Lyra opened her eyes to find Galen's face above her. "You good now? That's the second time someone's fainted in my house and I'm getting kind of sick of it."
Lyra scrambled to her hooves and smiled awkwardly. "Yep, I'm fine! Just a little exited, heheh..."
Galen rolled his eyes and looked over to Twilight. "We'll go over our alphabets later, and if we don't end up having time, I can just give you a sheet of all of our letters, both uppercase and lowercase."
"What are uppercase and lowercase?"
"...I think I get why you were having so much trouble. Uppercase letters are used in the first letter of the first word in a sentence, or as the first letter in a person, (or pony I guess) place or thing. They're also used at the beginning of every word in a title. Lowercase letters are used everywhere else."
"That's so unnecessarily complicated! Why would you write like that?"
Galen shrugged. "It helps important words stand out. Apart from that I don't know, but it's not too awful hard to understand."
"I... guess. Anyways, an alphabet to work with would be a big help."
"You know, I've been thinking, if I’m a unicorn, can I do that crazy magic stuff like you?”
“Of course! Every unicorn can do at least basic levitation.”
“And, can this levitation spell say, put pressure on an object?”
“Um, yeah. Where are you going with this?”
“Fuck. Yes. I think I’ve found an alternative to hands. I want to learn how to do that as soon as possible. Like, tomorrow soon.”
“Really? Great! I was going to ask if you wanted me to teach you anyway. Does that mean you don’t want me to work on that transformation spell then? I was actually kind of exited to do a project like that.”
“Oh no don’t get me wrong, I still want my human body back. I’m just glad I’ll be able to function semi normally until then.”
“I see. Well I hope that we can cross our little language barrier soon so I can get working on it.”
Galen and Twilight stepped into the living room from the hallway to find the girls and Spike watching the TV with amused or confused expressions. They looked at the screen to see what they were watching.
“For a guy in a suit, you’re pretty fuckin stupid!
“Hey fuck you I didn’t become a billionaire by being an idiot! I have four degrees in-“
Galen quickly snatched up the remote and turned the TV off. “Whoops. Forgot I was watching that.”
Pinkie was giggling like mad. “That was funny!”
“Ah didn’t quite understand what was so funny bout it.”
Galen chuckled. “Yeah, that’s essentially my sense of humor. Complete randomness that somehow makes me laugh.”
Spike looked up at Twilight in confusion. “Twilight? What does ‘Fuck’ mean?”
Galen snorted in shock and amusement. “Yeah, that’s not a word you should be saying kid.”
“Why? Is it mean?”
“Um, in certain scenarios yeah. It’s just an all around vulgar word. Humans have a lot of those, and we like to use them a lot. We really shouldn’t, but it’s a habit that’s pretty much impossible to break.”
Rarity scrunched up her muzzle. “Why would you use such words if they are as inappropriate as you say?”
“Because they make certain things funnier, and it’s a way to vent stress if you’re mad or hurt.”
The white mare flicked her mane. “Well I’ll stay away from them if they are as uncouth as you say. Well enough of that darling, I’ve been wanting to see your wardrobe! I’m so exited to see what human fashion is like!”
“Uh… sorry to break it to you, but I’m not big on fashion. I only have a couple of fancy outfits, and they’re for special occasions only.”
“Well I hardly see a problem with that. That’s very normal for a pony.”
“Yeah, but I figured you expected me to have some huge fancy wardrobe the way you were talking about it. I mean my mom has quite a few dresses, but if you’re gonna look at them don’t ruin them. I’m not gonna be the one to tell her a magical unicorn ruined her favorite dress.”
Rarity pressed her hooves to her cheeks and gave an *eeee!!!*. “Oh I simply must investigate! Where can I find your mother’s dresses?”
“Her room is upstairs, last door on the right. I repeat, if you ruin any of them, you’re replacing them.”
Rarity bolted up the stairs in excitement, and Galen looked back to the others. “Any other requests?” Four hooves and a claw shot up.
“Sigh, alright, one at a time. Rainbow?”
“I want to see what kind of sports you humans have! If they’re awesome enough, maybe we can bring them to Equestria!”
“Simple enough.” Galen turned on the TV again and went to YouTube. Saying ‘football’ into the remote, a multitude of videos on the American sport came up. “Go nuts. I’m not a big sports guy, so I’ll leave that to you. Applejack?”
“Well, ah was wonderin if ya knew anythin bout the history of where ya come from. Ah feel like ah’d get ta understand ya humans more if ah knew more bout yer past.”
