The wrong Equestria

by knownforit

Only the grass is greener

"You really buy into that isekai shit, don't you?" Myles is clearly doing his best to keep his expression impartial, but it's obvious he was barely holding back uproarious laughter. I roll my eyes and wave him off, opting to look over the forest around us instead of his stupid scrunched up face.

The bright orange and blue enigma to my right who's called Elliot makes a strange jerking motion with his arms as he tries to get his thoughts into words.

"Come on man, all the religious types here think the same way don't they? Maybe my Japanese ancestors are prophets and the anime tropes are legit. It's a nice thoug-"

"Yeah, yeah you'd think so, you fucking weeb!" Myles accentuates his teasing by running ahead with his arms behind him like Naruto. His stupidly loose high school bookbag bounces around on his ass as he dodges the people ahead of us, disappearing into the crowd.

Elliot sighs and takes a few swigs from his bright red spotlight of a drink bottle. As much of a goofy cunt Myles is, I can't help but agree with him whenever he pokes holes at how annoyingly bright Elliot's equipment is. He'd always say, 'We get it bro, you've always been a hiker! No need to swing your bright orange hiker dick in everyone's non-hiker faces!' I crack a smile at his childishness.

Elliot spits out his words like angry bullets. "I always tell him you can't be a fuckin' weeb if you're literally Japanese, too bad the guy is a hate crime walking around on two legs. Never listens to the China man." I choke on the red bull half way down my throat and stumble over a rock mid-stride, crashing into the person in front of us.

"Hey watch it, asshole!" I stabilize myself and move back next to Elliot. I bite back a sarcastic response since well, everyone here is guaranteed to be the loosest loose cannon to ever be called a wild card. Turns out when a large stretch of forest in the vague shape of a triangle suddenly makes people disappear at super high rates, all the crazies come out of the woodworks to stroll around in it.

I mean, plenty of people think it's pure coincidence like the Bermuda triangle or some shit, but they never found the bodies of the literal hundred and counting people that went missing in as few as three months. Rangers wanted to cordon the whole area off from the public, but it's not like they can just ban people from walking around in an entire national park.

So here I am for the second day in a row, hiking around with two questionably sane individuals trying to make ourselves disappear. My bet's on Isekai shit, Myles is literally suicidal and Elliot no shit said he wants to hike in a different dimension. Out of all three of us Elliot weirds me out the most, guy has a brightly colored brand anywhere he can fit it. Stickers, patches and key rings, he's like a nascar driver.

My ruminations are interrupted by the familiarly nasally voice of Myles returning from his autistic adventure.

"Yo there's some bullshit going on up ahead, girl there said her friend literally just disappeared in front of her. Says she has video evidence, too bad there's too many assholes tryna see it at once, though." Elliot looks just as skeptical as I feel excited.

"Video evidence? Surely she'll post it online soon enough, then?" Myles groans and grabs Elliot by his comically oversized backpack and guides him up through the brightly colored mass of people in front of us. Today's group is smaller than usual, maybe sixty people all up. Having so many hikers move through the trails has really done a number on it too, litter and bottles strewn about the once pristine setting.

I follow my two companions until we push our way up to a tightly packed conglomeration of heads gathered around a single phone. I manage to position my eye between two dude's sweat stained hats to see what's going on with the footage.

The video is shaky, a college age girl dressed in cheap looking hiking gear is smiling, spinning around and generally goofing off in front of the camera. The view pans to the right, showing off another girl who's walking along somberly, eyes looking at the ground. The person holding the camera playfully pushes her shoulder, but just as she looks up with an annoyed expression she disappears.

One second she looks like she's about to yell at her friends shove, the next there's an empty space. I can't hear the audio too well, but I can definitely make out the tail end of Myles yelling at Elliot for being a weeb. This is real, the audio checks out. The dozen or so people who could actually see the footage gasp and move out of the way, mumbling their theories to each other as they shuffle off down the track.

