Following Through
By Alaborn
Standard disclaimer: This is a not for profit fan work. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is copyright Hasbro, Inc. I make no claim to any copyrighted material mentioned herein.
Prologue
I slept in this morning. That means I set my alarm for 7:30 AM instead of 6:00 AM. Another lazy Saturday for the working man. God, I miss college, where I’d more often go to bed at 7:30 AM than be awake that early. But those days were past me. In any case, I was happy to find an engineering job in this economy.
I decided the weather was good enough to go jogging. Being the first day of December, this weekend was probably going to be the last decent weather for three months. I was just getting into rhythm when my cell phone rang. I slowed down and detached the phone from the arm strap. “Hey, Jason,” I said.
“Hey, John,” Jason replied. “You interested in getting together for some games today?”
“Sure,” I replied. “I could use a break from studying. Afternoon or evening?”
“I have plans this evening. Are you free later this morning?” Jason asked.
“Sure. I could probably get there by nine,” I offered.
“Let’s make it 9:30,” he suggested.
“Okay. See you then,” I said, hanging up.
Jogging gave me time to reflect on our situations. Jason Sedmak, one of my fellow engineering students at Purdue University, was an aspiring civil engineer now. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find an appropriate position, so he was stuck doing temp work. The civil service hiring process moved glacially even in good times, and there just weren’t a lot of positions posted these days. I found a decent entry level electrical engineering position, and was now studying for my Professional Engineer license.
I was determined not to lapse back into being a loner, so I made sure to keep up with my university friends. Jason and I were among several who moved (back, in my case) to Indianapolis following college. I had a nicer apartment than back when I was attending community college, but was still driving the same old car. Even after three years, the faint odor of garlic and oregano lingered in my vehicle, a reminder of many nights delivering pizzas.
Jason had a decent collection of Euro-style board games. They weren’t my favorite pastime, but I could play once or twice a month, if it meant spending time with a friend. It also beat studying any day of the week. I drove to his apartment complex, not far off the interstate. He welcomed me in, and we pulled out the tile-laying game Carcassonne.
Our first game featured a fierce battle over a large city. When he got a tile to stop my last attempt to claim the majority in the city, the game was all but over. I was behind eighty points when the last tile was played, so we didn’t bother calculating the final tally. We shuffled up the tiles for a second game.
At 10:30, midway through our second game, Jason turned on the television. I groaned loudly.
“I’m not missing the new episode,” Jason stated.
“Just record it,” I said.
“I am recording it, but I also want to watch it now,” Jason explained.
Yes, Jason was a hard-core fan of a television series called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. He’s tried many times to convert me.
“Don’t dismiss it before you watch it,” he said. “It’s really well-written, with something for all ages.”
“I did watch the first two episodes, and I didn’t want to watch further,” I said.
“Those first two episodes really aren’t indicative of the series. Try watching some more,” he said.
“Still not interested,” I affirmed.
“They had John De Lancie do the voice for the villain Discord!” he said.
“Ugh, I’m sure I’d hate that character,” I replied.
Everything I said was absolutely true. But I always left out a teeny, tiny, minor detail.
About four and a half years ago, I spent three days in the “magical land of Equestria”. By some cruel happenstance, I was sent across time and dimensions, along with six other unfortunate souls. It was part of some plot Discord had hatched to destroy the harmony of Equestria, and prevent the use of the super-powerful Elements of Harmony. Sure, we seven humans may have been paragons of disharmony, but when we all decided we hated Discord more than anything, that was enough unity for the Elements of Harmony to work once more.
So let’s just say the series provokes a lot of bad memories for me.
The pace of the game slowed considerably as Jason focused most of his attention on the show. I briefly contemplated peeking at the face-down tiles, as I was not getting the elusive tile that would finally finish my large city. Instead, my eye was naturally drawn to the television. Even with the stormy background of the second half of the episode, it was colorful. No matter how hard I tried to avoid it, the colorful animation tried to draw me in.
I resisted, of course. Then I did a double take. “Hey, Jason, could you rewind that?” I said.
Jason looked a bit surprised to see my sudden interest in the show, but paused and then rewound the show. The miracle of TiVo allowed him to easily replay the last minute. “Pause there,” I ordered.
There, in the background, was a red pegasus pony with an unusual mane style, different in shape from all the other digital ponies, and in three colors instead of the more common one or two.
“The red pegasus with white, pink, and black hair—what character is that?” I asked Jason.
He looked at the still image closely. “It’s just a background pony. Not one of the common ones, I guess. I’d have to look up her fanon name online,” Jason said. “After the episode is over, of course.”
We finished our game just before the episode ended, with me winning primarily because my distracted friend misplayed several times. Afterwards, I watched over his shoulder as Jason navigated through a menu of bookmarked pony-related Web sites on his laptop. The first site, some Wiki, had a list of characters, some with multiple names. “She’s not listed here. Maybe it’s a new background character?” Jason offered.
Jason then went to another site. He paged through what looked like some kind of record of a live chat. At the time the red pegasus appeared on screen, there was an immediate reaction among these rabid fans. There were hundreds of posts like:
new background pony
omg future twilight mane!
punk pony
Within three minutes, the chatters had coalesced around the name Punk Heart for this new character.
