A quick note: Colloquialisms and mannerisms in this first chapter are simply part of the location, and are not meant to be insulting in any way. This is accurate to my experience, and is meant to set the scene.

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Now I'm not the person who thinks that, right? But there is even more to worry about when you are in a foreign country, surrounded by dozens of people speaking an unintelligible language and seemingly using every excuse to bump into you, maybe even spill some ice-cream down the front of your jacket.

Lucky for me I had a friend with me, a (more or less) local guy. Unluckily the bastard was asleep against our pile of luggage in the corner. Dozy pony-loving dutchman...

The Buffalo City Bus Terminal, as the barely understandable official had called it, was actually little more than a parking lot behind newly modernized restaurant/take away/shop/place near the beachfront front of this underrated South African town. The afternoon sun brightened my spirits a bit as I looked out over the calm Indian Ocean. I could see the harbour off to the east, not even two miles away. A few yachts and smaller dinghies cruised in and out of the harbour mouth, lending some grace to the scene of the otherwise totally chaotic waterfront.

I was jarred from my reverie by the bus conductor, avidly trying to pull my backpack from my shoulders. "Hey, dude! That's my carry-on!" I growled, yanking it back. The man stared at me like I was going to blow up the bus or something, before turning around and wordlessly kicking my unconscious friend into wakefulness.

Have you ever heard a South African, and more importantly, an Afrikaaner, go into a full tirade? You should, it's the sort of thing that instantly destroys all innocence, and leaves the person on the receiving end a shadow of their former selves. Here was my best friend for years, a calm and respectful chap (He watched MLP, what more can I say), growling in a number of languages and tones, sounding like paranoid drunk with multiple personality syndrome. Hell, I didn't even understand what he said and I was terrified. The conductor huffed and ah-d for a second, before pointing at the pile of luggage and then at the rapidly filling cargo compartment of our bus.

I took this as a convenient time to interrupt. "Ah, Andrew, help me load the gear before we get left behind, again, yeh?"
He looked at me groggily, still fighting off the effects of his afternoon nap. He shook his head and wiped his eyes, then grabbed a suitcase and began dragging it over to the bus. It took a second for me to realize, but when I did, I quickly halted my companion. "Mate, I meant we need to load our luggage."

Andrew blinked a little stupidly, then looked back to see a poor Xhosa girl desperately trying drag her suitcase away from the man who seemed intent on taking it. He quickly dropped the bag. "Oh, I'm so sorry! lemme put it back for you..." Noticing her blank look, he realized that she couldn't understand him.

No problem for a guy that speaks four languages. I listened to their exchange as I towed my large suitcase to the bus, where it was loaded by a pair of burly workers. Andrew was getting quite a lashing now that he had shown himself able to speak the native language. Even after he had replaced the bag and was loading his own, the girl was still shouting over the gathering crowd. He just ignored it, somehow used to it after years of exposure the eclectic culture of this oddly amazing country.

'Amazing' doesn't exactly apply to the public transport system, though. Our large Greyhound sixty-seater bus wasn't even soundproofed. When the doors closed behind us on boarding, the girl, still intent on verbal murder, was quite audible. We found our seats about three quarters of the way down the bus on the left hand side. Andrew got the window, and I sat next to him, sandwiched in by a large African gentleman dressed primly, ready for a meeting no doubt. He turned to me and said in a friendly tone. "Moloweni! Igama lam ngu-Thomas-"

I held out a hand and cut him off before the usual awkward moment between his greeting and my confusion. "Hiya. Sorry there, but I don't speak...that language."

To my surprise, he gave me a relieved smile, and answered in a thick accent, "Ah, this is good. It is not my home-tongue either. I am born to Swahili, but...I heard you speaking to the girl outside, and I thought it wise to practice while I am here."

I tried to follow him, smiling all the while. He said each word separately, leaving a small gap between each exaggerated enunciation. The sound of the bus's loud engine didn't help as we pulled out onto our roadtrip. Andrew, of course, was more than up to the task. "Aye, that was me, not this douche. He ain't from this country." His smirk was only just tolerable.

