Friendship is Power: The Nightmare Returns

by Aiyonbeam

Chapter 2: Waking Up

Vinyl

I woke up at the bottom of a hill. My head was pounding...

Ugh...What happened? My head...

Something was wrong. Something big. I couldn't put my finger on-
Wait, what?
Finger? What was a finger, and why did I just think about them? Them? How did I know there were more than one fingers on each hand...Wait.
Hand!? What was going on here? I got to my hooves, head feeling like it was splitting open, it was hurting so hard. I put my face in my hoof...
And screamed.
What in Equestria were these! My hooves had changed! There were long, stubby...things poking out of the tip of my right hoof! there were four long ones near the...top...of them? And one shorter one poking off from the right side of my hoof! I tried to move them. They wiggled. For some reason, my hind legs were much longer than my front ones.
This was a dream. This was a firework mishap fueled dream, and-
The fireworks! The meteor! The explosion! I remembered it now. We'd ran down the hill, and there was a big flash of light... That must have been the reason for these...things on my hooves. What were they? Somehow, the word 'fingers' came to mind. Were these fingers? I started to feel dizzy. The world was swaying around me, and I fell to the grass. The grass felt weird somehow, like it was...darker. It was a darker green, and much longer and more coarse than I remembered. Somehow, I didn't think it was edible anymore. I felt the dirt. It'd changed too. It was harder.

It looks like this change has affected more than just me. Speaking of...

I looked over at Time Turner, laying beside me...
And screamed again.
He was different. He had these...hands...as well, and he was laying on the ground, his...arms...and legs spread out. How did I know these words? How did I know what they meant? How in Equestria did they get there? Why wasn't Time Turner brown? And where were his wings?
Where was my horn?
Well, it seemed that this dream had just taken a turn for the worse.
I got to my hooves again, and looked around me.
And screamed. Again.
There was...Octavia? She looked different. She wasn't grey any more, and her mane had changed. I felt for my mane. It wasn't just a strip of fur down the back of my head, it was all over the back of my head! I looked at Time Turner. His mane had changed too. It was still brown and short, but it looked different somehow.
I tried walking on my hind legs. I could do it fine, after a few minutes of falling down.
Then I remembered the little girls. I looked over to them.
This time, I didn't scream.

Well, at least I'm getting better at keeping my cool.

They'd changed as well. Their manes, their hooves, everything. The orange one that had told me about the fireworks wasn't orange any more. We were all the same color, a strange shade of pink, and - Scootaloo, that was her name - Didn't have wings either. I checked another one of the girls - Sweetie Belle - a unicorn. She had no horn. Octavia and the third girl, Applebloom, were Earth Ponies and didn't change in that regard, as far as I could tell without disturbing them. There was something strange about the girls, though. I couldn't quite place it... Taller. That was it. They were as tall as me, Time Turner, and Octavia, even though we were years older than them.
Well, there was no use standing around here. I decided to go into town to talk Twilight or Trixie or the princess, if she was here. I needed to know if they'd changed too. I needed answers. I was about to head towards town when Time Turner stirred.

"My head...What happened?"

He looked up at me. Then at my hands. Then at his hands. Then back at my hands. Then at his legs. Then at my legs. Then at my head. Then at my flank.
Then he fainted.
Octavia woke up while I was waiting for him to come to. She just stared in shock at everything. Didn't say a word, didn't make a sound.
We just sat there, my mind filling with strange new words: 'feet,' 'ankles,' 'hair,' 'wrists,' 'elbows,' 'knees'...

Later

"What in Equestria is going on?" Time Turner asked, for probably the hundredth time. Octavia stayed silent. She hadn't spoken since she woke up.

"Look. If I knew anything about what's going on, I'd tell you. Obviously, I'm just as lost as you."

"Should we wake the girls?" he asked.

"I don't know if we should disturb them. Besides, we need to find out what's going on."

"Well, we can't just leave them there." he insisted.