Galen chuckled. The poor naive fool. “I can’t tell you much off the top of my head, but I have quite a few history books in my room if you want to help Twilight and I close this written language barrier. There’s also a hell of a lot of history shows and videos on the TV I could show you sometime.”
“How far back does yer history go?”
“Well that’s complicated. The oldest recorded history we’ve discovered dates back to around 5,000 years ago, but humans were around before that. It’s just that whatever evidence we’ve found of humans from before that is indecipherable at the moment.”
“…wow. Ah’ve got a lot ta learn ah guess.”
“Depends on what you want to know. History’s extremely convoluted. I’ll show you some videos sometime. What do you want Pinkie?”
“I wanna go check out you’re awesome outside bathtub! The one that makes bubbles and has pretty lights!”
“You mean the hot tub? Sure, just don’t press anything if you don’t know what it does. And I wouldn’t stay in there too long. It’s really hot and you could get dizzy or even faint from the heat.”
“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie pulled a towel and swimming goggles out of her mane and ran out the back door. Galen stared blankly. “So, is her hair like a portal to a pocket dimension or something?”
Twilight furrowed her brow. “Now that you mention it, she does seem to pull a lot of stuff out of there. How does that make sense?”
Applejack chuckled. “It’s best not ta question Pinkie’s antics.”
Twilight’s eye twitched. “But it doesn’t make sense!”
Galen shrugged. “Fair enough. I’m a pony in magical cartoon land. Logic is dead to me already. What do you want Lyra?”
“I was just wondering if I could go look around your house! I know you probably don’t want me bothering you too much, so I’ll just look around for now. So much human stuff! I could write a book with all this information!”
“I’ll tell you what I told the others. Don’t break anything and we’re good. Also before going into the kitchen you should know two things. A) Humans are omnivores. You’re going to find meat if you look in the fridge or freezer. B) Where I come from cows are dumb animals, so don’t freak out if you find beef.”
Lyra’s face turned slightly greener. “…y-yep. Thanks for the heads up. I’m… gonna go check out the bathroom first.”
Lyra sped off, leaving Galen behind with the others. “I swear you ponies don’t know what you’re missing out on. Meat is awesome. Especially bacon. Bacon slaps.”
Fluttershy looked up from Sam, who was curled up next to her on the couch. “Oh we have hay bacon. Is your bacon different?”
“Yeah. It’s a fatty slice of pig meat, and the best god damn thing on the planet. Steak and ham are also up there, but not quite as good as bacon.”
Rainbow looked up from the game she was watching on the TV. “Oh, so THAT’S what Gilda meant when she was talking about how I was missing out on ‘real’ bacon!”
Galen cocked a brow. “Gilda?”
“My old foalhood friend. She’s a gryphon, so she eats meat like… you do, I guess. She was always trying to make me jealous about how I couldn’t eat meat. Which I mean I guess I know I can now.”
“Well then it’s settled. As soon as I figure out how to cook in this body, you’re trying bacon. All of you. I refuse to let you miss out on such a delicacy.”
Fluttershy gave a small smile, and the other ponies in the room gave reluctant agreements. “Alright cool. Oh, crap! Sorry… Spike was it? I forgot all about you!”
“It’s okay, I’m used to it.”
Galen blinked. “Dude, that’s a little depressing. Anyway, what did you want?”
“I want you to show me some of your video games! I bet they’re awesome!”
“Hm, how old did you say you were?”
“I’m ten!”
“Well then that narrows the list down quite a bit.”
“Huh? What does my age have to do with that?”
“A lot of the games I have are, well, I’d describe them as violently inappropriate for your age.”
Spike crossed his arms and huffed. “They can’t be THAT bad…”
Galen gave the drake a blank expression. “Ever witnessed a living being get ripped in half before?”
Spike’s eyes widened. “…on second thought, a smaller selection is fine.”
“Glad you agree. Do you have any fighting games here?”
“Oh yeah! We have a couple at the arcade.”
“Well then I’m going to show you Super Smash Bros.”
“Is that a fighting game? It sounds cool!”
“It is. It’s a game that has characters from a ton of different video game series. I think there’s actually around 190 game series represented in the game. If you include all the assist trophies, costumes and spirits anyway.”
“190?! I don’t even think that many games exist here!”
Galen led Spike down to the basement. “Why are we going down here?”
“Because it’s where the Switch is.” Galen turned on the lights and hopped down the stairs, Spike following. They got to the bottom and Galen led Spike to a couch. He went up to a device that had red and blue controllers attached to it and plucked them off. He handed them to Spike and turned the TV on.