Soon they were embroiled in a conversation that used all the languages the pair had at their disposal (Even German). I heard mention of Mali, but that word could mean any of the dozen things on this continent. I sighed and pulled out my only solution: My phone. A few taps and I had a running translation to the conversation, at least the one in Xhosa. When the damn thing translated their words to 'I dissected the underhand slime balloon', though, I realized I was still way out of my depth.

Instead, I put on my earphones and buried myself in mind-numbing music, giving my brain something to focus on other than my inability to communicate. I surfaced from my self-induced torpor, rather unhappily, a while later once Andrew started poking me in the ribs. I pulled off one earphone and glared at him in mock anger. He saw right through it though and pointed to the backpack at my feet. I knew what the bugger wanted. Eeyup.

I pulled from the depths of the bag, my amazing device: a laptop. Not uncommon to people who don't live on large cattle farms three hours from any major town. Andrew grinned. I passed my small bundle of media over to him for his entertainment, plus a flashdrive he had asked me to keep for him. He hadn't moved even as far as SD cards, and here was I, feeling ever so superior in my use of the cloud. I flicked through a few links on my phone meanwhile and tried to watch a live stream from home when I found a problem. It took me a few minutes, but I realized that there probably wasn't a place on this side of the country with mobile speeds fast enough for and video quality at all, let alone what I was trying to watch, and I was left with that small empty feeling of being too far away from WiFi.

Andrew was perfectly fine, though. He was lucky he was rural. I sighed, bored, and leaned over to see what he was watching so intensely. There he sat, wrapped in headphones, staring at the screen, as small cartoon ponies bounced around on the screen. I sighed again, looking away, right into the curious eyes of the man next to me. Damn.

"I see your friend is taken with your computer. What is it to have gotten him so?" Thomas asked kindly, just trying to be friendly. I thought for a second.

When it came to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (I still can't say that all out loud), it had actually been Andrew who introduced me to it. Well...There was that time when a girlfriend had tried to get me to watch it...Anyway, Andrew had given me two seasons, and a bunch of other stuff. After that, I had gone home again. Now that I was back, Things were different. I had season three and triple the amount of fan stuff, that being the reason Andrew was currently buried in in my laptop. And I wrote about it too, a few of my meagre stories floating around the web. And yet, he was still far more comfortable with admitting that he liked the show than I ever would be. And here I was talking a gentleman way to old to have even heard of the fandom.

I resorted to plan B. "Oh, nothin' much..." Proceed to stare out of window like dumbass.

I couldn't help but look down at my laptop over Andrew's hunched shoulder. He was reading something...Wait..."Dude! Get out of my fanfiction! NOW!"

Andrew laughed and twisted away from me, which unfortunately unplugged the headphones, allowing whatever he had been listening to to reroute through the measly, but somehow massively loud speakers of my laptop. 'Smile, Smile, Smile'.

"Okay, listen mate, you can watch videos, go through my music...Hell, you can even look at the stuff on the flashdrive on the bus, but you will NOT read my fanfiction! It's embarrassing enough as is!" I reached over and mashed the mute button, before returning to steely silence, staring at the seat in front of me.

Andrew cackled with delight. "Oh. man! You should have seen your face! What's up? You'll write MLP fanfiction for the world to see, but you won't let your best friend read it? Hey..." He turned and stared at me unnervingly, "Why so serious?"

The reference was not lost to me. In fact, we had had entire conversations purely using media references and memes dozens of times over. Still, not like I was going to answer.

I groaned. More than ever I just wanted to see the skyline of the Mother City. I heard a small scuffle next to me, a whispered question, and then Thomas's answer. "Ah, of course, young one, it is no problem."

As Thomas stood and moved over, I wished for the first time that African cultures weren't so friendly. Then a new character sat down beside me, having swapped seats with my previous companion. "Hi...?"

I looked over at her. And then did't want to look down. I gave my best winning smile at the young woman who just sat next to me. "Hiya yourself." I reached over a hand. "Marc Pyrefell, pleased to meetcha."

She looked at me dubiously (Can't blame her) and replied, shaking my hand, "Sure thing, Sarah Stein. I heard MLP mentioned, figured I'd join the group."

