Chapter 2: ...Gesundheit
"Sweet Celestia... I think he just broke." Twilight noted, ever observant like she always is. However, now that the potential subject of her interrogation had encountered a sudden unexpected crash, she was very uncertain how to reboot him.
She observed the supine (face up) form of the 18-almost-19 black-haired green-eyed Caucasian homosapien, which had his legs tangled up in the rungs of the chair he had formerly been forced to sit in.
It would be inconvenient... er, horrible, to have you die on me. Twilight considered before delving into her acute memory of general and theoretical anatomy.
First thing she noted was that the human laying on the carpet definitely did not have extremely strong skin. Nor did he have hair like iron in toughness or unending stamina. he didn't even seem to have an IQ that surpassed all other species and a wisdom that spanned worlds, either.
Yes, he was definitely a human, but he was only as extraordinary as an earth-pony, pegasus or unicorn. In fact, this human seemed somehow... pony to her.
She quickly determined that the size and shape of his ribcage would make chest compressions possible, but performed only one before Louis got up quite suddenly.
"PFFFFFFFFFOWAAAAAAH!" Louis gasped and yelled at the same time, the former due to insufficient oxygen intake while processing his new reality, and the latter for the shock that his new reality was on top of him. The little unicorn tumbled off as Louis shot up from this shock.
"DON'T APPROACH ME!" Twilight shouted, still very much apprehensive towards Louis, and logically so.
"Pleasedon'thurtme!" Louis yelped milliseconds after Twilight had shouted, still very much apprehensive towards Twilight, as he really did not know how she'd react.
"Stay back and KEEP your hands DOWN! I will call the town guard!" Twilight had mentioned the town guard out of instinct.
"They're the 'police', Twilight! They wouldn't listen-" Louis attempted to explain, but it was fruitless as Twilight wanted him to shut up.
"I DID NOT SAY YOU COULD SPEAK!" Twilight could obviously command a lot of authority.
"MEEP!" The noise slipped out as Louis drew his arms back to his sides and made himself small.
An awkward silence followed as both sides stopped yelling to actually think, and thereby avoid unreasonable accusations. Twilight had a noticeably nervous face on as the two locked eyes. Louis searched for words while Twilight continued to hold her unsettled gaze.
"... Can I declare an armistice?" Louis eventually said.
"...Technically speaking, we were having a cold war. That word does not apply."
"How about negotiating a truce?"
"That word doesn't work either."
"What is the word, then?"
"How about 'coming to terms with each other'?"
Pony and person looked at each other again. There was another pause while both introverts stopped to think.
Louis was the first to speak once more. "How about you make yourself comfortable while I find a way to explain things from my end?"
"Did you bring me here?"
"I thought until today that you didn't even exist, Twilight. For one thing, unicorns are mythical, and for another, you came from a TV show that both little girls and grown men enjoy immensely."
"TV?"
"Shoosh. Stop asking questions and tell me what you want for breakfast."
"Why'd you poke my nose?"
...
Louis retracted his right finger from Twilight's nose. Didn't even notice that. A bit dehumanizing... I should avoid that. "It's because you're adorable. Now tell me what you want and I'll see if I have it."
Needless to say, the bookish unicorn did not know what to think of being called adorable by something that did not fit the description of a typical human, so she remained silent.
"...We've got eggs, milk, uh... Carrots, lettuce, probably can't- shouldn't eat hotdogs, some leftover Chinese, never mind, that has a lot of chicken, lots of bread and mayo, uh... How long has this been in here? *sniff* ... Okay, still good. I'll eat that though... Thought I cleaned all that out... Oh! Broccoli! Can I force that on you?"
Twilight, having grown a bit more comfortable at the prospect of food, seized the broccoli in her magic and began happily mowing it down. Then she stopped.
"Uh... Do you have plates?"
"Doesh it matter?" Louis asked in response, his mouth full from a bite of pizza and Chinese takeout. ...If you are worried about his health, neither item was in the fridge for longer than a week. While the prospect of lunch-like leftover food for breakfast may be a bit disgusting, it had saved Louis time needed to get to work in the past, and he had grown oddly fond of it regardless.
Twilight pointed a hoof at the broccoli crumbs on the carpet, blushing as she did so. Louis simply shrugged and presented her with a plate. She finished eating the flower in short order, trotting over to start eating the entire bag of baby carrots. Despite quite a while of living in Ponyville, her Canterlot origins still managed to show slightly, even as she ate at an extraordinary rate.
"Hungry?"
"Oh, no, this stuff is just perfect. I've never tasted any vegetable so healthy! How did you grow these?"
"...I'll explain the human practice of cash crops to you later. Let me just get something first."
A million questions buzzed through Twilight's head as Louis walked over to the coffee table to mess with a black tablet.
Is electricity commonplace on this world?
What was it that he was getting the food from?
What is he doing? Magic?
Twilight put the carrots back, now half empty, into the strange cold box they had come from, turning around and trotting over to Louis to watch the shiny glow from the top half of the tablet.
She remembered something. "I'm sorry! Where are my manners today?" She addressed Louis.
"Probably fighting a strong rebellion with common sense, I'd imagine." Louis laughed, still focused on the strange colors of the tablet. He seemed to be touching letters at it's base in a complex sequence, which made the colors change quickly.
