Twilight looked at her friend uncertainly. She was very thankful that Applejack hadn’t visibly turned evil when she’d arrived- what would you even call an evil Earth alicorn? Cemetery Planter? After hearing what she had to say, though, Twilight was starting to think maybe she should have brought some of the rest of the girls with her when she teleported through the dome. Possibly the Elements as well.
“Applejack... do you know where this ‘human’ is now?”
“Ah ahctually don’ know. He was standin’ near Merry May when...” Applejack gestured tiredly towards the foliage problem. “Ahll o’ that happened. Ah didn’ see what happened t’him aftah that, though.” She looked down towards where Big Mac had laid Merry May on a couch. There were still banjo fragments in the unconscious mare’s mane.
Twilight nodded, feeling slightly jealous at the moment. Everything happened to Applejack, it seemed. First there was the alicorn transformation, and now meeting a potentially new species... although maybe not that new.
“Applejack, I have to ask... had you ever heard of humans before today?”
“No. Ya mean there’s more ah them?”
Twilight shrugged. “Maybe. Lyra ransacks my library every once in awhile looking for any mentions of them. She has this crazy family story-”
There was the flash of ancient magics releasing, and the popping BANG of an alicorn’s worth of air being suddenly pushed out of the way. While the laws of physics quietly went into a corner to sulk at how blatantly they had just been ignored, Princess Luna stood revealed in all her majestic glory. Applejack’s indignation was revealed in its equally majestic glory a quarter second later.
“Faust’s sake, Luna! Y’all have no respect fer privacy!”
Luna either had yet to grasp the relatively modern tradition of knocking on the door, or she would not be deterred from her mission by petty things like manners. “Applejack! It is not too late. You may yet be redeemed, but you must turn aside from this dark path you have chosen!”
“Dark path? Wha? No! Listen here, prin-cess. Ah am sick ‘n’ tired of you ‘n’ everypony else’s nonsense. There ain’t no law against a pony puttin’ up a fence around her personal, private property! NOW GET THE HAY OFF MAH PROPERTY BEFORE AH PUT YOU OFF!”
The tension in the air was as oppressive as the blast of heat from an open oven on a hot summer day. Two titanic tempers had been ignited: the cold fury of the void, and the sudden tectonic rage of the Earth. Neither one would back down now, and the only reason why Applejack hadn’t lit her horn up in preparation for battle was that somewhere, she remembered the advice of a certain biped. He’d told her to give Luna and Celestia more of a chance, and although she may not have remembered it at the moment, she still knew it on some level.
Luna didn’t quite have those qualms. “Applejack, we have come to try to makest thou see reason: surely thou must see now that things cannot continue as before, and that thou must accept that thou hast-”
“Ah don’ wanna, ah don’ hafta, an’ y’all can’t make me! This is mah choice to make, an’ ah ain’t gonna let y’all make it for me!” Twilight and Big Mac had long since found shelter behind the couch, underneath a protective shield made from an upturned table. Granny Smith hadn’t woken up, but passed her comment on the situation by turning over in bed.
Luna’s eyes flared momentarily with power. “If thou shalt not listen to reason, thou leave us no choice but to make thee listen!”
As one, the two goddesses lit up their horns. The very Earth trembled as it felt its mistress preparing to lay down the law, and the shadows seemed to coil around Luna as her own powers manifested for the divine smiting that was about to ensue. But first, the obligatory pre-fight trashtalk.
“Y’all have pretty dumb reasons ah reckon!”
“We shall see who is the dumb one when we are finished here!”
“An’ that’ll be y’all!”
“No, it shall be thee!”
Eyes narrowed on both sides. Tensions rose even higher.
“Nah, you!”
“No, thee!”
The fight to come would’ve taken place over several continents and leave its mark all over a certain desert, were it not for the fact that the situation of two technicolor cartoon equine goddesses arguing like the target audience in preparation for an Ultimate Showdown, was made even more surreal when suddenly a bird of prey was introduced to the mix.
“BY THE POWER INVESTED IN ME BY THIS GIANT BALD BIRD,
ALICORNS SHALL NOT ACT LIKE THE FOOLS OF THE HERD!”
Luna and Applejack turned as one, both losing hold over the eldritch powers they had been on the verge of releasing. Luna had no idea what the buck was going on, and while Applejack knew a little bit more about what the buck was going on, it still wasn’t very much. All fighting ceased for the moment while the two alicorns tried to figure what exactly was going on in front of them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Luna, I wanna like you! Quit making bad deductions!