I nodded understandingly. "Makes sense. I'm just trying to teach my friend a little shame. He's been digging into his priveleges at a helluva rate."

She chuckled. "I heard. I also heard you write? That's cool, I really enjoy fanfiction. FimFiction I take it?"

She was a little close the mark there, and truly this wasn't something I wanted to get into. Unfortunately Andrew didn't intend on letting me get off lightly. "Sarah, just type in Quicksear and you'll get quite a few things popping up, right, mate?"

I punched him, then turned and completed a now terse introduction. "This is Andrew...uh Andrei Werner. I guess he's kinda meant to be my guide around here. We've been friends ever since I first visited South Africa, and I meet him every time we're in the same country, wherever that happens to be."

Sarah was about to say something, but Andrew interrupted, waving his arms about as much as he could, "Yeah, right, guide my arse. Two days ago you rock up at my door with two bus tickets and and map, and call me off on some adventure. I thought you were still in Saudi Arabia, and now I'm on a bus headed to Cape Town?!"

Sarah laughed again at his expressionism, before getting her chance to speak. "Seriously? That's how you plan? Anyway, I don't need to search for 'Quicksear'. I've already read your stories. Not bad. Allow to introduce myself. 'terrorweaver87', at your service."

I grinned. I had argued countless times with this shadowy figure, over comments and views and whatnot, and now here she was, laughing at me, waiting for a response. Terrorweaver87 was a slim young brunette?! No way...

"Ahah..hm, right. I'll just call you Terry. How about we ignore Quicksear for the duration of this trip. My laptop only has five hours of battery left, and we're stuck on this bus for at least sixteen, so how about some idle conversation? Let's hear more about my comment-nemesis, shall we?"

As it turned out, Sarah was an international like myself, making a chance meeting like this even more surprising. She was going to visit friends in...you guessed it...Cape Town and was then going back home to Cardiff for the summer, ie. winter in South Africa. Lots of families did that, living six months a year in South Africa for the weather. I had spent two years doing that myself. Now we were on a bus together for the whole night, and our conversation drifted back to our mutual interests. By the time MLP popped back up, the sun was going down and we were nearing the city of Port Elizabeth.

Andrew and Sarah were talking about various pieces of fanart. Although I was more than familiar with them, I feigned ignorance. I had a strange feeling in my head, like I had dropped a thousand feet and wasn't used to the air pressure. I shook my head once or twice, swallowed, even took off my earphones, but the pressure remained. I started trying to focus on other things, like the (very copious) sounds on the moving bus. I heard the engine, people talking, a movie playing on the screen we couldn't see, and...Squeaking?

I looked around, trying to find the annoying squeak. I looked at the window. Nope. The seats around me? Nope. I couldn't quite get a latch on it. Then the bus hit a smooth piece of tar (Rare on the east coast of South Africa), and the squeak came to clarity. It was Sarah's kitbag. I stared at the offending bag on her lap. She had been oddly protective of it so far. Must be because of that noise.

The talking stopped dead. Sarah looked at me with a tinge of fear. She rapped the bag quickly, and the noise ended. Andrew leaned over, also having heard the sound. "Hey, you got mice in there or something? You shouldn't really keep them in a kitbag-"

"Shush!" She hissed, then looked around as if a I'd pointed out a snake. "Listen guys, I'll level with you. This bag is all I've got, and..." The change in her was instant. Gone was the cheery woman I had been listening to for the past three hours, replaced by a terrified looking girl, clinging to her bag. "Okay...Okay, yeah, I'm sitting here cause you guys watch My Little Pony. Now, in this bag...I have...Whatever, just look inside and and BE QUIET!"

I was more than taken aback. No more civility then. "What? drugs? Stolen goods?" She shoved the bag at me, and I realized she wasn't able to answer. I looked to Andrew; he usually handled odd occurrences like this. He just looked blank.

Okay, so it was all on me. Great. I looked at the bag. I steeled myself, wondering why I was so nervous. The pressure in my head seemed to increase, but that was surely nerves. I pulled at the zip, opening the bag.