"Look, they'd just slow us down. Let's go into town and talk to Twilight. She might know what happened."

"I'm not going to leave them."

"Let's go!" I snapped.

"I'm staying!" he replied.

"Shut up, both of you!"

We both turned to see Octavia standing there, arms on her flanks.

"You're going to wake them if you keep arguing like that. Vinyl, if you think they'll slow you down that much, just levitate them with your magic. now, let's head into town."

"I'm not sure if you've noticed, Octavia, but I don't have a horn anymore."

At this, Time Turner looked at my head.

"That's right, you don't! Wait..."

He checked where his wings were.

"They're gone! My wings!"

"Yeah, they're gone. Same for her." I said, gesturing towards Scootaloo with one of my long 'fingers.'

"Well, that's gotta suck." Octavia said.

Not really. I hardly used my magic anyway.

"I don't care for flying." Time Turner said. "Besides, everywhere I usually have to go is within walking distance."

"Well, I haven't changed, besides this whole thing." Octavia said. "Say, Time Turner, what's around your ankles?"

We all looked, and we found two metal bands wrapped around Time Turner's ankles. They were made of a brown metal, and they had a yellow crystal in the center of them.

"It's weird...I can't take them off, and it feels like - It feels like they've been there for years." he said.

"Is that a necklace, Vinyl?" Octavia asked.

There was something around my neck. It was a necklace, a shard of crystal on a gold chain. It was too small to fit around my head, and It didn't have a latch.

"That's odd. I can't take this off either." I said.

It feels...familiar. It feels like - It feels like my horn! I wonder...

I tried a simple levitation spell on a nearby rock. To my surprise, it moved! It looked exactly the same is If I'd used my horn to levitate it.

"That crystal! It's glowing!"

I looked down to see the crystal on the necklace had started to glow a light blue, just like my horn when I was using magic. I put the rock down, and the crystal returned to normal.

"I guess you still have your horn." Time Turner said. "Wait, does this mean-"

He stood up and closed his eyes, concentrating. To our amazement, he started floating! The jewels in the bands around his ankles began to glow, and he opened his eyes.

"I guess these are my new wings." He said, shocked and amazed.

In the excitement, we'd forgotten about the girls. We were quickly reminded about the three of them when Sweeite Belle screamed.
The other two woke up, and started looking around in shock and fear. Sweetie Belle wouldn't stop crying.

"It's okay, Sweetie Belle. We're fine!" I said, in what I hoped was a calming tone.

"What's going on!?" Scootaloo asked, eyes wide as plates.

Time Turner managed to calm Sweetie Belle down, and she stopped crying.

"I don't know, sweetie, but we're going to find out." Octavia reassured her. "Let's go."

The girls got to their feet rather unsteadily and walked with us to town.

Twilight

I could not believe his was happening. Could. Not. Believe it. All had gone well, for once, and I had just finished talking with the princess after the celebration when a colossal flash of light emanated from a hill on the eastern edge of the town. I was blinded and thrown to the floor of my library, and everything went black.
When I woke up, I had changed into something strange. My mane altered, my hooves changed, and my cutie mark nowhere to be seen, I calmed myself down and tried to get my bearings, taking stock of my new condition. Two front legs. Two longer back legs, with flat things on the bottom. Feet. The words just popped into my head the second I looked at them. Maybe I was supposed to stand on my hind legs? I tried it. I was shaky, but I managed to stay upright. It felt a lot more natural standing on my hind legs, though it felt like I could fall over at any moment.

How in Equestria does Spike manage to keep his balance just standing on his back legs? This is hard!

Thankfully, I could reach a lot of shelves from where I stood, and I used them to help me get around until I felt I could stand on my own. I had to admit, these changes did make it a bit easier to get around than walking on four hooves. I was taller, too. If I wanted to leave the library, I had to duck to fit through. But I didn't want to leave yet. I needed to find something, anything, to tell me what had happened to me. I could reach a lot of shelves that I hadn't been able to reach before.

