Chapter 1: Another world, another conundrum
"And the wings?"
Twilight scoffed. "I've been walking on two legs and picking things up with these", she said, wiggling her fingers for Spike to see. "Wings? I'm thrilled that's all I'll be dealing with back in Eques-"
SLAM. "Ow!"
She was cut off as she heard the dull smack of Spike's head impacting against the side of the statue... where the portal back to her home world was supposed to be. One look at her friend, who was rubbing his now sore head with a paw, and a rope tightened around her stomach. Her hand moved towards the center of the portal, only to find it wasn't a fluke: the surface was as solid as the marble it was supposed to be. "Oh no!"
Spike shook his head clear of the stars. "Twilight? What's going on?" His nails scratched the white stone. "Why can't we go through?"
"I... I don't know!" She felt more than heard her voice start to wobble. Her eyes shot upwards. "The moon isn't even close to reaching peak height yet! The portal was not supposed to close until then!"
"Twilight?" Her new, other friends stepped closer. "Is something the matter?"
She felt her ears droop. "The portal I was supposed to take back home..." Her fingers ran through the marble a second time, to the same effect. "It doesn't seem to be working anymore!"
"Uh-oh..." Rainbow Dash whispered.
A shoe sole softly hitting the pavement drew her attention. The commotion had attracted the attention of four more people, and they had come closer to investigate. Her eyes befell a girl who shyly held a trowel before her, as if she intended to hide behind it, followed by her two ex-helpers and the vice-principal.
Spike snarled angrily. "Hey you, Sunset Shimmer! What did you do to the portal?!"
Her timid expression melted off, replaced by shocked confusion. "What? The portal? W-what's wrong with it?"
"Oh, don't ya play innocent!" Applejack huffed, crossing her arms. "You deceived all of us before, what's stoppin' ya from doin' it again?"
"B-but I'm being honest now, I didn't do anything to the portal!" There was a note in Sunset's voice that the others weren't used to: desperation. It added to how she gesticulated nervously, flailing the small spade around. "I wanted to use it to go back to Equestria, I wasn't gonna risk closing it before the right time! You have to believe me!"
While the actual students of Canterlot High didn't look convinced, she saw the princess and her dragon-turned-dog share a look of uncertainty before eyeing her again. "Didn't you have any kind of failsafe on it?" Twilight asked after a second. "Something that wouldn't let..."
Her voice trailed off as another sound filled the space, a hum so deep she felt her feet vibrate inside her boots. Something metal hit concrete, and she turned her eyes back to Sunset Shimmer, who had dropped her trowel and was staring slack-jawed at something behind Twilight. She turned, and saw that the statue's side had started glowing an uneven, shifting mixture of red and white.
Then, at the same time as electric sparks started running over the stone's surface, the portal glowed brightly as if there was a sun right behind it. Then came the sound of thunder – not from the sky, but from the surface in front of her. Her ears started to ring, both from it and a single, high-pitched note that pierced through all the noise. She could barely hear Spike whining beside her; everything was so bright she couldn't see him.
Then she felt the pull. It was strong, unyielding and absolute, like the force of gravity.
IDI KO MNE.
She fell belly-down on the floor. The force didn't cease, pulling her constantly back with unrivaled strength, enough to make her dress ride up; her stomach raked painfully against the rough pavement. "WHAT'S GOING ON?!" she screamed.
PREESHLO VREMJA. YA VIZHU TVOYO ZHELANIE.
Her flailing hands grabbed a hold of something tough but pliable. It didn't slow her down in the slightest.
IDI KO MNE.
Then, there was nothing but Spike's scream of pain.
Vice-Principal Luna woke up to the light of sunrise in her face and grass under her head. Moaning, she stood up, cradling her head against the horrid migraine that had settled in it. After a couple of blinks to clear her blurry vision, she saw Snips, Snails, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity and Fluttershy sprawled on the school's front entrance. As she hurried to check up on the closest one, she noticed two things.
One, Twilight Sparkle, her talking dog and Sunset Shimmer were nowhere to be seen.
Two, there was a strange object similar to a malformed lump of plastic near the students. It wouldn't have attracted her eye if it wasn't emitting small arcs of light and peacefully bobbing above the ground at about ankle height with no signs of dropping any lower.
The woman shook her head. There were bigger issues at hand. With that in mind, she bent low to check up on Pinkie Pie, with one unconscious thought running through her pounding brain.
'I don't get paid enough for this.'
The cool autumn breeze gently caressed her face, as if to say 'don't worry, you can sleep a little more'. She felt inclined to do just that, oh how she did. Peaceful moments like this were hard to come by, no matter the shape of your body.
