> Diaries of a Madman - Lessov Adict Edit
>  by Quillo Manar
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Day 1 - Arrival
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Day 1 in Equestria - Arrival


Well, my life took a turn for the monumentally weird.

Ever have one of those days, you know, those days. Where things just don’t go the way you want it to, and it all just makes you wish it was over as soon as possible? Thankfully, yesterday was one of those days and today was one of… those days. You know what I mean? No? Neither do I. Context might be nice, so I guess I should start this off with the crux of yesterday. 

School is school. I’m not sure how else I can put it. There are good schools, there are bad schools, there are catholic schools, and then there is my school. It’s a mix of all three, the teachers are smart but strict, the students are varied and have their own cliques and the buildings are old fashioned. It’s kind of what you’d expect from a small town in Australia, settled by european settlers bent on making a world a bette catholic place. It brought me great pleasure that I was close to leaving that place for good. Still, I’m getting off track, today… right. I can say that I’m stalling at the moment, as there is really no way I can explain this properly without being called insane.

Though, judging from my experiences on day one on this planet, insanity is taken lightly here. I could very well be insane and not even know it, but then the mention of me having the slight possibility of being insane reduces my likelihood of being insane. This in turn makes be believe that I am not insane which raises my chance of actually being insane, but since I know this, redu

Right, I’m off track; Today.

It all started as a very strange day the moment I was awoken in the middle of the night. Sometimes, you have this inkling in your mind that tells you that it’s going to be a weird day, well, this inkling for me started with a ‘pins-and-needles’ sensation in my feet. It’s not strange for me to wake up with dead arms due to how weird my sleeping is, but generally my legs are fine. I just laid there in bed waiting for the sensation to dissipate. I then knew there was a problem when the sensation steadily crawled up them.

I quickly tore off my covers to inspect my legs, only to find that they ended at my shins. They weren’t cut off, as there was a lack of pain, blood, psychotic mass murderer, and suspenseful string music, but rather faded and just, gone. I sent signals to my toes to curl and move, but I couldn’t feel any signal of feeling coming back to me.

“That’s weird, I usually have feet down there,” this was a preliminary thought to an ensuring panic attack, but I feel that comments like these tend to lighten the load a bit. Joviality is helium in a balloon I say… I freaked out anyway but still, but come on, my legs were disappearing. The next few minutes was spent screaming and flailing about. Not my finest moment, but I didn’t read the latest issue of ‘Disappearing And You: Coping With those Suddenly Missing Limbs’ so screaming and flailing was my only option. I’m sure that if there was anybody else in the house I would have woken them up by now. However, other than my own shouting, no sounds or disturbances echoed through the empty halls of my house.

I decided to stop screaming when my voice was tapering on the edge of hoarse, all that and my thighs were the next target. After these few minutes my legs were completely swallowed up by the ethereal snake and my thighs were next. Through this haze of trepidation and panic, one lucid thought erupted and prevailed in my mind. ‘Leave a note’ So I did. How did I leave a note you ask? Well, you shouldn’t be asking that because it’s not nice to read my journals. Jerk. Anyway, I was very interested in this Lucid dreaming business and the top-tip is to keep a dream journal next to the bed, so that’s where I wrote it.

dont freak out but it apears im disapearing sorry for gramar but ive lost legs have no time full sentences stomac gone GOODBYE CRUEL-

Then the interstellar invisible snake managed to swallow my arms. At the sensation of my elbows disappearing, I accidentally dropped the pen, disallowing me to continue the note. Anyway, so I was mostly disappeared by now and I had only my upper chest and head left, my entire body otherwise was completely shrouded in pins-and-needles. It was more unsettling and uncomfortable than painful, but still, weird as. I had little time left until this beast swallowed me completely, and I only had my neck and head left. My last thought before falling into quintessential darkness was, ‘I’d make a weird bust to add to a collection.’

Sensibility was all but thrown out the window because I was being swallowed whole by an ominous snake thing that I couldn’t see, sue me.

What I felt next is impossible to describe properly in words or sentences, the best example I could give would be that I was sucked into a black hole, spaghettification and all. It was dark but wasn’t void of light or redshifted at all. Granted, there was red, as well as every other colour that I could perceive, as well as some that I couldn’t comprehend, but that’s what it felt like. Through the pins and needles sensation that covered my entire body I managed to feel that my body was stretching but staying the same, warping yet solidifying, these conflicting feelings just compounded to my utter lack of understanding of anything ever.

Then it stopped, and I could feel everything, and nothing. Well, sort of, I sent a probe into the recesses of my body and to my extremities, and I could feel everything there, arms, legs, etc. but I couldn’t move them. If I was restrained then I’d feel the restraints, but I couldn’t, literally every part of my body was prevented movement, but they weren’t restrained. Understand what I had to deal with that early in the morning? I tried to open my eyes, but that was prevented as well. The onset of loneliness was soon cut short as I heard a women’s voice.

“Ah ha! It worked! This is… it’s… well… it’s not quite what I was expecting…” Sorry I’m such a disappointment, “Spike, take note: the Subject appears disorientated, most likely a side-effect to teleportation, this can indicate that the subject either hasn’t had exposure to magic or is not prone to blinking long distances” Pre-definite knowledge thesis, I’ve been captured by a mad scientist, “there is little hair covering it, the majority is on the top of its head and there is some present where most likely is its lower stomach and bellow its neck, everywhere else, as much is visible, void. There is a type of what appears to be clothing covering up its lower body down to its ‘hind’ legs, ending at its feet. On a note of its extremities, its forelegs end in stick-like appendages with five digits, they end in very short claws that seem either trimmed or chewed, most likely the latter.” I have nerve issues, cut me some slack.

Through this thorough investigation of my fantastic body, I quickly realised that what ever had me trapped or suspended, whatever, was preventing my chest from moving, so I couldn’t breath. I then tried to get a message to my captive.

“Cn’t brthh-” I tried to force.

“It’s attempting speech! Spike, write down everything it says!” the woman said, I was indeed trying to speak, but I couldn’t because she wasn’t letting me move my mouth.

“Umm, Twilight… I think you might be holding it a bit too hard,” the one most likely called Spike interjected. I’m starting to like this guy, at least his head is screwed on the right way. Unfortunately, this Twilight didn’t have the best supply of common sense and only released the restraint to my mouth and neck, now it was time to frantically scream in panic and use what little air I have left.

“I can’t breath!” I yelled immediately.

“What?” the female voice replied, shocked, but still not letting my lungs go. The silly.

“Crushing lungs, can’t brea-!” I then ran out of breath. So, this is how I die, mishandled in a science project. I am riddled with joy… wait no, I’m pretty sure that thing I’m feeling now is called regret… yep, most likely regret.

“Oh! Sorry!” the voice said as it did the same thing as before but around my chest area, I then sucked in a large breath and replenished my supply of magnificent life preserving oxygen.

“Thank you,” I breathed.

“You’re… umm… Welcome,” she seemed hesitant to reply, I briefly wondered why, and I was about to ask about that, but she cleared her throat and began again, “the Subject seems to speak and understand Equestrian, this perhaps demonstrates a higher level of speech and potential charming abilities, Spike, write down the things it says, but don’t listen to them, we don’t want it loose and have it causing trouble.”

“Roger,” the younger male voice replied.

“Charming? Well, you don’t sound that bad yourself,” I quietly mumbled, before piping up, “what’s with this test Subject business? I have a name you know.”

“Names. Suggests a level of civilisation, though, the extent is unknown. Speak, Test Subject,” she said the ‘test subject’ as if she was addressing me with that as a name, someone’s a bit arrogant, “what part of Equestria are you from?”

I once heard that when you have been captured by someone who doesn’t know you, the best thing to do is keep it that way, whilst learning as much as you can about them. “It’s proper form to start with a name you know. My name is Fericious, what’s yours?” I happen to like Fericious thank you very much, it’s a weird as hell name that I use for online work, and it sounds badass. Wait a second. Equestria? What’s that? Some obscure country? I think I mightn’t be in Australia anymore. Joy… no, regret… oh forget it.

“Subject has identified himself as… Fericious, an unusual name, now, what part of Equestria do you come from? Is it uncharted territory?”

I paused for a moment in contemplation before finally giving up and saying, “I don’t understand anything ever, first of all, why can’t I open my eyes?”

She huffed at my indignation before answering my question in an exasperated tone, “We can’t be sure what kind of offensive or defensive abilities you have, I’m sorry but we can’t trust your eyes at the moment.” Yet she trusted my mouth for some reason. That’s odd, she’s odd.

Besides if she really didn’t trust me then I should be hearing her voice through an intercom on the other side of half-meter thick titanium infused oneway glass, “You didn’t think this through at all did you?” I bluntly said, evoking my full male swagger.

“What?” She responded, time to go all Sherlock Holmes on this person.

“If this was a documented experimental research project as you so claimed, you know the whole, write this down and that whole ‘Test Subject’ business, then you would have put precautions in place to prevent that sort of thing from being a possibility of harm in the first place. You have to at least have me in some sort of cage right? What happens if I use my brute strength to escape your confines? What then? Don’t tell me you don’t have any protection at all, what if I had some sort of disease in me that I was immune to but could be fatal to you?” Tee hee, implied innuendo.

She said nothing, I could practically feel her stunned.

“Tell me you at least thought of that.”

She stayed silent.

“He has you there Twi,” the awesome dude said.

“You be quiet, and you can’t know for sure that he is male.”

“He sounds like it,” he so awesome I just want to go over there and give him the bro-fisting of a life time- that looks horrifically gay written down.

“And last I checked I was,” I piked in.

“We don’t even know he’s species!” She spoke loudly, obviously becoming infuriated.

“Isn’t it obvious, aren’t you human to?” I asked with a forced even temperament, to contrast her anger. I do that automatically as it gives me a higher ground to fight on, on a sort of ‘You’re yelling and I’m not, therefore I’m better than you,’ stand point, but actually it just makes me look like an ass.

“No, I am a pony! Of course I’m a pony! I’m holding you up with magic, so obviously I’m a unicorn! If you are so highly intelligent as you so claim, then you would have known this!”

“Yeah well, I never said intelligent and I can be pretty unobservant at times, sue me,” as if I’d put that together. Wait. Hold on a cotton picking minute, “Forgive me if my brain died on me but, did you just say pony, magic and unicorn in that order?”

“More or less yes,” she became complacent for a second there.

“So you are a talking pony, okay, you either fully live up to your mad stature of mad scientist, or I’m really not in the right world any more,” I pieced it together before, but I denied it due to the whole mad scientist thing.

She hmp’d before breathing and letting out a sigh, “Let’s start this again before this degrades into a shouting match,” I was about to interject with the whole, ‘I wasn’t shouting’ schtick I had planned, but wisely I kept my mouth shut.  “Since we are both intelligent creatures here,” that’s only half true… ZING! “I suggest a question by question proceeding.”

“Fair enough, ladies first.”

“Right, so, where do you come from.”

“I was born in the Royal Brisbane Hospital in Queensland, in a country historians call Australia, on a planet geologists have called called Earth, located in the solar system our race has fittingly called Sol, residing in a galaxy astronomers have called the Milky Way, in the plane of reality our philosophical physicists have dubbed,” I paused for a second, “the 3rd Dimension…” the pause was necessary because it is a requirement to emphasise the ‘3rd Dimension’ just before lightning strikes a cat outside. Sadly, the whole lightning business didn’t happen, so a cat is saved this day. I cleared my throat and continued, “but I lived with my family in a farm, part of the town North of Brisbane called Calliope.”

“Well, that didn’t tell me much,” she proclaimed simply.

“You say that like you weren’t expecting it to,” I replied, “now, my question, where are we?”

“In the laboratory underneath the library located in Ponyville, Equestria, planet Equis, solar system Cel, and… we… haven’t really gone past that bit to be honest.” Horse puns, how quaint.

“So we are in a laboratory, you did that at least,” My remark was undermined by the lack of sarcastic clapping. A laboratory under a library, let me guess, this is where they get their ‘primary’ research.

“I’m going to assume that’s a compliment to dissuade further argument.”

“Clever girl,” I muttered, “also, Equestria, there’s that word again, that’s the country right?”

“Yes, now, what is your species and what are your traits?”

“Oh gees, I’m not a biology major, but my species’ name is Homo Sapiens, the common name is Human. We don’t have any natural defences or real ‘traits’ aside from our magnificent minds. If there is a problem, a human can sort it. The only thing bad about us, is that we are monumentally lazy, we have invented so many ground breaking things just so that we don’t need to do that little bit more.” Literally everything that we’ve invented came for our convenience, “Walking sucks, so we invented cars. Traveling sucks, so we invented aeroplanes. Farming sucks, so we invented artificial food production systems. Being sick sucks, so we invented various medicines. Basically, life sucks, so we made it easier,” pretty much sums up all of man’s inventions.

“Spike did you write that down?”

“Umm… yes?” He sounded hesitant, “How do you spell Say-pe-ens?”

My interrogator huffed but I replied before she could, “Ess-ay-pee-eye-ee-en-ess. That’s two questions for me now,” I grinned as I spoke letting out a comical laugh, having won a figurative match. The younger one, Spike, laughed along quietly.

“That doesn’t count,” Twilight quickly said, the spoil sport.

“Fine, will you let me see?”

“Depends, do you use your eyes for anything other than sight?” I’m counting that one.

“Reading, watching, determining, writing, and occasionally, ogling at fine wimens.” I wiggled my eyebrows in the best, ‘I’m seducing you’ manner I could fabricate. My efforts were rewarded with a slight groan and a passing remark about ‘stallions’, for some reason. All at once, I could feel something receding from my face a bit as my eyes were freed, I blinked them open sluggishly, and tried to focus on the sight before me.

“… Hello there…” I blinked a couple of times, “you’re purple,” not the best thing to open with, it wasn’t my finest moment. I just stared at the very purple pony standing in front of me, she was looking at me with her very purple eyes, covered slightly by her very purple mane that was highlighted with a very bright purple and pink streak, and she had a very purple horn that was glowing very purple. She was indeed, very purple. I think I have a new nickname for her, I will now refer to her in passing as Grape-Flavoured. Not that I would ever say it out loud, mind you.

And if you are reading this Grape-Flavoured, then you deserve being called Grape-Flavoured, because looking through a person’s personal journal is wrong and you should be ashamed of yourself.

“And you have a purple pet lizard too…” I continued when I looked towards the little very purple lizard thing standing next to her, he was holding a (thankfully) red and yellow quill in his very purple claw as he was writing things down on the parchment that he was holding in his other very purple claw, “Am I purple? Are we all purple here?” My mind wasn’t with me at the realisation. Sue me.

“Hey! I’m a dragon, buddy! And you better remember it!” the little very purple dragon exclaimed at me, heh, ‘it be the little very purple dragon of legend’ it seems.

“You’re still only a baby Spike,” Spike deflated at the reminder, “and No, Fericious, you are not purple,” the bemused, or in hindsight probably slightly irritated, Grape-Flavoured pony stated to me.

“Crisis averted,” I breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief.

“Right, so, you are wearing some kind of cloth on you’re legs, why?”

My mind was spinning but I still managed to answer her question, “Well, these are my pyjamas, they are made of a soft cotton-polystyrene compound that is most common in clothes where I come from. Usually I’d wear a shirt to go with it but I figured that it was a warm enough night not to.” Actually, I figured that it was a cold enough night to wear pants, goddamn it I was lucky that she teleported me out with pants on, I did NOT want to have to deal with flashing the first two people I see, “Humans wear clothes because our natural heating systems are inefficient and we have little to no hair on our bodies.”

“Got it, Spike?”

“…heating… in- ine- ineff-ic-ient… got it!” He beamed triumphantly, she nodded in his direction before turning back to me.

I just stared into the very purple pony in abject silence.

“Your turn to ask now,” she offered.

“I know, I’m still getting over the fact that you’re very purple… Ask me another thing just so that I can think a bit and ask something else when my mind isn’t focused on how very purple you are.”

The grape-flavoured pony did not look very amused, as presented by the exasperated nicker, but she carried on regardless. “Alright then, what about the appendages on the ends of your forelegs? Why do you have them and what can you do with them?”

I shifted my eyes to the right to see if I could see them, I could barely but not very well, as I couldn’t turn my head. Did I mention that she was somehow holding me in the air splayed out in a starfish like shape? If I didn’t, I did now.

“Not forelegs, arms, and they are called hands, the little digits are called fingers, the big solitary fat one is called a thumb, or an opposable thumb. They allow me to grasp and to hold a multitude of different things, as I’ve said before, humans have no natural fighting or hunting abilities, like claws, fangs or enhanced senses, yet we are still the best fighters and hunters on the planet. We developed tools to work with our hands to give us the greatest mechanical advantage possible,” It’s how we are the apex predator after all, if there is something alive, we can make it not so any more, “Animals hunt with their bodies and relay on their brains to help them, we fight and hunt with our minds and use our bodies to aid us. I think I can ask a question now.”

“How very interesting, I am to assume that you are carnivorous, I wouldn’t expect any less.”

“Omnivorous actually, humans can eat both meat and vegetation, although, we generally don’t like to eat meat raw,” I opened my mouth wide so she could get a look at my (slightly less than) perfect teeth so she’d have an idea what she was dealing with, I used my tongue to point out my canines, “those four spiky teeth are called canines, our teeth aren’t designed to rend or shred living flesh, only to chew and break down cooked food, before swallowing. Now, my questions.”

“Of course, continue.”

“How am I floating? And How am I here?”

“The answer to both of those can be summed up with, Magic.” Snort, snort.

I blinked, “Come again?”

