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// Aw, I'm a furniture wizard? (Prologue) 
// Story: HiE - Henchman in Equestria 
// by KiwiFreakinBlitz 
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I'm betting that if you're reading this, you were either once, or still are, a lot like me. Imagination working overtime, infatuated with a charming little cartoon about miniature horses learning life lessons and being adorable, scouring the internet for any piece of prose and artwork you can find, made by like minded fans that you could relate with. Sounds familiar enough to you? I thought as much.

And if that was the case, I'm sure you were a fan like me who used to dream and fantasize, to escape the mundane workings of day to day, whether your reality was going to a school where you couldn't be open about your interests lest you be bullied and attacked by the ignorant or if you were older and worked a 9-5 job that you regretted obtaining, but couldn't quit because it was all you had, that ate away at your very soul and made you long for something interesting, something better. Something impossible and fantastic. It doesn't matter what your background or history was, no matter how different your upbringing was from mine or vice-versa, I'm willing to bet that, still assuming you're like me, when you gave that certain cartoon a chance, it did something to you. It made your heart heal, little by little, and you would get lost in the fandom to escape the pains and doubts of the real world. That something happened at some point in your life that almost ruined you for good, almost made you question why you were alive at all, and whether you'd admit it or not, you were saved by the innocence and happiness of this cartoon and it's characters. 

Am I making ground here? Yes? Than I'll continue, don't mind me. Hope you're warm and comfy, need to get a snack or a drink? I can wait, I got time. You back? Great, now where was I? Ah yes, I remember...

Now keep in mind the crazy and perhaps audacious notion that you, my dear fellow and/or madam, are anything like me, then you fell in love with those pastel ponies and needed a creative outlet to handle all the love you were feeling in your little heart of hearts. And you sucked major donkey anus on a humid day in Summer when it came to your drawing skills, so you resorted to reading and writing fan-fictions. Don't give me that look, I've already prefixed this paragraph with the understanding that we're assuming you're like me, so that painfully poetic, if inappropriately improper, piece of prose is an accurate description of your artistic abilities, so back off! So, as I was saying, you would write up all kinds of scenarios for the canon characters to find themselves in, and you'd find a joy inside yourself you haven't felt in quite some time by writing such works of fiction, and you'd feel happy when others read your work and enjoyed it as well! Your heart would soar at the praise you'd receive for every single of Sparity story you'd perpetuate, every alternate universe where things were perhaps a little more realistic and dark, or maybe you created a masterpiece about the political and social messages masterfully hidden in certain moments in the show and give pause to many fans who only thought about the issue because of you. 

Or perhaps, you found yourself fascinated by the genre of "Humans in Equestria". Whether it was a certain non-brony who you rooted for whilst reading his fictional struggles, or a certain "overlord of awesomeness" that made you laugh, or perhaps you gave in to your antagonistic side ever so slightly and found yourself living vicariously through villainous little shits laying waste to the gorgeous lands you've come to love? Whatever the reason, like me you found your imagination exploding with the idea of humans interacting with your favorite characters. After all, it is perhaps the biggest personal fantasy of any brony worth their salt! Just imagine, holding a conversation with Twilight, or doing something  fun and athletic with Rainbow Dash, or perhaps helping out on the farm with Applejack? Getting a little bit silly with Pinkie Pie, and then getting a little bit refined with Rarity, followed by a quiet day among the animals with Fluttershy? ANYBRONY would jump at such a chance, and I think that perhaps that is exactly the point of these fics. Wish fulfillment. 

So imagine if you got that chance... The chance to enter the world you've always dreamed of entering, the chance to finally meet all the ponies who you've so desperately dreamed of meeting, and having the fun and adventures shared as only the best of friends can within the land of Equestria? Sounds magical, right? 

And what if you got screwed over in your wish, and ending up in some alternate reality version of the 'Power Ponies' comic Spike was reading, only you aren't yourself, you're a pathetic excuse for a bumbling villain and everyone in that world goes out of their way to make your life a living TARTARUS simply because the character you now find yourself existing as is such a laughable loser that the superheroes of the city talk to you like a harmless, yet precocious child instead of a possible threat?  (I still can't believe that one time I tried to rob a store, Radiance somehow ended up roping me into carrying her bags as she went shopping on her day off!)

