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Watch How Far I Can Slide

Moonshine Gravy
A Sequel to Ponky’s Overappreciated “Wrong Equestria”

Part I
Watch How Far I Can Slide

I paced back and forth in front of my laptop, muttering the same sentence to myself over and over and over again. As soon as I rubbed that lamp, I knew I was gonna get nervous. If my wish wasn’t worded exactly right, I might end up in as sticky a situation as I had the day before.

Yes, it had only been one day since my trip to HotDiggedyDemon’s macabre vision of Equestria. I probably should have waited a little longer before trying my luck in achieving every brony’s dream again, but I was just too impatient. The opportunity to transport myself to Ponyville was sitting on my desk in the form of an orangey-purple, completely unpowered lava lamp. One does not simply ignore the lamp.

That’s not to say I went to sleep, woke up, and started pacing. After Spike’s green flame transported me back to my room and I showered the poor dragon’s remnants off my skin, I went on a long walk to try to clear my head, singing Elphaba’s first line in “When I Meet the Wizard” every couple of steps. I had always wondered how it would feel to have something impossible happen. I wondered how I would deal with it, how it would change me. Now that I had actually experienced something that definitely fell under the category of “impossible”, all I wanted to do was forget.

Well, that’s not exactly true. It was an incredible experience, however bizarre and depressing, and I didn’t want it to disappear from my memory. But I certainly wasn’t going to brag about it to anyone, especially my fellow bronies. They would either think I was insane or steal my lava lamp, and I still had two wishes left on that thing.

My walk turned out to be very long. I guess I had a lot to think about. Somehow I ended up at Target, which is ridiculously far away from my house, and I decided to check their toy aisle just in case Rarity had finally come into stock. I had seriously been looking for the final member of the Mane Six to complete my figurine collection for, like, two months. My search that evening was mostly an absentminded one: I trudged to the back of the store and idly scanned over the pink aisle without much hope of making such a rare discovery. ()

Lo and behold, there she was: hanging beneath a yellow and white tag that read $5.01. I gaped at the box, hardly believing my eyes. Was glorious hallucination an aftereffect of green-flame-teleportation, or was my long-awaited prize finally here before my eyes for just a Lincoln and a Lincoln?

With shaking hands, I reached out and took up the tiny box. Within it, a tiny Rarity greeted me with shining sapphire eyes, her violet mane swirling down her neck, her triple-diamond Cutie Mark boasting her stylish talents. With her came some kind of pink bag (which I was going to throw away) and a blue comb thingy, which would probably come in handy when I found time to style her mane according to the show.

I really wanted to raise the box above my head all Link-status and scream out holy praises to the Cosmic Matriarch. But there were two fat ladies in the pink aisle with me, so I resorted to a shrill giggle and scampered to the checkout aisle.

Rarity was finally mine! It was THE. BEST. POSSBILE. THING! I ripped the box open on my way out the door and lovingly caressed her mane all the way home, skipping and laughing as often as my body would allow. By the time I was back in my bedroom, the sun had completely set and I was rightfully exhausted, considering the highs and lows I had encountered over the last six hours. Placing Rarity among her friends all standing around my laptop, I dropped into bed and fell asleep, dreaming of yellow chainsaws with giant, senseless screws.

Next morning I woke up, changed my clothes, stared at the lava lamp for forty two seconds, and started pacing. Within my head, I carefully constructed the perfect wish that was sure to send me to the right Equestria. I mumbled it under my breath several times, hoping desperately I wouldn’t mess it up in the moment and give the genie a way to send me back to .MOVille.

Finally I took three deep, calming breaths (thank you, Modern Family) and grabbed the glass cone with both hands. I rubbed its side with my open palm and cringed in expectation of the genie’s appearance. Even being so prepared, I yelped when he materialized three feet in front of me with zero warning.

“Can’t you sound a trumpet first or something?” I asked with a frown.

“I told you last time, kid: no conversations,” he droned.

“Yeah, right! You owe me an apology!”

One corner of his mouth raised in a bemused smirk. “An apology?”

“Yeah!” I stood up and crossed my arms. “You sent me to the wrong Equestria. I understand that my wish wasn’t very specific, but the least you could have done was send me to… I don’t know… Generation Three or something! I almost died in there!” My eyes started stinging. “And Spike did die!”

