A Dream

by totallynotabrony

Growing Up is Hard to Do

I was serious about crashing a Saturn V into it, by the way.

A British Thermal Unit is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of liquid water by one degree Fahrenheit. No, I don’t know why the British were measuring their heat in pounds and Fahrenheit. Still, it’s the thermal unit I know, so I’m going to use that.

The average mammal is around 70% water. The average pony was maybe two hundred pounds. Stage one of a Saturn V contained several million pounds of kerosene. Kerosene is a little bit more than six pounds per gallon, and each gallon can produce 135,000 BTU.

Maybe you can see where I’m going with this. I’m not a fan of math, and mental estimates were pretty much how I did everything. The moon over Equestria was much smaller and closer than Earth’s moon, so even with my heavy throttle, there was still a lot of fuel left as Daring and I were on our way back.

In my anger at myself, apparently, for trolling myself with a message on the moon, I’d decided to aim the reentering rocket straight at the signal broadcast location.

If you were following along with my calculations, you’d know that if there was anybody unfortunate enough to be standing nearby, they were about to get their body temperature raised by about 270 million degrees. Roughly.

Daring had been uncomfortable the whole mission, but she got really squirmy at this part. “And exactly how are we supposed to...not burn?”

“Oh, we’ll be popping off in a small capsule that’s going to fall for a couple of miles through the atmosphere, turning our terminal velocity into heat against the atmosphere. The bottom will probably be glowing hot.”

I decided to turn up the nitrous that I’d plumbed into her oxygen system. I’d originally brought it along to make the rocket go faster, but decided it was better used here.

We made a good reentry. With rockets, that means we lived. Daring was too relaxed to notice.

I kicked the hatch off and left. Hopefully when she woke up, she wouldn’t attribute the calm feeling to being a standard part of reentry. I really didn’t need ponies thinking that space travel was fun and casual.

Ponies like the CMC, who, for some God-forsaken reason, were now adults.

“Shit, was I in space that long?” I looked around. “Also, where are we and why are you here?”

“Appleoosa,” said Sweetie Belle. “We came to the fair.”

“And don’t worry about the adult thing,” said Scootaloo. “We don’t know why it happened, it just did instantly this morning.”

“I’m not sure if I should be concerned.” I shrugged. “Well, have fun.”

“Wait a second,” said Apple Bloom. “You’re an adult. We’re totally not qualified to be adults, too.”

“You...aren’t? I mean, you got your cutie marks. Is that not puberty? Sorry, I really don’t know much about it. All I know is that I trust you to be mech pilots, so really, how much more responsibility do you want?”

The three of them looked at each other. “Thanks,” said Sweetie. “That actually helps.”

I headed off to see what the rocket had landed on. Along the way I made a detour to get some fried dough because it was a fair. I didn’t know what they called it here. Presumably not an elephant ear. Was it still a funnel cake if it wasn’t made with a funnel?

There were some strange colors on the horizon. Maybe the explosion had been so extreme it created a new weather pattern. I’d never seen some of those colors before. That was a nice shade of purple. I decided to name it Hell Raisin.

Maybe we should also start doing dyes at the bell-shaped hair salon. We could apply it during the donging. Well, I didn’t know how popular dying would be in Equestria, where everybody was already some crazy color.

I found the crater. Impressive work if I do say so myself. I didn’t know what had once been here, but that was small potatoes compared to the satisfaction in destroying it. Screw you, me.

Just then, Twilight teleported in with Fluttershy. “Valiant, have you seen the girls?”

“The...Cutie Mark Crusaders?”

“Yes them-”

“Because it seems like literally everyone you or I associate with is female, so most of the time you’re going to have to be more specific.”

She shook her head and held up a glass case with a magical flower in it. I’m not really magic sensitive, but when it looked exactly like the rose from Beauty and the Beast, was glowing, and had one last petal remaining, I just kind of assumed.

“They’ve been messing around with this magic flower and we think they might have wished themselves to the fair.”

