I was in a hospital bed. It was quiet there and nobody was trying to kill me.
My tape recorder had been placed on the bedside table, and I listened to it. It provided some helpful hints as to what had transpired, but didn’t quite tell the whole story. I also learned that I really needed to reeducate some ponies on the meaning of privacy and leaving my stuff alone.
The door opened and Trixe rolled in. She hopped off her skateboard and propped it against the wall, slinging the M60 off her back and sitting down. After taking off her sunglasses, she gave me a small smile. “Hi dad. Good to see you’re awake.”
I nodded. “Let me get this straight: you have a pet t-rex.”
She nodded.
“That is incredibly badass and I’m so proud of you.”
She leaned forward and we shared a quick hug. Trixie pulled back, a little regret in her eyes. I remembered the radiation and how just being near her was probably a bad idea.
“I was thinking about doing some traveling,” she said. “You know, spread my toxic footprint out a little.”
I nodded sadly. “I understand.”
She nodded and started to get up when the door opened and six ponies came in. They appeared to be a little wary, but calmed down once they saw that I wasn’t foaming at the mouth anymore.
“So…what happened?” I asked when they were all there.
“There was this bomb,” said Twilight. “You called it a MOAB.”
“Which you got from somewhere,” added Rainbow, rolling her eyes.
“But with the moon rocket, machine gun, skateboard, and other weird stuff, we shouldn’t really be surprised,” broke in Pinkie.
“Discord was pretty near the blast,” commented Applejack.
“But we can’t really say for certain whether he’s dead or not, because we didn’t find any traces of him,” finished Rarity.
“I hope he’s all right,” murmured Fluttershy.
“Regardless,” continued Twilight, “He’s the Princesses’ problem now. We have other things to worry about.”
“Like rebuilding the town,” said Applejack.
“What’s the destruction?” I asked.
“Well, a twenty thousand pound bomb has a pretty large blast radius,” said Trixie. “Most of Ponyville is at least damaged.”
I considered that. “What about the Black Twins?”
“We haven’t seen them,” answered Twilight. “We think they left town before the explosion.”
We were all quiet for a few minutes. Apparently I had pretty much destroyed the town and gotten very little to show for it. By the sound of things, Discord might not even be able to be killed.
I tried to sit up, but it was a little painful. I might not remember what I had done while on a psychopathic rampage, but I was sure paying for it now.
I fell back on the bed. Something needed to be done, and fast. I kicked around a few ideas, some of them quite terrible. Then I hit on the most terrible of them all. “Twilight, please go get that shit-ugly rock and my finest booze.”
She gave me a skeptical look. “What are you planning?”
“The Black Twins know I’m from Earth. In fact, they know so much that I would say that they are probably from there themselves.”
“But how is going there going to help us?” asked Rarity.
“I know a guy,” I assured her.
Twilight returned in a few minutes with the requested items. “Why do you need the tequila? Since we installed the computerized logistics monitoring package, the multiverse capabilities of this rock are much more stable and useable at will.”
“Because alcohol makes me happy.” I took a swig from the bottle. “Proceed.”
Twilight stared at the complicated electronics that the rock was cradled in. “I think it’s been damaged in the blast. I can’t tell if I’m setting it to take us to your world or thirty-four world.”
I frowned. Those two might have rhymed, but the letters didn’t look anything alike. Whatever. Magic. I waved a hoof for her to just get on with it.
There was a bright flash of light, and we were transported to a different place. Well, different, but still the same relative spatial location. The big changes were to the general décor and activities of the local residents.
Fluttershy covered her eyes. Pinkie looked excited. The rest of us displayed varying levels of do not want.
“Er, I guess this is actually Universe 34,” said Twilight.
“Awkward,” muttered Rainbow.
There was another flash of light and we appeared inside a hospital in Milwaukee. The last time I had seen the place, I was being treated for alcohol poisoning. That had been quite a while ago in Equestrian time, all the way back during the wedding in Canterlot.
It seemed that only hours had passed in Earth time, however. The room was empty except for the eight of us. Seven were naked.
“All right everyone,” said Twilight. “I’m sure there are some spare hospital gowns around here somewhere. Humans have this weird hangup about being naked.”
I was glad she remembered the lessons I had taught her the last time we visited Earth, especially because I was confined to a hospital bed in this universe, too.
There was the expected shock and awe over being stuck in different bodies, but that passed quickly. All of us had experienced enough strange stuff recently that deliberately going to another universe was actually pretty low on the weirdo scale.
They unplugged me from various tubes and wires and rolled the bed out of the room and down the hallway. A nurse glanced in our direction. “What are you doing?”
“They’re, um, kidnapping me,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “You’ve been telling tall tales ever since you got here. I'm not going to believe this one.”
With that out of the way, we left the hospital and headed down the street. There was a grade that led downhill towards my place. The bed began to roll freely and Pinkie jumped on, giggling. Not to be outdone, Rainbow piled aboard, and the rest were forced to climb on or be left behind.
“It’s the fastest I’ve ever gone on a bed before,” I commented.
“It’s awesome!” cheered Pinkie.
“How are we supposed to stop?” asked Fluttershy.
We were all silent. None of us knew.
With parked cars whizzing by on one side and moving traffic on the other, it almost felt like we were making a trench run on the Death Star. We’d also be just as dead if we hit the walls.
“I’ll probably be okay,” I said. “I’m sure there still enough residual booze in my system to relax my body for impact. Sorry for the rest of you.”
Applejack grabbed the dangling wires and tubes taken from the machines in the room and fashioned them into a crude lasso. She tossed it over a stop sign as we barreled through an intersection. It did slow the bed down, but at the cost of simultaneously ripping the EKG electrodes off my chest and the needles out of my veins.