“Boo hoo,” the genie replied dryly. “Did you have another wish in mind or are you just gonna whine?”

“This isn’t whining. It’s complaining,” I clarified, sitting back down on the edge of my bed and running through my wish a few more times in my head.

“Well?” he encouraged.

I sucked in a deep breath and said: “I wish I was in Equestria exactly as it appears at the end of the second season of the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic created by Lauren Faust!”

Yes! I pumped my fist several times. Not a single mistake. Rehearsal pays off, kids. Practice your piano.

Unnervingly, the genie’s smirk hadn’t gone away. “Exactly as it appears?” he repeated.

“Exactly as it appears,” I confirmed with a decisive nod.

“You got it,” he sneered, and snapped his fingers. Once again, my bedroom warped and spun in the corners of my vision. Everything went black for a moment, and then suddenly there was color. A lot of color. I shielded my eyes from the blinding scene, already starting to grin like mad. Had it worked? Was I there?

I peeked through my fingers and whooped at the top of my lungs. Once again, I was at the top of a huge green hill, but instead of a burning town being ravaged by two mammoth monsters, my eyesight was filled with the panoramic orchards of Sweet Apple Acres.

“I did it!” I cried out, skipping down the hill and throwing my arms around the nearest apple tree. “I really did it! I’m here!”

Everything was perfect: the solid outlines around every object, the giant white sun blazing high in the sky, the marshmallowy clouds drifting low to the ground, the apple-shaped treetops… there was no doubt in my mind that this indeed was the Equestria of Lauren Faust’s imagination.

“Now to find some ponies,” I said to myself, rubbing my hands together excitedly. I wondered how they would react to seeing a human. The .MOV world was familiar with my kind and had hardly reacted at all. Would the real ponies panic, or would they be as curious and accepting as I desperately hoped?

I weaved through the thousands and thousands of trees with my eyes peeled for a big red barn. Finally I spotted it toward my front and right; what’s more, I noticed something orange under a big brown hat trotting in front of it.

“Oh, thank Celestia,” I sighed with relief. I had been a little worried that the genie would take the word “exactly” too seriously and put me right at the end of Season 2, when all the ponies I knew and loved were still in Canterlot after the wedding. As I drew nearer and nearer to the barn, however, Applejack herself became clearer in my eyes. It was really her, whistling happily, going about her chores on Sweet Apple Acres, rocking her Stetson like a boss! My legs picked up speed with every second and I suddenly found myself bursting through the tree line, holding my arms out to my sides for a hug.

“Applejack!” I called to her, sprinting the last hundred metres.

She turned to me with a startled expression, reaching up for her hat as her lips started to move. To my horror, they didn’t quite match what she said:

“Moonshine gravy!”

I stopped dead in my tracks and let my arms flop to my sides.

“What?” I squeaked.

As she answered, I watched her mouth closely. Sure enough, the words I heard didn’t quite sync with its movement.

“Apple Bloom!” she called out. “Have you and yer only two friends been pullin’ creatures from other dimensions again?” She whirled her head to the left and right, searching for her sister.

Something must have caught in my brain gears, because I literally stopped thinking for way longer than should be possible.

“Apple Bloom? Consarn that little muckraker and her Snooty Snarky Vaders! They’re always frat’n’izin’ with Pinkie Pie and gettin’ inta all kinds o’ trouble. That orange brat’s just a-thirstin’ fer knowledge, and Rarity’s sister gives me with the willies.”

I perked up. “Sweetie Bot?” I asked excitedly, and my brain lurched back into full operation. With it came a depressing chain of vocalized thoughts.

“WHAT!? No! This isn’t right! How could I be sent here? My wish was perfect! I didn’t make a single mistake! I specifically wished to be sent to Equestria, exactly as it appears at the end of My Little—”

I cut myself off with a rattling gasp. My hands found their way up to cover my gaping mouth, because gaping (like yawning) is pretty rude.

“Exactly as it appears,” I repeated in a devastated whisper.

Well, that was it, then. The genie had indeed sent me to a world that looked exactly the same as the Hub’s best TV show (and, IMO, TV’s best TV show). Unfortunately, it neither sounded nor functioned the same as FiM at all.

“Dag nabbit,” I grumbled. “I’m in the wrong freakin’ Equestria. Again.”

