//------------------------------//
// 2: Locked in Here with Me 
// Story: An Equestrian Princess in New York 
// by Tallinu 
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	2: Locked in Here with Me

Twilight did not murder me. I wouldn’t have blamed her, not really, but she just isn’t that kind of person. Pony. Whatever. Still, what she did scared the crap out of me at first. It still gives me a shiver if I think too much about the circumstances.
The purple pony princess sat in front of me and reached up to pull gently on my wrist with her hoof. Before I forget, there are two things I have to say about that statement. First, that bone and muscle structure I mentioned. Definitely not like our equines. And no, her horn wasn’t glowing. Her hooves could apparently latch onto things as if they were electromagnets and everything was ferrous. That explained a lot about the show, if you thought about it, assuming all pony types could do it.
She pulled until I was forced down on one knee, which put us approximately eye to eye. She said a few words in a tone that told me she was trying to reassure me. The fact that her horn started glowing brightly, and was looming ever closer, really spoiled the intended effect. All I could think of was that scene in that movie where the boss bug sucks the brains out of that dude. And while I didn’t really believe I’d share his fate, I was dead certain that this alien alicorn wanted answers badly enough that she’d dig through my mind in unpleasant, maybe painful ways to get them.
I tried to pull away, but I couldn’t move a muscle. She’d completely paralyzed me somehow. Then her horn tapped my forehead. A strange tingle washed over me, and there was a buzzing sensation in my head. Moments later, I discovered I could move again by startling even myself with a scream, one I’d apparently been trying to let out the whole time.
“Calm down, you big baby! I told you it wouldn’t hurt a bit.”
I lurched backward, bumping my head on the dome. Fortunately it yielded just enough to avoid any damage, but it still hurt. The pain made me realize she was right. Whatever she’d done hadn’t even been uncomfortable, but it was still incredibly disturbing. “I just got mind-raped by a cartoon character! Tell me why I should not be freaking out right now!”
“Oh, hell no!” she shot back, wide-eyed shock transforming into barely restrained anger. “I’m not some… monster! Don’t you dare accuse me of such violation.” She punctuated that sentence with a disgusted snort.
Cowed, I rubbed the back of my head and tried to make myself look small, with limited success. “Then how do you know English all of a sudden!? And why couldn’t I move?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t! I can’t speak or understand your language. That’s why I had to use a translation spell! And I could hardly risk letting you hurt yourself, or me, before I had a way to explain anything.”
“Holy shit.” Mind. Blown.
Some kind of Universal Translator? How was that even possible? My head was spinning as I struggled to find an explanation I could accept, and I was barely paying attention as she continued speaking.
“I’d love to learn it, of course, as soon as I have the time, but first I have much more important matters to attend to, and it looks like I’ll need help… Hello? Are you okay?” She started poking at me with her hoof. “Hmm, there shouldn’t be any strange side-effects. I wonder if this one has some kind of health condition?”
There wasn’t a lot of room in the dome, and the pony took up a fair amount of it. That meant that she was uncomfortably close as she peered around me, looking for head injuries and trying to figure out why I wasn’t answering her. I shook off my daze and figured I’d better do so before she started examining me with more than her eyes and a hoof.
“I’m fine! Just dandy. Magical pony princesses appear on the streets of New York every day. Nothing unusual at all, no reason to panic.”
“Okay, enough with the sarcasm,” she replied with a grimace. “I’m sorry, can we just start over now? My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I’m —”
“It really is?” I interrupted, surprised. “That’s not just something silly they made up for the show?”
“Um, what? Silly? Yes, that’s really my name. Is there something wrong with it?”
Great, now I’d made her defensive. “No, no! Sorry, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that there’s obviously a lot of differences between fiction and reality, assuming this is real, and… Look, this is not a good place to have this discussion. Everyone’s watching, recording us, someone’s probably called the police, you need to get somewhere safe and —”
“Authorities? That’s excellent! I can tell them why I’m here and go straight to the people in charge... I’ll be home in time for supper!”
“No! No no no! That is a very bad idea. You try to do that translation spell on the cops and they’ll probably shoot you!”
“What? Why would anyone want to hurt me?”
I gave her an incredulous stare. “You do remember how I reacted, don’t you? And I was trying to communicate!”
She paled and considered what I’d said. “Are you people all so easily frightened?”
“What, you mean by things that don’t really exist, can’t possibly exist, in our world? Things we have no understanding of whatsoever? Damn right we are! Look, Princess, a crowded public street like this really is no place to be having this conversation.”
She gave a long-suffering sigh. “Please, just call me Twilight. What about you?”
“What? Oh, right. Name’s Casey Miller.”
“Alright, Casey Miller, where would you recommend we go?”
“Ugh, just Casey, it’s weird if you say the whole thing like that…”
“Fine. Casey. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m thinking! Sorry. I never…”
The sound of sirens caught my attention, and I cursed under my breath. I looked around but couldn’t see the flashing lights yet.
“We have to move. Anywhere! Can you teleport us?”
“I... Yes, I... But…” A bit rattled by my urgency, she looked around, into and through the crowd, and then nodded decisively. “Get in close!” She pulled me toward her with a foreleg as if to hug me, and spread her wings. I tucked an arm over her neck. Her horn flashed, and I squeezed my eyes shut. There was the same disorientation I’d felt before. That explained how I’d gotten inside the shield. Then I screamed. The pavement was gone. There was no floor, no ground. And we were falling!