“I am currently using a spell matrix to tap into my natural magic reserves to power a simple levitation spell that is channeled through other matrices to give a more precise and complete holding at a force that directly counteracts the force applied to you by the planet’s gravity. As for how you got here, it was much more complex, I used an algorithm that was passed down by scholars through the ages that taps into not only the magical reserves of the pony, but also the innate energy of the planet, the spell was designed to call forth the metaphysical ‘voice’ or ‘soul’ of the planet to find and retrieve a weakened member of the most dangerous species alive. It was supposed to reach only into itself, but unfortunately, the spell seemed to reach across space to find… well… you.” She seemed disheartened, “the motive behind all this was that I wanted to find and research the most dangerous species so that Pony-kind as a whole would be able to prepare for anything. That spell was very complex and required a ton of magic to do, I don’t know if I could do it again…”

“You seem apologetic almost, it’s okay though right? You’ll just recharge and send me back when you’re done right?” it was with the way she worded it and the hint of sadness on her tone, I continued apprehensively, “something went wrong, didn’t it.”

She started becoming defensive, “I didn’t know you were going to be from another planet! I figured that you’d at least be from this one! I…” her eyes teared up as she looked to the floor, “there isn’t a counter spell, I… don’t have a way to send you back.”

My mind halted, my arms and legs tensed up, the back of my neck felt like it was turning to stone, I knew the onset of an anxiety attack when I felt it. It’s okay though, I thought, because I just need to squeeze my stress ball to alleviate the ten- I couldn’t move my arms. I wasn’t anywhere near my stress ball. I wasn’t anywhere near my house. I wasn’t anywhere near my planet. I have no way of getting back. I can’t move my arms. I… I… I have to be let down. I need to be let down.

“Let me down,” I said suddenly.

“I can’t, I don’t know if you are dangerou-.”

“Let me down, right now,” I growled so suddenly and sharply that I startled her into losing concentration on her ‘spell’, the purple aura surrounding her horn and I fizzled out as she stepped back. A clear instance of her prey-to-predator behaviour shining through, I noted this as a ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ situation, she being the deer, and the headlights belonging to my anxiety truck within me that’s about to erupt and turn everything in sight into varying degrees of roadkill. I fell out of the air and onto my feet, I didn’t stand for long as I then fell forward and onto my hands and knees as the anxiety fully clawed it’s way in and solidified it’s grip on my mind. No, no, no, no, no, no, I repeated in my mind as I began to hyperventilate, this can’t be happening! but it was. I tried to wake myself up as if I was in a dream, my arm became indented with my fingernail and I actually drew blood, but I was still very much in this nightmare. Everything I knew and loved is gone, and I can’t get them back.

“What kind of scientist are you?” I yelled to the floor, “What made you think that summoning the most dangerous creature here would be okay? What part of that plan is sane to you?” I gazed upon the purple menace with tears edging on my eyes, “Did you even think this through at all?”

“I wanted to protect the world by-“

I shot up to my feet, the abrupt action cutting her off, “bringing the ‘most dangerous creature alive’ here? You have some damned screwed up morals if you think that that was a good idea! Goddamn it!”

“I didn’t know that the spell would summon something from another world! How was I su-!”

“You shut up! You just shut the goddamned hell up!” I began my approach towards her, each step punctuating my words, “You ruined everything I had in my life, nothing you can say will ever fix that!” I was right on her, I flicked down and grabbed her by the arms to lift her up to my level. I stared at her straight into her fear ridden eyes with my powerful rage-filled ones. She was scared, but I yet shouted into her face, “You ripped me away from my world! You tore me away from my family and my home! How you possibly think that that would be fine is beyond me! How dare you! You stupid fuc-“ 


‘Never resort to swearing.’ 


I loosened my grip on the scared pony and she fell out of my hands. As soon as she hit the ground she quickly scrambled away from me. I closed my eyes and forced my body to stop as my dad’s golden rule stabbed through my head, it was never proper form to swear, especially in front of a woman. As my father’s word crept through my mind, my pure unrivalled rage subverted and became malformed as sadness. I will never see my dad again, nor my mum, or my sister. Never again will I see their smiling faces, or dad’s determined gaze as he worked on the family farm, or become entranced as the smell of my mum’s cooking as it wafted up through the house, or be punched in the arm by my five minutes earlier twin sister because she was huffy that I beat her in a running race. A tear sneaked out of my eye from the memories, all of that was gone now. It was taken away from me, but no matter how I place it…

No matter how much I hate this pony for doing this to me…

No matter how angry I was that I was forcibly removed from my home…

It was still an accident.

As I came down from my blast of rage and sadness, I slowly came to my senses. I fell to my knees and reopened my eyes. I noticed that the little purple pony that summoned me here was very much afraid and scared for her life. Though, through her veiled panic she managed to erect a small bubble like thing around her and the little dude dragon. She was balled up and I heard the telltale sounds of a girl sobbing in fear and regret. I sighed mournfully as I came down from my adrenaline high. I had to look at the positives now, I had to find some form of light in this dark twist of events.

I left my family behind… No.

I don’t have to deal with my sister any more… No.

I don’t have to deal with those pesky teenagers in town anymore… Better, but, no.

I don’t have any school work to do anymore… I suppose that’s nice.

I’m on a different world… Yes? that’s good I think?

I’ve always wanted to explore… Yes.

I can do what ever I want now… Yes.

I am free now, I don’t have any obligations, responsibilities or worries, I have nothing to trouble me anymore… Yes, this is it.

I am free, free from the confines of society, no one telling me what’s right or wrong, no one telling me what not to do.

This is the first time in my life that I am truly free…

…

It feels alright.

I breathed in, then exhaled all of my fury in one continuous slow breath. I was calm now, I had reason to be calm. I was silent for a good minute, before I fell down on the floor to sit. I laughed softly, “I’m in a new world for less than thirty minutes and I’ve already made someone cry…” I put my head in my hands and sighed, “Jesus.”

“Yeah bro, not cool,” Spike said as he consoled the grape-flavoured magician pony. I gave an exhausted smile. Dude’s awesome like that.

“Sorry man, I can get pretty horrific panic attacks if I’m not careful. This was example A.” I sighed again as I leaned back to lay on the ground. Panic attacks this furious always leave me drained, I have never hurt anybody whilst my mind was clouded by an attack, but I almost did, it’s the main reason why I was dumped by Lizzy after all, and I haven’t forgiven myself for it since. Whilst in my placid state, I decided to actually look around. I was in some kind of stone room, with some form of technology all beeping and scratching around me, how I didn’t notice that before was beyond me. The ground that was immediately below me was covered in some chalk-like substance, it was drawn in some kind of rune, but it was ruined with my stomping before. There wasn’t much more to say about the room I was in, it was dark, the only light coming from a lantern hanging from the ceiling. The room was void of anything else stereo-typical of a laboratory. There was a staircase behind the grape-flavoured pony that lead up to a wooden door.

Not much to say really, aside from the obvious apology. I closed my eyes as I sighed one last time, “I’m sorry,” I said into the air.

The crying softened before choking silent, I didn’t see anything else, but I heard movement. I then felt my arms and legs be covered in a hard tingling sensation that prevented their movement, I looked at them and they appeared to be shackles made out of grape-flavoured glass. “Apology accepted,” she forced back a sob. “Subject Fericious appears subject to panic attacks,” she croaked slightly, as the little awesome dude scurried to pick up his earlier abandoned scroll and quill to keep writing the grape’s dictation, “I am uncertain if this is a common trait of the entire Human Species, but he is currently too dangerous to be let free in society.” I sighed for a third time, I could practically feel her forlornness in the air. “I’m sorry Fericious but I can’t let you out until I get approval from the Princess. Spike, after you sign off on the report, send it to the Princess, along with a message to request her presence.”

“Oki-doki!” I heard the sounds of paper ripping before more frantic scribbling. Then, for some strange reason, I heard, felt and smelled the paper burning.

“Did you just burn that report?” I asked, bewildered, from my place on the ground.

“Oh don’t worry, that’s just how Spike sends letters to the Princess, I should get a reply soon.” Well that about sums up everything ever. I should have reacted more harshly at that but I’ve realised that at that point I didn’t have the required amount of bothers to give a damn.

I simply responded, “So he’s the male mail dragon… Funny,” the earlier tables were turned when Twilight giggled as Spike huffed.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Twilight began after a bout of silence, “how do you know what dragons are, but nothing about ponies? It seems unlikely that you’d know about one but not the other.”

“Oh, we have ponies and horses where I come from, but none so animated or so very purple as you,” she pursed her lips at that, “I was more surprised at the dragon, as he is part of mystic lore where I’m from. Medieval fairy tales and what not. It’s just hard to believe that a being fabled to be so massive and oppressive can be as small and docile as Spike over here,” still, dude’s awesome, “I can’t wait to see one that’s all huge and oppressive.”

“Still, you also seemed more surprised over the fact that I am purple, and not that I’m a unicorn, more mystic lore where you’re from?”

“You betcha’,” actually, now that I think about it, I had a question to ask, “You said you were summoning the most dangerous creature here,” she flinched slightly as I brought back the sad memory of the earlier conflict, “This isn’t a very big room, what would have you done if what you summoned was the size of a mountain, or could break free of your magic?”

She blinked, “You know, I didn’t really think of that… But the spell was designed to bring a weakened member here, if the species could do those things then it would have brought a wounded, ill or baby specimen here,” she seemed to think for a moment, “You don’t look wounded or sound ill… Are you a child of your species?”

What a weird question, surely she could tell by my manly voice and magnificent complexion that I wasn’t, “No, not really, I am seventeen years old at the moment, my species originally lived to be only about twenty years old in the dark ages, but with the development of survival tools, and medicinal advances, we have people living to be over one hundred years old,” so I’m almost a fifth of my people’s age, that’s not too young is it? Still, I had one more thing to prove my manhood… time to mention puberty… joy, “the main development stage for humans, puberty, begins at around twelve to fifteen for males and continues until about twenty years old,” here it goes, “it is the time when humans go through primary sexual development, it’s also when the most growth and ‘fine tuning’ happens for our motor controls and skeleton. The human finishes full development by twenty five, when the brain finishes maturing.” Talking about puberty is icky.

“Spike did you get that down?” Twilight said almost robotically, and I hope he did, as I am not repeating that spiel again.

“The report is on it’s way to Princess Celestia, I don’t think I could if I wanted to,” he looked away, and continued quietly, “I wouldn’t do it even if you wanted me to.” Dude’s awesome like that.

“There’s that word again, Princess, is it a monarchal society here?”

“Diarchal technically,” Spike cut in before the grape-flavoured pony could answer.

“Then don’t you have a King or Queen? Or is this Princess spearheading this operation?”

She looked at me confused, “Equestria has never had a King or Queen, such oppression is subverted by the princesses.”

I was about to ask more about this, before little awesome dragon dude interrupted us with an almighty burp of fire, fury and righteous awesomeness. It was honestly the most epic thing that I will ever have the privilege to bare witness to, and it was at that very moment when everything was alright in the world.

“I’m not going to lie, that was epic,” I laughed from my place on the floor. Spike tore the page out of the air with practiced finesse and gave a little bow where I could see it. Me and him are going to be best buds, I just know it. He ripped the seal off and recited the words on the parchment.

He cleared his throat, “My dearest Twilight, you should know better than to play with dangerous magic, especially with nopony else knowing what you’re doing! What if something had gone wrong? You do have every right to pick and choose what you research, but in the future, please come to me for advice before attempting an experiment like this. Now, I trust your judgment in dealing with this creature. If he is as dangerous as you say he is, I suggest getting your friends together in case he tries to hurt you or escape. Unfortunately, at this moment I am predisposed, otherwise I would have teleported right away when I read the request. Just be careful Twilight, I have every trust in your decisions. Your teacher, Princess Celestia,” his recital finished, Spike rolled up the scroll and looked at Twilight.

Twilight looked to be in thought, after a few seconds she sighed and looked towards Spike, “As always, the Princess is the one who thinks, Spike, go and grab Rainbow Dash, tell her to get Applejack and meet me here, then go and get Fluttershy. Tell all of them that it’s an emergency, but don’t give them details. Just say to hurry, and only get them.”

“Fluttershy? Are you sure that’s a good idea?” He asked.

“Trust me Spike, Go on,” she affirmed, then off the little dude went on his mighty quest, she looked at me with a sudden determined glint in her eye, “Now, Fericious, tell me why I shouldn’t leave you here, on the floor, restrained, until you are too weak to do any harm.”

I responded without any sense of my joviality, “Because if you do, you’ve no chance for my forgiveness.”

She sighed, “I wasn’t going to anyway, it’s not that I don’t trust you, actually no, I kind of don’t,” preaching to the choir there hun, “but I will never be able to forgive myself if any harm came to my friends. Just, don’t talk for now, I’ll decide if we are all safe enough for you to be let go when they get here… Don’t talk to them either, until I tell you it’s okay.”

I nodded my head, or rather put my chin to my collar bone and let it fall again, “The floor is cold,” I wined to the air. Bare stone against bare back is really cold.

“Oh, cry baby, they shouldn’t be long. Actually, Fericious, is there anything else that I should know?”

“Other then I have a perchance to suffer from a panic attack, not much,” I am not going to mention my red-belt, I just think that I should have that leg up if I was in danger from these guys. I might tell them if I trusted them more but as it stands now, it hides with my actual name. Then I thought for a moment, “Oh yeah, I really, really do not want to take my pants off, it’s a massive faux pas where I’m from. So don’t do it.”

“It’s a good thing I didn’t summon Rarity then,” she paused when she noticed my piercing glare, “sorry, poor choice in words.”

“Too bloody right, mate,” I think that was the hardest Aussie swagger I could possibly show, and most likely ever will show.

“Right, sorry, now keep quiet, I want to see what the others think without bias of your words, I want to hear their judgement first before you speak. As a standpoint as to how you would be received by the rest of Ponyville.”

“Fair enough.”

I had my eyes closed for a while, and I think I actually fell asleep, it wasn’t long before I heard the dampened sounds of a door slamming open in the room above, immediately followed was a muffled voice, “Twilight, what’s wrong!”

The pony in question stood and made for the door, “I’m in here girls! And there is not much of a problem… yet,” I barely heard the last remark as she lead them into the lab.

“Twiligh’? Is that there critter giving ya’ a hard time, it doesn’t look like it to me, it looks like you’ve got it trussed up real tight,” came an absurdly southern-american voice from the stairs. I would have looked up at them but I didn’t want to make my lucidity known just yet, so I kept still as I heard the sounds of clippity-cloppiting of three ponies making their way down the stairs.

“Yeah Twi, what’s the problem? If it’s that thing on the ground then it doesn’t look so tough.” I felt a repeated gust of air on my face and chest, and I very much wanted to know what it was, so I opened my eyes, “Woah!” yelled a very colourful pony as she somehow flew away, don’t tell me, they have pegasi here as well? Well why not, next thing you’ll be telling me that there are griffons or something like that out there.

I looked at her and I was about to say, ‘hello… you’re blue…’ as a stunning representation of my magnificent brilliance, but decided against it. Instead I smiled softly, wisely deciding to keep my mouth shut. No matter how disarming a smile can be, canines are canines. Since I knew my cover of sleeping was blown I moved my head up to get a look at my new audience.

The one from before, Rainbow Dash by the looks of things, had just landed next to her friends. Ahem, she had a very blue body that was accented by two big and very blue wings, her mane and tail were very rainbow and her eyes were very magenta, I have a nickname for this pony, from now on I will refer to her in passing as Skittle-Flavoured, because I can. Not that I’d ever say it out loud mind you. And yes, I am going to write this again for the very orange pony sitting next to her.

As I said, she was a very orange pony with a very yellow mane and very green eyes, she had no other discerning features like wings or a horn, but rather she sported a very big stetson. I’m okay with this, stetsons are cool. From a method of elimination I had to choose between naming her Fluttershy or Applejack, most likely the latter as it looked like she had a trio of apples stamped on her flanks. That’s odd, now that I’ve seen that, I noticed that the grape-flavoured pony had a star stamped on her flank, and Skittles had a picture of a cloud with a rainbow lightning bolt under it. Heh, it seems animals brand themselves now. 

Wow, what a dark thought.

“Aww, it doesn’t look so scary to me,” Skittle-flavoured remarked with an extra dose of brashness, “In fact it looks harmless, no claws, no fangs, no obvious muscles. I don’t know why you need us here at all Twi. Did it eat one of your books?” She and ‘Applejack’ stifled a giggle, as Twilight just scoffed. My smile was replaced with an annoyed frown, but then quickly evened out, I had to keep up my shroud of ignorance after all. Instead I just sniffed the air and had my head fall to the floor. That was stupid. I forgot that stone was very hard and usually hurt if you hit it. I scrunched up my face in pain as Skittles and Applejack laughed at my misfortune.

I could feel Twilight roll her eyes, it was that palpable, “Looks can be deceiving Rainbow,” Twilight piked up, defending my masculinity, “there is something about him that I can’t trust.”

“Ah know what you mean,” the very orange pony responded, “something about him just seems… off to me. Giving me a bad vibe is all… Fluttershy has tonnes of experience dealing with these sort of critters, maybe when she gets here, we can ask her what she thinks.”

“Good thinking, Applejack,” Twilight affirmed, now began the wait for the one called Fluttershy and Spike to come back. Hang on, I haven’t given Applejack a nickname yet have I? Oh well, I will do the thing when I think of it later. Not much happened before the arrival of Spike and Fluttershy.

Spike entered with a standard “We’re back!” but Fluttershy decided to live up to her name and enter without a sound. Well, now, this pony was very yellow, and she had very yellow wings that look more lithe than Skittle’s and she had a very pink flowing mane that fell to just above her very yellow hoovsies. I have a nickname for this pony, from this moment onwards I will refer to her in passing as, Banana-Flavoured, not that I’d say that out loud mind you.

She took one look at me and as soon as her very blue eyes met mine she looked away and continued down the stairs without glancing my way again. “Oh good, yer here, Fluttershy what do y’all think about this here critter? Have y’all seen anythin’ like it before?”

