> Mirror Man > by trondason > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Chapter 1 > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ‘A contest you say?’ Peter typed into FanFiction’s PM feature. He was currently chilling in his room after school, dressed in a black T-shirt with Akatsuki clouds on the side, black exercise pants with a white strip down the sides, and no shoes, cause who wears shoes inside? ‘Yeah. You go to this website, and follow the rules, and tell me what you get. If you win, I promise the prize will be awesome.’ Came the reply message. ‘And it doesn't take any money on my part, and giving of personal information?’ He responded warily. It sounded neat, but was making sure it wasn't some scam of some sorts. ‘None at all. Just do what I said, and tell me what you got.’ Figuring that it was worth looking at, he clicked the provided link, and skimmed through the rules. ‘What tier should I do?’ He asked, unable to see any indication on the page. ‘Do Tier 3. It gives a nice number of powers.’ Doing as suggested, he rolled up 5 powers, and got a rather interesting set. ‘Heh, I got a mirror theme going here. Perfect Doppelganger, reflection destruction, Replication, worship empowerment, and catoptric teleportation. Basically, I can become other people, break things by breaking their reflection, teleport through mirrors, can make more of me and things, and can get stronger the more people worship me.’ ‘That is rather neat. Usually people get a random grab-bag of powers. Now, what I’m going to do is create a story with your character and your rolled powers. Do I have your permission?’ Seeing absolutely nothing wrong with that, quite the opposite in fact, he had absolutely no problem. ‘Sure man, go ahead. Sounds like it’s going to be awesome.’ “Oh it is.” He heard a deep voice coming from his computer, before a arm sprung out and grabbed his face. Letting out a totally not girlish scream, he started to pound at the arm with his fists, but to no effect. “Oh, don’t be like that. You agreed to this after all. Now come here.” He felt himself being pulled forward out of his chair and into his computer, and unable to do anything but scramble for hand-holds, of which there was a sad deficiency. He felt something grab his chest, and the hand withdrew from his face, allowing him to see where he was. He was high in the sky, being held aloft by a demon creature sitting on a cloud. Noticing how high up he was, he quickly grabbed onto the arm with both of his arms, and even wrapping his legs around it, to be double sure he wasn't going to fall. “What? Scared of heights? I suppose that’s reasonable, considering how fragile you mortals are.” “W-What’s going on?” He bravely asked, in a totally not shaky voice. “I told you. I’m going to use your character, you, with the powers you rolled up to make a nice story. Something I’m confident you will do on your own. Now, don’t die on me too quickly. That would just be boring.” At that, he promptly ceased to exist, leaving Peter to fall to his probable death. “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!” He screamed. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!” He continued screaming. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!” It was a really long fall. Eventually he ran out of breath (combination of high altitude and the wind rushing by him making it hard to breath properly), and was left to look at the landmass he was rapidly approaching. It was some city, he was guessing, based on the handful of buildings he could see, but the majority of it was obstructed by what seemed to be a thick mass of fog. Though, as he got closer, he began to notice something. The fog was strangely shaped, parts of it sticking up above the rest, in what looked to be buildings. And there seemed to be a plethora of colored dots moving about. His observations were cut short, as he got air back in his lungs, so that he could continue his screaming. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” Things were rather close now, and he was heading towards one of the buildings windows. He rather hoped that the impact will at least kill him instantly. Putting his arms in front of his face to provide some semblance of protection, he squeezed his eyes and kept screaming, waiting to death. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” He’s going to hit it any moment now. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” Aaaany moment now. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!” Dammit what’s taking so long? He peeked open one of his eyes, to see what was taking death so damned long. “AAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhh?” His scream slowly died off, as he noticed that he was lying in the middle of the street, miraculously unharmed. With trembling arms and legs, he slowly got onto his feet, and looked around. He was in the middle of some street, buildings to either side, lampposts here and there, over all your generic random section of a city. Except, it was missing people. Aren't cities suppose to always have people going about, even in the middle of the night? Also, now that he was looking closer, the various signs he could see depicted horses, instead of people. Why horses? He noticed movement to his left, and when he turned, his focus was drawn to one of the windows. Or, more specifically, what he could see being reflected in the window. There was the street he was on, as was to be expected, but that version of it wasn't empty. It had a bunch of tiny technicolor horses. “What the hell?” Wandering closer for a better look, he confirmed it wasn't just his eyes. The window was showing a reflection of the street, but this one with ponies. “Alright, this is too much.” Stepping back from the mirror, he started pacing back and forth, shaking his head. “I mean, what the hell is going on? I was minding my own business, messing with the internet, when suddenly this demon-like creature reached THROUGH my computer somehow, pulled me here, said some crap about me agreeing to this, and then dropped me from several thousand feet up, a fall I survived without a scratch.” As he went over the events that happened, his voice grew more and more frantic and confused. “Am I sleeping?” With that thought in his head, he promptly decked himself in the face as hard as he could. And quickly found himself face down on the floor, blood pouring from his mouth. Slowly, he picked himself up, and after some probing with his tongue, found that he knocked a tooth out. His upper right canine to be specific. “Damn. I’m not suppose to be that strong.” He gurgled out through the blood. Glancing around, he saw a small trail of blood leading to his tooth, and he hobbled over to get it, gingerly covering the right side of his mouth, blood still pouring over it onto his shirt onto his shirt. “So this either isn't a dream, or so deep a one that I’m not waking up soon anyways. Let’s see, what else could it be?” He sat down, leaning against one of the buildings, pondering his possibilities. “Someone could have drugged me with one hell of a drug. Not sure who would though. I could have just gone insane. Don’t think it’s that though, same problem with the Drugs, I feel lucid. But, I guess that’s the point.” He let out a short laugh, and let his head roll to the side. “I suppose there is always the chance that this is all real, I really did get abducted by a demon dude.” He just sat there for a while, pondering existence, before standing back up. “Well, this certainly FEELS damned real. Nothing lost treating it as such. Speaking of which, I need to get to a hospital. Sure hope those pony things speak English.” He wandered up to one of the reflections with ponies, and on a hunch based on the Demon saying he had his rolled up powers, one of which was mirror teleportation, put his hand against the window. As he expected, it went right through, startling the ponies on the other side. Continuing on, he walked right through onto their side of things, before looking around to double check that, yep, it’s just like the street he left, but with ponies and some carts. He turned towards one of the ponies, who seemed to be cowering. He suppose he was a bit of a fearsome sight to them. Twice their size, and his bottom jaw and shirt covered with blood. Not to mention he just walked out of a mirror. “Excuse me, could you direct me towards a hospital?” He politely asked, pretty clearly as well considering his gum’s bleeding has died down. It just stood there for a moment, before shakily raising a hoof and pointing behind him. “Thanks.” He said, noticing a glob of blood propel itself from his mouth to right between the ponies eyes. Oops. And now it’s lying on the ground, presumably unconscious. Well hopefully one of the other ponies will handle that, he got to get his mouth fixed. Turning around on the spot, he proceeded to speed walk down the street. Occasionally asking other ponies, most of whom had similar responses, he eventually found his way to a large white building, with the iconic red cross on it. He walked up to the door, which opened with a pleasant ding, went in, pleased to note that pony buildings were tall enough he didn’t have to crouch, and went to the front desk, ignoring the ponies moving way out of his way. “Excuse me miss, I need to see a doctor.” He said, getting the desk nurse’s attention, who was reading a magazine of some sort. She looked up, saw him and shrinked into her self in shock, letting out a small “Oh my.” ... He waited for a few moments, before prompting “Miss?” “Oh, right, um, right this way.” She stood up and hurried off down one of the halls, obviously just expecting him to follow. She lead him to an examination room, and said “Wait here while I go get a doctor.” She then hurried off, not even waiting to see if he did what she aid. With a sigh, he stepped in and looked around. It was basically your average examination room, though everything was shorter, meant for ponies. Also the posters on the wall featured