Infinity: An account of The Last Horseman

by Brony Tron

Recorder account: 002

I woke up hours later, on the floor. As I stood up and made my way to the window, I noticed it was becoming day. 'I slept all night?' And then I remembered what happened and how I got knocked out.

"Oh crap. ALPHA! ALPHA ARE YOU THERE!?"

"I am present and fully functional, sir. But I seem unable to connect to the Smith tower mainframe."

"That's impossible. You have a heavily encrypted and direct wireless connection to the mainframe" I said.

"I am aware, sir, but I still seem unable to reach the tower. It's almost as if......" He stopped.

"As if what, alpha?" I asked

"Sir, I initiated a standard geographical scan of the properties and the immediate area around them, and I just received the feedback. Sir, nothing's where it's supposed to be" he said in a slightly worried tone

"what're you saying, my properties fine, but the damage hit around it?" I questioned.

"No sir, I'm saying that well your houses are in the right geographical coordinates, we have completely changed our location. Take a look." He brought up the camera view of my front gate on the big screen, and he was right. There was no road, and well my house was almost exclusively surrounded by pine trees, he ones on the screen were almost all either oak or birch.

"Something's going on here, Alpha. I want you to keep digging, and see what comes up. I'm going for a drive. Have Delta surprise me with a car."

"Absolutely sir. I'll keep you updated."

I head outside distracted by thought. 'I can't imagine what any of this means. We moved? But how? And what were those alien particles found right before any of this happened?' I round the corner and see the driveway, with my favorite car on it: my grey and silver Chevrolet Corvette C7 ZR1 Racing edition. A car that is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of human and machine coexistence to form the perfect vehicle.

I get in and the V8 growls to life, just eager to get under way. The computer activates, and on comes my vehicle manager. "I figured you may have needed a pick me up today" said Delta a bit smugly. "Well, I did, and I am grateful" I said

I threw it into first gear and began barreling down my three mile long driveway. 0 to 60 in 2.67 seconds. I wound around the bends and curves like the road was built for this exact car. As I neared the end of the driveway, I opened my gate and came screaming out of it like a bat outta hell. I then followed the dirt path left there. 'Its as good a place to start as any, right?'

I was on the road for about five minutes when I finally saw the first signs of civilization up ahead. It was what appeared to be an orchard with a fence around it. I slowed to a halt and got out with the engine still running. I looked up at the trees. "Apples? Huh, well maybe their owners can help me. At the very least I could use a map to see where I am."

I continued in the path until I reached the entrance. Above it was a sign.

"Welcome to Sweet Apple Acres, home of the best apples in all of..(gulp)..equestria?" I said, increasingly worried. "Maybe I can convince the brony farmer to help me." I continued up the path, then I saw the barn. 'There is no way....'

The farm was an Exact replica of the one from My Little Pony. 'This is unbelievable' I thought, as a slight chuckle escaped my mouth. At least, that was before I saw the horses running the place.

I sat in awe and watched as an orange mare with 3 apples on her rear trotted up to an apple tree, turned around, and kicked it. Then it rained apples on her, but she was already on to the next tree, seemingly unfazed by the falling fruit. Alongside her was a huge red stallion with half a green apple on his butt, kicking trees with a similar vigor as his smaller companion. But what really worried me was when they looked at me.

"Oh.....uh......uh oh" stuttered the orange pony. "Eeeyup" said her crimson compadre.

'Well, they know I'm here, may as we'll be neighborly' I thought to myself. "Hello. My name is Remy, uhh, Remy Smith. What's you're names?" I said nervously

"Well...uhh...my name is Applejack, and....uhh......it's a pleasure to meet you" she stuttered

"Likewise. Now, umm, could you please tell me where I am, exactly?" I asked. I then realized her big friend, who I already knew was Big Macintosh, was nowhere to be found. 'Hes sure is quiet for his size.

"well....you see....that's a difficult question.....and....uhh...NOW BIG MAC!!!" She suddenly yelled. I then felt a pinprick in the back of my neck. I reached back to feel it, and my hands found something cold and metal. I pulled it out, brought it around, and looked at it. It was a tranquilizer dart. Not just a regular one, but one built to take down a fully grown and fully pissed off bull. Knowing that, and from the feeling coursing from the impact wound, I could tell that they had filled it all the way. I suddenly felt light headed

"Alpha.....remind me nwwever twalk to stwangers again...." I spat out while stumbling around.

"Yes, sir." His reply was the last thing I heard. I then closed my eyes and the ground rushed up to meet me.

***

"Well, he's right on time, just like twilight said he'd be" said Applejack, staring down at the unconsciousness human with disgust. "Yup" was all Big Mac had to say.

"reckon we should bring 'im to Twilight?"

