Chapter 3: You're Not Alone
The Salt Lick Tavern was the most happening place in Appleoosa. That’s because it was the only happening place, thought Applejack. She and the rest of the Apples from Ponyville had made the trip to visit their kin, and help them with producing a feast’s worth of apple pies. With the hard work done, the cousins treated them to an evening of music and dancing, Appleoosa style. And Applejack might have enjoyed it, if it weren’t for the ponies in the corner, arguing.
The two mares had done nothing but bicker the entire time. Applejack had no idea what was so important. The two… actors? (Applejack recognized one’s cutie mark as one of those funny masks that theaters liked to display) were only mildly annoying before the performance had started, but they hadn’t shown the common decency to hush when the curtain was raised and the music began.
It was enough to make Applejack want to stomp the floor. Her mind churned, searching for something, anything, she could say to get those two to leave.
Crossing Over
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.
Chapter 3: You’re Not Alone
My stomach growled. I had no idea how much time had passed since breakfast, but I was clearly hungry now. “Twilight Sparkle, since I’ll be here for at least a few days, what am I going to do? I don’t have any food, any money….”
“Don’t worry, John,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Nopony’s going to let any visitor starve. Besides, didn’t you have a coin purse in your saddlebags?”
That’s right. There were those two mystery items. I opened the pouch, and found about two dozen glittering gold coins. If those coins were entirely or even mostly gold, then I was looking at thousands of dollars’ worth of precious metal. If I were back home, of course.
“How much is that?” I asked Twilight Sparkle.
“It looks like twenty-two bits,” she replied.
I facehoofed. “I can see that. What I’m asking is, how much is that worth? We don’t use bits in the human world.”
“Well, a couple of bits will get you some fresh food at the market. A full meal at the café might be five bits.” Twilight Sparkle explained. “A fresh quill….”
I cut off Twilight Sparkle before she described the price of every product in the pony world. Given this place looked like a small town without a lot of mass production, that meal was probably the equivalent of a sit down restaurant, not fast food. That meal might run $10 back home, so I mentally set an exchange rate of one bit equals two dollars.
“I don’t remember exactly how much money I was carrying when I fell through the portal, Twilight Sparkle, but I think twenty-two bits is roughly equivalent,” I said. “Whatever magic brought me here looks like it was careful about equivalency.”
“For someone who believes magic doesn’t work, you sure seem knowledgeable about it,” Twilight Sparkle commented.
“That’s just it. Magic doesn’t work in the human world, but the idea of magic is well understood,” I explained. “It’s a staple of fantasy literature. And since fictional magic can do anything, it only becomes interesting when it’s limited and also internally consistent. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with fans of one such fantasy universe, trying to work out a cohesive magic system based on the glimpses provided in the books.”
“Why would you do that?” asked Twilight Sparkle.
That’s not a question I’ve thought about a lot. Because I found the world fascinating as a child, and still do? Because so many of us bonded over the creative genius of J. K. Rowling? Because having these conversations helps me feel connected to other humans, even if it’s over the Internet? Because I feel closer to my fellow fans than my own parents?
All I said was, “It’s interesting. It’s fun.”
I gathered together all the material goods I now owned. “So let’s talk about my idea of equivalency, Twilight Sparkle. First, the obvious. I was a human, the only sapient species in my world. So the equivalent here is the pony?”
“There are a lot of sapient species here,” Twilight Sparkle responded. “But this is a pony land, so turning into a pony would be most equivalent.”
“Second, I was wearing clothing.” I motioned to her. “But you don’t wear clothing, so that didn’t make the transition.”
“Oh, we wear clothes,” Twilight explained, “but only on special occasions. So to become an everyday pony, you wouldn’t be wearing clothes.”
“Third, I had a few items in the pockets of my clothes. A keychain, a wallet with money, credit cards, my driver’s license and student identification….”
“And you have keys there, and money there,” Twilight Sparkle said. “But I’m not familiar with the rest.”
“Fourth, I carried a backpack. It’s pretty clear the saddlebag is a direct correspondence,” I said. Twilight Sparkle nodded in agreement. “But why did its contents not get changed?”
“Two possibilities come to mind,” said Twilight Sparkle. “One, the magic of this portal saw one item, your ‘backpack’, and not ‘a backpack, two books, papers, and so forth’. Two, the material of your backpack offered protection against the magic. Do you know what it was made of?”
“I don’t know, probably something synthetic.” I prodded the saddlebags, which looked like they were made of canvas. “Not like these saddlebags. But the color was the same, gray with black trim.”
My stomach growled, more urgently this time. “I’m enjoying this conversation, but I really need to get something to eat.”
