You are Anonymous and you're injured. How did it happen, who's taking care of you, and where are your pants?
Chapter 1 You are Anonymous and you're in the hospital. There was an incident and it was all Twilight's fault. In order to make it up to you, she wants to use magic to help set everything right. Lucky you!
Chapter 2+ There were demands for this story to be continued, so put on your big boy pants because this thing is going to get weird. Sometimes you are Anonymous the human, other times you may be someone else, in this second-person POV adventure. More backstory, more world building, more characters, and more snarky comments! Think of thing that you've never thought before!
My first published story. Rated "Teen" for sexually suggestive themes, crass language, and profanity. Updates whenever I come up with an idea for a chapter. Feel free to suggest ideas for future chapters in the comments.
Your name is Anonymous, which isn’t your original, Earthkin birth name. Thankfully, you’re the only human that exists in Equestria. You’re a cool, suave, debonair man-about-town. Latin lover, and by the grace of God, Latino lover. It's getting to be late Summer, nearly time to wake up Billie Joe Armstrong. The sky is blue and the grass is green, or plaid when Discord becomes bored. You can hear birds doing bird things outside your window and you wish they would shut the hell up. You are currently resting in a cot with too many pillows, in Ponyville General Hospital, and there is a haystack coloured pony wearing a Stetson talking, not to you, but at you. You’re doing a lot of listening right now, which it unusually uncharacteristic of you.
Nurse glitter-something, you didn't get his name, had just picked up your diagnosis clipboard and clip-clopped his way out of your room leaving you alone with your favourite farm pony.
"Just stay calm, Anon. Y'all just lie back, now. Sometimes these things just happen," Applejack said while she gently pushed you back down. "Twilight is working on a spell to fix everything."
Well, second favourite farm pony, as Applebloom was obviously your first favourite because she is the most adorable. Granny Smith was easily your third favourite because she makes some of the best apple pie you’ve ever had in your life. And Rainbow Dash didn't farm, let alone do any actual work. If there was an award for being the most lazy, that skittle-pone wouldn't even bother to participate but still somehow win by default. Her napping schedule, the one she has posted on the bulletin board outside Barnyard Bargains, makes you only a little bit jealous. You’re positive that is everyone you remember seeing at the Apple family’s farm. Eeyup, pretty sure.
You lay in bed watching Applejack's deliciously kissable mouth move, forming words, tongue lashing about, doing soundy-speak thing. You hear the sounds coming from her mouth but you have no idea what she is talking about. You weren't sure in what way Twilight was supposed to fix everything. Given her track record, the flippant violet librarian was usually the chosen one who caused the problems in the first place. You were convinced that the infestation of green slug monsters that appeared last week, which ate both the stone bridge leading to Fluttershy’s cottage over Babble’s Brook and the roof off of Sugarcube Corner, was somehow her fault. You didn't have the heart to tell any of the helpful hospital horses that everything about you was fine and supremely sexy, as it should be. They were just trying to do their little horsey best in the horseiest way they knew how. You knew your own body like the back of your hand. Except for that one scar near the base of your thumb. You still don't know how you got that one. You were pretty sure that Zecora had something to do with it. Maybe you were drunk and you tried running your hand over her bristley mane and she wanted none of that. It seemed like a plausible scenario. Her hair really was amazing and taking a bite on your hand would be totally worth it, you think.
You are a human, not some hairless, damn dirty ape. Your body is supposed to be proportioned like it was. There was nothing that the Princess of sparkles and glitter, or whatever she did when she was not stalking you, needed to fix. But, like the rising of the sun, an idea set upon you. You unraveled the Rubix cube of conversation. You had figured out what they were talking about and quickly shut your goddamn mouth. While you weren’t exactly smiling, your face had settled into a comfortable, smug grin.
You lay in your cot and remember back to yesterday morning. Worst princess, Celestia, had commissioned Twilight Sparkle, the mediocre princess, to gather census data from the border towns. Thinking back on it, you couldn't remember why she had picked you to help her and not Spike, or one of her friends, or just some random homeless pony off the street. Or how she even got you to agree to help her in the first place. You distinctly remember telling the purple bookworm 'no', repeatedly, often before she even opened her flapping noise hole. As it turns out, in Equestria, 'no' sometimes means 'yes' in the same way it does back home.
That morning you decided to get an extra hour of beauty sleep, not that you needed it but because you knew that people who woke up early were crazy, and ended up being late for your early morning meeting with the Princess of Friendship. In your infinite wisdom you strategically planned to forgo breakfast and met Twipone at the crystal eyesore on the outskirts of Ponyville. The two of you then spent the day hauling papers, writing data, filing things into folders, applying labels, sorting the folders into boxes, then adding even more labels. Box it, ship it, pull it, pass it, bop it, on repeat for hour after hour. The work was tedious and seemed to go on without end.
Twilight had felt the need to schedule visiting every town in the same day. She probably did it on purpose in a desperate need to get back to what she loved doing the most, mentally abusing Spike. The twitchy lavender nerd didn't schedule any breaks for snacks, second breakfast, elevenses, tea, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea, supper, dinner, or tacos. Now, after teleporting the two of you around for most of the day, hardly staying in any place longer than half-an-hour, you fainted. Not from the casual blinking in and out of space-time, but from Twilight's stupidly jam packed schedule. Who in their right mind doesn’t schedule time for tacos? There’s always time for tacos. It’s literally in the name of the world famous taco restaurant: Taco Time. Think outside the bun.
Here you are, twenty-two hours later. Your Adonis-like human physique finally had enough of running on empty and collapsed from starvation and low blood sugar levels. Now you're lying in bed, hooked to an IV, recovering in the horse hospital, and not the vet like last time, staring dumbfounded into this beautiful farm mare's emerald eyes as she tried her best to explain something ... truly amazing. Someone ought to write a story about this.
Prinnie Twinkle Spicket, in her infinite purple princess privilege, somehow got her grubby little hooves on a copy of your full body magic medical scans. She had decided that what she read in your charts should have not been what it was, though it be like it is 'cause it do. That, somehow, one or more of her multiple long-range teleports had caused a vanishing of body tissue and a not small amount of cell damage.
When your tiny horse doctor, Doctor Horse, told you what Twilight thought she had found, you definitely weren't worried. You just needed to get up and stretch your legs, at full speed, in a direction anywhere but here, which just so happened to be across town. And you sure as shit weren't yelling or crying. Running takes a lot of endurance and you were probably just breathing hard and sweating lots. And if anyone says anything different they're lying. Because ponies are world renown for two things: friendship, lying, and not knowing how to count.
One of the larger, definitely gay, male nurses had tackled you from behind like a coward, probably in an attempt to grope your nearly naked ass, and carried you back to your room and strapped you down to the bed. Your sudden and extreme need to exercise had spooked the locals so much they felt the need to take precautions so you wouldn't try to make Billy Blanks proud by doing Tae Bo. Bondage was probably the male pony nurse’s fetish, if you had to guess.
The hulking beefcake of a nurse had left you alone with Applejack. With her soothing country accent lulling you into a false sense of security, you finally clue in as to what Twilight thought she found and her pending magical solution to fix everything. According to what Twilight thought she had discovered, your multiple rapid teleports had caused your, ahem, ‘colt parts’, to become ‘damaged’ and that they had ‘lost significant mass’. Applejack was always so cute when she blushed.
Some careful groping under your hospital gown had revealed to you that everything was the right size, where it should be, and functioned properly. At least as far as you could test without ‘summoning the trouser snake’ in front of the freckled field filly. You were going to save that for the honeymoon, stud.
But Twilight was dead-set on returning everything to its ‘original size’, which, when directly compared to a pony stallion's wedding tackle, your manhood was no longer to-scale with the rest of your body. Twilight Sparkle, the alicorn of magic and Princess of Friendship, was creating a spell to give you a bigger dick and all you had to do was just shut your stupid mouth for once and try not to grin like an idiot.
This will all work out for the better. Magic was totally Twilight's thing. She was literally the Element of Magic. It was even printed on her business card and you know those things never lie. What could possibly go wrong?
You didn’t ask to be born perfect, you just turned out this way because God loves you more. But the universe? It seems to hate you. You’re sure of it. Sometimes when you wake up in the morning with good intentions and build great plans to get things done, the universe seems to scowl at you and say ‘not today’. Take, for example, your stay in the Ponyville hospital. You had all the best and brightest doctors and nurses trying their hardest to help you. Which means that everything went wrong. Because of course it did. There are four sure things in life: death, taxes, Twilight S. Parkle fucking something up, and you not respecting someone’s name.
For what it’s worth, Twilight tried her best. As it turns out, her best is what some other people would call their worst. You don’t have the first clue how magic works but you’re damn sure it shouldn't cause body dimorphism. That’s a real word. Look it up. The spell was miscast, or had misfired, or some other word starting with mis and now you have the biggest, magic induced raging monster of an erection, both literally and figuratively.
"Help, my new penis is a gigantic monster!" You yell, still attached to your giant throbbing member as it smashed through yet another unfortunate pony's home. "That one was also your fault!"
Twilight did give you a bigger dick, yes sir, but in the most destructive way possible. Now all of Ponyville gets to bear whiteness to your oversized wedding tackle flatten any structures standing larger than it does in a fit of jealous rage in a classic textbook case of overcompensation. Not that you would know, personally.
Twilight was galloping alongside your bulbous gland, shooting magic stun bolts at the gigantic creature that was once your one-eyed gopher. "Anon, I can fix this! You just gotta hold it still!"
You were cool as a cucumber, as your mammoth gherkin rumbled down the road to its next target. "Hold still? Hold still!? I don't even know how I'm hanging on!"
Your name is Anon and you're apparently not allowed to have nice things.
Many facts brushed across your mind like tiny snowflakes during a gentle winter’s night snowfall. You are, thankfully, still the only human in Equestria. When you first arrived many years ago you forsook your Earthly given name and took up the Equestrian moniker of Anonymous. And now you have just woken up. From what you last remembered, you didn’t lie down and go to sleep, and you certainly don’t remember falling asleep. Right now you’re wide awake, which never happens, and not hung over, which was unusual for a Wednesday. You’re also standing, which you almost never willingly do if there was something even reasonably soft to sit on. Whatever was going on was a real head-scratcher for sure.
