I wasn't sure what knocked me out, but when I came to it was to the sound of a concerned girl's voice. That was all I could tell at first. Slowly things became a little more clear and I could eventually tell what she was saying.
“Are you alright Spike?”
I briefly wondered who she was talking to before I was nudged by what I guessed was a foot. I groaned as I became aware of my muscles. I was sore all over.
“Oh thank goodness. I was worried about you. How do you feel?”
I figured she was talking to me now. I still didn't know who this 'Spike' was though. I answered with perfect honesty to the question, “Soooo sore.” I groaned again. The girl chuckled for some reason as I said that.
“Well I guess that's to be expected after being practically buried in books by a certain pegasus.” I could tell she said that part through gritted teeth. My mind was still catching up to what she had just said when another girl piped up.
“Hehe,” she said nervously, “sorry about that kid.”
At this point I finally strained my eyes open with a question that effectively summed up my state of mind, “What the heck are you talking about?”
What greeted my eyes was probably the last thing I was expecting. I found myself staring at a pair of disproportionately shaped ponies who were purple and blue. Secondly I noticed that the purple one was apparently a unicorn and the blue one was a pegasus hovering in the air. Any response to my question was completely ignored as I looked at my surroundings.
I saw that I was in some sort of library with a wood theme going on. There was a large pile of books to my right that had a hole as if something had been pulled out of it. Then I looked down at myself. At some point I had evidently gotten much smaller and lost my clothes. In addition to this I had been transformed into a green and purple dragon or dinosaur. I wasn't quite sure which one yet.
As I raised a hand full of claws to my face and flexed it I was startled out of reverie by the purple one shaking me with one of her front hooves.
“Spike! Aren't you going to say something? Rainbow Dash asked you a question!”
I looked at her dumbly. I was a bit of a reader myself and had spent some time preparing for theoretical scenarios where I somehow entered a book or story. It was always fun to use my imagination for that. However, I never really expected anything of the sort to happen. Not to mention that I had no idea what was going on here.
I blinked and responded with another question, “Who's Rainbow Dash?”
The expression on her face quickly changed from agitated due to frustration to concerned. She leaned forward and pressed a foreleg to my forehead. The blue pony stopped flapping her wings and sunk to the ground with a much more surprised look on her face.
“Oh dear. Spike? What's the last thing you remember?”
“Who's Spike?”
The unicorn backpedaled rather quickly and sat down in shock as she stared at me. She looked like she was trying to talk as she opened and closed her mouth repeatedly. Clearly she wasn’t expecting me to say that. Her face reminded me of something that I immediately decided to mention to her in hopes that it would stir things along.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like a fish when you do that?”
The purple pony blushed and stuttered at this while I sat there waiting. I figured an explanation would surely come soon enough. The pegasus appeared to still be in shock. She hadn't even budged when I made the fish comment. The unicorn finally shook her head and pointed one of her hooves at me.
“Spike is your name. Now-”
“No it isn't.” I interrupted.
“What?”
“My name. It isn't Spike.”
“What?”
I sighed and slapped my palm onto my face in exasperation. I slowly dragged it down to look at the pony staring quizzically at me. I sighed again and decided that we were going nowhere fast with this.
“Okay. So, nice to meet you. My name is Sean. I have a few guesses as to what's going on here.” I held up a claw. “One, I'm hallucinating or unconscious. This is most likely from my point of view.” Another claw join the first. “Two, I've been shunted into some alternate universe slash reality slash planet and taken this body from its previous occupant, presumably this Spike you mentioned.” I held up a third claw in finality. “And three, I am Spike but have somehow undergone a memory and likely personality rewrite through some means as yet undetermined.” I shrugged. “In any case, I would like to get this resolved quickly. I'm just grateful that we can speak the same language here.”
The unicorn's jaw had slowly dropped lower and lower as I monologued.
I had been looking around a bit while I talked. At this point I stopped and stared her directly in the eyes. “So, I have three questions I need to know the answers to right now. What am I? Where am I? And who are you two?”
The unicorn decided that this was the perfect time for her to take my previously occupied place as the unconscious individual in the room.
My palm and faced decided in return that this was the perfect time for them to get reacquainted. I clenched my teeth, which I noticed fit together rather well at this point, and muttered a few things under my breath which were definitely not anything I would repeat in polite company. Finally glancing at the pegasus again I decided she was probably the more intelligent one if she was still conscious even with that dumb look on her face.
I weighed my options and realized that trying to act like a rational being wasn't getting me as far as I had thought it would. The blue pony seemed to still be in a daze, so I couldn't just talk to her the same way I had approached the unicorn. It would get even less results. I considered walking out of wherever I was, but figured that would just end up with me being more lost than I already was.
I thought about a couple of other equally bad ideas before settling on just snapping her out of it the quickest way I could think of. I calmly walked up to the pegasus and looked into her eyes. They were clearly still staring off into the distance as they slowly blinked. I walked around to her side and poked her lightly out of politeness, “Hey, you still there?” No response. I prodded harder. Still no response. I drew back my arm a bit to jab really hard, but then took a look at my hand. Those claws could definitely pierce skin if I wanted them to. My hand fell to my side as the other went to my chin.
An idea exactly how to do this blossomed forth in my mind. I had absolutely no doubt it would work. Their actions so far had already shown that they had at least basic social interaction like what I was used to. I walked further away from her head, but stayed right next to her body. I raised my hand up and prepared mentally for the consequences of what I was about to do.
My hand came down and slapped her flank as hard as it could. To say there was a reaction would be an understatement. To say that it accomplished getting me someone to talk to would false, unfortunately. She jumped up in the air with quite the yelp. I must say it was very feminine. I had been hoping for indignation so that I could talk to someone who wasn't asleep. Angry people tend to be more likely to cause physical harm, but less likely to allow themselves to lose consciousness because of something as stupid as someone else needing their help.
Sadly, having the blue pony be furious at me would have to wait, as I had forgotten she had wings. If you think about it, anything with wings is going to use them when startled. Combine it with a surprised jump of the magnitude I had just initiated, and you have the perfect formula for a head hitting the rafters and blacking out.
With my first two encounters asleep on the floor in front of me I absolutely lost it. I was really struggling to stay logical at that point. It's likely I had already lost that ability as evidenced by my insane decision to slap the rear end of a sentient female. Fists clenched at my sides I raised my head and screamed in frustration.