Entropy

by PseudoBob Delightus

Lost Chapters - #8 "All That Was Done"

Author's Note:

I think this title is interesting, because it could mean (slightly) different things depending on which word you emphasize.

Chapter 8
All that was Done

Fluttershy got off of the couch after a long silence filled the room, and proceeded to look up at me like the five other ponies. They all just looked at me, examining my features as I got increasingly uncomfortable. I broke the silence with a plead, well disguised as a humble request.

"Really though, any questions?" They looked around at each other before Twilight cleared her throat and repeated her question from earlier.

"So... you can talk."

I nodded.

"Why didn't you talk earlier? Like, when we first saw you?"

I thought for a few seconds before answering, "I had a little trouble finding my voice."

"What are you?"

"Human."

"Never heard of it..."

"Homo Sapiens... sapiens, I think. Highly evolved primates." Twilight nodded, but the others cocked their heads at unfamiliar words. I said, "smart monkeys," and they accepted that answer. Rainbow Dash stuck her foreleg up and I accepted her question.

"Where did you come from?"

"I guess Fluttershy never told you?" I looked at the pegasus in question and she smiled sheepishly, slightly blushing. "Don't worry, I didn't really tell you very much anyway." That was her turn to look at me, and my attempt at a sheepish smile. I didn't know if it was executed very well, but I pushed on.

"I came from Earth."

"What's that?"

"A planet. I don't think I'm there anymore." They all looked surprised at the explanation, but couldn't find any words to ask. Rainbow Dash stuck her hoof up again.

"You can just ask, this isn't kindergarten." She gave me a face crossed with embarrassment and humour before finally asking.

"How are you so strong?"

That wasn't expected. "What?"

"You... you fought the Royal Guard, escaped out of the Canterlot dungeons, and defeated a dragon!"

"I don't really know. Do I look strong?" I asked. Rainbow Dash put a hoof under her chin in thought as she examined my figure.

"Sort of. You're really tall, too, but you mostly look like a burn vict-" Applejack shoved a hoof in her mouth, but it still didn't cover up what she was saying. Applejack gave me a fake smile and started looking around, anywhere but my eyes, which narrowed as I understood her concern.

"Do you have a mirror?" The orange pony looked at me in horror for a few seconds before sighing and pointing to a frame on the wall. The others watched in matching fear as I approached the mirror. I bent down to see my face. I almost jumped backwards at the image I saw.

My entire body was laced with a network of deep scar tissue. Especially on my chest, shoulders and face, the scars made up the shattered stone texture I had felt earlier covered the regions. While the discolouration was relatively subtle, several more distinct scars covered my body as well.

A large, creasing scar ran down my face from my right eyebrow to the bottom of the cheekbone. The iris behind it was greyed out, a stark contrast to the bright blue colour it used to be. Pulling my gaze away from my scars, I noticed that most of my hair was gone, and my eyebrows and rough beard were singed grey. After examining the rest of my body, especially the huge marks on my chest, I sat back down on the couch and accepted it. I traded looks for freedom; only a fool would choose differently.

I looked around at the ponies. Some of them were looking back at me in concern, some were staring at the floor in shame. I found the new events funny for some reason, and they all eyed me in confusion as I laughed. When I finished, I shared with them the humour of the situation.

"I guess I won't be winning any more beauty pageants, will I?" A resounding of snickering convinced me that they wouldn't dwell on it any longer than I would. Rainbow Dash attempted to lighten the mood with a joke I didn't get, but I laughed anyway.

"Well, you don't have the cutie mark for it anyway!"

Applejack and Rarity stopped laughing first, and they started comforting me with things like, "It'll come eventually," and, "these things take time, everpony knows that." I really didn't get what they meant, but I guessed it was some badly executed continuation of my joke. I nodded and as the laughing died down, Pinkie Pie started jumping and asking my name.

"It's Ethan. Don't worry, I know all of your names. There's you, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy."

"How'd you know our names, Mr. Ethan? OH do you have an Ethan sense!?"

"Uh... No. I have great hearing, and good enough memory."