You’re wearing the finest clothes that you currently own. An extremely stylish, white, cotton t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off. The shirt front is sporting your favorite smiling internet meme frog because you and other true meme believers know that internet memes will always be relevant, funny, and will never, ever get old. The back of the shirt says “Pepe” in your best attempt at using fountain pen ink to recreate Comic Sans because, as much as you love that frog, you hate having to explain it to every pony who asks. Now you can just turn your back to them and point, saving you precious seconds that you could otherwise spend doing anything else. It's not your fault that they can't read American. You can't read their dumb pony words, so it's only fair, really.
Your legs and legbenders are covered in god-tier relaxed-fit stone washed denim jeans which you refuse to let Rarity mend because the rips and holes make them more comfortable and the warm summer breeze feels good blowing across your freshly shaved bikini line. Covering your manly piggly wigglies you’re wearing simple white cotton socks, capped with proper shoes and not sandals because you’re not some sort of barbarian, and for some reason pony society refuses to see the sheer brilliance of Crocks. It’s your average, totally normal, fancy formal wear, basically. You could even wear a black stovepipe hat to finish your classy ensemble. Not that you actually own one, but you totally could, and it would look great on you.
You peep your dazzling facelookers at your surroundings. You appear to be standing in some sort of volumetric haze that a lazy game developer might have used so they didn’t have to bother modeling an entire world beyond a few hundred feet, and not meters, because you are a gentleman and scholar. There’s a glittering field of stars overhead because paying five dollars for a store asset featuring blue sky and clouds would have been too expensive. The same sky was reflected in, what looks like water, at your feet. Probably because making grass look realistic would have been too difficult. You gave the watery ground an experimental couple of taps with your ensneakered foot to see if it rippled, which it didn’t. Despite the game developers being too lazy to even bother to program water physics, IGN would still have given it nine out of ten and called it Game if the Year. You give it a solid two at best. The water wasn’t even wet. Pretty much a fail right there, in your humble opinion. There could be some who would call it the most humblest of opinions, in fact. There wasn't anyone here that could disagree with you anyway.
Of course, now that you put that thought out into the world, the world decided to shove it harshly back in your face by immediately proving you wrong. Off in the distance a familiar shape emerged from the nondescript white void. “What the actual hell,” you say to the smartest person in the room, which is you, obviously.
You’re clearly no longer alone in wherever this place is. They could disagree with your opinion on your most humble of opinions but you'll never ask them, especially not that person. The number one pony on your ’Top Ten Worst Princesses’ list is also here, wherever here is. Upon recognizing you she immediately opens her God damned mouth. As it turns out, this isn’t the usual dream where her mouth is full of millions of ever-moving razor sharp teeth, her gaping skull hole buzzing like a Vitamix® Plus+ blender full of Africanized murder-hornets that have been horribly mutated to be extra aggressive. Rather than the expected attempt to leap at you like a hungry house cat would a field mouse, in an attempt to eat your face like she would do in your usual nightmare, she speaks, which is somehow even worse. Women, am I right?
“Oh, hello Anonymous. Of all creatures, I didn’t expect to see you here. Weren’t you supposed to be on your way back home by now?”, Princess Celestia asked you.
That's when your forgotten memories came flooding back to you. You remembered where you were before you had arrived in lame-space and you wish you hadn't.
Many facts brushed across your mind like crackles of lightning during a thunderstorm. You are the steward of the Sun, the gracious and magnanimous, retired, Princess Celestia. Up until a hoofful of seconds ago you were making your way across the sandy shore of the Eastern coastline, back to the beach hut you share with Luna, now you are… Ah, yes. It’s so clear to you as you have been here many time before. You were here as little as three years ago, in fact, with your dear student, now Princess in her own right, Twilight Sparkle.
This place is the Ascended Realm. Even after hundreds of years its ethereal existence never changes, unless you or one of your fellow Alicorns will it. You chose to never again make any more changes since your last as you have already made your preferred additions to it, but that matters very little right now. Luna’s night sky still glitters far above, with every dancing point of light exactly where she placed them nearly eleven-hundred years ago. Cadance’s radiant pool of Everwater still ripples and shimmers under hoof as it has done since it’s placement nearly forty years ago. Twilight has yet to decide on her contribution but she has plenty of time for that now. You have seen the size of her list of possible additions and she has… ideas. You dared not to crease the spine of volume one but it is safe to assume she has many, in both ideas and volumes of lists.
Without further procrastination you set off in a straight line through your contribution of enchanted, day-glow colored mist. It would have mattered very little which direction you chose, seeing as this specific pocket of unreality is doughnut shaped. An idea contributed by Clover the Clever. Her name was well earned, you think. You know that you will reach your destination no matter where you started so long as you never waver, always moving ever onward in a straight line, as by design.
Your beach attire didn’t come with you as you are now are wearing your royal crown, chest plate, and golden shoes. In this place they’re not real. Neither are you, but they exist here none the less, as do you. Your shoes make their distinctive click on the Everwater as you try to discover who else is here. Hopefully you will find your sun hat when you return. It was your favorite, as Luna had given it to you, and you would not love to purchase a replacement.
If you were to keep a list of such things, like who you would believe to be the next to ascend, it would most likely consist of Twilight’s closest friends. And you do keep such a list. You nod to yourself in agreement. To not do so would be negligent on your part.
The obvious top pick is Pinkie Pie. Seeing as friendship correlates directly to magic. Pinkie Pie has the most friends out of anypony you have ever met, bar none, including yourself. Since you became aware of her existence, you have personally witnessed on several occasions for her to unconsciously perform the lost art of extra dimensional teleportation, just for funsies as she would have likely said. It would be little wonder for you to find her here ready to ascend, probably with a basket of baked good of some kind, or a sheet cake. For some reason you crave something sweet and glazed doughnut sounds lovely right about now.
Next on the list is clearly Applejack. The connection the Apple family shares with the spirit of Equestria was clear with Granny Smith and has only grown stronger with each generation. It was most obvious to you the time when a very young and lonely Applejack raised an apple tree to sentience. From what you understood of the after-action reports from the local guard, the apple tree sprout named Bloomberg was quite the little chatterbox. At least until the magic wore off.
The obvious next choice is none other than the self-proclaimed Element of Awesome, Rainbow Dash. That mare has broken as many athletic records as she has bones in her body. Some more than once, bones and records both. Her stellar performance of the Sonic Rainboom, and her accidental invention of the Subsonic Mistfart, put the rainbow-maned speedster within a proverbial wing flap to ascension.
One would be remiss no not include Fluttershy next. If her obvious connection the the magic within the Everfree wasn’t enough, her ability to project her will to subjugate the local wildlife and most other creatures, including other ponies, easily sets her above the rest. You would be worried about her using her mind power for nefarious purposes were she not already the Element of Kindness. Both of those facts together keeps her from being any higher on the list.
And of course, one can’t forget the fashionista and the Element of Generosity’s friend, Coco Pommel. That mare has such passion for her craft and a strong will to succeed that it fills you with determination. You have seen much of her in the local news paper’s celebrity gossip column as of late. She has been spending a lot of time, both public and in private, with your little Twilight that one could mistake them to be dating. Perish the thought. For what could two mares even do together, without a stallion, no less. You shake your head to yourself in wonder. The mind boggles, truly.
You have arrived at your your destination, as off in the distance a familiar shape is made manifest from your day-glow mist.
“What the actual hell,” you hear familiar a voice say.
Your ears reflex, swiveling to the source of the sound. Your eyes snap to follow. Trademark smile number eight, one of your favorites, forms on your muzzle at the familiar face before you.
“Oh, hello Anonymous. Of all creatures, I didn’t expect to see you here. Weren’t you supposed to be on your way back home by now?”, you ask your little human.
The two of you are alone in the Ascended Realm. It is the way. Seeing that you two have finally come together, that must mean the process of assentation has commenced.
He appears the be trembling. Knees weak, arms like a mothers tomato pasta. He raises his graspers to point a single digit directly at you . He looked like he was having some sort of panic attack. This should be a joyous occasion. What ever could have come over him?
Today is an average day. It’s better than yesterday but worse than it will be tomorrow. You are feeling things in a way that you haven’t in a long, long while. Sad, apprehensive, anxious, nervous, and other things you don’t have the words to explain. The resident purple Yoda of Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle, had finally figured out a way to send you back across space-time to your home planet of Earth. You had wanted a full, proper sendoff befitting of a national hero such as yourself; a parade, brass marching band, fireworks, the whole nine yards. But you gladly settled for the bento lunch Fluttershy had packed for you, which was the superior option. She did things with bread, sandwichy things, that delighted your taste buds. So, here you are, rugged and handsome, standing in an empty field outside of Ponyville, in the middle of a compacted dirt clearing, inside an intricately drawn chalk circle, patiently waiting to magically blip home.
Twilight and her friends, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and the white one, all stood evenly spaced around your circle. Hanging from gold chains around their necks were crystal jewels in the shape of their cutie marks which they had borrowed from a magic crystal tree. The Elements of Harmony and their bearers, the single most powerful force in ponyworld were required to power Twilight’s spell to send you home.
You were seconds away from finally going home. The six ponies surrounding you had their eyes closed in deep concentration and were starting to glow. You felt that now was the best time to confess your most grievous sins against them. After all, you would never see these people ever again. What better time to do that than now? Originally, you had wanted to write it all down in a letter but you still didn’t know how to write in the pony language so your heartfelt words will have to do. A magical wind was starting to pick up so you needed to rip the metaphorical bandage off quickly. You don’t know what happens next but you know what needs to happen now. Having to admit that you’re anything less than perfect at all times is going to be the most difficult thing you will ever do in your life.
“Applejack, I was the one who told Rainbow where you stored extra barrels of apple cider. We were the ones who drank them.”
“Aw shucks, now I gotta apologize to Flash.”
“Rainbow Dash, knife monopoly isn’t a real game and neither is wrench dodgeball.”
