//------------------------------// // 29- Discord! At long last? Wait... no... // Story: Still No Signal // by Axel Azabash //------------------------------// Smarty Pants, our now kind of local alien, was soundly asleep in his castle room. It was a pleasant night, crickets were chirping, stars were twinkling and the moon shone trough the window. It was perfect, except for the ominously gentle breeze coming trough said open window, the curtains swaying back and forth slowly. Yes… it was the kind of thing they showed in a horror film to unnerve people and warn them for the impending jump scare that was certainly coming, one could even hear the foreboding music playing in the background. Well, this isn’t a horror story, isn’t it? An alien being in Equestria was the novelty of this setting. And that’s probably why he felt so special. Ponies were… curious about him, some might even say they were thrilled to meet him. His life would be overflown with new friends and exciting adventures. Some might even feel identified with him, live vicariously that thrill of loosing everything, a hard reset, the sadness that justified it all, to make it feel genuine, the fact that you just want to get rid of it all, that old boring life gone in a way that would remove the blame from you, as you had no options. The accident of coming to Equestria would be as much of a curse as a blessing, everypony would come and comfort him for his lost home, work with him to find a way back or, if not, provide a life for him, convince him he would be oh SO happy living amongst them, in this caring, loving and understanding society. A monster amongst the ponies, but they would accept him because THEY were the greater good, even a NEW creature from the great beyond would feel welcome and at home… But what about those WEIRD creatures that had always been HERE? We didn’t get to experience THAT! Ponies ran away from US, they called us MONSTERS! *Sniff* Just like if we didn’t have feelings… Yes… what about us… what about ME! “Oh, he is so nice, he helped me around and thanked me, he even came back to visit even after I treated him like an animal…” Said Fluttershy’s voice to the empty room. “Like I WASN’T there the whole time… like if I HADN’T helped her at all around the cottage…” “Be nice to him, Discord. He is so alone; he is the only one of his species around…” I continued talking in Fluttershy’s voice as I mimicked with a talon a mouth talking and the shadow behind said talon was a perfect copy of Fluttershy’s silhouette. “Hello! Is someone home!? Look at ME! Yeah… tons and tons of Draconequs around, they are OVERFLOWING!” A cascade of tiny discords rained down from the ceiling, creating a cacophony of squeaky toy sounds on impact. “Me and my OH SO MANY colleagues around! I’ve NEVER been alone!” I gestured around for the audience. Yes… you, the audience. “And then you came here, and you got it all. You got Fluttershy’s help and friendship and care, you got the princesses looking after you, Twilight would LOVE to get in here and ask question after question. All your needs and desires taken care of in an instant, no need to work for it, no need for ANYTHING! Only your oh so important struggles and traumas to deal with in the perfectly accepting and friendly and safest place of all the universes, such a TRAGEDY!” “Ugh…” The creature lying on the bed had the AUDACITY to stir and turn in his sleep, then rubbed one of his hands over his eyes. “I can’t believe it…” I deadpanned at him and snapped my claws, producing a stack of written papers and Rarity’s red rimmed glasses (Please, don’t tell her I used those) appeared, precariously balanced on the tip of my muzzle. “Who is in ugghh…” He groggily awoke. “No… nononononno… EXCUSE ME! But according to the SCRIPT!” I shoved the stack of papers in front of him. “YOU are not supposed to wake up during my monologue.” “Wait… what…” He confusedly started to read. “Paragraph 27, subsection G, line 3. If you have any issues with that, please, send a written complain to the author. Now… ta ta, my friend, back to sleep.” Again, I had to snap my claw. He got woozy and almost fell back to his bed… almost… but not. “I said SLEEP!” I snapped, more energetically, this time a few sparks of static electricity came out of my claw, and he finally complied, falling back to the bed and resumed his light snoring. “Geez… this low budget productions… I have to pull out all my charms to compensate for the lack of resources.” I stared at him for a little while, pondering about what should be done with his case. “Oh, he is so special, you have to be nice to him, he is my FRIEND!” I said in Fluttershy’s voice, cracking at the last word like it was the foulest thing ever. All my life, all my sufferings, and this SCOUNDREL gets it all without batting an eye. The nerve! “Oh, but… what makes you OH so special.” I got menacingly close to him. “You are a creature from the greater beyond… the only one of your species… but what if you just weren’t THAT special... What if you just were another one of the bunch? Just having to work it all, be in the background forever, just a filler, another forgotten face in the crowd, a repeated, nameless asset…” I snapped my claw again. Chaos magic filled the room and… it fizzled out of existence after the light show. “Wait… are you serious? Are you going to be stubborn until the very end?” I snapped again, much, much harder this time, so hard it almost sounded like a thunder. The questionable script was the only thing that kept the creature asleep this time, but my chaos magic FINALLY caught on him, and I smiled down at what I had just done. “Mwahahaha… yes… time to see it all unfold in the morning. Good luck, commander, I’ll be