"Sorry 'bout your burns, Ethan, really I am, but... how'd you defeat the dragon?" This time it was Applejack. Her accent seemed less prevalent than last time I heard her speak.

"I don't really know."

"I thought you had good memory?"

"I didn't know what I was doing when it happened. I just went along with it."

"Well, when you figure it out, let us know, ya hear?"

"In all honesty, I actually remember exactly what I did, but..." I was cut off by an angry Applejack.

"Well why don't ya tell us?"

"But I don't have words to describe the act of bending the air around me and pushing it back on the attacker."

There was silence for a few seconds, and I face-palmed in realization before explaining, "On second thought, there's your explanation. Anyone have any other questions?"

"Yes, what ever happened to my- I mean, your shirt?" Rarity spoke up.

I looked around for my two bags, and noticed they weren't in the house. "I was using it to carry some things, but that and my backpack went missing. Probably right after the second confrontation with that manticore."

"Was that what happened to you before we got here?" Twilight was asking, though my attention momentarily turned to Pinkie Pie when she gasped and ran out the door.

"Uuhh... Yeah, funny story. You already know I ran out of your house when I woke up, but you probably don't know why I returned." She responded with a shake of her head and I continued, "It was for three reasons. One, I didn't have any place to go after retrieving my things; two, what was in that bag would help me in this society, though I don't want you to know until it's back in my possession. And, three..." My voice was overrun by Pinkie Pie rushing back into the house, carrying two loud objects on her back. She dumped them on my feet and sat down with the others, looking up at me expectantly.

"I found your bags!" She motioned a hoof to the two objects on the floor, and I realised they were my bags. I quickly opened them, found that nothing was missing, and patted Pinkie on the head.

"Thanks! How'd you find them?" I almost got my hand stuck in her mane when I pulled away, but she was stuck in a strange, pleasured face for a few seconds before shaking her head and snapping out of it.

"I just saw them lying near the trees on the way over here!" She hopped up and down as she spoke, punctuating the sentence when she sat back down on her haunches. Twilight stopped me from rifling through the bags as she still had a question.

"Wait, Ethan, what was the third reason?"

"You know, after this impression I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter anymore."

"I still want to know, please."

"Fine... I decided to go back because there was nowhere else, I had my belongings, and..." I breathed in, expecting the reaction, "I thought you were able to overpower me at first, but after I succeeded in stopping the dragon where the six of you could not, I had the feeling your kind would fear my power and respect my freedom. It would be that, or a severely offset body count, had they attacked me first."

Twilight and the others had erased all other emotions and began backing away, even Fluttershy. I sighed and tried to reset their disposition, "but I hope you'll believe me when I say that I don't wish harm on any of you, which was the chief reasoning behind sacrificing myself to the dragon."

"Sacrificing? You're still alive, how did you-"

"I thought I died. At least, I was dead, until I was brought back by Celestia. And I'll tell you, surviving death was a very unpleasant experience."

With that explanation out of the way, they came closer

“What can I do to repay you for helping me?”

“You don’t need to do anything at all! I love treating animals… except your not… oh, im…”

“It’s ok, I’m not exactly wild, but I am an animal.”

“Ok… Hey, you must be hungry. Would you like some soup?” She turned and walked into another room, like I didn’t even have a choice.

“That would be very nice, thank you.” I wasn’t going to turn down soup, despite how uncomfortable I was being babied by a pony.

“Well, what kind of food do you eat?”

“Pretty much anything, though what I would really go for is some chicken noodle.”

“What do you mean by, “chicken noodle”?”

“Its soup with noodles and chicken in it, but I guess you don’t have that?” She walked back into the room looking worried.

“What?”

“You eat chickens?”

“Well, it’s not exactly my favourite. I really like beef and bacon, but those don’t go very well in soup, do they?” She ran into the other room and mumbled something about carnivores. I hadn’t regained all my power yet, so I couldn’t make out the whole thing. It was apparent, however, that she didn’t eat meat, and was probably scared of me eating her.

I got up in disagreement with the pain around me and shambled over to the doorway.

“Come on Fluttershy, I told you the first time that I wasn’t going to hurt you. I have no plans to eat any of you ponies.”

