching for a way out of this forest. Since I had no idea where Ponyville was, let alone which direction was North, I just picked a direction that seemed to be the way back and then started walking. I got the feeling that trying to find a way out on my own was more productive than just sitting around, waiting for the world to decide for me. I know that a lot of survival books that I read while I was still a Boy Scout told me to wait for help, but I quickly got impatient and went regardless of that advice. I did not want to wait for help to come, or for some creature to eat me up.

---

“Are you sure this is a good idea Scootaloo?” Sweetie Bell asked as she stared upon the empty tall house that stood before the trio. It didn't look like it was falling apart or spooky for that matter as they had initially believed it to be, but the style was nothing like they have ever seen. It was two stories tall, and was painted a light brown color with dark brown trimming.

“Yeah I'm sure. Once we get the proof we need, we'll get our cutie marks in proof investigation.” Scootaloo said confidently as she looked around for a way inside.

“But ain't this considered stealing? As much as 'ah want my cutie mark an' all, I don't think that stealing and poking our muzzles into other pony's lives is the way to do it.” Apple Bloom stated, obviously nervous about the mission.

“We won't be stealing. We'll just be borrowing the proof for a short while, then just return it after we show it to everypony.” Scootaloo stated proudly.

“But...” Apple Bloom started protesting before they heard a voice close by.

“I don't know sir. I thought I heard voices from somewhere over here.” One voice stated.

“Then check it out. The last thing I want is another incident like what happened yesterday.” The other voice stated in a more gruff fashion.

“Are you referring to the Pegasus 'new-comer' that kept running and screaming in joy around every which way? The one that you had to chase for 3 whole minutes?” the first voice asked. As he went around the brown house to what seemed to be the back, his teal coat and white mane slowly revealed itself as he came out of the shadows cast by the house. His wings flapped to create a breeze in order to get some relief from an already hot day.

When the other guard heard the last question, all he could to was snort at it. “No, not tha... Wait. You mean to tell me that you were timing the whole chase? I really needed your help to capture him. I was lucky I could even catch up to him half the time. And even luckier that he didn't simply fly away.” The white Earth Pony guard said as he looked around to the door.
To the white guard, it looked like a normal door, except to him, there was yet another door knob that was higher than he was used to seeing. And what was stranger, was that this particular door had a strange black flap that hung like a banner at the bottom center of the door frame. It wobbled back and forth slightly in reaction to the wind, and made a small noise as it moved.

“Find anything?” the white guard said.

“No, nothing sir. Just a strange, black banner making noise.” the other said. The teal guard glanced at the other houses. They were not laid out in any sane layout. Each house were facing each other in unusual angles, making no direct sense of any road when traveling around the houses. Some houses were closer to each other, and the colors of the different paint jobs made each house visually clash with one another. It was certainly a confusing sight.

What was worse, was that it was apparent that none of the houses properly fit the contour of the land, meaning that some of the houses were cutting into the sides of the hills making immediate entry very hard depending on the steepness of the hill itself. But at the same time, surprisingly, they were all standing upright. Some required special ladders or Pegasus ponies to even reach what was assumed to be the front door, and others seemed to require a more indirect approach since not all of the doors were exposed to the open air. And the only thing that kept some of these houses from simply falling over or tilting was the fact that all of the houses had some sort of rough, gray stone attached right underneath each one. Some of them were bigger than others.

“I have to be honest about this place. It's starting to give me the creeps.” the teal guard stated, ears back.

The white guard looked around at the sight and sighed. “I'll have to agree with you on that. There's even a large building that came here as well. But it wasn't filled with any ponies, but books instead. I guess even Humans have libraries.”

“But what if Humans are really as bad as the stories say they are?” the teal guard asked worried.

“I don't think that's likely. Celestia has already made a public statement stating there was no immediate danger from them. I highly doubt she would say such things unless she was absolutely certain. And besides, the only one that escaped from the refugee camp just ran around shouting at the top of his lungs.” The white guard took another look at the houses, then back at the teal guard.

