You are Anonymous. You are the most humanly human in the magical happy little prancing pony land known as Equestria. You aren’t your usual chipper self today. Yesterday was the day when the barmare, Berry Punch, who runs the local speakeasy, The Ragamuffin, discounted her already uncorked stock of assorted liquors to turn over inventory. You awoke this morning several bits lighter in the coin purse, dehydrated and hungover. Which makes today laundry day which is a very dangerous day. Oh, and a Wednesday, but you knew that already because that’s the day of the week that follows Tuesday. That’s just how causality and calendars work regardless of whatever obscure lies Discord tells you.
Today you are up with the sun. Not because you set an alarm, or received a friendly wake up call, but because the early morning sun now shines through your bedroom window. Normally it don’t be like it is, but today, it is ‘cause it do. Some entrepreneurial spirit had absconded with some of your fine drapery sometime during the raging house party you threw last weekend and you have yet to replace them. The money tree you had planted in your back yard had only just sprouted so you aren’t exactly flush with mad stacks of cash right now. You may be comfortably poor in fungibles but you’re exceedingly rich in social interactions with the locals, thanks for asking.
You are at your modest home, located at 221b Baker Street, on the Northern-most edge of the urban sprawl known as Ponyville. Your home sits a stones throw away from the dirt road that leads through Ghastly Gorge. You proudly named your driveway yourself and even picked out your own house numbers. You did that because it’s a very clever Earth reference and conversation starter. You hope that one day someone will ask you what it means and when they do, BAM! Instant conversation. Beyond that, Ghastly Gorge Flyway is an awful name and you can’t help but be surreptitiously clever with that big brain of yours.
Right now you’re in the kitchen because a glass of water seemed like a good idea at the time. You take notice of the green thing wiggling around on the windowsill above your kitchen sink. That sexy little beast is your pet venus fly trap, Tiny Steve. When you found him in the Everfree forest, he reminded you of the alien plant from that one 1986 movie starring the beloved Canadian comedian and actor Rick Moranis. From then on the two of you were insuperable and inseparable. Mostly because Steve was a potted plant but partially because he hissed at you whenever you tried to move his pot from the windowsill. Right now Tiny Steve was happily chewing on what looked to be the remains of a very large spider.
Steve is the goodest boy, one of the absolute bestest, and you’re very proud of him and his hunting prowess. You don’t know how he keeps finding so many ugly creepy crawlies to eat but you’re not about to question such a majestic miracle of nature. He is a natural predator like yourself, thus earning your respect and both a place in your heart and on your windowsill. Tiny Steve slurped down a spider leg like it was an al denté spaghetti noodle and gave a little burp. If you were ever to have a child of your own you hoped it would grow up to be as amazing as Tiny Steve. May his vibrant leaves never whither.
Your house was big for you but many of your guests had said that it was downright small. It was very human in layout. All the rooms were box shaped, as was the house overall. For ease of construction and the keep your costs low, everything was on one floor. One-third of the space consisted of your bedroom and bathroom. Then a short wall to make a hallway which divided it from the rest of the space. The other two-thirds was all open-concept. Your kitchen was the upper third, which is where you are now. A large dining table with seven low back chairs to accommodate guests who have wings, separated the space. Which all then flowed into your living room which had three mismatched sofas arranged around pentagon-shaped stone coffee table.
When a stone table was first suggested, you were curious about its construction. As human as much of their pony lives are, their construction and manufacturing techniques were still a complete mystery. You had assumed the table would it be a stone slab atop a framework of iron, stone or wood. Like something from a mediaeval IKEA but built with actual solid pieces and not glued sawdust and screws that never seem to go in straight. But then you saw it, or rather, felt it. Little did you know, a diamond dog would push up a chunk of stone the size of a Volkswagen beetle out of the ground from under your house, then carve it by claw into the shape you wanted. The whole thing took under two hours, including the cleanup. It left you speechless and wondering how diamond dogs could scratch themselves, with claws sharp enough to cut stone, without slicing off a body part. Answer: carefully and often.
The house now had a root cellar, which is where the stone came from, but it was empty since you don’t have a lot of stuff yet and your magic powered refrigerator kept all your food nice and chill. There was also a gable roof balcony thing for flyers to land and take off from, but since you lacked the prerequisite of having wings you couldn’t exactly get up there to check it out. In pony standards your house was very tight, with them having long bodies and all. But for you it was perfect, if very tall, to better accommodate wingalings and featherfowels alike.
While in the kitchen, you take note of your grocery shopping list stuck to your fridge with a novelty magnet that says ‘wish you were here’ above a picture of the gates to Tartarus. Rainbow Dash has an amazing sense of humour you have come to appreciate. Your grocery list already has a few thing on it; milk, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, double-edged potatoes. You look to the left of your fridge to what normally would be a bare section of floor to eye the orange vegetables hovering several inches above in the air. They look scaly and their normally deep-green fringed tops have turned dry and brown. They’ve seen better days. You deftly add displacer carrots to your list.