“Dag nabbit?” Applejack repeated thoughtfully, putting a hoof to her chin. “Hmm. I like that.”

“I bet you do.”

I sighed despondently. There was nothing left to do but find Spike, go home, and try it one more time. Maybe I’d have to write out a paragraph-long wish to make sure I closed up any loopholes the genie could use to torment me.

“Which way to Ponyville?” I asked Applejack.

“Whoa there, stranger. I ain’t lettin’ ya get away that easy,” she said, crouching into a position I fearfully deemed “aggressive”.

“Please, I just want to go home!” I said, holding my hands at arm’s length to prevent her. The last thing I wanted was to show up in the real Equestria bloodied and bruised by a war ~~criminal~~ veteran.

“Where’s home, exactly?” she questioned.

“I don’t know. Far away.” I gestured at the sky. “All I need to do is find Twilight’s library. Spike can send me back.”

Applejack snickered. “Spike? What’s he s’posed to do, whine you all the way home?”

Her boisterous laughter left a bad taste in my mouth. I frowned.

“I don’t know why you guys are always so mean to Spike,” I grumbled. “He’s just a poor baby dragon in a world full of ponies who hate him, struggling to find where he belongs.”

“I know right where he belongs: a cage at the zoo!” She laughed harder. “It’s too bad he’s such a good little cleaner, or Twilight would’a’ sent him away to be killed by his own kind years ago.”

Just the thought of this world’s Spike dying, too, was enough to send me over the edge.

“Shut up!” I yelled at her. “Stop being so mean to Spike behind his back!”

Applejack’s eyes widened. “Biscuits and gravy, yer right! Ah oughtta be insultin’ him right to his face at the Cult meetin’ this afternoon!”

“This afternoon?” I asked, stealing a glance at the giant Sun directly overhead. “As in… this afternoon, this afternoon?”

“’Friad I cain’t stay and chat, Kreacher,” she said, hurrying down a dirt path away from the barn. “I’m gonna be late!”

I’m sure she meant “creature,” but the way she used it as my name made me mentally spell it like the house elf.

But that didn’t matter: she was headed for a Cult meeting, which undoubtedly meant the spa, which was undoubtedly near the library, wherein Spike undoubtedly dwelt! Without a doubt, I sprinted after Applejack, struggling to keep up with a four-legged animal.

And when I say “struggling”, I mean “Nice try, kid, but that ain’t happening.” I ran my hardest after her, but Applejack disappeared beyond my vision in a cloud of swirly dust. I never realized how fast the ponies were before, nor did I realize how far away Sweet Apple Acres was from Ponyville. I thought it was just a casual trot’s distance, but it turned out to be just as far as my house was from Target. By the time I panted over a hill and finally saw the town of my dreams, more than thirty minutes had passed.

“Ah, horseapples,” I wheezed, clutching my knees and breathing deeply at the top of the hill. “No wonder none of the ponies are fat.”

After a conclusively loud “Phew!” I jogged into the town. The glances I received from background ponies were surprisingly unsurprised. They didn’t seem alarmed at all that a big, ugly bipedal was trudging through their village. (Okay, fine, I’m not that big or ugly. Still, they should have at least been confused, right?)

I started to think that maybe this world already knew about humans, too. After all, if Sherclop Pones’ redubs were to be believed, these ponies were familiar with iPods, Gremlins, Star Trek, and the internet itself. Perhaps I wasn’t as much of an oddity to their eyes as I’d assumed.

Still, Applejack thought I was from another dimension, whatever that meant. Actually, the more I thought about it, the more that made perfect sense. Maybe all these warped versions of Equestria existed in their own special dimensions, and the genie was just having a gay old time shipping me here, there, and everywhere but the one place I wanted to go. Sigh.

Meh, whatever. Philosophizing wasn’t going to do me any good. I just needed to find Spike. Luckily, the library was just as easy to spot in this world as it had been in .MOV’s. Its leafy branches towered over its nearest buildings and I made my focused way through Ponyville to get there.

Well… sort of focused. The further into the city I walked, the more I slowed down and admired my surroundings. As long as nopony was talking, everything about it was perfect. It really did look exactly like the Ponyville I’d come to know and love through multiple sessions of Netflix-Pony-Marathons. I couldn’t even remember the last time I used Netflix for anything besides (re)watching Friendship is Magic.