You need to stop jumping to bad conclusions!”
I turned, pointing my finger at Applejack, who once again had that creeped out look I’d seen on her earlier. Which was perhaps understandable.
“And you: Applejack! You’re acting like Rarity discorded!
You need to put your head back on straight before everything gets desolated!”
Stepping back a little to address them both, I finished my shamelessly stolen reprimand.
“I’ll properly reach across this aisle and scold you both as equals,
Of the ponies,”
I poked Applejack in the chest and she actually took a step back.
“By the ponies,”
I did the same to Luna now. Both of them still seemed pretty shocked.
“For the ponies, EAGLE!”
The eagle resting on my arm considerately let out another screech right on cue. Thank goodness Fluttershy is so good with animals: convincing a bald eagle to perch on a crazy biped’s arm while he reprimands two goddesses probably isn’t easy.
It was just as I had that thought that the full insanity of what I had done occurred to me. A cold line of sweat ran down my spine and I got this weird feeling in my gut as I backed up a couple of steps. The eagle’s talons suddenly felt a lot sharper, even through the improvised falconer’s glove made by wrapping my belt around my left forearm. I was probably headed for some celestial body now. Maybe the sun, or possibly a pit in the Earth. Wherever it was, I was probably going to be banished to it, and then put in a dungeon after being banished to it-
BUMP
I turned around to apologise to whoever or whatever I had just backed into. “Oh, sorry, I wasn’t...”
Turns out I was headed for the sun after all, in a manner of speaking: I had just bumped into Celestia. She had a very neutral facial expression. I soon realised that what I was looking at was a poker face that had been perfected over thousands of years, and had been the epitome of non-expression for longer than some civilizations had existed.
She coughed politely into her hoof. “Well, that was a most unexpected turn of events.”
I nodded mutely. All I could think about at the moment were the Trollestia, Tyrannestia, (and worse still) memes, pictures, and jokes beyond number that I had seen. I also really, really hoped that Celestia wasn’t telepathic.
“In fact, your very presence here is unexpected. I don’t suppose you know Megan?”
It took me a few moments to realise what she was referring to. There had been a reference to a human named Megan in the original fic I had found myself in, something about one of the (shudder) earlier generations of the show.
“Oh-uh, well, you’re going to have to be more specific than that, Megan’s a pretty common name, I think there are at least two at my school.”
Celestia raised a single eyebrow. “I see. Well, in that case, would you mind telling me how and why it is you’ve come here? And was it really necessary to have an eagle with you while berating my sisters?”
I thought for a couple of seconds. I hadn’t arrived in Twilight’s library, so it was unlikely that she had summoned me. Likewise, there hadn’t been anybody around when I arrived, which ruled out the notion that anyone had summoned me. Admittedly, I’d been asleep when I came through, but still... also, I hadn’t heard Discord’s voice at any point, so he probably hadn’t brought me here to act as his replacement... I hadn’t been within 100 miles of CERN or any other groundbreaking physics research centers recently, so that officially emptied out my bucket of theories.
“Nope. No idea how I got here, even less of what I’m going to do now.” I frowned as I remembered what else she had said. “Hey, the eagle was totally necessary. The eagle is a proud and majestic symbol that has served my race well throughout the years. It has been carried with pride by humanity from the Roman times, through to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Russian royalty, my own United States, and countless personal heraldries. It is a powerful and enduring symbol of strength, majesty, and-”
“D’all y’all humans talk this much?” Applejack had apparently recovered just in time to cut me off before I got too far into things.
“Not usually,” I said, scratching my head sheepishly, “Apparently it’s some kind of stress coping measure for me. I usually don’t babble anywhere as much as I am now.”
“Well, I feel your coping measure might have prevented a possible war.” Celestia trotted past me to face the other two alicorns present. I smiled a little as I noticed Twilight and Big Mac carefully poking their heads around the corner. Luna was pawing at the ground, looking a little embarrassed. Applejack was making a conscious effort to take this all in stride, relatively speaking. She looked a bit sheepish as well. Celestia, meanwhile, took command of the situation with the grace and experience I expected from the immortal sun goddess. “Now that we have all calmed down a bit, let’s talk this over. Applejack, why did you put this dome up?”