“But you eat animals, I don’t want any of my friends to…”

“Look, if it’s really a big problem, I’ll ditch eating meat altogether, ok?”

“Really?” The voice was coming from a cupboard. I opened the door to see the pink-haired pegasus.

“Absolutely. Now come out of there, if you give me an ingredient list, I can make us some soup, and I promise won’t include any animals.” She stepped out, but hovered over to my shoulders and started turning me around. I forgot she had wings.

“Oh, no, you can’t go to all that trouble in your condition! I’ll make it, you just rest.”

I began to protest, but I forgot to duck out of the doorway and hit my face on the wall, almost falling flat on my back. “On second thought, I can’t go to all that trouble in my condition.”

She giggled as I laid myself painfully onto the bed, which was actually a flat couch with some sort of medical covering.

“So, are you some sort of veterinarian?”

“Sort of, I mainly help the friendly animals from the forest with things like broken wings or sicknesses.”

“That’s cool. Hey, do you know what happened to my clothes after the dragon incident? In fact, what happened to me?” Fluttershy stopped chopping vegetables and looked in to the room.

“I’m not sure you’d want to hear about that…”

“Actually, I do. I don’t remember much after that point.”

“Well…” she swallowed nervously and walked up to me, “when you jumped between us and the dragon, and did that shouting thing, the fire almost completely destroyed your clothes on contact. And, your body, the skin…” She trailed off. I was curious as to how badly I was hurt.

“…Yes?”

“I don’t really want to talk about that…” That would have to wait.

“Naw, that’s ok. One thing though: where did these new clothes come from?”

“My friend Rarity made them. Actually, you should be able to meet all my friends later today. I told them you were doing much better, and they said they wanted to see. I mean, it’s only been a week, so Twilight-”

“A whole week?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I guess you didn’t want to hear…”

“I swear if you say sorry one more time, I’ll…” I almost lost it, but looking at her shaking on the floor in fear dissolved my anger. The eyes again… Something was up with them, I swear.

“I won’t do a damn thing about it. You were saying?” I was careful not to say ‘sorry’.

“Well, umm Twilight wanted to get some information about your species, and I guess I wanted to know a little about you as well, but… um, if that’s ok with you…”

“You already know I’m an omnivore.” I said with a smile, showing off my canines. She laughed a little and I remembered an earlier reaction.

“You already knew, didn’t you?” She tried to feign confusion as I asked her.

“Oh, I didn’t really-”

“You saw my teeth in the cave, what was it, twelve days ago? Anyway, you saw my teeth and got scared, and when I asked about it all you could say was I looked, ‘nice.’” I replicated her voice pretty well on the last word. “Are meat eaters frowned upon here?”

She started to stutter, saying something about friendly forest creatures, when I just patted her on the head and told her I would still switch over if it became a problem. She finished fretting over it and suddenly remembered something. I never said anything about it, but she was starting to wear on my nerves.

“I guess I should finish that soup, huh?”

“Yeah, thanks Fluttershy.”

“No trouble at all, Ethan.”

I was lying there for about ten minutes, thinking about how fragile Fluttershy was, before she flew over, carrying the soup with her front hooves. I thought I wasn’t going to ask about that, but she hesitated when she pulled out a spoon.

“Oh, I guess you won’t need this…” She began to walk back to her kitchen with the spoon.

“Uh, Fluttershy…” She turned around and I wiggled my fingers at her.

“What?”

“I can, in fact, use spoons. I have fingers, you know…”

“Oh sorr- I mean, I thought you wouldn’t be able to hold it…”

I showed her that I could indeed hold utensils, “Yeah, I just grasp it with my fingers. Don’t you have any animals that can do that?”

“No, some of them have fingers, but they don’t really use them for eating.”

I started to sip the soup, “Wow, Fluttershy, this is great! You have to show me how to make it some time.” She blushed at the compliment, and I was almost glad that she was lightening up to me, only hindered by those eyes. I move past it and tried to understand the spoon mystery.

“Ok, back to the spoons… How do you ponies hold them? I mean, you don’t have any way to grasp them or anything.”