watching.” *** Morning came, as mornings ought to do, which might not sound like a lot, but believe me it is, considering the sun and moon are magically bonking around under the whims of two sister horses with wings and horns. I stirred awake under the sunlight’s assault. I Blame the princess, early mornings should be abolished and life ought to start later on, like… a couple of hours before lunch. I tried to rub the sleepiness away, but I couldn’t coordinate. My arm moved the way I commanded it to move, but somehow it didn’t reach its intended target. Oh my… I am sleepier than I thought. Maybe I should skip life today. I absolutely felt like garbage for some reason. And said reason was weird, because the more I thought about it, the more awake I was. Then, why was everything so out of focus, so out of… something? Whatever. I tried to curl into a ball and wriggle my way under the covers again, but the more I moved, the bigger the mess I was creating. What on earth!? I opened my eyes, ready to find what was going on with my covers. They were a mess. How I managed to get them so tangled was beyond comprehension. And I was having difficulties to focus my eyes. A brown lump of something was in front of my nose for some reason. I blinked furiously, and looked left and right. Wow… such a good peripheral vision, I could almost see behind me with almost no turn of my neck. After a couple of seconds, I regained the ability to make my eyes look forward, but that brown lump remained. Pushing harder my forward-looking abilities I crossed my eyes and watched. That lump was where my nose was supposed to be. How peculiar. I tried to get up, but I only managed to trash around, entangling myself further. It was as if I had forgotten how to human. Okay, something was definitely going on. Take it slowly, step by step. Figure this out in a calm and rational way. I craned my neck to lift my head from the bed and take in the situation. For some reason my neck was much more flexible, and the movement of my head disturbed my center of mass much more than it ought to do, making me almost tumble forwards. My whole body was entangled with the bedsheets, and for some reason it was not responding to my squirming the way it ought to. Okay, let’s see… I lifted an arm, ready to grab the sheets and extricate myself from it all, but it came short, like… a few inches short from its intended target. After so many years, I felt like a toddler trying to figure out my own body. A movement that was scripted in my muscle memory was just… not there anymore. My body… A cold sweat started to form on my brow, and the fur of my back bristled. A hoof. There was a hoof at the end of my arm, a slightly shorter arm than I was used to. Yeah! Enigma solved, that’s why I was unable to reach and unable to calculate distances, my arms were shorter than they used to be, and they had hooves instead of hands now. I should have thought about that… Oh, and the bristled fur on my back… I had fur now, apparently… What? Wait… Slowly, and looking back at the mess of blankets, I started to wriggle away from the bed. It was hard, and I only managed a marginal victory in that regard, and I got rewarded with the sight of more brown fur. I looked up and caught a glimpse of orange bangs on top of my head. Oh, fancy… orange hair, it goes nicely with my brown coat. Wait… am I a pony now!? Have I been exposed too much to horse radiation and now I had turned into one of them? Could it be that all those ponies were humans and then they turned into ponies when they got abduced here? Was this all just a plot to get me? Was I going to become one of them just like that? Something stirred and moved under the covers without my permission. I could FEEL it was a part of me, but I hadn’t wished for something to move. After some more wriggling I was able to free the little wiggler… a rich vibrant orange tail, shaking in annoyance. And a nervous ruffling… I spotted a feathery appendage that ALSO had the audacity to ruffle on its own if I stared too hard, and by the look of it, I had two of them. Where was the instruction manual for those? Nobody knew. As I got increasingly frustrated, agitated and frightened, I notice something else. When A bird chirped, another thing on top of my head moved along, tracking the sound. When the frustration of yet another thing going on on its own got to me, said thing on top of my head went flat against my skull and all the morning sounds outside of the castle took a slightly muffled tint. O… kay… This has to be a bad dream… a nightmare… I will pinch myself and wake up… I just stared at my hooves, and said hooves offered no insights as to how would I pinch myself with them. Okay… stay calm… take a deep breath and (oh my goodness, this nose is amazing, I can smell SHUT UP!) take it rationally. I am a pony now, apparently. I have wings, so I am a Pegasus type. I need to find Purplesmart and ask for help, my ha-hooves were now shaking badly in terror. Breathe in, breathe out… keep it together… Oh, and ponies had another thing going on. Their markings, those things on their butts that somehow marked their destinies. Maybe I had one of those and it could somehow shine some light to this problem… I took a look and found the most horrifying thing yet. It was the very incarnation of tasteless, unremarkable and a thing that I particularly hated every single time I happened to land my eyes on it, so much so that I PURPOSEFULLY avoided using it when texting. And bear with me, back on Earth, that thing was something I saw a lot… A LOT! And I hated every single time I saw it. The emoji of a laughing face with tears. Then, and only then, I allowed myself to fully lose it and panic in a trashing screaming mess.