“But you said they are your world’s most dangerous games!” You could feel the hurt deep in your soul. It hurt several times less than being pelted with iron wrenches and spanners.
“Pinkie Pie, I’m not really allergic to raspberries dipped in white chocolate. I just don’t like how the seeds get stuck in my molars.”
“Gasp!” Pinkie gasped. “I knew it!”
“Fluttershy, I’m the one gave Discord the idea to set up a market stall to sell poison joke tea and invest all the profits in crypto currency.”
“But, I could have used those extra bits to feed more of my critter friends…”
You look at the white pony with purple hair. “Um… you. I don’t actually know what your name is. You’re Sweetie Bell’s sister, yeah? Well, nice meeting you, I guess.”
“The nerve!”
What was taking Sprinklebottom so long to finish her spell and send you home? Does her magic run off of AOL or something?
“Twilight, I was the one who created the blockchain and invented crypto currency and… you’re teeth are clenched. Doesn’t it hurt, grinding them like that? And you’re growling. Are your eyes supposed to be glowing like that? Twilight, are you even listening to me? Hello?”
You could see it now and it looked like danger. You could feel it in your danger bones. Somehow, opening up and being honest to your pony friends had backfired. Your psychiatrist was wrong, yet again. You had always known that opening your heart to others and sharing your feelings will only get you hurt. Now here is your proof, for what good it will do you in what little time you had left.
Then the magic exploded. Twice.
There was nothing left but a black scorch mark on the compacted dirt. The grass field was deathly quiet, the magic wind had died down. Your horn was still smoking and sputtering glitters of raw magic. The spell had failed in the worst possible way. Flakes of ash and soot were falling from the sky, dusting everything in a fine, grey powder.
Fluttershy was the first to speak up. “Um, you did send him home, right Twilight?”
You didn’t answer. You were still furious. Heaving breast, huffing heavily in and out through your nose. You knew he was a liar but why did he have to tell you all those things while you were casting? You’re sure that he knew that strong, negative emotions had a detrimental effect on magic. There was no way he could have not known! You had personally given him several lectures on magic!
“Good riddance. Ah say we ain’t see nothin’.” Applejack stated. “Lazy, good for nothin’ thief.”
“Aww, he was blasted to smithereens. I’m going to miss Nonnie. He was a lot of fun.” Said Pinkie Pie, wiping some soot off her face. "And now he's just a lot."
“I’ve never been so close to someone before,” said Fluttershy, fluttering her wings in an attempt to shake the powder from herself. “I don’t think I like it very much. He’s getting stuck to my feathers.”
Rarity kicked a hoof at the black smudge. “You tried your best, darling. No humans here. I’m sure he’s in a better place now.”
“Yeah, like in several different places. Yuck! I’m going to need a dunk in the pond now.” Rainbow Dash said. She tried to shake free from some of what was left of the human off her leg to no effect.
“I say a visit to the spa is in order. What do you say, Twilight dear?” Prompted Rarity.
The six of you had been through some tough times together. You all have learned many valuable lessons from your many adventures around the world, like how to create a convincing alibi. You felt bad, but not as bad as you thought you should. After King Sombra, dealing with things like these was somehow getting easier, which worried you a little bit, but only for a second. You finally tore your eyes off the smoldering pile of ash to address your friends, your accomplices, your co-conspirators.
“Yeah, the spa sounds pretty good right now.”
You’ll come back later to clean up the circle, burry the evidence, maybe plant a little marker somewhere in memorial. It’ll all still be here tomorrow. Anon wasn’t going anywhere. Ever again.
You are Anonymous. The sky is stars, the ground is water, and everything is totally, absolutely fine. Things couldn’t be any better, really.
“I’m dead, aren’t I,” you state calmly. “I’m dead and this is Hell.”
You behold a pale white horse. It’s name is Princess Celestia and she is standing a few paces in front of you. She lightly brushes a golden clad hoof against the non-water ground.
“No, you are not dead.”
Seeing that ever present, dopey smile on her face makes you wish that she actually had tried to gnaw off your face. At least it would have been slightly more bearable than pretending you care enough to be on your best behavior. You normally save that level of premeditated heedfulness for church on Sunday but Equestria doesn't have any of those. Churches, not Sundays. They definitely have Sundays here and they are four hours longer than any other day of the week for some unknown reason, which will remain unknown because you can't be bothered to ask anyone. You’re sure the purple Book Princess, who moved up from number two to the number one spot of your ’Top Ten Worst Princesses’ list for having magically murdered you, would love to flap her noise hole at you for hours extolling the virtues of extended daylight hours but there isn’t enough liquor left in your cabinet for doing that and you just don’t want to give her your attention which she often desperately craves.
“ ‘Kay. Just checking.”
She wiggles an ear. “Please remind me, which one was hell? Is that the cloudy one, with the trumpet playing, flying humans who wear the white togas?”, she asks.
“Yeah, sure. Hell has an angel.” Which is technically correct. And technically correct is the best kind of correct. Your favorite documentary about a pizza delivery-boy in the future taught you that.
You jam your hands into the pockets of your jeans. You dont find anything in them. No keys, no cell phone, no wallet, no vape pen, and no pocket knife. You didn’t even your trusty fidget spinner. Which is a good thing because you’re still totally calm and don’t need to spin your fidget right about now.
You reiterate your question from earlier in an easier to understand fashion so her smooth girl brain can understand. “And you still haven’t told me what those thing are.” You point at the floating rectangles behind the horse woman by raising your head a little and thrusting your chin in their general direction.
Her right ear does a wiggle in a similar way the left one did moments ago. You’re totally not jealous of her ear wiggling ability. That would be, just, something something something... You don’t have to justify yourself to anyone, least of all, to yourself.
The pale horse straightens up, “Very well. We,” she waves a wing in a circular motion, “are in the Ascended Realm. You,” she points the same wing at you, “are here because you have accomplished many great deeds and have been deemed worthy.” She curls the same wing, impossibly, somehow, to point at herself. You’re pretty sure wings have bones in them and bones don’t bend, like, at all. Your best friend’s parents getting them a trampoline for their tenth birthday taught you that.
She continues, “And I am here to guide you.” The Princess folds her wing back up against her side. She probably had that whole speech memorized. You're trapped here with the Princess of being over-prepared and you think that’s just fucking dandy.
You point indiscriminately at several new shapes emerging from the misty, perpetual void in which you both currently reside, to ask the most relevant question that has pushed its way from the brilliant depths of your beautiful mind to grace your luscious, kissable lips.
“What about those floaty square things behind you?” You ask a third time. She has to answer you now. Those are the rules. Your favorite documentary about cryogenically frozen British spies from the nineteen-sixties taught you that. Being all aloof and shit doesn’t make any of this more exciting or go any faster. You would stamp your foot to display your rising anger but acting like a Karen wouldn't help you in this situation.
The top of your top-ten worst princesses must also know the rule about answering a question if it has been asked three times because she finally answers you. “Each one of those,” she bends her neck and flips her head to briefly look to her right side at a floaty window thingy, “are viewports to your memories, Anonymous.”
“Those crazy hover windows show my memories?” You are going to be seeing a lot of porn in a little bit. Like, several years worth of porn. You’re fine with that but you worry about the poor horse woman. You’re probably going to have the explain why the humans are doing things to each other and themselves. You can’t help but smile a little at that thought.
She nods, “Correct. As we walk along, each viewport will show us the great deed you have accomplished.”
“So, this isn’t a trial?” you ask. “And this isn’t some sort of intervention?”
She shakes her head, “Not as of such.”
“Cool beans. Then I’d rather skip all this.” You’ve seen all of this porn already, anyway. “Could you send me back, please?” Manners are important to you and so is knowing when to use them to manipulate people.
“I cannot send you back as I did not bring you here. The only way for you to leave is to Ascend.”
“What a load of horse sh- nonsense.” You catch yourself from making an accidental pun in front of the talking horse. Puns are the worst, shortly followed by mimes. A mime somehow making a pun would probably kill you dead, or make you wish that you were.
In your head, all the dominoes line up, as the last puzzle piece falls into place. “If the only way to leave is to ascend, then how are you going leave?” Checkmate.
“It’s not nonsense. Your being in this place brought me here and your ascending here will let me leave.” And just like that, all your dominoes fall like a house of cards. Board games were never really your thing. You were more of the type to sit outside the local gas station and sip brightly colored slush drinks out of domed plastic cups.
“So, the windows are my memories,” you state the obvious. “What about that crib over there?” You brutally stab a finger at the air in the general direction of that way over there to point at a wooden child’s crib next to a small pile of colorful children’s toys. “Is that supposed to represent my childhood? Or something I have to look forward to in my future?” You wiggle your eyebrows up and down in a suggestive manner. Suggesting that you and your lovely Applejack will finally get together and have a kid of your own. Then when your first kid is born you’ll promptly step out to have a vape and never return, leaving her alone to raise a child by herself. You don’t see the problem in it. That’s how your mom raised you and you turned out totally fine.
But white privilege princess rips that bandaid off quickly. “Oh no, nothing of the sort. Not long ago, during a time of national emergency in the Crystal Empire, Princess Cadance couldn’t find somepony quickly enough to mind little Flurry Heart, so she placed her in here with Shining Armor, to be safe.”
“So, Cadance can come and go, but for us to leave I have to ascend? Why can’t we leave the same way she did?” If this place had any smell it would probably smell like a trap and maybe a forgotten diaper. You’re here alone with the big horse woman and you’re about to go through your memories. She is going to be seeing some frightfully scary stuff in here and she is probably going to panic and start kicking because that’s what horses do. If only you had your trusty, Swiss Army pocket knife. You’re not sure what you would do with it, but you’ve seen YouTube videos of people recapping news stories of men taking down full grown grizzly bear with nothing but their car keys. You’re pretty sure you could take a single horse with a pocket knife, easily. But, sadly you don’t have your trusty knife, just your wits and your words.
“We did not arrive the same way. There are many doors to arrive here, but they must also be the exits. One entrance can not be interchanged for an exit of another.”
That’s a load of horse shit, you think. “That’s a load of horse sh- nanagans,” you say.