Applejack cleared her throat. “Well, ah was doin’ mah work, when he,” she gestured at me while I did my best to be unobtrusive and get the eagle off of my arm, “popped out ah nowhere. Well, we got to talkin’, an’ ah was jus’ takin’ him back to th’ farmhouse, when this mob showed up bayin’ for him. An’ ah jus’ suppose everythin’ over the past week jus’ got to me an... this happened.”
Luna turned an imperious eye on me. “And what might you have done to provoke this?”
I turned away from the window I had been trying to convince the eagle to fly out through. “I have never been in Equestria in my life, so no, I don’t know why your subjects were so keen to embark upon violent quests against my person.” I tried shaking my arm a little. Unfortunately, my arm was apparently much more comfortable than anything else in Equestria, because the bird refused to budge. Thank goodness for cartoon physics, otherwise I don’t think the skin on my arm would be in good condition right now from having a bird of prey sitting there, makeshift glove or not. That odd feeling in my gut hadn’t gone away either. Brilliant.
Luna frowned at me. “We saw the mob outside: they had effigies of thou, pitchforks, and torches. What other explanation is there for their behavior then that thee did something to provoke it?”
I spread out my hands in the universal gesture for ‘I dunno,’ then went back to resignedly rubbing the eagle. I could’ve sworn the smug avian bastard smiled a little. And now I was definitely getting an odd feeling in my gut. It wasn’t hunger, it was more like a gentle pulling sensation in the pit of my stomach. If I was hallucinating all this, that was probably my body reacting to the not-so controlled substances that were responsible for my delirium tremens. I idly figured I was probably going to regret waking up, judging by this feeling.
“I don’t know, but-” I was cut off by a pegasus slamming into me. Now, the average pony on earth weighs about 200 to 300 kilograms. In pounds that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 550 pounds. Equestrian ponies are quite a bit smaller, (their heads are about waist height) and pegasi tend to weigh even less, possibly because their bones are, if not fully hollow, at least pretty close to it. That’s not to say it didn’t hurt when Merry May slammed into me. It was akin to the sensation you would expect to feel when a professional linebacker learns that you were the one who replaced his manly deodorant with some absurdly expensive French ladies perfume made from flower scents, star sprinkles, sugar spice, and whale vomit. On the bright side, the bird let go of me.
“Don’t worry Princesses! I’ve got it!”
“AUGH! What are doing? Get off me!”
“... Merry May.” Applejack sounded upset. That’s all I noticed, because I was busy fending off the pony determined to giving me a structurally superfluous new behind.
“Get off me, you crazy horse! I don’t know what I did to make you mad but QUIT IT!”
“It’s all right Princess! I’ll hold it still, you go ahead and charge up your magic!”
“Merry May.”
“If I have to spend a thousand years fighting this monster on the moon in order to keep you safe, I consider that sacrifice well worth making!”
“MERRY MAY!” The shout wasn’t at full Royal Canterlot volumes, but that three different ponies delivered it meant it was pretty close. Needless to say, all fighting stopped. Luna and Applejack turned to see Twilight standing with them, glaring razor blades at Merry May, panting a little from joining them in shouting. They both just sort of shrugged, and joined her in glaring at Merry- nope, Luna was still glaring at me as well. She had that in common with Merry at least.
“Merry, y’all mind tellin’ me why y’all hate Jack here so much?”
“Well, it’s a monster! I mean, look at it! It’s got hands! Everypony knows only big scary monsters like minotaurs, sea serpents, and chaos spirits have hands!”
“He is not a monster, my little pony.” Celestia’s voice was like a cool breeze cutting through a stuffy room. “He is a human, a clever and talented species that hasn’t appeared in Equestria for thousands of years. I once knew one, and she was one of the best friends I had had. Some humans are somewhat dark-minded, true, but I believe this one is one of those good ones.”
“But Lyra told me about how there’s a monster that looks like that-” she waved a righteous hoof in my face- “that’s haunted her family for years! How can you just assume that that thing hasn’t decided to try to destroy the princess? We need to deal with it now!”
Celestia’s poker face got even stonier. While I tried to make the mental connection that Merry’s little speech had opened up, Luna just looked confused while Applejack raised an eyebrow and opened her mouth to start giving a lecture on- Oh. Now I get it. I cleared my throat.
“Celestia? I know you’re an immortal goddess, and that I probably don’t have the right to criticize you,” (I could have sworn I heard a derisive snorting sound coming from one of the other ponies right then) “but I think you owe a certain one of your subjects an apology.”
