The stares. Oh my fucking God, the stares. Everywhere I looked there were ponies staring at me. And it wasn’t just the normal stares I got for being a human. It was also because of what I was wearing. If it didn’t cover my head, I was sure I would never even have made it out of my house.
I don’t do cosplay. About the closest I’d ever come was being dressed similar to that fat guy who pretended to be Luffy in One Piece. If you don’t know that reference, that’s fine. Just think of a guy wearing a red vest, some blue jean shorts cut off just above the knees, some sandals, and a straw hat with a red band around it. It’s not exactly something a fat man should wear. Then again, that is kind of what I do wear in the the summer. Just replace vest with muscle shirt.
Well, none of that really mattered so much to me right then. What I was wearing, however, wouldn’t have been all that out of place at Bronycon. Why you ask? Well, I was walking around dressed as a red and black alicorn abomination. It was a red mane and a black coat and the cutie mark on it was a human arm flexing it’s bicep with an explosion framed behind it.
After my rant with Discord, I needed to take a look at the whole thing in a mirror, which Discord helpfully snapped up behind me at the table. Fucking hideous. By the way, Discord then said that he started that OC trend. I didn’t believe him for a second. It did make me realize that it meant he knew about fanfics.I shudder to think of what he might have picked up from reading those.
After letting me look at the costume, in which I noticed the head in one of the chairs, I sat down to eat breakfast again only to realize that my hands were covered by furry hooves. The glare I shot Discord was enough to make him actually disappear in a flash. Of course, knowing him it may have just been out of playfulness. He stayed gone for the remainder of breakfast. Yes, I still went about eating breakfast. You don’t walk away from bacon and eggs unless they’re made out of tofu.
Eating them without hands was a chore. You just don’t appreciate things like that until you no longer have them. I pretty much just worked everything with my mouth while keeping the plate steady with my hooves. There was no hint of dignity left by the time I was done.
After slowly carrying my dishes to the sink, I went over and snatched up the head. After putting it on, I noticed how oddly easy it was to see out of. I had looked inside a mascot head before and it was not the same as the one I got from Discord. While I still couldn’t see to the sides, the lenses in the eyes didn’t obscure any detail on what I was seeing. I ended up settling on magic again. It makes ignoring facts so blissfully easy.
What I couldn’t ignore was what happened after I got out of the kitchen. I went up to the front door and tried to leave. In that moment, I had remembered my problem of having hooves again. Those damn things had almost no traction on them. Because of that, getting them to open a slick, metallic doorknob was a horrendous task. After what I think was a few minutes of finagling my way around the thing with both hands, I managed to get it turned enough to get the latch past the frame and get the door open. After that fiasco, I was very tempted to leave the door open until I got back, but the fact that I was so near the Everfree Forest quickly killed that idea.
I continued on from there to get my new clothing from Rarity. It didn’t take too long to get to town on my way there. That was when the staring started. And the hushed whispers. And the pointing of hooves. And the soul crushing agony knowing that it would be pretty obvious who was in the suit and it would never go away now. Oh fuck! What was I thinking coming here in this!?! This will never go away!
“What in the world are you wearing?”
A voice close to me helped steady my thoughts. I looked just off to the side and saw Twilight Sparkle giving me a questioning eye. Rightfully so considering what I was wearing.
“You know, yesterday I was defending Discord to you. I’m having trouble trying to figure out why right now.”
She then graced me with a knowing smile.
“Well, at least you didn’t do this on purpose.”
“In this eyesore? If this was on purpose, I would let Rarity give me a fashion lecture.”
She chuckled at my little quip.
“Speaking of Rarity, I was on my way to her place in order to get my new wardrobe so I can change out of this. Am I headed the right way?”
I had to ask. Most of the buildings in town look very similar to each other.
“So far you are. There’s a fork down the road a little bit that you’ll come to. You know what? Let me take you there. We can get started on getting back Rarity’s memories after you get your new clothes.”
“Oh yeah. I totally forgot about doing that.”
