Kelly Mathews, Equestria's Landstalker

by Leafwebs

Chapter 0_The Amended Contract - Hostile Welcome

Author's Note:

This a rewrite chapter after a review by the Displaced group admin indicted that the story as it was turned out to be too rushed to make sense. I'm attempting to slow my pacing down and better show the personal interactions between my characters here by breaking the previous chapters into arcs.
Will likely be released after arc completion instead of chapter completion. Old Chapters will become obsolete.

Chapter 0_The Amended Contract – Hostile Welcome

‘None of us can predict how the world will change without excepting that we all play a part in shaping that future change.’ Kelly Mathews ponders staring out a car window.

‘Thank you Deloris LeClaire. Your actions may have taken the world by surprise, but you inspired people whose goals meshed in such a way that I was able to come home.’ Kelly continues to ponder shedding a tear. ‘My hope… my will to live almost died when the Merchant crossed my path that day, but I was saved by the people who used your discovery both for ill and benefit of us humans and the ones they touched. I owe you all.’

It all started for Kelly when she attended the Silicon Glades convention sponsored by Open MMO to get a programmer’s open source coding package. In spite of threats to the convention, Kelly and her sister Erin attended the event. After finding a simply dressed balding merchant, Kelly would have change forced upon her three days ago. All she remembers…

“No you don’t!” a man’s voice yells causing Kelly to turn around with her hand closing tight around the dog’s head shaped whistle.

“This isn’t… No, NO, NOOOO…” Kelly screams hearing her voice shifting to become deeper and feeling a hot summer wind replace the cool air conditioning. Gone was the convention hall as it morphed to a grassy field; the disorientation of the visual shift being just enough for her to misjudge her footing and fall when the level floor became uneven dirt and grass.

“That bastard… ” Kelly screams crying as she looks at the now heavier dog head whistle in her hand stop glowing.

Kelly’s whole body felt heavier with the odd sensations that her whole sense of balance was wrong. Missing were her breasts likely due to the transformation the same as her voice. Her ears came to a sharp point. Her hair was cut short and spiky, but even without a mirror she could tell it was not anime crazy. Her musculature was certainly more athletic than she was before, making her wonder if going to a gym would yielded the same results.

Gazing at her clothing she could see just how much better the suit’s construction now was. From it weight to the stitching this was no mere costume now. The green coat and pants part seemed to be a silk lined padded leather suit with a sophisticated illusory pine tree cameo markings giving the suit its coloration. The leather breast plate itself was composed of three layers, two of tanned leather fastened to a layer of wood by brass studs. The boots again seemed to be made of tanned leather like the breast plate.

Kelly’s heart hitched as she contemplated the last part of the outfit that set quietly in its scabbard. A faint ringing was made by the slender, 18 inch long, steel blade as it was shakily drawn.

Tears hit the finely polished rapier as newly changed forest elf considers running the blade’s edge across his wrists. It is only the sight of train tracks that stills the blade in the elf’s hand as the presence of trains meant civilization. Putting the rapier away Nigel the forest elf, formally Kelly Mathews; stands up begins walking towards the tracks veering off into the direction of the rising sun.

“Maybe I can at least make a classy entrance.” Nigel pouts, stopping briefly to look in the grass below and recover the Friday doll he made. “The prick couldn’t even spring for my traveling companion.”

The path along the tracks would be easy going thanks to the lack of hills and presence of the occasional tree to provide shade for the new forest elf.

A little ways away a life and death chase was now entering the plains as a deer bolts from the underbrush.

The doe’s muscles pumped as she tried to put distance from the forest she exited mere heart beats ago. Her ears catch the telltale snarl of her pursuer a poison sumac covered Timber wolf entering the plains behind her, its own natural camouflage failing it outside its natural habitat.

This only prompts the doe to pick up speed risking a fatal stumble as the obstacles of the forest were no longer present to aid the deer.

The Timber wolf had lost the easy kill in the forest when an errant shadow fell upon the deer giving away his approach. The glow of his eyes had also not helped matters.

‘Show me that you deserve to survive.’ The Timber wolf thought with excitement keeping his eyes locked on the fleeing doe as she zigzags left to avoid a tree and giving a vocal growling bark.

It should not have happened that a predator who was so focused on his kill would become so distracted that he would lose his kill, but the improbable happened.

The Timber wolf snarls in feral rage whipping his body to face right and brace for savage fight that would not happen. His nose had caught the scent of something alien and threatening.

Shaking his head free of his foolishness, the Timber wolf curses his self control as the doe now was certainly much too far away to catch. His body, still bristling in anticipation to defend his prey from another; was sprouting fresh thorns that would help savage the hapless competitor in this battle for dominance.

