//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Honey, Where Are My Pants? // Story: Downed and Daring // by 8thekhip //------------------------------//         Erik’s eyelids fluttered open lethargically, hesitant to lift themselves from their comfortable perch over his eyes. While he could now see the world, unconsciousness was still selfishly clinging to his mind, and so it took a moment for him to really register any of his surroundings.         The first thing that he did manage to take note of was that the roof appeared to be made of thatch. The second thing he noticed was that the Stick of Salvation was lying next to him. The third and thing he realized was that he had no pants.         Unconsciousness was so surprised that it let go of his mind, and immediately he was assaulted with memories of the previous day, right up until his traitorous pants had sent him tumbling to the ground. The evil garments were probably still hanging from that branch.         I guess it was a granny knot, he thought to himself. Figures.         He lay there a moment longer as he realized he felt much better than he had yesterday. He couldn’t even feel anything beyond a dull ache from where he had sliced his leg open, and his back was almost unnoticeably sore, despite the fall he had taken last night. He frowned to himself and sat up to inspect his wounds.         His frown only deepened as he saw that, while he had a large bruise, the cut that had extended down the entire length of his leg was completely gone. In fact, all of his cuts were gone. He also appeared to have some strange, smelly substance slathered across his arms and legs, which he assumed had contributed to his miraculous healing.         But who could have applied this ridiculously potent ointment to him? Erik wondered briefly if someone had found him lying in the woods and brought him to their home. He certainly couldn’t remember anything like that happening. He couldn’t remember much of anything after he had fallen. Except… something standing over him. Something that looked almost like—         His thoughts were cut off as he was forcibly shoved to the ground by something that landed on top of him. The same something, in fact, that he had just been thinking about. A pegasus, or at the very least something that highly resembled one. It was much smaller than a normal horse, though, and was a light tan. It also seemed to be wearing a pith helmet. How quaint.         As he was still attempting to process exactly what was happening, the creature that stood on top of him did something that would have completely startled him out of his wits, had he not heard it once before. It spoke.         “Alright,” it said in a voice that was, quite undeniably, female, “You owe me some answers.”         It took him a small moment to respond before he addressed the most relevant issue he could think of. “Where are my pants?”         Erik couldn’t be sure, due to his lack of familiarity with mythological horses’ facial expressions, but the pegasus seemed to have an expression of stunned confusion on it’s face. “You mean, you actually wear those things?”         Erik nodded as best he could from his prone and immobilized position. “Of course. Pants are probably the most ingenious invention of all time. Who knows where humanity would be without them?”         The pegasus shook its head firmly, once more adopting a serious expression. “Forget about the pants. What do you know about Ahuizotl? Is he the one that brought you and your weird broken machine?”         Erik briefly considered persisting in his pants related inquiries, but thought better of it as he realized what the mythological animal on top of him had said. “You found the plane! What about my friends, do you know where they are? Did you see them, too?”         A brief look of concern seemed to flash across the pegasus’s face for a brief moment, but Erik decided that he had merely imagined it. It’s not like he could really interpret its facial expressions. In fact, he figured that he was hallucinating, and that the ancient Greek anomaly before him was little more than the result of his fall the other day.         “Yes, I saw them. Now answer the question! Did Ahuizotl send you?”         Erik figured that he might as well humor the hallucination, since he really had nothing better to do. He grinned. “I’m not telling you anything unless you promise to take me to them.”         He knew what this was. He’d been startled by some noise or another, fallen out of the tree, and was now lying unconscious in the underbrush having some kind of trauma induced dream. Soon the pegasus would take him to base camp where he’d meet Marge and that pilot with their own magical horses, and they’d ride off into the sunset to conquer Mars.         