The Winds of Change

by AgentSnail


The Journey

The Journey

"Bored, bored, bored..." Jason groaned as he slowly walked the half-mile distance. "This shouldn't take this long! I should at least be able to see the town by now!" He looked at his hooves. "Stupid dwarf legs..." He chuckled for a moment, and tried to make one of them longer, to no avail. "Guess it only works with full transformations." He tripped and fell on his face again. "Fuuuuuuuck."

He got up and started trying to figure out how worthwhile it would be to just become a regular pony for the walk. Nah, that'd probably just cause more complications. Oh, how he hated complications.

Jason was roused from his musings by the unmistakable sound of a breaking stick, making his ears swivel towards the offending area. Managing to ignore the ear movements for the time being, he immediately locked his vision on the area from which he thought he had heard the noise. However, there were no further sounds, and he decided that it was nothing to worry about. He continued to walk on, attempting to figure out how to voluntarily move his ears, to no avail. A few steps later, he heard the crackling of more broken foliage, and repeated his previous actions of turning and staring. In the darkness of the forest, however, he could have sworn he had seen a set of yellow eyes looking back at him.

"Hopefully I'm just losing my mind," he scoffed. "Never thought I'd be saying that in a positive way." Against his better judgement, he moved to the opposite side of the path and continued to stare into the shadows for several more seconds before deciding to move on. "God dammit I'm going insane," he sighed and turned around, continuing to walk. "I'm getting pretty good at this walking stuff though, haven't tripped in almost three minutes. I've been talking to myself for much longer than I want to though..."

Something snarled. Jason turned around, just in time to see some sort of giant wolf running straight at him. He reared up, putting his forelegs in front of him for protection, wedging one into the back of the wolf's jaw. "Well, shit." The wolf bit into his left arm, and Jason cried out in pain, yet the wolf seemed unable to do any real damage because of the hidden chitin. Jason wildly punched at the beast, repeatedly hitting it in the nose. The process continued until Jason regained enough of a thought process to punch the wolf in the eye.

The wolf released his arm in pain, briefly nursing it's eye. The wolf was unperturbed, however, and simply backed up and pounced again, this time missing its target as Jason rolled out of the way, getting a stone painfully stuck in his arm. Managing to get to his feet, Jason attempted to levitate the wolf and try to fling him away, but couldn't seem to gather the power to do so.

"Great, so now I figure out my limitations," he scowled. The wolf, now back to its feet, almost seemed to smile as it neared Jason. Jason turned and ran, not particularly looking for a fight in the first place.

"Dammit I can't fight that thing!" He looked back to see that it had closed the distance between them considerably already, and was still gaining. "Oh fuck!" Then some good luck came along, and he tripped again, sliding a short distance on his face before coming to a halt in front of the wolf. In possibly his clearest thinking so far, he transformed back into his changeling form. He had grown considerably larger, was now slightly taller than the wolf, and looked much more menacing, he hoped. The wolf lunged again, and time seemed to slow. He wasn't ready to dodge, and the beast was too close. Jason closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and tried the levitation spell again, not sure why he expected to find different results.

Waiting a few seconds, and finding that he had not been tackled or killed, Jason opened his eyes, and stared at the face of a VERY pissed off, but luckily immobile wolf. Chuckling to himself, Jason moved the wolf upwards, and flung him back into the forest, honestly not weighted by the probable fate of the wolf. "That would have to be the most anti-climactic ending to a fight I've ever seen."

Jason had been in a few fights during high school and college, and was proud to say that he had won all but one, in which someone pulled a gun on him. It always went the same way. Some large guy would get pissed off by him, and because he was tall and lanky, would think they had found someone that couldn't fight back. However, this overconfidence was always their downfall, because while Jason actually knew martial arts, they only knew brute strength. 'Lotta good those human fight tactics are going to do now...' he thought.

"Well, now that that's over," Jason said as he transformed back into colt form. Looking himself over, he noticed that the bite wound and some other large, bloody scratch marks were still there. Curious, he shifted into an adult pony, finding the same cuts, albeit bigger, and slightly more painful. "Weird," he said as he thought back over the conclusion of the battle. "Why could I levitate the wolf the second time?" he wondered, "Oh well, I guess that's not really that important, although my true form might be stronger. Or it could be that the form I was in didn't have a horn. I guess that makes sense."

He started walking again, finally seeing the town as he moved over a hill. "Ugh, finally. Half mile, my ass!" He looked back over his injuries. Thinking for a moment, he laughed "In a supposedly peaceful world like theirs, it sure will be funny to see their reactions to a beat up kid. I guess this could be good for the disguise, though."

Jason felt strangely drained after the fight, and immediately thought of food. He didn't really feel the specific feeling of hunger though, and just felt a more empty feeling, really. He couldn't figure out what to do, until his mind pieced together the scenario. "Oh no," he exclaimed "I need love to survive." He sighed. "Well, this complicates things, to say the least. I guess, though, love is kind of a broad emotion, including love from friends and stuff. Maybe all positive emotions are 'edible', so to speak. Eh, couldn't possibly be THAT hard." He paused. "I really need to stop talking to myself."

"I hate walking." He paused, and slapped himself. "Wings, you idiot, wings." At that, Jason stretched his wings to their full span, which was still hilariously small, before taking off towards Ponyville.