“Well, all ponies have a little magic in them, and while unicorns have a lot and use it for all kinds of things, earth ponies and pegasi have a little and we use it for smaller things, like holding things and moving clouds.”

“You said earlier that Twilight knows a lot about mysterious and magical things?”

“Yes, she lives in the town library and loves to read, so even if she doesn’t know something, she should be able to find out from all the history and science books.”

“I guess I’ll have a little talk to her about all this ‘magic’ stuff. It’s not really getting through to me.” There was a knock on the door, as if they appeared there by magi- goddamnit.

“Oh hi girls, my patient actually just woke up. Come on in!” Hooves clopped on the floor and I craned my head up to try and see the approaching crowd. There was a blast of colours like purple, orange, cyan, rainbow, and pink…

A pink object flashed in front of me, causing me to nearly choke on the still-hot soup.

“Hey what’s this thing it looks hurt, Oooh I bet its Fluttershy’s patient! Wait, you look familiar! You’re Pinkie Pie number two! Hi twin, happy to see you again, we still haven’t had any of those missed birthday par-” She was cut off by the orange pony, I seemed to remember it being named ‘Applejack’, who dragged her out of the room with a sheepish smile. I could have listened to what they were saying out there, but that would probably get awkward later on.

“Well, I see you’ve already met Fluttershy. I’m Twilight Sparkle,” The purple unicorn explained, “The pink pony was Pinkie Pie,” I heard a faint ‘Number One!’ coming from outside, “and the orange pony was Applejack. These ponies beside me are Rarity,” She motioned to a bright white unicorn to her left, “and Rainbow Dash,” she gestured to the obviously-named cyan pegasus with a bright rainbow mane, who greeted me with a detached, “Hey,” as Twilight continued.

“We are all very grateful for what you did for us earlier, and for helping Fluttershy yesterday… but, we really wanted to find out how you were doing. Maybe Fluttershy can…” I cut her off.

“I’m actually doing fine.” That was met by a unanimous, “You can talk?” from the four that didn’t know.

“Yes, I can. I’m a human, and my name is Ethan. Most of us can talk.” I guessed Twilight and Fluttershy either didn’t tell them or forgot.

“Well, how come ah haven’t seen yer kind ‘round these parts?” Applejack asked with a light western accent, as she and the pink pony came back in.

“Because I’m not from around here,” I answered, looking at Fluttershy. I got up with a wince and slowly moved to the kitchen, eliciting gasps from the ponies as I crouched under the doorway. Fluttershy followed me as I started to wash the bowl, but she took over and pushed me back to the other room with a concerned smile. I went back out and sat down on the couch, still not meeting eye level with the small ponies around me.

“Wow, you’re tall!” Pinkie Pie somehow got right next to me without making a sound.

“I suppose I am, but compared to other humans I’m just above average height.” It was true, I stood at 6’3”, which may have been a bit more than “above average”, but I was a middle height among my friends. I continued moving the conversation along.

“With introductions aside, I’m a little surprised to see you here, let alone thanking me, after what I did.”

“Well what did you do, darling?” The white unicorn asked with a different light accent.

“I attacked Fluttershy three times, I nearly killed at least three of you, I scared off a manticore, I fought and disabled over a dozen of your army, I mentally broke your Goddess-like ruler and escaped out of an enchanted dungeon, I survived a terminal velocity crash into the ocean, I knocked out, then possibly killed, a dragon in a single day, and I made a manticore disappear by shouting at it. How does that warrant a thank you?” I was almost checking things off at that point.

They all looked like they were about to say something, but were too scared to ask.

Rainbow Dash, the pegasus, was the first to speak up, “Yeah, why are we thanking him? We should be taking him back to the princess and jus-” She was cut off by Twilight.

“No, Rainbow, Ethan sacrificed himself to save us, and did it twice more for Fluttershy. Why do you think you don’t deserve anything?” The purple unicorn was forgiving, I gave her that.

“I guess I just didn’t think of it that way. By the way, Rainbow Dash…?” She looked up at me with a tinge of anger.

“I’m sorry for whatever happened after the incident on the day you found me. I never really meant to hurt you, but I heard you might have been injured, and I’m feeling guilty about it.” Her eyes dropped to the floor.