Note to self: Stand on hind legs more often after I manage to change back.

I gathered some books on transformation spells, and sat down to read. I noted that these new appendages - the word 'hands' sprang to mind - were good at picking up and holding objects, much better than hooves, in fact. I didn't even have to use magic to-
Magic. I checked my head. No horn. Nothing.
I lost it then.

"My horn! Where's my horn? How can I change myself back if I can't use magic? Am I going to be stuck like this forever? This can't be happening! My horn! It's gone! MY HORN!"

I flung myself on the floor, nearly bursting into tears at the thought of no longer using magic. Magic. The thing that I'd studied long and hard, even before the princess sent me here to study friendship-
Friendship! Maybe my friends could help me get my horn back! Maybe they could help me change back into a pony! Wait...Maybe they'd changed too! I scolded myself for being so selfish. I thought of what they must be going through.

I have to help them before it's too late.

I ducked out the door to go find my friends.

Pinkie Pie

I don't really get it.
I was just sitting there, eating some muffins, when BOOM! I'm not a pony! I'm a 'human,' whatever those are.
The Rarity fairies visit me in my sleep, I guess, cause I'm wearing clothes when I wake up.
I know a lot more words though. Elbows, knees, feet, hands, fingers, toes - It's a lot to take in. So I take a nap. When I wake up again, Twilight's there.

"Hi, Twilight!"

"Oh, Pinkie Pie. You're awake. Good. Do you have any idea what's happening?"

"Nope. It's kinda cool, though. I'm taller. Or everything else is shorter. I can't decide. Oh, where are my manners? Muffin?"

I offer Twilight a muffin, and she declines.

"Now's not the time for food, Pinkie Pie. Do you know where the others are?"

"Well, Rarity's in her boutique getting some beauty sleep, and Rainbow Dash is up in her cloud house. other than that, nope."

"Thanks. We should go see Rarity first."

"Alrighty, then. Let me finish this muffin, and we'll be on our way."

I ate the rest of my muffin, and we headed over to the Carousel Boutique to talk to Rarity.
When we get there, she's sleeping on a divan near her sewing machine. She's human too. We decide not to wake her, and we head back to Twilight's to get her balloon.

"I think we have a problem." Twilight says, looking at the basket, barely higher than her knees.

"Oh, don't worry. Just because the balloon's a little too small for us doesn't mean we can't get up to Dash's place!" I say. "We'll bounce our way up there! Let me get my extra big trampoline!"

So we bounce up through the floor of Dash's bedroom, but she isn't there. Whenever our heads poke into her house, we hear a faint noise coming from the bathroom. It sounds like-

"Dash, are you okay? Are you crying?" Twilight asks.

"Go away! I wanna be alone right now!" She yells.

"Rainbow? What's wrong?" I ask. "Are you sad about being human?"

"Just-Just leave me alone!" She yells, sobbing.

"What could get Rainbow Dash so down in the dumps?" I ask as we make our way to Fluttershy's cottage.

"I don't know, but it must be something serious." Twilight answers.

As we approach Fluttershy's place, we hear singing from inside.
When we open the door, we see Fluttershy twirling around in the middle of her cottage, birds perched on her head and arms, their talons hooked in her clothes.

"Hi, Fluttershy." Twilight says cheerfully.

"Oh, hey, Twilight, Pinkie Pie. Don't you just love this? I can play a lot more with my animal friends now that I'm a -a,- a-"

"Human?" I suggest.

"Yes, thanks. A human."

"Do you know what happened?" Twilight asks.

"No. One moment, I'm in the meadow, helping my bunny friends gather carrots, and the next, I'm a human, and I can reach the bird's nests, and I can hold the baby bunnies, and the baby chicks, and the little squirrels, and I can help them grow even more now!"

"Well, I'm very happy for you." Twilight says with a smile. "But do you know where we can find Applejack?"