“My suggestion would be to head to Sugarcube Corner. When you leave the library, turn right, and walk down the road. You’re looking for the building that resembles a gingerbread house. They have the best baked goods.”
“Can you take me there?” I asked.
“Well, I did promise the princess a more detailed letter, so I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. If you get lost, just ask anypony for directions. Oh, and would you leave your two books behind? I’d like to refer to them.”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
Twilight Sparkle pounced on the books with an eagerness I’ve never felt as a student. Meanwhile, I donned my now lighter saddlebags, and left the library.
The streets of Ponyville were a lot less busy than they were when I arrived. I guessed it was near dinnertime. Sugarcube Corner wasn’t hard to find. I had noticed the building on my arrival to town. The Swiss or German style architecture, combined with the omnipresent thatch roofs, was what reminded me of Old Europe.
The building was quiet, and the shutters were closed. But the sign on the door said Open. I pulled it open.
Inside, it was dark. It had to be the right place; I could smell baked goods. “Hello?” I called out hesitantly.
Suddenly, light flooded into the room as lights were illuminated and the shutters flung open. “SURPRISE!” yelled dozens of ponies. I was. Everywhere I saw colorful balloons, colorful cakes, colorful streamers, and of course colorful ponies. A pink pony, with a poofy mane of a color that I think Crayola called hot magenta, bounded up to me, blowing one of those paper horns in my face. *FWEEEEEE*
“Welcome to your surprise party! Were you surprised? Because if you weren’t surprised, then this wouldn’t be a surprise party, which would surprise me, but then it would be a surprise party again, and surprise or no surprise, this party is all about YOU!!! You’re new to Ponyville, and that surprised me, so of course I needed a surprise party to welcome you, and so I say welcome to you! I’m Pinkie Pie!”
I don’t think the hyperactive mare took a single breath in the middle of that diatribe. As for me, I took several steps backwards, trying to reestablish some semblance of personal space, a process that failed when I backed into the wall of the bakery.
“You must be hungry! Cake? Pie? Cupcake? Bonbons? Chocolate covered fruit? Chocolate covered cake? Chocolate covered chocolate?” Her forelegs moved so fast I couldn’t keep track of all the foods she offered me. They all sounded great, but it’s not like I could have grabbed any of them, with how fast she was moving. “Ooh! Can’t forget this!” In an instant, the pink pony put a paper party hat on my head. Then, she dashed into the kitchen, and returned, riding a frightening contraption.
My mouth hung open as I stared into a giant cannon. Was this the ignoble end to my life? Pinkie Pie pulled a cord, and with a pop, confetti shot out, followed by… a perfectly decorated cake? Somehow, I caught the still-warm cake in my hooves. It was already threatening to collapse, so I took a huge bite. It was delicious. I consumed the rest of the cake in two more bites. By this time, Pinkie Pie was bouncing around the room, simultaneously greeting the other guests and attending to the party’s details.
I needed something to wash down the super sweet pastry. I headed over to a table with a punch bowl. I grabbed the ladle in my mouth and poured a cup of the fruity beverage, filling the goblet to the brim. Then I remembered I had to grab it without hands. My hooves worked before, so I tried to take hold of the goblet. So far, so good. I lifted the goblet to my mouth, tilted it awkwardly, and ended up pouring a few sweet drops into my mouth. The rest, unfortunately, flowed over my lip and onto the floor.
I felt foolish. My feeling wasn’t improved by the sharp laughter of the pony next to me. It was Pinkie Pie. She laughed for no more than a second, then stuck a hoof over her mouth to stop her laughing. Pinkie Pie had a look of shock on her face.
Recovering her happy exterior, she grabbed herself a goblet of punch and held it aloft. “Everypony,” she shouted, “I declare this punch good enough to wear!” She then dumped the contents over her head, coloring her mane with streaks of purple. Joyous laughter filled the bakery. “But it’s even better to drink!” Nobody was looking at me and my mess, so I felt a lot better. A few seconds later, Pinkie Pie returned from the back, and placed a container of straws next to the punch.
Pinkie Pie set the needle on a record, using a gramophone straight out of the… actually, I have no idea when people still used gramophones. Music filled the room. I glanced at the impressive spread. Between the cakes and candies and decorations, she must have spent hundreds of dollars, for a party for a complete stranger. This generosity was completely alien to me, but in a good way.
With a now drinkable goblet of punch in hoof, I mingled with the crowd. Between the music (nothing I recognized) and the talking of the crowd, it was hard to actually hear anyone. I shook a lot of hooves, shared smiles, and despite being unable to converse, I felt more welcome than I could remember feeling in a long time. I could get used to this.
