Ten Trips to Equestria

by WiseFireCracker

Voice a dream

We stopped in front of a door wearing this insignia : ‘43 – Singing, do not disturb’. For further proof, Thunderlane grabbed my head and forced it against the wall. Through it, I could make out a mare’s singing voice, barely.

“Would you believe them?! They started without us!” He flew a few feet in the air, carried by his indignation.

I chuckled. “Berry Punch. That is all.”

It calmed him down. Well, a little, he was still pouting.

“We just have to knock and they’ll open up. Simple.” I said, before doing exactly what I described.

We waited, with my companion staring intently at the door.

The muffled singing continued, unperturbed.

I sighed. I should have known.

“Oh for Luna’s sake!” Thunderlane shouted, before turning his back on the door and bucking it. Hard. “Open up!”

His method, while rash, worked perfectly.

An annoyed Rose opened up the door, letting us hear perfectly good cries of dying cows or the closest equivalent. With the looks we were getting, both the flat one the mare was giving us and those of the passerby, I’d have preferred if Thunderlane hadn’t overreacted…

“Seriously, you couldn’t wait for the song to be over?” Rose said, voicing my sentiment.

The pegasus huffed, making his way inside the small soundproof room, while I muttered a quiet apology.

“You might as well come in.” The mare motioned toward the ponies behind her, one of which was screaming into the mike very intensively.

Honestly, I didn’t expect Carrot Top to be the one strangling that mule (sorry, Cranky).

It may have shown on my face, because Rose chuckled to herself as soon as she had closed the door. “Yeah, she’s that bad. Good thing she’s quiet most of the time, eh?”

Bewildered, I took in the scene of a Berry Punch snuggling close to a half-grinning, half-blushing Thunderlane while her friend was screaming her heart out in her mike. “Yeah…”

I exchanged a glance with Rose and we both started snickering.

She recovered before me. As such, she pushed me toward the unused couch, a few meters away from our overly enthusiastic friend.

“Berry already ordered a couple of drinks for us.” Rose leaned over the edge of the sofa, her head disappearing behind it. Seconds later, she was lifting two bottles with her mouth. “Hou hay hant ho-”

I snorted and offered her a hoof. As soon as her mouth was free though…

“Thanks… as I was saying, you might want some now to drown that out.” She pointed to Carrot Top, who had just started a particularly loud solo.

Man… perhaps I wouldn’t be the worst singer tonight.

Yeah, that called for some alcohol.

“Cheers!” I happily declared, rising my beer high before downing it under Berry Punch’s loud applause.

With a grin, I hooffisted with the purple mare, ignoring Rose’s sly smile and Thunderlane’s indignation.

Not to be undone, the other stallion downed two bottles at once.

…You can guess where this will end…

“Whoot! Six percents! My new record!” Carrot Top yelled obliviously, as if coming out of a trance.

She was met by four pair of eyes, with two of them being slightly unfocused.

“What?” She tilted her head innocently. “Not everypony’s a rock star, you know?”

Well, hell yes! I jumped on the occasion. “That’s the spirit! We’re here to have fun!”

“And we will!” Berry Punch leaped on the unused microphone, claiming the next song to be hers and hers alone!

Nopony argued on that.

She gave a surprisingly good performance on a stunningly sappy romance song. Oh all saints in the sky, that did not fit with her personality! She gave me the puppy eyes mid-singing!

(Or at least I think she did. She might have aimed it at Rose…)

Afterward, Thunderlane, whose body was starting to feel the impact of his drinks, flew the distance needed to steal Carrot Top’s previous mike and insisted on a duo with Berry.

The song was excessively lascivious and catchy. Rose, Carrot and I bobbed our heads while the two ponies on the mini-stage oozed desire and sensuality. You couldn’t get much more explicite than rubbing their bodies together while standing on their hind legs!

Was it any surprise that Thunderlane’s wings were fully expanded?

Despite the unneeded information, I couldn’t help a smirk. Someponies were going to spend a good night… and, well, if they were my friends, I might as well be happy for them. Besides, tomorrow morning would be as good as a time as any to be smug and flaunt my lack of headache in their faces.

The song ended with their faces inches away from one another.

For a second, I thought they might kiss. Their gazes were locked together, eyes allowing a silent exchange I didn’t get. Thunderlane even leaned slightly, his breath still short from the singing.

He was almost headbutted when Berry Punch remembered a crucial thing and jolted upward.