The pegasus stomped a frustrated hoof on the ground right next to his face, but he didn’t even flinch.         “Fine.” It said, finally. “Now answer my questions.”         Erik nodded. “Dunno who this ‘Ahuizotl’ is, but he sounds like the kind of guy who can throw a killer party.”         The mythical equine took this in stride, which Erik took as further proof that he was indeed dreaming. “You don’t know the half of it.”         Erik cocked an eyebrow, still smiling. “So he actually does throw parties?”         The winged beast nodded. “Killer ones. In that he’s always trying to kill someone. So you honestly don’t know?”         Erik shook his head. “Now, take me to my friends, my wonderful winged warden!”         “Sorry, but no. I’ve still got more questions for you.”         Erik sighed, growing somewhat frustrated. Why couldn’t this dream just get a move on?         “Proceed.” He said.         “Right,” the pegasus said, leaning in close, “who and what are you, why are you here, and what was that weird machine?”         Erik elected to answer those questions as fast as he possibly could, in hopes that he could perhaps get the dream to move on. “Erik Herris, human, fell from the sky, airplane.”         The horse gritted its teeth and made a “continue…” gesture with its hoof. “Would you mind elaborating, maybe?” It asked in a falsely sweet voice.         “Well, my great greek girl, whatever is it that you want me to elaborate on?”         The horse stomped its hoof and put its face right up against his own, once more shoving him to the ground. “You know very well what I mean. Why did you fall from the sky, and what’s the ‘airplane’ supposed to do? Is it some kind of death machine?”         Erik couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous this dream was getting. A magical horse with an attitude? It was just too rich. Ah, mind, he thought to himself, I need to give you a raise.         “An airplane is a flying machine, which I was, quite surprisingly, flying in. I fell out of it while I was filming the rainforest from above for a wildlife documentary. I then stumbled through the woods for a while, found some water, and decided to bed down on a branch. I then fell out of that branch and passed out, and now I’m having a wonderful little trauma dream.”         Realization dawned in the pegasus’s eyes as she backed off of him. She looked him in the eye. “Listen, I get that this must seem like a dream to you, but it’s not.”         Erik waved a dismissive hand in the air. “People in dreams always say that.”         It was at that moment that something struck him in the face. Hard. He twisted to the side, his head thumping onto the wooden floor upon which he lay. He immediately sat back up and yelled at the offending hoofed beast.         “What in the heck was that for? That hurt!”         The pegasus, stood off to the side, regarding it’s hoof casually. “Really? And what’s something that you almost never feel in a dream.”         Erik paused and reached a tentative hand to his aching jaw. “Pain.” He whispered. He looked back to the horse and squeezed his eyes shut.         It was still there when he reopened them.         “I’m not dreaming, am I?” He looked about him, stunned.         “Welcome to reality.” The pegasus said.         “But then, where am I? And how do you,” he said, pointing to the impossible ancient Greek apparition before him, “even exist!”         The pegasus snorted and gestured around it. “Welcome to my humble abode, home of Equestria’s number one explorer.” She put a hoof out to help him up. “Name’s Daring Do.”         Erik took the hoof and frowned as he stood, still rubbing his sore jaw. “I guess I owe you an apology then, er… miss Do.”         “Just call me Daring.” The pegasus responded.         “Right. Well.” He worked his mouth, at a loss for words for a moment. “I guess… I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore.”         Daring the magical pegasus raised an eyebrow. “Is that where you’re from then? Kansas?”         “No. It’s—never mind. I’m from America, on a planet called Earth.” He adopted a concerned expression. “I’m guessing I’m not there anymore, right?”         Daring only shook her head, though her ears seemed to perk up somewhat. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but he cut her off.         “You promised that you’d take me to my friends if I answered your questions?”         “I… did.” Daring answered carefully.         “Then take me to them. Please.”         Daring told him to follow her, then walked over to the door of her cabin. Erik followed after, grabbing SoS before he did so. She opened it for him, letting him walk dazedly out into the dampened light of the jungle.         “Are you absolutely sure that you want to go? You… might see something you don’t like.” Daring asked, biting her lip nervously.         Erik merely gave her a questioning glance, for he knew quite well that Marge was fine. She’d already set up base camp, after all. “Of course I’m sure. Lead the way.”         Daring walked outside and shut the door behind her, then began to walk out into the jungle. Erik halted where he stood, looking down at his bare legs. It seemed to take the equine in front of him a moment to realize that he wasn’t following.         “Are you coming, or what?” She asked, turning her head back towards him.         “I’m still not wearing my pants.” He said, still looking down at where they customarily sat against his legs. He grew suddenly very self-conscious. He must look ridiculous, walking around with shoes on his feet, but no pants. It just wasn’t natural. Not that walking around without pants or shoes on was natural.         “Yeah, so?”         He looked up at her skeptically. “I’m indecent!”         The pegasus was silent for a moment, before she face-palm—er, hooved. “Really?”         “Yes, really!” Erik said, crossing his arms for added effect. He turned his head up. “I’m not going anywhere without my pants on, and that’s that.”         Daring sighed and rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Fine. I’ll go get your pants. I’ll be back in just a moment.” With that, the winged impossibility sped off into the air to get his pants.         This gave Erik a little time to observe Daring’s shack. It seemed to have two stories, and, yes, a thatched roof. It also had a thin chimney sticking up out of the straw, though it was, oddly enough, tilted. Right now he stood on a large stone which was set into the ground. He looked around and spotted several other such stones arranged in something vaguely resembling a pathway, leading up to the house.         All in all, he deduced that it looked like some kind of idyllic cottage. In a rainforest.         Daring returned far more quickly than he had assumed she would, grasping his pants in her teeth. She landed in front of him and spat them out, a disgusted look on her face.         “That was absolutely vile.” She said.         Erik snorted, grabbing the pants and pulling them up with some difficulty, due to the fact that he was still wearing shoes. “It’s your own fault for carrying them in your mouth.”         The pegasus opened her mouth to argue, but stopped, realization dawning on her features. Serves her right. Seriously, who picks up a pair of pants of unknown origin with their mouth?         Eventually, he managed to get the pants all the way up his legs. “All right,” he said, “I’m ready. Let’s be off.”         Daring turned without another word and once more began leading him into the jungle. They walked along silently for a while, before Erik spoke up.         “So, who’s this ‘Ouchi Total’ guy you mentioned earlier? He’s got a weird name.”         “Ahuizotl,” Daring corrected, “is my arch-nemesis. He lives out in the jungle somewhere, but I haven’t found his hideout yet. He tries to kill me on a regular basis, mostly because I try to stop him from killing everyone else.”         “Doesn’t sound like a nice guy.” Erik commented.         Daring shook her head. “He’s always up to something, but he’s been strangely quiet lately. I think that he’s the one that brought you here. To be honest, it’s about time he did something.”         Erik raised an eyebrow at that. “So he’s some kind of… super villain? Who can teleport people to different worlds. That’s cool, I guess.” He frowned. “This was all a lot easier to deal with when I thought I was lying on the forest floor with a severe concussion.”         Daring gave a small snort at that, but stopped talking as she noticed that they had arrived in the clearing with the destroyed plane in it. She frowned for some reason.         “They’re in the machine.” Daring said, before turning away from him and staring out into the woods.         Erik strode forwards, frowning to himself. It wasn’t exactly the ideal place for a base camp. There was no water nearby, and the plane was kind of cramped. Not to mention the fact that the huge gashes in its body wouldn’t help keep the rain off any.         It was then that he caught sight of someone inside the plane. He rushed forward, grinning. “Marge! I was so worr—”         He froze mid-stride, dropping the Stick of Salvation and nearly falling over. He swallowed heavily. “No…” he whispered to himself, staggering forwards, towards the horrible sight before him. “No! No, no, no no no!”         