“That may be so, but it doesn’t make it any less true.” She turns from you, toward the closest window and walks away. “Please follow me as there will be much for us to see.”
You don’t really want to tag along with the ex-Princess because it involves your mortal enemy, walking, but you follow after Princess clip-clop anyway. The whole time, wishing with all your heart, that you were back in your cozy little cottage near the Ghastly Gorge flyway, or anywhere else but here. But someone has to babysit her ex-royal whiteness and make sure she doesn’t stick her giant horse nose where it doesn’t belong. Since you’re already here, that person might as well be you.
You are Anonymous. You still find yourself in some sort of hazy glow space with the whitest and horsiest horse woman this side of wherever the fuck this place is. And just now you have had what you consider to be your biggest and brightest idea of all time. Your superior human frontal lobes tingle with anticipation. Now to set things in motion.
“Now, hol’ up a moment.” You say.
The ex-Princess of clip-cloppness comes to a complete stop just ahead of you, holding up a hoof in mid-stride like you would see children’s plastic horse toys from back home. One of her ears focus on you like a villain would target James Bond with a head exploding death laser.
“What seems to ..” she begins to ask, but you cut her off in mid-ellipsis because you have more shit to say. Your speech is going to be the stuff of legends.
“I have gone far enough and will go no further. You and your little ponies have pushed and pulled me around for far too long already. You and your little student stole me from my very universe, away from my friends, family, and very species. Ever since I got here all I’ve ever wanted was to go home. And now! Now… this. Whatever this is. No. Not me, not here, and not now. I was finally about to go back home and you ripped that chance away from me. I’m fed up. I’m done. I’m not going to idly follow along any more to all your pony shi-stuff. I’m making my own path.”
Celestia turns her head to face you, to look you directly in your eyes, in a way that horses back home woulden’t. Her facial expression is flat, like she had just opened a new carton of eggs and discovered that one of them had a cracked shell.
“And how do you propose you ‘make your own path’, hmmm?”
She must think that you’re bluffing, like you don’t have a plan and will just bend over and take whatever this little pony universe has lined up for you. But you’re smart. And clever. And very, very handsome. You’ve had first hand experience of a universe not of your own. You’ve seen some serious shit go down. Shit so shat it shart itself. But you have learned, like some sort of autonomous learning computer A.I. but with more squishy meat bits and less blinking lights and wires. You know about things that wouldn't be possible back home can be everyday occurrences here. And now you’re going to use those smarty-smart things you have learned against the pony universe itself. This is gunna be gud.
You cough to clear your throat and begin, “I, Anonymous the human, Pinkie Promise…”
“And what do you expe…”
“No not take another breath for as long as I live…”
“Which wouldn't be for very long.”
“Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye,” You make sure to do the motions, too, poking yourself in the eye with your pointer finger.
The ex-princess raises an eyebrow. “A stirring speech, really. What did you expect to accomplish, Anonymous?”
Here it comes, your big finally. Now you have just got to get ready to spring into action. You finish your final sentence with finality, like a gray bearded wizard casting a difficult spell, “And breaking a Pinkie Promise is the fastest way to lose a friend.”
“Forever!” Said a pink poof-haired pony that somehow popped out of a hatch in the water floor that you’re damn sure wasn’t there a second ago. Just as planned. The newly appeared pony, not the hatch. Even your very big brain couldn't have expected a floor door to appear. You may never find out how Pinkie manages to do the voodoo that she does so well but you’re grateful that she somehow does.
The nearly-a-queen pony princess was too stunned to say anything as you dashed to the mystery magic hatch and dove in, past Pinkie Pie who was still pointing dramatically where you were standing not even a second ago. You’re very fast. You know how fast the speed of a blink is? Like, half that speed. You’re that fast. Like, whoosh!
Before you could think up any more metaphors you’re in Sugarcube Corner. Specifically, in the upper floor, in Pinkie Pie’s room, sitting on her bed. You know this because you have repressed memories of hiding from Fluttershy’s rabbit in this very room. Pinkie taught you how to braid hair. It was a pretty good day.
A very familiar pink pony appeared on the bed beside you with hardly a sound, who then made many rapid sounds that sometimes sounded like talking but only much faster. She didn’t at all look surprised to see you here, in her room, on her bed, with fewer bite marks. Nothing strange seemed the phase her. She just rolled with it like water off a ducks back.
“Oh, hey Nonny! Are you here for cupcakes?” Well, she said a lot of words at you really fast but you're pretty sure she said something about cupcakes. She usually does. It's one of the best things about her. Either that, or her other love, soap stone carving, but you're not going to make that mistake again. Those carvings may look cool, and sometimes like food, but they taste awful.
“Hey Poinks,” you reply, nonchalant. “Sure, let’s go get some cupcakes.”
Before Pinkie just smiling, now she was Smiling™. Pinkie bounds from the bed and scampers out the door and down the stairs to the ground floor, the whole way you can hear her joyfully shouting, “Wheeeeee!” You stand up and stretch both arms high above your head, the familiar faint pops and cracks from your elbows and spine reach your ears. You let your arms flop down, then your roll your shoulders as you gently rotate your neck. This is your well deserved victory stretch.
No princess had followed you through the trap door. Pinkie being back here with you means that the trap door closed behind her, as they do. Either the Princess was lying or she was wrong, either of which wouldn't shock you one bit. A person could obviously use a different exit other then the entrance they had used to reach water-sky-fog space. You being back here in Ponyville proved it. A big brained genius like you knows that is just how science works. And now the most cheerful, pinkest pink pony named Pinkie Pie awaits you with a plan to make some delicious cupcakes downstairs. Science is pretty cool like that.
You’re now free. Well, as free as you were twenty minutes ago, which is pretty free, all things considered. You swagger your way after the speedy tiny horse girl, visions of sugary treats dancing in your head. Princess Celestia is a big pony, probably the biggest, in more ways than one. She can find her own damn way back. Eventually.
You are svelte and handsome specimen of the human race. Strong, bold, brave, and right now, a little confused. You can be a lot of things at the same time. You’re complex like that.
“It’s blank,” you say, stating the obvious.
“I don’t understand. It should be showing memories of your deeds that lead up to your being here.” Horse Princess was also confused, which worried you, but only a little bit. You’re super chill like that.
“Maybe it’s broken?” You offer. Your powers of deduction are peer to none.
“This portal is a magical manifestation. If it was to break it would dispel, effectively cease to exist.” She shook her head, her rainbow wavy hair somehow not moving around like you would expect head hair to go. It just flipped quickly from being over her left shoulder to her right and back again. You saw it happen but it hurt your eyes a little to see it flicker like that. If you were lucky it would give you a seizure and save you from having this conversation. “No, this is something else.”
“Have you tried turning it off and back on again?” That was usually the first thing you would try and it normally worked for you.
The white horse Princess shook her head again, “I didn’t cast the spell. It is tied to the Ascended Realm, which triggered upon you arrival.” She shook her head, making her hair do the flickering thing again. The flipping and shimmering was making dark spots form at the edge of your vision. All aboard the train to Seizure City.
“Maybe try hitting it?” That was usually the second thing you would try and it occasionally worked for you. Not just for fixing things but it worked on people, too. If some homeless bum tried to rush you and beg for spare change? Ka-pow! Poverty fixed. Homeless crisis averted. Violence is always the answer.
“Violence is never the answer, Anonymous.” Señorita Buzzkillington disagreed with you. But she would be wrong, and two wrongs don’t make a right. Which means you’re right, so, by default you won. That’s just how logic works.
Your next idea was to try putting it in a bag filled with rice over night but that would have been the dumbest fucking thing you could could have said at this time. Come on, brain, you can do better than that! Also, you didn’t bring any rice with you. Come to think of it, you don’t remember ever seeing rice being served or eaten. Does it even exist here in pony world? If it didn’t then what would they use to quickly dry out their water damaged crystal balls? Probably magic, those dirty little cheaters. All of that means you’re down to your last fool-proof, sure-fire, fix-all option.
You cleared your throat, then spoke loud and clear, “Computer, restart program.”
“Anonymous, I don’t think…” was as far as she got for before the window went black. “Huh, that actually did something.”
Then you heard a jingle play. It was something you’re sure you’ve heard before, something from your past, but you couldn’t place when or where. Then, as if by magic, because it was magic, an image appeared.
“Well, I’ll be darned. I can’t believe I remember that!” The image it showed brought a smile to your face.
“I would hope so. These frames show the path you have taken to arrive here in the Ascended Realm. Each one has the ability to show an event in your past that has shaped the destiny of you or somepony else.”
Then the Princess turned to the window. She didn't have the same smile she held before, or even one similar to yours. In fact, she looked worried.
You remember it like it was yesterday. You don't actually remember it yourself, you were told about it later. And it wasn't actually yesterday but nearly two months ago. But it wasn't something you were likely to forget.
You were discovered adrift in the ocean off the Western continent of Equestria by a pegasus training for marathon flight. Lucky for you, you were wearing your favorite sleeveless white muscle shirt at the time. Not so lucky because you could have just as easily drowned. And your muscle shirt somehow got torn. The important thing is that you were there, adrift, somehow rescued from sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
You don't remember being in the ocean, seeing as you were no better than a drowned rat at the time, but you sure remember how you ended up there: Twilight Sparkle.
All things wrong in this world seem to either come from or be drawn to the purple book nerd. You're sure that if she were to stick her nose in any random doorway, sure as you remember your own name, the poor souls beyond the threshold were bound to have french fried when the should have pizzaed; a bad time.
But you? Somehow, you get it the worst out of anyone. You’re always so close to the pony that is often cause makes you ground zero for Twilight’s latest big disaster. Case in point, two hours ago and your unexpected swimming lessons. But now, here you are, laying in a hospital bed in the port city of Al’ Salbaud. The quiet room giving you time to think back on all of the other times you ended up in similar situations brings a frown to your face. You could feel your frown. Your face all scrunched up, probably with a large purple vein on your forehead getting ready to burst. You were angry and you had every right to be.
That's when the door to your room opened. It was just a crack, but you noticed immediately because your hearing was absolutely the tip-top best. A soft knock followed, then a voice.
