Chapter 1
Ryoga was surprised when his captors, a purple unicorn-pegasus and some sort of purple man-lizard, came to what appeared to be a house-tree — or was it a tree-house? — in any case it was a crazy merging of tree and building; like some sort of tuna-fish sandwich made with banana-bread, there was something fundamentally wrong with that idea… and it only got worse when they entered.
Whoever had built the place had a sick, sick sense of humor: the house doubled as a library — books, the paper products produced by pulping plants, lined the walls from floor to ceiling! — It was simply wrong on a sadistic level, like asking a comic book fan which was a worse movie: Daredevil or Green Lantern, after they’d had enough time to properly forget, in the hopes of tricking their own morbid sense of curiosity to view them.
In any case, the dastardly duo determined to directly deliver him to their disturbing domicile, whereupon they determined to dine on dairy. (In other words, they took him straight home and had grilled-cheese sandwiches for lunch.)
Needless to say, Ryoga was relieved to not be on the menu… at least for the current meal. While the two were busy eating, he tried to find a way out of the crazy house — well, it was a crazy house: apparently having eighteen bathrooms and six broom-closets. Either that or he was getting lost again.
‘Probably the latter,’ Ryoga grumbled, remembering the time he’d gotten lost in a Chinese restaurant for the better part of a week. He’d finally escaped that deathtrap after he gave the walls a good Bakusai Tenketsu.
That solution, hitting the breaking-point of an object, while good for removing obstacles, was useless against living things… so their twisted little tree-house was the perfect prison for him, even if he did find a way to revert to his human form.
Ryoga grunted in disgust as he found the nineteenth bathroom, ‘What, do these guys constantly eat copious amounts of oat bran and prune juice?’
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After finishing lunch Spike went to play with Porkchop, leaving Twilight to do some light reading, something about music today, or at least Spike thought it was… it was hard to keep up, since the alicorn was such an avid reader.
Spike finally found the small black piglet hanging from the bathroom door’s doorknob, as if the black piglet had been trying to open the door… but that was ridiculous.
“Pigs don’t use doors!” Spike said, as he retrieved the poor piglet.
‘And ponies do!?’ Ryoga thought sarcastically at his captor.
“Anyway, let’s go read some comics, Porkchop.” Spike said, as he made his way to his basket.
“Let’s read Power Ponies… I just got #74 yesterday.” Spike said, with a smile. “So, let’s read issues #1 to #73 first!”
Ryoga looked on in a mixture of horror and fascination — not only was he stuck as a piglet, someone’s new pet (not that this was a particularly uncommon occurrence), but his new ‘owner’ was a comic book nerd! — ‘Well. it could be worse.’ Ryoga thought.
“‘You’ll never stop me!’” Spike began reading aloud.
Ryoga struggled to escape the confines of the basket, ‘It is worse!’
After Spike pulled him back several times, Ryoga sighed, resigning to the fate of having a comic-book read to him… without being able to see the pictures.
This continued on until Twilight came upstairs to the bedroom and glared at Spike, and with slight annoyance asked: “Have you been up here the whole day?”
“Yeah. Why?” Spike responded, confused.
“Because you need to take Porkchop out every so often… I don’t want to be cleaning poop out of the library, and certainly not off any of the books.”
“Ok, ok…” Spike said, closing the comic book and pulling Porkchop out of the corner of the basket where the little guy had fallen asleep, “I’ll take care of it.”
Spike retrieved the leash and, after gently waking Porkchop, proceeded to take him on a little walk in the back yard.
Ryoga, on the other hand, was non too pleased. The embarrassment of being taken out for a poop was incredible, almost as much when he would try to confess his feelings to his crush, but there was nothing to be done about the situation… well, nothing but do his piggy business in the bushes, as far away from any eyes that would see him as he could get. — If only he had his backpack he could make some hot water.
Looking around as he exited the bushes seemed to reveal that the town was… normal. Ryoga mentally shrugged, if ponies could talk why wouldn’t they have towns?
Maybe these ponies and dragons had teakettles or hot water — it would be great if they did — Ryoga resolved to investigate, to see if maybe Twilight and Spike had a teapot in their kitchen.
“Alright, are you done?” Spike asked, only to be surprised when the piglet seemed to nod.
‘That’s really odd.’ Spike thought to himself, before shrugging and dismissing it. It was probably nothing.
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‘What was that!?’ Twilight woke with a start to a cacophony of the metallic clangs of pots and pans falling from the cupboards onto the kitchen floor. ‘A prowler? A robber? Some sort of book-eating robot!?’
She levitated the lamp off her night-stand, and edged out of her bed, making her way down stairs down to the kitchen. Just outside, she paused to cast a quick illumination spell in the hopes of blinding the intruder. She jumped out and…
She saw Porkchop holding a small sauce-pan full of water and a huge pile of pots and pans covering the floor at his feet. Twilight sighed in relief, feeling the tension ease away from her body: it wasn’t a book eating robot.
But, on the other hand, this mess just had to be cleaned up. — She took a big breath and levitated all the pots and pans on the floor floated back to their places in the cupboard.
“Oh, and you…” Twilight said glaring at Porkchop as magic enveloped him and yanked the pot away.
“You need to be dried before I put you away!” Twilight said, addressing the pot of water as she dumped it down the drain and retrieved a towel to dry it off.
She completely missed seeing Porkchop sitting in the kitchen, eye twitching.