A brony finds himself in Equestria, but with abilities that shouldn't exist in either his world or theirs. Oh, and a timberwolf.
Peter Michael was a normal kid: going to school, watching TV, playing video games, and the like. That no longer mattered after he woke up in Equestria. The only thing that amazed him more than his new home and pet timberwolf was his new powers. Nope, not magic; the Force. As one could guess, he was quite happy with the situation.
The Star Wars elements of this story are based on a combination of the Canon, Legends, and my personal headcanon.
Tags are subject to change.
Displaced fic (which I'm surprised hasn't become a tag).
I'm not doing crossovers with other displaced stories yet. However, I will be doing them once I've gotten the first bit of this story done. Assuming I work on this story consistently, it shouldn't take more than three or four months.
I'm in the process of rewriting this.
It's recommended that you read the rewritten chapters in night mode to distinguish certain text colors better.
Humans are strange creatures. Most beings do just about anything they can to keep themselves alive. Humans, on the other hand, will sometimes endanger themselves to protect others. Sadly, some of them, believing the world, their friends, and their family would be better off without them; or feeling that dealing with the world or the consequences of their actions isn't worth living; will go out of their ways to kill themselves. For these reasons, humans both fascinate and draw pity from me. I do all I can to protect the humans of the planet Terra. It's not your planet, although it is quite similar. I've wished for the longest time that I could do more for them, but sadly, I am restricted. I'm here to tell you the story of a human in whom I took a particular interest.
I stared at the creature. It seemed to be a canine made entirely out of wood. I recognized this lupine lumber pile, having seen its kind on a tv show about magical talking equines. As I stared at the timberwolf, I wondered why it was just sitting there, staring back at me. My morning had not been particularly pleasant, as I had awoken in an unfamiliar forest, and then been chased by a pack of these things.
"Thank you," I said to the wolf. "I don't know why you did that, but thank you." Just a few minutes before, this timberwolf, a small one at that, had chased away the pack that had been after me. As my body ran out of adrenaline, I realized two things. 1) This timberwolf had purple eyes, as opposed to the lime green that most of them do. (I made a mental note to wonder about that later.) 2) Timberwolves don't exist on Terra. There were creatures called "timber wolves," but those were probably unrelated. If I was currently looking at an actual timberwolf, either humans had made them and I was simply unaware, I was hallucinating or dreaming, or I had somehow landed myself somewhere other than Terra.
I immediately discarded the third possibility. The others may be unlikely, but that one was next to impossible. I scratched the timberwolf behind what I assumed was its ear, hoping to confirm or rule out hallucination. The wolf seemed to like it, and since I could feel it fairly plainly, I assumed "no" on hallucination. The next test I went for was the classic "pinch me" to see if I was dreaming. Far as that test could determine, I was not. 'So I'm probably looking at a genetically engineered wolf made of wood that I somehow didn't even know we were in the process of making.' The sheer absurdity of that hit me. 'You know what? That probably requires just as many assumptions and unlikely events as the alternative. I decided that it would be easier on my brain to just figure it out later. I could probably find some civilization if I tried, and then my questions would probably be answered. Of course, I didn't know much about the environment for certain, and what I did know was that there were more timberwolves out there. 'I am screwed on my own,' I realized. I turned to the wolf, which was looking at me with its mouth open and its tongue sticking out the side. Kinda like a dog. "I don't suppose you'd help me get out of the forest, would you?" I asked it.
The timberwolf immediately stood up. It was just tall enough to reach my shoulder. It turned around and walked off a bit. Then it turned its head to look back at me. I took a wild guess and assumed it wanted me to follow it, which I did.
It wasn't long before the timberwolf, who I had decided by then to refer to as "Jack," had led me to the edge of the forest. "Thanks, Jack," I said to him (I assumed it was a "him"), scratching behind his ear. I looked around. There was a fair-sized town in the distance, but it looked... it looked... "Ye Olde," I guess. It took me a second to recognize the town, and once I did, it took most of my willpower not to collapse from the combined excitement and disbelief.
"By Sunbutt's sunny butt... I really am here."
I will admit that when the Pink Party Pony of PowerTM suddenly dropped into existence beside me, yelling "Hi there!" at the top of her lungs, I was a bit startled. I will assert, however, that I did not respond by shouting "Sweet Celestia's Sun-Spangled Sflank!" or anything remotely similar.
Don't lie to the readers, Pete.
...
As I was saying, the P4's sudden appearance caught me off guard, and I may have responded in a way that was somewhat... embarrassing. And I may have jumped a bit. A lot. And landed face-up on the ground.
Once I landed, the P4 positioned herself so that her face was directly over mine, but upside-down from my perspective. "Hiya," she said. "I'm Pinkie Pie."
I blinked and tried to regain my composure. "Hey..." I wound up saying. "I'm Peter."
"Nice to meet'cha, Peter," she said with a huge grin on her face before turning to Jack. "And what's your name?" she asked him.
Obviously, Jack didn't say anything. "His name's Jack," I answered for him.