You'd probably feel like crying at your helplessness and frustration at how unfair life is, huh?

Yeah, that sounds about right... 

"Hey, Beez! You doing okay over there?' a concerned voice whispering to me brought me out of my internal monologue. 

"Huh?" I blinked twice, and glanced to the side. It was well after midnight and the air was cold and clammy as we crouched low on top of our vantage point down by the docks. To the left of my position were three others, two stallions dressed in matching stylish clothing and who looked completely identical, from their style of mane and it's green color, down to their irises and their off-white coats and a slender figure completely shadowed by a dark purple, hooded cloak. There was nothing visible but beady yellow dots of where the figure's eyes should be. 

"You zoned out for a moment. We can't have you doing that right now. You need to stay focused, you understand me?" the shadowy figure's yellow eyes narrowed as the once concerned whisper took a stern and warning tone. "This is a stakeout and I need everyone to be alert and to pay attention, are we clear?"

"Crystal, Shadowmane.' I frowned and re-positioned my grip on my carved driftwood staff. I tried my best to look certain and sure of myself, but I doubt I kept the mysterious mare from detecting a bit of nervous tension in my shoulders. "You don't have to worry about me..."

Shadowmane scrutinized me with her piercing gaze for a moment in silence, the rooftop winds tussling the edges of her cape and giving me slight flashes of the well toned, lithe, feminine body beneath the cape. 

"See that I don't." she turned her head forward again, her tone clipped and harsh. Maybe she noticed how my eyes had unconsciously strayed to other things and got offended by them, despite how helplessly male the poor orbs were? Regardless, I swallowed a lump in my throat at the thought of her being angry with me. " If you slow us down in this endeavor, I don't care how interested in you Mane-iac is, I will put you down."

I flinched as she looked back in my direction, her yellow eyes seemed to glow with a slow-burning intensity as the reality of what she said, and how she meant it, came down upon my poor little shoulders. 

"Hard." her eyes narrowed, before she turned back to keep an eye out for our target. 

For a few seconds, I'd imagine my eyes were as big as dinner plates and my body probably shook like a twig. "Y-yeah.' I nodded my head quickly, making an adamant prayer to Pony Jesus that I didn't mess up tonight. 

I threw my nastiest glare of disgust over to the other two mooks as they snickered at my plight. 

Those metro-sexual bastards. 

With a deep sigh of those who have accepted their horrible fate long ago, I too returned my gaze to the area of our mutual interest. Tonight was an important job for us. We currently founds ourselves on top of an abandoned warehouse down in the docks of Trotham, on a little bit of a combination reconnaissance/retrieval mission that was in the best interests of both Shadowmane and me and the mooks' boss, the legendary villainess known as The Mane-iac. Shadowmane came to our newest hideout in Maretropolis one evening without any warning or detection, it was as if she wasn't there one moment, and then she simply materialized before us the next. Scared the ever-loving CRAP out of us minions! (Mane-iac simply laid back in her throne of hair and looked slightly less bored than she was the second before. )

Turns out being an undetectable master thief has perks outside of the immediately obvious, as during one of her jobs where she was commissioned to steal the Hoof Diamond( ugh, puns), some professional thugs had beat her to it. Now, normally she could easily take out any average group of thieves and leave with what she was looking for before they ever even realized they'd been had, but her years of experience told her that these guys were good. The were dressed in the latest and greatest gear, armed to the teeth with military semi-autos and held themselves like they were a well-trained SWAT team. She felt it would be wise of her to not chance it, and so instead she simply observed and listened. From what she gathered, they worked for a new crime boss in town and she had overheard the details of the next job they planned to pull. It just so happened, that the next job they planned to pull was scheduled to go down in some of Mane-iac''s turf, without her permission.

She took that insult with great maturity and poise, as I'm sure you know. 

And so, here we are, me with two of the generic grunts Mane-iac manages to draw to her voluptuous insanity like hipster flies to coffee-shop honey, accompanied by Shadowmane as a "favor" to Mane-iac for something our glorious leader once did for her in the past, but between you and me I think our little pony-kunoichi is mostly using that as an excuse to get some revenge on these guys. In any case, our orders are to simply gather some intel on what these boys are doing so rudely in our mistress' turf and if an opportunity presents itself, we're to take anything the boss would find valuable.  

