I laugh now
“Jack.”
“Hnngh. Five minutes.”
“Jack, you have to wake up now.”
Curtains were pulled and sunlight filled the room. Such awful brightness was thoroughly unwelcome. Jack, groaning, rolled onto his front and shoved his face into the pillows. This helped.
“I know I know, five minutes,” he said, muffled. Twilight, being the one trying to get him out of bed, came up beside him and frowned hard. He couldn’t see this, but he was could guess she was doing it. He was pretty sure he could actually feel it prickling his skin.
“You said that five minutes ago,” he heard her say and this was so patently false he immediately turned his head to glare at her. How dare she lie to his face like that!
“That’s bullshit, I haven’t -,” he yawned, having to stop. “Oh man, I’m such a sleepy boy.”
Looking at Twilight through sleepy, bleary eyes he saw no trace of sympathy. So he closed his eyes and turned the other way, which was also luckily the way without the window and its horrendous, beautiful, gorgeous sunshine and light.
“Five minutes. For real. Just gimme a minute,” he said, yawning again and pulling the covers up tighter around him.
Without a word Twilight trotted out of the room and Jack allowed himself a minor thrill of victory as his mind started winding down again. He was already slipping back into something of a pleasant doze when there came the sound of hooves returning, the tinkle of magic and the rather quieter noise of something sloshing.
Being half-asleep, Jack did not pay too much attention to these things, and so when Twilight dumped a bucket of water over him it came as something of a shock. All sleepiness vanished immediately. There was now only moisture.
With a sigh Jack rolled and sat up, the beds creaking beneath him. Peeling sopping duvet away from himself with distaste he gave Twilight an especially level look.
“There’s a good reason you did that, right?” He asked.
“You told me to.”
Jack could not remember having done this.
“I did?”
“Yes. You said that if you didn’t get up and out of bed I was to dump a bucket of water on you. You were very, very specific about it being a bucket. It was my choice to make it cold water.”
A little bit was coming back to him now, about him having asked her to do it. Difficult to hold it against her when it had been her idea to start with. He couldn’t even really blame her for the coldness of the water. For one thing he probably would have done the same, for another he couldn’t really feel the cold anyway.
“Nice touch. Ice cubes and everything?”
“Yep,” Twilight said. Jack felt around the bed and found one, holding it up before him between forefinger and thumb. He gave it a squeeze and it cracked into fragments which, sticking to his fingers, started to melt. He brushed his hand on the duvet.
“Very nice. Well I’m definitely awake now, thank you.”
“You do actually have to get out of the bed though.”
“Ugh, fine. Jesus Christ…” Jack grumbled, swinging his legs out and - with a grunt - actually getting out of the bed though.
Or beds, rather.
Jack had three beds to sleep across now, being as how he was just too big to comfortably fit across two. He’d also had to have additional duvets, but that was a given.
Whatever unusual effect the roughing it in Equestria was having on Jack had not stopped on him leaving the Dragon Lands, though being provided with actual, prepared food - as opposed to rocks or whatever couldn’t get out of the way in time - seemed to slow the effect.
Or so he said at least, and so others tended to agree. Jack was continuing to grow, that much couldn’t be stopped it seemed, though now so slowly it was barely noticeable. So he said.
Though if you didn’t talk to Jack your opinion might have differed.
Twilight was still worried, of course, though whenever Jack asked her if she was she lied and said she wasn’t. Until she had answers she didn’t want to tell him otherwise. Twilight figured that if she told him she was worried he might start worrying too, and might do something unreasonable as a result. This wasn’t unwarranted on her part, she felt.
When Jack stretched - which he did on getting out of the beds - the amount he’d grown by became even more obvious. It made Twilight a little nervous. Made her worry something bad might be happening to him and that she might not have any idea what to do about it. Again, not that she’d tell him that.
Rolling his neck and cracking his knuckles he looked down at her just in time for her look of concern to disappear and a look of neutrality to return. He thought nothing of it.
“I didn’t tell you to do anything else unpleasant to me, did I?” Jack asked.
“You don’t remember?” Twilight asked, this time only internally concerned. Jack shrugged and shook his head, again yawning. He really was a sleepy boy.
“No, and I’m pretty sure I would, I just don’t really trust myself.”
“The bucket was it. You said you wanted to make sure you had as much day as possible to start making it up to everypony.”
