I was pissed off and rightfully so.
It had been several months since I’d last visited all of my pony friends in Equestria and confessed my love to Fluttershy. I’d needed to come back to my world for several reasons, one of which was to figure out what had gone on in Equestria since I’d stopped watching the show after Season 6. Certain things that I thought I knew didn’t seem to hold water any more and I was determined to figure out the truth no matter how long it took.
But that wasn’t what had me pissed off at that moment. What had me pissed off the most was what I’d found out regarding Discord. The last time I’d been to Equestria, Fluttershy briefly mentioned to me how Discord had brought King Sombra back from the dead as well as bringing back a few other villains, the former resulting in the Tree Of Harmony being destroyed. All of this couldn’t help but make me wonder why in the everloving fuck would he bring villains back like this!?!
I’d had my suspicions over who some of these other villains might be; one such villain I knew full well that if they’d been brought back, that it would’ve been absolutely idiotic on Discord’s part as this villain had already tricked him before. Sure enough, that villain, Lord Tirek, had been amongst the assembly he’d gathered together. Except that he hadn’t gathered them as Discord.
All throughout the final season, Discord had been masquerading as the evil ram necromancer Grogar, which wasn’t revealed until the Ending of the End 2 parter, whereupon I found myself completely dumbfounded on how Discord, for a millenias old chaos spirit, could be that incredibly fucking stupid. Not just by bringing back Sombra, Tirek, Chrysalis, and even a newer villain, a young Pegasus filly named Cozy Glow, but also because of all the lives that he’d put in danger with this idiotic stunt. Probably even more disturbing and infuriating to me was the fact that he’d put Fluttershy in danger!
I wouldn’t normally make it a point of singling Fluttershy out as being more important than the others if not for the fact that Discord had gone on and on in the past about her being the one pony he cared the most about. If he really cared that much about her, he wouldn’t have constantly put her life in jeopardy like that. A real friend would never put their close friend in harm’s way as often as he had.
He told me that what he’d done was all blown out of proportion and that it wasn’t that serious, but, after finding out what had happened, you can’t say something on this kind of apocalyptic scale was blown out of proportion. If anything, he wasn’t being serious enough about what he’d brought upon my friends, nearly resulting in all of their deaths which only unsettled me even moreso than previously.
Normally, I’d be less angered at Discord himself and more angered towards the writers of the show for making him this mind-numbingly stupid, but I’d been to Equestria several times before; I’d seen that all of it and its inhabitants were real. The writers of the show were simply transcribing what had been revealed to them as the show went on. That being said, Discord was not free from my wrath. Every bad thing that had happened in Season 9 was his fault.
Another detail that I thought was really messed up, aside from bringing Sombra back to life only for him to be killed off again, was the fact that Discord had brought these villains together, set the idea in their minds of attacking Princess Twilight and her friends, and then, after these villains were defeated, he got to decide what their punishment was. I couldn’t be the only one to see how screwy that was, right? It’s all because of him that they were united in the first place!
It had already been bad enough when he’d betrayed the entire pony race to Tirek back in the Season 4 finale, but knowing that he’d pulled off this kind of bullshit, even bringing back Tirek who had already tricked him before, any respect that I might have had for Discord was now shot straight to Hell. Not to mention the fact that he had the ability to bring ponies back from the dead was all the more unsettling. I wouldn’t trust him with getting his powers back like he did afterwards because he’s far too reckless and dangerous with them, much moreso than when he was a villain back in Season 2.
At the same time, though, I couldn’t help but think back to when I’d watched The Last Problem, wherein all of my friends had gotten older and moved on with their lives. Sticking out strongest in my mind was when all of them had gathered for their counsel meeting and Fluttershy had arrived there from a portal to Discord’s realm, Discord himself handing her a paper lunch bag before he went off to his Ogres and Oubliettes convention. Fluttershy exiting Discord’s realm couldn’t help but make me worry that I might have interfered with something that could’ve possibly developed between them in the time between past and present.
As much as I held a deep loathing towards Discord for fucking everything up in the final season, I still respected Fluttershy far too much to stand in her way if she truly wanted to be with him. I didn’t want it to be said of me that I was a homewrecker, especially when it came to one of my closest friends. At the same time, though, was it really wise for her to be in a relationship with someone like Discord who had so thoroughly disregarded her feelings and safety in that manner? Not to mention toying with her emotions by faking injury when Sombra struck him with his shadow blast. That was a huge dick move on his part and not something that I myself would ever even think of doing to the mare I loved.