Then someone whimpered beside her, ruining it all. "Oh, come on," she groaned. "I'm trying to relax here!"
"S-Sunset Shimmer?"
She blinked groggily. "What is it?" she asked, her voice sounding grumpy and slurry, as she opened her eyes to see the beige lump at the edge of her vision.
Wait... beige lump?
She moved a hand to scrub her left eye clean, but no fingers connected with her face. Instead, a hoof tapped her brow. "Wha..." She was back to pony form. Did that mean they had crossed back over to Equestria? No, no they hadn't - one look at the most definitely human-made car sitting in front of her was enough to dismiss the theory.
Someone breathed raggedly right next to her, and her ears perked up. She turned and beheld a boy, naked like on the day he was born, lying curled up on the grass while nursing his mouth with one hand. His other arm lay limp across the ground. A pair of green eyes peeked at her from above the fingers, and short dark purple hair stuck up in wiry clumps from his head. Though his bulk and facial shape was different to what she was used to and his complexion was not the expected violet to match his old fur, there was no mistaking the human before her. "Oh, that's you... Spike, was it? Twilight's dog?" He 'hmm'ed weakly in agreement, very slowly stretching from his fetal position. To her surprise and marginal alarm, his nudity was overshadowed by the fact that there was blood smeared on his face, obviously his own, seeing as there were two dark lines coming down from his nostrils. "Wow, what happened to you?"
He moaned weakly and tried to sit up; with some support from her, he succeeded. "No idea..." he said as he wiped his face clean. "All I remember was Twi talking to you, and then there was so much noise my head started to hurt." A solitary raven crowed as he peered around at the landscape. "Are we still in the other world? As in, not Equestria?"
"Looks like it," was the response.
Right then, a loud snore made them turn. Sprawled on the ground behind the two was Twilight Sparkle, also back to her pony body, lying on her back with her wings splayed out and the Element of Magic perched in front of her horn. "TWI!" Spike yelped, excited, crawling quickly to her side.
"Nnngh, not now, Spike, go enjoy your day off..." the mare muttered, groggily waving a hoof in front of her to dismiss the annoyance. A firm shaking with a hand awoke her more, enough for her to notice the bloodstained face above her. "Wah!"
Barely avoiding a hoof to the face, Spike grabbed Twilight's forelegs. "Easy, easy, Twi, it's me! Spike!"
"Spike?" The name jolted her completely out of dream land. "Is that you? Oh gosh, what happened to you?"
While the alicorn fussed over her now-human friend's health, Sunset watched from a small distance. Despite his protests and claims of being fine, she didn't stop her worrying, checking the boy from all possible angles. Twilight hadn't even noticed her. It was obvious that she cared a lot for him, and he was being careful not to be harsh on her annoying behavior. Was that really how a friendship was? If it was, then it was nice... She had nobody that cared for her like these two did. Even Flash Sentry didn't quite act like that when they were together; he was just there, following behind her, trading smooches when invited and talking when spoken to. The more she looked at the scene, the more uncomfortable she felt, and so the unicorn found it best to walk around, taking a look at where they'd ended up.
She was only partially right in her initial assumption: while the world around the grassy courtyard was definitely human-made, it wasn't like anything she'd ever seen from the world linked to Equestria through the mirror. First off, the courtyard was littered with junk like wooden crates, metal barrels, and even old fridges. The buildings all around were all at least two-story tall, but their compact, square style and dull colors were a far cry from Canterlot High and the nearby area where she had her dormitory room. At the end of the street before her lay a truck, rusted beyond use, like it had been left out to the elements for years. Its condition reflected the entire landscape: it all looked... abandoned.
"Sunset Shimmer?"
She turned at the mention of her name, to find Twilight Sparkle staring at her with a concerned frown, with Spike standing behind her, his face now clean. "Are you okay? You look a little down."
"I'm fine," she retorted, facing away from the still nude boy. "Can you tell your friend to cover up, please? He's got it out for the whole world to see, if you haven't noticed." She could feel the blush starting to heat up her cheeks.
A definitely male gasp hit her ears. "Sorry about that!" Spike hurriedly apologized. "I-it's just..."
"Yeah, I know, the whole thing with humans and clothes can be a little disconcerting at first." She remembered her first time out of the locker room, one where she'd forgot to put her clothes on. Luckily, only that red-haired Norman kid saw her. "Just... just keep at least your groin covered until we can get you some clothes, alright?"
"Sorry again..." the baby dragon muttered, covering his front with his hands.