I hear an exaggerated laugh to my left and a hand claps down on my shoulder. Myles's face is red, usually a bad omen that he's in one of his more eccentric moods. His free hand forms into a finger gat pointing at my face as his voice rattles off a mile a minute.

"Good fuckin' shit man! You gonna shoot up all the aliens once you disappear Mr. military man!? I'm sure the chaotic gods of Cthulu are gonna shit bricks at your scary assault rifle!" His hand slides off my shoulder and toward my rifle, I turn away so that he can't reach it.

"Don't want you blowing your brains out just yet, Myles." I raise an eyebrow to appear joking, but my tone shows I'm being serious. It's a little disconcerting knowing your new friend is already set on suicide, although I can't take the high ground since I'm hiking for the same result, just with a different theory.

Myles steps back and looks around with a devilish grin, probably looking to jump onto Elliot's back and see how long he can hold on before he's thrown off. Pretty hilarious that the asian is the only guy in our trio who actually breaks six foot, everything inside the land based sequel to the Bermuda triangle is fucking weird I swear.

"Hey, hey Elliot! You think Gordo here is gonna kill all the aliens!?" The heavy footfalls of Elliot manage to pierce the cacophony of excited conversation around us as he strides over. He's trying to look annoyed, but I can tell he finds Myles funny no matter how hard he doesn't want to. His face shifts to me as he looks me over as if I were some scientific specimen.

"Hmm, if we run into a resonance cascade I'm going to be the first one who goes to Gordan for help. Unlike you, he actually brought useful equipment with him." Myles shrugs as he pulls his ragged looking pack off his back, holding it before us as if it holds the key to eternal life.

"Excuuuuuuuse me yellow man, it's called ultra light hiking. I am not poor or unprepared. I am efficient, thank you very much." Myles looks pleased with his casual racism and excuse for only bringing three packets of doritos and a water bottle. The guy isn't really too wrong, he didn't plan on going anywhere if he did disappear, his logic is disturbing but checks out I suppose.

Elliot snorts and flips him off before turning to plod further down the track. Myles grins like a Cheshire cat and leaps onto the bright orange and blue backpack with his hands latched around Elliot's neck.

"Gotcha asshole!" Elliot spins around, slapping at Myles's head to get him off. I giggle like an idiot at the display and step forward, locking Elliot's legs in place with my arms so Myles can nooky the crap out of the elite hikers messy hair. As Elliot tries to step forward he realizes too late his legs are constricted and he pitches forward like a water tower being demolished.

A hundred and twenty kilo's of eastern muscle and gear slam into the rough dirt in a low cry of anger.

The hum of the crowd stops immediately, now replaced by rustling leaves and bird songs. I pull myself from the two wrestling morons and pat the dirt off my pants.

Oh fuck.

"Get off me you little demon!" I hear the sounds of Myles being flung around, but still managing to cling on like a rabies infested Chihuahua. I crouch down, eyes scanning our surroundings as I take my rifle off my back and chamber a round. I clear my throat loudly to get their attention.

"Yo guys-"

"Your soul is mine china man!" I tear my eyes away from our surroundings to see Myles's struggling form compacted up into a human cube in Elliot's arms. As usual, the big man has won the test of strength.

"Elliot." He takes his attention off of the twisting, groaning man in his grasp and looks to me, his eyebrows shooting up when he notices the rifle is no longer on my back.

I use my left arm to gesture around me. "We did it." His face is at first confused, he's still breathing heavily with sweat running down his face. But quickly his eyes widen as he realizes our surroundings have changed and the other people are gone. Myles ceases his struggling as he notices Elliot is no longer resisting.

Myles rolls out of Elliot's lap and stands up, looking around with a sudden horrified expression, his face going a little pale. Elliot stands up next to Myles and puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey man." Myles looks up to Elliot, his eyes watering at the realization that no, he isn't dead. I sigh and tear my focus from the gut wrenching display in front of me and back to the much greener, denser and cleaner forest surrounding us.