Inside was a bit of an odd sight. It was nothing but a but a few MLP figurines, each no more than three inches long, wrapped in a bunch of what looked brightly coloured clothes and scarves. I laughed. "Haha, nice one, you actually had me going there for a bit! So you've got - huph!"

I doubled over the bag, the pressure in my head doubled. It felt like me head was being exploded from the inside out.

Suddenly, it vanished completely, leaving me gasping and tearing up. Then I heard a voice. Well, it wasn't really a voice, it was more like and impression of feelings, showing me concepts that my brain couldn't process without turning into thoughts that weren't my own. And even then, I felt woozy just from trying to comprehend exactly what was happening.

A greeting. I looked into the bag on my lap. I didn't respond to Andrew's attempts to get my attention, I could only stare as one of the small figures in the bag, purple, with a horn atop its head and a gold chain about it's middle, wriggled itself out from the fabric, spread it's wings and looked straight at me with eyes glowing like the sun.

"Hello...?" There it was again. I don't know how to explain it: it wasn't words that came to me, but, I heard them. Like my brain was translating for me, trying to save my sanity by giving something familiar to answer to...

I felt amusement, and I saw the small figure before me shaking a little. giggling through a smile as false as linoleum. "Yes, yes it was. But it worked, right? You aren't going crush us or eat us?"

I was more than a little repulsed by the suggestion, the concept not fitting well with me at all. No way, who could do that...? My brain froze up after that, before the next thought jumped unbidden to my mind. What the hell ARE you?

"I am a... The small being seemed uncertain of how to proceed, but she (Um, how did I know that?) came to a conclusion, that being to let my mind draw it's own: "I am a 'pony'

I could feel her dissatisfaction at that translation, and I knew why. 'Pony' did her no justice. Ponies don't have wings and horns. They aren't purple, or telepathic, and their eyes don't glow. They don't wear jewelry, and they definitely aren't smart.

Then why did I feel totally daunted by the consciousness I was being exposed to?

"Yes" At least she seemed satisfied with he name I pegged to her. I wanted to move. To lean back and shout, make a noise to bring myself back to reality, but it was being impressed upon me, the urgent need not to do so. I breathed for a second, calming myself, before I thought emphatically: No movement, I am still

The light of the sun that was boring into my soul slowly faded from her eyes. Twilight's eyes. I had just lost a staring match with a three inch magical cartoon character. I wasn't even drunk.

I threw my eyes around the inside of the bag, noting the other figures squirming through the fabric. there were six all together. Go figure. I didn't need any more information, I knew what I didn't want to know. Twilight was still looking up at me. I could see an uncertain grimace playing in those eyes. I nodded slowly, and she nodded back, I glimpsed one or two other small faces turning up to me, but I ignored them. I sat up, calmly, feeling a small but very threatening pressure in the back of my mind. A warning. I zipped the bag back up slowly, realizing I was effectively a hostage. I turned and looked at the scared face of Sarah, watching me. She swallowed, then said, "Terrifying, isn't it?"

I was about to respond when Andrew poked me again, this time enough to hurt. I spun to him, not realizing that he hadn't just experienced the same world shattering ordeal I had. "Dude, dafuq?! You spend five minutes staring into a girl's kitbag and completely zone out? What the hell?"

He was implying a joke, I know, but the uncertainty in his voice removed any trace of it. I wondered if I should just give him the bag, make him feel what I had felt. Hell, he'd probably love it, the psycho. But no, not yet. All I knew was that this was a secret. Now that my mind was more or less free of invading energies, I tried to think clearly, laying out the situation to myself.

Sitting on an national bus, part of a service known for it's unreliability, bound for a foreign city, and a girl gives me a bag full of mind altering creatures willing to knock me out any second should I freak out as I so really, really wanted to. I shook my head to clear the hazy feeling washing over me. It felt like I had just been given a shot of morphine; I was numb, and ever so slightly woozy. I looked at Andrew, who was now muttering a stream of foreign curses and trying to get my attention. He looked at Sarah and said something. I was vaguely aware of hearing her sob, and then my senses swung into perfect precision as I stared at Andrew snapping his fingers in my face.

I shook him off. "Okay, I'm okay, just lemme go for a minute." I looked at the kitbag, now aware that it held all the capability to kill me.