“Wait, what?” That, and a few other variations on that phrase, echoed out from pretty much everyone else present, which now included Big Mac.
“Well, you see, what happened was thousands of years ago, a certain unicorn nobleman, or I guess noblepony would be the phrase, acted very... what would be a polite way of saying it?”
“Boorishly.” Luna chimed in. She had an ‘aha!’ expression, as she’d seen what I’d seen.
“There you go. This unicorn acted very boorishly towards Luna, so Celestia unleashed nine kinds of divine smiting on his punk flank, and just to make the point, has made sure to remind that unicorn’s descendants every once in awhile that they are cursed in her eyes.”
Twilight was understandably shocked. “What? But Princess Celestia wouldn’t hold a grudge like that, she...” She seemed to notice that Celestia still hadn’t reacted visibly. “Princess?”
“That doesn’t prove anything! So you know how the princesses deal with trouble makers, that just raises the question of how come you were dumb enough to try it now! That story doesn’t even have anything to do with this situation!”
“The human has a point.” Luna seemed to have finally decided I wasn’t deserving of glares, and was nodding sagely in response to Merry May’s outburst. “The curse that my sister and I wrought upon that stallion was to drive him insane with visions of a tall, bipedal creature dressed all in black, with only a blank white space where its face should be. For our sake, she has continued to visit that unicorn’s descendants with the occasional glimpse of a strange, bipedal creature that they can never catch. It was harmless, up until today.”
Merry May looked about ready to demand more answers when Celestia finally spoke. “The unicorn’s name was Heartstrings.”
Merry May blinked, swallowed, and then finally said “Oh.”
Awkward silence ensued. Along with a slow, silent facehoof from Twilight.
Then Applejack cleared her throat, prodded Merry May with a hoof, and gestured towards me. Ears flat, she turned towards me, coughed, and then stammered out her apology “I, uh, guess I’m, uh sorry for beating you up? And starting a riot.”
I raised an eyebrow as I looked at her. Yeah, it was nice that she’d apologised, but I still hurt from getting tackled by her and... damn. She was just sitting there, with a pouty expression, ears flat, and... confound these ponies and their adorableness! They drive me to repentance!
“And I’m sorry I hit you in the head with a banjo.”
“About, that, Jack. Y’all owe me a new banjo. An’ there’s still that apple y’all took earlier.” Everyone was a bit more relaxed now that there wasn’t any sign of an imminent war, but Applejack seemed somewhat serious still.
“Uhm... I don’t have any Equestrian money. Can we work something out?”
Luna interjected. “We shall cover the cost of any fruits he has devoured,” she proclaimed,
“And we shall also see to restoring your banjo, dear Applejack.” She hesitated, and then plunged on. “We, I, am sorry. We of all ponies know what it means to be unfairly judged, and we can see that that is what we did to you. Will you accept our- my, friendship?” She held out her hoof. Applejack studied it for a moment, and then, smiling, met it with her own.
“Ah reckon ah will.”
As I picked myself up from the floor (and most of the ponies engaged in one of those cardiac-arrestingly cute group hugs), I put an uncertain hand to my belly. This was no normal upset stomach feeling. It had come back stronger than ever just now, and it felt like my innards were being twisted and pulled on by a little gremlin armed with a large hook. At least the building was large enough to accommodate me, so I didn’t have to worry about a sore back from any low ceilings.
“Well, I think we’ve all done very well today. We’ve stopped a potential feud between alicorns, and reintroduced a lost species to Equestria. Now, I think we should probably do something about that dome of plants outside.” Celestia motioned towards the door. “Shall we?”
I hid the discomfort from my face, and being somewhat old-fashioned in some ways, decided the chivalrous thing to do would be to open the door for them all. “Please, allow me.” I said, as I opened the door, bowing a long, low, theatrical bow. I suddenly heard a few gasps. Looking up, I saw that whatever was making all the ponies turn pale (even Celestia) was apparently just outside the doorway. I turned around and saw some horrific gold and green edged rift in reality behind me. I don’t really know how to describe it, beyond saying that it looked just like a seeping wound in the air, bleeding sparks of golden power, through which you could just barely see the chaotic matter that was the skeleton of reality. I had just enough time to notice that the pain in my gut suddenly flared before a yellow glowing tentacle reached out of the rift and pulled me in.
