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A Summary
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Alex groaned as he opened his eyes, only to be met with a throbbing headache that felt like a ton of bricks being dumped on his brain. He hadn’t felt this crappy in months.
Sitting up, he looked around the room to try and get his thoughts straight. Where was he?
Instantly, he recognized that he was in his world.
And then, in a flash, it all came flooding back to him.
He had come here just after the Canterlot wedding with Dash and Twilight, deadest on telling Chet the truth about where he had been. Then, after dropping the girls off at the library, he went across the street and watched Star Wars for a few hours. Then, to finish everything off—
“You’re awake!” Chet said, having just opened the door to check on Alex, “Thank Jesus! I thought you were in a coma or something!”
“What happened?” Alex asked, still trying to recover the last fraction of his memory, “Everything is fuzzy…”
“You shot friggin’ lightning out of your god-damn arm!” Chet answered, flicking on the light and momentarily blinding Alex, “You scorched half of my backyard!”
“Right…” He muttered, not processing the fact that he had shown his magic to Chet just yet, “What knocked me out then? I should have been fine…”
“Well, you healed up this cut on my arm,” Chet said, unbuttoning his sleeve, and showing Alex his unscathed skin, “Then you passed out.”
“That makes sense,” Alex nodded, slowly opening his eyes and getting himself used to the bright light, “My horn usually keeps me from hurting myself.”
“Horn?” Chet asked, as Alex finally realized just what he was saying.
“I guess I have a lot of explaining to do,” Alex laughed softly, grunting once again as his head throbbed painfully.
“Do you need some asprin?” Chet asked, just wanting Alex to get on with his story, “I got buckets of it downstairs.”
“No,” Alex shook his head, holding out his empty hand, “I can get it myself.”
His hand began to emit a soft light, as three red pills appeared in his palm.
“Jesus Christ,” Chet said again, sitting back in a chair next to the bed and running his hands through his hair, “What are the chances I’m just going insane?”
Alex laughed, as he downed the pills, “Maybe I’m showing off too much.”
“Showing off he says…” Chet huffed, leaning forward, finally able to interrogate Alex properly, “So, I think it’s time for you to tell me just what the hell has been going on with you!”
Alex thought for a moment, before he started to laugh to himself.
“What’s so funny?” Chet asked, miffed that Alex wasn’t just getting on with the story.
“I’m sorry,” Alex laughed, thinking about the absurdity of the story he was about to tell Chet, and whether or not he would even believe him, “But you need to promise me that you won’t call bullshit on me.”
“Alex,” Chet said seriously, “You just shot lightning out of your arm, and healed the chunk it took out me. I think I can buy whatever you have to say.”
“Well,” Alex exhaled, counting the numbers in his head, “I guess it all started about four years ago.”
“Four?” Chet asked incredulously, “You’ve been doing this since before your parents died?”
“Oh… Right,” Alex said instantly, having forgotten about the time difference between the two worlds, “Okay, scratch what I just aid, it all started the night my parents… died.”
Chet nodded. That was the night Alex vanished, leaving him to pick up all the pieces of his brother’s death. It had been a hard time, and he had wished Alex had been there to help him through it.
“After I got the news, I lost my mind a little bit,” Alex said, holding steady eye contact with his uncle, “Cried my eyes out for a few hours in the back yard, wishing I would just wake up.”
Chet nodded.
“So, after I got myself together a little bit, I decided to go for a walk in the woods just off the property… You know the ones I mean.” Alex waved his hand, moving on with his story, “So, I was walking up to the clearing my mom used to take me to all the time… And there was a light. It was so bright, I had to check it out. I mean, I just needed to get my mind off of things, right?”
“Right.” Chet agreed.
“So, I walked up to it, thinking it had been a vehicle of some kind- even though there’s really no road,” Alex continued, “Anyway, I got to it, and… well, it was just this-this bright door.”
“A bright… door?” Chet asked in a disbelieving tone, rising an eyebrow.
“Can you just… okay?” Alex asked, “You said you’d listen, didn’t you?”
“Sorry,” Chet said quickly, raising his hands, “No more from me tell you’re done.”
Alex mouthed a small ‘thank you,’ as he got back on track.
“So, being the curious lad that I am, I decided to check it out by, well, touching it.” Alex laughed, “But, once I hand my hand in it, I couldn’t pull it out. So, after freaking out, and being pulled in more and more, I just wound up falling in.”
Chet nodded, still finding the story easy enough to believe at this point.