“My cup of punch is still half-full!” She exclaimed, scrambling away from the stage and unto her place on the second sofa.
Thunderlane deflated in a second, the poor stallion.

With a roll of our eyes, we collectively encouraged him to offer her something to drink. It probably would be a surefire way for him to conquer her.

“Alright!” Carrot Top jumped on her hooves, energized by all these events. “Time for our silent friends to break their vows of silence!”

Aw crap!

No use fighting it, lest I brought down Berry’s wrath on me for wasting perfectly good singing time with my stupid hesitation.

“Don’t think you’ll get a voice worthy of Maredonna!” I warned them, making Thunderlane snort into his drink.

Resigned to giving out the newest of a long series of awful performances, I untangled myself from my position on the sofa, fighting with a sudden sense of vertigo from all that drinking.

I would have won the fight if another pony hadn’t suddenly crashed into me. As it was however, we stumbled forward before falling unceremoniously to the ground.

“Take Rose as your assistant, Caramel!” Carrot Top cheered, a mischievous light in her eyes.

Like I heard her when I had a mare sprayed on top of me.

Was it just me or this room had gotten awfully hot all of a sudden?

Eyes wide, locked into Rose’s, cheeks on fire and breathe short, my heart skipped a beat.

She was beautiful! Stunning and all that, or so my body seemed to suggest, because hell I was getting a bit turned on and, consequently, a fuckload disturbed.

Drunken disgust won and I pushed her off me rapidly, ignoring the lewd comments from Berry Punch and Thunderlane.

Rose reacted stoically, her face never straying from her poker face. It was to the point I would wonder how she could have one day screamed ‘The horrors! THE HORRORS!’ in the middle of the town.

“Ouch, Caramel…” She muttered. “You could have been more gentle…”

Okay, even to me that sounded snicker worthy.

“Sorry,” I apologized sheepishly, doing my best not to grin or fall face first on the ground. Both were equally likely in my current state of inebriation.

“Forget it…” Rose shrugged, slowly making her way to the miniature stage with one mike. “I’m picking the song.”

Seeing as I knew none of them anyway, well, it was not wrong to say I couldn’t complain.

“L-lasht shto-top… the BIG STAGE!” Thunderlane cried out, slurring and wobbling from one hoof to another. He had given up flying an hour ago, when he had crashed headfirst into the door while trying to be still.

We sneakily used his concussion to brainwash him into being a bit less reckless and not kill anyone of us tonight through his clumsiness.

At the moment, both he and Berry Punch seriously needed the support of my shoulders, along with those of Rose and Carrot Top.

Lightheartedly, we made our way to the third floor. Well, I did, because I made a fantastic discovery!

When I opened my mouth to start singing with Rose to the tune of a song I never heard of, I was expecting the wallpaper to retreat in horror, with the mare at my side dying of a heart attack and the ponies behind me succumbing to a sudden seizure. Needless to say, I was not looking forward to this wonderful experience.

So imagine my shock when my little pony vocal cords managed to push out an absolutely, perfectly…

Normal singing voice.

What? Did you expect me to Sue it up and charm them all?

Yeah, Caramel has a decent singing voice, not bad enough to kill anything in range like mine is, nor good enough to get more than a sixty-three on that machine. Still, the discovery thrilled me, getting me to sing much louder and with much more confidence than I ought to have for my performance.

I blamed it on the alcohol.

They did not care. They just told me to move my flanks so somepony else could have a turn. Ah, nothing quite like true friendship. We were probably just a few magic points from the all-powerful rainbow of harmony.

So… anyway, we were heading to the “BIG STAGE”, as was decided by the mares earlier tonight when I first heard the loud cheering. Logical, seeing as it were someponies trying their hooves at singing in front of a crowd in the world of love and tolerance.

I love this place.

“Ooooooooh, somepony’s excited to sing in front of the big crowd!” Carrot Top chuckled, referring to my goofy grin.

“I bet he wants to go with ‘I like big flanks and I cannot lie’. Don’t you remember how much into it he was?” Rose added teasingly.

For sole reply, they received a roll of my eyes, which they could not even see from their position, or maybe they did if Carrot Top could see my mouth…

Whatever.

The weight of our drunken friends on our shoulders, we continued in the neon lighted corridors until we reached a much larger door, with what appeared to be a receptionist.

The pegasus mare behind the desk waited no time to engage.

“Hello, my name is Gray Sunnyside. How may I help you?” She smiled, denying the mechanical structure of her introduction.

