//------------------------------// // 2 - The Man in the Daemon-Carriage // Story: Surviving in a Strange Two Legged World // by aCB //------------------------------// Applejack stumbled over, coughing. That was one of the most intense experiences she had ever been through. That compressed feeling, the lights, the spinning. She felt slightly nauseous. Her head was aching. She raised her fore hoof to her head. Wait… What the hay was wrong with her hooves! “Holy buck!” shouted a voice beside her. Applejack looked over at Rainbow Dash and nearly screamed. They had all heard Twilight talk about the ‘hu-manes’, of course, but nothing could prepare her for how ugly they were. Rainbow Dash ran her hands over her head, breathing rapidly. After a moment, she looked over at Applejack, who was still in a state of shock. “Oh my gosh, Applejack…” “That bad, huh?” Applejack croaked out with a feeble attempt at a smile. “You look so weird. I can kind of see some resemblance, but your face is all weird, and your fur is gone.” They spent a moment staring down at themselves in silence. After the initial shock of their transformation had worn off, they looked up to observe the world they had landed in. It was dark, with only the light of the full moon above them and street lanterns to see by. The buildings around them were well packed like Ponyville, but they were made of stone and didn’t have the same warm feel of their thatched-roof home village. Directly ahead of them was a large brick building Applejack took to be the school Spike mentioned. “Ah don’t reckon that school’ll be open. Where should we go right now?” Rainbow looked around and ‘stood up’ on all fours. “I’ll go up and get a pegasus eye view of everything. I’ll let you know what I see.” Rainbow Dash sprang forward with her legs as if to take off, but instead just landed face first in the dirt a few feet ahead of her. “Uhh… sugarcube? Y’all don’ have your wings.” “What!?” Rainbow Dash started hyperventilating much like Twilight had done when she realized she would have to complete her task without magic. Very abruptly, Dash let out a loud angry groan and ripped her shirt off. The sudden action took Applejack by surprise. “Rainbow! What are y’all doin’?” “This world sucks, Applejack. I’m not going around here like some prissy Rarity clone. I don't give a crap about fashion right now. I’m getting rid of these damn clothes and I’m knocking on every door I see until we find someone who knows where Twilight is. Then we’re getting the hay out of here.” Applejack sighed, “Whatever you want, sugar. It’s a little cold out, so I’m gonna keep mine on.” Rainbow ripped off her shoes and pants and started stuffing them angrily into her bag. Applejack watched her with mild interest. These hairless bodies were so interesting. Rainbow stripped off her panties and bra and shoved them in as well. She got back on all fours, with only her feet and hands touching the ground. Applejack started feeling a very strange feeling in her gut when looking at Rainbow’s naked form. “Rainbow? Didn’t Spike say they walked on their hind legs in this place?” "What, and fall over constantly? Even you should be smart enough to know something standing tall on narrow hooves isn't steady." "Well, Ah'm gonna try it anyhow. Ah don't want everypony around here thinking Ah'm some weirdo." Applejack steadied herself against the statue behind them and struggled to her feet. Rainbow tried to follow suit, but ended up losing her balance and falling down on all fours again. “Oh for Pete’s sake... Screw it. If these morons want to walk around losing their balance all the time, then that’s their stupid choice. I’m walking like a sensible pony.” Applejack stepped slowly away from the statue, trying her best to stay upright. It wasn’t easy. For some reason, she kept looking over at Rainbow’s tailless plot sticking in the air. There was something endearing about it. It was flat compared to a pony, and yet slightly rounded. Rainbow’s odd position caused her to be spread out in strange way, spreading her plot and showing off… Applejack, that’s gross! Get ahold of yourself! She shook her head. The last thing she needed was to get distracted by Rainbow’s body, as foreign and intriguing as it was. Maybe this is why humans walked on two legs, so they didn't go around staring at each others sex's all the time. “You coming or what?” asked Rainbow brashly from beneath her. “Yeah. It’s just… tricky, is all. Lead the way.” Rainbow Dash did a reverse crab walk toward the nearest row of houses. Applejack stumbled along behind her on two legs, falling occasionally. The building they came to first was a brick townhouse. Rainbow crawled up the stairs, turned around, and kicked the door with her legs. Applejack stayed at the bottom of the stairs, not trusting herself to walk up steps quite yet. After a few moments, a man opened the door, looking out straight ahead. He started looking down, first noticing Applejack. “Can I help you?” “Yeah, you can help us!” shouted Rainbow Dash at his feet, “Twilight Sparkle. You know her or what?” “Dear lord!” The man slammed the door shut in panic after witnessing the naked teenage girl on all fours at his feet. “Hey! Get back out here!” “Don’t bother, Rainbow. He probably was just weirded out by seeing a human walking around on all fours like