“It’s okay, just hold on!”
I clung to her warm neck and looked down. The city was spread out below us, skyscrapers rising up all around. But the ground wasn’t rushing up to meet us. We weren’t falling anymore. Her wings flapped unhurriedly, and she had one foreleg under my thighs and the other around my waist, supporting most of my weight. I still clung to her neck, but managed to relax my death-grip slightly as I caught my breath.
“There, see? Nothing to worry about! Now, where should we go?”
“Well... My apartment probably has enough room. I could show you a map, let me... Shit! My phone!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I forgot it! Those things aren’t cheap, and someone could run up my bills, or the police could find out who it belongs to and —”
“Relax! I have it right here.”
She looked back with one eye (the other wandered a little, still pointing in the general direction we were facing... did I mention creepy?) and her saddlebag opened itself, my phone floating out of it.
“Oh, thank you so much!” I grabbed for it, but couldn’t get a good grip at first. When the glow vanished, I nearly dropped it. Using it with one hand was awkward, as always, but I wasn’t about to let go of her neck no matter how securely she might be holding me. I was hundreds of feet in the air, if not more! Thinking about it, there should be wind whipping past us even if we were just hovering in place, and we definitely weren’t hovering. But all I could feel was a gentle breeze. I made a mental note to ask later. Wings that size simply couldn’t support her on their own, much less me as well, without something else going on. I’m just glad I’m not agoraphobic.
The video player had paused when the phone was put in standby... someone, or somepony, must have pushed the button, or it would have just kept playing. I didn’t remember that happening, but it didn’t matter. I switched from that to the GPS software I used and poked the ’go home’ icon. I knew where the major landmarks were, of course, but I’d never tried to spot my apartment from the air before.
“Okay, turn left... it should be... that way. Right about there.”
“Got it. That looks like a very useful gadget.”
“Yeah, they’re great... Look, Twilight, there are probably still eyes on us. And cameras. We’re not exactly hidden up here. I don’t suppose you can make us completely invisible?”
“That’s... not something I have much experience with. Being invisible generally isn’t as useful as it sounds. Why is hiding so important?”
“Because if they know where we’ve gone, we’ll have people knocking on my door, or breaking it down, in no time. It’s still possible they’ll track me down. There were certainly enough people taking video back there, and someone might recognize me. But we’ll have a lot more time to work with if we can get there unobserved.”
She nodded. “Okay, how about an illusion? Something nobody would look twice at. Any ideas?”
“Sure, but would it fool cameras? Or is it just some kind of Jedi mind trick?”
“If your cameras work the same way ours do, it should, as long as they aren’t equipped with True Sight, magic-detection filters, and the like.”
“Hah, I doubt it! Okay, how about a flock of pigeons? Wait! If someone sees us suddenly change like that…”
“Right! Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
Moments later we were surrounded in a large purple sphere, which quickly became completely opaque, only its faint glow and that of the unicorn’s horn (and my phone) illuminating the space inside. She was still flapping, lazily, but her eyes were now closed in concentration. Her horn flared, and after another brief, mild disorientation (perhaps I was getting used to it?) we were back in open sky. I looked around and spotted the sphere a few hundred feet away and above us. An instant later it burst into a cloud of smoke which began to dissipate in the wind.
“Think that was enough of a distraction?” she asked, grinning.
“Yeah, that should do the job. I don’t see any pigeons, though…”
“You won’t, we’re inside it. It’s only visible from the outside. Wouldn’t be able to hide us otherwise. A flock was a great idea, it’ll disguise any distortions of the background needed to keep us from showing through between the birds. And I had them converge on the location from a roof below us before we teleported.”
“Cool. Good thinking. Alright, if we land on the roof of my building, we should be able to get in through the stairwell, unless you can teleport into places you haven’t been before…”
“That’s probably not a good idea in this case, although it’s not really that dangerous with me. You can miss your target and end up in the wrong place, so we could pop up in someone else’s home… Line of sight is best, although very familiar locations or special beacons also work quite well.”
I nodded and referred to my phone again, then looked below us. “There, we’re close... That one.”
I could only imagine what the whole flock of pigeons landing on that roof would have looked like to an observer. To me, it was the second most frightening moment of the flight, and as the surface swept up to meet us, I turned away and hid my face against Twilight’s neck. I will neither confirm nor deny any whimpering.
There was a thump, and Twilight was no longer holding me up. At least not with her forelegs. Only my death grip on my phone kept it from falling as I clutched at her, but suddenly my heels were kicking at the roof.
“Careful! Don’t hurt yourself. We’re down now, you can let go of me.” She chuckled and I blushed, getting my feet under me and standing up shakily.
“Whew... Sorry. Next time I’m riding on your back!”
“Next time?” She raised an eyebrow at me, and I blushed even more.
“Uh, that is, if you ever, I don’t mean to presume, I’m sorry!”
She laughed. “Relax, I was just teasing. I know what you meant.”
I sighed heavily and pocketed my phone so I could rub my temples. “Alright. Let’s get out of sight…”