The office was dark all around, except for what little was illuminated by the bank of three monitors on a desk. The low hum of the workstation desktop computer and the occasional clacking of the keyboard and clicking of the mouse could be heard through the quiet music playing in the background.
A man sat by the desk, frustratedly glaring at the middle monitor, and throwing glances at the one to the right after typing for a bit. This was usually followed by a disappointed sigh whenever the changes he had made had not had the desired effect.
He saved what he had of the Cascading Style Sheet document so far, and the preliminary menu button designs he had open in Photoshop. He rose out of his chair, swaying a bit from side to side as the dizzyness from having sat down for too long and rising too fast, slowly wore off.
Stretching his back and his legs as the motion sensors in the office made the fluorescent lamps in the office flicker on, he moved away from his desk after locking his computer. He always locked it, more out of habit than worry anyone would mess with it, knowing he was likely to be the only one in the building besides the night-guard in the lobby.
The music grew distant as he walked through the door to his office and down the empty hallway, slowly getting lit up as the motion sensors - once again - noticed his presence. The flickering lamps now illuminated his destination: The soda vending machine a little further down.
Already knowing what he wanted, he slid a coin into the slot and pressed the button for a grapefruit soda. Some relatively loud clunking noises emanated from the machine as a half liter bottle hit the bottom of the tray.
A frown appeared on his face as he picked up what was apparently a lemon-lime soda, the frown soon replaced with a look of puzzlement as his eyes moved between the button he had pressed, the soda in his hand and the button for orange soda. He then shook his head and returned to his desk with his unexpected bounty.
Sitting back down and taking a gulp of the cold, fizzy drink before putting the cap back on, he returned to his work as the usual spring rains drummed on his window. Living and working in Denmark had a few benefits... the weather was not one of them. As a web-designer, however, it didn't much matter where he worked from as he could theoretically get clients from anywhere in the world, or work from anywhere in the world with a stable Internet connection.
Unlocking his computer, he returned to his work on the highly uncooperative div-box positionings and z-indexes. Hoping to be done with the structuring of these web-site pages by the morning, he decided to power through the night so he could get to work with the more interesting stuff once the morning came.
He greatly preferred the more creative design aspects of his work, working with the colours, shapes, textures, typography and logo design. He always carried around a sketchbook and a set of pencils in the grey courier bag he practically never left his home without.
The sketchbook containing little more than random scribbles and a few sketches of things that at one point caught his attention. Ever since he had gotten himself a Wacom tablet he had mostly been drawing with that, but he still liked the feeling of paper and preferred to have the ability to doodle a few things down, should the opportunity arise.
By the time morning came, he was sitting in front of the computer, his head dipping from exhaustion, his job finished on the monitor in front of him. Locking his computer once again, he got out of his chair, audible pops issuing from his back and neck as he rose, hoisting the strap of his courier bag over his head and onto his shoulder.
The mostly untouched soda got put into the bag before he wandered back out of his office.
It had stopped raining a bit earlier, so he wanted to head up to the roof for a breath of fresh air, something he'd need if he was to spend an hour or two more getting started on the rest of his little work project before going home to sleep the day away.
He plugged his headphones into his phone as he ascended the stairs leading to the roof a few floors further up, put the headphones in his ears and nimbly navigated to the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon play-list, that he felt would fit well with watching the sunrise from the roof of the office building. As soon as he exited the door to the roof, he walked to the closest wall and leaned against it, closing his eyes and just breathing in the cool morning air.
Starting to feel the warmth of the sun on his cheek, he opened his eyes... and noticed something was off.
First off: The door he had gone through to get onto the roof was suddenly too small for him to go through without hunching down. Secondly: There were barely any clouds in the sky and the roof was dry, despite it having just rained.
He turned off the music on his phone and took out the headphones, only to notice even more oddities. It was too quiet... not completely quiet, but much too quiet to be the Copenhagen business district he was supposed to be in. No car-horns or engines that he could hear, and a noticeably louder sound of wings flapping than he was used to.
Putting the phone back in his bag, he started looking around, but failed to figure out where he suddenly found himself.
He wasn't in Denmark anymore, that much was easy to tell from the presence of mountains.
Panic slowly crept into him as he realized that something impossible had happened and he had no understanding of what it was at all... either that or he was dreaming.
After pinching several different spots of his body to no effect whatsoever, he felt no better about his situation, but he realized that staying on this roof - wheresoever it was - would get him nowhere.
Crouching a bit to get back through the door to the stairway down, he went down the stairs all the way to the ground floor, hoping to see the night guard snoring away the last half hour or so of his shift behind his desk... When he opened the door to the lobby, he saw no such thing.
What he did see however, damn near broke his brain.
The building's lobby was full of colourful, furry, four-legged creatures. None of them taller than the average full-grown Great Dane. Every single one of them looking at him with an expression of about as much surprise as was on his own face.
His jaw hung low as he stared at all of them...
Their jaws hung low as they stared at him...
And they all dove for cover, as he bolted out through the front door of the building and ran through the streets, as fast as his two legs could carry him. He dodged more of these creatures out on the sidewalks and in the streets, noticing some of them pulling small carts like they were horses.
He could hear the sounds of screaming and whinnying following behind him like a wave and even saw one of the creatures faint as he stormed towards it.
“Dear sweet Celestia! What the hay is that thing?”
“Waaaah! It’s the end of days! The Horror! THE HORROR!”
“Watch out Tavi! It’s headed right for you!”
“Somepony do something! Get the guard! Get the Elements! Get the Princesses!”
“Alright everypony! Follow my lead. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHGG!”
Of course he understood none of this and heard only little of it through the din of panic.
He could not run forever though and soon had to dive into the nearest back alley to hide, not knowing exactly why he was running in the first place... just knowing that this place was very much not where he was supposed to be.
It was beginning to show that the locals agreed with him on this.
“I saw it go in there, I think it’s hiding.”
“Thank you citizen, stand back now... there’s no telling if this thing is dangerous.”
Peeking out from behind some neatly stacked garbage bags and back towards the street only to lock eyes with a lone one of the creatures. This one in what looked like golden Roman Legionnaire armour, and all of a sudden not moving so confidently down the alley anymore.
It’s presence however was still more than enough to send the man scrambling further down the alley, until he reached what he now saw was a dead end.
Trapped, cornered and tired, he didn’t even notice the odd rainbow trail and three dark smoke trails, crossing the small visible sliver of sky directly above him. They were suddenly much harder to ignore when they were barreling down through the alleyway straight at him at high velocity. A winged creature much like the other ones out on the streets at the front of each trail.
The four creatures stopped about 10 feet in front of him.
“Stop right there xeno scum, nopony breaks the law on my watch!”
“Uhm Soarin’, I don’t think it’s done anything illegal yet.”
“It definitely will if we don’t grab it now Spitfire, I can see it in it’s tiny, beady, shifty eyes!”
“See? Dash agrees with me! It’s probably dangerous!
“Yeah, let’s just knock it out and let the princesses figure out what to do with it.”
“Don’t you guys think we should be a bit calmer about th...”
“GeronimoooOOOOO!”
“Uhm, I don't understand what you're sayooomph!”
“Get it’s head Soarin’! Hit it’s head!”
“Which part is the head!? Where is it!?”
“Idunno! Just hit all of the parts!”
“Ooooof!”
He promptly blacked out as a pair of light blue hooves connected violently with his face as he was held tight against the wall by another creature with rainbow coloured hair. Collapsing onto the ground as it let go of his limp body.