• Published 26th Aug 2011
  • 8,167 Views, 254 Comments

Fastest Fall in Equestria - Parchment_Scroll



Rainbow Dash isn't herself lately... literally.

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Mike: I'm Gonna Be

Mike: I was beginning to figure out a bit of what had happened, but I had a long way to go before all the pieces fell into place. Fortunately, I had a lot of help figuring it out.

Fastest Fall in Equestria
I'm Gonna Be

I stared at myself in the mirror provided. My body -- well, not my body, but the body I was in -- was startling. I was sleek, sky blue, and topped with a striped mane in all the colors of the rainbow. No wonder they keep calling me that. I angled myself at the mirror, noticing that this body's tail had the same rainbow coloration as the mane.

"Rainbow Dash," the quiet yellow pegasus said, "are you all right?"

I was staring, I realized. Fascinated with the sleek lines of my borrowed body. I couldn't tear my eyes away. My violet eyes, I realized with a start. The body had its own reflexes. In response to the shock of seeing such an unusual eye color, its wings flared out dramatically. "Wow," I said in a whisper.

"Um..." The pink-maned pegasus poked her head around in front of the mirror. "Rainbow Dash?"

"Gyah!" She'd gotten awfully close while I was distracted. Of course, as soon as I shouted, she vanished behind the mirror again with a squeak. Communicating with this one was going to take some patience, I began to realize.

"Are... are you all right?"

I frowned. "I... frankly, I don't know how to answer that."

"Fluttershy," a voice called out from another room. I recognized the voice as belonging to the purple unicorn pony from earlier. "Is she up?"

"Um... yes," the yellow pegasus -- Fluttershy -- said softly. "Yes," she said a bit louder. "But she's... she's acting odd." Quickly, she turned back to me. "Um. Sorry, I don't mean anything by it, it's just that--" the sentence devolved into incomprehensible squeaking as she became visibly more nervous with each word.

The purple unicorn came back into the room, a fresh ice pack floating in the air beside her head. I could just make out a purple glow around the ice pack, and a similar glow around her horn. I could feel the blood draining from my face as the implications sank in.

"Um... hi?" I said, unsure where to start.

"Hi, Rainbow," the unicorn said. "Let me guess: you were trying a new stunt, and it didn't quite work out?"

"I..."

The unicorn came so close our noses -- muzzles, I guess -- were almost touching. "Look at my horn," she instructed matter-of-factly. She began to sway back and forth. "Hold your head still and follow the tip of my horn with your eyes."

I had difficulty tracking her horn, even though I was staring at it. My head was still pounding, and wave upon wave of nausea swept through me. I couldn't take it anymore, and clenched my eyes shut, fighting off the nausea.

"Bucket," the unicorn said briskly, and I heard the sound of wood scraping across wood.

"Let me guess," I said, still struggling with the urge to vomit. "Concussion?"

"Yes," the unicorn said, exasperated. "And you're lucky it's not worse, Rainbow Dash. I can't stand watching one of my friends taking her life into her own hooves like that. I want you to promise me you'll clear any stunts with me before you try them. Pinkie Pie Swear."

I frowned. "Miss," I said. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"What?"

"I don't know where I am, who you are, or... well, who you think I am."

The nausea faded, and I opened my eyes slowly, just in time to see the horrified looks on the two ponies' faces.

* * * * *

In retrospect, I suppose the reaction my statement triggered was predictable. It would have helped if I'd known who I was speaking to, honestly, but let's face it. If one of your close-knit circle of friends claimed no memory of you after a head trauma, you would probably regard it as a sign of severe brain damage too.

Fluttershy, which I learned was the name of the pale yellow pegasus with the immaculately groomed pink mane and tail, was left to keep me from moving around too much while the unicorn, Twilight, immediately began yanking books off of shelves and tossing them around with reckless abandon.

Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do was move around. Just watching Twilight was making me nauseated.

"No," she muttered, casting aside a book as useless. I barely dodged the heavy tome in time, and as the nausea from said movement drove me back to the bucket to lose what little of my -- or rather, Rainbow Dash's -- lunch I hadn't already purged, I thought about the title: Mental Trauma and You, by Flora Schrie-Boer. Despite the fact I was in some kind of alien world whose main race was, well, ponies, the name seemed familiar.

"Okay! Okay, I think I have it." Twilight was in front of me again, her horn glowing with a gentle purple aura while an open book hovered in front of her with the same lavender glow. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Pony Disorders, the title read. Great, I was going to be diagnosed by an amateur with a copy of the pony DSM-IV. I'd be better off in the hands of one of my fellow students. But they weren't anywhere to be found.