This was a search engine, but Twilight didn't even know what the internet was, much less a laptop.
Letting out an uneasy giggle, she spoke up again. "I never asked your name..."
"Louis Anderson." Louis blurted out.
"Oh. Okay, Louis... It's nice to meet you."
By now, Louis had a few tabs open: one on The Earth, one on Humans, and one on American Culture and History.
"Okay. This will probably explain some of the more burning questions that you may have... Provided you write the same language as I."
Twilight glanced at the screen. "Seems Equestrian."
"That's... Good? Okay. The controls of my laptop are rather intuitive, so you should be able to figure them out well enough. Just don't go clicking the little red X in the top right corner. That closes the page, and it's going to be rather hard to find back." Louis explained, getting up to let Twilight sit in front of the computer.
"Uh, Okay."
"Great. I'm going to make a phone call now, so be really quiet. I don't want you distracting me or disturbing the neighbors."
"'Phone call'?"
"Yeah. Kinda like the letters to Princess Celestia that you send, only instantaneous, and you can talk to the other person instead of write." At Louis' statement, she became more interested in this prospect than at the computer that sat in front of her.
"How do you do that? I wanna try!"
Louis held up his phone. "You talk into this thing. Now, I'll be upstairs. Don't talk to me unless it's an emergency, okay?"
"Why?"
"I... Don't think the neighbors would like you all that well."
Twilight became indignant at this comment while Louis hastily made his getaway into his bedroom.
Louis had barely any time to improvise an excuse before Chelsea picked up her cell phone. "Hi Chelsea. This is a bit sudden, I know, but I can't have you coming over today."
"WHAT? Why? I thought you said you had free time!"
"Uh... I'm working."
"Working? Wow. Your boss stinks."
"Yeah. He's having us work... another 10 hours. This time loading trucks."
"I thought your hand was bad."
"It's not... That bad. I can pick up just as much with it as I could before." Clearly a lie... Don't slip up like that again.
"Uh huh. Your boss clearly wants you to re-open your wound so they can have one more volunteer worker help with the trucks. IF that were the case, I'd suggest you work at a different department... You're lying, Louis."
And Louis' fabrication went down the drain. Twilight was doomed to be known by at least one more person, it seemed.
"*Sigh.* I don't get it... Why would you back out of this so quickly? Do you want to be 'just friends' or something? I'm okay with that, of course... High-school relationships don't last long anyway."
Chelsea was indeed okay with the prospect, true to what she had said over the phone, but Louis wasn't.
"No no no no no no no no no... It's not that."
"Well, what is it?"
"Look... I'm just a bit off this morning. When are you coming over?"
"Around 12, I guess. So you still want me to come?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Thanks... And, by the way... This isn't going to work out if you make a habit out of lying. I know I hate keeping secrets. Promise not to lie anymore?" She said sweetly.
"Okay." Louis knew he could not keep that promise if a Pony's life was at stake.
"Thank you. Love ya stupid." Chelsea finished.
"Love ya too, ya ditz." Louis responded and hung up the call. His mind rushed with worry... He did not know any place to hide Twilight. Ah well... He'd think of something eventually.
"YAAAAAAUGH!!!" Twilight screamed from downstairs.
"Oh Ff-" Louis rushed down the stairs to attend to his pony guest.
So... Dude... Only a few seconds pass here man... But isn't it rad that there's a pause in the center, dude? DUDE!
"What? What's wrong?!"
"PORN." Twilight pointed an offending hoof at an unknown web-page containing gratouitous clop, giving her human host a look of absolute "I-want-to-kill-you"-ness. This look obviously signified that it was somehow his fault and this startled him a bit.
"... Three clicks to disaster... Apparently I need to give you a little crash course on the internet."
"'The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email.' Wikipedia."
"... Gesundheit." And holy crap, Twi, you have a photographic memory! ...And the internet should not be that intuitive.
"I don't need a crash course. I just need a warning." Twilight clarified, reducing her "I-want-to-kill-you" face into a "I-want-to-say-embarrassing-things-about-you-in-public" face. There is considerably less malice laced into such an expression, but it's still pretty bad. Would you want your uncle telling your school friends about the time you lost a bet and had to wear a tutu? Didn't think so.
"Really? Well, the common goers of the internet have a saying for just this very thing: 'There's porn of it. No exceptions'."
"Oh... That's a bit blunt."
"To be precise... Yes. Yes it is."
Twilight glanced back at the screen, then back at her host. "So... You guys rebelled against a monarchy, huh?"
"...Yeah. Good ol' king George was not so 'good ol'' as he made people think."
"... Huh. Equestria isn't like this."
"Your princesses have the benefit of being practically made for the job. They don't have to sit on a throne of propaganda, lies, and statistics. Just a throne of gold... And niceness... I guess."
Just then, a knock. A simple rat-tat-tat on the apartment door... But never had a sound ever invoked such pure terror in Louis as that one.
He whipped back around to face his equine guest. "You have to hide."
"What? Why?"
Louis picked up Twilight forcefully. "By all rights, you should not exist here. You are the product of a cartoon show here! Other people won't take to it so well... Or maybe take it too well." *shudder*.
"Put me down!"
"YOU HAVE A BETTER IDEA?" Louis promptly threw her under the blanket that laid across the futon and rushed to the door.
On the other side was the land-lord. And he was not happy.