a pony.” “Whatever. Let’s go to the next house.” Rainbow carefully made her way down the stairs. She walked beside Applejack as they went next door. “Ya know, that doesn’ look very comfortable.” “To be honest, it’s not. My fore legs are all tiny. It’s making my flank rise way up.” Applejack gulped and rubbed the back of her head. “Yeah, Ah… Ah noticed. Heh.” “You better knock this time. Ponies in this world are just plain weird.” “Alrighty.” Applejack struggled up the stairs of the next townhouse, gripping the handrail like her last life line. With some slight trepidation, she knocked on the door. After a moment, a young girl with lavender striped hair answered. “Uhm… hi. Are your parents home?” “Ugh. Dad! Someone at the door!” After a minute, a man appeared in the door frame. "Yes?" “H-hi. Mah name is Applejack. We were wonderin’ if y’all seen a friend a ours.” “Applejack?” the man questioned, “The one who works on the farm?” Applejack started. She wasn’t expecting this. “Uhm, no. I think y’all are mistakin’ me for somepony else…” The man raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure? The… Wait - ‘somepony’?” At this point, Rainbow Dash had had just about enough. She was already freaked out about not having her wings, her back hurt, she wanted to go home, and everypony in this world was just outright strange. She crawled up the steps as fast as she could. “Alright, look! Just tell us where Twilight Sparkle is already!” “Uhm… why are you naked?” “What does it matter to you, huh?! You want to fight about it, or you going to tell us where Twilight is?” “Filthy!” called a female voice from inside the house, “Who is it?” The man called Filthy blushed, “No one, dear. I’ll be there in a second!” The man looked at Rainbow with a gleam in his eye. “I’ll give you three hundred bucks if you come back in two hours just like that. Here, take a hundred now. Just be here, I mean it.” “Huh?” Filthy handed Rainbow Dash a hundred dollar bill and looked her over one more time before shutting the door. Rainbow let out a loud groan of anger and slumped down on the steps. “Did you hear that guy?! He didn’t even answer our question, then he started cursing at us! Then he hands me a stupid piece of paper that doesn’t even say anything on it,” she sighed and threw the bill on the ground, “Applejack, I just want to go home.” Applejack was about to reach out and hold her friend, but thought better of it. She wasn’t really sure what those feelings were that she had earlier, but it wasn’t something she wanted to think about right now. “Come on, sugarcube. Ah know it can be off-puttin’ bein’ trapped like this. But Ah’m here too, after all. It could be worse.” “Sounds big for you to say, but you didn’t lose your wings!” “Now Ah didn’t think that wings were all the great Rainbow Dash was about,” Applejack said with a wry smile, “Why, the Rainbow Dash Ah know woulda never been like this. The Rainbow Dash Ah know wasn’ scared of nothin’.” Rainbow looked up. “You know? You’re right. I was letting my fears get the best of me. Twilight’s counting on us. Come on! Rainbow Dash and her faithful assistant are off to the rescue!” “Excuse me?” Applejack was about to complain bitterly about being relegated to the ‘assistant’ category when she heard a horrific noise pierce her eardrums. She and Rainbow Dash covered their ears instinctively. It was the most earsplitting and unnatural noise she ever heard, like a battle cry erupting from a thousand falcons. “What the hay is that noise?!” “Shoot, Applejack! I think it’s headed for us!” Sure enough, a fast moving horseless dragon-carriage on wheels was barreling down the road right toward them. Overcome by fear, the girls attempted to run. However, all they managed to do was fall down the stairs painfully onto their dangly human limbs. Applejack looked up in fear at the approaching horror. Lanterns attached to the front beamed a light as bright as the sun into their faces. On top of it unnatural red and blue lights spun around in place, basking the entire area with its unholy light. The pony-girls were frozen in place with fear. To their surprise, a man in a black uniform stepped from the carriage, a small stick-lantern in his hand. “What’s going on here?” he asked. Applejack wanted to say something, anything, to make the man go away. But to be fair, she had no idea what he wanted. Celestia knows what terrible things he might do. “A little too much partying, huh?” he asked with a smile, “You ladies come from that Halloween party over on Adams Street?” “Party?” “Yeah, I must have come across a dozen kids tonight, drunk off their ass. Although I can’t say any of them were naked…” “What’s the big deal?” Dash demanded angrily, "Why is everypony so obsessed that I'm not wearing clothes?!" “Wow, you are drunk, aren’t you? You got any clothes in that backpack of yours?” “Yeah, why?” “Ok, I’m going to take the backpack and get your clothes out of it, okay?” “I can get them out just fine by myself, thanks!” Applejack could have facehoofed right there. This is not the time to get belligerent, Rainbow Dash! Just shut up and do what he says, maybe he’ll go away. “Sorry, but I don’t know what else you might have in there. I’ve got to go through it first. Are you going to hand it to me or are we going to have to do this the hard way?” “I guess we’re