"Hey, uh, buddy. Are you awake?" the voice asked.
Whoever it was, you're pretty sure it was either a doctor or a nurse, probably wanted to check up on you. They didn't deserve your ire. That was reserved for Twilight. You thought to yourself that you had better make yourself appear more presentable. So you reached deep into your soul, taking all your rage and anger, buried it as deep as it could go, and repressed it. Doing that always calmed you and you're sure nothing bad will ever happen because of it. Deep breath in through your nose, then a trembling breath out through your mouth. The newly acquired bad feeling were burred along with all the rest. You felt a lot better now.
"Yeah, I'm up," you replied.
"’Kay. I'd like to come in and check your vitals. Make sure you're doing okay. Can I do that?" the voice in the hallway asked.
Your superior sense of reasoning lead you to think that them having to ask for your permission was a little out of place. They worked here, it was their job to check in on the patients. Maybe they wanted to preserve your privacy or something? Only one way to find out.
"Sure, you can come in."
The voice didn't reply that time. The door just swung all the way open and in stepped, uh, you're not really sure what it was.
Tall, very tall, like a minotaur but the face was all wrong. It was wearing a lab coat like you would see Twilight wear while she was conducting her crazy science experiments in the basement, but it was much longer as it was designed to cover the creature's upper body and most of it's legs, which were clothed in black pants. No hooves either, just the strangest, long shoes you've ever seen capped the end of it's legs. It was holding a clipboard in the crook of it's left arm and a pencil in it's right hand.
It waved the pencil hand at you.
"Hi, I'm nurse Anonymous and I'll be checking your vitals. Can I get your name?"
You wanted to reply. Really you did. It would have been the polite thing to do. It would have been the simplest thing in the world to say 'I'm Spike.' But that didn't happen, did it. Instead, you panicked. You did open your mouth but it wasn't to form words, there was just a whoosh of gas. Then there were only flames. That's when the screaming started.
“That little guy had pretty good aim. Saw me and, fwoosh, right to the face. He turned me into extra crispy chicken.”
Celestia, first of her name, Wielder of the Sun, the eldest of all alicorns, former ruler of Equestria, looked like she was about to vomit. She couldn’t though because horses like her lacked the necessary reflex, but it seemed to you that she was highly motivated.
You were thinking this was some sort of cosmic joke, or perhaps a off color prank by Discord. That was hours ago. Since then this experience had become your own personal blimp to Tartarus with the Human, Anonymous, sitting in the pilot seat.
“Whew! That was a good memory.”
You were laying on your side, in the middle of the pathway between the memories, with your eyes closed. Your torturer had been acting like a foal in a candy store. He seemed either incapable or unwilling to slow down, going to the next memory as soon as the last one ended.
“I’m going to go back and watch the last one again. Remember that one?”
You didn’t even bother to reply. You just laid there with your eyes closed, trying to fall asleep. There was a small chance that Luna would visit your dream where you could send her a message. Perhaps you could beg her for help, to somehow free you from this insanity.
“That was the one where Twilight tried transformation magic on me and turned me into a deck chair.”
Surely your sister would likely then pass on the message to Twilight Sparkle. Then she and her student, Starlight Glimmer, would come up with an ingenious plan to mount a rescue. Then in no time at all you would be out of the Ascended Realm, back on the beach, and far, far away from the human. If you ever saw him again after this it would be too soon.
“You okay there, Princess?”
His voice sounded very close. You dared to open one of your eyes to look at him. As much as you didn’t want to, it was the polite thing to do. You saw that he was stooped over you, bent at the waste in an attempt to get his face closer to yours.
“You don’t look so hot.” For some reason he chuckled at that. Perhaps it was wordplay at your expense. You are the Alicorn of the sun, after all. “Maybe I should just keep going without you? There are only…” he looked down the path, probably to count the remaining memory viewing portals. “Seven, eight, nine….” Yes, he was counting them out loud. He turned back to you, held up both hands and spread his fingers wide, “At least twice as this many.”
At least twenty more memories to go. You and he had already watched several dozen memories containing mishaps, accidents, and other unfortunate circumstances that he had somehow lived through. There was even a memory where he bought a double-bladed, razor-whip Chop Jimmy from the con-artists known as Flim and Flam. Chop Jimmy’s were outlawed for a reason! If you weren’t extremely careful with hoofing them they assuredly would take a limb clean off! Luckily, Anonymous had accidentally dropped it, causing it to misfire, where it wrapped around and bifurcate a sycamore tree. You had wondered why a gardener had decided to remove the tree from the Royal Arboretum. Now you know that it wasn’t removed by choice and Anonymous was to blame. You made a mental note to address a royal Demand Letter in his name to the royal arboretum.
“You should go on without me. I am only here to guide and you seem completely capable to do so yourself.” You closed your eyes again in an attempt to reach the dream realm.
“Okay, iffn you’re sure.”
“But do let me know what you discover at the end of your path.”
You could hear him walking away, swishing something through the air. “Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. Ooh, I wonder if the memory of when Spike sent me to Canterlot by dragon fire is in here somewhere.”
You let out an undignified groan.
Normally, one can send a dragon fire message by writing on a piece of paper, then having a dragon magically burn it while the dragon had the recipient in mind. It was a simple spell that was unique to dragons.
But a body is several thousand times the flammable volume of a scrap of paper or a scroll of parchment. You vividly remember that day in the throne room. It was just after lunch. You remember because the royal chef had served a mango salad with peanut dressing which had been absolutely was divine. You had just opened Day Court when a wispy, screaming mouth appeared next to your head, hovering several hoof lengths above the white marble dais. It then proceeded to take several hours for the spell to convey the human’s entire body from Ponyville to Canterlot. All the while he had been aware of his body burning on one end of the spell and being reconstituted on the other. To this day the Crown is still receiving therapy bills from several noble houses.
You deigned to rolled on to your back to kick at the air like a little filly having a tantrum. You had to get out. You had to escape this madness! There was no way the human could ever make heads or tails of all these memories. They had nothing in common!
Your ear flicked at a sound. The gentle slap, slap, slap of cloth shoes beating upon Everwater tiles was rapidly approaching your position.
“Cee-cee! I think I figured out why I’m here, what all these memories have in common! We can finally go!”
It sounded to you like Anonymous had accomplished what you thought to be impossible. You rolled back over onto your hooves and stood up. You would finally be free! Your smile was genuine for the first time since your sister had returned from her banishment nearly eleven years ago.
Just as he begun to speak, the Ascended Realm started to send the both of you back to the mortal plain. You could barely make out what he was saying as both your and his forms were fading from this plain of existence. “I’m going to be the Alicorn of …!”
Then you were back on the sandy shore of the Eastern coastline, from the very same spot where you had left several hours ago. The wave action from the surf had half buried your favorite sun hat in the sand. It was a lovely hat. Luna had bought it for you from the local Cap Shack this morning. It sat well upon your head without prickling at your ears. It's firm, woven grass brim will be greatly missed, at least until you find a replacement.
The Ascended Realm had sent the two of you back so quickly that you had missed what Anonymous had said. Now Luna and you needed to take the train back to Canterlot for the coronation of a new Alicorn. You were going to see Anonymous fourteen hours from now and it was far, far too soon.
You remember back to some shitty advice you read on 4chan a very long time ago: “When you don’t know something, lie. A lie can be very powerful. Tell a lie long and loud enough, to enough people, it will become the truth. And for the times that you can’t lie, blame someone else. There is always someone else for you to blame.” As it turns out, that advice didn’t work unless you either had more money than brains or multiple scummy people to back you up. Not that shitty advice or lying would do you a lick of good right now. Only the truth of your words were any use and, right now, could be as warm and delicious as a Thanksgiving turkey dinner complete with cranberry sauce.
You aren’t in your home city. You’re not even in your home solar system any more. For the past several years you have been living in Equestria, wherever that is, but not from lack of trying. Equestria is the kind of place where friendship can be wrung out of specially treated butterfly nets, dried and powdered, measured on a balance scale, then converted directly into magical energy. Where the emotion of love can be siphoned from the air, jarred, and eaten as food. Where the sunlight that has been reflected off the moon can be captured, refined, fermented, distilled, and bottled to be drunk at a later date. That last part was what you were doing right now. You are sitting on one of your chesterfields, in your living room, at your home along the road a stones throw away from the dirt road that leads through Ghastly Gorge, on the Northern-most city limit of Ponyville, drinking distilled moonbeams out of a short tumbler, and it was glorious. The company wasn’t so bad, either.
Their body was taking up two of the three cushions, with their head laying across your lap. You stroked your hand over the crown of their head, down their neck, and across most of their side on one smooth motion. The path of your fingertips having traced this route many times before and will again many more times after. They liked the familiar closeness, your gentle caress. They often needed it and you didn’t mind one bit. They preferred the touch to anything else you could provide and you preferred to sip on your drink. They brought you their company and you brought the pets. It was a good arrangement.
Tonight was a little different than usual. Your guest arrived late in the evening, unannounced, nearly starving, and looked ready to collapse at any moment. You, being the intelligent intellectual you are, carefully scooped them up off your front stoop and plopped them and yourself on the beige sofa in your living room for some nourishment. Your very fancy crystal decanter half-full of the best magic-based ethanol Equestria had to offer that, if you were asked, fell off the back of a cart and not at all lifted from Luna’s personal stash at the castle. I mean, how would you even have gone about finding a secret stash of booze anyway. Casually lean against a wall sconce and accidentally stumble into a hidden pantry packed floor to ceiling with shelves of bottles? Very unlikely. You also weren’t making plans in your head to go back soon to refill your decanter after tonight and maybe grab a second bottle just in case. These were thirsty times and thirsty times called for thirsty measures.
You took the glass in your hand and gave it a swirl. It didn’t look like anything, not even water. If you didn’t feel the subtitle shift in the balance of the glass as the liquid sloshed around you could have sworn the glass was empty. A faint odour wafted up from the glass to tickle your nose. It smelled a bit like cedar smoke, caramel, and chocolate.