“He scares me,” she said into her mane, well thank you there little one, that’s a very good way to help my ego out.

“It doesn’t take much to do that,” Skittle-Flavoured whispered to Applejack which made her give off a small chuckle.

Without pulling any mention to it, Twilight motioned for Fluttershy to continue, “there is something about him that just seems unnatural, like he’s not supposed to be here,” preaching to the choir and the crowd there little one, “I have never seen anything that’s just like him, but he bares resemblance to the monkeys in white-tail woods. If he hasn’t done anything wrong so far, then why is he tied up? His eyes give off the presence of intelligence, and I think that he at least deserves a chance.” Her voice was so very soft and silky, as if she was whispering every thing she said, she had me almost mesmerised until she called me up for being intelligent. That was an amazing shot in the dark if I do say so myself, it probably had something to do with how still I was keeping myself. A wild animal was stuck like this would be trying to break free at any time. 

GG Banana-flavoured, GG.

“I agree,” said Twilight, “he hasn’t done anything wrong. I think we all remember how we took to Zecora, the only thing she did wrong was look strange,” they all shared an abashed look with one another, whoever this Zecora bloke/sheila is, “however, I haven’t been completely honest with you all. Fluttershy was right, our… guest, I suppose, is intelligent and can speak,” amidst their looks, she continued, “Fericious, tell them who you are.”

I smiled, and decided to play a little game. In the most gravelly and unintelligible speech I could fathom I said in broken English, “Ferissy. Speak. Human. I. Come. From. A. Land. Down. Under-” I couldn’t hold it in any further, it was Twilight’s look of utter astonishment and Rainbow’s look of severe bewilderment that set me off. After a solid ten seconds of laughter from me, I decided to cut the act, “Sorry, I just couldn’t pass it up. You should have seen the look on Rainbow’s face, Priceless! Anyway, my name is Fericious, and I, am an alien. I am from a likely distant planet called Earth, Twilight here summoned me in an attempt to study the most dangerous creature alive to find a way to protect pony-kind from anything. The spell didn’t work as planned and it ripped me from my world and she was no way of sending me back. It was an accident, I know, but she still tore me from bed,” I only now realised how tired I was. The panic attack from earlier, mixed with the lack of sleep from the night previous and the nap I had before the other ponies arrived here all compounded in one mighty yawn that broke my speech, adrenaline is one hell of a drug, “As you can probably tell, I am very tired right now and I only have my pants on me and nothing else, so as I am now, I am completely harmless” the red-belt in ninjutsu notwithstanding, “as Fluttershy said before, everything at least deserves a chance.”

There was silence for a few moments, before Applejack looked towards Twilight and spoke up, “Ya know, sugar cube, he’s right, if what he said is true then ah can’t rightly abide when he’s tied up wrongly like this. T’ain’t fair in the slightest.”

“Aj’s right,” Rainbow confirmed, “I say let him go, ‘sides, if he tries anything then I know for sure that I can take him down before he can hurt anypony.” We’ll see about that Skittles, we will see.

Fluttershy just nodded and smiled, content that her friends all agreed that I should have a chance.

“But,” Applejack interrupted Twilight as she was about to say something, “I want to know how he got here, he said that he’s an alien from another world, and that it was an accident, but what actually happened?” Twilight nodded and stayed silent for a few seconds as she pieced the story together in her mind. She then recounted the tense few minutes of my entrance into this world, rightly not mentioning the panic attack I suffered earlier, in favour of me.  

She finished with, “I don’t feel right about keeping him here like this, yet I don’t feel right about letting him go, the spell was designed to summon to most dangerous creature alive, should we really risk letting him run free?”

“We could leash him,” Skittle-Flavoured piped up, everyone, especially me, gave her a glare that could melt steel, Fluttershy more so than the others, probably due to the fact that she couldn’t stand an intelligent creature treated like anything but one, either that, or she really doesn’t like leashes, “Never mind.”

“I don’t know about you lot, but I really don’t want to be leashed. I already said I’m harmless,” relatively, “if you all don’t trust me now,” I said especially having my gaze fall upon the grape-flavoured pony, “then I’d doubt you ever would.” the deliberative sound of contemplative silence returned once more as they all thought of a way forward. 

“I think,” Twilight lied… ZING! “that we should all consider this away from him,” Twilight nodded in my direction, “if he does have a corrupting or charming influence on us, then I think that decisions should be made away from him.” Charming? Well, you don’t sound that bad yourself hun, “Spike, watch him, if he starts breaking away, then make as much noise as possible, and we’ll be there to help right away.” With that final remark, the group of disbelievers, or rather, the believers and Twilight, left me to my own thoughts. Or I would be if I had forgotten that Spike was in the room.

“Give it to me straight dude,” impossible, but still, “how long have I got to live?” I asked him.

“Eh, I wouldn’t worry about them, they are pretty friendly if a bit slow to trust. Besides, the ponies in this town would sooner run away from you than outright attack on sight. It’s more a matter of when Twilight will let you go than a matter of if, so yeah, knowing her, she’d probably pick up a few books and you could be here all night.”

“Joy,” I sighed.

“Why don’t you tell me about you humans to pass the time, I wanna know about those ‘air-o-planes’ and ‘carts’ you mentioned earlier.”

“I don’t see why not,” I then went into a rant about human inventions and how we travelled, boat, car, bike, rollerblades, planes, you name it, I also talked about human leadership and democracy and all that, I didn’t know much about it but it was a topic for discussion at school, so I knew a bit. He seemed interested in the invention sections, but quickly shushed me when I spoke about politics, because seriously, who likes politics? We waited the return and decision of my fate, it wasn’t long until the door to the main section opened and in walked a resolute salad of Bananas, Grapes, Skittles and Applejack… I seriously need to think of a flavour for her. 

Anyway, Applejack and Rainbow had very determined looks in their faces, where Twilight looked resigned and Fluttershy looked indifferent, at least I thought so, it’s hard to tell with these ponies. I would most likely guess that the conversation opened with Twilight giving her friends all the reasons why I should become a museum exhibit, and her friends all precisely and effectively shot down each and every one of her arguments.

“Don’t make any sudden movements,” Twilight warned. Little did she know, I planned to do the exact opposite of what she’d said. 

My earlier mention of my training in Ninjutsu had me prepared for situations when I would be immobilised for long periods of time, the tip is to tense and then relax your muscles constantly to make sure the flow of blood continues in your system and it stays ready, kind of like why a cat purrs. This made sure that I was ready for my next very sudden movement. 

As soon as I felt the hard magical constructs recede from my arms and legs, I raised my legs up fast enough that I could lean on the nape of my neck, I then twisted my legs to the right and bent my back in a way that would make my legs falling bring up my upper body, the last motion was to propel myself off the ground with my hands to give myself enough air to land on my legs properly and stand up fully finishing with spin. It was probably the most sudden and quick movement that I could have possibly done in this situation. I finished with a spin and a flair, “tah-dah!” I announced as I landed on my feet. All I needed was a top hat, suit and a cane and the image would have been complete, why? Because being a badass gentleman is probably the coolest thing in existence.

I looked down to my captive audience (see what I did there?) to gauge their reactions, they didn’t take to it kindly as per my expectations. Twilight’s very purple horn was glowing very purple, Dash was already in the air in a combat stance (combat hover?), Applejack had a length of rope in her mouth - where she got it out from I still have no idea - and Fluttershy backed up and looked at me in fear. She looked so little, in fact they all looked so little. It was then I realised just how tall I was compared to them. I know that Australians have a taller frame in general but these ponies were just short, I towered about a meter above the ponies, and an extra half a meter over Spike.

“I just said no sudden movements!” Twilight stomped as her horn died down.

“Hey! that’s just how I usually get up!” No it isn’t. I just wanted to put on a show.

“It’s effective, Ah’ll give ya that,” Applejack said as she put her rope behind her, just behind her, and it disappeared. I stared astonished at the magical disappearing act for a bit before Spike broke the silence.

“That was awesome!” he giddily remarked, I gave a bow at my stunning display of fineness.

“Yeah, it was kind of cool,” Rainbow stated, ever cocky with herself, she landed soon after. She also had a smirk on her features despite herself.

“Just don’t pull those kinds of things again,” Twilight warned, ever serious.

“No guarantees there Twilight,” I smiled with devious intent. She was not amused, still, she lead Fluttershy and Spike up to the main room, with me following them and Rainbow Dash and Applejack behind me, I knew for a fact that the back of my head was in ashes with how hard Rainbow Dash and Applejack were watching me from behind. I’m sure they got a good view, the back of my head is fabulous.

We reached the main part of the building, the library, as I had been told, and how blatantly it was obviously a library. All the furniture was made of wood, there was a table in the centre with a wooden ornament of a unicorn head resting on it, the were a few strange chairs around it and space for ponies to read the books they picked out, which were all around us. Twilight intruded on my examining silence, “there’s still the matter of what to do with you now that I’ve released you. We can’t let you into Ponyville proper yet, because I fear the ponies here won’t take so well to you. I propose that you stay with me for the night until we figure out a better plan.”

“Absolutely not Twi’,” Applejack interjected, “If this here Fericious is supposed to be the most dangerous critter alive, then is it really a smart idea ta’ keep him in the centre of town?” You raise a very persuasive argument there Applejack… I really need to think of a flavour for her, seriously, “We could hold him up in the barn for safe keeping.”

“I’m afraid not Applejack, as you said, he is dangerous, and with all those tools at your barn available to him it would only make him even more so. I really don’t want to leave him with any means to hurt any pony and escape.”

“Hey,” it was my turn to be offended, “If I wanted to hurt you and get away then I would have done it already, all I’d have to do is push Rainbow’s arrogance far enough that she would attack me. I would then force her into a wall to knock her out, in the same motion I’d throw Spike into Twilight hard enough that you’d both be incapacitated or at least distracted, then I can be sure that Applejack here would use that rope of hers to try and capture me, but I would grab it mid-flight and twist it around in her mouth so it would wrap harmlessly around her neck, then I’d pull it and flip her around. As she sailed towards me, or I towards her, I would tackle her to the floor. I would then hog tie her up when she’s dazed so she couldn’t move. Then I’d glare harshly at Fluttershy to scare her stiff and knock her down for the count. All that’s left would be for me to simply walk out because all of you would be unable to do anything about it,” I crossed my arms and looked smug, “But hopefully, it won’t have to come to that.”

I looked upon my varied reactions, Twilight looked ready to put me back in restraints, Applejack felt that she should defend her friends, Spike just looked at me in awe (Dude’s awesome like that), Rainbow Dash probably wanted to test my theory, and Fluttershy visibly paled. Rainbow Dash had the fasted recovering reaction, she flew up to me and hovered right in my face, “You wanna test that out pal?!”

“You would have to start it,” I said calmly. Apart to my expectations, she didn’t start swinging hooves, she instead smiled darkly as the infernal candle inside her mind lit up with a pitch black idea.

“Hey Twilight!” She said, looking towards the grape-flavoured pony, who in turn looked towards her with a worried expression, “Why don’t you cast that cloud walking spell on him and he could bunk up in my place, if he causes any trouble, then I won’t mind having an extra ventilation hole in my floor,” she says that like she lives with her head in the clouds or something, I wouldn’t be surprised, wait, cloud walking spell? That can only end well for me.

“You know…” Grape-flavoured darkness filled her dark purple face as she smiled darkly as Skittle’s dark idea flooded her mind making her grape-flavoured mind unusually dark, “that’s not such a bad idea.”

“If that horn lights up, then I’m diving out the window,” I casually warned.

“Lights up?” Twilight asked, I was about to continue with my observations before Spike cut in with a logical answer, have I ever said how awesome that little dude is?

“Guys, simmer down! It’s the middle of the day, ponies are all out and about, so moving him would be way too risky!” and then the tension in the room promptly vanishes in a puff of logic, “He should just stay here with Twilight and I, we have a spare bed anyhow.” I might have mentioned this before, maybe, but… Dude’s awesome like that.

“I suppose you’re right Spike, if anypony does see him, there would be a lot of panic and unwanted questions. Both plans however, are good possibilities for later, if we need them, but for now they wouldn’t quite work. We should just leave him here and hope he sticks to his word.” I smiled happily and uncrossed my arms. “However,” good feeling gone, “I wouldn’t mind the extra company and security,” she turned to her salad ensemble, “Fluttershy, you can go home if you want, I don’t want to push you into staying with him for longer than necessary, you haven’t been able to look at him without freezing up the entire time he was mobile.”

the banana-flavoured pony in question looked to the floor and mumbled a quiet, “thank you,” before turning and making her way to the door. She froze before opening it, “No,” She turned to her friends and me before declaring her intentions, “I will stay with you, I know that he won’t hurt us so I have nothing to worry about…” she then paused her triumphant declaration to look away in shyness and paw (hoof?) at the ground, “If you don’t mind that is…”

Twilight and her friends smiled at Fluttershy’s braveness, even I had to admit that I was impressed, she then turned to Skittles and Applejack, “Applejack, Rainbow Dash, I know that you both have pressing obligations that need to be attended to in the morning, but if staying the night here wouldn’t cut into your work too much then I would happily have the extra security.” Rainbow Dash and Applejack quickly added their determination to the mix as they made Twilight sure that they’d never abandon her, and that they are going to help watch over me.

“Come on now ladies, there’s no need to go to this extent, I already said that I won’t do any damage unless you provoke me, and I make it a point to keep my word,” I told them, in an effort to dissuade such hostilities, but they all stared at me in the typical woman ‘hush male’ look. I guess things are just equal between realities, no matter how far you go. I said offhandedly to Spike, “Where I come from, there is a two step process to winning an argument with a woman, one, accept everything she says and two, don’t try to argue. It almost never works.” He burst out laughing and Rainbow smiled despite herself. I snapped my fingers in defeat, “Alright, alright. I have been defeated, watch me if you must. I see it will be a hard process to win your trust,” they looked annoyed by that comment but took it nonetheless.

Before I went to sleep however I made two small requests, a blank book and something to write with. They were very readily on hand and it was no trouble getting them, I had a small problem with using the quill and inkwell set Twilight supplied at first but I quickly got the hang of it. I have this ability, I suppose, to be able to accurately remember everything that happened in the day, at the cost of not being able to remember the day previous very well, if you think about it, I have about 36 or so hours of memory banks available, and everything that’s not important gets written over with the input of new memory. It’s a significant part of being able to correctly and accurately write down and recollect the events that happened in the day. I am not sure how this condition works, but it could be that my neural paths in my mind have solid yet fickle connections with each other, they are able to be used often, but every new signal that passes through a provided pathway will overwrite and replace the previous neural data written and stored within the central memo-

Okay, she’s gone now, I’d figured as such, Skittles just has no concept of privacy. Anyway, they are taking turns with watching me, and it’s taken 30 or so minutes to write this. It’s sort of a meditative process that really puts me to sleep. Anyway, I’m tired now, and I’ll continue writing this tomorrow. Maybe then I should become further accustomed to the world that I have been permanently moved to. Tomorrow, for now? Sleep.




A note from your lord and ruler, Discord.

“No, no, no,” I repeated as I paced around my eternal infinity, “this can’t be right. I was expecting someone else, he should have been at least six times more irritable than this!”

In truth, I had planned that someone else would have taken the place of this ‘Fericious’ character. Sure he meets the requirements of ‘chaos puppet’, the only one being ‘human’, but he was suppose to be completely different! His ‘name’ should have started with an N for Me’s sake!

No matter, this just means that I would have to take extra precautions for the future, one little hiccup like this can’t upset the balance of my plans. Everything has to go according to my plan that I set in place.

Wait.

Since when did I need a plan of all things? Better yet, why am I surprised at all that things didn’t go according to it? Ugh, I’m no good at this planning business. Whatever goes in the future goes, let’s just see if I don’t have a say in it. Everything will eventually go according to my plan, because after all… 

I said it will.
> Day 2 - Examination
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dream 427 - A horrible twistd form, shreiking a wiked laughter. I was spiraling downwads and upwards… I cant remember much else.


Day 2 in Equestria - Examination 


My dreams are weird. 

I figured I might as well use this as a dream journal, considering it satisfies the checklist for being one, that being ‘a book’ and ‘not destroyed’, and so I’ll record any dream I can remember into this book when I wake up. Anyway, the morning...

I was up first, unsurprisingly, my remark yesterday about Skittles' lack of knowledge about the concept of Personal Space was brought on by the fact that they took turns watching me through the night. So, being the only one that got a decent rest, I was up first. Just to make a note, that night was probably the best night’s rest I have ever had, it wasn’t plagued by nightmares that I’d expect out of this situation, and it wasn’t gifted with memorable dreams either. It was just simply a relaxing sleep, I suppose it also helps that these beds the ponies sleep on feel like they are made of clouds.

I did wake up disheartened though, the main fact that this whole tirade didn’t turn out to be a nightmare solidified when I woke up under the same strange wooden ceiling I fell asleep under. I guess I really am never going home.

Anyway, I was up first in the day, and my first hour of being awake was spent at the window, looking at the town that I was torn to, this, ‘Ponyville’ as it was called. Little of it’s inhabitance were awake at this hour so this enabled me to gaze for quite some time. My first thought was that everything was so colourful, the sunrise accenting perfectly the yellows and browns of the thatched roofs, light reflecting beautifully off the pasty white of the stone enlaced buildings, the swaying greens of the leaves in the forrest in the distance as they danced with the winds, all of the sweeping grass on the rolling meadows in the distance and the glorious hard brown that was the branches jutting out of my vantage point, that I later found out was inside a tree. It was beautiful to say the least. 