"Okay... Let's see." She flipped rapidly through the pages. "DO YOU KNOW," she said very loudly, slowly, and distinctly, triggering another bout of the dry heaves, "WHERE YOU ARE?"

I tried forcibly holding my head still with my hooves to stop the room from spinning. "Please not so loud. I have a concussion. I am neither deaf nor an idiot."

She chuckled self-consciously, rubbing the back of her head with a hoof. I blinked. How in the heck was that even possible? Equines of all stripes -- speaking of which, I wondered briefly if this world had zebras in it -- should be completely unable to reach the back of their head without some serious contortion, but she was doing it naturally. "Oh. Ehehehe... Sorry. I got a little... excited." She grinned. "I honestly didn't think I'd get to use this book when I ordered it."

I frowned. "I understand," I said, even though I didn't, really. "Just... anyway, no. I have no idea where I am. Although at a guess, I'd have to say... a library?"

Twilight grinned. "Great! Okay, so you retain basic concepts, that's good. At least, I think that's good." She flipped a few more pages. "Do you know who is princess of Equestria right now?"

I frowned. "Princess of what now?"

Twilight's jaw dropped far further than it should be able to. "Equestria." She started flipping through pages again. "Okay, better do this another way. Do you know who you are?"

I nodded, slowly, so as not to trigger another set of the dry heaves -- if you've never had dry heaves, let me just say they're among the worst things you can experience without severe risk to life and limb. "Of course. My name is Michael Alan Davis. I'm twenty-four years old, and a medical student at the University of Texas."

Twilight blinked. "The university of what now?"

"Who?" a voice said from outside of my field of vision. I turned to look, but didn't see anybody, or any ponies, for that matter.

"Michael Alan Davis," I said. "But you can call me Mike."

"Who?" The voice was coming from to my left, somewhere around where a brown bird was sitting on a perch.

"Mike," I said, enunciating very carefully.

The bird turned its head a good hundred degrees to face me, and spoke again. "Who?"

I facepalmed. I was getting into an argument, it turned out, with an owl.

"Ooookay," Twilight said nervously, "Mike, was it?"

I returned my attention to her and nodded slowly. "Yes," I said. "Mike."

"All right... Mike. And... I've never heard of a city called Texas. Although... I don't suppose it's near Appleloosa? Something about the name says Appleloosa to me."

I frowned. That... that was a double pun. A one-word double pun. On the horse breed Appaloosa, with the word "Apple" substituted for the first two syllables. As the name of a place. "Texas," I said, "isn't a city. It's a state."

"I don't follow."

"I live in the city of Austin, in the state of Texas, in the country the United States of America. Barack Obama is President. The year is 2011. It's August. Twentieth, if I remember right."

"Twilight?" The quiet pegasus interrupted. "Does... any of that make sense to you?" She looked at me. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to suggest that you're not making sense, but... I've never heard of any of those places. Not that I'm saying they don't exist, but... That is to say, I mean... I'm sorry?" Her voice got faster, quieter and higher pitched with each word, the final "I'm sorry" so faint and high pitched it was almost impossible to tell they were actually words instead of just a nervous squeak. It was adorable.

Twilight frowned. "President?" She set aside the DSM (DSMP?) and pulled out an atlas. "Can you show me where that is on a map of the world?" she asked, opening the book to the first plate -- a two page map of the globe. The map was similar, but not identical, to Earth.

"How accurate is this map?" I asked.

"Very," Twilight replied.

"Then I'm from right here," I said, indicating a spot with the tip of my hoof. "Just northeast of this... Appleloosa you were talking about earlier."

"That can't be right," Twilight said. "That's buffalo."

"Buffalo's in New York," I said, frowning even more than Twilight. "See? Right here where it... says... Tell me that doesn't say 'Manehattan.'"

"Of course it says Manehattan. That's what the city is called! Manehattan!"

This was going to be exceptionally trying for both of us, I realized. "Manehattan. And I suppose the capitol is called, I don't know, Washingpony or something?"

Twilight let out a frustrated growl. "Rainbow Dash, you know very well the capitol is Canterlot!"

"How many times do I have to say I'm not-- wait." I looked her in the eye as steadily as my blurring vision would allow. "Did you say 'Canterlot'?" I laughed. "Not 'Cametrot'? Or you could go for the double pun and make it 'Canter-trot'." I couldn't take it anymore. "No," I paraphrased, "on second thought, let's not go to Canterlot. It is a silly place."

Twilight frowned. "You are weird," she said, "Rainbow Dash or not."