Over the purple mass of semi-conscious pony that was Berry Punch, I could barely make out Carrot Top’s shape. I guessed it was even worse for Rose.

Our attentions had, of course, been turned to the one pony we knew had organized this. As soon as she spoke, she confirmed it too.

“We signed up for the talent show.”

…What?

“Names?”

“We entered Thunderlane and Caramel as our participant.” WHAT?!

Surely this was all a mistake and she would laugh, saying there were no such things written on her list.

“Oh, yes, of course.” The receptionist nodded. “I take it you are talking about those… two… stallions?” She shot a worried look at the incoherent black pegasus. “Can he perform?”

I could understand the concern. I was also hoping it would mean the whole thing would be cancelled.

“Not really. We just figured Caramel would do the whole song by himself.”

Typical really.

‘Why don’t they just tell me right now the audience will be filled with dragons, diamond dogs, griffons and some unpleasable critics? Would save us time to skip the part where we pretend it won’t be derailed into a dangerous life-risking situation.’

I had to put my dark thoughts aside quickly though, as Carrot Top pushed me out of our supporting pony structure toward a secret door. Apparently, artists had the benefit of using a five minute moment backstage.

The cold air brushing my fur made me feel really privileged alright, so let’s not get started on the dark and tiny corridor being hard to navigate. Bumping into walls was my favorite, after all…

Oh great, I was already getting grumpy. What would it be like on stage?

‘I WANNA GO HOME!’

This was crushing! The spotlight was turned exclusively on me, nothing else! I was alone – all alone – in front of this crowd!

Unable to grasp the passing of time, I stared at the numerous ponies in front of me. My knees started trembling…

‘I can’t do this…’

‘Why not? It’s fun!’ A very cheerful voice rang to my ears, a voice I could recognize...

‘PINKIE?! You’re a telepath?!’

‘Of course not, silly. I’m just a fragment of your wild imagination.’ Oh, well, that was fine then. I already had a few of those just waiting for a chance to interject at any given time.

Still, this little interlude helped me calm down and look at it rationally. Singing with the others hadn’t been so bad, right? Why not do the same here?

The apple pie, the cupcakes, borrowing a book from Twilight Sparkle’s library, watching the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ antics, singing with Berry and the others… it had all been fun.

I wanted things to stay this way.

Right then, as if the epiphany had triggered some sort of chemical reaction, a surge of energy went through my chest. I-it was strong, very strong indeed, and trying to hold it back had me squirm. My mouth opened of its own accord and I let go of this futile struggle.

The words flew by themselves, with the few musicians around instantly picking up the appropriate melody.

~Dearly beloveds… if this joy only exist in my dreams…~

Somehow, as if guided, my eyes fell precisely on my friends, lost amidst the crowd.

~I don’t want to wake up…~

Even Berry Punch, using the strength of a valorous liver to fight off the alcohol, looked captive after the first few lyrics. She could tell, as the others could, that this song was directed at them. In a way, I was thanking them for giving the one thing I ever really wanted here.

Some friends…

The last words did not come out so easily. They were almost chopped halfway by a sob. “Don’t wake me up…”

The crowd started to react as well, with a few ponies muttering the lyrics along, as the magic spread through the audience and my feelings reached them.

~Don’t wake me uuuuuuup!~

It was getting harder to see. My vision was starting to blur behind a veil of tears…

Fun my ass! Darn Fake Pinkie... I was emptying my heart in front of a quarter of the whole town for freak’s sake!

And I could not stop. Nor did I want to.

~I don’t want to fall, fall, fall, fall asleep, no

I don’t wanna fall lest I lose all of you!~

The magic did not leave until the last words were said, but the gratitude I had toward my friend did not fade. I doubt it would ever do.

Not when we shared a collective hug at the end of the night, with Thunderlane nearly crushing my bones and getting subsequently teased by an amused Rose about some manly tears that were shed during the night.

We shared one more bottle of wine before going our separate way, because, as Berry Punch put it, ‘alcohol is the solution and the cause of all our problems’.

She was not happy when I snorted my cup all over the table at that.

“Doesn’t matter,” as Carrot Top put it. “There’s still plenty left where that came from.”

…Oh boy, I loved these guys…

The next morning, or at the very least, the next moment of the day that had sufficient light to see ahead of us, I awoke with a powerful hangover. Eh, I almost missed the feeling.