Twilight giggled awkwardly. "Don't worry, Spike, I'm sure you didn't mean it. Hehe..." The red on her cheeks was far brighter than whenever she'd been with Flash Sentry, and he didn't really know what to make of it except blush harder himself.
A cold drip on his exposed back, though, and the embarrassment was forgotten. "Brrrrr! Cold! Cold!" His eyes moved to the sky, and to his surprise, it had gone from a perfectly clear morning to an ugly overcast in a matter of minutes, and rain was already starting to come down. It was fast, much faster than he'd ever seen actual rain clouds assemble.
"Quick, in there!" Twilight called, pointing to a building overlooking the courtyard, and all three rushed to the closest entrance, which turned out to be a staircase jutting out the side.
Spike sat down on a bench near the empty doorframe leading inside, rubbing the cold from his arms as his jaw trembled violently. "I-I think I foun a-anoth-ther reason to need clothes," he stuttered. From what little he'd spent in this new body, he could tell that humans were not made to endure rain, at least not in the chill of autumn... at least, he judged it was autumn.
Twilight felt another pang of concern. "Oh, Spike..." He looked like he was freezing. Her left wing reached out and wrapped around his back, a gesture Spike gladly received from how he reached a hand to stroke at her feathers. "We'd best get out of the wind, then, it's gonna make the cold worse. Come on." As he got up to follow, she caught Sunset Shimmer observing them. "Are you coming? I don't think the owner of this building would mind if we hung back until the rain stops."
The unicorn shook her head and went to peek around the edge of the doorway. "Sure, let's go. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure the only one who'd complain about us being here would be a squatter." The distant look she had on and her eagerness to enter first made Twilight ponder, but a shaky breath from Spike made her put that aside. Between hugging himself for warmth with one arm and cupping his crotch with the other, he looked positively miserable. With him standing, her wings couldn't properly reach past his midsection, but it didn't stop her from trying to make him at least a little bit comfortable.
As they took their first steps inside, Twilight couldn't help but agree with Sunset's assessment. All the rooms past the little hallway were barren of all furniture save an old bookshelf or two, and even those were mostly empty save for junk. She sighed; the chances of finding something for Spike to wear were running thin.
Lightning struck far away, attracting her attention to the outside. Then, she froze, but not because of the weather. Rather, it was the fearful look Sunset Shimmer was directing to a corner, where there was another human sitting against a wall. He wore a far cry from anything Canterlot High had to show: a set of heavily reinforced, forest-green camouflaged clothing, complete with gloves, a helmet and a large pair of protective goggles. In fact, the only bits of skin they could see were his nose and mouth.
He was also unquestionably dead, lying completely motionless on a puddle of his own blood.
"Oh jeez..." Spike felt like he was going to be sick, but his stomach was too jittery to move. He wasn't shivering just from the chill on his wet skin now, and judging by the two masses now warming his legs, the girls shared the feeling.
Sunset Shimmer was the first to break off after the self-conscious realization that she was practically snuggling a naked stranger's leg. With that, cautious curiosity won over the reluctance, and she moved towards the corpse until she was a foreleg's distance from his leg. There was no obvious injury that she could identify, be it sword, arrow or spear wounds; the only thing were four holes in his vest and a bloody one on his leg. The wall behind him was pockmarked with similar holes, except these were two-centimeters wide punctures into solid concrete. She repressed a shudder.
"Sunset, what are you doing?!" Twilight hissed from behind her. "We have to get out of here! Who knows what did this and if it's gonna come back!"
She spared the alicorn a mildly irritated look. "Perk up your ears, Princess. There's nothing here but us now." It was true; the only sounds were the waterfall above their heads and the occasional thunderclap. At least, until a noise reached them. Somewhere nearby, children were laughing. Their jolly giggles were distant, faint, but somehow they rang in the three's eardrums clear as crystal despite the rain; they were out of place, unfitting of the situation, made unbelievably eerie because of it. Sunser Shimmer was very quick to back away from the dead man and return to the company of a disturbed Twilight and Spike, who seemed about to start whimpering. "Okay, okay, I take it back!"
"G-guys, I don't know about you... but I'm getting really scared here," Spike said, his voice tremulous. "Can we get out of here? Maybe the rain isn't so bad anymore..."
"Wait a second." Twilight would have immediately given him a lecture about hypothermia, a condition the baby dragon might not be subconsciously aware of, but she had to concede that the idea was quite appealing. Still, there had to be a logical explanation for this. "Maybe it's a..." She paused. No, it couldn't be a spell; she would have noticed the casting. Besides, while humans could channel the magic of friendship, mundane magic was beyond them. Perhaps... "A speaker hidden around here."