This Jack considered and, on reflection, accepted. He nodded to himself.
“Yes, yes I remember that part. Ah! It’s all coming back to me, yes. Making amends, mending fences. Heh, amending fences... “
He wasn’t sure why that was so amusing to him. Probably just it’s punny nature. Jack was a cunt for a good pun, after all, which rather made Equestria an endlessly amusing place to be.
“But first a shower, I think. Can you give me five minutes?” He asked. The room he was in - his old rooms, the ones he’d been in after arrival and until his ‘episode’ - had en suite facilities. Very fancy. All crystal. The magic in some of the fixtures didn’t really work when he used them now, but that was fine. The water still ran so Jack wasn’t too fussed if he had to shower in the dark sometimes. It didn’t happen often.
“You’re very fond of five minutes, aren’t you?” Twilight asked, eyebrow raised. Jack raised an eyebrow right back at her.
“It’s a very useful little chunk of time! Or would you prefer I not shower?”
“Go, go. I’ll deal with this,” she said, gesturing towards the damp bedding.
“Ah, thank you kindly Twi, you’re a pal.”
Jack had to bend a little to give her mane a ruffle but he did it anyway because the occasion called for it. Twilight did her best to fend him off but her heart wasn’t in it and if either of them noticed that she was actually pushing into his hand as much as trying to push it away neither of them felt the need to point it out.
While Jack went off to shower Twilight did indeed busy herself with the bedding. Stripping three wet beds was not anyone’s ideas of a good time, but she could do magic so it worked out alright.
In the event, his shower took less than five minutes.
Jack emerged, still not completely dry, vigorously toweling himself off. So vigorously Twilight had to look away.
“Alright, I’m back and I’m reformed and I’m contrite - how do I go about actually demonstrating this to everyone? I have some ideas, but you probably have better ones because, well, I’m me and you’re you,” he said, dropping the towel and putting his hands on his hips.
“I’m sure your ideas are fine, Jack,” Twilight said warmly, taking great pains to keep her eyes above his waist. He looked down at her, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Twilight cleared her throat.
“...I did have some ideas of my own though,” she said, a hoof rubbing against her foreleg a little sheepishly. Jack grinned.
“That’s more like it, knew there was a reason I kept you around,” he said and Twilight rolled her eyes but found herself starting to grin as well.
“I put together a loose plan for you to-” She started to say only for Jack to interrupt:
“You’ve written out a whole plan? Does it have bullet points?”
Twilight bridled and whatever grin had been building went away again.
“I didn’t say I wrote it out! I mean, I have, but you shouldn’t assume. Besides, bullet points are useful! Do you have a problem with bullet points?”
“No no, I fully respect their usage, I’m sure they’re well-utilized in your plan. Integral, one could say.”
She could tell he was making fun of her but could also tell he wasn’t wholly serious in doing so and, besides, rising to it would only make it worse. Instead of making an issue of it Twilight took a breath, straightened out her mane and said:
“You are under no obligation to follow my carefully-prepared plan that I went to the trouble of putting together to help you.”
“Oh, I’m totally going to. I bet it’s real good, actually. Honest! Sorry about the bullet points thing. Really, hit me with the plan, I want to do this right,” Jack said. Twilight eyed him for signs of duplicity or piss-taking but he seemed serious enough. This eyeing up Jack noticed.
“I can tell you’re trying to work out if I’m fucking with you or not but honestly, Twilight, I’m super-grateful for your help and, well, your everything actually. Even for the bucket. Just point me in a direction and tell me what I got to do and I’ll do it. You got this down pat, I bet.”
His earnest sincerity put a smile on Twilight’s face. A smile that very quickly disappeared again when he added:
“Will there be a pillory? Because I could handle that, easy.”
“Jack…” she said, warningly.
“It was a joke! A joke!” He said.
Both of them counted off the beats in their heads, knowing that more was coming. Jack couldn’t help himself, and Twilight knew it.
“...doubt you guys have a human-sized one anyway,” he said. She sighed.
“And there it is. Got that out your system?”
“Yes,” Jack said, nodding emphatically.
“Good, now, I’m not going to show you the plan - I was going to, but now I’m not - because you’ll just make fun of it,” Twilight said.
Jack could not argue with this.
