A Truly, Truly, Truly Outrageous World

by Wing Dancer

Opal, for Harmony...

“But Twilight, you don't know what happened. Who is...”

“...stop ogling him so much Rari...”

“...the spell should have...”

“...um, excuse me, I think he's coming...”

Those and a great many other voices pierced the thick veil of Taric's dark world. The knight felt his head spin, and the throbbing in his forehead was something truly obnoxious. Little by little, he forced his eyelids to open.

At first, the image he saw was blurry. A haze of different colours, some of them forming outlines of certain animals he couldn't name. Blinking a few times sharpened his vision, revealing a bunch of horses standing around him, staring at him intently. Each equine was of a different colour (one of them actually having rainbow coloured hair), with big round eyes focused on Taric.

The knight recognized the unicorn from before – alongside it was yet another horned horse, with a white coat and purple mane formed into something that could be called a hairstyle. Next to them there were two pegasi, another rare type of creature that existed on Runeterra. These horses had smaller wings compared to the ones he recalled from history classes. Could they actually use those to fly?

The last were two regular horses, one of which stood out with a crazy puffy pink mane and something that, should it be a human face, could be considered an ear-to-ear grin.

“He's awake! He's awake!” shouted the pink horse, jumping up and down like a bouncy ball. Her high squeaking voice made Taric's head throb even harder, the pain somehow managing to extend past his forehead, in a cone-like shape.

The knight cautiously raised a hand to rub his temples, but ended up poking himself with a flat hoof. The weird part was that he didn't even touch his face yet.

Upon visual inspection, indeed, the hand-hoof was well in the air, touching something white and long that was aimed at his head. It had a spiral pattern on it, going all the way down and out of view. The object was firm and pressing against it caused a tugging sensation in his skull.

“Sweet diamonds,” uttered Taric in his alien voice, moving his hoof up and down the foreign object on his head. It was connected to his skull. It was in his head. “Call a medic! I have an arrow, or icicle or something that I can't quite describe stuck in my head!”

The horses looked at the knight with raised eyebrows. The man knew that screaming and panicking like a toddler taken away from its mother's breast was undignified. It didn't fit the tough and elusive image he has been building all these years, but for Terra's sake, he had something stuck in his head!

“What's up with him?” asked the cyan horse, pointing a hoof at Taric who by now was fruitlessly trying to grab the offending object on his head with both hooves. “He brain-damaged or something? Can he even understand us?”

“I don't know Rainbow. Please, settle down!” said the purple horse, shooing away Taric's flimsy hooves with her own. “Can you hear us? Can you understand what I'm saying?”

Taric looked over the obviously magical horses and replied: “Yes, I can, now help me get this thing out of my head. If internal bleeding doesn't kill me, head trauma will. And I'm not willing to become First Blood in...this-,” huffed Taric, struggling against the horse who kept his hands at his sides.

“Hey pardner, settle down a little. Twi here is tryin to help ya, ohkay?” spoke the orange horse and leaned over Taric. Only now did the knight notice that the creature had a brown stetson hat on her head. Twisted Fate would be pleased.

Surprisingly, the horse managed to pin down Taric's hands under steel hooves. Now he couldn't even so much as squirm, his vision partly obscured by orange hair.

“Thank you Applejack. But could you please move a little? I need to examine his horn” said the purple unicorn, looking at Taric's head intently.

“Sure thang Twilight. He sure is a squirmy one,” replied the knight's captor, moving a bit to the side, its whole face now in view. The horse had green eyes and Taric could swear it had its hair tied into a ponytail.

“Let's see here,” said 'Twi', drawing her muzzle close to Taric's and squinting. While she poked the object stuck to his head and looked it over, the knight noticed something. These beasts didn't smell as foul as the ones back in Runeterra. He instinctively crumpled his nose when the creature came this close, but when he finally had to take a bit of air in, he felt...shampoo. A nice fragrance, subtle and not too intense, even for his nose. A nose that obscured the bottom of his view and was another point in the agenda of “Figuring out what in Terra is going on here”.

“I'm sorry mister, but there doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with your horn or head. Where does it hurt?” finally spoke up the Twilight, observing Taric's face with a worried stare.

“Horn?” repeated the dazed knight. His horn? What was his horn? Last he checked, there was nothing but perfectly styled hair on his head, and perhaps expertly plucked eyebrows over his baby blue eyes. No objects extruding from his skull whatsoever. “What horn? I don't have a horn.”

“Twilight, I think he's kinda,” said the rainbow coloured one, making a spinning motion near its head with its hoof. “We should call the guards or have him sent to the hospital or something.”