“Well, I got a messed up wing and stuff, but it healed pretty quickly. I mean, I was the one who tackled you. Didn’t you get hurt too?” She was trying to sound concerned, but I heard it as disappointed, like she wanted me to be hurt. I decided it was a good idea to get on her good side for now. I pointed at my left thigh.

“The bone in this part of my leg is the largest and strongest bone in the body. It would have taken almost ten times my weight to even bend it, but your tackle broke it in three places. It wasn’t very pleasant, I’ll tell you.” I was slightly exaggerating on the injuries.

“Oh, umm… sorry.” I noticed she was satisfied by the answer, but tried to feign guilt. I winked at her and she smiled, understanding what I meant.

“With that explanation aside, I wanted to thank you girls for helping me. Thank you, Fluttershy, for healing me, and thank you, Rarity, for the clothes. Unfortunately, the shirt might be in a little disrepair…” I finished by pulling a sleeve, which came off with little effort, revealing several rips along the body.

“Well it was no problem at all, darling! You simply must come to my boutique some day soon; I can imagine you would want some say in what I design for you.”

“Design for me…? Well I don’t want you to go to all that trouble-”

“I insist. I mean, you must miss those old things you had earlier, but I’m afraid they were almost all gone before we managed to get you in a stable…”

“Wait, wait wait. When you say almost all gone…?” This was getting more uncomfortable by the second.

“I’ll just say that we know your male, and leave it at that.” Twilight explained and kept her professional look, but was blushing slightly. That was nothing compared to the crimson shades and nervous shuffles that were displayed by the ponies around her, and I started to flush red as well. Twilight was eager to break the silence.

“Well, we may have gotten off track a little. How are you feeling?” They all looked expectantly as I began to stand up, testing my body.

The pain was excruciating. Joints were scraping and grinding, breathing was an effort, my skin felt like it would fall off at an instant, every movement creaked in anguish, and I had trouble seeing. It was like fire ran down my veins and every second of existence was another exposed wound, like a paper cut, but my entire body.

“I’m feeling fine, just a little scratched up.” Fluttershy looked at me funny, but Twilight was incredulous.

“I don’t understand it! You were barely alive when we found you the first time, and after the manticore…” I stared her down and interrupted her.

“Perhaps we could talk about that somewhere else.” I subtly gestured to Fluttershy, and while the other ponies didn’t quite understand it, Twilight nodded and sat back down, and Fluttershy smiled at me. I noticed the reason for one of my ailments.

“Hey Fluttershy, do you know where my pack went? I dropped it before the most recent ‘incident’ and I think it has something in it that I need.” Pinkie Pie gasped and blasted out of the room. I was about to ask what that was about, but she shot back in and put my bag on the floor.

“Where was… How’d you find it?” I still thought something was off about that pony.

“I saw a weird thing lying on a tree, and it looked like half of a saddle bag, but until you mentioned it I didn’t know what the hay it was!” She said that in a single breath, confusing me further. I was glad to have the bag back, at least. I took out my glasses, cleaning them with a cloth, and put them on.

I audibly sighed as I took in all the details around me. The ponies still stared at me, wide eyed, and I looked at each of them, when I noticed something on their flanks. On Pinkie Pie, she had a tattoo with what looked like balloons on it. On Fluttershy, butterflies. Butterfly, Fluttershy. On Twilight, a six-sided star with sparkles around it. Rarity had a diamond, Rainbow Dash had a cloud with rainbow-lightning, and Applejack had an apple…

Applejack eyed me with suspicion, and I realised that I was essentially leaning at a 45 degree angle to look at her butt. I straightened immediately, and there was a long silence as I brought my palm to my face in regret and embarrassment. I was about to try to apologize when I noticed something different about my palm, like that old expression no longer applied. The skin was harder in some places, wrinkly in others, and dark and light patches wisped through it.

“Oh, shit. Fluttershy, do you have a mirror?” I asked nervously, and Fluttershy pointed to a frame on the wall. I stood up, still examining my hand and wrist, and when I reached the mirror, bending down to see my face, I almost jumped at the sight I saw.