The party slowed down after an hour or two. I noticed the sun was setting outside. Then it got completely dark, as my eyes were covered by some pony’s hooves. “Guess who?” said Pinkie Pie. She didn’t even give me a chance to guess before she uncovered my eyes and started bouncing around me.
“This is the end of the surprise party, but I’ve also put together a not surprise party. It’s over at the Carrots’ barn! Normally, the not surprise party would happen here, but Mr. and Mrs. Cake have the two cutest little foals, and it needs to be super duper quiet so they can get their sleep and grow up to be healthy and happy ponies! So are you coming? Huh? Huh?”
“Sure. Sounds fun! Lead the way,” I said.
The whole way to the second party, Pinkie Pie described it in her excited manner. “There’s going to me MORE food and MORE punch and MORE sweets and MORE music, and there’s going to be dancing and we’re going to dance until we can’t move any more, which will be awkward, because we won’t be in our own beds, but we’re going to do it ANYWAY!”
“When you bake, just how much of the sugar ends up in your mouth instead of in the mixing bowl?” I finally had to ask.
“One for me, one for the bowl. One for me, one for the bowl. Two for me, one for the bowl. Three for me, one for the bowl. Five for me, one for the bowl.” She happily counted off her Fibonacci sugar high the rest of the way to the barn.
It appeared that Carrot was the name of a farmer or a farming family, and I spied carrots growing in the outlying fields. There were a few other crops, hard to place in the dim twilight, but I was quite familiar with carrots, having picked them as a child from my parent’s home garden. The Carrots’ barn was unoccupied by animals; it smelled only of hay. Since there probably wasn’t a convention center in Ponyville, a barn like this was the perfect place for a small town party.
The barn was lit by lanterns, and decorated similarly to the bakery. I now noticed the balloons were arranged in trios that mimicked the mark on Pinkie Pie’s flank. Rather than a gramophone, I saw a deejay booth, with a dual turntable setup. Incongruously, these record players looked modern, more like the one on the stereo in my parents’ basement. The deejay, a white unicorn wearing rose-colored sunglasses, was queuing up a pair of records.
Before long, the crowd of ponies was dancing to the music. Again, it wasn’t music I recognized from home, just piano-based instrumentals with a driving beat. But everyone enjoyed it. Now, the mechanics of ponies dancing is hard to even describe, let alone do, but I made my best effort to dance.
I took a break to get some more punch and a snack. A red pegasus was over by the snack table; she was consuming pastries at a frightening pace. I don’t remember having seen her earlier; I think I would have remembered that mane, white and black and pink in a “punk” style. “So, uh, what’s good?” I asked her.
I don’t think she had heard me approach. She turned her head, her eyes wide, an apple fritter hanging out of her mouth. Then she bolted. For some reason, I chased after her, out the door of the barn, and into the clear, moonlit night. I was mentally kicking myself for my stupidity. She could just fly away. But she didn’t.
“Look, I just want to talk!” I shouted to her. Was that a guitar on her flank? “You like rock and roll? I like rock and roll!” My God, that was a stupid thing to say.
But it worked. She slowed to a canter, then stopped. “No, I don’t. Rock and roll is a bloated, stinking corpse! Only the punk rockers are keeping the original spirit of rock and roll alive.” She was certainly passionate about music. My own musical tastes can be described as “whatever I like”; in any case, what I liked wasn’t even enough to fill my iPod.
With the little I knew about popular music, I had to fake it. “So, what bands do you like?” I asked.
“The Pistols, the Ramones, the Damned, the Clash… but I’ll listen to any band. If you have a message and you’re not afraid to say it, I want to hear it.”
“Wait, those bands exist here?” I asked.
The pegasus clutched her head. “I don’t even know where here is!”
“I think here is called Equestria. But tell me, where were you before you came here?”
“Manhattan,” she said, sighing.
“Wait, as in New York City? In the United States?” I responded excitedly.
“How did you know that?” she asked.
“This morning, I was in the United States, too.”
“Then why aren’t you freaking out?” she yelled.
“I did. Then I tried to wake up. Since that didn’t work, I’ve been trying to find a way home.” She looked a lot more uncomfortable than I did. “I’m John,” I said, extending a hoof.
She tentatively touched her hoof to mine. “Bobbie,” she offered.
“Well, Bobbie, let’s just sit down, listen to some music from home, and talk.” She sat down, looking a little better. “What were you doing before you came here?”
“I was at a show. Max’s. Between sets, I went to the restroom, opened the stall door, saw a bright light, and then I woke up here. I wasn’t even drinking, I swear! Some yellow pegasus saw me, shrieked, and ran off.”