pony anatomy. Of particular interest to him though was the mirror on the wall. He had to crouch to get it to the right height, but when he did, he confirmed that yep, he’s a mess. Chin pretty much covered with blood that was starting to dry, shirt too, and a nasty bruise on his cheek. But he wasn't here to check himself out. He stuck a finger out, and slowly pressed it against the mirror. To his minor surprise, it hit the mirror, and didn't do anything. He tried this again, trying to will his finger through, and this time it did, the mirror rippling around his finger. “Hello.” A voice came from behind, startling him. Quickly withdrawing his finger, he stood up and turned around to discover a light brown unicorn looking up at him in astonishment. “I take it it’s your mouth that I need to look at. Please sit there so I can look closely.” He said, gesturing towards a low table, only about shin-height to him. Complying, he said “Yeah. Got punched pretty hard. Lost a tooth.” Holding up said tooth. “Punched?” The Doc asked in confusion. Being a quadrupedal species, he guessed it would make sense that they didn't understand the term. So, he obligingly demonstrated by punching his hand. “Ah. Open wide please.” His horn started glowing while he looked inside Peter’s mouth. “Hmmm. Seems like it came out rather cleanly. Though, I can only base that off ponies, because I don’t know what you are. I’d suggest going to one of your doctors to double-check.” “Would if I could Doc.” Glancing up momentarily, he brushed it off “Hmm, yes. Now, let me see the tooth.” A glow surrounded it and it floated up to the Doc’s eye, who evaluated it. “Sorry to say, but the tooth is too damaged to be able to replace it, at least not without me knowing more about your species. Might be able to get a fake one, but that will cost money.” The Doc threw another glance Peter’s way, and when he saw him shaking his head, continued “Alright. Now, hold still. This will tingle.” And tingle it did, Peter was barely able to keep himself from laughing. When it faded, the Doc continued “And there we go. That should heal nicely. Don’t eat anything hard or acidic for a couple of days.” Then a few damp towels floated in front of Peter, and the doctor said, “Here, use these to clean your face.” “Thanks doc.” He said while wiping his face. “Will this, um, cost anything?” “No. Healthcare is free, paid by taxes.” “Sweet. So am I free to go?” Peter say, standing back up. “Yes. Though you might want to get rid of that shirt. Contamination is not good. We can dispose of it if you want.” Doc offered helpfully. Looking down at his shirt, he let out a sigh, before taking it off. “I really liked this shirt too.” After he got it off, he paused. He had abs. Not just abs, but a full on six pack. How? He spends most of his time sitting in front of his computer. He was in no way fit, but look at him now. He was shocked out of observing his hot new bod by the Doc clearing his throat. “Oh, um, here. Um, would you mind telling me where I am. A hospital of course, but beyond that I'm pretty lost.” “No problem. You are at Tenderhoof Hospital, in Las Pegasus. I suppose you are a traveler?” He asked conversationally while dropping the shirt in a special waste bin, marked with a bio-hazard symbol. “Here.” He said, handing Peter more towelettes to clean his chest of blood. “Of a sorts.” He said, deciding to keep the nature of his predicament secret. It’s rather unlikely Demons abducting people and dropping them in some other world while giving them powers is a common occurrence. He would probably be labeled crazy even if he told someone. At least it seems like the local populace isn't TOO unused to other species of sentient creatures existing. He was gawked at, sure, but the White Men probably gawked at the Indians, and they were at least human (couldn't tell based on how the government treated them, though). Plus, his front was covered with blood. Handing the now bloody towelettes back, which once again glowed before floating over to the bin, he stood up. “Thanks Doc. Know where I can get a map of the town?” “There are tourist booths scattered around that have them. There should be one east a ways.” “Sweet. Thanks.” And with that he walked out, letting the Doc get back to whatever. Offering a nod to the Reception nurse, he walked out the front doors, only for something to run into his junk. Unable to even let out a peep through the pain, he collapsed forward, on top of something blue and green. While cradling his jewels in pain he felt himself float up before hearing a voice say “You are under arrest.” Cracking an eye open he say the world has taken on a green tint, and saw a trio of ponies dressed up in police men uniforms, one of which was rubbing it’s face in pain. “What the hell? I didn't even do anything yet.” “We will sort it out at the station. Now come quietly, or we will add resisting arrest to the charges.” Most of the pain having faded by now, he just sighed “Fuck” before letting himself be floated away.