Connor
With the suspected portal gone, all Connor had left to deal with was this purple mass laying in the backyard. There was no indication as to what this thing was from where he was standing. A couple thousand questions were racing through his mind as to what he should do. Should he try and investigate and see what it is? Should he just leave and go back inside and ignore it? If it was alive, would it be aggressive? Should he call the police? He looked to his neighbors homes on either side and behind his house to see if any of them were going to make their way outside and try to investigate what the bright lights were coming from his back yard. He didn’t see any movement, not even a light turning on or a window opening. He was wondering why no one else had decided to come out and just look over into his yard to check on it. He was getting a sneaking suspicion that this might be an elaborate practical joke, but he still has a body of something laying in his back yard.
Curiosity got the better of him and decided to see what this new entity was. He was going to man up and see what was going on before he blew the whistle and called someone. He stepped off the small back patio and on to the grassy lawn and approached the object in a cautious stance, ready to jump back if it popped up and started attacking. As he got closer he could make out four legs and fur on it; so it had to be an animal of some sort. When he was about a foot away from the purple form, Connor confirmed it as a horse... a very, very small horse. So maybe not so dangerous.
He crouched down onto the balls of his feet to get a better look at it. There were three things that were stopping him from deciding to write this whole thing off as some super elaborate prank. One: the fur color; purple was not a natural hair color, or natural color in general, for anything living or nonliving. There are some exceptions, those were mainly just flowers. Two: the wings. Connor would have passed it off as really good practical effects if it weren’t for the wing joints looking so naturally integrated to the body and the feathers looking genuine. Connor reached out and grabbed the end of one of the wingtips and extended it out to full extension. The feathers felt real and he could feel the hardness of a bone between his fingers as well. He replaced the wing back to its folded position. The final thing: the horn sticking out of this horse's forehead.
Okay, purple fur color with highlights in its... what is it called, a mane? That can be done with just a lot of paint. The wings, that can be done with really talented practical effects specialists. The full articulation of wings with a metal endoskeleton would be tough, but Connor had seen some pretty good special effects in movies before. The horn? easy enough, just a fake horn and some glue, right? Connor reached out and touched the horn. It felt similar to like teeth or a tusk. It was smooth, but it had this spiral engraving in it that traveled up the length of the horn. He gripped the tip of the horn in his finger tips and gave it a small wiggle. The horn, and the head of this horse moved a little as he tried to dislodge the horn a little bit to confirm his theory that it was simply glued on.
“Wow, that must be super glued on...” Connor said to himself. But even he was not convinced of that idea.
As he finished his thinking out loud, the tiny purple horse decided to wake itself from its slumber and look around at its surroundings. It didn’t spend too much time doing that as it noticed Connor crouching over it. There seemed to be a bit of a frantic, panicked look in its eyes which Connor had connected to be frightened of its new surroundings.
And then it began to talk...
“Excuse me, but I need your help! My name is Twilight and my friends are...... “
Connor couldn't hear the rest of whatever the horse was talking about, but that was the least of his thoughts that came roaring to the front of his mind and stopping all other trains of thought with a crash. He had an animal. A tiny horse. Talking. Right in front of him. In his mind, this seemed impossible. The only time he ever saw or heard animals talking was in movies and shows; but those were make-believe, like in not actually being possible or part of some fantasy world. And here he was, with a talking horse in front of him.
When the purple horse had stopped making noise, Connor gently raised a finger and pointed at it.
“You're not supposed to be able to talk.”
“Huh? What do you mean I’m not supposed to talk? I’m a, uh, a girl, aren’t I? Is that the word I’m supposed to use? Or did Rarity say I should use the word 'heu-mane'?” It tilted it's head to the side as if in thought while Connor tried to grasp for cohesive sentences in his mind.
“Uh, no. Uh, I mean, as in, you, as an animal, horse, should not be capable of speech. Or abstract thought for that matter...”
“What do you mean I'm a...”
The horse trailed off as it looked back over its right shoulder at itself to see its wings and purple coat. It gave it's tail an experimental flick before turning back to Connor. The horse turned back began to hyperventilate before letting loose a scream that could wake the neighbors at the end of the street. Connor jumped forward and clamped his hands over her mouth to shut her up.
“Will you shut the fuck up?! Jesus! I don’t want to explain to the Carlsons' why I have a purple horse in my back yard! So keep it down!” Connor hissed at the tiny horse in a low growl to emphasize discretion. He let his hands go from it's mouth to let it speak.