He collapsed to his knees before the passenger side of the plane, whose door had been ripped off. Inside, sitting on the seat, neck bent at an awkward angle, was Marge. The pilot was in a similar position, to her side.         Erik moved closer, tapping her on the shoulder as tears welled up in his eyes. “Marge? Margey? C’mon. Look at me, Marge.” He prodded her again. Her head rolled over to the side, looking down at him.         He saw her eyes. Her dead eyes. Staring at him, piercing him, and yet there was nothing there. No life. No spark. No Marge. He squeezed his eyes shut in a futile attempt to escape that gaze. Tears began to run uncontrollably down his face, and he let out one long, ragged cry of anguish.         He was alone. --         Daring kept her back turned from the scene and let the creature, Erik, mourn. She didn’t know his relation to the two other creatures in the plane, but it seemed as if he cared about them quite a bit.         She tried her best to suppress it, but the rage rose within her once more. Ahuizotl had done this. She was sure of it. He was the cause of those cries of ultimate suffering. She gritted her teeth in an attempt to keep her composure.         Her ears swiveled as she heard something further out in the woods. Laughter. Very familiar laughter. Her ears pulled back against her skull as she gave into the rage. “Ahuizotl.” She hissed.         She wasted no time as she began sprinting through the woods towards the source of the sound. It didn’t take her long to get there. Ahuizotl stood, surrounded by his cats, and appeared to be accepting a large sack of bits from somepony she didn’t get a good look at, as she was too busy yelling at Ahuizotl as she barreled towards him.         “How dare you!” She yelled as she slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. “How dare you bring them here just to kill them!”         Ahuizotl recovered quickly, flinging her off of him and into a nearby tree. Daring spun in the air, striking the tree with all four hooves before bouncing back off of it and leaping back towards Ahuizotl.         Ahuizotl laughed evilly. “Bring who, Daring Do?” He swatted her with his tail, knocking her off course. She twisted in the air, narrowly avoiding one of Ahuizotl’s cats, which leaped at her. She circled back around towards her eternal enemy. “The machine with the creatures in it!”         Ahuizotl raised his eyebrows in surprise, barely ducking in time as she sped past him. “So that amulet actually did something? A shame that I sold it just now. Oh well, it was worth it, if only because you have presented yourself to me, Daring Do.” He sidestepped her as she dove at him again. “I will quite enjoy destroying you once and for all.”         Daring didn’t bother to respond. Her assumptions had all but been proven. Ahuizotl was the one behind the death of Erik’s friends. She might not know Erik, but that didn’t matter to her in the slightest. Ponies—or whatever they were called—were dead now, and it was Ahuizotl’s fault. That was more than enough reason for Daring to confront him.         Ahuizotl swung his tail at her, but she managed to dodge out of the way… and right into the claws of a leaping tiger. She let out a small cry as it sank its claws into her side before slamming her into the ground, knocking the wind out of her lungs.         She reflexively lashed out with a hoof, catching the tiger by the snout, making it loosen its grip on her. She rolled out of its grasp, gasping both for breath and in pain as its claws tore several long gashes across her back. She sprang to her hooves, whipping her wings out and preparing to once more take to the air, when she was suddenly seized by the throat.         Ahuizotl chuckled darkly, his tail hand squeezing. “Once more, your emotions are your downfall, Daring Do.” He said, holding her high and tightening his grip. --         Erik stopped sobbing when he heard the pegasus—Daring’s—voice. She was yelling something, but he only caught one word. “Ahuizotl.”         He whipped around, a fury building within him. Ahuizotl. Daring said that he was the one that brought him here. He was the reason that Marge and the pilot were dead. This never would have happened if it weren’t for him.         And Daring had been kind enough to find the monster for him.         He stumbled to his feet and began sprinting towards the struggle, not bothering to slow down for anything. Bushes and thorns snagged at his legs, ripping fresh holes in his pants and giving him countless nicks and scratches, but he paid them no heed.         