My attention was then caught by some early-morning pegasi who were flittering about in the clouds, they looked as though they were moving them around the place. This whole picture reminded me of that famous earthly painting, you know the one, the one of the lakeside parkland with a white clad populous sitting about the place enjoying their morning, just without the people. I would have enjoyed the sight and relaxed on it further but a hoof that nudged my side made me jump and severed my reverie. 

“Sugar cube,” went the owners accented voice, “Ah think y’all should probably come away from the window, we don’t want ponies ta’ see you right ’bout now, it’ll raise too many unwanted questions.”

“That’s fine,” I drew the curtains, isolating my view from the beautiful sight.

It was silent for but a few moments until Applejack spoke up in her natural farmer dialect, “So, how are you up so early?” It’s a strange question, but I’ll bite.

“I usually am, the place I lived was about an hour’s bus ride away from my school, so I had to be up really early to catch it, or I’d have to get the next one and be an hour late.”

“A bus? Is that like a carriage?” Right, I forgot, these ponies don’t have as advanced methods of transportation, I asked about that yesterday when I talked to Spike about the topic, and the little awesome dude told me about the pegasus drawn carriages and the ‘earthpony’ powered train system. Heh, talk about horse power.

“It sort of is, but it can hold about fifty or so people in it.”

“Golley, what sort of demand would need that kind of transport?” She thinks that’s impressive?

“A big city with lots of people that need to be places, or a spread out city with not as many people but need to go further.” Supply and demand and all that.

“Well, Ah’ll be. Anywho, I was goin’ to slip out of here to trot on up to mah farm an’ git you somethin’ to eat before y’all woke up but you beat me to it… but since ya’ haven’t tried anything bad while we were sleeping, I think I can trust you enough to leave you alone,” she turned away and head for the door of the library, before freezing in front of it and turning to me, “before ah go, Twilight said that y’all were om-niv-rus without explainin’ it to any of us…” Twilight must have told her while they were off plotting my demise, she probably assumed that they all knew what omnivorous meant and you know what happens when you assume, “What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m a lower grade carnivore and herbivore at the same time,” ‘lower grade’ because humans can’t eat only meat alone, and we don’t have a hankering for leaves and grass and the like. After my explanation she just looked at me funny, my first thought was that she had a lower opinion of me because I eat meat, but looking at her face made me realise that I explained one big word using other big words, I hate it when dictionaries do that and it didn’t make it any better when I did, “It means that I can eat both meat and fruit.”

“Ah,” she affirmed, “Meat huh? Shoot, ah don’t know if I could get any of that here, not that ah’d want to for that matter,” she shivered at the thought, “would apples be fine?” I nodded. At my answer she dipped her head and turned away, “Well, ah’ll be off, knowing these lazy ponies, ah’d be up ’n’ back three times before they wake up.” I chuckled at that last remark and wished her well in her epic quest for apples. She left me to my musings. I decided that I should heed my earlier warnings about gazing through the windows and see if I could pique my interests on anything else. It didn’t take long until my eyes fell upon Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, it was adorable.

Twilight set out the sleeping arrangements so that she’d share her bed with Applejack, Spike and I’d have our own beds and Fluttershy and Rainbow would drag a cloud into the library to sleep on. These ponies don’t have the same taboos with sleeping as humans do it seems. I saw them do it yesterday, but thought not to mention it, and by ‘do it’ I mean drag in the cloud you sick bastard. Besides, why are you even reading this? this is my journal, stop it.

Down boy.

Anyway, I saw them drag the cloud in and do some weird pegasus mojo on it to make it not float away, then Fluttershy just plonked herself onto it and promptly fell asleep. She didn’t fall through it either, I wanted to see if I could actually touch it but to my distain, my hand just fazed through it. I questioned about that but Rainbow just explained it as ‘magic’. I will quickly come to hate that term. It was Rainbow’s first shift to watch me, then she’d go and wake up Twilight and go to sleep with Fluttershy. After Twilight’s shift she’d magic Fluttershy out of bed without disturbing Rainbow, and then she’d go to sleep. And finally, when Fluttershy felt that I wouldn’t be a problem, she’d go back to bed. It was then planned that Applejack would wake up before me and see if I was being unruly, but they didn’t plan on me being up first now did they?

Looking at the adorable sight before me made me just want to go over there and squeeze the life out of the two cute little ponies. They were facing each other with the Skittle’s hoovsies wrapped around the little dainty Banana. The little banana-flavoured pony had her head down close to the skittle flavoured pony’s chest and Skittles had her head just above Banana’s in some form of protective display, like an older sister caring for her younger. I couldn’t stop smiling at the sight, it was just too charming to let by. However, since I didn’t want to be caught staring and smiling at ponies while they slept my attentions were drawn elsewhere. 

I got out of the bed I was given and went into the main room. I was interested in what kind of books this library held so I picked one up and started reading. It didn’t take me long for me to realise that I couldn’t actually read it well. Sure the symbols looked familiar, but it was as confusing as hell to try and decode it. It honestly looked more like Russian. Still, I managed to get the gist of the contents, it was some book about agricultural methods or something. I was more interested in decoding the words than what the words were actually saying, so a good hour or so passed and I became somewhat more proficient with reading these weird equestrian words. 

“Booksmarts will only git you so far, nothin’ beats proper experience,” came a voice unto my silence, “I’m a good example of that.” I looked up to see Applejack trot on in and quickly close the door behind her and her little wagon of food. It took me this long to realise how hungry I was, I hadn’t eaten in about 10 or so hours after all, and the abrupt break in my sleep yesterday served to aggravate that.

I sniffed at the air as a tantilising smell wafted through the building and caressed my nose, I responded, “I smell apple pie,” I put the book down, “I love apple pie.”

“Then you an’ I are gonna get along jus’ fine,” she smiled. With that bout of broship out of the way, Applejack and I sat down to enjoy various filling apple related foodstuffs. It was a good while of apple munching silence before Applejack asked me about my diet and whatnot.

“It’s no mystery that humans can live without meat, in fact, some humans choose to, they call themselves vegetarians,” and I call them crazy, “but it really, really sucks to, especially if you’ve been practically living off of it for the past lifetime,” she looked worried at the confession, “that doesn’t mean I won’t try, mind you, however it’s impossible for me to live without a steady source of iron in my diet.”

“You can eat metals to?” Spike so suddenly said behind me. 

That damn near scared me within an inch of my life, it made me choke on the food in my mouth for that matter. After I managed to eject the intruding morsel from the entrance of my oesophagus, the pony and dragon asked if I was fine. I nodded the affirmative yet still took a moment to recover. “What? No, I don’t eat metals-” I interrupted my speech to rearrange my windpipe slightly, “what made you come to that conclusion?”

“Dragons can eat metals! Though, gems mostly, and anything that’s available here, like hay fries for instance!” 

“No meat though?” I asked.

Spike was about to answer before Twilight spoke up from behind him, scaring the little awesome dude like he did to me earlier. All we need now is for Rainbow to scare Twilight and Fluttershy to scare Rainbow, and the combo will be complete. “Spike doesn’t eat meat,” she said that with a hint of something in her voice, disgust perhaps. I briefly wondered what kind of dragon doesn’t eat meat before the grape-flavoured pony continued speaking, “It seems that you’ve already had breakfast, was he any trouble Applejack?”

“Nope, he was even up before me and didn’t do nothin’.” Them double negatives aren’t really not bad.

“Excellent, then I suppose I can have the others here as well, Spike, go get Rarity and Pinkie Pie and bring them here to meet Fericious.”

“Right away!” He then bolted out the door, and I swear I could see hearts in his eyes or something.

“I suppose I should get the other girls up so they can eat to,” and so she did, and we all ate in the room until the food was all used up. I think I might just note here that those apples were the second best thing that I have ever tasted, number one being my mother’s cooking and a close third is good ole’ Vegemite and cheese on toast. I think I can sustain forever on those three things alone. It didn’t take long for the little awesome dude to return from his little awesome quest and bring in the two earlier mentioned ponies, like an awesome little dude.

The voice of a very typical high society person sank in through the door, “Honestly Spike, I don’t see what is ever so important that you’d pull me from my morning routine, a figure like this can’t sustain itself you know,” then the door opened, “So can you plea- Oh my word! What is that thing?” she shrieked when her eyes fell on me. She was another unicorn like Twilight, but the only thing being very purple about her was her mane, and it was a very deep purple to, it was styled in a way that reminded me of ribbons, she had very blue eyes and had a very white plushy body, I have a nickname for this pony, and I will now refer to her in passing as Marshmallow-Flavoured, not that I’d ever say it out loud, mind you.

The other pony that entered with Marshmallow was another non-interesse pony that was very and ridiculously pink, she had a very pink body with a very, yet darker, pink and poofy mane accented slightly by her very blue eyes, I have a name for this pony, I will now refer to her in passing as, Strawberry-Flavoured, not that I’ll ever say it out loud, mind you. This one’s reaction was probably on the opposite scale to Marshmallow’s, she let out a sharp, startling squeal and proceeded to rapidly bombard my face with a tirade of incomprehensible words strung together with barely recognisable words like Party, Creature, Friends, and Ponyville, it was quite the unsettling experience, she then near disappeared from my face and appeared around me, jutting about and describing certain things about me… I think. I decided to react to the Marshmallow-flavoured pony, because I don’t think I could provide a possible reaction to the strawberry-flavoured splurge of verbal nonsense.

“Nice to meet you too I guess, that’s not a very nice way to welcome an alien to your world,” I crossed my arms in annoyance as the strawberry-flavoured hurricane of speech rocketed away from me. The Marshmallow at least had the goodwill to be ashamed at her reaction. I then looked towards the strawberry-flavoured pony, who, by the way, was still talking at break neck speeds, though she seemed to be annoying Skittles about something relating to surprises, pranks, parties and cupcakes. I have an ominous feeling about this one. 

“I apologise,” Marshmallow stepped closer to me in an attempt to quell any harsh misgivings, “It’s just that I have never seen a… ah…” she paused and motioned with her hoof in some weird way, in hindsight, she was probably trying to get me to fill in the blanks for her, but at the time it just looked like she wanted me to spoon feed her or something. 

Ponies are hard to read if you aren’t one. 

“Human,” Twilight cut in before I could find a spoon anywhere and most likely embarrass myself.

Rarity nodded a quiet thanks to her friend before continuing, “…A ‘human’ quite like yourself before,” she looked abashed towards my feet, “Your presence was quite startling.” Her apology sounded genuine, and I know the difference between that and a fake one, having used (and abused) both myself, so I lightened up. If she had the goodwill to mean her apology, than I should at least have the will to forgive her.

“Consider yourself forgiven.” She and I shared a quaint little nod to subvert any past and potential future aggressiveness.

After the grape-flavoured pony managed to calm the strawberry-flavoured tornado from talking the library in on itself, Twilight introduced me to the new members of the gang, “Rarity, Pinkie Pie, this is Fericious. He was accidentally summoned here when I launched a research project, and I have no means to send him back, for now however, he is our… guest, I suppose. He is a Human.”

It was then when I knew what it felt like to be steam roller’d by a pony, as I was tackled down with a gas bagging strawberry pony. In fact, I think I might’ve had some splinters in my poor uncovered back. “Wow! I’ve never seen a hu-mane before!” She leaned really close to my face before she gasped and illogically floated off me somehow, “I’ve never thrown a party for a hue-man before!” she squealed before zipping over to to the grape-pony, “What are you gonna do with him Twi? Can we keep him? Can we keep him? Pleeeeeaaaaase?”

It was then when I knew that it was going to be a long day.

Nothing really remarkable happened for the rest of the day, it mostly included me just hanging about amongst the books and reading all sorts of different interesting things. Lunch came and went without a problem and everyone seemed fine with my presence, that was before Twilight shattered the pleasant atmosphere with an almighty gasp, flash of light and a transparent very purple bubble around yours truly. This of course put everyone on edge, me especially, because I was halfway through a really tense story about an assassin, the blade was nearly at her target’s throat when the book suddenly disappeared out of my hands.

“Hey, I was reading that!”

“I can’t believe I could be that absent!” Twilight suddenly proclaimed. Well, the last racehorse finally crossed the finish line.

“What’s the matter?” Came the Skittle-Flavoured reply.

“Fericious, do you remember when you said something about fatal diseases on you?” Twilight went on, regardless of Rainbow’s question.

“I remember it exactly, yes,” It hasn’t been thirty-six hours since then, so it’s still in my memory banks, “why do you ask?”

“Because that could be a very possible conundrum to have to deal with if left unsolved!” 

“Oh dear,” says I, “I hadn’t thought of that,” we then promptly vanished in a puff of grape-flavoured magic and reappeared in the laboratory. Twilight kept me in the bubble until all of the necessary machines were set up and then proceeded to hook me into every single recording device possible. She even had the stereotypical evil mad scientist brain washing machine. “What do you want?” I exclaimed in a deep voice, “Do you want me to talk?”

“No, Fericious, I want you to keep still for a moment. As I said, I have to check to see if you carry any fatal diseases.” Well fair enough. She didn’t get far through her examinations until her friends burst through into the laboratory and joined in the interrogation… I mean investigation.

“Are you sure this is necessary?” I asked, tensing my wrist against the really tight chair cuffs she put me in.

“I just have to run some tests,” She replied, her mind preoccupied, “I have to search you for any known diseases, and then for any bacteria, virus, chemical, pheromone, radiation, hazard, spore, seed or aura you might have carried over from your world that has a malicious intent.”

Silence.

“Wat.” I stared at her blankly, matching the gaze of her friends. She suddenly stopped her activities when she felt all of our eyes on her.

“I have to know if you are a health risk to ponies.”

All of us that were staring all looked away at each other as we shared the ‘oh’ of understanding and let her get back to work. It didn’t take long before the Strawberry started messing with the Grape’s equipment. She was being very silent about it to, we didn’t actually notice her presence near the consoles until my spine was ruptured with a searing pain, as if struck by lightning. 

“Ohh! That’s what that does!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. I couldn’t speak, the pain was too intense.

“Oh no!” I heard the frantic shriek of the Banana pony as she fused to my side to see if I was hurt. She was gently caressing my shoulders and back, which didn’t really do well because of the hard hooves and all, but still it was a nice gesture.

The pain didn’t let up, I let out the breath I was holding and it came out with a bit of smoke. My brain tickled and ached with the influx of electricity. I just hoped my heart was still beating. I managed to find my voice, and barely hissed, “Moriarty!”

Being a big fan of Sherlock I decided that if I was ever to be tortured for what ever reason, of if I was being hurt by someone, I would shout out that name, because you know, being tortured is a very possible circumstance to have to plan for… Anyway, I coughed as Rarity came closer to help Fluttershy try and help me recover from my very shocking experience, thankfully it was over in a manner of a few agonising minutes. 

Rainbow Dash, Spike and Applejack were sharing a ball of laughter at my expense. They’ll get theirs, I promise.

“What the bloody hell was that for?” There goes the Aussie swagger again. Everyone present seemed a bit taken back by my exclamation, or by Pinkie’s rashness. Or maybe that I could actually still speak after that, who knows?

“Well excuse me for being curious! That button was practically begging to be pushed!” Pinkie said in a futile attempt to defend herself, “But that wasn’t so fun at all!”

“That must have been the Bio-Electric Detection Amplifier,” Grapey examined the console where Pinkie was, “though that’s actually not what it does, it was supposed to measure the intensity of electric signals being sent from the brain to the muscles and back, it must have overloaded and sent a surge of detection magic through you,” Twilight looked at what Pinkie had pressed, “I don’t even know how she did it.”

She moved to show her, I tensed up, “Well it’s easy! You just have to-“

Twilight put a hoof in front of the Strawberry-flavoured menace to stop her, “And I don’t want to find out either. I don’t want him to be put in any more pain or turn violent.” The rest of the process after that unpleasant experience went rather well, in that I didn’t somehow manage to piss off Zeus and get lightning bolt’d to the back again, and as it turns out I didn’t, in fact, have any hazardous factors about me. It was then when she decided to run a biological study on me. I do not want to write any of that down here because the professionalism was quickly chucked out the window and became concussed on the gutter outside covered in glass shards with one sly remark from the Marshmallow’s mouth.

“So you mean he is ripe for the picking?”

See what I mean? Curb concussion. By the comments that I totally didn’t hear and the surrounding quips that I am not going to repeat, I’d put the age of these ponies to be somewhere around young adults. Around the twenty mark. The whole thing wasn’t at all pleasurable for anyone with a Y chromosome. Like I said before, long day.

After a long time of sitting in an increasingly uncomfortable chair Twilight finally told me that I was healthy, “Well, you don’t have any physical hazards on you, and your aura isn’t infected as far as I know, so I can say that you are healthy,” she said, “Aside from yourself, I can confidently state that I know the most about humans, but even that is limited knowledge. You look fine at least, even after the Bio-Electric Detection Amplifier malfunctioned.” After she unlocked my restraints and let me stand we returned to the library proper, and I returned to my book. Not long after she turned to her friends and bid them farewell as they left for their various homes and workplaces.

I didn’t look up from my book as she saw her friends off, “Already trust me enough to send your security away?” I asked.

“Ponies are trusting by nature,” I heard the door shut and looked up. She had turned to face me, “But we generally only trust once, keep our trust healthy and we’ll get along just fine. Besides, you seem okay, you haven’t outright attacked any of my friends and you stopped yourself from hurting me yesterday in that panic attack, so I can tell you have a trained self restraint. Also that…” She paused as a slight blush formed on her cheeks, “biological examination… served to prove that you are hardly in a position to hurt me, not without any sort of weapon or intent.”

“Let’s keep me without one then,” I smiled and nodded, deliberately not determining to which I was referring, before I thought of something really important, “but what if the rest of the populace in Ponyville don’t take well to me? Should I just roll over and take the caning?”