"Oh, I wouldn't go looking for Applejack right now," Fluttershy warns us. "She came by earlier. She was really mad. She scared the little creatures with her yelling about not being able to harvest the apple trees, and she left to find you two." Fluttershy says.

"Well, thank you for the information." Twilight says. We leave, and start looking around for Applejack. As we walk around town, some of the sleeping people start waking up. Some of them start crying, some of them are silent, and some of them take it in stride. They eventually start to follow us over to town hall, where we see Rainbow Dash laying on a rain cloud, her sleeves wet with tears.
I get onto the roof of one of the nearby buildings, and sit within speaking distance of her.

"What's wrong, Rainbow Dash?"

"I-it's my wings! They're gone!" she sobs. "I was fine with this whole thing until I looked in the mirror this morning, and my wings were just gone!

All the pegasi that had followed us check their backs too, and find that their wings have disappeared.
Some of them cry, some of them just stand there, and some of them faint.

"How am I gonna get into the Wonderbolts with no wings? How am I ever gonna race again? I can't fly! My wings are gone!"

Rainbow starts crying even harder, and the cloud starts raining lightly.
The unicorns that followed us here check their heads, and find no horns there. There's this big hullabaloo in the square, with crying former unicorns and weeping former pegasi and earth ponies doing everything from sobbing to shrugging and saying "Oh well."
Twilight gets on the poduim, and calls for order.

"Attention. Attention!"

The crowd quiets down.

"I know that we all have been drastically affected by this strange disaster, but we need to calm down and be rational about this. These changes are strange and new, to be sure, but we can all agree that we need to reverse them."

The crowd agrees enthusiastically.

"Let's change back!" says one pegasus.

"Hear, hear!" say a couple of unicorns.

"It's not that bad!" a voice rings out.

"Shut up, Lyra!" three others reply.

"Please! Quiet down, everybody!" Twilight yells. The square comes to order again, as all eyes are on me and Twilight.

"Now, for the time being, we need to help the rest of Ponyville adapt to this change." she says, and starts organizing the former ponies.

"Cheerilee, Mr. Cake, and Thunderlane, your job is to wake up the rest of the town and help them get used to being..."

"Human." I say.

Why does nobody want to say the word human around here?

"Human, yes. Thank you, Pinkie Pie."

"The rest of us will try to find workarounds for the loss of our wings and magic." She announces.

"Hold on a second!" A voice yells.

We all turn to see my friend Vinyl, along with the Cutie Mark Crusaders and two other ponies, step onto the platform.

"Why's everybody so sad?" asks Applebloom.

"Why?" Rainbow Dash yells angrily. "Why!?" "Our lives are ruined, that's why! We've lost our horns and our wings! We can't do anything!"

A voice shouts "Honestly, it's actually kinda fun being huma-"

"Shut up, Lyra!" three people yell.

"Well, it seems to me," Vinyl says, stepping up to the podium, "That you're making a big fuss over nothing."

"Nothing? Nothing!?" Rainbow Dash jumps off of her cloud and runs at Vinyl. "I'll show you nothing!"

Vinyl looks at Dash and stops her with magic, her necklace glowing.

"Yes. Nothing. Have any of you even tried to use magic or fly? Look!" she says, holding the crystal on her necklace. Twilight looks at her neck, then at Vinyl, then gets this overjoyed look on her face, and starts jumping up and down.

"Our skills aren't gone, they've just changed, is all. Show them, Time Turner."

Time turner closes his eyes, and starts floating. He hovers over to Rainbow Dash, still stuck in the air due to Vinyl's magic.

"Rainbow Dash, there's no need to be so upset." he says. "You can still fly, even if you'll have to learn all over again."

"Unicorns have these," Vinyl says, holding her crystal triumphantly, "and pegasi have those anklets. Now, let's all try to fix this mess as soon as possible so things can return to normal."

Twilight calms down, and steps up to the podium again. She's just about to say something when she gets pale and a worried look crosses her face.