Sunset Shimmer shook her head. "Human speakers don't work that way. That was like they were laughing right by my ears."
"Okay, so not a speaker," she conceded. "Then, maybe a... collective auditory hallucination?" Okay, that one had sounded better in her head.
A floorboard creaked softly behind them. "Don't twitch a muscle, or I'll turn you into a sieve!" The strange, accented voice caused them to freeze. Their heads slowly craned back towards its source, which turned out to be a second human about two meters behind them, covered just as heavily as the dead one, except his attire was grey with a white and sky-blue camouflage pattern on the top, and his head was mostly hidden by a blue hood and fabric mask that left only his eyes visible. He was carrying, at waist level, something similar to a short lance of metal and wood, with one of his hands on a handle around its middle and the other further back in a grip protruding from underneath the frame.
A quick exchange of looks between Spike, Sunset and Twilight showed how while neither understood what the threat meant, they weren't keen on finding out. "Listen, we don't want to cause an incident. We're just lost and need a way home," Twilight said clemently.
The man didn't even acknowledge her - in fact, he focused fully on Spike. He was too far for her to try and buck the lance off him, and she didn't want to risk casting any magic in case the telltale glow from her horn set him off. More so, she wasn't willing to gamble Spike and Sunset Shimmer's safety. "Okay, okay... Hands in the air and turn around, streaker. I want to see your face."
"... who's 'streaker'?" Spike asked tentatively. "Look, I think you're making a mistake..."
"Don't you play the comedian with me, you bastard!" the human yelled out. "Are you seeing anybody else in his birthday suit here?!"
"He was talking to you, dummy!" Sunset clarified in a harsh whisper.
The former dragon looked at Twilight, asking silently for guidance. She had her mouth set in a thin, worried line, but nodded faintly. It was enough for him. "All right then... I'm gonna turn around now." He did so, lifting his arms up high. Zombies and ghosts might scare him out of his scales, but someone his size only made him feel nervous. "What do you want with us?" The human didn't answer at first, silently looking him up and down. It was strange, Spike noted, how he didn't seem to have any malicious intent like Garble and his crew, and his hands seemed to be shaking a little. He looked stressed out, scared even, which he found out he could relate to. After all, another human had died there. "Listen, if it's about the... dead guy over there," gosh, it felt wrong just to mention it, "we didn't do anything. He was like that when we got here. I swear by the dragon code."
The human didn't say a thing back. He simply eyeballed Spike, who began to feel unsettled by his firm gaze. Finally, after ten seconds that felt like two eternities and a half, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. Then, he let go of the handle on the lance, shifting to support it with only one arm, and lifted a finger as if someone who was about to speak but forgot his line. "Just one thing..." and then, he extended it. "Give me your hand. Slowly, no funny moves."
Well, at least it seemed like he had calmed down a bit. It was an innocuous order as far as he could see, so Spike complied. A gloved hand enveloped his own, first gripping it as a whole, then its fingers started poking and squeezing at it, like the other couldn't see what he was holding and was fumbling with it to determine what it was, before letting go all of a sudden. "... you're real. You're fucking real. Shit..." the masked man whispered. "First it's Monolith, then the spetsnaz, the blowout, fucking ghosts, and now this..." He turned tail, marched straight to a corner and proceeded to sit down, cradling his head with both hands. "Goddamn it. This fucking place..."
"What the heck was that all about?" Sunset Shimmer asked, looking at the native funny. First he threatened them with a weird saying and a clumsy spear that looked too heavy to be any use, then he ignored Twilight Sparkle like she didn't exist. Then, after groping Spike's hand, he went to sit in a corner. That wasn't normal even by a stretch. On the contrary, his behavior was downright freaky.
"I don't know," Twilight concurred, "but let's get out of here. This guy's giving me the creeps."
Both her companions agreed, and were about to get out through the other doorway when the man called out, considerably more subdued this time. "Where are you going, streaker? Aren't you gonna take the suit?"
Spike knew he was the one being called by now. "Uhh... what? Where's a suit?"
Though his eyes were mildly glassy, he still gave the boy a look like he'd grown a second head. His hand pointed lazily to the dead man. "What kind of stalker are you? You get out there butt-naked, one single rodent will tear you to shreds. Besides, it's a Berill that got what, five bullet holes at most?"
Spike winced. "Grave robbing? Are you serious?"