“Well, you shouldn’t have any problem with the local ponies, they’d sooner lock themselves away then outright attack you on sight,” that’s funny, that’s what Spike said yesterday, I think, “Besides, the ‘capital’ punishment ponies employ is more weighted towards banishment than anything worse. Although, if you do get exiled and live to return, if the princesses deem you worthy of a second chance she will give it. If you don’t do anything to warrant exile then you should be fine.”

I didn’t really take to well to that information to be honest, but it’s better than nothing. The phrase ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ comes to mind, I’m figuring out the meaning of that faster than a family of illegal Iraqi immigrants as their boat sinks just before Papua New Guinea. 

Christ All-mighty, I’m such an Australian.

there wasn’t much more I could say about this day as it ended. I read more books, which Twilight readily and enthusiastically supplied. I had finished off that story about the assassin and was horrendously discontented at it. The climax built as her blade edged closer to her target, but then the pony turned around and the assassin realised that she loved her target, so she gave up her entire life’s work to live with this stallion she just met, and just like that the story was over. Twilight seemed to really celebrate it as mastery of the written word and pinnacle of romance, my English teacher, on the other hand, would have had a conniption over it. The following fiction books I read weren’t any better. I put the books down in disgust as I vowed to correct this blight on fictional literature, for my teacher’s sake. 

Oh well, I suppose I could rant and rave about literature for the next thirty minutes, but I don’t really want to fill this journal with things like that. So as it stands now, this stain on literature shall rest as it’s corrupted nature festers. As of now, sleep calls, and it so seductively whispers.
> Day 3 - Sorting
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dream 428 - I was being chased by som russian spy, experiment or somethng. Christ she was determind. I had to run jump and climb my way around my house to shake her, but no mater where I hid to catch my breth she was always only a few minutes behind. The last thing I remember is her scream of rage when I finally bested her, and I woke up.



Day 3 in Equestria - Sorting


This morning I woke up bright and early, just like always, except it seemed easier for me to do, the process of actually waking up seemed a lot appealing here. Despite that epic dream I had, I slept like a restful baby. It could be because of the bed, or the way the sun warms my face, or the quality of sleep I get without the light of my phone keeping my brain hyper for longer. ¿Quién sabe?

It felt like heaven not to have to jut out of bed for school or to do my farm chores before the morning’s out. It was really nice. The giddiness of being free filled my mind once more as I departed the sleeping world and my bed. This feeling slightly wavered as I heard a knock at the door.

Twilight warned me that if ‘any pony’ she didn’t trust came over to the library I was to hide myself in the laboratory. So I sighed and made my way to that cursed room. I looked at the main room of the library and noticed that the floor turned into books over night. Twilight was up all night studying something or other, these are the remnants. Oh well, to the lab! 

Before I managed to make it to the laboratory, however, I was stopped in my tracks when Marshmallow-flavoured calls came forth from the front door.

“Twilight dear, open up. I’ll have you know that I have a tight schedule that calls for my complete attention.”

I quickly waded my way through the sea of books to the door and opened it. The Marshmallow in question had her eyes closed in some form of haughty display of her displeasure.

“Well, it’s about time,” she then opened her eyes and learned of my presence, “Oh! It’s you Fericious, where’s Twilight, or Spike for that matter?” It was the way her voice hitched when she saw me, or the way she desired anyone but me to open the door, I don’t know. I just found the arrogance of that pony testing on my nerves at times.

I did, however, keep my voice level and cheery, “Oh, they are still asleep, Twilight stayed up all night doing lord knows what, and Spike had to help her,” I gestured to the books around the place, “this is the evidence of that.”

She hummed before agreeing with me, “Well, Twilight suggested I come over today in order for me to fashion you something to wear. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be forced to wear the same…” she appraised my sleepwear with a critical eye for a second, before she finally harshly regarded them, “cloth for three days straight without any substitutes to change into. I know for a fact that I couldn’t stand it.”

“Huh, well that’s neat,” I simply replied, “Yeah, wearing pyjamas all day might seem like a fantastic thing to do, but wearing it all day, everyday, is not really a favourable activity. What do you have in mind?” That was the exact opposite thing that I wanted to ask because I wasn’t prepared for her whole tirade into fashion and the ‘ideas’ she had in mind for me. I don’t think this pony really understands what it means to design a ‘something something’ for a male, she suggested some kind of jewel to “accent my eyes” or something in every single suggestion. Thankfully, and I grace whoever is watching over me, Twilight came down to interrupt the tirade of Marshmallowy ideas. 

“I don’t think he’s looking for something extravagant Rarity.” That’s what I’ve been trying to say this entire meeting, but the enthusiastic marshmallow pony just wouldn’t listen.

“Thank you Twilight,” I said, grateful at her incursion, “I was afraid that I’d be so runned into the ground with her ‘dress’ ideas that I wouldn’t have been able to tell her that I wouldn’t wear a dress at all.”

Rarity huffed at my explanation, “Are you sure, darling? A dress would work perfectly with those legs of yours,” yeah, she was really getting on my nerves now.

“Yeah, that would work, if I was a girl. I’d just simply go for some pants and a shirt, plain and simple, something that I could wear everyday and not be blinded by diamonds and sequins.”

“But diamonds and sequins improve everything, darling!” What does she have against simple designs? I’d figure a seamstress of her ‘caliber’ would be used to fabricating the mundane for the mind of the mundane. I silenced her protests with a look that could curdle milk. She tisk’d but relented, “Fine, I suppose I should get back onto the task that I have been requested for. Twilight doesn’t want you exposed to the masses yet, so I am required to bring my measuring utensils here, if you would be so kind,” she left her request open and gestured to the centre of the room, my first thought was that she wanted me to read a story for her. Then I realised that that would be stupid, so instead of embarrassing myself and grabbing a book, I stood in an empty place and spread my arms out. She quickly and very efficiently measured all of the dimensions of my body. 

I silently remarked at how efficient she went about this as I gazed at the blue shimmering notepad and quill that wrote down various measurements. She was rattling on about designing something for me, but I was too entranced in the floaty bluey measurey notepaddy quilly writy thingy to notice, “… I do hope you’d accept my request, I have to say, I am quite enamoured with the idea of designing an ensemble for the newest discovered species!” She scrunched her face in glee as the pen jotted down the last of my dimensions.

“Yeah, you see, about that,” I expertly cut through her joviality, having no idea what the ‘request’ was, but getting enough information to respond from the tail end of her sentence, “I have no way to pay you. It’s hardly fair if I just got these clothes from you without any sort of payment.”

“Oh, you should not concern yourself with that, Fericious!” She quickly interjected, “I shan’t ask payment of someone who is in a tight spot, I just feel that this would help you adjust to your new world. Getting into the local fashion would surly help you in that regard!” Now that she mentions it, that is a fairly decent point. Still, it’s not my alley.

I blinked, “I guess, just don’t make it too ‘high class’. KISS it, and all that. I don’t know if you have denim or any kind of leather, but just something that I can use to cover my legs, hips and chest would be fine, arms are optional.”

“I beg your pardon? For what ever reason would you want me to kiss it for?” She mustn’t be familiar with that phrase.

“No, no, KISS is an abbreviation. It stands for Keep It Simple Stu-…” I don’t think she’d openly accept to me insulting her, so I coughed and tried to recover, “Keep It Simple Sally. Sally is just a general name where I’m from.” King save, she didn’t suspect a thing.

“Keeping it simple? Please, darling, that is what a common tailor is for. I am a famous and well-renowned seamstress, who is known for bringing life to the extraordinary! You can’t possibly ask me to degrade myself to make a simple piece of clothing for the only member of a new species no one has ever seen before! The mystery and intrigue is just far too much to pass up!” She lowered her head and looked up at me, her eyes dilated and her lip quivered. She sounded heartbroken, “You wouldn’t deny a mare the opportunity of a life time, would you?”

I looked at her for a while. She probably expected that this pouty face of hers should have made me melt into her demanding cup, but it just came across to me as the cutest thing I’ve seen since Skittles and Banana. Despite my feeble attempt at maintaining a sophisticated charade, I bursted out laughing. I couldn’t help myself, it was the voice that set me off. She looked astounded at my reaction. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t have as many conniptions about fashion as you do. I don’t really care about what others think of me at all. As I said, if you must make me something, then keep it simple. Please.” I felt like I was tripping around land mines with this person, as it looked as though the Marshmallow was about to erupt and destroy everything about me.

Fortunately, the Grape stepped in and calmed Marshy’s nerves, “Rarity, I don’t think…” too right there Grape Pony ZING! “…that he really means it like that, maybe he means that he doesn’t want to cause a big stir with his appearance, I mean, you know how you reacted to him when you first saw him… how do you think everypony else would if they saw him wearing pony styled clothes designed to state a certain scene?” 

The Marshmallow pony still looked ready to erupt with her fountains of argument, but she soon relented, “Fine… I suppose you are correct Twilight, I just cannot fathom why you would not dive for such an opportunity as this Fericious!”

“Hey, trash and treasure love,” Rarity whirled on me with such force that I was sure that her neck would snap right off. It occurred to me that these ponies mightn’t have the same idioms as humans, no, really. Oh dear, I can predict that the majority of my future will be spent explaining myself to various offended parties, “It’s a saying,” I yelled in defence as I backed up slowly, fearful of my continued existence, “the full saying goes, ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’.” She didn’t look any calmer from the explanation, she probably assumed that I was insulting her craft. Thankfully, I didn’t see her horn light up.

“Why you! How dare you say such things!” She stepped closer towards me, and I was sure that at that very moment she was prepared to rip me limb from fabulous limb.

I stepped back and raised my hands in a defensive position, the chair behind me began to look very appealing as a knock-her-out-then-run-for-your-life defensive weapon, “It just means that people have different tastes from other people!” I didn’t expect that my mannerisms would receive this level of negative feedback, such is the mind of ponies right?

She stopped her advance and just stared at me, it was a tense few seconds before she scoffed, turned, and stormed out of the library, slamming the door behind her. I didn’t hear any unpleasantries soaking through the door after she left, none at all.

“That…” I said apprehensively, “did not go so well.”

“Nopony likes having their special talent insulted, I’d likely respond in kind if you talked rubbish about my magic,” she shook her little grape head, “that’s Rarity though, her life is fashion and she very often gets what she asks for. She doesn’t like her paradigms flipped so harshly like that. You should be happy that she simply left and I didn’t have to step in to keep your lungs receiving a sufficient amount of oxygen,” she told me. I gulped, I quickly meditated on the advice to never piss of a woman, especially if she has arcane abilities at her disposal.

Pushing the event into the past I shrugged. Twilight looked at me strangely. Right, them humans and their mannerisms, “that’s a shrug, a universally apt signal to put things in the past.”

She had an incredulous look in her eye as she looked me up and down, “Right,” she shook her head again before calling out for the little awesome dude. Begrudgingly, the little dude made his tired way down the stairs to the main room. The grape pony, unfazed by the awesome dude’s demeanour, opened up the day’s agenda, thankfully ‘Force Fericious to piss off Zeus again’ wasn’t part of the plan. In fact, today Twilight had planned a meeting with the town mayor, the list item just said ‘Meet with Mayor Mare’. I originally hoped to god that that wasn’t her real name, but sadly, my hopes and aspirations were dashed as I asked Grapey and found out that it actually was her real name.

Friggin’ ponies.

After a short bit of discussion, the grape-flavoured pony opted to send herself out to speak with the Mayor and goad a meeting out of her, leaving the little awesome dude and I to clean up this mess of a library. I complained about that but Twilight just shirked it off saying that Spike and I are the only ones with ‘grabbing appendages’ so it should be easier for us. I then remarked on her magic, but she shot it down with a lot of complicated words and strange reasons, like a proper nerd does. Spike on the other hand didn’t speak a word on it, and just went to work, like a little awesome dude.

I won’t say much about the cleaning, mostly due to it being as boring as all get out. There was, however, a short discussion between Spike and I that I should probably write down.

Shortly after Grapey left and I managed to stack a pile of books on my arms, I was about to make my way to the shelf before I realised something, “Hey Spike, where do these books go? Is there a categorical system here or something?” 

He slid a book he was holding into a seemingly random bookshelf. “No, not really, Twilight has this nasty habit of changing the sorting order every so often, I think this week she has it on authors by chronological occupation.” 

“Alright,” I said as I hefted the books in my arms, “what does that mean?”

“It means that she orders the authors of the books by the jobs they had, and she sorts them out by when they got hired for it.” He said, disinterested, as he picked up another book and put it away.

“Alright,” I said again as I dropped the books, causing Spike to jump, “that’s utter bollocks, how would any one else find a book in this place? Don’t you ponies have a Dewey Decimal system or something like that here?”

“Dewey Decimal?” Well, that answers that question.

“It’s a system that sorts book by field, subject, topic, author and date,” I think that’s the general schtick, “all in a handy-dandy method using numbers.”

“That actually sounds pretty neat.” He gets hyped over sorting things? Oh dear, I think I smell some Grape-like OCD washing off on him. 

As we sorted all the books in Twilight’s ‘method’ I explained the basic concept of the Dewey Decimal system, it was a long twenty minutes work before we had finally finished cleaning. Spike went upstairs to write down what I explained so he can shove it in Twilight’s face when she gets back. After Spike came back down stairs with some questions about the sorting methods, which I supplied answers to, I decided that I wanted to learn more about the so called rulers of the land, just so that I could learn more about this world.

As it turns out, Celestia and Luna have the entire populous believing that they control the sun and moon, as in they are the reason the sun raises and lowers at the ends of the days, and Luna controls what stage the moon is in every night and manages where the stars go. It took a fair chunk of my self control, which is fairly vast to be modest, not to burst out laughing. There is no way that the sun orbits around the world, and there is no possible way that Luna could control the position of stars millions of lightyears away. It’s all just a bunch of dingo’s kidneys if you ask me. Though, I didn’t speak out in it, because if I know crazy ‘believing’ cultures like these, then I know that if I did mention the actual truth I’d find myself tied to a steak and burned alive; which is something that I’d like to avoid at all costs.

However, come to think of it, I am in a world where talking purple unicorns can boss around little purple dragons and do magic, so why am I complaining about this little flaw in physics? For all I know, Celestia and Luna actually do control the celestial bodies’ rotations. Of course, my belief is so far to ingrained in my mind for me to believe otherwise, but it wasn’t my place to say anything. 

Oh wait, I get it now, Celestial body, Celestia, and ‘lunar’ is latin for moon. Har har.

With nothing else to pique our interests in, and the library being mostly tidy (with the book organised in the grape’s crazy sorting system), Spike asked about the libraries in our world. “Yeah, we have libraries where I’m from, the city I was closest to had about four, located in public areas and in universities. All of that knowledge stored away so that students and curious masses could look upon them and learn about the world they live in. Of course, this was a necessity until the Internet was invented,” oh the joys of the Internet, it truly is a wonderful thing, “If you knew where to look, and understood how to trust a source, you can learn anything you wanted.”

“Anything?” he asked, very interested in what I was saying.

“Yep, literally anything that has been discovered, anything that has been learnt, and even somethings that are in the process of being learnt, you can learn it all for yourself,” I am going to really miss the internet, but not the comments though, I am really not going to miss the comments.

“That’s amazing!”

“And it’s also, very dangerous,” I said, super cereal.

“What?”

“Have you ever really looked into chaos? Have you ever stared into the heart of insanity? The Internet is heaven as much as it is hell, if you stumble onto the wrong site, or open the wrong page, you could be horribly scarred for the rest of your days,” I was once eleven, and was served a heaping helping of Creepypasta. It was probably the most effective anti-sleeping agent I could have courtesy of Jeff and his pasty white face. Hoo-ahh. Just thinking about it makes me shiver. After all was said and done, it didn’t take long for Purple Grape to return with the mayor.

Her initial reaction was tantamount to the Marshmallow’s reaction, that as in she freaked the hell out. The conversation that followed was infused with a mix of promises of non-violence and questions about my humanness, mostly focused around if I would go insane and eat every living thing around. It was not a very pleasant experience. I swear, these ponies thought I was the plague or something terrible like that. Before she left however, the mayor said that I would have to make a ‘public announcement’ or something along those lines. I agreed that this would be a good solution to my enigma-ness that I held. Unfortunately, word did get out that there is an alien in the library, just no one knew what it was. It seems that I did actually get caught when I was looking out the window yesterday. Oh well, I’ll jump that hurdle when I get there.

The rest of the day was unremarkable. The little awesome dude did as expected and shoved the neat-o organising system up the grape’s schnoz, over which Twilight immediately nerd-gasmed. She marvelled over how logical and easy this sorting was and why ponies haven’t thought of this style before. After she made a copy of the sorting notes she sent it to the Sun God as a means to distribute it through the libraries of Equestria. The rest of this day was spent in the library cataloguing and sorting the books. As I said, not many exiting things happened today, as there wasn’t the time allowance for it.

Anyway, enough about that, it’s late enough as it is.

Good Night.
> Day 4 - Have Fericious Do Stuff Today
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dream 429 - her song was beutiful. the sombre melody filld my soul and warmd my haert. Her presens burned me, yet soothed me. I cant remember her face, but I remember the blazing passion behind her gaze. 


Day 4 in Equestria - Have Fericious Do Stuff Today


Another normal start for me. Well, I say normal, but I’m fairly sure that others around me would say something along the lines of insanely early. It was strange but, now that I was in this world it felt like my senses were improving somehow, for example, I’ve noticed that my eyes can see things in greater detail, or rather there are so many details to notice that my brain hasn’t finished noticing it yet. One thing that I’ve put to detail registry is that ponies with blue eyes, have very big and very blue eyes… especially when they are very close to your face and the owner is breathing down your chin.