Pinkie scratched Jack behind the ear with her hoof. "Hi, Jack. Who's a cute little timberwolf?" She still had that huge grin. I would have expected her to at least be intimidated by Jack's presence. Then again, she was Pinkie Pie.
She was Pinkie Pie.
She was Pinkie Pie.
It was just about then that I hit my daily limit for "weird" and blacked out.
I found myself in a green void. Green. #00ff00. This color. Somehow, that had to have been the weirdest thing to happen to me that day. Usually, when one finds oneself in a void of some color, it's either white or black. Green's practically unheard of.
I responded to this realization in the only fashion I considered reasonable.
"Wut."
"Hello there, Peter."
I jumped and looked around for where that voice came from. "Who's there?"
"I apologize for the situation you've found yourself in. And for startling you, that too."
"Who's there?" I repeated. "And where are you?"
A figure appeared before me. It appeared human. It had shoulder-length hair the color of ash, eyes blue as sapphires, skin a healthy... what even is that color? Pink? Light orange? It looked like a healthy caucasian; that's my point. I say "it" because I couldn't tell whether it was male or female. If I were to guess, I'd say it (they?) was about six feet tall, and it looked lean and somewhat muscular. They were wearing, of all things, a yellow t-shirt tucked into blue jeans, a red belt, cyan shoes, and a magenta beanie hat. It actually hurt my eyes to look at all the bright colors on this person. They extended their hand to me. "I am Azrael."
Hesitantly, I took the hand and shook it. "Peter Michael."
"I suppose you have more questions about these last few hours than, as you would say, 'you can shake a stick at.'"
"Uhh... yeah. I do. Not sure how many of them you can answer, though."
"Most of them, likely. It would happen that I am the reason you're here. Both in this place," they gestured to the space around them, "and the physical location at which you last fell asleep."
"Huh?"
"You're dreaming."
"Oh. Wait, you're why I'm in Equestria?"
"I swear I had a good reason." They raised their hands defensively.
"Can I go back home, or am I stuck here?"
"Hitting the nail on the head, aren't we?"
"I've read a million fanfics with this premise."
"Of course you have." They smiled and chuckled. This quickly became a frown. "I'm very sorry, but at present, you're stuck here. I was only able to get you to this place. It's currently outside my power to return you."
"Oh..." I trailed off, looking down. That wasn't good. I looked back at Azrael. "But what about my friends and family? They'll worry about me, and I don't want to do that to them."
Azrael looked sorrowful for a second. "Peter... I brought you here to save your life. You co-" They seemed to choke up a bit, and I could have sworn I saw tears in their eyes. "You died on Terra. You fell from a high place. I removed your memory of the event to keep it from permanently scarring you."
That hit me like a train. I died? What the heck?! "I- Uhh... Thank you, Azrael. For saving me."
They smiled warmly, but gave no verbal response.
"Wait. If you were able to bring me back from the dead and send me here, what exactly are you?"
They thought for a moment. "I suppose one might refer to me as a god. Just with a little 'g.' There are creatures more powerful than I, one of whom in particular is my boss. Creatures like myself exist outside of universes and watch over them, sometimes affecting them. Most of us have a single universe which is our 'domain,' where we have the most Authority. Mine is the one that contains Terra."
"Really? Wow. ... Wait, you said your boss was a 'more powerful creature' than you. Whozzat?"
"He is an entity known as Clockwork. His power over the multiverse is unmatched, and his motives are a mystery to me. I've been trying to figure that b****** out for the longest time."
I stared and blinked for a second. "Did you just bleep yourself?"
"Yes."
"I'm surprised a 'little g' god cares about cursing."
"Clockwork said I should do that around you. Like I said, he makes no sense, but I'm not gonna second-guess his orders."
"Alright... I guess that makes as much sense as everything else that's happened these last few hours."
"That's all I can hope for. This isn't a situation most humans would find themselves in. It's not common for a human to be Displaced."
"Dis-?"
"When a being from one universe is moved to another. For some reason, Equislike worlds are bizarrely common destinations."
"Oh. What's-?"
"Equis is the planet you're currently on."
"Thanks."
"Any more questions?"
"No, not really."
"In that case, I'll let you wake up. If you want to talk again, just focus on that as you fall asleep."
"Alright." I felt strangely warm as I returned to the world of the conscious.
"So I tried to wake him up, and when that failed, Jack and I brought him here."
"That makes sense, ignoring the fact that you cooperated with a timberwolf."
"And that's how Nightmare Moon was defeated."
"..."
"Hold it! I think he's waking up!"