Spike looked to the controllers in awe and confusion. “These have so many buttons! The games I play only have one or two and a joystick.”
“The games you play weren’t designed for opposable digits.” The Tv started up and the screen displayed a list of games on it.
Galen pointed to one of the buttons. “You press that one to open up the game.”
Spike opened the game up and Galen directed him through the menu. The drake was in awe at the detail of the game. He was used to 8 and 16 bit graphics, so this was crazy for him. He got into the character select screen and his mind finally broke.
“Th-there’s so many characters!”
“Yeah, Smash Ultimate probably has the most characters in any fighting game. There’s 88 of them, and we’re apparently getting one more.”
The dragon’s jaw dropped. “88?! Our games only have like 8 characters!”
“Yeah that seems about right. Again, this game has a huge roster even by my standards. Go ahead and pick a character. If you can’t decide, there’s always the random option.”
Spike looked through the characters for a bit until he found one that caught his interest. “Is that a dragon?”
“Oh Ridley? I mean yeah? I don’t know a lot about Metroid, the series he’s from. What I do know is that he’s a space pirate and the arch enemy of Samus, the character you play as in those games.”
“So he’s a bad guy? He sounds cool I guess.”
“Yeah, he’s a bad guy. One of Nintendo’s most ruthless villains from what I’ve heard about him.”
“Nintendo?”
“The company that makes most of the games the characters in here are from.”
Spike selected Ridley as his character and picked a stage. As soon as the match started up Galen paused it and showed Spike the controls. The drake was a little overwhelmed with all of it, but eventually he got the basic gist of how to play.
“This is pretty different from the fighting games at the arcade. Instead of getting your opponent’s health down all the way you have to hit them off the screen.”
“Yeah, Smash is unique. I have traditional fighting games like that, but they’re a bit too violent to show you.”
Eventually, the CPU got a final hit in and knocked Spike’s character into the blast zone for the final time.
“Aw man!”
“Hey it was your first time. Besides, I had the CPU set to level 5. The default is level three, so don’t feel too bad.”
“Well I lost, but it was fun! It’s so much more complicated than the games at the arcade, so many buttons!”
“Well it was designed with fingers in mind. I wish I could take a crack at it, but well, you know.”
“Man, Button Mash would be really jealous if he found out about this.”
“Who now?”
“Oh, Button is this colt I met at the arcade a couple weeks ago. He’s like the best player ever! If he found out about a game you can’t play with hooves he’s be pretty upset.”
“Ah. So even ponies have gamers. Well I guess I could visit the arcade sometime if I can’t wait until I’m able to use my own systems again. Right now the only game I can play is Geometry Dash because it only has one button.”
Galen chatted with Spike for a while longer while he played the game. Eventually he scored a win and got exited.”
“I finally did it! I think I’m really getting the hang of this!”
“Heh, good for you. Keep playing if you want, I’m gonna head back upstairs.”
Leaving Spike to the addiction that was the Nintendo Switch, Galen headed back upstairs to find Lyra levitating a bag down from one of the cupboards.
“Oh, hi! Do you know what this is? I can’t read the label.”
“Oh sweet! It’s my beef jerky!”
“B-b-beef?!”
Lyra dropped the bag from her aura in shock and Galen snatched it up off the ground. “Yeah. It’s dried beef strips flavored with salt and other stuff. It’s crazy good.”
He pulled a strip out and took a bite out of it. He held a piece up to the mint unicorn. “Want a taste?”
Lyra was about to deny it as quickly as possible, but stopped. W-well, it IS human food. Even though it’s *shudder* cow meat. He did say that cows couldn’t talk where he’s from though. If I want to learn everything about humans, I have to taste their food eventually right?
Lyra gave a deep breath. “O-okay. I’ll try a small piece.”
“Huh. Didn’t think you’d actually be open to the idea just yet. Well, here ya go. Trust me, shit’s incredible.”
Lyra looked at the strip of beef in her hoof with mild disgust before closing her eyes and taking a small bite.
“Well?”
“…it feels so wrong to say that I like it.”
Galen chuckled. “Well, it’s not exactly immoral. No sentient being was killed to make it, and the thing that was didn’t suffer, so it’s morally fine, despite the psychotic breed of vegans that insist otherwise.”
Lyra took another bite. “Vegans?”
“People that don’t eat anything that comes from an animal. Not only do they not eat meat, but they won’t eat eggs, cheese, milk, or anything like that either. I’m not saying all vegans are crazy, but the ones that are are REALLY crazy.”