Completing your grocery list will have to wait as life has found a way to ruin your quiet contemplation yet again. Your toil has been interrupted by several soft knocks coming from your front door. You let out a quiet sigh because you know who is waiting on the stoop. Wanting to get it over a quickly as possible, you make your way across the house and open the front door to find…
There was a bat-pony on your front stoop with the biggest grin plastered on his face. He looked like he was a morning person, the tiny-brained fool.
“Hey there, Anon!”
His coat was the color of ash and his mane and leathery wings were bordering on black. His eyes were the shade of blue coal. You didn’t have even the faintest idea who he is. You couldn’t see his butt tattoo from this angle, which is a good thing because you didn’t want to look at some other guys ugly rump anyway. You’re pretty sure you’ve never seen the little bat dude before in your life. You would definitely remember if you had.
“Um,” you smartly say.
“It’s me. Darkstar!” He barks, giving a jaunty little hop and flapping his leathery wings.
“Uh…” is your clever comeback. You don’t exactly have time for any little horsey nonsense today. You have some very important laundry to do and very little time to do it. Daylight was burning, as the hip kids say.
But he kept going. “You remember. I smuggled you and Spike out of the port city of Al’ Salbaud and into Equestria in my airship. We really did have some good times, didn’t we.”
“Err. I don’t…” you start but immediately stop as your unwanted pony guest interrupts you.
The dopey smile never left his face. “Look, I’m wrapping up my shore leave here in Ponyville and starting my way back home and I thought I’d check up on you before I left. That’s just what good friends do.”
“I’m n… “ was as far as you got when you were interrupted, again.
“I’d give you a hug goodbye but my airship is ready to leave and I’m running late as it is. It’s a good thing they can’t leave without their captain. Ha ha! So I got you a little something.” He said.
“I…” your sentence ended even sooner this time.
“I wanted to give you a little token to remember all the good times we had together so I commissioned a local artist to make a miniature painting of one of our many adventures.” He said, then pulled a colorful rectangle out from under his left wing.
“…” you didn’t even try to reply this time because you were sure he was going to keep on talking. You extended your hand and he plopped the eight-by-ten inch piece of artwork into your open palm.
“It’s of our heroic air race we had with the dragons.”
Yup, there be dragons. They were in hot pursuit of a sky boat blimp thing over some mountains somewhere. You didn’t know what to say, so you didn’t.
“I gotta go. Keep in touch will ya?” He gave a little flap which spun him around. You could see his butt mark now. It was a four-pointed black star on an unrolled scroll of parchment. “And next time your in Al’ Salbaud, look up your good friend Darkstar!” He gave a big flap this time and rocketed off your front stoop and launched into the sky. Within seconds he was a speck over the horizon, likely heading toward the skydock in Canterlot.
You stepped back inside and closed the door and set the small portrait on the table where one might have kept their house keys, but you didn’t have any keys as door locks weren’t really a thing in Equestria.
Who even was that guy? You managed to get that thought out into the universe before there was another knock at your door. It was probably the bat dude returning to give you that hug anyway. Not that you would want a hug, but it would be nice. But who you find instead were the very last ponies you would ever expect to be here where they are now. It’s none other than one of the local nuts, Lyra Heartstrings, who has a coil of rope across her back, and her marefriend Bonbon, who is wearing nothing, just the way you like it.
“I have no idea who that was and I have nothing to do with him,” you tell them. “I’ve been here all day. Last night I was at The Ragamuffin until …”
“Uh huh, I don’t know Captain Darkstar, one of the most decorated Thestrals in the Equestrian air fleet, is either.” Bonbon cuts you off, her neutral face becoming a frown. “And he only helped smuggle some idiot human and a baby dragon from Al’ Salbaud into Equestria.”
“Right. See? It’s weird that you don’t know him, either.” You say.
The grump of a mare verbally accosting you is none other than secret agent Sweetie Drops, locally known as Bonbon. Her job, when she’s not bothering you, is the worst kept secret in Ponyville, seeing as both Colgate and Copper Top have told you that she is a secret agent. If those two know a secret, everybody knows. Of course Bonbon would know what you were doing last night and who that random stranger was. You’re pretty sure her entire job is to keep a constant watch over you, seeing as you’re a devilishly handsome alien from another universe and all that jazz.
“Princess Twilight sent me to collect you,” the grump tells you.
You point a finger at Lyra whose smile turns into a really creepy grin. “And what about her?”
Bonbon’s frown turns into a different frown which worries you. “She’s my backup.”
“Backup?” you shouldn’t have asked.
“In case you didn’t want to come quietly.”
You should have just gone with them.
You should not have slammed the door in their faces.
You really should not have started sprinting to the back door.
And you definitely should not have yelled, “You‘ll never take me alive!”