"Eeyup"

"Alrighty then, load 'im up and I'll bring 'im"

They dragged the body to a cart, loaded him on, and made the short journey to Ponyville's own prince and princess of friendship's castle.

Comments

[SHMANDER]

Well.... Interesting

[BAR0SS]

Prince?

[Brony Tron]

Indeed. There is a prince

[Timeless Lord Slayer]

Highly interesting and immense potential, but it could use a bit of work overall. Not a lot, but a bit. Try looking at this guide, it helps a lot. http://eznguide.neocities.org/#Action-tags

[BAR0SS]

4553466 but who?

[Xepher]

Let me start this with a disclaimer... you asked for feedback in the notes of the first chapter, so here it comes. Nothing I say is meant to be discouraging though, merely honest.

That said, here goes... This is rough, really rough. You've got a lot of problems, both technical and in more general areas. Despite that, I can see that you do have some solid ideas you're trying to work with, and there bits here and there which stand out, showing that you have the potential to do a lot better.

Let's start with the bad:

#1 Grammar, spelling, and punctuation. These aren't optional. While most readers will tolerate the occasional typo or slip-up, nothing will lose you readers faster than butchering the technical details. The good news here is that this stuff isn't too hard to learn, and there are plenty of resources out there to help. The key is to spend the time, both in writing frequently for practice, and in editing your own work. Take that time, and try your hardest to deliver a polished product. In the processes, you'll learn a lot.

On that subject, one suggestion I give to a lot of new authors... don't let your spellchecker correct things for you. A lot of the misspellings I saw were the WRONG words rather than actual typos. I see this very frequently when someone has simply stepped through the spellchecker, clicking the "correct" button on every mistake it finds. Avoid this. Let it highlight problems, but retype them yourself until they're correct. Not only will this make you pay more attention and avoid those pesky "their/they're/there" mistakes, but will help you become better at spelling yourself, letting future writing go even faster.

Likewise, when you come across something you're unsure about ("How do you quote dialog inside dialog?") or see something that "just feels wrong" don't let it slide, don't just guess at what's correct... go look it up! If you consider the entire writing process as something educational, you'll improve at it a lot faster than if you just "wing it" and hope for the best.

#2 Pacing. This one is hard to get right, and comes mostly with practice. The main thing to remember is that when you're writing something, you're going way, WAY slower than you are when reading it. As such, you may often feel you've been on a scene or action for far too long, and need to jump to the next plot point. When a reader is going through it though, what was many minutes to you may be only seconds to them, and the jumps can feel awkward or unnatural.

One way to improve this is to "sketch" your scenes. Some people do outlines for this, but I often like to write a shorthand version of a scene to figure out how/what needs to happen. I do it quickly, closer to reading speed, then go back and write the fully detailed one once I've established the pacing.

Ex: "Twilight enters, finds spike nervous. Asks why, he mumbles something about dinner. She notices the smoke from kitchen door, starts to panic. Kitchen fire. Lots of frantic words. Water spell? Goes wrong, soaks books, adds to panic. Soaked owl for humor?"

Those couple of lines might end up being a couple of pages or more when written out, but I know all the points I need to get through before it's time to change scenes.

#3 Mary Sue. A Mary Sue (if you're not familiar) is an overly perfect protagonist, usually a self insert. Here, your "Smith" is basically Tony Stark with a better garage. As it's also in first person from his PoV, this really dings all the Mary Sue bells, and this is generally a bad idea for a character, unless lampshaded as such for comedic effect. Granted, you haven't finished your story yet, but the overly detailed descriptions you give for his cars and posh lifestyle don't seem to serve any purpose to the plot, leaving the reader to assume this is basically your own self-insert/wish fulfillment.

Okay, enough on the bad. For the good, it's clear that you've got some big ideas of what you want to do in the story. You're obviously bringing together a lot of concepts from many different places/stories, and that can be really fun. It'll be challenging as well though. I do see in your writing, some places that stood out as more polished. For example, you frequently use some more complex sentence structures, which will definitely make for better prose in the long run, though they're still mixed in with some very haphazard stuff.

All that said, keep at it! There's nothing that helps as much as practice, so don't let anyone (me included) discourage you. There's an oft-repeated adage about writing, that you basically must write (and edit to a polished state) a million words of junk before you can really be ready to write properly. I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but I do promise you that if you stick with it, in a few years you'll look back and be absolutely amazed at how much further you've come.

[Brony Tron]

Thank you for your feedback. I am taking the points you brought up into my writing and I hope it shows. The one concern I do not share with you is him being the perfect protagonist. His money is simply to allow for a more developed character. His power that will come with being death will not allow him the opportunity to overcome great challenges with ease. It is simple fact that if Death took on form, it would possess within it the power to overcome anything, else it would not be "the debt that all men pay." But thank you again, and I will be sure to put those points into practice