I hear Myles sobbing behind me, his voice is muffled as he mumbles to no one in particular. I cringe at the idea of him actually feeling any serious emotion, the guy makes us laugh so much I keep forgetting why he came here in the first place. Now he's just learnt he's going to keep on existing, even if he's been mystically teleported somewhere.

Mystically teleported somewhere, the thought fills me with excitement and my mind kicks back into action. I check that I do actually have a round chambered, I do. I close the dust cover and make sure I'm on safe. I keep my head on a swivel, making sure no alien bastards sneak up on me or my friends and suck out their brains.

That's another thing, I'm here with other people. I was sure I'd be alone, but I have Elliot and Myles. I'm not sure whether I should smile or frown, so my face does a weird little spasm in its confusion. If this place is hostile we're going to have to look after Myles. The guy doesn't even have his pack anymore since he took it off before we were teleported.

Elliot has a suppressed .22 pistol for hunting, but that's not going to work for self defense unless the aliens are the size of cats. I have my AR and my p226, but I can't just give my handgun to Myles, what if he shoots himself. My grip on the rifle tightens as I swear under my breath. This is going to be fucking difficult without our third guy being capable of shooting or storing shit.

I look back at the two men, Elliot looks embarrassed as hell with Myles's face buried in his chest. We make eye contact and he makes an expression saying 'I don't know what to do'

"Hey Elliot, what kind of experience do you have using handguns?" His face goes from embarrassed to proud in an instant.

"First place in two states using .22" I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I'm not a shit shot, but hearing Elliot is that skilled brings me comfort. Guy is like that one kid from school who can't fail at anything he does and pulls motivation from absolutely everything. I'm jealous.

Myles on the other hand... He takes a few shaky steps back, eyes locked on the grass at his feet. His face is red, but he's no longer crying. He looks over to me, eyes lingering on the handgun on my hip.

My face contorts into a snarl, I feel disgusted. Am I actually considering letting him shoot himself? We all knew what he wanted, he didn't get it. I look over to Elliot, he looks just as uncomfortable as I am. I look back to Myles. He stares into my eyes, trying to find an answer to what he should do inside my mind.

I rub the bridge of my nose and sigh.

Myles's voice is hoarse and scratchy. "Don't worry guys, let's just go. I'm not holding us up." I go to question if he's sure but stop my idiocy. I stand up and spin around, trying to see if there's any specific direction we should head.

"Magnetic north has shifted entirely." I look over to Elliot who has a compass in the palm of his left hand and a now evidently useless map in his right. He comes to the same conclusion I did and scrunches the map into a ball and sticks it into a zipper pocket attached to the hip belt of his backpack. Still useful as tinder.

I open my mouth to query the superior navigator where we should go, but he begins marching off before I can ask. Myles and I exchange a glance before we move into a single file formation behind our de-facto leader. I opt to be in the back to make sure no monster can grab Myles out from behind us without our notice.

I keep my rifle at low ready as we trudge through what can be best described as a rainforest. The canopy isn't that high up, but there's vines, thick bushes and everything is blindingly green. Elliot has his handgun drawn, using it to pick through branches and vines in front of our path. I don't know what we might stumble upon, but I imagine we're looking for a river.

Every time my vision comes back to my two allies I can't help but cringe. Myles is wearing a grey hoodie and black pants, but Elliot is a beacon of orange a helicopter could pick out through the god damn leaves above us. I just hope the aliens here are either friendly or blind.

Hell, maybe we're still on Earth. I got myself all caught up in the hype online of this being some kind of dimensional hop, it's totally plausible we just turned up in some obscure jungle in Africa. I stifle a chuckle at the thought of fending off ancient spear wielding tribes who never made contact with modern humanity.

Now that I'm actually here, I'm glad I didn't cave in to the weird looks and annoyed grunts I got for my seven magazines, rifle, sidearm and camouflage clothing while on the trail. I felt like an idiot walking around like some soldier while everyone else was wearing bright colors. Hell, now I wish I brought even more stuff. Oh well, we're not going back now are we.