Season 3 needs to hurry up. F’real.

Suddenly I found myself passing the spa. And as Luck would have it (or Fate, or the genie, or the Cosmic Matriarch, or… I dunno… Nietzsche), four very recognizable ponies skip-to-my-loo’d out the front door. I squealed a little in spite of myself. Sure, they weren’t the “real” Applejack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, and Fluttershy, but they sure as Tartarus looked like ‘em. Yeah, they’re rude and anti-knowledge and nihilistic and borderline insane, but they’re also ridiculously cute.

“Hiii, giiirls!” I crooned.

“That’s the one I was tellin’ ya about, Twilight,” Applejack done said. “He came runnin’ outta my orchards like a parasprite outta hell.”

“Whoa! I’d like to think I was a little happier than something from hell, thank you very much.”

“Good heavens, what a bizarre creature!” said the most beautiful unicorn in the universe.

Boy, lemme tell ya, Jenny nailed that Rarity voice. Even though it wasn’t Tabitha St. Germain’s unmistakable, fabulous tambour, this version of Rarity—despite suffering from PDDD and dedicating her life to a more-than-questionable Lord—still made my fingers all tingly and sent my heart aflutter.

“It looks like one of those ghastly primates that ambushed us in the war!” she continued.

That one took me a minute.

“Fluttershy, you know all about demons and otherworldly monsters. Do you recognize it?”

Ghastly primates… ambushed us… hmmmm…

“I know what it is, girls! That’s a human. They’re featured prominently in some of my favorite movies.”

Ambushed in a war… and I look like one…

“Girls, um… I’m glad you’re curious about interdimensional monstrosities, but… we don’t want to get distracted like last year. Let’s just focus on the task at hoof… er, if that’s all right with you, I mean…”

Click.

“Oh!” I epiphany’d, startling the gathered mares. “I get it! Gorilla warfare! Heheheh…”

My chuckling faded away while all four ponies just stared at me. I’m not a believer in “awkward situations”—only awkward people—but those few moments of silence were about as close as it’s gotten for me.

“Uh…” My eyes met Twilight’s glossy, purple pair. “Where’s Spike?”

That seemed to break the tension pretty well. Each pony reacted negatively to the mere mention of his name: Twilight slumped, Rarity rolled her eyes, Applejack snorted harshly, and Fluttershy scowled.

“He was sick with the flu and couldn’t blow any fire past his boiling mucous,” Twilight answered, “so I sent him to deliver my latest friendship report to Princess Celestia on foot.”

“What!?” I panicked, clutching the back of my hair. “When? How long will he be gone?”

“It was probably about a week ago,” she said. “I don’t know what’s taking him so long.”

The image of a pale baby dragon corpse curled up at the bottom of Canterlot’s mountain slithered through my mind’s eye and set my rage on fire.

“You sent a sick baby dragon all by himself?” I yelled.

“Well, it’s certainly not her fault that he fell ill,” Rarity defended. I was surprised she took a stand. I was under the impression that none of these ponies liked Twilight very much. Maybe her hatred of Spike outweighed her dislike of Twilight.

“Uggh!” I groaned, glaring daggers at the group. “Well, I’m gonna go find him, just in case any of you saints wanna come.”

“Sorry, but we’re a little busy right now,” Fluttershy seethed.

“Don’t say ‘sorry’ if you don’t mean it,” I snapped, spinning about and marching in the direction of Canterlot. I was gonna find Spike if it was the last thing I did. And it very likely may have been the last thing I did, seeing as if I didn’t find him I’d be stuck in a world of witchcraft for the rest of my life with nothing to eat but apples and hay. And that would get old real fast.

I heard the Disciples of Smooze grumble amongst themselves and trot away to attend unknown business behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I was determined to find, and very possibly rescue, Spike, nurse him back to health, and hope to Celestia that he had the same tricks up his snout as the last Spike I met.

Unfortunately, I didn’t end up making it very far on my journey. In fact, by the time I has passed through two cobblestone intersections, my quest was rudely and quite painfully interrupted with three shouts and a bang.

“Look out!”

“Apples!”

“To reduce the risk of injury, assume a new position immediately!”

BANG!

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