“You forgot about that?”
“I’ve had a lot on my plate today. I don’t exactly have the best of memories. Not like when I had magic. Man, do I miss having magic. Magic is awesome.”
“Focus, Seth. Let’s head over to Rarity’s and get you out of that ridiculous costume.”
Without another word said, the two of us made our way over to Carousel Boutique. I had to follow a bit behind her to make sure I was headed in the right direction. Walking by her side almost took me in another direction entirely. It took a bit, but we finally made it. Except, of course, for a small problem.
“Closed for Fashion Emergency?” I half yelled. “Son of a- hrgh! Mother! Argh! I feel like this was orchestrated somehow. I just know it.”
“Well, Discord did give you that outfit,” Twilight stated matter-of-factly.
“That was so I didn’t walk around in-”
I stopped short since it clicked in my head. Discord just pulled off an all day prank. A prank that would have me getting more and more uncomfortable as the day dragged on. One where he would be keeping an eye on me to laugh at all the issues that cropped up at random. It was a pretty good prank. I just wished he had pulled it on someone else.
“I swear I’m going to round up Pinkie and Dash and the three of us are going to get him back so hard!”
“I wouldn’t recommend doing that,” Twilight chided. “That would just lead to more and more pranks that would just lead to the entire town getting caught up in the crossfire.”
Ugh, she was right. Of course if I did nothing then Discord would think he could get away with doing whatever he wanted to me without consequence. I couldn’t just let myself become Discord’s joke outlet. I doubt that it would be conducive to my health, let alone my sanity. Without any better options, I decided to sit on it. Besides, there wasn’t anything I could do about it right then anyway.
“Alright, so Rarity is out. I have no idea just how long it’s going to take her either. Do you?”
“A fashion emergency could take any amount of time that she thinks is necessary, so no.”
“I thought so. If we could find out where she went we might be able to ask her to come back for a few minutes to get my clothes. Especially if she see me in this I bet.”
“That sounds like a plan. We should split up to-”
“No, no we shouldn’t,” I interrupted.
She looked at me with shock for a moment before blushing. It felt a little weird to think about how adorable of a look that was. I’m not sure why, but it just was.
“That’s right. You don’t know your way around town.”
“That, and I doubt that anyone will want to talk to me while I’m dressed up like a bad joke.”
“That’s true. So, where do you think we should start looking?”
“It’s your town,” I shrugged. “I’ll just follow you wherever you go.”
As we searched around for Rarity’s whereabouts, I realized something that had been bugging me. Normally when I walk around anywhere, I tend to put my head down slightly since I don’t like looking anyone in the face. Wearing my hat it gives me a perfect visor against doing so. However, with all the ponies being around four and a half feet or so, I can’t help but be staring right at them with my usual gaze.
Looking straight at them isn’t a bad thing. I mean, you want people to look you straight in the eyes so why wouldn’t you want to look a pony straight in the eyes? Well, other than how that makes me feel a little uncomfortable there was another problem that I didn’t really notice until it was directly in front of me. That problem being that I was staring directly at Twilight’s ass. Now, until I was in that suit, it didn’t even register to me because I was usually looking around or if I was looking forward it was when I was walking side by side with them. Because of the issue that I had to follow Twilight and the fact that I couldn’t look around in this stupid suit, it brought this problem right to the forefront of my mind.
For the record, I’ve been around horses quite a few times. My grandparents were farmers and my dad was a farmer until he went to college. They owned a couple of horses until I was about ten. Well, a horse is a horse, of course, and while I had no problem with them I tend to stay away from them since I once saw an old friend of mine who face was badly bruised from having one bite his cheek. He said it was his fault and I believe him. Why the exposition? Because I’ve seen a horse’s ass and trust me when I say that looking at a pony’s ass from here I realized that it was way too human looking for my comfort.