“Sorry. I’m just... hey! I am a pony thank you very much! And I do not take kindly to being called a derogatory name.” She, well Connor assumed it was a she because of the feminine sounding voice, she raised her chin higher in the air to give herself a presence of high stature. Connor ignored the gesture, he was still talking to a horse and horses are still lower on the food chain than humans the last time he checked it.
“What? Pony? Horse? What's the fucking difference?”
“I am a pony. From where I am from, we refer to others as ponies. Or mares and stallions if you want to be specific. 'Horse' is a bit of a derogatory name used when somepony refers to somepony else that they do not like.”
“Well, where I’m from, we refer to you as horses. And you are a tiny.. Purple... horse......” Connor slowly put his face in the palm of his hand as he came to a realization, “I can't believe I am arguing semantics about the difference between ponies and horses. With a horse, no less.”
“Pony.”
“Whatever.”
Connor looked up from his hand to reassess the current situation before him. He had a purple horse; sorry, PONY, now sitting up in front of him. This PONY could talk; not only that, but could make cohesive thoughts and abstract ideas. Possibly knowing more on the whole transdimensional travel thing. He needed to find out more information about who she was and why she had come here.
“So. Uh, what were you talking about earlier? Like, when you first woke up and all? And what was your name again?”
“My name is Twilight sparkle and I am here looking for my friends at Canterlot high. They sent me a message saying that they needed my help. So I came here as fast as I could to help them, but something must have disrupted the portal and threw the desired anchor point off, and prevented me from changing into my two legged form.”
While the hor-, sorry pony. This is going to be a long adjustment period for me if this doesn’t get fixed soon.
While the pony named Twilight Sparkle pondered on what could have caused such a disaster in miscalculations, Connor sat there going through his own thoughts on how to explain this. Twilight sparkle; sounded like a name an eight year old girl would give to her plushie doll. But how could he rationalize everything else? This was becoming too real to be a joke. Suddenly, An idea popped into his head and presented the perfect explanation.
Drugs.
That was it. He had to be on some trippy-ass trip with some major drug cocktail that someone must have slipped into his water bottle at work and it was just now kicking in. teenagers were always playing pranks on each other and this just had to be one of their more extreme pranks. Sure, he would be mad and would probably beat their asses when he found out who did it, but at least this would suffice as a valid excuse. For now, he would just humor his hallucinations he was having for now and when he would wake up the next morning this purple, pony, would be gone and everything would go back to being normal. That is, if he didn’t die from a drug overdose in his sleep.
“Say uh, Twilight, right? Why don’t we head inside my place and maybe we could look up where you are talking about. Maybe we can see how far off you missed your mark.” he threw a thumb over his right shoulder pointing to the sliding door that was still open to the house.
“Hmm? Oh! Yes, that's perfect! Perhaps you have a 'cahm-pyew-dar' in your house we can use? Ooo, do you also have the 'enter-net' as well? It was such a fascinating thing! So many books in it and you don’t even have to move to read it!”
“Uuh, yeah. I have a 'com-pu-ter' in my room and yes it has the 'inter-net' connected to it.”
Connor got up and led the h-pony back into his home. Connor was only 5'9” but the pony only came up to his upper thigh and waist, which only solidified the fact that this.. pony, was still tiny. After closing the sliding glass door, he made his way through the dining room and kitchen towards the stairs. The clipping and clopping sounds coming from Twilight on the worn wooden floor was sounding excruciatingly self-conscious to Connor's ears. He made his way back to his room and back to his computer where his game still sat at the main menu. He sat down at his computer chair and closed out of the game then brought up his internet browser. Twilight stood up on her hind legs and propped her... its hooves, right? Her hooves on his desk to see the screen as well.
“So what was this school called again?” he poised his fingers over the key board ready to begin clicking away.
“Canterlot high.”
“can you spell that for me?”
“C-A-N-T-E-R-L-O-T high.”
Connor typed in the name in the search box and hit the enter key. On the first page of hits, there was a school that was the first pick at the top of the list. He looked at the address then the state the school was in. he did a double take and he click on the map icon near the address to bring up a map with a point to show where it was. He then zoomed out and typed in his home address so that the map program would place another point on the map. Now that the second point was placed, Connor told the program to give directions to this school so that it would calculate the distance from where he lived to the school.