“Wished themselves into adults, actually. Still at the fair, though.” I paused. “Wait, go back, what was that about a magic wishing flower?”

Twilighted looked at the flower, and then looked at me. I opened my mouth.

She hit me with a teleport before I could even begin a wish.

I blinked, realizing that I’d been teleported...back to Appleoosa. The sun was lower in the sky now, so apparently time had passed. I wasn’t sure if Twilight had sent me anywhere and I’d time-skipped while coming back, in which case fast-travel, cool, or if she hadn’t sent me that far and I’d been up to something.

Hopefully not revenge on myself for attacking my own plans. Probably not. I’d probably anticipated that I would do that. It was me, after all.

I set off to find the CMC and see if they were still doing the whole Big thing. To my disappointment, they were not.

“Hey Valiant!” said Scootaloo. “Thanks for the coming-of-age switchblades, even if we didn’t really.”

Twilight gave me a dark look. Mostly, I was just confused where I had gotten three switchblades. If I had one, I’d be carrying it.

But back to the CMC, I’d always gotten along with them, and apparently blackout-me did too. They already had families, so it would kind of be inappropriate to adopt them. The fact that the thought had even crossed my mind was kind of strange. Was I really getting that starved for attention and family?

“What’s wrong?” Fluttershy asked quietly. I jerked, realizing that I must have been staring into space for a few minutes while pondering. I realized the others had departed.

“I just...came to the reluctant realization that I actually do desire companionship. And damn, that is messing up my self-image.”

Fluttershy nodded and let me talk.

“I guess I can justify it in that I get so much more done when I have people to help me, to draw me out of my shell. But when it comes down to it, I need a core of individuals to rely on. At the moment, I can’t even rely on myself. I need to put the Dream Team back together.”

I paused, and then shook my head. “Who am I kidding? Those guys are all twenty years retired from basketball.”

I needed my own Dream Team. I needed to get back to the previous universe. God, I hoped they were looking for me.

It was just then that a bunch of cannibals came streaming through town and boy is that a thing to distract you.

“What the hell?” I said. It seemed prudent to pull out my knife.

“We’ve got a lot in common with common-sense parenting,” one of them said. “I think we can all agree not to let our children get spoiled.”

“Yeah, refrigerators are awesome!” A couple of them in the back slapped hooves.

I cut my eyes back and forth. What a strange and random happenstance. I didn’t think shit like this just happened in Equestria.

I’d often wondered how much different the place would be without my influence. At a time like this, though, it was no time to be wondering how much extra protein ponies really needed.

As I was the closest person around, the group started to advance on me. Fluttershy was wisely already gone. I shrugged. Well, I think even Twilight would agree that this was a pretty clear-cut case of self-defense.

If you step on someone’s foot, they often open their mouth like a garbage can. That’s a good way to get an obsidian knife into their brain case.

I whirled through the group, slicing and dicing like a blender. It was kind of fun, really. “I am the terror that flaps in the night! I am the lone stocking in your sock drawer! I am that one uncle whose eyes always linger on you just a little too long!”

When the last one fell, I stopped, breathing deep. That was distracting from my problems. I kind of wondered if blackout-me had set it up as an apology. It felt sort of like a “Hey, the plan will all make sense eventually, just stick with me, okay?” I am kind of an asshole, but would I really do it to myself? I mean, it wasn’t like I was going to send a gift card.

Comments

[Titanicgaming360]

IT’S BACK BOYS

[Dragon Turtle]

Towards the beginning you wrote "was in in" instead of "was I in."

It was just then that a bunch of cannibals came streaming through town and boy is that a thing to distract you.

How does he know that they're cannibals? Is that a joke about the swamp ponies looking like hillbillies? Why do they start talking about parenting and refrigerators?

[totallynotabrony]

9872018
word error fixed, thank you

[Dragon Turtle]

9873033
Thanks for noticing and your response, but I’m much more interested in the cannibals.