He made it into the clearing, and spotted what he assumed to be Ahuizotl—a blue gorilla-cat… thing, which was currently gripping Daring’s throat with a hand that was, oddly enough, attached to the end of its long prehensile tail. Erik bent over to pick up a rock he had spotted on the ground, still sprinting forwards, then literally leapt over a very surprised panther, before slamming into the monster, Ahuizotl, at full speed.         It let out a small cry of surprise, releasing Daring from its grasp as Erik drove it to the ground and began slamming the rock repeatedly into its face. It was so stunned and in pain that it couldn’t react as he yelled at it, a rambling torrent of words spilling from his mouth as he hit it again and again.         “First,” he said, “you teleport my rental plane here, then, you make it fall from the sky, then I fall out while it’s still a hundred feet up! Then the plane crash lands, killing the pilot and my best friend! Her name was Marge Featherstone! And you KILLED her!”         “And for that,” he said I. Will. End. You!” He punctuated each word with a blow from his mighty stone.         Ahuizotl let out a small whimper as Erik halted his onslaught for a moment, panting heavily. He brought his arm down once more.         Fortunately for Ahuizotl, the panther that Erik had leapt over just a moment ago came to its senses at that very moment, and tackled the seething Erik to the ground, sending his mighty stone tumbling from his grasp.         Daring, who had been regaining her senses, rushed over as quickly as she could to where Erik lay, shouting his name—a name she barely knew, a name she shouldn’t care about. The panther lunged towards his throat, and for a moment, time seemed to come to a complete standstill.         It was in this moment, the panther looming above him, the magical pegasus yelling his name, the dazed and beaten monster that had taken his best friend away from him lying inert on the ground, that he paused.         I could all end here. He could just sit here and let the panther tear his throat out. That would be easy. To just let it end.         A lot of people told him that he had an odd take on pain and death. He really didn’t think much about either, so long as they were happening to him. He obviously didn’t want either of them to occur, but they had never seemed that bad to him. They were easy.         It was easy to die. It was easy to be in pain—unpleasant, but easy. It was also easy to just plod through life. To just live. You didn’t have to do anything. They just happened to you. You either endured it, or you gave up and let yourself die.         It was acting that was hard. Getting up and moving forwards and making something of yourself, brushing the pain off and moving on, spitting in death’s face and deciding to live another day. That was hard.         Maybe if he died he’d be with Marge. He’d go to some afterlife and live out the rest of his days in peace and bliss. He’d be able to stare at the sky all day, bask in a perfect sun and laze around for the rest of eternity.         The thing about peace was, with it, there was invariably boredom. Peace was just another thing that happened to you. A nice thing, yes, but it was just one thing. And Erik never had been able to stomach doing a single thing for a lengthy period of time.         So he decided to spit in death’s face and tell it to deal with it. He raised his forearm in front of his throat.         Pain lanced through it, unbelievable pain, as the panther’s teeth sank into his flesh. But pain was easy. He punched the stupid thing in the face, causing it to release his arm just as Daring bucked it off of him. It yowled in both pain and surprise, flying a few feet before landing hard and rolling through the underbrush.         Daring then proceeded to unceremoniously yank Erik to his feet.         “Run!” She shouted at him.         Erik was happy to oblige.         They sprinted through the woods, Ahuizotl’s cats hot on their heels as they dodged and weaved through the thick jungle brush. Erik’s vision began to fuzz as he ran, undoubtedly due to the crimson liquid spurting out of his arm. As such, he could do little more than let Daring lead him through the jungle.         They seemed to run for an eternity before Daring grabbed Erik’s arm and yanked him under the concealing roots of a fallen tree. He watched blearily as Ahuizotl’s cats ran past, then sat there as they waited for another eternity.         When Daring finally decreed the coast to be clear, they sprinted as best they could back to her cabin. Daring got there far faster than Erik, but waited by the door for him. He stumbled inside drunkenly and collapsed on the wooden floor, blood pooling around him.         He vaguely heard Daring curse before he let the darkness take him.