“Jack!” I turned to see Twilight had managed to grab one of my arms with her magic, and for a moment that held me within the rift. I desperately clawed towards them as best I could, but even with their help, it felt like I was swimming right towards one of those current jets in a pool: I just couldn’t hold onto my foraward momentum long enough to move forward.
“Hang on there, partner!” I saw Applejack trotting back into view, lasso held ready to cast, when suddenly something seemed to shift within the rift and the rift closed like a snapping turtle’s jaws on a tasty worm. Twilight’s magic faded from around my arm.
I’d like to say I said something dry and witty, but the truth is I was just screaming my head off. “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH-”
Kerthud.
I blinked. One moment, chaotically skipping lights of every imaginable and unimaginable color had been dancing in front of my eyes while my guts tried to tie themselves into a monkey’s paw knot, and then I was just standing in a field. The weird feeling in my torso was gone too.
I looked around. I could see some mountains in the distance, and that this was a grassy field, but other than that, nothing. I guessed there must have been a storm somewhere off in the distance, because I heard a distant boom like thunder. No sign of Sweet Apple Acres, or Ponyville, or anything I recognized.
I sighed. “Well, that was bizarre. When I do get out of this fever dream, first thing I’m doing is finding myself a psychiatrist.” I muttered as I polished my sunglasses on a corner of my scarf. As I did so, I noticed that I was still animated in that distinctive MLP:FiM style. “At least I know I’m still in Equestria. Would be helpful if the show bothered to explain its own geography though.”
I looked around once again, and for no other reason other than the fact that I was already facing that direction, started walking forward.
It was sort of strange, though. The animation style was the same, but now I could see some small differences in my surroundings from what I expected. The clouds were higher up in the sky, and they looked more wispy and less substantial and cartoony then they should have, more like Earth clouds.
That thought made me stop walking for a moment. I thought about it for a minute, and then decided:
“Nope. There’s no way I just got yoinked out of one fanfiction, and into another one where the clouds look different for some reason. This is all just one long hallucination. There’s probably some perfectly logical reason why the clouds in this part of Equestria look different, but that doesn’t matter, because I’m probably going to wake up any second now with a killer headache...” I trailed off as I listened. I could hear something getting louder, some sort of droning, whining sound. You know, that sound they always play in movies when a plane has lost power, and is plummeting to the ground. I looked up and-
SUDDENLY RAINBOW DASH FROM THE SKY.
I dove to one side just as she slammed into the ground just behind where I’d been a second ago. I trembled for a moment as I realised that her velocity and course would’ve taken my head clean off. Then I knocked that off and got back up. What was it with pegasi throwing themselves at me today?
Then I realised that Rainbow was unconscious. She also looked to be in bad condition. I’m no expert, but the way those wings were bent couldn’t have been healthy. Or those legs. The silver dart stuck in her flank, just above her cutie mark couldn’t have helped either. There was also a sizable pool of blood under her, from numerous gashes and scrapes.
“What in Celestia’s day... are you?” At the sound of someone speaking in some strange language, I turned to see a white-coated pegasus mare, with a red and yellow mane. Her cutie mark was seven pointed star in a circle, and her eyes were blue. She was panting a little with exertion, and her coat had a slight brown tinge from dirt and dust.
Her voice seemed to have woken up Rainbow, who stirred a little at the sound. I held up my hands in the air and stepped back a little. Seemed to me a pegasus would be better equipped to deal with an injured pegasus than a human would.
Rainbow’s eyes opened, focusing on the strange pegasus. “Please tell me you speak Equestrian” she said tiredly, at which the pegasus seemed to flinch. Wait a minute, I thought to myself, I’ve seen this before.
The white pegasus haltingly responded “I do speak,” in a strange sort of accent, very formal and hesitant.
"Cool," Rainbow said with a grin that I winced just looking at. "I think I'm about to pass out, so if you could stick around till I wake up that... that would... be... awesome."
And then she did pass out. As the pegasus turned towards me warily, I held out my hands again. “Hey, I was just walking here, and she came dropping out of nowhere. I didn’t do anything.”
She started, and then said “You speak Equestrian Old as addition?”
“In addition,” I corrected automatically, pointing towards the unconscious Rainbow, “and we should probably help her before talking about languages.” I don’t know this universe quite as well as I do Applethosis, but if I’m right about where I am now, having Rainbow up and running as soon as possible would be a good thing, I thought to myself as I watched Star Fall call for help. This was going to be rough.