"Oh my goodness! I just remembered!" Twilight gasps. "Where's the princess?"

We all look around for Princess Celestia.

"I think she was just barely starting her flight back to Canterlot when the flash hit." Vinyl says. "She might be on the outskirts of town."

"Don't anybody worry. I found her a while back. She's resting back at Twilight's, and Spike's taking care of her." A voice says. We all turn to see Applejack, with this half-crazed look on her face, walking towards the platform we're standing on.

"Now, if'n you don't mind, kindly point me in the direction of whoever's responsible for this, and get ready to clean up whatever's left of 'em, after I get them to reverse this spell, or whatever it is that's happened to us."

"Calm down, Applejack. We're trying our best to get things organized and find whoever or whatever's caused this catastrophe." Twilight assures her. "Now, has anyone seen Trixie?"

Trixie

Trixie woke up in a wooden house. Her head was pounding. What had happened to Trixie? How did she end up here? How was she going to get out? Instinctively, she felt for her horn, source of her magic, her wealth, and her pride.
It was gone. gone.
Her world was crashing around her. With no horn, how could she make a living? With no horn, how could she use magic?
With no horn, how was she Trixie?

"No! Trixie's horn!" "This can't be happening!" Trixie said, bolting upright. She was so heartbroken that she hardly noticed the masks hanging from the walls, the bottles and pouches sitting on shelves, and the rather large cauldron sitting in the middle of the little one-room cottage.

Trixie's a- geez, now I'm even starting to think in the third person - I'm a unicorn with no horn. If this is some sort of dream, I want to wake up. Now.

"These changes are very tragic, to be sure, but I'm working hard to find a cure." A voice said from the shadows.

Trixie looked to see that Zecora lady step out of the shadows towards her. She was human too.

"How did Trixie - oh, who cares anymore!.. - how did I get here? Where did you find me?"

"That must have been quite the blast, for when I found you, you were fading fast." she answered. "I found you near the edge of the wood, and brought you back as fast as I could."

"Well, thank you." I said.

"You should rest and have some stew. We're going to Ponyville in an hour or two." she said, handing me a bowl of soup.

"Do we have to go now?" I asked. "It can't be just the two of us that have changed, so why not wait a bit until they've adjusted to being human?"

"Why should we wait until they've adjusted? Do you fear you won't be trusted?"

"I guess." I said, frowning into my soup. "After all, I did cause this whole disaster."

"If that is what you truly fear, then we will wait a while or so here." She said. "If a couple of weeks we stayed, they'd be less mad about the mistake you've made. Besides, I need you to pick up the slack and help me try to change us back."

"Oh, I'll help you." I said. "And, Zecora, thank you. For everything. For taking me in, for giving me food. I hardly even know you, and the one time I saw you - well, you know. So thanks."

"It is a pleasure; new friends are a treasure."

"Do you always have to rhyme?" I asked. She nodded.

"Well, let's get started then." I said, standing up. "What do you want to try first?"

Author's Note:

This is still a work in progress, so feel free to add criticism, comments, and questions if you see something I can make better.
Hope you enjoyed the first two chapters. The second one was kind of rushed, so it's not as good as the first one in my opinion.
Also: Screw tenses, she's Pinkie Pie.

EDIT: EDIT:ED

Comments

[Aiyonbeam]

1778659
I'm still refining it, but Lyra will make a cameo.
Also, no unicorns lose their magic in this series. It just gets transferred to another source. It may be a story about magic turning ponies into humans, but I have to keep some semblance of realism. The unicorns get a magic necklace, and pegasi get magic anklets.
Alicorns like Celestia, Luna, and Cadance have both, and can use them at any time.
Hope you enjoyed what's there. I have a lot of ideas, but writing them down takes some time. I'm just glad I could get chapter one out in one day.

[Regidar]

1778791 Makes sense.

[RagingCacti]

... Might want to check out how the characters look again. The last time I checked, Time Turner was an Earth Pony and Octavia was gray.