However, that wasn’t the only thing on my mind in that moment. I was also troubled by the fact that my friends seemed to have completely forgotten that I was an Alicorn Prince the last time I’d visited them. I’d hoped that watching their show would provide some kind of answer as to why they couldn’t remember that, but it only brought up even more questions.
I’d been informed of my royal ancestry by Star Swirl The Bearded several years ago when I’d first arrived in Ponyville and wound up in some weird kind of limbo after sacrificing myself to the hag who had threatened to destroy all that I’d come to know and love while there. However, the Season 7 finale showed me that Star Swirl had been trapped in limbo with 5 other ponies, the Pillars Of Old Equestria, as well as the Pony Of Shadows. If the Star Swirl that I’d been talking to back then was the real one, why hadn’t I seen any of the others who were trapped in limbo with him? And if it wasn’t the real one, then who the hell had I even been talking to? Was the real Star Swirl even around in Equestria any more for me to ask him about this?
During my time of getting caught up on the show, I’d also come across this really bizarre spin-off called Pony Life that had been done in a completely different art style with a completely different tone. At first glance, I’d gotten very strong Teen Titans Go vibes from it and yeah those thoughts weren’t unwarranted, but, after watching a few episodes, I much rather preferred this over Teen Titans Go any day. I obviously knew that none of these episodes of Pony Life were canon so it didn’t really bother me all that much. Just another glimpse of another reality.
As I stepped out of a nice hot shower, that had helped to melt some of the stress away, and put on a new change of clothes in my bedroom, I banished all of these thoughts from my mind for the time being. What was most important was that I was finally going to be heading back to my homeland after far too long. Several months here in the real world seemed even longer since I’d last visited Equestria. Along with catching myself up on the show, there had been one other detail that needed to be taken care of before I could return there again, something that was more financially sensitive with longer lasting implications.
Ever since my first wife, Savannah, had been murdered; our daughter, Ariel, was stolen when she was an infant; and I’d been in and out of mental wards for the past few years, I’d focused a good amount of whatever disability checks I got into finding the man who’d done this and bringing him to justice with rather unsuccessful outcomes. As a result, my finances were pretty much non-existent so I had to save up the money I got from these checks til I finally had enough to buy a proper wedding ring for my beautiful Flutters; a ring with a blue diamond that matched her eyes as well as a silver chain for her to wear the ring like a necklace as she had no fingers or horn on which to wear it.
It might’ve seemed weird that I would go to all of the trouble of buying a wedding ring here on Earth rather than in Equestria where I already had a sizeable number of bits stored up from working as a masseur at the Ponyville Day Spa, but there was a method to my madness. You see, if I were to buy a wedding ring in Equestria, it would arouse way too much suspicion. Being that I was the only human in Equestria, it would already be pretty obvious that I’d be proposing to Fluttershy and word would spread way too quickly, taking out the element of surprise when I did propose to her.
Along with that, I still meant to visit her parents to make sure that I had their blessing and news of my intentions to propose before I’d even received said blessing was not the kind of impression I wanted to leave on them. I wanted to make sure that everything leading up to my proposal would be absolutely perfect and therefore would need it to be as discreet as possible.
Making sure that I had the small velvet box in my pocket, the time had finally come. Seeing as I’d already left a good amount of my stuff back in Equestria from the last time I’d visited, there wasn’t really all that much for me to pack before my return. Putting on my favorite leather jacket, in which one of the pockets held the feather Fluttershy gave me from herself before I last left Equestria, and taking my necklace in my hand, I read the inscription on the back of the pendant.
“Equestrian Son/The victory won/Return to thy home.”
Just like all the other times, no sooner had the words escaped my lips then a bright lightning flash struck the floor of my room whereupon the portal opened that would take me home again. I immediately stepped forward into it, falling through a magnificent rainbow of colors flashing by me in a rapid rush that was hard for me to register all of it at once. Despite this, as I felt my great feathered wings sprout from my back and my pony ears emerging from the top of my head to replace my human ones, I was more confident than ever that it would be smooth sailing all the way through. Little did I know of what awaited me on the other side of the portal.