The idea that I'm never going to return to Earth doesn't bother me, I came out here because I wanted to leave Earth in the first place. I'm nervous to find out what's waiting for me here, but whatever it is I'll be the first human to see it, unlike my old planet where everything was already discovered.

"Hold up." Elliot's voice is quiet, but it still cuts through the soft rustle of wind on branches around us. I stop moving and kneel down, looking down the optic into the bushes behind us. I can faintly hear running water, we must have found that river. I hear the harsh rustle of someone moving through a bush. Half a minute of anxious waiting later Elliot returns.

"Alright, we're good." I follow Myles through the bush and emerge into a long clearing, left to right a clear river flows through the forest. It's just wide enough that I couldn't jump across, although Elliot probably could.

I trudge up to the river's edge, Elliot is using his expensive as fuck filters to pump a few bags full of clean water from the stream. I opt to cover him, eyes scanning across the tree line. If I did have to shoot something, everything for a dozen kilometers is gonna know and we'd have to book it out of here. Myles doesn't look as depressed as he did before, but he definitely isn't in his usual joking mood as he simply watches Elliot work.

Taking a quick moment to look up, the sky looks normal. When we teleported the time was about 2pm, now it looks more like midday with the sun directly overhead. Weird thing is, usually my eyes sting like hell if I even have the sun in my vision, now I can look pretty close to it and it barely hurts at all. Is it just the shock of the situation or is this sun weaker?

A firm hand comes down on my shoulder, I look back to see Elliot's finished.

Is this guy gonna watch over me with nothing but his dinky little pistol? "You want my rifle while I filter?" Elliot looks apprehensive.

"Later, I don't know how it works." Fair enough, .22 man.

I drop down to one knee and get out the stuff I need to refill my clean water supplies. Reaching into the water to fill up a small bottle, I hear a hitching gasp behind me. I freeze and turn my head behind me.

Myles's voice is awestruck. "Holy shit." I follow his dumb look of shock to the sky.

Horses. Flying. Horses.

Five of them, circling us maybe two hundred meters up. I look to Elliot, he has his handgun trained vaguely in their direction with a very concerned look on his face.

"Hey, are they hostile?" Elliot keeps his eyes on the flying horses and shrugs. What the fuck is going on? I race to get my pack back on and locked into place. As soon as I'm done the sound of a very large bird soaring through the air grows in volume. I look up to see the winged horses spiraling down to meet us.

Myles has apparently been knocked out of his reverie by their approach. "They're my little ponies!" What the fuck did he just call them? He smiles and takes a few steps back to give the ponies more landing room. Elliot puts his handgun into its holster and I keep my left hand off the rifle as it lays across my chest. Four of the ponies land in front of us in a neat line, one of them is nowhere to be seen.

I furrow my brows at that development, clearly it went off to notify its master that we're here. They're wearing grey armor and their coats are all different colors. In this dimension apparently ponies can be any goddamn color of the rainbow.

"Hello there travelers!" My jaw drops. One of the ponies talked. It speaks English. Myles jumps up and down with his hands in the air as if he were a child on Christmas morning.

"Oh my god! I'm in Equestria!" Myles ceases his leaping and falls to the ground, his face coming down to the grass and kissing it as if it were blessed earth. He's actually crying now, openly sobbing with no shame.

"Oh thank you god! Thank you so much!" Me and Elliot exchange worried glances.

One of the ponies giggles at the young man's idiotic display, it sounds more feminine then the previous one to make noise. Under the armor though, it's hard to make out gender.

Another pony speaks, his voice incredibly energetic and warm. "We welcome you friendly creatures to Equestria! Follow us down the river to Ponyville!" This guy sounds like he's welcoming customers to a theme park or circus or something. It's too dramatic and impersonal, maybe this is a common occurrence? This could be where everyone goes when they disappear.