I felt my vision swim again, and felt a prompt. I grabbed the edges of the bag and swung it over to Sarah's lap, where she huddled it close to her chest, as if to protect it.

I didn't feel particularly awake at that point, but that could be forgiven. "Andrew, that bag is going to blow your mind. Sarah, what the hell are they doing in your rucksack?"

She seemed to calm down, feeling better now that she wasn't the sole bearer of responsibility for our six little visitors. "They told me that they appeared due to some spell mishap, I don't know, but I can tell you this: If we don't get them somewhere private within the next twenty-four hours, we are going to have serious trouble-"

She looked at me in shock. And I knew why. It was inconceivable to think of leaving them in that bag, being carted around by this girl. She was right. I sighed and looked at the bag, addressing it. "Sorry, I'm a little scared here. Okay, Andrew and I are staying in an apartment overlooking the waterfront in Cape Town. It's pretty big, and we were going to be alone. That's as good a place as any."

I felt Andrew tug on my shoulder. "What hell are you talking about? C'mon, mate, level with me, please!"

I suddenly whipped my head around, realizing that if he could hear us, others might be able to as well. It wasn't even night time, most people were still awake. The fact we were in a crowded bus, though, didn't seem to matter. I couldn't hear any other voices. I realized, with some shock, that Twilight must be blocking out the sound.

With that in mind, I turned to Andrew. "Mate, you'll have to ask Sarah, but I'm telling you, it's nothing like anything you've ever seen, or probably ever will again." I looked at Sarah expectantly. "If you want to use our apartment, you'd probably want to show him why our holiday just took an about-face."

Sarah looked at the bag for a second, then nodded. "You're right, and thank you. For them." She slowly pushed the bag across my lap into Andrew's waiting hands. He looked at it curiously, still wondering what to make of it, when he gave a sudden snort and shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of a fly. Then he opened the bag with on quick movement-

-and locked. To anyone else who might see him, it looked as if he was staring at a phone screen, the slight ambient light flickering across his paralyzed features. He sat like this for a good two minutes, not even blinking, eyes wide with shock.

I sat back and grimly enjoyed the scene, even wondering if I should take a picture, but decided against sudden movements. I looked at Sarah, questioning, "Did it hurt? When Twilight did that mind control thing?"

She shook her head, relief flowing into her features. "No, but I couldn't move or speak, even think, until Twilight 'scanned' me. They were full size, too, though. They're much more...well, more, than you see now."

"Wait, they get bigger?" I frowned as I digested this piece of news. "How much bigger?"

Sarah's reply has cut off as Andrew suddenly collapsed forward over the bag, out cold. I grabbed his shoulder before he knocked the bag off his lap. As I pulled Andrew back up, I looked into the bag on impulse. Twilight's tiny head popped over the edge and smiled sheepishly. "He reacted badly. I'm sorry, but I put him under for a while. I know this is quite frightening, it;s scary for us too, but we just want to get home. What Sarah says is true, though, we need to get somewhere where we can return to our normal shapes. I cannot hold our forms to this size forever."

I nodded to her, trying to remain patient and calm with the miniature pony who had just knocked my friend out. I said out loud, "I suppose I understand. Now please, I need to think about this. Hold your forms til we get to our place, then we will talk again. Oh, and wake my friend up in the morning only. rather keep him out now that you've already done it. We're going to try and get rest, I suggest the same for you all."

She merely nodded and ducked back into the kitbag. I pulled over to me and zipped it back up. The sounds of the bus filtered back into my awareness as Twilight stopped muffling it, and I leaned back into my seat , trying to lose myself in the sound. I reached up and replaced my earphones, about to close my eyes and lose myself in music, when I felt a pressure on my shoulder. I looked down and saw Sarah leaning against me, closing her eyes. She looked so tired, and I realized how much stress she must have been under.

Another sign of movement caught my eye, and glanced at Thomas waving an over-emphatic thumbs up to me from across the isle, grinning like an imp. I smiled back, too tired myself to put any effort into it.

The man was four feet away and had missed the entire reveal of an almost cataclysmic truth.

The Mother City

by Quicksear

1. A Journey Begins