“Don't you also think that it's weird that they are all now ponies? That doesn't make any sense.” the teal guard said.

The white guard gave it some thought. “I wish I had an answer for you. In all honesty, I'm nervous too.” The white guard said as he took a look through a nearby bush to see if anypony was hiding inside.

“They may look like us, but how will they react to us?” the white guard continued.

“I don't know. I know that while you were passed out, a blue stallion 'new-comer' just started crying for no reason and then just ran off.” the teal guard said.

“Wait, you mean to tell me another one got out? And you didn't apprehend him?” the white guard asked, now annoyed at the teal guard.

“I couldn't. Apparently, he was specifically given citizenship shortly after his arrival. Something about legal issues that came up with him being outside the refugee camp. I dunno. I didn't really ask anypony about it.” the teal guard replied.

“Wow. I wonder how he took the news.” the white guard wondered.

“I'm not sure that he knows yet if he knows or not.” the teal pony answered.

The white guard winces slightly at the idea.

“Come on, let's get back to work. I don't want to get in trouble, again.” the white guard said, beginning to walk around the house. The teal guard took a quick around one last time and followed his superior.

“I said I was sorry.” the teal guard stated in his defense.

“Yeah, yeah. Somehow, I've heard that one before.” The white guard stated back in a slightly annoyed tone.

Moments passed and the flap on the door flipped open to reveal Apple Bloom's head sticking out, looking around for any signs of any guards.

“Okay girls, we really need to get out of here.” she said in a loud whisper.

“Whoa! Check it out.” Sweetie Bell said in awe.

Apple Bloom pulled herself back in from the strange door flap back into the strange house. Although at first, her head got stuck. It took a little bit of fidgeting to get it unstuck.

“Look at all those toys. It looks like...wait. What's that?” Scootaloo said.

---

“Great, I have been walking for hours now.” I told myself. I even tried to climb a tree so I could get to a better idea where I was, but that failed miserably. Although my hooves could grip, apparently the bark could not hold my full body weight. And the lack of hands made even harder to pull myself up off the ground. But it wasn't like I could do it as a Human either. I just didn't have the upper body strength to pull it off.

Every time that I scaled a large hill, I seemed to find myself to be more lost than before. I wasn't even sure if I was going around in circles or not. I even got desperate enough to start crying for help. As much as I wanted to find a way back to town, I still could not, despite my best efforts. I couldn't stop either. The last thing that I wanted, was to become an easy target for whatever might be lurking out there. Looking at the bountiful ground, I sighed. Well, at least I won't starve to death.
As I looked around again to determine which direction I should go next, something caught my eye. In the distance, I saw what had looked like a dark figure of some kind. It was hard for me to tell what it was at that distance, as the shape seemed kept shifting. I couldn't tell if it was just my imagination or if someone was actually out there. It took me a moment to realize that this shape was getting bigger with each passing second and not any clearer. That's when I realized that it had glowing red eyes and a dark, cloudy. I also noticed that it was coming right towards me.

With fear taking over, again, I began bolting the other way. Thinking back to all those films that I watched in the past, that those who linger behind to find out what the mysterious entity is often turns up either hurt or dead. I did not want to find out the hard way. As much as I was curious, I wanted to live.

As I continued to run away, I was looking back every so often to see if it was still following me. It was. But at the same time, I wasn't looking where I was going. By the time I realized that, I was already halfway down a steep hill, rolling uncontrollably.

By the time I had reached the bottom of the hill, I blacked out. Whatever I hit, I hit it hard.

Author's Note:

This chapter took a while to polish out before I could publish it. There may be some tweaking as time goes on, but overall, I do have the main content down. I just hope that the beginning of this chapter can hopefully make up for the confusing emotional breakout scene in the last chapter. ;)