I sat up and checked out my surroundings. I was, as far as I could tell, in the waiting room of a hospital. Fairly nondescript. There were only two other beings in the room with me: the pink pony I had been conversing with before my talk with Azrael, and a white-coated earth pony with a pink mane and tail, a nurse's hat, and a mark on her flank consisting of a red plus sign and four pink hearts. I guessed that this was Nurse Redheart. Shortly after registering that, I realized a major difference between the two. Pinkie Pie looked, for want of a better term, cartoonish. She essentially looked like she did in the show, just in three dimensions. Redheart, on the other hand, actually looked somewhat realistic. She still looked like she did on the show, but I could pick out individual hairs in her coat, mane, and tail, and her eyes reflected light in a realistic fashion, rather than simply having white spots. When I looked closely, I noticed that her cutie mark moved. The four tiny hearts moved toward and away from the plus sign on a steady rhythm, each with slightly different timing. Once I noticed that, I couldn't look away. My focus was locked on like a-
"Excuse me!"
I was shocked out of my trance. "Huh? What?"
"I've been trying to get your attention for the past five minutes, mister 'Peter.'"
"Oh, sorry. I was mesmerized."
"Haven't you seen a Cutie Mark before?"
She must have followed my eyes. "No, I've never seen a cutie mark in person before. Well, aside from Pinkie's, but hers didn't move."
"I'm an oddity."
"I can confirm that. I gave up trying to figure out what's up with her a few years after she moved here. Longest headache I've ever had."
"... Not surprising." I stood up. "Well, unless y'all actually need something, I'm gonna take off. I need to figure a few things out." 'Starting with when I am relative to the events of the show. I can't believe I forgot to ask Azrael about that.'
Redheart stopped me. "Before you go, I should make sure you're alright."
"Do you know anything about my kind's biology?"
"... Fair point. Not even sure what you are, really."
"I fainted because I was overwhelmed by the situation I was in. I should be fine now that I've had time to pull myself together."
"If you say so. But if something feels wrong, come to me immediately."
"Whatever you say, ma'am. Now, where's Jack?"
Not much later, Jack and I, followed by Pinkie for some reason, were standing outside the Golden Oak Library. 'So I can't be any later than season four, then,' I thought. 'I can probably narrow that down a bit.' "Hey, Pinkie?"
"Yeah?"
"Does anypony live here?"
"Nope. Why would someone live in a library?"
"I can think of a few reasons. Love of books, hatred of noise, sheer novelty of living in a library, things like that." 'Shoot. That means I could be at any point in time before the show starts. Although, I guess I can't be too early. Since Pinkie's here, I have to be within around ten years, and I'm probably closer than that. Unless I'm in some weird alternate timeline where Twilight never comes to ponyville for whatever reason, and therefore the events of the show never take place, but what are the odds of that? ... Knowing my luck, probably pretty high. S***.'
"Huh."
"What is it?"
"Look over there, by the library."
"We have a library?"
"Carrot, we've always had a library."
"Oh."
"Just look by the giant tree."
"... Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?"
"Only if you think you're seeing Pinkie Pie, a timberwolf, and what looks like an ape with very little hair.
"Oh, wait. I was looking by the wrong tree. Okay, now I see it."
"What were you-?"
"Unimportant. I think the ape's going into the library."
"I'm not blind, Carrot."
"Pinkie's following it."
"I can see that, Carrot."
"I think the timberwolf started to follow them, but the ape made a gesture and it stopped."
"Carrot. Stop."
I figured that the best way to know everything I could about my situation would be to read the library. The whole thing, or at least the whole nonfiction section. Unfortunately, I quickly determined that that would be impossible. Apparently, despite our languages being similar enough for us to communicate vocally, their writing system consisted mostly of squiggly lines, with a few pictograms here and there. "Welp, that's a problem."
"What is?"
"I can't read this."
"Why not?"
"Squiggles."
"Writing's too different?"
"Exactly. So far, our languages seem to be identical when spoken aloud, but your writing looks like squiggles to me."
"That's a problem."
"There goes that plan."
"I'm gonna go over there."
"Why?"
"I'm curious."
"Curiosity killed the cat."
"I'm not a cat."
"That makes almost no difference."
"Still going."
"There's a timberwolf there, and we don't even know for certain what that tall thing is."'
"And yet you followed me over here."
"What do you- ... S***."
"Well, this was fruitless. Not really sure what that would have done for me anyway."
"Are you okay, Peter?"
"Hmm?"
"You're crying."
I wiped my eye. Tears. 'Why only now?' "I'm fine. Let's go." It was a lie, given my situation, but there wasn't much that could be done about that.
"Okay..." She sounded unsure. "If you say so."
I went over to the door and opened it.* As I did so, a pair of ponies fell in, as though they'd been pressed against the door. One was purple with a darker purple mane and a cutie mark consisting of a strawberry and some grapes, which shook back and forth. The other was yellow with an orange mane and a cutie mark of three carrots, swaying side to side. I quickly recognized them as Berry Punch and Carrot Top, excepting one detail: they seemed younger than I would have expected. If I were to guess, I'd say they were in their mid-teens, about the same age as me. How I could tell, I had no clue.
"Hiya, Berry Punch and Carrot Top!" At least I was right about that.
"Hi,Pinkie," they said simultaneously as they got up from the floor.
"What were you two just doing?"
"Uhh..."
"Eavesdropping," Carrot Top said casually, immediately getting a hoof to the head from Berry. "Ow!"