Nearly my entire face was covered in various scars, which looked almost like dark veins that spread through my face. On my left eye was a large, rough and dark scar that went from the eyebrow to the mouth level, but on the side. I tried rubbing my eyes, and took my glasses off to clean them thoroughly, but I kept looking back to that disfigured head.

My dark brown hair was always cut short in a sort of military style, but now it was mostly stubble with patches of inch-long hair sticking out. My eyebrows were mostly intact, and I had somehow retained most of the beard that grew over the past two weeks, but it was singed gray. Perhaps the most unsettling feature of my new face was my scarred eye, with the colourless iris. My other eye was a piercing blue, and the right side was relatively intact.

I looked back at them, and they all faced the ground except for Fluttershy. I smiled and said, “I guess I won’t be winning any more beauty pageants.” I didn’t know why I was so comfortable with the discovery, since it contrasted with my growing dislike of being there.

“Well you don’t have the cutie mark for it, anyway…” Rainbow Dash tried to lighten the mood but trailed off with a hint of sadness.

“Cutie mark…?”

“Well, in the whole clothes-replacing part of your recovery,” Twilight managed to mention that without blushing, “we didn’t see a cutie mark anywhere on you.” She did, however, blush at the concept of looking around my naked body, no matter how injured it was.

‘A cutie-mark? I needed to be naked for them to see it, and it was related to beauty in some way…’ I nervously brushed my hands over my head and exhaled. I was pretty good at concealing emotions, but when a bunch of what I assumed were college-age girls asked me about stuff that I could only imagine was related to my sex organs, and, to make matters worse, my lack of something, I couldn’t help but get extremely uncomfortable. And that made

“Ah, yeah, I don’t have one yet…” I looked over my shoulder at them, and they seemed worried, but not suggestive or anything. ‘Maybe it’s not… that.’ I couldn’t take my chances, so I just quietly sat back down.

“Don’t worry, hun, it’ll come eventually…” Applejack patted my upper leg, which I could have either passed off as a cultural difference or a reassurance that it really was the worst thing possible. Naturally, my brain took a nose dive for the worst option, and I couldn’t think of any way to get out of it.

“Something wrong, Ethan?” Twilight had her genuinely curious face on, and I could only shift uncomfortably as Applejack backed away. I was quickly losing patience.

“Yeah, uh, something’s really wrong. Can we please change the subject?” My voice cracked as I tried to back away from the situation. I could feel sweat beading on my ragged forehead.

“Hey, here’s a thought. What ever happened to Pinkie? She’s usually talking all the time.”

I knew what they meant and, eager to skip over the last minute of dialogue, I looked over at Pinkie, who was lying on the floor and holding her mouth closed, barely containing whatever sounds were leaking out. As we all examined her prone position, she finally broke and screamed something about parties, before blinking out of the room. That was it, in less that a tenth of a second, she just disappeared, leaving a whirlwind of both questions and actual wind around us.

“What did she say about parties?” I began to believe that all of the ponies here had some sort of crazy in them.

Fluttershy had some sort of care-obsession, and was extremely emotional to the point of it being a hindrance on all involved. Twilight was fine, but leaned towards an almost eidetic nature, which wasn’t bad on its own. Rainbow Dash was part sadist, part egomaniac, and after remembering Iron Man, my brain reeled at the resemblance.

Rarity was a little obsessed with clothes, but I chalked that up to being female. Applejack was to look out for, as she seemed to have something about being unable to “enhance the truth”, especially when it came to embarrassing subjects.

Lastly, Pinkie Pie was hyper and uncontained, obtrusive, obnoxious, and all-around annoying. I wondered what she was doing while I was recovering, but then it hit me: They could have been doing anything to me; especially Fluttershy. I kept thinking about that horrible effect her eyes had on me.

“Hello? Anybody there!” Rainbow Dash was tapping me in the shoulder and I snapped out of that stupor, but kept my analysis on my mind.

“Yeah… what?”

“We were saying that you should probably watch out for Pinkie for the next few days.” I already concluded that, but I hoped they had another explanation.