“No!” interrupted the pink horse, bouncing into view and shoving aside the stetson hat wearing horse and the purple unicorn. With ease it embraced Taric's frame and lifted him up into the air. “He's a new pony in town! And the law says that new ponies have to have a welcoming party before anything else!”

“The law? But Pinky!” protested Twilight, picking itself up from the floor with a sour face. “He might be injured, or sick! We don't know who he is! Maybe somepony is looking for him? Look, he looks totally confused. Maybe he has amnesia?”

Indeed, Taric's elongated face did exhibit a certain degree of confusion. Simply put, he was lost. At some point he was even ready to believe this was yet another of Nocturn's tricks, sending him into a nightmarish trance, but this all seemed too tame for the daemon's work. Unless something would pop out of nowhere and attack him with a maw of sharp fangs.

“Pinkie Pie, you know Twilight is right. We need to get him to a hospital,” said a childish voice behind Taric.

As the knight turned his head slightly, still held in place by two pink hooves, the man again questioned whether or not this was Nocturne's work. And if it was, whether the spectre was feeling out of form today or not.

Standing no more than a few feet away was a purple and green dragon-spawn. It was relatively small, but its fangs were quite visible, and the scaly tail looked like a formidable weapon. It wasn't particularly intimidating, but in his current state Taric could probably be beaten in hand-wrestling by an infant. Mainly because he didn't have any digits or a palm. Or a hand, or arm.

A sudden rush of panic made the knight struggle against his captor, the motion surprising the horse who let go of Taric with a scream. The hapless man flailed his hooves around for a split second before landing on the floor with a meaty slap. Everybody in the room cringed and looked away, closing their eyes slightly.

“Oh, my,” silently gasped a yellow Pegasus.

“Stand back gurls, Ah'ma gonna settle 'em down an then we'll decide what to do with 'em” said the orange horse, slowly approaching the Gem Knight.

The man was flimsily trying to grasp the mechanism of standing on four legs that contained more joints than he was used to and ended with inflexible and hard hooves. Each time he had two set on the ground, the others would slip or falter, sending his posterior or face down to the ground with a thud, increasing the knight's frustration and throwing timber to his forest-fire of panic.

“Now pardner, just settle down. Lie down and stop hurtin' yerself, ya hear? We're not gunna hurt ya.” slowly and calmly said the stetson-hat wearing creature.

Taric could only grunt and hiss as he kept picking himself up and falling down, his legs wobbling around and escaping from underneath him. He was so focused on his task he did not notice an extended hoof until it touched his, uh, shoulder.

His body acted before he could register with his eyes or mind what happened. One of his forelegs flew forward, connecting with something soft. As in slow motion, he heard displeased voices and something thud to the floor. As he raised his head, he saw the cyan Pegasus with its wings flared standing over him. It was shouting something and for some reason it turned around.

Last thing Taric saw was a pair of horse frogs closing in on his face with blazing speed. Then the world went black without a sound.

* * *

The first sound that woke the knight up was a steady beeping. It sounded mechanical and was coming from somewhere to the right. After sound, there came light. Taric opened his eyes only to see five horses standing next to him. The rainbow haired one was near a wooden door, looking away, leaning on the frame with its hooves crossed on its chest. It looked kind of bizarre, this human pose.

The knight looked down, his consciousness fishing for the tiny little pieces that were floating around in the void of his head. He was on a bed with green sheets. The side of his face was tender and hurt like hell.

“Girls, I think he's waking up! Finally!” complained the pink horse, its head bobbing up and down with excitement.

“Yes, the doctor said he would be fine, despite somepony trying to send his head to the moon,” said the white unicorn, directing its words to the creature at the door. It merely snarled something inaudible and exited the room, closing the door behind itself with a slam.

“Give it a rest Rarity. She was only tryin' to protect me and you girls. It was all just an unfortunate accident,” calmly concluded the orange horse, smiling slightly at Taric. “I know we were off to a bad start there, pardner. We were kinda all over the place and thang got out of hoof. Sorry fer that.”

Taric sat there quietly, still considering the situation he had found himself in. The possibility of this being an illusion was already out of the question – after such a long time, he would already either be re-summoned or brought back to the real world by allied heroes.

“So, uh, I guess we should introduce ourselves,” continued the horse, seeing how Taric just stared at it with an absent gaze. “Mah name is Applejack. This here is Twilight Sparkle,” said the creature, pointing to the purple unicorn who blushed and plastered a weak smile to its face.

“Yeah. Sorry for dragging you down to Ponyville. I promise I'll fix this soon,” it said, slightly bowing its head and looking away.

“That's Pinkie Pie,” continued the orange one, pointing to the pink bouncing horse who literally exploded with a geyser of words that no sane person could possibly comprehend. The phrases that stood out the most were 'party', 'pony' and 'fun'.