The man let out a single 'ha!' noise. "And what else you gonna do, dumbass, go look for a boutique or some shit? Wake the fuck up, rookie, you're stuck here. Take what you can get. That guy's got no use for it anymore anyway."
"Stuck?" Twilight asked, feeling a chill in her belly. "What do you mean, stuck?!" No, that couldn't be! The others were counting on her to come back with the Element of Magic! The crown on her head meant the safety of all Equestria!
For half a second, the man's deadened eyes glued on to her, but just as quickly, he went to staring at the floor with a hand on his head. "Shut up, damn hallucinations, just shut up...!" he moaned quietly, just not enough for the Equestrians to not hear.
"Hallucination?" she asked. So he could see her; he just didn't believe in her presence for some reason. "You think I'm a hallucination?"
"She's not a hallucination," Spike confirmed.
Lightning struck somewhere nearby, and when its flash passed, the man's eyes stayed lit up. It wasn't in anger or joy, or any outward emotion. He was uncertain and fearful, and it showed when he spoke "Wha... are you joking with me? I'm seeing two little talking horses with horns and I'm not crazy?"
"Oh please." Sunset Shimmer walked to the human and whacked his knee with a hoof, eliciting an 'ow!' from him. One look back and she saw Twilight glaring disapprovingly at her. "What? He was doubting us, so I showed him."
"I should kick you in the face for that, you little bitch," the man said angrily, rubbing his sore joint. "That hurt!"
Spike gave her the blunt answer. "No wonder you don't have friends."
Those two lines, spoken so close and by those exact people, made the unicorn shrink back, her eyes darting left and right. She'd done it again, hadn't she? Now both of the other two were disappointed, and the third was angry. "I'm... sorry?" Maybe that'd be enough.
"Forget it," the clothed man waved her off, a little less miffed.
The gusts turned the window's way, and a cold shiver ran through Spike. "I'm g-gonna accept that offer," he tittered, crouching down to the corpse and working out how the many straps, zippers and belts worked.
"You do that," he answered. "I don't like staring at men's junk."
Twilight gave her housemate a sad look before turning back to the sitting human. "Why didn't you think we were real?"
He was silent for a second, as the human dragon left with the bloodied cloth parts of the suit, presumably to wash the blood off them. He eyed the alicorn in front of him for a moment, as if trying to convince himself that she was indeed real. "The Brain Scorcher," he said finally. "I heard of a Duty patrol that went a little ways near there. Most of them came back... wrong, you know, talking about headaches, their vision getting yellow and them seeing animals and people... and those things, some talked back to them. Even the animals." He stretched his other leg, and his foot bumped lightly against Twilight's hoof. He sighed. "I saw you two with him, and freaked out, thought my brain had boiled. Fucking headaches don't help..." He cradled his brow with a hand, as if keeping a lid closed.
The two ponies shared a look. Neither had a ready answer for such a weird prospect, and to worsen it, while his behavior was erratic, the human didn't seem to be lying at all. "Well, we're very real, not some made-up illusion," Twilight said comfortingly, extending a foreleg. "I'm Twilight Sparkle."
The native scoffed, a hint of mirth in what she could see of his covered face. "Well, if this is real..." he moved to a crouch and shook the offered hoof. "Nimble." He looked at the other pony. "And who are you, Spunky?"
Said pony glared at him in annoyance. "My name's Sunset Shimmer, not 'spunky'," she tossed back.
"Whatever you say, Spunky," Nimble said with a smirk. The mare looked even more disgruntled, to the point of flicking her tail and ears, but instead of continuing the argument, she harrumphed and turned away. He paid her no mind as the one with wings snickered. "So, you guys are definitely more stalker than mutant. What are you anyway?"
"We're ponies," Twilight answered. "We were coming back to our world from another one, when the portal... malfunctioned, to say the least. We woke up on the grass outside, and Spike - our human friend," she clarified at his inquisitive look, "was in human form."
Nimble took a few seconds to digest the news, and while he did so, Spike came back, now wearing the crumpled and slightly humid set of clothes. They were still stained. "I got it mostly clean, but the blood wouldn't come off," he said lamely.
"It doesn't, even with soap," Nimble assured him. "It just stops smelling. Don't forget to put on the rest now." The boy did so, looking a little less aghast at the idea of wearing a dead man's clothes as he began dressing up with the vest and boots. "There you go, you look like a real stalker now!" the older man grinned.
"Stalker?" Spike asked, confused. "I'm not a stalker. I don't stalk anyone, that's just wrong."
"If you're a human in the Zone and not coming on an expedition, you are a stalker," Nimble said simply. "Welcome to it, by the way."