“Okay,” Connor explained, “ So according to this, here is where the school is, Canterlot high,” he indicated to the point on the far right hand side of the screen for Twilight. “And here,” he pointed to the other side of the screen, “Is where I live. So according to this, if you were aiming for the school there, you missed your mark by about, ooh 3,000 miles.”
“WHAT??!!!” Twilight almost screamed, putting her hooves to her temples.
“Yeah, the school is all the way on the east coast. You landed in the northwest part of the country. And trying to get there (which is on the east coast) from here will take a good long while.”
Twilight got off the desk and sat down, mouth slightly agape with shock.
“That's it, Connor,” he thought to himself. “Just convince the hallucinations that it can't make this trip possible and will have to go back and try again from where ever they came from.”
“I guess I'm going to have to wait until the portal opens up again so I can go back and try again.” Twilight said defeatedly. Her posture slumped a little at the prospect of idea.
“Great! Lets head back outside and you can call them back to pick you up!” Connor got up from his chair and was getting ready to head back outside.
“But I can't just call them back. I have to wait for them to try and reopen the portal before I can go back home.”
Okay, maybe Connor couldn't get the hallucinations to leave by sending them back from where they came from. But maybe he could put them in another room and they would disappear by tomorrow morning.
“Oh, well. Uh, how about you just spend the night here until the portal opens up?”
“Would you really let me stay here? I don’t want to be a burden or anything.”
“No, no, its fine. Its; uh yeah, just follow me. You can sleep in the TV room.”
Connor led Twilight to the TV room was that just down the hall and on his right. He pushed open the door to the room to reveal a large couch against the back wall and a TV on a stand opposite of the couch. A few blankets and a couple of pillows were on it from when his brothers were here last. There was game system at the foot of the TV stand with a couple of controllers and games scattered on the floor. There was a bookshelf off to the left filled with movies, old VCR tapes, and complete box sets of sci-fi TV shows. He walked in and made a quick clean up to get most of the debris out of the way and tidied up the couch for Twilight to sleep on.
“It's not much, but you can sleep here until you can go back.”
“Thank you. I appreciate everything you have done for me. By the way, I never got your name.”
“uh, yeah. No problem. And, its Connor. Look, I’m going to go to bed right now; I've got school tomorrow. And I will be getting up early to catch the bus, so if you want food...” he trailed off into space. Why was Connor telling the hallucinations about his morning routine tomorrow when it should be gone when he wakes up tomorrow? He decided to leave it at that and head back to his room to turn in early. He heard a “Good night!” from Twilight which he returned before closing his bedroom door. He quickly changed into his pajamas and powered off his computer. He didn’t care what time it was, he wanted this night to be over and just sleep off the rest of his drug induced roller coaster of a ride.
The next morning, his two alarms went off. His radio alarm began playing music over the radio while his phone beeped annoyingly at him. Connor opened his bleary eyes and looked at his watch that was on his bed night stand. 6:00, the time he needed to get up at if he wanted to catch the school bus on time. He roused himself from his comfy and warm bed and headed for the bathroom to take a shower. He let the hiss of the warm water distract him as he tried to get over what he had experienced last night. If it really was drugs, he thought there would be more of a hangover. He got out of the shower and headed back to his room where his radio was still playing to get ready for the day. Some fresh clothes, wallet, phone, motorcycle key, watch, glasses, and his trusty combat boots. With everything set he turned off his radio and headed for the kitchen downstairs.
However, as he shut the door to his room he heard a noise. It was soft thudding coming from the TV room. Connor approached the door cautiously wondering what could be in there. In the back of his head a bubble of fear was rising. He was hoping with all his might that he would find something normal on the other side. He pushed open the door to see a tiny purple horse pacing back and forth in the TV room.
“Oh, hello Connor. I was just up trying to think of what might have caused the gross misplacement of the portal and if Spike or the Princess might be able to open the portal again to get me back. Are you alright, Connor?” Twilight noticed that Connor was just standing there with an unbelieving expression across his face.
“FFFAAWWWKK!!!!!!!! GOD DAMN IT!!!!!! SO IT WASN'T JUST A FUCKING DRUG TRIP!!!!!!”
Twilight recoiled back in shock while Connor burst in a flurry of cursing and flailing. The outburst continued for another second or two before simmering down to a raging boil and Connor stormed down stairs for some food in the hopes that a full stomach will help calm him down.
The rest of this week was not going to be a good one. It was only going to get worse.