My field of vision was completely pinkified. I could write here that I totally handled this situation like a baddass, and therefore be lying through my quill. Or I could write the truth and say that I freaked the hell out, which quickly led to me jumping out of bed in fright and falling into a pink knot. The Strawberry pony probably had the best reaction out of the two of us, apparently when she gets scared suddenly she starts violently hiccuping. Though, maybe it would be more accurate to say violently squeaking. Have you ever seen a horse squeak before? It’s hilarious. After calming down from a period of laughter, I decided that I had the right to know why she was breathing down my face in the morning.

“Aside from forcing me to know how ever big and very blue your eyes are, why were you over me while I slept?” I should have been angry, but these short few days have taught me that these ponies have very different views to sleeping than humans do, and the worst thing to do is reject things like that.

“Well, I couldn’t really get to sleep that well yesterday because I felt really guilty that I zappto’ed you in that machine thing, then I realised that I should probably apologise for doing it, and then I realised that I can’t apologise to you if I’m not around you, but when I got here I realised that I don’t know how you sleep and if you are that different from a pony,” she took a long deep breath, “so that’s why I was watching you this morning!”

I don’t and possibly will never know how I managed to get all of that down, she said all of that in the space of about three seconds. Somehow, I understood, “So what’s the diagnosis doc?” I asked her, fake seriousness in my eyes, as I put my hands on her shoulders, “Am I really that different from a pony?”

She looked back into my eyes as faux tears edged in hers, “I’m sorry, but… You are…” She then brightened up and moved away from my hands, she bounced up and down as she described what she noticed about me, “Your face is all flatty but your snout is all pointy, and your ears look all weird and are on the sides of your head, and your eyes are really small and are a dullish brown colour instead of a really bright and colourful colour! I noticed that last one when you were looking at me before!” I was more fascinated by how her legs sounded like they were actually springs to come up with a response to the generally basic description of my fabulous face. 

“You’re just a big ball of random aren’t you. Also, I accept your apology, just don’t mess with things that you don’t know how to work,” she nodded and seemed happy that I accepted her apology, or maybe she just was that happy in general… eh, “So, does Twilight know that you’re here or did you manage to slip under her watchful radar.”

“Nopey-dope! Twilight is too busy using a book as a pillow to know that I’m here!” Silly Grape, books aren’t pillows.

“Speaking of, does Twilight actually live here? Or does she just lurk here so often that she’s made this her burrow?” She was about to answer before I pointed behind her and continued, “Also, what’s with your tail?” Seriously, It was jittering about like she was having a butt spaz or something. As soon as I mentioned it she looked at it, squawked like a freaking chicken, and dived under my bed, somehow, there isn’t enough space for me to fit under there, so I have no idea how she got in.

I carried on, “What are you-?” 

It was in that short space of 5 seconds after when I realised that Pinkie’s butt spasms are God’s way of saying, ‘get the hell down’. A frantic yell pierced the otherwise quiet room and henceforth a blur of blue and Skittles crashed through the window and flew straight pass my face, fast enough that I didn’t actually realise what happened until I heard a crash and a groan coming from the far wall.

“The hell was that?!” I yelled, frightened by the close contact I had with being possibly very broken. I darted to where Rainbow Dash turned a perfectly good table into a mound of kindling. I checked over her to see if she needed a vet or something. Surprisingly though, instead of being a twisted up ball of pain and injury, the Skittle pony was mostly fine. Sure she had some scratches where her front hooves crashed into the window, but she didn’t have the notable signs of crashing face first into a freaking wall.

She was still pony-shaped.

“You…” I pointed at the dazed pony as she tried to dig herself out of the pile of wood, “… should be dead!” Despite my surprise, and utter confusion, I helped her out of her predicament. When she was dusting herself off and examining her irritatingly minor lacerations I continued with my bewilderment, “You should be a rainbow coloured splat on the wall! How are you not?”

“Eh, I’m used to it,” she brushed it off like she did the wood sticking to her fur, “they had a reason to call me Rainbow ‘Crash’ in flight school.”

She would be more suited as an ASM than a pony.

Pinkie magically appeared at my right to assist Rainbow in not being a puddle, I think I should just give up on questioning anything ever. Twilight however, as she was woken up by the ruckus upstairs, quickly teleported in - scaring the living daylights out of yours truly in the process - to see what is wrong. I’m getting scared way too much these days…

Still not having woken up completely, as evidence by her bleary eyes and one sided book-head, it took a while for her to process the scene. Upon noticing her shattered window and splintered table, she just sighed and shook her head, “One of these days Rainbow, I’m going to get you to pay for my new windows and furniture.”

“Sorry Twi…” Rainbow said, ashamed, “New trick, you know how it is…”

Twilight huffed before getting us to work on cleaning up the place. I didn’t want to join in, but Twilight all but forced me into doing it, she just doesn’t understand how annoying or terrible a glass cut or splinter can be in the hands, I was just protecting myself but no. Apparently, a man’s word means nothing in a woman’s mind… Heh, tell me something else that’s new.

As we were working I decided to strike up a conversation, “So are pony ASMs and other insane things a natural occurrence in pony town?” I questioned before continuing, “if it is then I don’t know if I would ever want to sleep in a house that has windows if they magnetically attract rainbow ponies better than free welfare can an aboriginal. Christ, I don’t even know how she hasn’t deformed into a pulp from that crash.”

“Hey! I don’t crash that often!” Skittles feebly protested, “Besides! The library just got in my way is all.”

“How could a…” I looked towards Twilight and she just shook her head again, I rubbed my temples in resignation, “Nevermind…” I sighed, “I guess I’m a little volatile at the moment, I’ve been stuck inside a tree for the past three days, completely, yet accidentally, separated from my family and friends, and trapped here in a world where insane occurrences are frequent and commonplace; compound all that with no personalities I’m familiar with and you don’t get a very happy camper. Maybe I’ll get better when I become familiar with things around here. It will take some time, but I will eventually get better.” 

“I understand Fericious, I would likely be the same if our places were traded,” Twilight said before her speech was broken with a yawn. She held it for an impressive five seconds before she continued, “I’ve spent the last few days and nights trying to find or construct a counter spell, the algorithm of the original spell makes sense, but it really doesn’t have an accurate or safe negative algorithm.”

“Which means…” I goaded an explanation out of her explanation.

“It means that the negative or reverse version of the spell will have improbable effects, like, you teleport home, but you appear underground, or in the sky, or maybe you will just reappear in the lab, or maybe you could transform into an animal or object, or your atoms could deteriorate or super-condence, it really is up to chance at this point.” She paused to see if we were all following.

“So… Doing it would be bad,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Basically,” Twilight affirmed, before turning to look at me, “I have even asked Princess Celestia for advice and help in finding it but she hasn’t reported any luck. As far as I know, you’re stuck here…”

“Darn,” I said, before sighing, “Well, what can I expect? Anyway, what’s on for today?” It wasn’t a very good idea to fight the legitimacy of my position any more, eventually I might come to accept it, but I suppose I still have my slight chance that I am still dreaming, or insane. Both aren’t a very nice proposition, as the former would mean that I am in a coma, as I wouldn’t remember that I was dreaming this long in a night, and the latter would be bad because then I’d be insane.

And we don’t want that now do we?

Still, the longer I am here, the more I would think that this is actually real. Something I don’t think I want to be proven at the moment, as I couldn’t deal with the revelation but… just… ugh…

Anyway, Twilight responded to my earlier question about the day’s agenda, “Well, if I know Rarity then the clothes would be done by now so we can expect her soon, and then we have your public announcement-”

“Already?” I was quite surprised that the mayor would put that on so soon, if it were in my world we’d have to inform the government, wait for their approval, wait for their say so (which are two completely different things), wait for the auditorium to be booked, wait for a few months for the reservations to be set, have your predicament hyped up by the media, and when the day finally comes to have your presence announced, it’s raining and you get stuck in traffic long enough that you miss your deadline. 

“Well, Mayor Mare likes to get formalities like this out of the way as soon as possible. Things like this take a day to plan, and it’s usually ready for the afternoon.” Efficiency, thy name is Mayor Mare, which is still a pretty retarded name.

“Fair enough.” 

It was a bit more mulling about doing nothing much of anything before the Marshmallow turned up with her finished products. Now, I say this rather generously. The… vibrant… clothing that she showed to me were… substantial… in that they really…

Screw this.

I did not like what she showed me.

“Is it that you can’t follow directions? Or do you just do this to spite me?” I held up the dress in my hands as it draped back into the box it came in, that’s right, I said dress, “Honestly, I perfectly remember telling you not to make me a dress. I don’t think you understand that I will not wear a dress if it would save my life.”

“No, darling, I don’t think you understand just how magnificently it will accent your legs and physical stature!” She said pointing out various ‘features’ of the dress, “What you asked me to make was just… not enough, I believe that something like this would help you adjust to this world.”

“Rarity,” I said as I put the horrid dress back in its box, “You’re a smart pony, right?”

She looked slightly offended, “Well, of course.”

“Then why can’t you follow a simple request? I specifically said, ‘no dresses’ because it’s demeaning for a man to wear a dress where I come from,” unless you’re a Scottish baddass, but still, that’s a kilt, not a dress, “and I am not going to agree with any argument of, it’s a different world, because these sort of things keep me sane. I know that you and I aren’t the best in the way of relations but seriously, there is no need to torture me with gaudy monstrosities like these,” I told her as I motioned the dress in the box.

She sighed, “This wasn’t the only clothing I made Fericious, I just suppose that you might have changed your mind if you saw the dress first.” She pulled another box out from where it was staying, “This is what I made following your suggestions, they pained me to make, but I pulled on through.” She opened the box and a few simple sets of clothes levitated out and unfolded. They were very brightly coloured, but they were at least simple in design. 

I breathed a sigh of relief, “Thank god.”

“I only made three different dresses, to make sure that I didn’t go insane myself, the rest however are modifications of this basic design, in total I made about 6 sets of clothing,” she sighed before stacking four boxes in front of me and wheeling over a rack with some ‘suits’ hanging on it, “varying levels of formality.”

I nodded, admittedly impressed with her ensemble now that she had shown me the proper clothing, “very nice, thank you, I suppose I could wear the suit for my presentation this afternoon.” I noticed how she regarded the clothes she had in her magical grip.

“I don’t like them myself,” the winey marshmallow finally declared, “I just feel that no one pony… or human I suppose, can really dictate how fashion can evolve! These clothes just don’t appeal to my eye for fashion at all, if I tried this in the fashion industry in say, Manehatten, they would surely shun my profession and question my title as a seamstress.”

“You are very dramatic aren’t you? Doesn’t fashion evolve like nature or something? It develops slowly, but sometimes there can be rapid and dramatic changes, mutations I suppose. In my world, if a foreigner entered in a strange land, the trout running the fashion scene would quickly copy and assimilate their own wears to the visitor’s culture of fashion.” I crossed my arms and had my right hand on my chin in that typical pensive stance, “What if, that through my suggestions I inadvertently change what you ponies call fashion completely and develop a new fashion based off of human designs?” I don’t like talking fashion, I feel my man points declining rapidly, but at this point, in a world of technicolor salad flavoured ponies, I was rapidly beginning not to care.

“Fashion is run by fish in your world?” The strawberry cut in, “Humans can understand and trust fishies enough to let them lead something?” I jumped in a mild fright when she (literally) bounced into the conversation. I had honestly thought she left, but it turns out, she and Skittles, who was also there and listening in, decided to be uncharacteristically quiet, just looking over the books on the bookcases.

“It’s a metaphor Pinkie… just a metaphor,” I groaned. Curse these ponies, they going to drive me to drink. Come to think of it, these ponies mightn’t even have alcohol in happy sunshine rainbow magic pony land.

During that little banter, the marshmallow was giving a fine demonstration of the fashion industry in my world, as in she just stood there with her mouth opening and closing like a fish. A marshmallow pony fish. I grinned in slight satisfaction upon the sight, and just savoured the moment until the marshmallow ended up recovering from her fishdom.

“I suppose I see your point there Fericious,” she shook her head slightly, causing her ribbony hair to bounce about like a cute little spring, “Although, it could also be reasoned the opposite, that a different species of intelligent being could be ostracised by what impressions they might impose through their attire.”

I uncrossed my arms and let them fall, she did have a sound point there.

She continued on with her argument, “If you were seen wondering about in human styled clothes, there would be far too many differences with you and the surrounding populace for there ever to be a connection, however, if they notice and catch you wearing clothes designed by a pony then there wouldn’t be as much of a difference between you and the populace.”

“That… is actually a very sound argument, but still…” I sighed as I grabbed one of the floating dresses from the marshmallow’s glowy magic grip. I appraised them in my hands. The fabric felt smooth and silky, almost to the point of being frictionless. The colours were far too bright for my liking, they caught the light well I suppose but they reflected it too much, almost to the point of glaring. Then again, this is what a pony is used to with they see people trotting about their daily business, bright colours give ponies their statements, it’s what they use to identify with each other. Then then again again, “…is it too much to ask for a few comforts based from my own world to help me adjust to my new life?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, but allowed me to continue.

“It’s not that I have anything wrong with pony fashion at all, given the examples. I would actually see my sister in one of those dresses,” I held back a choke at the unintentional stab into painful memories, she seemed to glow at my recognition, not noting my slip, “I would really like to keep to what I know though, and I know that I will never see me in a dress,” I gestured towards the box with the offending garment in it, “although, that would be a very big waste of materials. If you can’t make it into something else then I might as well hold onto them, you never know when I could very well need a dress,” I hesitated at her beaming smile, “that is for a gift if I happen upon any other biped like me in the world.”

She seemed pensive, for a few seconds, “I suppose there is no arguing with you out of your stance, Fericious, I see your point. Nevertheless, I would ask you try all of your clothes on to see the fruits of my labour, but as it is so, my work’s demands give me little time for such luxuries. Farewell for now, friend,” she turned and headed out the door, leaving the boxes and clothes rack behind.

I won’t lie, I breathed a sigh of relief as she left, that pony just has an aura of hoity-toity-ness that I just can’t stand. The silence didn’t last because Pinkie Pie jumped up from behind me, causing me to spin, step back and face her, assuming a tight combat stance, my reflexes working ahead of my sensibility for a change, “Now we can talk about planning your surprise Welcome to Ponyville Party! But don’t tell you about it!”

I let my stance fall before the inquisitive grape could pick up on it and stared at Pinkie blankly, “wat.”

“I plan surprise Welcome parties for everypony in Ponyville when they first arrive! So that ponies don’t have to feel all alone when they come in to a new place surrounded by new ponies that they don’t know! And they can make lots and lots of friends!”

“Yeah,” Skittles said, looking up from her book she picked out, something relating to the Wonderbolts if I can recall correctly, “I can remember my Welcome to Ponyville Party, that’s when I realised that my oldest friend Fluttershy moved here when she left school.” So she found out from a party, and not from… say… asking the banana herself? Silly Skittles, that’s not how you’re supposed to friendship.

“I can also remember mine when I came into Ponyville,” the grape flavoured pony chimed in, “it was a very startling experience, and truthfully I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have as I was very occupied at the time. That was the day I learned that libraries can be very loud, depending on its patrons.”

I hummed before replying with a quick and decisive, “How about no. I don’t really like parties.” Especially if it’s the political party. Eugh.

The strawberry froze in the air mid-bounce, before slowly floating to the ground and turning towards me. Her eyes were so wide and filled with disbelief that I was sure they would fall out of her head. Pinkie can be horrifying at times, horrendously horrifying, this was shown in full by how she almost growled out her objection through clenched and ever wide smile, “You. Don’t. Like. Parties?” I almost resumed my combat stance or made a break for the door but I didn’t want to be shaken by the strawberry flavoured fear-bringer. I figured that she probably thought that I didn’t like parties in general, which was only mostly true. I do enjoy small get togethers with friends and family, but this world is a little short on both assets so I didn’t see partying as a very enjoyable experience.

“No, not really,” I reiterated with an unknown willpower, “though I like the odd birthday party and get togethers, but only if it’s with close friends and family.” Pinkie ran up to me, forcing me to step back and put my arms up in defence. She stared intently at my face as she scrutinised my reasoning. She looked like she was about to start swinging fists or yelling at the top of her voice but the grape flavoured magician pony spoke up before she did.

“He’s an introvert, Pinkie,” this calmed the burning strawberry, if only just a bit, “that’s not saying that he doesn’t want friends, just that he has fun and expresses himself differently to somepony like you and Rainbow Dash,” Skittles flicked her head up from her book pillow upon hearing her name, it seems that this one can’t sit still for long without sleeping, “he is like how I was when I first arrived here, though you girls have slowly changed that facet of my personality over the years. He’s like Fluttershy in the way that he can get overwhelmed if he is presented with too many unknown ponies in a short space of time.” I found myself nodding to the grape’s description of my personality, it was rather impressive how she managed to build an accurate (to an extent) personality profile of me by just being around me. Her analysis could have been based off of how I reacted to the seamstress marshmallow’s choice in colours and my disinterest in fashion in general. This shows that I don’t mind about what other’s think of me and am more concerned with my own view of myself, such is the mannerisms of an introvert.

GG Grape Flavoured, GG.

The pink strawberry did eventually let up, “Nyeeallright, A party won’t work… but I have to do something!” she looked as though in thought, which is something I’m not quite sure she’s experienced in (ZING!), before she sprang up with an idea, “What about cupcakes? Will some cupcakes make up for it?”

“Depends on the amount of icing or sugar in it, I prefer muffins instead,” I stated, “If I have too much sugar I can get very sick.”

I think I broke her. She halted her cheeriness and stood shocked at the confession, her eyes looked like they glazed over. The grape was looking on at us with a fear in her eyes. A weak growl left the strawberry’s lips, “Sick?” She then bounced right in my face and exclaimed, “We’ll see about that!” 

Then I heard a door close, and noticed she disappeared, in that order.