My house was… ransacked. Or I had crashed it very badly last night. I was leaning toward the latter, since most of the stuff I noticed yesterday was still intact… just in a different location. For example, I was fairly certain my sofa was not lying upside down in front of the bathroom.

Great. I had a killer hangover and the one room I needed access to the most was blocked by a giant pillow structure. OF COURSE!

Not feeling up to the challenge of moving the thing around, I proceeded to climb over the offending piece of furniture, muttering under my breath about what kind of idiotic pony could possibly do such a thing.

We all know it was me, but screw that.

The task proved harder than I had previously supposed, my limbs being awkwardly stretched while I tried to move with the foreign feeling of standing on my hind legs. With my head barely over the line of the sofa and missing my useful fingers, I was a bit ill-prepared for this.

Struggling, I pushed on my front legs, putting an abnormal amount of strength into it. I abruptly remembered that, pushover as he seemed to be, Caramel was an earth pony when I felt the resistance disappear.

I fell forward, with the sofa as it flipped and crashed down onto the ground.

Pain soaring through my whole body now, I lied down bitterly.

“He sure was right when he described us both as klutz…” I grumbled.

However, at my own words, the whole ordeal crashed down on my all over again. All to my partying and fun doubling, I had simply stopped thinking about the game.

I supposed I should feel lucky I hadn’t accidentally said ‘Uncle!’ again…

Then again, I wouldn’t have to deal with this now.

An abject fear gripped my guts. This was more than I could really stomach. I was not that kind of guy; I did not like the responsibilities. When I thought about escapist fantasies, it involved utopias and infinite fun, not epic quests against dark lords and such where the fate of the whole world depended on my ability to ram a sword into something.

I grimaced, feeling a bit cold. I did not have much of a choice though.

What to do here? If I made the wrong choices, more people than I could count would suffer.

ARGH! This was too much! Too big for a single man to…

“THAT’S IT!” I screamed, realizing how much of a moron I had been. I didn’t have to resolve this all by myself!

This was Ponyville. The Mane Six lived here. Twilight Sparkle and her living fax machine locked on Princess Celestia called Spike inhabited a hollow tree in this very town!

Heart beating fast, I jumped to my hooves, intent on seeing this through. Without losing a second, I galloped toward the door, determined to find help as soon as pos-

I collapsed, struck down by a sudden wave of pure agony.

It was as if a cold clawed paw had suddenly ripped my chest open to play with my insides!

‘Now, as much as I like the idea of making this whole game more chaotic by adding players…’ The creature I hated the most materialized before my eyes, wearing his traditional sunglasses and non-traditional armor. ‘Did you honestly believe I would let you babble about my plans to Celestia?’

Mother of buck…

It did not help that, even through the tears of pain, I could see he was utterly pissed. The unending suffering was definitely a great sign of that.

My brain was on the verge of shutting down, my senses already blurring.

His distorted image refused to leave so easily though. ‘Oh no, that would be too easy and I had too much fun for too long with this to let a little coward like you crash my party.’ My body was run over by a spasm, making me cough up blood. However, the sight was quickly forgotten as another bolt of agony made me scream. ‘You are going to play this game MY WAY OR YOU WON’T GET TO PLAY AT ALL!’

The world turned black.

‘I can’t do that!’ My mind screamed.

‘Do what?’ I replied.

I had woken up a few minutes ago, streaks of blood coming from my mouth and ears having already dried up. My disheveled look had been just one of the many reminders of who truly owned my ass in this game, who pulled the strings.

Newsflash: it wasn’t me.

There were only two things I could do. The first one would be to give up right here, give Caramel his life back and return to Earth, knowing I would have to go through another round and probably free Discord. The second would be to keep on living this beautiful, beautiful lie, with the knowledge that a pony had been killed to make it happen.

‘…’

Yeah, I couldn’t do either of those things. There wasn’t any reasonable decision I could make that wouldn’t hurt somepony.

The real question was how many I was willing to let get hurt. If I stayed here, well… Caramel would not be the only one to really suffer. Mom would freak out at my state of complete coma and carry on with even more of the sadness that stuck to her skin for nearly eight years now. Giantonio, on the other, would barely miss me; my food however would be an entirely different matter to him. Eh, maybe Mom would spoil him rotten to help herself go through this ordeal.