“That’s fair,” he said.
“So for now I’ll just take you through it. I think probably the ones you need to make it up to most are the Apples,” Twilight said and Jack spluttered.
“What? Why? What did I ever do to them?”
“Stole from them. Several times. A lot of times, actually.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah. That. I forgot about that. Sorry.”
“It’s not really me you have to apologise to.”
“Well yeah, but still. I’ll say sorry to them, too, but I’m sorry for being a disappointment to you, too, you know.”
He genuinely was sorry, too. At the time, when he’d been doing the actual stealing he’d been able to avoid the guilt of stealing by just avoiding thinking about it altogether as he desperately tried (and failed) to get drunk. Now though there was no avoiding facts, and the fact was that seeing Twilight’s face on reminding him of his theft made him feel like shit.
Which, he imagined, was but a prelude to how he’d feel when he came around to making his actual apology to the actual people he actually stole from.
Jack squirmed at the very thought.
“You’re not a disappointment, Jack, or a burden or anything bad. You just made some rather odd choices and might have done some things that might have upset some ponies. But you’re going to make it better, aren’t you?”
“Damn straight I am,” he said, pounding a fist into his palm.
“Glad to hear it! First though - the first bullet point, if you will - is clothes.”
“Clothes?”
“Yes. Remember when you used to wear those? I think it’d be good for you to be in actual clothes again rather than a curtain or bits of wood or nothing. I think it’d make you feel better, too.”
“You guys are naked all the time. Most of the time, at least,” Jack said, somewhat defensively.
“You’re human, and from what you told me clothes are normal for you. When you first arrived you wore clothes all the time and seemed pretty happy. I’m not saying having clothes again is going to suddenly, magically make you happier or anything like that, but it couldn’t hurt. Might put you in a slightly better headspace.”
As though noticing for the first time that he’d been having this conversation stark-bollock naked Jack looked down at himself and frowned.
“Guess you have a point…”
He kept looking down at himself and the frown deepened.
“I’m a little bigger in the everything since I arrived though. Do I even still have clothes left here?”
Those clothes he had been wearing when he’d run madly in the Everfree for dubious, shortsighted reason had not lasted long amidst the branches and Timberwolf fangs, and he hadn’t arrived with many to start with in the first place.
“You don’t, not really, which is why we are going out,” Twilight said, pointing a triumphant hoof onwards. Jack followed the direction of where she was pointing - towards a wall - and didn’t really get it. At least not immediately.
“Out? What - oh, oh I get it. Rarity, right? Nifty thinking there, Twilight. You sure she’s up for that?”
“She’s made things for you before,” Twilight pointed out.
“True, but that was before I went off the deep end.”
“The whole point of this is that we’re moving past that, Jack, remember? I’m your friend, Rarity’s your friend, we’re all friends and friends help one another out. Just...put on a sheet and let’s go.”
“Righto, chief,” Jack said, giving a small salute and fumbling around for something to wrap around his lower portions. This led to him taking down one of the curtains, much to Twilight’s dismay, but she decided to just let it slide. There hadn’t really been anything else to hand, anyway.
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Yes! I can't wait for more.
The madness, it never ends.
He isn't going to get any better, is he? Please tell me he gets better. Growing hugely warped and staying that way cannot be good for you.
9524073
I mean, if you think about it "better" and "worse" are somewhat subjective.
At the least, what I can tell you is that he doesn't die.
was there ever a proper description of what he looks like? bigger and more muscular I'd imagine but on what level? does he look like he could be a world champion body builder here on earth or is he within the realms of fantasy at this point and if so to what extent?
9524684
It is deliberately unclear. However you'd like to imagine 'bigger' will probably fit.
9524712
Ah, so he is now sporting a 1 metre pompadour now? Good to know.
9525021
Yes, but not where you'd expect.
9525029
The real reason Twilight wants to get pants on him.
I think it might be nice if Jack repaid, monetarily, for everything he broke. Have Twilight give him a line of credit to pay everyone else back, and then he works to repay Twilight.
About his physical condition, couldn't they just use a shrinking potion/spell on him to negate the effects of frmmprhph!
*gets taken away by author's SWAT team*
9567136
NO-ONE SAW ANYTHING.
CARRY ON, CITIZENS.
9567169
does not carry on
i thought he was making a penis joke for a second there