“Wow. Humans can eat meat, but some of them still choose not to? Weird.”
“I heard ponies can eat meat too, they just choose not to.”
Lyra gave a sigh of relief. “That’s good. I was worried I’d get sick or something.”
“Still would’ve been worth though.”
“For you maybe. This is still uncomfortable for me.”
“You say, taking your third piece.”
Lyra gave a sheepish smile. “It IS good though. Hey, I just want to say I’m sorry for being such a crazy fanfilly all day. It’s just that I’ve been researching humans for so long, and to finally have proof they exist, AND meet one? I was really exited, you know. I think I’m calm enough to realize that I was being weird, and I’m sorry if I creeped you out.”
Galen gave a laugh. “There was a kid in high school who would follow me around wherever I went. THAT was creepy. You were honestly just being exasperating at worst.”
Lyra laughed too. “Why was there a baby goat following you around your school?”
Galen gave her a confused look, until realization dawned. “No, like a human kid. It’s what we call our children.”
“Oh. Do you have any ‘kids’? Sorry if that’s a weird question to ask, I’m just curious.”
“Hell no! I do have five younger siblings though. The youngest aren’t much different from having a kid of my own I suppose. Besides, I’m only 17, not even a legal adult. Why would I have kids?”
Lyra blinked in surprise. “17 is still a minor to humans? In Equestria, you become an adult once you turn 16!”
“…what.”
“Yeah! I mean, I’m pretty sure almost everypony in your house right now is under 20. I’m only 17 myself!”
Galen gave a sigh. “Well I guess that makes sense why they’re so childlike still. I’m not dealing with adults, I’m dealing with children who pay taxes.”
Lyra laughed. “That’s a good way to put it!”
All of a sudden, a *ding—dong!* resounded across the house.
“What was that?”
“The doorbell, someone must have rung it.”
Galen and Lyra went back over to the open window to find a ticked off earth pony standing at the front door. Her glare sharpened when she saw Lyra.
“There you are! You were supposed to help me with the shop today, not ditch me to harass our new neighbor!”
Lyra gave a nervous chuckle. “Uh, hi Bon-Bon. Sorry, I just really wanted to meet him! Did you know he’s a human?!”
Bon-Bon rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m very aware. Almost everypony in town knows by now, given how Pinkie and Twilight were talking about it all through the streets last evening. I bet you’re very exited, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to ditch me when I need your help!”
Bon-Bon yanked Lyra out of the windowsill and put her on her back. “I’m very sorry if she bothered you sir, she can get overexcited about her whole human thing. That being said, it is quite odd to have a real human, a creature I thought my housemate made up, living here In our town.”
Galen frowned. “Well, I’m not exactly a human at the moment. But yeah, if you need her for something take her. I didn’t realize she ditched work to come here.”
Bon-Bon glared at Lyra again. “Oh, we’ll talk about that when we get home. Have a good day sir. Sorry for the trouble.”
“Bye! I’ll come again soon!” Another glare was cast Lyra’s way. “When I don’t need to work of course. Hehe….”
Galen watched the two mares leave with a blank expression. “Well that happened.” He shut the window and turned around to find Twilight looking at him.
“Uh, you need something?”
“I overheard your conversation with Lyra. You didn’t realize you were considered an adult here?”
“No, thought I was still a couple months off.”
“Well, anyway, I thought it would be a good time to mention that the princesses want to make you an official citizen of Equestria!”
“Let me guess, that requires paperwork.”
“Heh, sorry, it does. Can you write with your hooves or mouth yet?”
“A) no I can’t, B) my writing was already shitty with hands, and C) I don’t know your written language.”
“Well, the language thing we can hopefully figure out soon. As for the writing bit itself, I’m sure that once you learn basic levitation, you’ll be able to write fine. We don’t need to do it right now, the princesses didn’t give a deadline after all, but it should still get done as soon as possible.”
“Sigh. Paperwork, the bane of every civilized being’s existence.”
Rainbow looked up from the TV. Applejack had joined in on watching the sport at some point too. “Hey, I feel for ya dude, the weather reports I have to write are sooo boring. I can’t imagine becoming a citizen would be fun.”
“Well, whatever, I don’t need to worry about it right now. Twilight, you want to try and get this whole translation crap over with right now?”
“Sounds good to me. Hey by the way, have you seen Pinkie come in?”
Galen stopped dead in his tracks. “…Shit. I’m gonna go make sure she hasn’t passed out.”