I believe that strawberry can be used to explain and describe the insanity of this world in it entirety. I seem to have become very desensitised to this strawberry-flavoured craziness… Which was all a bit too quick to be honest, but something tells me that I have yet to pop the lid to the Strawberry Jam of Crazy, it’s only going to get worse from here in out. 

—

“I’m not so sure of this,” I hesitantly spoke as I straightened my shirt for the third time. The grape and I stood behind a dark curtain that separated us from the populace in the front of the town hall. The mayor was giving a speech about the ‘newcomer’ to this world, and how he doesn’t mean any harm. It was closing to the time when she’d announce me and I’d have to step out from the shadows and introduce myself.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re nervous,” the grape joked from behind me.

“Yeah, well, you aren’t an alien that has to stand up in front of a crowd of people that have no idea who or what you are and have to introduce your predatory nature to a people that is made up entirely of herbivores.” In truth, I was more afraid of how I would react to the amount of people I would be standing in front of than how they’d react to me.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she reassured me.

The mayor cut into our banter, “…and now, without further delay, please welcome to this world Fericious the Human!”

I took the following applause as my cue to exit the safety of the obscuring fabric. I exhaled a final, “Here we go,” before I moved the curtains aside and stepped out into the light. To my right stood the mayor, to my left, annoyingly, stood a trio of guards. I briefly wondered if they were there for my sake, or simply for me, as if I’d attack the ponies from here… Come to think of it, maybe they were just there to look official. Who knows? Who cares? Who eats apples or pears?

Anyway, I stepped up toward the podium — that was vastly too short for me — and looked out to the crowd. There were a lot of ponies here to be sure, I was certain that most of the town’s populace were standing in front of me now, and I just have to say; Crikey they were colourful. 

They had quietened considerably at my presence, most likely because I was just so gosh darn tall, especially with the height of the stage adding more height to my height-ness. I cleared my throat, and decided to open with the best way to start any introduction to a world ever.

“Hello… you’re all so colourful.” I flinched slightly at my own voice as it echoed across the crowd. I briefly wondered how that happened as there was no visible microphone on the podium, but a quick glance to my left found a white-furred, blue-maned unicorn sitting on some sort of scaffolding with her horn activated. She was the one with the speaker phone it seems.

The response to my magnificent opening was only half expected, they all just stood there, confused at my opening. I did however, hear an audible smack as I’m sure a delicious grape-flavoured face palm was being served behind me. I then cleared my throat again and decided to continue with my planned speech.

“Okay, as you have heard my name is Fericious, I am a human that was summoned here by your very own resident mad scientist, Twilight Sparkle,” I think that was as well received as I had hoped, about half the crowd scoffed at my accusation and the other half nodded with a hint of understanding. I didn’t get an angry uproar, for that I was thankful. “I am here before you today so that you may ask me any questions that you may have about me and my human-ness. So, I open the board to all, ask away.”

There were quite a few hooves that flew up, a fair bit more than I wanted, but about as much as I expected.

I pointed to the back of the crowd, half wanting to know their question, half wanting to see if Speaker Pony could actually reach that far. “You, the green hoof at the back.” I glanced to my left and found Speaker Pony huffing in either annoyance or exertion, or both. I grinned at her and she scowled at me, and with that, a beautiful relationship was born.

The voice rang over the crowd, “are you going to eat us?” 

I blinked and redirected my attention to the crowd, any more blunt and I would have been clobbered in the face by a bowling ball. “What? No, I have not and will never eat another sentient being. In fact, whilst I do like the odd slice of beef, lamb, and occasional kangaroo, but I have never eaten a horse or pony in my life.” Lies. I did once, on an over seas trip, my dad had me try horse meat. The texture was too tough and it required a lot of chewing in order to eat it, it was far too tiring to enjoy properly. A few more hooves raised, much to my chagrin. “Yes, the yellowish hoof in the middle.”

“Do you come from the Everfree Forrest?”

I scrunched my face in confusion, “I thought we’ve been over this,” I looked to the mayor but she just shrugged and motioned for me to answer, “no, I am an alien from another planet that is possibly millions upon millions of lightyears away, called Earth.”

With that answer out of the way, a fair bit of the hooves descended from the sky. I was a bit annoyed at the fact that they were going to ask the same thing, yet overjoyed that the amount of questions I have to answer declined rapidly. I sighed internally and pointed to the right side of the crowd. “Yes, the pony attached to the blue hoof.”

“Is there going to be an alien invasion? Is your kind going to descend from the sky and rain terror on all of us? Are you going to capture pony kind and enslave us for your bidding? Will you take all of our mares and fillies for your sick…”

I interrupted the stallion, “no, no, for Christ’s sake, no. I suppose I should expect something like that to be asked, but no. I didn’t come here willingly, as I have said, Twilight Sparkle summoned me here. Whilst my kind has been in space before, we have never visited any other planets with sentient life on them,” I thought for a second before I put my right hand on my heart and held my left hand up towards the audience, “I come in peace.”

Several other hooves left the sky. I knew ponies could by quite skittish, but seriously, come on, I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to kill anyone anytime soon. There were a few more, so, thinking only of the dedicated and hardworking speaker pony, I pointed to the other side of the crowd. “Yes, the brown hoof on the left.”

“Mother bucker,” I heard growled from my left. I smiled, but otherwise ignored her.

“Are you from the future?”

That question took me back, and I had to think for a bit, I was quite surprised that I was asked this. Still, I don’t think I’d be able to provide an accurate answer to this.

“I… actually don’t know. It’s true that my people are far more advanced than you ponies are in the technology factor, but the spell Twilight used to summon me apparently reached across space, I don’t think it reached through time. I don’t know, though, if I have to give an answer I’ll have to say no, I’m not,” the pony seemed satisfied with my answer, so I gestured to another one, on the opposite side of the crowd of course. “Orange pony crowd right.” Another scowl earned from the Speaker Pony.

“Are you going to hurt my children?”

I cringed from the shear absurdity of the question. I had my head fall into an open palm as I answered with a sigh, “no… no, of course not,” before I chose some other question I decided to answer a bunch of them at once, “If any of you think I’m going to go psycho on you and hurt you in any way, be it eating, violating or straight up assault on you or any one you know, than you can be assured that I most certainly won’t. I will not hurt any of you if you don’t give me a reason to.”

I was annoyed at the amount of hooves that left the air after that statement, but there were a fair few left. I sighed, “Yes, the little light brown hoof on the pony in the centre.”

“Do you breav fire?”

“Well, that’s an odd question,” Since it was just a kid, I didn’t immediately face palm, instead I decided to humour him, “Hmm…” I put my hand to my chin in an inquisitive manner, I then turned to my left where the metal clad police ponies were and comically blew out from my mouth. The guards actually jumped slightly, meaning that their hooves twitched and their eyebrows raised a bit, Speaker Pony actually almost lost her grip, and I almost lost my cool. After recovering; the guards from their little shock, the speaker pony from nearly needing to go to the hospital, and I from nearly falling over with laughter; I cleared my throat and continued with my answer, “It doesn’t look like it,” I turned to the crowd who were all quite shocked, and I smiled at them, a wide cheeky grin. 

They all eventually calmed down and I pointed to another pony who’s hoof was shaking, “yes, the shivering purple hoof in the front.”

“Are you going to eat us?”

Oh for Christ’s sake. I immediately face palmed. These bloody little horses man… “No, I already said no, I won’t eat you… now if any one has any questions that are actually kind of important and doesn’t involve me inflicting any sort of bodily harm on you in any way, keep your arm up.” I was very displeased again with the amount of hooves that left the air. I was however happy that there was one left. “Yes, the last surviving hoof in the crowd.”

“Are you sure you’re not from the forest?”

“Oh for Christ sake,” I said aloud as I shook my head and looked towards the mayor, she mirrored my head action and gestured to the curtain, probably saying that it would make a nice fabric to use in a cloak, but most likely saying that I can end my presentation. So I turned back to the podium and declared to the crowd, “Well, my effort limit has been exceeded for the day, so as much as I’d like to stand here and answer asinine questions all day I should bid you all adieu. If you do have any more questions to ask, find me and there would be a high chance that I would probably answer them maybe,” they seemed confused and my wording, mission accomplished, “Good bye for now.”

I turned around to leave and caught the mayor face palming, or is it face hoofing, whatever, “I suppose that would have to do. Thank you Fericious for your time and I hope your integration into our culture goes smoothly from here on out.” I just shrugged and walked off stage, as much as I’m sure her words as a politician are worth I knew that doing such a thing can never be easy.

“So Twilight,” I asked the grape pony as I passed by, “what’s next on the ‘Have Fericious Do Stuff Today’ agenda?” You might think I’m joking when I called it that, but I was actually being serious. That’s what the silly grape pony decided to name the schedule. So as such, and much to my amusement, the grape flavoured pony didn’t even bat an eye when she responded.

“With the town presentation out of the way, the ponies should be less afraid of you being around, the second thing you have on today is to spend time with Rainbow Dash.”

“You mean stand around like a barra’ as Dash does her usual thing?”

Twilight paused as my words did their job in confusing her, “‘Bah-rah’? What’s that?”

I shrugged it off, “It’s short for barramundi, it means fish.”

She eyed me incredulously before catching up and leading me out to the field where Skittle-Fly just happened to be practicing her stuff. She was drawing a pretty decent sized crowd already, that being a grand total of one little orange pegasus foal who was shouting encouraging words to the acrobatic rainbow blur. I was the one who brought the rest, they were more curious about me than the Skittle flavoured pony, but to Rainbow Dash? Heck, they were still a crowd.

Skittles just took the extra crowd in breeze and added that to her already massive ego. Her tricks seemed to have a showy flair to them, as to be expected from any flavour of egotistical performing showman. They were fairly decent to, there was this one move she did where she flew right over the crowd, trailing a rainbow behind her. Only, the thing was that she did some of her unconscious freaky pony magic and made the rainbows have actual form, if only a tiny bit. You’d only feel it slightly on your skin before it dissipates. 

It probably had something to do with the way her rainbow tail would react with the latent moisture in the air. The grape pony helpfully explained that pegasi have magic that is at it’s strongest when they are flying at speed. The magic sort of, slides off of their body and ‘exits’ via their tail, and their magi-essence is left behind. For Skittles, her essence was displayed by a rainbow, due to her very bright colourisation… Basically, that was a nifty trick. 

GG Skittle-Flavoured, GG.

Sometime through the show I sat down so that I didn’t tower over all of the shrimpy ponies. I was still taller than them though, if only just a bit. A pony’s eye level would be at my chin when I’m sitting, which means that my eye level would be just at the top of their head. 

It was then, however, that I had to add another human mannerism to the list of ‘misconceptions’. My hand left my lap and traveled to my mouth, I hooked my fingers around my tongue and let out what I thought was an encouraging whistle, not realising what exactly it meant.

This action disorientated the flying Skittles Advertisement long enough for her to get very well acquainted with a tall tree and every branch below her. Thankfully the ponies were too engrossed with the show to realise just who it was that whistled at her, just that someone whistled and she crashed. The helpful grape pony thankfully pulled me aside with a slight blush on her face and informed me that whistling like that was a more of a demonstration than an encouraging sound. A demonstration of what you might ask? Well, ponies don’t have fingers, so it would normally be impossible to make that sound. It takes a lot of talent for a pony to be able to create the shrill whistle. If you can’t understand what I’m alluding to, and you shouldn’t regardless because you shouldn’t be reading other people’s journals, you ass, the whistle basically means that you have a talented tongue.

I freaking know right?

After rushing over to the rainbow candy pony to see if she was okay I found that, bar from a few twigs and leaves in her mane and tail and a splinter in her hoof, she was completely fine. This fact irritated me; she should have been rainbow flavoured compost with how fast she was going. It was shortly after Rainbow threw in the towel that the crowd and I left her to do whatever it is she does, sans a little orange-coloured purple-maned pegasus that I mentioned earlier who was starstruck regardless of the crash, she ran over to the bigger blue pony and gushed her heart out.

Was she her sister or something? That’s something that I would need to ask her later.

The next item on the schedule was simply titled ‘Meeting with Rarity’, which is a funny way to spell ‘Marshmallow’ but I wasn’t about to correct it. Anyway, we arrived at the marshmallow’s place which looked more like a gentle theme park ride. It was called Carousel Boutique, and I have to say, it fits. 

The building actually looked like a merry-go-round, with the pony-shaped mannequins in the windows arranged so that it looked like the horses in a merry-go-round. It was a very witty design that focused on making the whole ordeal of fashion seem like an attractive and fun idea, with each pseudo-pony dressed in a different colourful attire. I had to say that that marshmallow really did have a sense of design, placement and colour.

GG Marshmallow-Flavoured, GG.

Giving slight mind to the crowd that gathered behind me, I walked up and knocked on the door. “Who is it?” I heard the marshmallow call from behind the door.

I replied using my deepest voice possible, “Oh, you know, a real bloody vampire,” Abridged parodies of TV-serieses make up about 90% of my internet browsing history… the other 10% goes to school study… honest.

It was a scant few seconds before the white fashion marshmallow opened the door. She gasped in a show of surprise, it was very painfully clear — to me at least — that it was an act, “Why my dear friend, Fericious! What brings you here?”

Yeah, I was having none of that, “Oh shoot, I forgot my script,” I padded down my shirt in a show to ‘find’ it, “um, I’m here because she is,” I pointed my thumb to little grape pony, both parties not finding themselves the tiniest bit amused at what I said, “so may we come in?”

Without missing a beat the enthusiastic marshmallow continued in her show, “Well of course darling! Who am I to refuse Equestria’s resident human entrance into my humble abode? Please, come on in!” She stepped aside, I just shrugged and ducked my way in. I say ducked because the door frame only reached up to my chin. I’ve said this once, and I’ll say it again, these ponies are just short.

I quickly closed the door behind me, not allowing the populace to enter and gawk in on whatever the fashion pony had in store for me. I didn’t have long to wonder before the little grape pony asked the marshmallow just what she had in store for me for today.

“A simple tea party!” U wot m8? 

“First off,” I interrupted her before we moved further, “Why?”

“Well,” She said, facing me, “I couldn’t think of a better way for you to integrate into pony society than teaching you the basics of pony manners and social boundaries, and in the mean time, we could learn a little about human culture.”

“… Through a tea party?”

“Well, of course!” I eyed her, clearly annoyed, before shaking my head and following her further into the store, where I noticed a dining table set out with three places. One for the marshmallow, one for the grape and one for their unwilling and off-put human companion. Tea parties seem like a strange thing for a pony to conduct, I mean, sure they might have ‘elegance’ and ‘poise’ but no amount of finesse would let a pony other than a unicorn hold the small and delicate teacups that are currently sitting on top of the table without getting china shards embedded in their little hoovsies. 

We each took our positions at the sides of the square table, the marshmallow was on her own side to my right, and the grape was opposite her to my left. These chairs were in no way going to fit my magnificent human figure, so I didn’t even attempt to sit.

“Are you going to sit Fericious?” the grape asked me curiously.

“These chairs look like they might actually cause my spinal cord to eject out of my back and into space,” the grape seemed taken back by my objection, before I looked at the shocked marshmallow, “you wouldn’t happen to have any seating pillows here would you?” 

“It’s not exactly orthodox, but I suppose I can see your discomfort, here you are Fericious.” Her horn lit up and over floated a small square pillow that would suit just fine. I moved the chair and replaced it with the pillow, for seating I decided to engage my first lesson in Martial Arts and sit in the typical Japanese seating position, the one which, to an uninformed man, would look like kneeling. Don’t let it be said that I don’t have manners of any kind. The grape and marshmallow raised an eyebrow at my chosen position.

“Is that how humans generally sit?” the Intel quad-core processor™ enhanced grape asked.

“Not really, this is a common position for only a part of the world. Bear in mind that mostly we would sit on chairs that are designed for us, but without we can use the ground for our comfort in many different ways.” I then cycled through different positions, showing them the different ways humans can sit on the ground, which, to be honest, is a weird way to spend a tea party. I ended up sitting cross legged to finish up, “this is how most of the world spend their time on the floor, as it’s generally the easiest to do.”

“Interesting,” she said as she wrote on a sketch pad she pulled out of thin air while I was demonstrating the positions, probably sketching my magnificent body in the poses, “are there any further positions or is that it?”

“Oh I’m sure there’s more, I’m just not a savant when it comes to sitting, as I prefer to spend my time standing,” I returned to my first position and sat back in my part of the table. “Now, what is on the menu for this tea party?”

The Marshmallow nodded her dainty little schnoz and listed the foodstuffs she had on offer, “Well, to start I have made us all a rose and dandelion salad, to compliment that I have some daisy sandwiches with a hit of daffodil and for a drink I have made a boisson de fleur using black locust bark for a kick of flavour, a bit of an eccentric mix but still quite heavenly.”

The grape looked impressed at the spread but I just looked at the marshmallow and said, “Impressive, anything without flowers or leaves?”

Marshmallow looked confused, “Why, what ever for darling?”

I put my elbows on the table like a rebel and sat my chin on my hands, “Well, last I checked, my appendix doesn’t really work all that well, or at all really, so I can’t eat leaves and digest them properly.”

Both flavours of ponies blinked at my remark, the Grape immediately opened up a new page in her prehistoric version of Microsoft Word, while the Marshmallow looked at me with a slight mix of shock and surprise. “Wait,” she finally said, “I thought you said you could eat plants.”

I shrugged, lifting my elbows off of the table and raising my posture, “I said that?” she raised a confused eyebrow at my question, I just sighed and continued, “that’s a generalisation, I can eat fruit, and even that’s a strain on the term,” I waved my hand dismissively, already growing bored of the gaudy room, “I’ll eat anything that doesn’t kill me.”

The world was silent for but a few moments as the confused ponies deliberated my words. “Well,” said the Marshmallow, “that certainly complicates things a tad.”