You took a careful sip. The drink hit you as hard as ever. Every sip feels like your first. Your throat burned like you doused a cheese grater in kerosene, lit it on fire, then tried to swallow it. When the liquid hit your stomach it sent a chill down your spine that you could feel in your liver. Your face broke out in a hot sweat like you gave a rimjob to a jar of puréed ghost peppers. You forgot time, and for a moment time forgot you. You only existed right now, in the time between one heart beat and the next. This moment is all there ever was and forever will be. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, your suffering was over, and your mouth tasted like peppermint. It was beyond surreal. You glance at the deceptively empty-looking glass. Drinking the rest of this poison might actually kill you, Irish heritage be damned. Distilled moon beams are no joke, fam.
You were sitting on your couch, mindfully sipping your ill-gotten poisonous swill from your natural crystal tumbler, and feeding your guest. Your stories flowed effortlessly as they so often do. You are a natural born storyteller. It helped that Equestria hasn’t invented television or radio yet. They barely had recorded audio and it was damned expensive, not that you wanted to hear their shitty garbage music anyway. You told stories because you always felt the need to fill the silence with something and your stories were better than reading trash from a newspaper or a story book, not that you could even read their gibberish horse words.
Your guest never speaks but that’s okay because you both prefer it that way. They just don’t talk, they never have, since the day you two met. It was a good thing that body language was universal between your species. You could read them better than a human written book full of diagrams and footnotes. Ear flicks, tail wiggles and wags, eye movement, huffs of breath, shakes and nods of the head. There were more subtitle movements that you knew of that helped your guest express themselves but those were the most obvious and important ones.
Tonight was more about them. You drank your bottle of distilled moonbeams, yes, but that was more of an excuse. It helped you loosen up, to get the words flowing. The important part was the closeness. They needed it like a plant needed sunlight and water. Without it they would eventually wither and die. You were their lifeline when all else failed, which it did far more often than they would have liked. When their hunger became too much for them to bare they would come to you. You were their wooden raft of food in an ocean of starvation.
Your hand travelled the familiar path across their body.
“Did I ever tell you the story of how I ended up in Equestria.” You didn’t ask as it wasn’t a question. That’s how statements worked. It was more out of need to fill the silence.
Your guest didn’t make a verbal reply. Their ear flattened agains their head which, to you, meant “I don’t want to hear about it.”
It was a boring story, anyway. There were barely any pirate battles and far too few drunken bar fights. On warm summer nights, when the breeze drifts in off the ocean, you sometimes wonder whatever happened to the piano playing mare with the baby blue eyes, wearing a red dress, with a red carnation in her pink hair.
“Okay. Well, what about a story about how I met my favorite person?”
Their ear slowly raised about halfway back up which meant “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”
You slowly ran your hand across their form again. “Spoilers: It’s about you.”
They flicked their ear all the way up in response, like you might move around an old TV antenna when trying to tune an over-the-air station that was mostly static, which meant “I’m listening.”
This was a long story but it was okay because you had all night and your guest was a good listener who was very hungry for your story.
You are Twilight Sparkle; well-read, studious, lavender, graduated pupil of Princess Celestia, unicorn turned Alicorn of Friendship, grand master level user of the semi-colon. Your over-under score for accurate usage of the semi-colon is often in the ninety-ninth percentile. You would love to shake your own hoof for that accomplishment were it not for the usage of the cloning pool being so heavily restricted, for good reason.
You sit behind your crystal office desk in a drawing room in the East wing of the Ponyville Castle of Friendship. A freshly unboxed EverHot™ Unbreakable IV® brand ceramic mug half-empty of its nutty, rich, sahlab-style hot chocolate drink levitates in your magic near the left side of your head. It hovers slightly above eye-level as not to boop you in the snoot if you were to quickly turn your head but still be visible as to remind you of its existence. Both Pinkie Pie and you had learned a valuable lesson about situational awareness, personal boundaries, and a practical demonstration of the term magic whiplash on that fateful day.
Your cleaning staff, a team of engineers, and several magic theorists are still trying to extract your previous mug and the remains of a strawberry and rhubarb cobbler which had… become… partially phased, to put it mildly, pinning a large throw rug to the crystal floor of the West wing drawing room. It looked as if Discord had popped in to construct a scale replica displaying wave action on a pond, where the mug and cobbler had acted as a thrown rock and the rug was the surface of the pond, which had caused everything to sink in its entirety low enough to become an unmovable tripping hazard. He had not made such a model but, with his permission, he grudgingly shouldered the blame which was to be the official story if anypony were to ask. And ponies did ask, more frequently than you would have imagined. He was less of a scapegoat and more of a scapedraconequus, for which you are continuously grateful. Not that you would ever tell him.
That little janitorial issue aside, you would have been in a relatively good mood this morning if it were not for todays early edition of the Ponyville Foal Free Press. For in your freshly pedicured hooves the front page title makes you wish you had entered into different vocation, as an editorial editor and not an Equestrian princess.
Your glare casts over the newspaper title like a lighthouse beacon made of balefire, for what felt like the hundredth time. Anonymous: Penetrated Twilight Sparkle through back door.
The title splashed across the front page as gracefully as a griffin flying into the moving blade of a windmill. While being technically correct, which is the best kind of correct, was wholly inaccurate, bordering on slander. You’re not angry. The writers of the article in question were foals, after all. If you were to be completely honest with yourself, you were only half a notch higher than severely disappointed on your gruntability scale.
Being a former head librarian, you know better than anypony that the common pony will often immediately judge a book by its cover. In this case, the common pony will normally only ever read the article title. The common pony will only read the big, bold, simply worded lettering of the header and use their dirty, filthy, detestable gutter of an imagination to fill in the rest. The common pony will mindlessly giggle at the large funny words, then skip over the article body to the next title in search of more funny words. Again, you’re not angry at foals, you’re just half a notch higher than severely disappointed, which is a completely different thing!
You are not a foal. You are not a common pony. You are an Equestrian princess and are often held to higher standards than most ponies. You do the work and you follow through. You conduct your own research, in your very own laboratory, and often times publish the results in creditable journals like “Magic Quarterly” and “The Decanter”. The article in todays paper will go on to tell how the resident, and thankfully only, human had assisted a team of paid professional penetration testers, whom were hired by The Crown, to test the security of the Castle of Friendship. It will continue on to tell how they had achieved victory by slipping through the guard rotation and sneaking in a service entrance in the back of the castle.
You know all of this already because you had personally proofread and approved the article body. The team had successfully completed their job at finding critical flaws and your guards will continue their job to make improvements. Since then you had already implemented several changes to castle security which is why the newspaper was even allowed to publish the article at all. You wouldn't want a school newspaper to give a possibly hostile foreign nation the figurative keys to the castle. Equestria didn’t have nearly enough windmills near the border to guard from a possible griffin invasion force. Security penetration testing is a common enough exercise in Canterlot and the Crystal Empire that a write-up such as this may as well saunter past the border of being pedantic, trip over common parlance, and skid plot first into being a new, fun, daily activity. You’ll have to remember to thank Carrot Top for that vivid, yet apt turn of phrase.
Your internal musings were interrupted by several soft knocks on the chamber door. Shortly after a yellow face with just the cutest little nose, followed by a pink mane, popped through the ajar door. It was one of your best and closest friends, Fluttershy, of course. She was returning from her assignment with good news!
“I’m sorry, Twilight. I don’t think there is anything I can do.”
Okay. Maybe not good news, but a step in any direction was still progress. If you had learned anything from your tutelage under Princess Celestia was to delegate tasks to those who were more knowledgeable. Fluttershy was only the first pony you had reached out to. There was still…
“After that I consulted Zecora. Then I went to the hospital and asked Doctor Stable and nurse Red Heart for second opinions. They’re at a loss, too. Nothing was wrong but… we can’t figure it out.”
Drat. Those three were your next best options. Unfortunately, the resources currently at your disposal were limited. Without going out of your jurisdiction, you had very few options left. Well, nothing for it now. It’s time you stop prancing around the issue at hoof. When delegation fails, delegate harder.
Your name is Anonamiss, which isn’t your original birth name. Thankfully, you’re the only human in Equestria, a mostly unspoiled, nearly literal, Eden world. You are the dictionary definition of elegance, beauty, and whimsy. Salsa dancer, and by the grace of God, salsa eater. You just love spicy foods, what more is there to say.
It's getting to be late Summer, nearly time to trim the lower pompadour into a Brazilian. The open sky was refreshing and the grass was a lush green hue, or pokadoted when Eros becomes bored. You could hear birds singing their brave little heartsongs outside your window. Your selfish wish was they would do their beautiful birdie business somewhere else. You are currently resting in a cot with too few pillows in the Ponyville Hospital and there was an amber colored pony wearing a Stetson talking to you. Nurse Glitterwing, you made sure to get her name, had just picked up your diagnosis clipboard and trotted his way out of your room, leaving you alone with your favourite farm pony.
“Just stay calm, Anon. Y'all just rest easy, now. Sometimes these things just happen," Applejack said while he gently pushed you back down. "Dusk Shine is working on a spell ta fix everything."
Well, second favourite farm pony. Apple Seed was obviously the most adorable. And Rainbow Blitz didn't farm, let alone do any actual work. If there was an award for being the most lazy, that skittle-shrimp pony would sign up to participate, then drop out for it being too difficult, but still somehow win by default. His napping schedule was so legendary that if it was a loot drop in Borderlands 3 it would be a level 72 Golden Anointed Hyperion SMG. It made you a little bit jealous, not that you would ever tell anyone.
You watched Applejack's dry, cracked lips forming words, tongue slapping about, doing wet noises, but you had no idea what he was talking about. You weren't sure in what way Dusk was supposed to fix everything. Given his track record, the flippant lavender nerd was usually the Chosen One which caused the problems in the first place. You were convinced that the stampede of giant stoats that appeared last week, which ate the roof off of Sugarcube Corner and collapsed the stone bridge leading to Butterscotch’s cottage, was somehow his fault. You tried your best to tell every helpful hospital horse that everything about you was fine and supremely sexy, as it should be. They were dead-set to do their little horsey best in the horseiest way they knew how whether you wanted their help or not. You knew your own body like the back of your hand. Except for that one scar on the side of your right hand. You still don't know how you got that one. You were pretty sure that Zelcor had something to do with it. Maybe you got drunk and started running your hand over his bristley mane without permission, which you don’t need to get because you’re a woman and you can pet whomever you want.