“Something like that happened with me, except I was outside at the time, and it was a blue pegasus who found me.” I reached into my saddlebag and pulled out my iPod.
Her eyes brightened. “Is that a Walkman? Because I just traded for some great live performances. I got Devo, and Television, a real classic show.” She reached into her own saddlebags, and pulled out some cassettes, blank with hand-written sleeves.
Cassettes? Walkman? “Say, what day was it when you left Manhattan?” I asked.
“October 25th. No, wait, it was after midnight, so the 26th,” she corrected herself
“What year?” I asked.
She looked at me funny. “1980.”
“I don’t know how to say this, Bobbie. We kind of look like the same age and all, but I wasn’t even born in 1980.” I showed her the iPod. “But at least we have better ways to listen to music in the present day.” I offered her one of the ear buds, and she held it to her equine ear. I selected an album, and pressed play. Bobbie heard Green Day’s American Idiot for the first time.
“Is that what you call punk? Way too commercial,” she scoffed. After a little while, she backtracked. “But there’s something there. The attitude, the message.”
Before the song even finished, though, she passed back the ear bud, and stood up. “I’ve got to go,” she said.
“Wait!” I called. “Where are you staying?”
“That’s not important,” she said. “I’ve stayed on who knows how many couches, cots, and floors. I can take care of myself. Right now, I’m just some yahoo that frightens the locals. I only came into town looking for something to eat. I got that, so I’m going.”
I stood up, but that only made her run away.
As much fun as the party was, I wanted to talk to Twilight Sparkle about this new visitor. Not surprisingly, she was studying when I returned to the library. She was going over my two textbooks, comparing them to other books from her library.
“Twilight Sparkle! I met someone at the party!” I said excitedly.
“That’s wonderful!” Twilight Sparkle responded. “Oh. Do you need to see the Your Body And You book?”
I flushed. My entire muzzle must have been bright red at that moment. “No, I didn’t mean that!” I sputtered. “I met someone, and I think she’s also from the human world.”
Twilight’s expression turned deadly serious. “Your arrival could be explained as a random happening in a world blessed with an abundance of magic. Two similar events happening at the same time can only be explained by deliberate action. Where is she?”
“I don’t know. She ran off. I think she had a bad encounter with one of the locals, and she’s more than a little freaked.”
“First thing tomorrow, we need to find her,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Please excuse me, John. I must go inform the Princess of this new development.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.017 seconds
Total duration
1,067 users online
1,533,327 hits today, 1,960,719 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Wow this is really good. It doesn't follow the overused plots that a lot of HiE stories have. The fact that there are other humans than just the main character is very interesting (Having them from different times makes it even better!).
The sentence structure you used is also very good. About how much preparation did you put into making this story?
I can't wait to see where this goes. Keep writing these and I would LOVE to keep on reading them.
So far, this story is a 10/10.
Good job so far. You've kept it entertaining and humorous. I really liked the opening misdirection on which fandom the protagonist was expecting. Makes me wonder if the other visitor was a fan of some other realm as well.
Certainly a new take on introducing humans to Equestria. Look forward to seeing more.
Will he be taken to Zecora to learn potion brewing? Will there be a roundup of strange pony visitors? Will Rainbow Dash get a chance to put that straight jacket on somepony? Enquiring minds want to know!
444106 For preparation, it started with the idea. So I know the ending, the who and why and how, but the journey to the end is still a work in progress.
445547 Oh nais. Well it is a great story, keep it up!
Well, this is a definitely different HiE where there's not only two humans, but one of them was brought to Equestria at the advent of the 80's. That should create an interesting cultural clash once the two former humans meet again. Or when and if more similarly displaced humans are discovered.
Bum bum BUM.
More humans
True genius, if there's one thing I like, it's a good plot twist....... In writing terms that is.
448088 I have noticed a certain theme to HIE stories. So, of course, I wholeheartedly embraced them in writing that first chapter.
Oh Twilight, don't pretend that you learn spells solely to actually get any use out of them. *gestures towards the moustache-growing spell, then realizes that it would have solved a problem they'd had in the premiere in a way that admittedly would have resulted in Nightmare Moon winning*
Pinkie Pie was depicted really well here. Here dialogue was accurate without relying on cliches from the show. She deflected negative attention and subtly solved the problem.
Only potential criticism is that John reacted to the party by partaking and going along with it, but he never really spent much time questioning the circumstance behind the party or his opinions on it.
DJ is an acronym for {disc jockey} so it is spelled with capital letters rather than as a word.
So far, the story is very well written, and also unique with no reliance on common cliches.