“So… heh, well, what happened next was when it got crazy.” Alex closing his eyes and chuckling once again, “I became a horse.”
Chet frowned, “Alex, I told you I’d respect this story of yours, but that’s a two way street, kid.”
“I’m not lying!” Alex said, laughing at the instant disbelief of his story, “I turned in to a cartoon horse!”
“Oh fuck off!” Chet said, cracking a smile of his own, “How much are you going to pile on top of this story?”
“I became a cartoon horse, with wings and a horn!” Alex said, as Chet chuckled and shook his head,
“Are you done yet?” He asked.
Suddenly, Alex remembered something that gave him pause.
“Uh… Remember when I came back a few days ago?” Alex asked suddenly, “Remember when you got a hold of my iPod?”
Chet furrowed his brow, had he been on it?
“Oh yeah!” He nodded, “It was full of porn.”
“The big question, however, is… what kind of porn was it?” Alex asked.
“Uh…” Chet muttered, as the pieces slowly fell in to place in his head, “It was… horses, but they were cartoons— Oh god.”
“What you actually looked at, was a picture of myself, and Rainbow Dash.” Alex replied, as Chet stared blankly past Alex to the wall, “Or… Sarah, as you know her.”
Chet scratched his head, not quite able to buy this yet.
“There’s no way.” Chet shook his head, “Nope. No way. That’s not possible.”
“Nothing about me is ‘possible,’ Chet.” Alex said seriously, “But you need to believe me when I say that I went through a door, and turned in to a cartoon horse. It’s a pretty important part of the story.”
Chet covered his eyes and exhaled loudly, “You promise me you’re not bullshitting?”
“I mean every word, swear to god.” Alex responded, as he held out his hand, and materialized his iPod in his palm, “I’ve taken pictures.”
Chet didn’t answer as he watched Alex slide his finger over the screen a few times.
“To be exact, I’ve taken… fifteen thousand four hundred and six!” Alex said, reading the number on his screen, “And I’ve got it all in chronological order! From applebuck season to Manehattan… a thousand years in the past, Haven Station, the Gala, back on earth, some pictures of Dashie in her sexy uniform… Alpha, the Crystal Kingdom, Nightmare, my breakup with Dash, getting back together, Trixie, and the wedding! There’s a lot of sex mixed in there though.”
Chet rubbed his eyes again, “You’re gonna need to slow down. I don’t think my head can take all of this.”
“Okay,” Alex said, his eyes still glued to the screen, “I’ll get back to the beginning here.”
Something Alex hadn’t considered, however, was the time displayed on his iPod.
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Dash sighed as she closed the last comic book from the shelf, and placed it next to her, along with all the rest she had read. It was a pile of books that would literally but anyone to shame.
“I’m out of books!” Dash growled, as Twilight looked up from her own, “I thought Alex was gonna be here hours ago!”
“How many of those have you read?” Twilight asked, eyeing the massive pile next to her friend.
“I don’t know,” Dash said, pointing over her shoulder, “That whole bookshelf.”
Twilight was about to dig deeper in to the conversation, when something dawned on her. In the time that it had taken her to read through half of a semi-abridged history of earth, Dash had burned through what looked like forty or fifty comic books.
Twilight had inspected one herself, and they were fairly thick, despite the simplicity of their content. It would have taken her at least half an hour to read one of those by her own estimation… so how did Dash read fifty?
“Did you read those all the way through?” Twilight asked, as Dash smiled and nodded, “Like… Every comic?”
“Yeah! They were great.” She nodded again, not following Twilight very well, “Why does it matter?”
“Oh, it’s nothing.” Twilight shook her head, as the horrible reality set in.
Rainbow Dash was capable of speed reading more than twice as fast as her. What was this world coming to?
“Maaaaan…” Dash whined, leaning back in her chair, “We’ve been here for like, nine hours!”
“Grab something else to read,” Twilight suggested, “I’ll bet you could find a series just like Daring Do here.”
“No way,” Dash shook her head, “I’d never cheat on my favorite series like that!”
“You know that’s not how it works, right? …right?” Twilight asked, as Dash seemingly didn’t answer, her mind elsewhere, “Dash?”
“Oh! I know what I can read!” She said, grabbing her backpack and dropping it loudly on the table, “Reports!”
Twilight cocked an eyebrow. She hadn’t heard anything about Dash bringing… reports along for the trip, “What kind of reports are they?”
Twilight’s eyes widened further as Dash pulled out the largest stack of papers she had seen in her life. They were all contained inside of a huge binder, and were separated with small protruding stickers.
