//------------------------------// // 04 The Cleaner Road Ahead // Story: Isekai'd An Hero // by Kaidan //------------------------------// Upon waking up on a dusty road in the middle of Ponyville, I wasted no time. I immediately bolted down the road, nearly flattening Fluttershy. As much as I’d like to spend a little time with a pegasus with butter smooth thighs, I refused to let that bus win again. It wasn’t until I stepped into a large pile of horse feces that I finally stopped, briefly, to wipe my shoe off. I looked around, noticing that there were piles of the small circular vegetarian horse droppings everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. In fact, there was a pink pegasus squatted on a cloud dropping one out right now, letting it fall in a steaming pile onto the street. “That’s gross!” I shouted. She looked down at me. “Pervert!” She shouted “Use a toilet! You’re not animals!” “Uh, yes we are.” She leapt off and gilded down to meet me. “I mean, it’s not like I’m gonna wipe it with my hoof. Besides, I’m not the one stepping in it and watching others crap. You got some kinda fetish I should know about?” “No, I’m just a human thrown here from another dimension and being relentlessly hunted down by a killer bus.” The pegasus nodded and smiled. “Ah! Why didn’t you say so? I was human once too. The name’s Dawn.” “I’m Jake.” I reached out, and they let me grab their hoof and shake it. “Us humans have to stick together, I’m sure I can get you back to Earth.” “Really?” I asked, skeptical that a pegasi would be good for much more than flying around and bragging like a high school jock. “Yep! I’m an OC. My powers are limited only by the ability of my author to feel shame, and in that regard, my power level’s over 9,000.” I rolled my eyes at the dated reference. Dawn sighed. “Come on, no one around here gets my jokes. I figured at least you would.” “Spouting random pop culture references doesn’t count as making a joke.” “Wow, who pissed in your cheerios?” I blinked in confusion, and looked around. “Wait, you can say p—s?” “Yeah, self-insert powers, remember? You’re kinda slow. What’s your deal?” I let out a long exasperated sigh. “Okay, so I keep getting hit by a bus and each time I wake up in Equestria. But it’s not like the cool anime kind where I get a harem and save the world by finding the sword of a thousand truths—” “And he thinks my references are bad—” “—so then I tried getting up in a hot air balloon to escape it and it jumped off a freaking ramp that wasn’t there before. If it keeps hitting me, who knows how bad of an Equestria I’ll wake up in!” “Alright, alright!” Dawn gestured across the street. “That’s my old bachelor pad, you can hang out there to hide from the bus, I’d recommend the basement. It can’t bust through twelve feet of packed dirt and brick.” I smiled at the thought. “That’s a great idea! Just promise me it’s not some murder basement, because I’m still eighty percent certain I witnessed half a dozen pre-mediated murders in the last version of Equestria.” “Nothing that depraved… it’s where Dash and I keep the sex dungeon, can’t have our filly using a ball gag as a pacifier. That’s probably… three or four buses away still” I groaned and followed them towards the house, watching them pull out a key to unlock it. “On the show nopony locks their homes, or takes dumps off a cloud. This really is getting out of control.” “Hey, you should try it sometime. It's very liberating, it’s also why they always say Never look up on a cloudy day. It’s also why Dash doesn’t eat Mexican food before races anymore.” “What?” I asked as I followed her inside. “Do you at least have some fiction or pop culture references from the last decade? Maybe a TikTok account?” “Nope, what’s that? I bailed on Earth back in like, 2014.” By now we’d headed across the living room and she’d unlocked the basement, letting me head down the stairs. The house was proportioned for a pony, so I had to watch my head around the door frames. I found the light and turned it on. “2014? Hmm, so you’re really outta the loop then. Missed out on the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Game of Thrones ending, and the annual 110 degree global heatwaves.” “Wait,” Dawn darted down the stairs behind me. “Sequel trilogy?! You got to see how Game of Thrones ended?! Tell me everything, now!” “Uh…” I rubbed my head and laughed nervously. “Forget I said anything, trust me… Disney didn’t do it justice, and then Game of Thrones was just indescribably bad…” “Come on, I’m dying here! I have to know!” Dawn pleaded. “Really, you’re better off not… besides the shows are way too political so I stick to anime! Did you know Marvel has a teenage female superhero now? Not to mention Amazon Prime made a show that mocks nazis. Nah, Equestria is my golden ticket out of that shithole. I just want to settle down and bang some hot ponies.” Dawn raised an eyebrow. “Yeah… I think it may be your attitude that’s the problem and not Equestria. Maybe you should try and fix that; karma’s a bitch and all. It might help you with your magic school bus problem.” “Really, another reference?” Jake sighed. “Well I already said I’d help you so I’m going to leave before I regret it. Just try to return the house in one piece. I’ll be upstairs for a bit but I’ve got to be back to watch the kiddo soon. Let me know if you need anything, and I wouldn’t go digging through the toy boxes down here.” Dawn hurried up the steps and closed the door, leaving me alone in the modestly sized basement. There was a washer and dryer, some odd looking furniture, and some tidely stacked boxes. There were a couple bean bags that I could use to relax; fortunately there were no black lights down here. I’d, at the very least, be safe from any buses. I was staring at the laundry machines in the basement when I tripped over a metal bar that I hadn’t noticed there a few seconds before. I looked down and muttered to myself. “A rail? What the hell?” Then I noticed the concrete sleepers underneath and heard the rumbling. A deafening railroad horn caused me to jump and hit my head on the ceiling, the noise echoing and causing my ears to ring. I crapped my pants, not at all finding it liberating as the pegasi had suggested, and dove behind the nearby water heater. It was a double-stacked Z train, headed east towards the fast single track of the BNSF Emporia Sub in Flint Hills. As it roared past, I considered myself lucky to have dodged its attack. It was actually majestic as hell: traveling 75 miles per hour, with six units, and distributed power. 4 ES44DC’s pulling and 2 Dash-9’s pushing, all in run 8. The whole basement smelled like diesel. I considered myself lucky after it passed, carefully heading to the stairs to get out of the basement in case the train came again. I was fortunate, for there is truly no way to discern which path a train will take, so I would have to be vigilant for trains as well as buses now. If only there were some sort of marks on the ground I could avoid, since my plate was already full just trying to outrun the bus. By the time I got upstairs, I called out. “Dawn, there was a freaking train in your basement! What the hell is going on? Dawn?” I looked around and saw a set of black tire prints on the floor, and a pony that had been flattened like a tube of toothpaste from the middle. They led to what I had thought was the wall, but was actually a bus parked right in the hole it had busted through the wall. The high beams flickered on. “F—k my life.”