“This here's Rarity,” said the stetson-hat wearing horse, somehow managing to silence its pink friend with a hoof.

“A pleasure to meet you, sir,” graciously said the creature, flipping its hair in a human-like manner and fluttering its long eyelashes.

“And the one who left us and, uh, roughed you up a little, was Rainbow Dash,” finished the orange equine, smiling along with the others at Taric. “So, what's yer name pardner? Where ya come from?”

Taric considered the horses' words. If this was an illusion or trick, he could think of only one hero that could pull this off, and it was LeBlanc. If that was the case, the knight had no other choice but to play along until he would be re-summoned or saved by one of his allies.

“My name, is Taric,” said the man in a calm voice, again noticing how alien it sounded. It was slightly higher than his usual soft tone, reminding him of his pre-adolescent years. “I come from a place not known to Runeterrans, so it matters not.”

“Runeterrans?” asked the Twilight Sparkle, cocking its head. “Who are they? Some ponies from the east?”

“Ponies? Hardly. Runeterrans are the inhabitants of this world. You know, waging wars, doing politics humans and creatures of different shapes and sizes?”

“Umm...I never heard of those before,” said the Sparkle, furrowing its brow, its eyes shifting from left to right like it was reading a book. “What is a hu-mane?”

Taric chuckled. Whatever the sorceress that was maiming his mind was trying, it would not be enough. The Gem Knight would not fall easily for such lame trickery.

“Creatures with two arms and legs, of course. Standing straight, wearing clothes, operating things with...hands,” sighed the knight, displaying his hooves and looking them over from both sides. He would have to live with these appendages, at least for now.

“Fascinating! You mean like monkeys? Tell me more about them! Where can they be found? What continent they live on?” asked the Twilight, its friends rolling their eyes or sighing and shaking their heads slowly.

“Monkeys? Are you serious, horse-unicorn creature?” asked the Gem Knight, raising his eyebrows. ”How could you not know of humans? They are the dominant species of this earth.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” The Sparkle cocked its head to the side and looked away. Its face slowly changed – its mouth opened and pupils dilated to tiny specks in a sea of white. It looked kind of terrified? Then, out of nowhere, it lunged forward, sticking its face close to Taric's. “Oh. My Gosh. You're not from Equestria. You're not from here! You're. You're-”

The beast jumped away and begun pacing around the room, talking to itself: “Sweet Sun and Moon, this is amazing! My spell, it was supposed to change a rock into a top hat. So, in theory, it had to replace one physical object with another. Somehow, somewhere, along the magical streams, the spell must have thrown an exception and handled it by borrowing an object instead of creating one! Yes! And I have no clue how it linked a top hat with a whole pony, but it did! Girls! Do you know what this means?!” exclaimed the Twilight Sparkle, its body shaking all over.

Taric and the Girls kept silent and stared at the purple horse with a nearly identical expression of doubt and confusion.

“This is a pony from a whole different dimension! I-I kind of...kind of invented a new spell!” squealed the horse and began prancing around the room in an utmost undignified manner, like a child that got candy.

“I am not a pony, or horse. I am a human,” calmly stated Taric, now drawing the equine faces to himself and stopping the purple one mid-flight.

“Wait, what?” asked the Twilight.

Comments

[MoldyShishkabob]

“This is a pony from a whole different dimension! I-I kind of...kind of invented a new spell!” squealed the horse and began prancing around the room in an utmost undignified manner, like a child that got candy.

She seems to doing that.

“Wait, what?” asked the Twilight.

The GREATEST question ever.

[Aziraphael]

1725047 I know what you mean. That's like why I use Sheriff Caitlyn. She's just not Caitlyn without the giant hat.

And as someone who mains support like you 1725118, I feel your pain....

[Wing Dancer]

1731840

Yaay

[Azu]

A fantastic chapter! I loved it!

[Wing Dancer]

1732197

Today I'll write up another one. Time for Taric to move on and live in this 'illusion'.

[Wing Dancer]

Looking for a proofreader and/or editor for this. Anyone up?

[Wing Dancer]

1734110

You're hired I had a fight with the last chapter and need to rewrite it, but hopefully I'll get one out today. Or not.

[Wing Dancer]

Pay attention at 0:19!

[Admiral Applejack]

I'd like to make a suggestion, this actually came to me while i was trying Sona out earlier, but maybe Lyra could be playing her harp and Taric could hear her and somehow link that to Sona. Looking at what i've written it seemed better in my head, but i'll make the suggestion anyway

[Quantum_Shift]

I am enjoying this, in spite of not actually playing LoL, and would like to offer my services as an editor.