No challenger was in sight and no roar of challenge to be heard, but something had been here. In the tall grass the Timber wolf found ground that was recently disturbed by a large creature and some tracks heading away toward the train line, its scent tainting the earth like a corruption.

‘Unnatural thing…’ The Timber wolf snarled in revulsion glaring off in the tracks direction.

The scent was very fresh and the ground even retained a subtle heat difference making the Timber wolf adopt a stalking pose as he once again sets out on a hunt. His ears and eyes worked overtime to catch any odd sound or out of place movement as he silently sprinted toward the scent’s source.

‘This is not prey…’ The Timber wolf thought to himself, wary of an ambush.

The Sun was reaching its mid-day peak when the Timber wolf finally laid eyes on the strange beast dressed like the forest, the wind whipping its scent over to the wolf's hiding spot. The wolf’s ears directed at the thing.

“Maple Trees with taps in them. Someone must be near who put these up.” Nigel smiled saying approaching one of the trees with stainless steel bucket hanging off it.

A short distance away a train’s steam whistle blares catching Nigel’s attention causing him to sprint off in the direction of the noise. A pair of glowing eyes nearing the spot Nigel was just at.

‘It races into the ponies den alone sickly as it is…’ The bristling Timber wolf muses glancing at the fleeing beast before giving the maple tap a long sniff. With a deep snarl and the baring of teeth the Timber wolf cuts into the forest thinking. ‘Unnatural magic beast… must observe from afar then tell alpha.’

As he reaches the crest of a hill, Nigel quickly jumps to land on a low building’s roof to avoid smacking into its wall the noise of the train covering his landing. Across from the roof was a train station where an old fashioned red steam engine train was pulling up with two cars attached to it.

As the train unloads, Nigel notices that the passengers and townsmen were mostly pastel ponies. The crowd was very orderly for what looked like a full town welcome for these visitors.

“It’s worse than I thought…” a masculine voice mutters from below Nigel’s perch.

Turning his gaze back to the train, Nigel sees a wealthy family departs only to be met by a crowd of local ponies. The foals, fillies by the looks of their tattered attire; were pulled to the side and were forced to watch as their parents had a collar with emerald stone on it forced on their necks. A series of eerie green runes flickered into being then faded when the collar was attached. The father succeeds in throwing one of the locals in an effort to resist but stops cold, his collar glowing; at the raised hoof of another local bearing a glowing armlet.

“I must warn Princess Luna…” the same voice from bellow mutters.

Nigel slowly crawls over to the edge to get a look at the mystery stallion witness. As soon as the head of the blond mane white stallion became visible, the Friday doll falls from Nigel’s pocket upsetting the junk pile the stallion was hiding behind and creating a lot of noise.

The spying stallion vanishes in a flash of light accompanied by a brief scream. The local with the magic armlet turns toward the noise of the ally as a few collars in the crowd took on the frightening glow.

“Crap…” Nigel blurts out as he makes an undignified fall from the roof as it partially collapses under his weight to hit the previously disturbed junk pile stunning him.

“Stranger, this is a ponies only town.” A female voice scolds then roughly clasps a collar around Nigel’s neck. “This should help you fit in!”

Nigel’s vision was blurry from the fall so he couldn’t make out the three ponies as pain ripped thru his body. This was worse than what he felt from the Merchant’s transformation as limbs shifted form. It only took mere moments to blackout from the pain.

Nigel’s pained scream carried some distance into the forest to startle the hidden Timber wolf for a second time after the teleportation flash halted his advance on the pony village. A unicorn pony by the glow of his horn had gotten between the Timber wolf and the village.

The wolf watched the fidgeting, nervous prey cast glances everywhere as a pair of objects next to it dimly glowed.

‘Bold beast, flush the prey from their den and in their panic you hunt them.’ The Timber wolf thought as he watched the blond mane white stallion suddenly shrink into a hiding posture as more glows approached.

The Timber wolf could only watch with growing unease as the new glows revealed more ponies that moved in an unnerving calm way toward the concealed and fearful stallion. Something was not right, but the Timber wolf had no time to ponder this as the motion of the glowing objects becoming one and disappear next to the stallion alerted the new ponies.

A brief and futile fight ensues resulting in the stallion getting subdued. As the stallion gets carried off by the other ponies, the hidden Timber wolf sees a brown rat pop out from under a bush in the underbrush. The thing stunk of magic and the wolf considered killing it after trapping its tail with a paw.

‘The alpha must hear about these ponies unsettling behavior.’ The Timber wolf huffs thinking and releasing the rat to silently return to his den. ‘Unnatural Predators and weird prey is a bad sign for pack.’