Dad… I had no idea how he’d take it…

The most logical solution was to stay here forever. Discord’s return would be so much worse than any individual’s sacrifice. Even if it meant hurting Mom, even if it meant losing my whole life back on Earth, even if it meant that someone had to be sacrificed…

Unwillingly sacrificed…

My jaw hurt. My teeth were clenched together so strongly I was starting to lose sensation at the level of my mouth. Words could not describe the feeling in my guts. It wasn’t cold, it was… a… a claw that tore apart my insides.

I-I had to do this! This h-h-had to be done! It was very sad for Caramel, bu-

I froze.

So close, just on the counter in the kitchen, a lone picture stood tall. I could not help but be drawn to it, to its content.
It was just a photograph of Caramel, with Big Mac and Applejack. All three were smiling.

…Just a picture… i-i-it was j-just a picture…

My heart jumped in my throat. I was going to be sick.

This was a life, a real, tangible, pony life.

What did he feel like before Discord placed my mind in his body? He was sleeping, right? Did he have a nightmare?

…Did he feel his mind slip away into the darkness, screaming and howling as the draconequus swatted him away from his own body? Did he feel his mind being destroyed, replaced, by that of a stranger?

It was all too real to me. My vision could blur, like everything would fade away and I would never wake up. My hooves would slowly disintegrate, eaten away by a capricious spirit. It would hurt, of course. It couldn’t be painless…

I retched. I… I was going to be sick.

My skin turned green under my coat, I felt it change. My breathing accelerated, getting closer to hyperventilation. My legs started shaking, my control weak from the emotion and the general state of illness I was in.

I threw my head forward, esophagus burning from the acid going up. Eyes closed, I fought the nausea that was slowly rendering me useless.

‘This is a life you want to steal…’

My stomach rebelled. I emptied its content over the floor, tears of pain and guilt flowing from my eyes.

“S-sorry…” I thought of my friends and of this day. Images of the great things, of the life I could get in exchange for this flashed in my mind… tempting, demanding that I stay, but… “Thank you so much…”

If I stayed, they’d be saved… I’d get all I ever wanted: a happy life with friends, a nice house, maybe… love (IF I ever got over the completely different species thing)...

All of that could be mine, all of those lives could be saved… if I accepted to live in this body until my death… in the body of another…

I couldn’t do it…

God, I COULDN’T DO IT! It would be for the best, the logical choice, the conclusion I ought to arrive to, but… I couldn’t actually KILL CARAMEL!

“UNCLE!”

My body did not double over on reflexes alone this time. No, for once, my return from Equestria was peaceful.

As peaceful as an almost-murderer could get, moving toward world destroyer.

In the dark, with nothing but my mother sleeping a few feet away, there was no defense against my guilty conscience. If there had been… well, I might not have taken it anyway.

I was a miserable excuse of a human.

What had I been doing exactly? I tried to steal some sentient beings’ lives away, only stopping, not because it was wrong, but because what I got was not up to my standards. Heck, sometimes only the threat of Discord’s reaction had held me back.

One thing was certain though: I could not fall asleep again. If I did, then Discord would win, no matter what happened.

For some obscure reason, the thought bothered me a lot.

But let’s be realistic here. How could I never fall asleep again? How could I never fall asleep again when I had been declared narcoleptic?

…

I needed a plan and fast!

Author's Note:

This is here just to mention that the song (with very slightly tweaked lyrics) was actually "Don't wake me up", by Chris Brown. The message is completely different, but the title was so freaking appropriate I couldn't resist.

Comments

[NaiKujibo]

DAMN, shit just got REAL!
knowing Discord, the last life will probably have a chance of stopping discord and saving the day. But we all know that he stacks the handicap heavily in his favor.

[WiseFireCracker]

1967467 Yup (before, it was only realistic holograms). There will indeed be a chance to stop him and yes, the deck will be very stacked in his favor. You can only spend so long tormenting someone before you know what makes them tick.

[Buckshot2825]

Can't say i blame him. It's hard to live when you know that by doing so your killing someone... or in this case somepony

[Darkwhip]

He could've played the card:
"If caramel spirit is lost, being overwritten by mine, and I had to live his life so Discord would be kept imprisoned, this is something worth dying for, soldiers died for much less, even if he didn't have a choice in giving himself to stop a great evil, it's been already done, I'd live this life, the life I dreamed of, in his memory to stop this tyrant from wreaking havoc in both Earth and Equestria, so be it""
Still whatever choice he picked would be interesting plot-wise and realistic.

[Amos Anon]

What? Did you expect me to Sue it up and charm them all?

Mary would be proud.