“Why?”

“’Cuz she’s gonna throw you a surprise party, that’s why!” Applejack almost yee-hawed at the concept, and the others looked thoughtfully at me.

“I don’t really think that would be a great idea…” It really wasn’t, and I was starting to snap.

“Well why ever not, dear?”

“I can barely stand you guys right now, that’s why!” I almost yelled, and stood up in spite of the pain to walk out the door with my bag. The ponies stood in awe as I stormed out, but they soon ran after me.

“What do you mean by that, big guy?” Rainbow was the first to catch up, hovering at eye level, as I walked towards the forest.

“You all act nice, but it’s like your crazy. I fear for my life whenever you talk, and you expect me to party with you five and that crack addict Pinkie? Against my will, no less!” Twilight was on my other side, barely able to make up a sentence.

“But, you and us… you saved us… we just wanted to… to be friends, and…” At that word I stopped and put my arm in front of Twilight, stopping her in her tracks. I crouched and centered my eyes a few inches away from hers.

“Friends? You want to be friends? I had friends, they worked with me and we had common interests. They were never nice to me. The only people who were ever nice to me are dead. And those that I tolerated, I have no idea where they are, and they, me. I can’t do a damn thing about it.” My voice cracked as I started to tear up. Twilight was obviously moved by what I said, but I couldn’t read her face as I started walking faster to the forest. I didn’t have time for being nice.

Three sets of hoof-steps followed me, with two pairs of wings flapping above them. I couldn’t care less about what they were saying, to themselves or me, so I blocked them out. I was about to step across the forest threshold when pink hair fell in front of my face, and yellow hooves wrapped around my neck.

“No, please don’t go Ethan! We’ll do anything to help you! You’re one of the nicest ponies I’ve ever met, and I can’t imagine you being shut out from everypony else!” She managed to tell me through sobs, and my knees buckled under the emotions.

“I didn’t have any real friends in my world. What makes you think I can get friends in this one?” I asked flatly as the five huddled in front of me.

“Because you’ve already made six!” They all said with equal enthusiasm, starting to hug me. I would have pushed away, but I was feeling defeated and I just sat there. A single tear ran down my scarred face and hit the ground. I took that as the cue to agree and return the hug. Nearly all of them were completely crying at my revelation, with Applejack and Rainbow Dash restricting it to the occasional sniff. I broke away and turned to the forest.

The ponies looked at me, and I looked between them and the forest. I turned to look at Fluttershy’s cottage. Another sequence of takes, and I ended the silence.

“I know there’s value to the whole thing, but I don’t do very well at parties.” I slowly started back to the cottage with the others tagging to either side, Fluttershy still holding onto my neck. I was hoping they could overlook the nervous breakdown I just had.

“Well, I was new to Ponyville around a year ago, and I was even less social than you, but these four and Pinkie managed to show me how great it was to just spend time with other ponies!”

“Yeah, that raises a problem. I’m not a pony, and even for my race I look a little scary. That was before the hideous burns and scars, by the way.”

“Ooh, I have a great idea!” Twilight looked up at me, “We could have a slumber party at the library to get to know you, then Rarity and Fluttershy could give you a make-over the next day!”

“Oh, hell no! I’m not getting a girly make-over from a bunch of pon-” I noticed they stopped walking and I looked over at them.

Aside from Rainbow Dash, they all had big puppy-dog eyes and gave me pleading looks. Rainbow Dash looked over at them, said, “Oh, yeah…” and stood next to them with a mirrored expression. I was about to tell them not to try that, when Fluttershy came out from behind me and put her hooves on my shoulders.

“Oh, please, Ethan?” She had the biggest eyes and cutest expression out of all of them, and it broke straight through me. I tried to look away, but she hovered to meet my eyes.

“Godda… Fine. But I don’t want to look girly, so no things like… make up, bows or… butterflies. No offense, Fluttershy.” She just giggled as we walked back. I had a pretty wacky thought just then.

“Hey, Fluttershy, you’re pretty light, think I could carry all of you at once?” She looked over at Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Rarity, and they all smiled at me before trying to jump, or fly, onto my face.

I fell over.