As the ponies turn to walk downstream I grab my rifle's handguard with my left hand, one of the ponie's eyes flick down to it with a worried look. As soon as he looks at it he quickly turns away and follows his buddies. Myles is already up and happily following the quartet of sentient farm animals, Elliot and I aren't so sure.

I study his face, trying to understand what he's thinking. Easier just to ask him I suppose."You think this is a good i-"

"Nope."

"Oh."

Elliot looks at his feet before turning to follow Myles and his four pony buddies. I guess he has a point, not like we have a better idea on what to do next. I move up next to Elliot, Myles is happily conversing with one of the guards about Equestria. I have no fucking idea what is going on or why Myles seems to know more than we do.

My mind goes back to when one of the ponies looked at my rifle. I didn't see the face of a confused medieval guard looking upon future weaponry, I saw recognition. That's not a bad thing necessarily, the bad part is that he looked away as soon as he recognized the rifle. He didn't want me to know he knew what I had. My chest tightens as the anxiety of this weird situation grows.

"Is Twilight in Ponyville right now? Can I meet her!?" Myles's voice is nigh on painful in its high pitched reverence.

"Oh yes of course she is! I'm sure she'll be very interested in new specimens coming out of the Everfree." Twilight? Specimens? Everfree?

"Awesome! What about the other elements? Oh can we meet Celestia?" One of the ponies jerks mid step at the end of Myles's question. It's the same dude who acted weird with my gun. I find myself shaking my head without realizing.

Something pokes my side, I look to my right to see Elliot staring at me with an intense expression. He shakes his head before looking ahead again. I control myself as I copy his act that everything is fine.

He felt it too, these ponies are not what they seem. They called us travelers and acted as though humans are normal to see around here, then they say we're 'new specimens' as if they've never seen us. One of them must be new, he's fucked up twice now, once with my gun and once with a physical reaction to the name 'Celestia' Is that their leader or something?

I'm putting the pieces together in my mind already. I don't like what I'm seeing.

"Elliot, Gordan!" I snap out of the haze and almost bump into Myles who has apparently stopped walking. I take a step back so I'm not almost hugging him. His eyes are wide, he's still crying a little. He looks downright manic and it's making me feel very uncomfortable. I slowly take a few more steps back to escape his radiating madness.

"You guys, we get to go to a welcome to Ponyville Pinkie Pie party! We ended up in literal heaven!" I try to cock a single eyebrow in confusion, but my anxiety forces both my brows up. Neither me nor Elliot respond, we're too busy looking past him.

The four winged and armored ponies are looking back at us. They're holding expressions of genuine happiness at meeting us, except one. The rookie isn't doing it correctly, he's blatantly scared. Scared of us? Or is he scared of what's going to happen to us?

The rookie's sweating bullets as he looks between Elliot and I with a forced, shaking smile.

"What?" Myles is knocked out of his happy gibbering by our lack of response. My hands are shaking with how tightly I'm squeezing my AR. I'm confident I could take on these four ponies, they don't even have weapons. But I still don't know if they're actually hostile, I'm just getting incredibly disconcerting vibes.

"What's the holdup, gentlecolts?" The leader is good at his job, the rookie however...

The rookie looks up.

I look up.

My heart leaps into my throat, it feels like a hot wave of pure adrenaline has been dumped into every muscle. My ears ring and I can feel my pulse rising exponentially.

A dozen ponies are circling us, they're all holding a glass bottle of glowing blue liquid. All at once, they drop the glasses.

"Grenade!" My voice tears my throat as I turn and sprint as fast as I can into the forest, I zip past Elliot who's still stuck looking at the incoming objects.

I hear the leader pony yelling, I leap through the brush in the tree line and cut up my arms and face on sharp branches. I fall to the ground but immediately pick myself up and keep running further into the forest. I hear more yelling followed by the sound of glass smashing along with a loud hissing noise. I stop running, spin down to one knee, flick to single shot and focus the red dot on the bush I leapt through.