You are a human, not just some hairless, damn dirty ape. Your body is supposed to be proportioned like it was. There was nothing that the Prince of squeaky burrito farts needed to fix. But, like a fluffy kitten, an idea sank its claws into the leg meat that was your brain. You deftly unraveled the twisted ball of yarn that was this conversation. You had figured out what he was talking about and reluctantly closed your mouth and settled your face into an angelic, satisfied smile.
You lay in the cot and let your thoughts drift back to yesterday morning. Worst prince, Artemis, first of his name, had commissioned Dusk Shine, worst of his name, to gather census data from the border towns. Thinking back on it, you couldn't remember why Dusk had picked you to help him and not Barb, or one of his friends, or any of his castle staff, lest they do their actual job for once. But how he restlessly badgered you to help him. You distinctly remember telling the purple bookworm 'no', repeatedly, often before he even opened his chompy cake hole. As it turns out, in Equestria, when boys hear 'no' they decide that they'll do what they want anyway because ‘you just don’t know what you really want’ or some such bullshit, in the same way human boys think back home.
That morning you decided to get an extra hour of beauty sleep because your feet still hurt from kicking metaphorical ass all day every day, and ended up being late for your early morning meeting with the appointed Prince of Friendship. In your haste you had barely enough time to eat a handful of chocolate covered espresso beans for breakfast before you spirited yourself away to meet the self-proclaimed Duskainator at the crystal castle on the outskirts of Ponyville. The two of you then spent the day doing simple secretary work that any smooth brained idiot should have been able to handle. It was just a bunch of shuffling around papers, a little writing, placing the correct forms into the correct folders, applying labels, sorting the folders into boxes, labeling the boxes, then stacking the boxes into one of several stacks. Dusk usually loved this type of task and would normally do it on his own for several hours around his own library just for fun. You had no idea why he was so reluctant to do this simple task or why it was giving him so much trouble. If someone tells you to do a thing, you do that thing, in the way they tell you to do it. It’s as simple as reading an instruction manual or asking for directions, really
For some unfathomable reason, Dusk had felt the need to schedule visiting every town on the same day. He probably did it on purpose in a desperate need to get back to what he loved doing the most, finding new ways to gas-light his baby dragon, Barb. The twitchy lavender nerd didn't schedule any breaks for snacks, low tea, brunch, lunch, high tea, dinner, or dessert. Now, after teleporting the two of you around for most of the day, hardly staying in any place longer than thirty minutes, you fainted. Not from the casual blinking round in space-time, but from Dusk’s stupidly jam packed schedule. Who in their right mind does a week's worth of government contract work all in one day? You’re being paid a daily wage to do the job. Why do it in one day when you can do the same amount of work in seven? Then you get to eat more ice cream on the government’s dime. It’s not rocket surgery.
Now, here you are, twenty-two hours later. Your Superwoman-like human physique finally had enough of running solely on caffeine and collapsed from starvation and low blood sugar levels. Now you're laying in bed, hooked to an IV drip, recovering in a ponylander hospital, thankfully not the vet like last time. You were staring awestruck, deep into this handsome farm stallion’s emerald eyes as he tried his best to mansplain something ... truly amazing. So amazing, in fact, that you think some aspiring chimpanzee on a typewriter could easily pound this into a twenty-four-thousand word story like they were questing to win a Booker prize.
The Prince of broccoli stuck in his teeth, in his infinite purple privilege, somehow got his dirty little hooves on a copy of your full body magic medical scans. He had decided that what he read in your charts should have not been what it was, though it be like it is 'cause it do. That, somehow, one or more of his multiple long-range teleports had caused a vanishing of body tissue and a not small amount of cell damage.
When your tiny horse doctor, Doctor Horse, told you what Dusk thought he had found, you definitely weren't worried. You are a human from a different universe and they are tiny chromascoped horses. Multiplying one and one together equals one because it’s the same as saying that you have one group of one thing. Nothing happens to the other one because there is only one one. It’s simple math and you are in your own group of one because you’re a human. There is only one of you and you do your best not to multiply with the locals despite their best efforts. You are who you are. Their medical knowledge lacks the nuance to properly define what you are. You’re built different.
You tried to tell the doctor this. That you weren’t going to put up with his anti-human nonsense but when you tried to leave she had one of the larger, definitely sexy, male nurses sedate you and strap you down to the bed. You may have panicked a little. You’ve seen too many scary movies where the hot girl always dies first. You desperately hoped that bondage was her fetish and was not seeing how many organs that they could remove before the patient expired.
The lumberjack of a nurse had left you alone with your applejack of a pony, Applejack. With his gravely country accent lulling you into a false sense of security, you finally clue in as to what Dusk thought he found and his pending magical solution to fix everything. According to what Dusk thought he had discovered, your multiple rapid teleports had caused your overall muscle mass to deteriorate to dangerously low levels. Applejack always looked so cute when he was thinking thoughts in his normally empty head.
Some careful groping under your hospital gown had revealed to you that everything was the right size, where it should be, and functioned properly. At least as far as you could tell without some pony removing the canvas straps holding you to the bed.
But Dusk was dead-set on returning everything to its ‘original state’, which, when directly compared to a pony mare’s Body Mass Index, your noodly appendages were no longer to-scale with the rest of your body. Dusk Shine, the alicorn of magic and Prince of Friendship, was creating a spell to give you bigger abs and all you had to do was to shut your pretty little mouth and try not to give away the game too early.
But you knew that colt’s track record. While magic was totally Dusk’s thing and he was literally the Element of Magic, you knew for a fact that he didn’t think his actions has consequences. Which means you had to be the responsible one, like always, and do the deep-brain level of thinking that human females are known for. You have one, teeny, tiny suggestion, a simple tweak to make, then the Alicorn of magic induced drama could give you all the muscles he wanted. Why work harder when you could work smarter?
Everything went wrong because of course it did. Thankfully you were sitting on an Adirondack deck chair, sipping iced tea and eating popcorn, on the balcony of the tallest tower of the crystal castle, several miles away, watching the events as they unfolded. When you told Barb the what and why she decided to join you for some sun. It’s common knowledge that dragons, like other similar lizards, loved to be toasty warm. Be it lava baths or baking themselves under the bright noon day sun.
Your tiny, yet brilliant, suggestion was to have Dusk Shine test his spell on a volunteer at twenty percent power just to make sure it worked the way he intended. His victim slash volunteer was none other than the local grey mail stallion, Bumble Hooves. He and Dusk had met at the Ponyville fountain square in full view of the telescope you had borrowed from the guest room of the castle and had set up to give you a better view of events so far away. A telescope which had not been needed.
"Oops, sorry!" You hear, as a giant quivering monster of a pony smashed through yet another unfortunate pony's home. "Sorrysorrysorry!"
You could see Dusk galloping alongside, shooting off counter-spells at the enormous creature that once delivered your mail. It was shaping up to be your very own Fourth of July event complete with fireworks and destruction of property. The rumble of hooves nearly drowning out the townsponies screams of terror.
“You know, that was almost me.” You tell Barb as you reach for another handful of popcorn. “Does Dusk ever test his spells?”
“Nah. Not since he became the Element of Magic. He just powers his horn and fires away. Kind of careless, if you ask me.”
A stray zap from Dusk caused Bumble Hooves to trip, falling onto town hall, crushing it flat under his giga-butt. A huge shockwave of dust uprooted many of the trees decorating the town square.
Sunning herself on a beach towel beside you, Barb lifts her sunglasses to look over at you. “We probably have a couple of hours before the guards get everything under control. We’re all alone in this big castle. Just you and me. I was thinking strawberries and whipped cream.”
You chew on your mouthful of popcorn. “Murf?”
“In the bedroom.” She continues, batting her eyelashes at you.
It’s not the first time Barb has invited you for some, uh, extracurricular activities. The first time you saw her lick a glass mixing bowl clean with two quick swipes gave you some interesting dreams that Prince Artemis dream-walked into one night. There were some awkward questions. Maybe Barb caught you staring. You’re not really sure but what ended up happening later you wouldn't change for anything in the world. Who are you to turn down another invitation from a fellow sapient adult who just happens to have a two foot long prehensile tongue. You do your best not to multiply with the locals but this specific dragon woman gets a pass for many very good reasons. And, yeah, sure, a couple of hours may seem like a long time, but that’s when she is just getting warmed up.
Your name is Anonamiss. You’re a strange creature, with even stranger friends in a world filled with even more strange things. You may be the only human, alone, but you’re not lonely. And sometimes you're allowed to have nice things.
You are Anonymous. You are the most humanly human in the magical happy little prancing pony land known as Equestria. You aren’t your usual chipper self today. Yesterday was the day when the barmare, Berry Punch, who runs the local speakeasy, The Ragamuffin, discounted her already uncorked stock of assorted liquors to turn over inventory. You awoke this morning several bits lighter in the coin purse, dehydrated and hungover. Which makes today laundry day which is a very dangerous day. Oh, and a Wednesday, but you knew that already because that’s the day of the week that follows Tuesday. That’s just how causality and calendars work regardless of whatever obscure lies Discord tells you.
Today you are up with the sun. Not because you set an alarm, or received a friendly wake up call, but because the early morning sun now shines through your bedroom window. Normally it don’t be like it is, but today, it is ‘cause it do. Some entrepreneurial spirit had absconded with some of your fine drapery sometime during the raging house party you threw last weekend and you have yet to replace them. The money tree you had planted in your back yard had only just sprouted so you aren’t exactly flush with mad stacks of cash right now. You may be comfortably poor in fungibles but you’re exceedingly rich in social interactions with the locals, thanks for asking.