It made be think back to the time when I had accidentally humanized the ponies and they were all pretty much eye candy to me. I mean they were all trim, they were all curvy, and though I will never tell any of them, I was sexually attracted to every female in that form who was in my age group. Wait, I did tell them. Gah, nevermind. The worst part at the moment, however, was that I was torn between looking at her ass the whole time or taking off the head piece and letting everyone see who was in the stupid suit just so I didn’t have to keep staring at her like that. I felt like I didn’t want them to confirm that it was me. As stupid as that was, it was that feeling which basically meant that I had to default to staring at her posterior the whole time. I just hope that she didn’t notice or didn’t care; hopefully the former.
I decided just to not think about it as we took our time questioning any pony that we came across. I’m not sure how long it took since my watch was also inside this wretched thing. It went on for some time, I can tell you that much. I could tell by the fact that my leg was hurting and the suit was making me sweat profusely. It’s a black suit and there’s not a cloud in the sky. I couldn’t really smell anything myself, but I always get told that I get pretty smelly, pretty fast.
As we got to the marketplace, we spotted Applejack in her stall once again. You know, I don’t think I’ve seen her buck apples once since I’ve been back. I wonder why that is? Oh well, I don’t really care that much right now. I just want this thing off as soon as I possibly can. Therefore, the both of us walked over to ask her.
“Uh, howdy there partner, Twilight. What’s goin’ on?”
“A practical joke by Discord,” I said flatly.
“Ah see now.”
“It feels pretty bad to know that every time I feel like trying to defend him, he then pulls this kind of stunt on me.”
“It’s yer own fault I reckon. Discord just loves pullin the wool over yer eyes sometimes.”
“Well, we can fix this problem,” Twilight began. “From what I think he said, the spell Discord used will only last until he gets his new clothes from Rarity. The problem is that Rarity has left to take care of some fashion emergency. Do you know where she might have went?”
“Actually ah do.”
That got my hopes up.
“She’s gone off to Fillydelphia.”
That dashed them even faster.
“Why in Celestia’s name would Rarity go to Fillydelphia for a fashion emergency?” Twilight asked.
“Why wouldn’t she go someplace for a fashion emergency?” I deadpanned.
I managed to draw a chuckle from both of them.
“Still,” Twilight continued, “that leaves us the problem of getting his new clothes up in the air. I’m not sure we can actually go to Fillydelphia and find her. The chances of finding her there are incredibly low.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “Then again, this is a giant prank by Discord. I’ll bet it doesn’t really matter where we go. He’s basically created a prank that will make sure that the worst possible outcome will occur until he feels that it’s no longer funny. Then, he’ll bring out the coup de grâce. Basically, we’ve already lost.”
“That’s awfully pessimistic of ya,” Applejack stated.
Meh,” I shrugged. “I can already see this happening. As an author I knew once said, ‘any attempt to circumvent the joke will result in twice the hilarity when the punchline hits’. It’s not quite the same situation, but close enough that I’m pretty much resigned to being ridiculed today.”
“You ought to have more confidence than that,” Twilight said. “Just because he’s doing this doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.”
“It’s fine Twilight. I’m not going to run around and be a nuisance. I think I’ll just wait at the train station for Rarity to come back. Unless she teleported herself or went by chariot or some other nonsense, she’ll come back on the train and I can meet her there.”
“Why don’t you just wait for her at Carousel Boutique? That seems like a much better place to wait, and you know she’ll be back there,” Twilight suggested.
“True, but I doubt that she’ll appreciate someone looking like I do hanging out at her place of business. Let’s just head over to the train station and wait for her there.”
“I guess so.”
“Here, ya’ll go ahead and have an apple while you wait.”
She tossed an apple for each of us with her tail. As I thought about just how cool that was, I realized that I couldn’t catch it with hooves. Thankfully, I didn’t have to as Twilight caught it with her magic.
“Thanks Twilight.”
“Of course,” she said with a smile.
Of course, I still couldn’t eat it with the head still on. I reached up and removed the piece.
…
Or I tried to. I sighed heavily.
“I should have seen this coming.”
“Should have seen what coming?” Twilight asked curiously.
“I can’t get the head off.”