going to do it the hard way, then!” she yelled, raising her fists. The man rolled his eyes and grabbed a spray can from his belt and sprayed it on Rainbow’s face. She blinked painfully for a moment, and then dropped to the ground screaming. Chills ran through Applejack’s body. They were being attacked. The man grabbed Rainbow Dash, pulled her backpack off and locked her with handcuffs. “Help! Somepony help us! Rape!” “God damn it, I’m a cop!” the man groaned, “What is with you kids?” The man grabbed Applejack and with one swift motion, cuffed her hands behind her back. As much as struggled, she couldn’t get out of them. The man left her there, went to the vehicle, and started talking into a little black box. “This is car 6 at the 3-1-1 on Maiar Avenue. Suspect in custody. One suspect is nude; request a female officer to assist.” “10-4,” the box told him. The man took Applejack and Rainbow’s bags and set them on the hood of his vehicle. He pulled out all of Dash’s clothes from her bag. He started searching deeper… “Holy shit!” One by one, he started pulling out bottle after bottle of vodka. All in all, he found nine bottles of alcohol in her bag. “How… how the hell did you fit all this in here?” He grabbed a bottle and examined it. “Pride of Canterlot. By appointment to her majesty the princess Celestia,” he read, “I’ve never heard of this brand before. Where did you get it?” “Pinkie Pie,” choked out Rainbow Dash through the pepper spray. The officer laughed, “Pinkie Pie, huh? I should have suspected. I think she’s been at every underage party I’ve ever busted in this town. Why, the last time I arrested her she gave me a beer and asked me to play pin the tail on the donkey!” *** A dark figure crept through the streets. It had seen the two exit the portal. So, it had been right all along. There was some sort of connection between this pony-world portal and the full moon. Time was running out. The figure moved swiftly toward the statue on the schoolyard. It looked back briefly at the world of man. A world it would never see again. Good riddance. The figure slipped through just as the portal closed for another thirty moons. *** “This is such a bucking load!” shouted Rainbow Dash to no one in particular. Applejack groaned. She had been at this for an hour. The two sat in an empty holding cell in the city police station. After giving the girls breathalyzers and being baffled at the results, the police didn’t have much idea as to what to do. Neither girl had identification on her, or even anything that might give them any clue as to where they lived. They claimed to be of age, but anybody would say the same in a similar situation. In the end, they dropped the alcohol charges and charged them with public indecency and disorderly conduct. “I’m going to throttle Spike when we get back! Of all the useful advice he could have given us, he didn’t think to say ‘Oh, hey Rainbow, if you don’t wear clothes 24/7 you’ll get thrown in prison’! Not to mention Pinkie Pie! Of all the things to give us, she crams seventeen bottles of vodka in our backpacks!” "Ya know, Spike also said we should walk on two legs. You didn't listen to that." Rainbow blushed slightly, "Yeah, well, I'm done with walking like a pony here. Stupid legs are all uneven. It's a real pain in the plot." “Alright ladies,” said an officer who had appeared outside their cell, “You can go now. You’ve been bailed out.” “What? By who?” “We threw out the vodka. You can pick up the rest of your things at the front desk. Let’s go.” Looking at each other in confusion, Applejack and Rainbow Dash slowly got up and followed the officer to the lobby. Waiting for them there was… No, it couldn’t be… “Pinkie Pie?” gasped Dash and Applejack together. “Of course, sillies! Who’d you expect, Principal Celestia?” The girls retrieved their bags and exited the police station with Pinkie. The morning sun started creeping up over the building on the horizon. Tired eyed denizens of the human world walked slowly to their cars, coffees in hand. “Uhm… Pinkie? How’d y’all know we were, ya know, arrested?” “Don’t you remember? I was at your house having dinner when Granny Smith got a call from Filthy Rich. Oh, he was mad, alright. He wanted to know where your ‘friend’ was. Apparently you were supposed to go see him or something. So I hopped on over to talk to him. He said you and your ‘blue friend’ were drunk and he would make you pay or something. I don’t know. So then I came here and bailed you out!” “How did you know we’d been arrested?” “Just a hunch. That’s usually where I end up whenever I drink.” They pony-girls were too shocked by the strange turn of events to even comment on this. It had been a very strange night. “Well, I better get to the Sugarcube Corner. Don’t want to be late!” “Wait, Pinkie,” Applejack huffed. Keeping up with her was a chore no matter what world they were in. “Where should we go now?” Pinkie looked at her with a confused look, “I guess you should go back home, of course.” “Ya do know we’re not the same pon… people you know, right? We’re like Twilight was when she came.” Pinkie shrugged, “You look like Applejack to me.” Rainbow huffed with annoyance, “Look, can you just tell her where she lives?” “Over that way!” With that, Pinkie Pie disappeared. Applejack sighed. It was about time she paid herself a visit.