When I stopped screaming in agony, I realized that we had neatly come to a halt right outside my apartment building. The jolt of pain had caused my reflexes to come back online, and the burst of adrenalin had negated a little of the intoxication. I was able to get out of bed and stumble up the stairs. I was worried for a moment that the door would be locked, but my roommate was there.
“Hi,” I said. “You’ve met Twilight before. This is my daughter, Trixie. The other five are just tagging along.”
He took in the sight of the seven women and myself all dressed in hospital gowns. I bet he was wondering how I had stumbled into a theme porn film, but discounting the idea because I wasn’t that lucky.
“Anyway, we need your connections,” I said.
“What?”
“Come on dude, you’re both a geologist and a discerning aesthetics snob. You have to know something about precious stones, and while you aren’t a jeweler, you probably know a couple of people who are.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“And chances are that at least one of the jewelers is a fence for the mob. Among the various organized crime groups, someone has to know a pair of twins who do murder and mayhem.”
He shook his head. “Twins, what?”
“Trust me. Just get the word out.”
It took a little more convincing, but he picked up the phone. His jeweler friend said he would make some inquiries. We waited around for a while and the phone rang again. My roommate answered it, his face growing more and more pale as he listened.
Concerned, I asked, “What’s up?”
“Your ex is unhappy with you.”
I didn’t have to ask which one, as that was pretty much the story for all of them. “That’s not news.”
“You don’t understand. It’s the blonde.”
I had dated a couple of blondes. The blonde, however, was one woman I really didn’t want to piss off. I gulped. “What did I do?”
“I wasn’t able to find out. Sorry.”
While I doubted that particular ex would send the Black Twins after me—she preferred to take care of things personally—it was still disturbing that I literally had no idea what I might have done to get on her bad side.
“Anyway,” I said, “I should probably get out of here before she comes for me.”
“It’s probably best,” he agreed.
“Go in the other room. I don’t want you to accidentally get teleported with us.”
He gave me a strange look, but shrugged and went down the hallway. Twilight held up the ugly chunk of basalt and activated the electronics.
“I’ll be glad to get out of this hospital,” I said, back in Ponyville.
“So will I,” said the pony in the bed on the other side of the room. He was a light blue pegasus with a microchip, wire, and piston for a cutie mark.
Trixie pulled the curtain between the beds. She turned back to me. “Get well soon. I think I should probably be going.”
“Don’t forget to write,” I said. She gave me a quick smile before departing with her skateboard and machinegun.
“The rest of us should be going soon,” said Twilight. “Princess Cadance wants us to help bring the Equestrian Games to the Crystal Empire.”
Trixie popped her head back in. “Spike said he’s watching your pets while you’ll be gone. Can he also take care of Rexy?”
“And Admiral Falcon while I’m in the hospital?” I asked.
“I’ll talk to him,” said Twilight. “He seemed a little pushy and wanted to be paid in jewels, though.”
“This sounds like that one time when he got greedy,” I noted.
They all thought for a moment. “You know, he’s right,” said Applejack.
“I couldn’t bear to have that happen again,” said Rarity.
“Okay, so we need to give Spike a good smackdown before he gets any ideas,” put in Rainbow.
“I was just going to pay him in bits rather than jewels,” offered Twilight.
The six of them agreed that maybe that would be easier. They left to board the train to the Crystal Empire.
I lay there for a while, feeling oddly content. I realized there were some drugs going into my IV. That was probably it. I reviewed what I wanted to do when I got out of the hospital. If there really was a Saturn V parked in Ponyville, you bet your ass I was going to go to the moon.
I clicked back in the tape recorder, listening to the fragments of my insane ramblings it had caught. Apparently, green was now a color and a shape, beetles had invaded Switzerland, I promised that next alicorn that I met for the first time I was going to kill, and I wanted a nice ice cream cone. Actually, that last one I felt more strongly than ever. I pressed the call button to summon a nurse.
The ice cream was going on my bill, but combined with the cost of treatment already, I figured that it wouldn’t escalate much. I was happily licking at the cone when the Black Twins walked in.
“Relax,” said Woody. “We’re just here to take away your painkillers.”
Beauty yanked the IV out. I was getting real tired of needles being ripped from my skin today.
They started to walk away, but I called after them. “Is that it?”
“Your temporary insanity was enough to entertain us for quite a while,” said Beauty.
“We’re sticking to small stuff for now,” added Woody.
“You’ve never explained why you keep toying with me in the first place,” I said. “Back when we first met, you said you were getting paid, but never explained by who or for what reason.”
“It's none of your business,” said Woody.
I had an idea. It was risky, but if I was right, it gave me an advantage. “Clearly, if you were allowed to kill me, you already would have.”
Beauty pointed her horn at the pony across the room and something very bad must have happened to him judging by the amount of blood that splattered on the curtain.
“A fancy demonstration,” I said as coolly as possible, “but I’ve got bigger problems to worry about right now. I just found out that my ex is after me.”
The two of them stared for a moment before turning away to have a whispered conversation.
“Hey, afraid I’ll overhear?” I called.
Beauty glared at me. “This is for badass unicorns only.”
Trixie wasn’t here, so I plunked the ice cream cone on my head and looked at them expectantly. Woody shook his head. “Valiant, out of the shockingly high number of exes you’ve had, why is this only happening now?”
I shrugged. “I only just found out myself.”
They traded glances. I gave them the most evil grin I could muster. Somehow, something incredibly improbable had fallen into my lap. I had finally found one thing that appeared to antagonize them.
I said her name. “Meghan.”