I didn’t tell Jason that the character was actually named Bobbie, or that I met her four years ago.
“You’re well on your way to becoming a brony,” Jason teased me over our third game.
“Shut up,” I replied, snapping down my builder piece on the tile I just played.
“Then why the sudden interest?” Jason said.
“It just caught my attention. I don’t know why,” I lied. “The character looked different, you know? Like an olive green unicorn would look in a sea of pastel ponies.”
I watched Jason’s reaction to my seemingly random comment. His face didn’t betray any particular recognition when I mentioned my own appearance when I was in Equestria. But just because he didn’t recognize my own pony form, it didn’t mean I hadn’t appeared myself.
This game, it was my turn to be distracted and make play mistakes. How in the world did Bobbie appear on screen? Did she get sucked into the world again? Was that going to happen to me? I don’t want that to happen, especially now. I can’t miss work!
“Good thing you didn’t finish my city,” Jason said, as his play highlighted my own misplay.
Definitely distracted. “Yeah, I… I’m going to have to hit the books soon, so this will be my last game,” I said. I finished the game, accepted the inevitable loss, and headed off to study.
I returned to my apartment. After draping my sweater over the chair, I bypassed the study guide on my kitchen table and went into my bedroom. I pulled a cardboard box from under the bed, and from it pulled out a manila envelope labeled Taxes 2008-2011. Amidst photocopied 1040EZs and IT-40EZs and spare W-2 forms, I found a smaller envelope, unmarked and sealed. I opened it, and withdrew the printed pages.
For the first time in more than four years, I read my personal account of my time in Equestria. The information on these pages existed nowhere else, the old electronic version deleted off my old computer, with the hard drive wiped and reformatted. I steeled myself and faced the memories I had tried to forget.
The ponies I had met: Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack. My attempts to figure out the rules of the magic that had transported me there. The universal theory of time, space, and magic. Talking about the human world with Twilight Sparkle. The tales of Hearth’s Warming Eve and Nightmare Moon. The six other humans I had met, all taken from different places and dates in the past. Metal rods and arcane formulas. The plot of the villainous Discord. How we humans brought disharmony into the pony world, and stopped the Elements of Harmony from working, at least until we united in hatred of Discord. Our attack against Discord. And a delicious cupcake.
What did I write about Bobbie? Bobbie Jensen, a woman around my age, taken from New York City in 1980. Passionate about punk rock. Wrote for a punk rock zine. Appeared in Equestria, in Ponyville, probably around the same time as me, probably near where Fluttershy lived. Appeared as a red pegasus, with a punk-styled mane in white, black, and pink. Mark: an electric guitar over a sheet of paper or a page from a book.
One note stuck out: handled the situation very badly. I remember that she really freaked out, and essentially tried to hide from everyone. I was surprised as well, but I had read enough tales of magical transformation to accept the reality of being in a strange world, as much as “reality” could be used to describe it. She was almost in shock.
As much as I didn’t want to, I sat down to watch the cartoon. Today’s episode was already on YouTube. I watched closely, pausing frequently, looking at all the characters on the screen. Bobbie was only on screen for about five seconds, far in the background, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was her. I didn’t see myself, nor did I see any of the other humans from my trip.
I checked the rest of the episodes of Season 3. No human ponies were there.
My notes suggested the “current date” of my trip to Equestria was around April 2012. I reviewed the episodes from the second season, starting in April. Still no luck. In fact, it seemed like our entire sojourn to Equestria was absent from the cartoon. That made sense to me. What didn’t make sense was Bobbie’s sudden appearance today.
I watched today’s episode one more time. I tried to envision the scene as if I were an animator. It was an audience, ponies watching the climactic duel between Twilight Sparkle and some pony named Trixie. So to make the audience, add some group of randomly chosen background ponies. They’re waiting, watching. But Bobbie was moving. She was out of place in both appearance and action.
I had a feeling this conundrum was going to distract me for a long time.
The next morning, I realized just how distracted I was the previous day. I couldn’t find my phone anywhere. After searching my car and apartment, to no avail, I recalled that I didn’t have my winter jacket yesterday. Normally, I keep my phone in the interior pocket of my jacket, but yesterday I must have had it in my jeans pocket, and maybe I took it out at some point at Jason’s.
I sent an e-mail to Jason. About an hour later, I got a response. “Yeah, your phone is sitting on my end table. Let me know when you want to pick it up. I’ll be around all day,” he e-mailed.
“I’ll be over in an hour,” I responded.
I was about five minutes late when I knocked on Jason’s door. No answer. I knocked louder, with as much success as before. I put my ear to the door. I didn’t hear any movement inside. Hopefully, Jason had just stepped out.
After waiting five minutes, and knocking again, I checked the door. It wasn’t locked. I opened the door and stepped inside, then quietly closed it behind me. I saw my phone, but more importantly, I saw my friend’s laptop computer, sitting on the kitchen table as usual. An unnatural green glow surrounded it, spherical in shape, and it emitted a low humming noise.
That can’t be good.