The rifle is shaking and jittering as I take in heaving breaths. I hear screaming, I don't know if it's the ponies or one of my friends. I hear leaves rustling to my left so I spin around, laying my optic where the threat lies.

A bright orange and blue creature runs past a tree and keeps going deeper into the undergrowth. Elliot's safe, but what about Myles?

I consider for a second simply following Elliot to safety, but I'd be haunted by the guilt forever I'm sure of it. I stand up and look to the dense tree line, the shouts have stopped. Suddenly an unarmored bright blue pony leaps through the leaves and lands in an undignified heap with legs poking in every direction.

Another wave of adrenaline is dumped into my body and I line up the optic on the ponie's head, finger moving to the trigger.

From the direction of the river I hear him. "Gordan!" Relief flows through me, my trigger finger relaxing as I hold off from executing the intruder.

"Myles get the fuck over here right now!" I'm exposing my position to the ponies, but Myles is okay so he can still get to me. I focus my eyes on the fumbling pony half a dozen meters away from me, no reason to kill it right now.

The cute little blue pony looks up to me with massive watery eyes, a few bleeding cuts across it's body from where it got cut up by the branches. It opens its mouth and speaks.

"Gordan, I'm okay." My finger moves back to the trigger. The pony Myles shakes violently under my critical gaze.

Elliot's panicked voice echoes from far behind me, he's calling for Myles and I. A glowing red circle with a small red dot in the center lies over the childish face of what used to be my friend.

"I-it's me, Gordan. Please don't shoot." I take a deep breath, my decision coming to me from the depths of my mind in that very moment.

I stride forward, bringing Myles over my left shoulder. I spin around and sprint as hard as I can toward Elliot's voice. I hear someone else yelling behind me, multiple footfalls as they pursue me through the spiky and dense brush.

Myles's pony voice sounds like an eight year old as he sobs and hiccups. "G-Gordan please don't r-run Gordan!" I keep my eyes opened wide, I see bright orange shining through some heavy vines ahead of me.

"Elliot they're behind me!" After I'm finished getting whipped by the vines I throw Myles to the ground. A rapid series of sharp cracks make my ears sting in pain as I turn around to face my pursuers.

I bring my rifle up, positioning the red circle over the body of a charging, armored pony. Before I can pull the trigger it falls down to a .22 shot from Elliot, it's body spasming and kicking at nothing. There's only three of them lying underneath the vines in front of us. Which one is missing?

I look to Elliot, he's hovering over Myles with his handgun coming to bear.

"No!" Elliot looks at me, confused.

"E-Elliot why would you k-kill somepony!? W-why!?" The little blue pony is now covering its face with its front hooves and crying it's eyes out at the prospect of us defending ourselves.

Elliot doubles over and throws up right next to Myles which only intensifies his violent sobbing.

Scooping up Myles is more difficult this time as he's actively trying to escape my grasp, constantly yelling incoherent refusals all the while. I take a few steeling breaths, shutting down my emotions and most of my thoughts. I nudge Elliot's shoulder with the bottom of my rifle's magazine to bring him out of his dazed state.

I don't hear any pony trying to chase us down in the brush, but I can hear heavy wings beating through the air above us. We're still in deep fucking shit.

My right hand is free to use my rifle, so I point it straight up at the source of the wing beating above the canopy and let off half a dozen rounds. Once I'm done shooting, nothing falls through the leaves. My ears ringing is all I can hear. God I'm an idiot, I'm not going to be able to hear correctly for hours now.

I feel Elliot tapping my right arm, I look to him and see he's already off in a light jog. I move my legs and follow him further into the forest, hopefully further away from these demonic fucking ponies. After only a minute I'm forced to turn my rifle onto safe and use both hands to hold Myles as he tries his very best to squirm out of my grip. My ears are still ringing, but I can vaguely hear the world around me now.

Myles knew where we were, apparently this place is called Equestria. Maybe he can tell us what the fuck is going on right now. Once we find somewhere safe of course.