“Well, with the impending treaty with the Changeling empire, Shining Armor asked me to go over all of our intelligence and cross reference it was some that Alpha sent us, so we can fill in some blanks on their invasion tactics, see just what our spies got right and wrong, and fact check the legitimacy of what they’ve said. Along with all that, I have to make a master log that has all the information from both sides, in one report, instead of two.”
Twilight’s jaw had hit the table two seconds in to her explanation.
“You’re going to do all that?!” Twilight asked, unsure if even she was up to that kind of record keeping task, “How do you plan on getting all that worked out?”
“Easy!” Dash chirped, happy that Twilight was so interested in her work, “I’ll read all the reports, then match up the ones that are in regards to the same events. Then I’ll read them again, and cross reference for factual errors. Then, finally, I’ll write new a new report for the event, and file it away!”
“Well, I’ve got to hoof it to you, Dash,” Twilight laughed, truly shocked, “You’ve got a real egg head inside of you.”
“That’s not true!” Dash defended, instantly snapped back to the mare Twilight always knew, “I ran away from my duties as a Captain! I’m only doing this to make up for it! ”
“Whatever you say,” Twilight said, looking away from Dash and whistling.
“Quit bugging me!” Dash said, holding her volume back, “Why are you bugging me so much for reading?”
Twilight paused. Why was she giving her a hard time? It was a miracle that Dash read at all, let alone planned on spending days, or even weeks breaking something massive like that binder down in to something easier to understand.
“You’re right,” Twilight said, “Sorry about that… I guess it’s just hard for me to see. You’re so different from the mare you were four years ago.”
“No kidding,” Dash laughed, “I like to think I’ve changed for the better though! I read, I’m getting married, I can still fly faster than anypony in Equestria. I’m winning at life right now!”
Twilight just laughed and moved back to her book, leaving Dash to her own work.
Glancing up the clock quickly, Twilight started to wonder about his absence as well. Hopefully everything had gone well with Chet, and he had just lost track of time.
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“And here I am after I destroyed that entire place,” Alex said, pointing to him standing in front of the completely destroyed Haven Station, “I literally melted the concrete supports in the underground level, and brought everything down to me.”
“And… this was after you agreed to let Dax inside of you?” Chet asked, not even sure if he was using the right names, “He allowed you to use that magic?”
“Right!” Alex said, holding out his hand for a high-five, “It was a mix of the two magic types I mentioned earlier. Harmonious and Chaotic. I called it Harmonic magic.”
“You named a special kind of magic yourself?” Chet asked, unsure if Alex was just being arrogant when he talked about it, “How many people can use it in that world?”
“Oh, just me, Rarity and Rainbow Dash.” Alex answered, hoping that Chet knew them all by now, “I’m still the best at it, though.”
“Of course you are,” He shook his head, “How would it be any fun if someone challenged you?”
“Oh, believe me,” Alex said, sliding past all the NSFW pictures and hit the next phase of his time in Equestria, “Someone challenged me real soon. He even turned me to stone!”
“Just to be clear, how close are you to finishing this story?” Chet asked, a hopeful look bleeding on to his face, “I mean, no rush, i cancelled my date.”
“Cancel it? Don't worry, you’ve got hours!” Alex said nonchalantly, “You can grab her food in twenty minutes.”
“Alex, you were out cold for hours! My date would have started in an hour!” Chet laughed, “I guess your magic didn’t help you there, did it?”
Alex look at the clock on his iPod and gulped loudly.
“I guess I forgot about the girls I brought along with me... Crap."
“Where did you forget them?” Chet asked, not having thought Alex brought anyone along.
“The library,” Alex answered hoping they would still be there if he left right away, “I dropped them off before we watched the movies.”
“Right,” Chet nodded, “Well, let’s get in my car, you can keep filling me in as we go… feel free to repeat yourself as well… I may have faded in and out a couple of times at the beginning there.”
“Are you serious?!" Alex asked, unsure if Chet was being sarcastic. "To be fair, I was only trying to stop a Wonderbolt’s final race. That’s pretty much nothing, right?”
“Alright, alright, you win,” Chet lied, crackling a smile, “Those words are gibberish to me. I wasn’t really listening at all.”
"You know, I can tell your joking... But I'm a little worried that you're not taking this as seriously as you should..." Alex said.
"You just spent the last half hour explaining your adventures in cartoon land." Chet replied, clearing his throat, "You're just lucky I'm not having you institutionalized."
"...fair enough."
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