“Although,” I thought aloud for a second, “I might have some of the tea, my people use leaves to make tea, so I shouldn’t have a problem with it.”

“Oh, well, this didn’t turn out to be a complete disaster after all,” the perky Marshmallow piped up, “just let me get that for you!” The tea pot lit up in a light blue glow and levitated towards my cup. It then tipped and the contents poured neatly into it.

“Well,” I said, “here goes.” I took a sip of the tea. 



It was about thirty minutes before I finally stopped retching, and about another six hours before my stomach settled. I really, really don’t want to write that ordeal in detail, it wasn’t the greatest time of my life at all. I ended up having to hobble out of the boutique being magically assisted by Purple Grape. With both the Marshmallow and the Grape obsessing over me and what had happened. As it turns out, the Black Locust tree was actually poisonous to humans, but not to ponies, as such they didn’t have any problems with it, but I? Very much so.

I don’t even care what the town thought of me as I had to be assisted out of the boutique and to the hospital. The hospital itself was a bit strange, they have never seen a human before, let alone healed one, but the biometric analysis that Smart Grape had supplied them with allowed them to somewhat assist me. 

The just told me to take it easy, and have lots of water. The generic healthy spiel.

It was about sunset when I was able to continue on with the day, the Marshy Pony went back home, and I continued with the Grape-Flavoured list. To my discontent to next name on the list was not something that I could really deal with at that moment.

- Baking with Pinkie Pie.

I had mixed opinions about that pony. Sure she’s happy and all, but there is a point where happy becomes deranged, and this late in the afternoon (and after that tea), happy-deranged was the last thing I wanted to deal with. It had to be done though, else Grapey would get sour. 

Ehehe, Sour Grapes, I’ll have to use that later on.

Anyway, Strawberry’s place. Grape told me that it was called Sugarcube Corner, but I think it would be more suited to ‘Hansel And Gretel’s Retreat’. Seriously, the entire building looked like a freaking gingerbread house.

“We can’t seriously be going in there,” I established my enthusiasm of entering the artery clog of a building. I looked towards the grape pony as she turned her head to hear my statement, “I’ve heard of theming but this is ridiculous!”

The grape pony shrugged (at least that’s what it looked like) and simply told me to follow her in. Aww, the little grape is picking up on my mannerisms. I’m so proud of her.

*Manly sniff*

Anyway, the bakery.

I entered the bakery with the signature tiny bell ding. We walked not five steps before the lights turned off and the curtains schlinked closed. Darkness consumed all for but a few seconds before a spotlight turned on, illuminating a circular table with two chairs.

“Welcome to the bakery,” a high-pitched voice obviously belonging to the pink strawberry echoed through the room, “please, take a seat.”

I looked down to my right to notice the little grape pony face palming before moving off to sit down at the table, I shrugged and made my way over to her.

Before I continue, allow me to shed a brief light on my experiences in the martial arts. I’ve always been fascinated by all the different types of martial art, and dabbled in a few. I started off with Karate when I was little, but I didn’t really go any further than a yellow belt, I don’t know, I guess I just wasn’t in to the styles of Karate. 

The next art I practiced in was Kendo, I was pretty ok with the sword, but I couldn’t get past this one section about not being disarmed. I was actually caught out purposely letting go of my sword in one face off to disorientate my enemy and finish him off by swiping his sword when he jabbed at me, which was a good plan, though unfortunately, apparently it’s against the rules of the dojo I trained in to purposely release your weapon. I left that art soon after.

I went through a few other arts ranging from Tai Chi to Kung Fu, I was quite the MMA person, but the one art that I tried and remained dedicated to was Ninjutsu. The art of the inconspicuous assassin, sort of. The reason why I chose Ninjutsu over all of my other arts was for one reason, avoidance. The art teaches you to avoid most fights by distractions or escaping. Yet, if you do get confronted, you can use anything to your disposal to win. There are no rules, and there are no constraints. Just fight to win.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well, Ninjutsu has taught me a lot of things, but the one thing that it didn’t teach me, and the reason behind how I managed to climb so rapidly up to red-belt level, was common sense.

As soon as the situation I was in presented itself, my common sense erupted. Right then, the Strawberry was my aggressor, and the Grape was a tool for extortion in case I need to escape. What I was presented with was a table and two chairs, what I noticed however, was the darkness. Why is that important? Because it isn’t, that’s why. The important parts are the table and chairs, no one ever looks around it.

She’s trying to manipulate me, and I knew it.

While I was making my way over to my chair I deliberately made a few things the focus of my attention. The distance between the door and the table, how much space I would have around my chair, and the size of the table. While all of these things might seem unimportant at the time, they could very well play an important part in the near future. It’s all to with common sense.

The Strawberry wanted me to sit down. So I did, but I didn’t pull my chair in. I made sure to keep my legs free. I asked to the darkness, “So, why the creepiness?” I got no reply from the Strawberry.

The Grape looked slightly worried at the strangeness of her friend and replied, “I don’t know, the plan was that you were going to show her how to bake something from your world and share it with ponies, but it looks like she has something else in mind.” 

I didn’t like the sound of that. I prepared myself for anything. It was a few seconds of nothing happening at all before my world went dark as a strip of fabric was fashioned over my face. “Oi!” I yelled, ripping the fabric off of my face before it could be tied off. Annoyingly enough another one just replaced it. I decided that I wasn’t having any of that so when I grabbed the new cloth I prepared myself to jump up and out of my chair.

I noticed how the fabric was coming from directly above me and acted accordingly. When the Strawberry would have blindfolded me again, I leaned forward and half-crouched onto my feet, feeling the fabric slide off of the back of my hair. Before the pink pony could recover from her miss, I sprang up into a back flip and flew over her.

I landed to the right of her with the two fabrics in each hand. She turned to me and pounced with the intention to blindfold me correctly this time. Thinking quickly, I threw the cloth I had in my left hand in her way, distracting her, and darted to the right, away from the table. She stopped just where I was and was about to turn and face me, but I made a pounce of my own, my remaining cloth stretched between both hands. She didn’t realise what I was doing before it was too late. 

I managed to wrap my cloth around her face and eyes and land onto the table, pulling her close to where my chair was. She tripped over the chair and was about to face-smash the table but I stopped her before she managed to. She was leaning heavily into the fabric I was holding, allowing me to easily wrap her eyes closed with the cloth; metaphorically turning the tables on her.

“Ok,” I said aloud to the little blind Strawberry, “this is the part where you tell me what in the world you are doing,” I hopped off the table and stood amused at the strawberry’s attempts to regain sight. She was doing that cute little thing that dogs do when you put a sock on their snout. It was adorable watching her try to take the blind-fold off.

She gave up on trying to get the blindfold off, “Never!” She yelled back and tried to face me, but since she couldn’t see, she ended up glaring a hole through the wall to the left of us.

“That was amazing Fericious!” The grape pony recovered from the shock of my retaliation, “How did you do that?”

“Reflexes,” I brushed it off, hopefully, the grape wouldn’t pick it up as a practiced from of attacking or anything.

If she noticed, she didn’t say anything about it, instead she addressed her friend. “Pinkie,” the magic grape said as she stood up to help the pink pony, “I’m sure that Fericious would cooperate better if you tell him what you are trying to do.” She magicked the blindfold off the strawberry’s eyes so she could see.

“I will never talk!” the stubborn strawberry exclaimed.

“Well, all right then,” I said, shrugged and headed for the door. Or rather where I believed the door was, I couldn’t exactly see it, I think the Pink One must have put up a sheet or something over it. She’s efficient, I’ll give her that. I wasn’t actually planning on bolting, I just had to give a show.

“Ok! Ok! I’ll talk!” She exclaimed after me. I smiled and turned to face her, “As long as you let me blind fold you.” Purple Grape’s face-palm was audible from here.

“So, Twilight, what’s next on the list?” 

The grape was about to reply before the Strawberry cut her off. “Alright fine!” The Strawberry relented finally, she walked over to the light switch and turned on the lights, revealing that she did actually put up bedsheets over the doors and windows. “Well, earlier today when you said that cupcakes would make you sick-“

“I didn’t say that, I said icing and sugar would.”

“Yeah, well, I just thought that if I force fed you enough cupcakes you would see just how wrong you were.” Not likely, it takes a bit to change my views.

“Well, I didn’t exclaim a specific rejection to cupcakes, just to too much sugar,” I clapped my hands together and made my way back to the table, “in any case, let’s see what you have in store.” Get it? Because this is actually a store! I’m hilarious.

“You really mean it?!” Strawberry-flavoured yelled.

“Yes,” I said.

“Yippee!” She then pulled a giant cake lid out from behind her back and slammed it on the table. She then grabbed me and sat me onto the chair before I could properly react. “Alright now, feast your eyes, and tummy,” she giggled, god that was adorable, that pony is just so squeaky, “on these!”

She lifted up the lid and a plate with a neatly stacked pile of cupcakes appeared from beneath it. Every single one of them was unique in shape and colour. While they all had the main basic shape of a cupcake, some where taller, others were fatter, and the colours, sweet Jesus the colours. I’m sure the strawberry went to every possible length to fit every single colour into each of her creations, it’s like staring into a frosty rainbow. I didn’t react much to the cupcakes suddenly appearing, having grown used to stuff like this happening already. 

My right eye just twitched, a new record.

Anywho, to call these cupcakes ‘pretty’ was an understatement. The Perpetually Pink Party Pony placed a plate in front of me, grabbed three random cupcakes, and put them on it.

“Christ,” I said as I gazed upon the sugary treats, I picked one up to inspect it closer, “I thought I was going to eat cupcakes, not these pieces of art.”

“Silly, cupcakes are art! All the more reason to like them!” she then flinched her head back, and muttered quietly, “Woah, déjà vu.” She shook her head and gestured to the three little beauties on my plate, “Anyway, get to it Rissy!” (It’s ‘Riccy’.)

I eyed her for a second before I hesitantly picked up one of the cupcakes, being careful not to ruin the shape of the icing. I swear, it was like a freaking sculpture, the spire of frosting looked more like a diamond drill head with its fine shape and detail. I almost feel guilty for having to eat it.

“Alright,” I said as the cupcake approached my mouth, “here goes nothing.” I bit into the cupcake.

Unlike earlier when I said, ‘here goes,’ I didn’t spend the next few hours regretting all of my life choices ever, because this choice didn’t end with me on my hands and knees evacuating the contents of my stomach, and the rest of my organs, into a bucket several times over, though I was close. The amount of sugar that was condensed into that single bite was probably equal to the sum of all of the sugar I have ever had in my entire life… Multiplied by three.

I managed to force down the lump of sugar after a few seconds of struggling. Sweet Christ (emphasis on sweet), It felt like my teeth were melting. I couldn’t even force myself to finish the treat. I had to put it back on the plate. 

I glanced over to Pinkie who was looking at me with a look of sincere hope. “Do you like it?” she asked me, hints of trepidation edging on her voice.

“There is way too much sugar in that,” her ears fell at my analysis, “Christ, how do you ponies handle that much sugar and still have teeth and tastebuds left?” 

“So, you don’t like it?” Her ears fell, her pupils dilated and tears edged on her eyes. I think she might possibly be sad… I have no idea.

“I can’t like something that destroys my mouth, I’m sorry Pinkie but I can’t eat your cupcakes.”

“But…” She inched a cupcake I didn’t touch closer to me, “they’re so hard to make.”

“And they have too much sugar in them,” I put my hand to my stomach, “Any more and I’ll probably start throwing up again because of that black locust stuff.” I need some Vegemite. Christ I need Vegemite, I just need to taste something bitter to counteract this level sweetness.

Or a steak… A steak might be nice.

“Perhaps I can help,” the Pink Thing’s and my ear twitched to the added voice of the Purple Grape as she made her position known. She walked up to one of the cupcakes I haven’t touched and floated it up to inspect it. Her horn flashed slightly and the cupcake separated from it’s icing. The glob of sugary stuff floated over to the Strawberry, who eagerly devoured it, and the icing-less cupcake floated my way. I grabbed it out of the air and held it in my hands.

I looked at it hesitantly, but the Grape pony encouraged me on. So I shrugged and took a bite out of it. There was substantially less sugar, yet still more than what you’d find in a normal cupcake. “It’s better, as in I can actually eat this one, but just barely. Humans can’t take that amount of sugar at once, it lingers in our systems until our bodies can break them down into energy that we can burn off, that much every day would likely kill me to be honest.”

The Strawberry looked sullen. The Sullen Strawberry, sulking silently, spoke softly, “That sounds horrible, to not be able to eat sweet things everyday, how can you live?”

“Other stuff, remember, I’m part carnivore, I have a whole other range of dietary possibilities. Since you’re a herbivore I can understand why you don’t live without meat, but I don’t know how long I can last if I get constantly kicked in the diet like that.”

“Are there any sweet things where you come from?” She looked down at the floor, possibly considering a world where there are no sweet things.

I smiled at her, knelt down and put my hand on her shoulder. This caused her tear filled eyes to match with mine. “Now, now, I never said there weren’t any sweets where I come from, there is one particular treat that comes straight from the land down under, my home.” No, unfortunately I wasn’t talking about Vegemite, that is a plan for a later date, only if though. I was talking about Lamingtons, those little chocolate coated, coconut sprinkled beauties.

Being a resident on a farm, we usually made our complex treats ourselves, because driving all the way out to the store to get a packet of Lamingtons is a bit over the top, so my mother taught us kids this recipe that makes delicious Lamingtons. Of course, I wasn’t a savant when it comes to baking, but that is why the Strawberry is here.

She seemed brightened by my comment. I continued, “So, what about it Pinkie, you want to help me make some Lamingtons?”

“What are Lamb-in-tons?”

“Well, they are like little cakes, covered in chocolate icing with coconut sprinkles.” 

I had her at the word ‘cake’. Shortly after, she quantum leap’d me into the kitchen to help her make the Lamingtons. She and I both really enjoyed the process of creating the little cakes, the Strawberry pulled fun from being able to learn how to make a whole new type of chocolatey treat, and I from the pure nostalgic value. I have to say, this whole ordeal actually went quite well.

I kept to my promise and shared the treats with the ponies of the town, from which I gained some serious street-cred. The Grape and I left from the store, fulfilled and content with the treats I brought to the world. I was quite satisfied with how it turned out, and grateful that I had one item on the plan that ended on pleasant terms. 

Of course, the plan would’ve continued, if it weren’t for the fact that the sun was then trying its best to wrap itself in its blanket known as the horizon. It was getting too late to continue on with the schedule; much to Purple Grape’s chagrin. 

However, not all was lost, as the next pony on the list was Applejack, the uh, Apple-Flavoured pony? No, that doesn’t really fit her, barring the whole Apple thing she’s got going. Damnit, she seems like such a non-complex person, why is thinking of a flavour for her so damned hard?

Anyway, next on Grapey’s list was to meet with Applejack- who just walked in the room to tell me that I should probably go to sleep soon, I’ll get to that when I finish this.

Yeah, next on Grapey’s list was to meet with Applejack to help with various apple related stuff. However, that was supposed to be during daylight hours. Crikey, even I know from experience that working farmland at night-time is a bad idea. It’s a hell of a lot better to work with the natural light of the sun as opposed to the filtered and reflected light of the big cheese at night.

So, after grieving about the loss of the order of her wonderful schedule, Grape decided that perhaps we should stay the night at the farm to be able to help with the early morning chores. Which is fine with me. I mean, I grew up on a farm, so this is rather familiar turf. 

However, the long walk from Ponyville to the farmhouse served to prove that the farm that I will be staying at tonight wasn’t like the farm back home. This one is primarily a crop farm as opposed to a livestock farm. Sure, Applejack told me that she has some cows and chickens sleeping in there respective pens, but that’s not what I’d consider the level of livestock my family had back home. She also said that the cows in particular can get ‘a might bit talkitive’ in the morning, whatever that means. I suppose she meant that they will start mooing early in the morning, eh, nothing I can’t handle.

So, after Grape and I got settled in our rooms, the whole family got together to have a hearty dinner; and boy, do I mean ‘hearty’. The table went from a simple versatile surface to a veritable smorgasbord of apple related foodstuffs; pies, fritters, crumbles, muffins (more edible than Pinkie’s cupcakes, that’s for sure), salads, and even just plain apple slices were all on the menu. It was actually quite overwhelming to be honest. Even with my empty stomach from the violent eviction of everything from earlier’s encounter with Black Locust, I still felt very full from the meal.

Still no stake though, that’s a bummer.

What else can I write here? Oh yeah, Applejack’s family, they’re certainly a varied bunch, there’s Granny Smith, the grandma with probably a few thousand years of wisdom gushing from behind her dentures, Big Mac, who’s the strong, quiet, if-you-mess-with-my-family-no-one-will-know-where-to-find-you kind of guy, and then there’s Applebloom, the adorable trouble maker.

It’s no surprise that these lot remind me of my family. Applejack is a lot like my sister, Applebloom actually reminds me of me a bit, and Big Mac reminds me of my Dad… Granny Smith is just there I guess. She doesn’t remind me of mum, as there is no real substitute for my mum, it will be terribly hard to find a replica of that woman. The imitator would likely implode due to the awesome fury of the forces of malevolence and benevolence using their psyche as their unholy battleground. Mum would be very hard to pull off.

A copy of her is actually a rather terrifying thought.

Anyway, so I’ve reached the end of this tiresome day, and used up a fair bit of pages while I was at it. I’ve just checked the time and blimey, I should probably get to sleep. Tomorrow, Twilight has tasked the two of us to take care of the farm with Applejack’s family. Afterwards, we will then disembark for Fluttershy’s house to help with her in some way. I don’t know how we were originally going to do it, but Fluttershy has to find out something we can do.

So yeah, that’s it, not much else to put here. I should probably turn my lights off before Applejack comes racing back in with the curfew stick. 

Good night.