"If they're going to use my real estate, they can pay the fees." She had cackled on the subject. 

A quick glance at the four of us made me think that we really weren't going to get a chance to do that anytime soon, so my highest priority was to memorize everything I could about these guys, what they're smuggling in, and to see if I could recognize any distinguishing marks or features that could give away their allegiance. My night vision was almost ridiculously good, and was really the only reason I could see for me to be of any use here.

Anyway we got off topic a little bit, my name is (currently) Beezan, and I'm a magic user of a "certain persuasion". And by "certain persuasion", I mean I have the power to bring any piece of furniture to life, leaving them under my control to do my bidding! In theory! Turns out, in practice, my power is really more of a hassle than it's worth... Hypothetically, I could make a local IKEA into my own personal army, and they would follow my orders to a "T", but it'd only last for a few minutes... THEN they'd start to rebel, and let me tell you how fun being swarmed by enraged folding chairs and ottomans is: it's "root canal" fun! 

Yeah, okay, I might sound a little bitter, but you would be too. At first, after the initial shock of what had happened to me had passed, I had spent every ounce of my energy into finding a way to get home.  I know that there are plenty of guys out there that would have LOVED to just stay in this amazing fantasy/comic book world of anthropomorphic animal people and forsake the real life they lived in, but I wasn't one of them. Sure, the life I had was balls back on Earth. But I had grown used to my life being balls! All of the fail that had accumulated in my 24 years of living has all become unique and precious to me, and as sad as that is to admit, it was true. I had spent almost a quarter of a century learning to deal with the crapsack that was life on a planet of humans, and NOW the universe just expected me to be learn how to deal with someone else's crapsack of a life that was even more fail worthy than my own???

Fuck that noise!!! Right in the ear! 

Of course I spent months finding out how to get home. I learned everything I could about my new body and what was established as what my new persona had done before I took the reins. I experimented in many different ways to learn the extent of my new found powers, and I mastered them. Sure, they were only conditionally useful, but that was better than nothing! I trained hard and eventually got to the point where I could bring to life and control a small group of medium sized furniture for approximately 5 minutes 34 seconds. It may not seem like that big of a goal to you, but when I first tried my powers out, I was lucky to my newly born minions to do my bidding for a few seconds at a time! 

I discovered that I had partial access to the original Beezan's memories, and I learned what to expect of people due to my minuscule reputation, as well as what little allies I had and who they were. I did some morally questionable things in return for the resources I needed to find my way home. At the time, I didn't care what I had to do. What crimes I had to help commit, what amount of dignity I had to shred to make it through my journey, it was meaningless to me. I was gonna get home, and then it would all be the problem of whoever would inhabit Beezan's body when I was gone. 

Karma's a bitch, ain't she? I guess it was justice that because I was such an uncaring douchenozzle in my mad dash to get back to my own dimension, my own world, that I found out that the magic that brought me here couldn't get me back home... I was devastated. I lost all reason to live, all meaning. I just didn't care what happened to me anymore, I was just so tired... In my depression, in my anguish... I decided to throw all that I was away...

"Hmmm, life has no meaning anymore, does it? What a mane raisingpoint of view! If you're throwing your life away because you have no reason for living, then why not come live for me? Make my reasons yours..." 

I shook myself out of it, and lightly patted myself on the face. The memory of my first meeting her was a powerful thing at times, if I wasn't careful it could consume me... Heh, a little while ago I mocked the "Wondertwins" over there for being moths so helplessly attracted to the flame that was The Mane-iac, and yet here I am... 

I blinked in surprised as I looked down. I had unconsciously started to caress the green and purple leather choker that was strapped around my neck, the silver padlock dangling from my throat with a big "M" carved into it, to remind the world of who's property I had become. 

...I'm not even whipped, am I? I'm domesticated!

"I'm not sure how I feel about that..." I muttered aloud and felt my brow furrow. 

"Quiet!' Shadowmane hissed at me over her shoulder, and pointed down at the docks. "We have company..."