You are at your modest home, located at 221b Baker Street, on the Northern-most edge of the urban sprawl known as Ponyville. Your home sits a stones throw away from the dirt road that leads through Ghastly Gorge. You proudly named your driveway yourself and even picked out your own house numbers. You did that because it’s a very clever Earth reference and conversation starter. You hope that one day someone will ask you what it means and when they do, BAM! Instant conversation. Beyond that, Ghastly Gorge Flyway is an awful name and you can’t help but be surreptitiously clever with that big brain of yours.
Right now you’re in the kitchen because a glass of water seemed like a good idea at the time. You take notice of the green thing wiggling around on the windowsill above your kitchen sink. That sexy little beast is your pet venus fly trap, Tiny Steve. When you found him in the Everfree forest, he reminded you of the alien plant from that one 1986 movie starring the beloved Canadian comedian and actor Rick Moranis. From then on the two of you were insuperable and inseparable. Mostly because Steve was a potted plant but partially because he hissed at you whenever you tried to move his pot from the windowsill. Right now Tiny Steve was happily chewing on what looked to be the remains of a very large spider.
Steve is the goodest boy, one of the absolute bestest, and you’re very proud of him and his hunting prowess. You don’t know how he keeps finding so many ugly creepy crawlies to eat but you’re not about to question such a majestic miracle of nature. He is a natural predator like yourself, thus earning your respect and both a place in your heart and on your windowsill. Tiny Steve slurped down a spider leg like it was an al denté spaghetti noodle and gave a little burp. If you were ever to have a child of your own you hoped it would grow up to be as amazing as Tiny Steve. May his vibrant leaves never whither.
Your house was big for you but many of your guests had said that it was downright small. It was very human in layout. All the rooms were box shaped, as was the house overall. For ease of construction and the keep your costs low, everything was on one floor. One-third of the space consisted of your bedroom and bathroom. Then a short wall to make a hallway which divided it from the rest of the space. The other two-thirds was all open-concept. Your kitchen was the upper third, which is where you are now. A large dining table with seven low back chairs to accommodate guests who have wings, separated the space. Which all then flowed into your living room which had three mismatched sofas arranged around pentagon-shaped stone coffee table.
When a stone table was first suggested, you were curious about its construction. As human as much of their pony lives are, their construction and manufacturing techniques were still a complete mystery. You had assumed the table would it be a stone slab atop a framework of iron, stone or wood. Like something from a mediaeval IKEA but built with actual solid pieces and not glued sawdust and screws that never seem to go in straight. But then you saw it, or rather, felt it. Little did you know, a diamond dog would push up a chunk of stone the size of a Volkswagen beetle out of the ground from under your house, then carve it by claw into the shape you wanted. The whole thing took under two hours, including the cleanup. It left you speechless and wondering how diamond dogs could scratch themselves, with claws sharp enough to cut stone, without slicing off a body part. Answer: carefully and often.
The house now had a root cellar, which is where the stone came from, but it was empty since you don’t have a lot of stuff yet and your magic powered refrigerator kept all your food nice and chill. There was also a gable roof balcony thing for flyers to land and take off from, but since you lacked the prerequisite of having wings you couldn’t exactly get up there to check it out. In pony standards your house was very tight, with them having long bodies and all. But for you it was perfect, if very tall, to better accommodate wingalings and featherfowels alike.
While in the kitchen, you take note of your grocery shopping list stuck to your fridge with a novelty magnet that says ‘wish you were here’ above a picture of the gates to Tartarus. Rainbow Dash has an amazing sense of humour you have come to appreciate. Your grocery list already has a few thing on it; milk, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, double-edged potatoes. You look to the left of your fridge to what normally would be a bare section of floor to eye the orange vegetables hovering several inches above in the air. They look scaly and their normally deep-green fringed tops have turned dry and brown. They’ve seen better days. You deftly add displacer carrots to your list.
Completing your grocery list will have to wait as life has found a way to ruin your quiet contemplation yet again. Your toil has been interrupted by several soft knocks coming from your front door. You let out a quiet sigh because you know who is waiting on the stoop. Wanting to get it over a quickly as possible, you make your way across the house and open the front door to find…
There was a bat-pony on your front stoop with the biggest grin plastered on his face. He looked like he was a morning person, the tiny-brained fool.
“Hey there, Anon!”
His coat was the color of ash and his mane and leathery wings were bordering on black. His eyes were the shade of blue coal. You didn’t have even the faintest idea who he is. You couldn’t see his butt tattoo from this angle, which is a good thing because you didn’t want to look at some other guys ugly rump anyway. You’re pretty sure you’ve never seen the little bat dude before in your life. You would definitely remember if you had.
“Um,” you smartly say.
“It’s me. Darkstar!” He barks, giving a jaunty little hop and flapping his leathery wings.
“Uh…” is your clever comeback. You don’t exactly have time for any little horsey nonsense today. You have some very important laundry to do and very little time to do it. Daylight was burning, as the hip kids say.
But he kept going. “You remember. I smuggled you and Spike out of the port city of Al’ Salbaud and into Equestria in my airship. We really did have some good times, didn’t we.”
“Err. I don’t…” you start but immediately stop as your unwanted pony guest interrupts you.
The dopey smile never left his face. “Look, I’m wrapping up my shore leave here in Ponyville and starting my way back home and I thought I’d check up on you before I left. That’s just what good friends do.”
“I’m n… “ was as far as you got when you were interrupted, again.
“I’d give you a hug goodbye but my airship is ready to leave and I’m running late as it is. It’s a good thing they can’t leave without their captain. Ha ha! So I got you a little something.” He said.
“I…” your sentence ended even sooner this time.
“I wanted to give you a little token to remember all the good times we had together so I commissioned a local artist to make a miniature painting of one of our many adventures.” He said, then pulled a colorful rectangle out from under his left wing.
“…” you didn’t even try to reply this time because you were sure he was going to keep on talking. You extended your hand and he plopped the eight-by-ten inch piece of artwork into your open palm.
“It’s of our heroic air race we had with the dragons.”
Yup, there be dragons. They were in hot pursuit of a sky boat blimp thing over some mountains somewhere. You didn’t know what to say, so you didn’t.
“I gotta go. Keep in touch will ya?” He gave a little flap which spun him around. You could see his butt mark now. It was a four-pointed black star on an unrolled scroll of parchment. “And next time your in Al’ Salbaud, look up your good friend Darkstar!” He gave a big flap this time and rocketed off your front stoop and launched into the sky. Within seconds he was a speck over the horizon, likely heading toward the skydock in Canterlot.
You stepped back inside and closed the door and set the small portrait on the table where one might have kept their house keys, but you didn’t have any keys as door locks weren’t really a thing in Equestria.
Who even was that guy? You managed to get that thought out into the universe before there was another knock at your door. It was probably the bat dude returning to give you that hug anyway. Not that you would want a hug, but it would be nice. But who you find instead were the very last ponies you would ever expect to be here where they are now. It’s none other than one of the local nuts, Lyra Heartstrings, who has a coil of rope across her back, and her marefriend Bonbon, who is wearing nothing, just the way you like it.
“I have no idea who that was and I have nothing to do with him,” you tell them. “I’ve been here all day. Last night I was at The Ragamuffin until …”
“Uh huh, I don’t know Captain Darkstar, one of the most decorated Thestrals in the Equestrian air fleet, is either.” Bonbon cuts you off, her neutral face becoming a frown. “And he only helped smuggle some idiot human and a baby dragon from Al’ Salbaud into Equestria.”
“Right. See? It’s weird that you don’t know him, either.” You say.
The grump of a mare verbally accosting you is none other than secret agent Sweetie Drops, locally known as Bonbon. Her job, when she’s not bothering you, is the worst kept secret in Ponyville, seeing as both Colgate and Copper Top have told you that she is a secret agent. If those two know a secret, everybody knows. Of course Bonbon would know what you were doing last night and who that random stranger was. You’re pretty sure her entire job is to keep a constant watch over you, seeing as you’re a devilishly handsome alien from another universe and all that jazz.
“Princess Twilight sent me to collect you,” the grump tells you.
You point a finger at Lyra whose smile turns into a really creepy grin. “And what about her?”
Bonbon’s frown turns into a different frown which worries you. “She’s my backup.”
“Backup?” you shouldn’t have asked.
“In case you didn’t want to come quietly.”
You should have just gone with them.
You should not have slammed the door in their faces.
You really should not have started sprinting to the back door.
And you definitely should not have yelled, “You‘ll never take me alive!”
Since you first arrived in pony world you have had some pretty epic battles. Being a novel creature, a human, has lead you into conflicts with many of the local fauna. Your first appearance in Equestria, when you washed ashore in the port city of Al’ Salbaud, you were the cause of a two-day long street brawl that ended in a dance contest. There was also the time when you fell into a cave lurker nest which ended up in an explosion and the subsequent collapse of a jade mine. And the time when you accidentally stumbled upon a bugbear hive where a troupe of Fillyscouts tried to rescue you by setting fire to the forest. But nothing even comes close to the situation you find yourself in now.
Since you moved to Ponyville you’ve found that defying the local tiny pony overlords is a good way to have fun, be they the local guard or contract workers for S.M.I.L.E.. Bonbon, also known as secret agent Sweetie Drops, had one heck of a time trying to capture you. Your mad dash through the back door of your house and sprint into Ponyville proper had her hot on your proverbial tail. You were quick, nimble, and clever. You ducked, juked, and dodged. You snuck, shimmied, and even swam at one point. But in the end you were no match for a highly skilled secret agent on her home turf with enough strength to lift the fruit stand you tried to hide under. Lyra was there, too, but she was too busy drinking a smoothie to be of any help.
But this is when things stopped being fun. When you were finally captured, your arms were bound with a rope. When you protested, you were gagged with a clean sock Lyra snatched from a clothes line. When you refused to walk, you were sat upon Lyra’s back and she carried you. You’ve never seen the little teal weirdo so happy. She kept making these squealing girly noises which, if you were to be frank, was the most embarrassing part of the whole ordeal.
Your two captors hauled you through town in broad daylight all the way to the big, spooky, crystal castle that looms over Ponyville. There you were greeted by the proprietor, a tiny purple space wizard. Being bound and gagged doesn’t even make it to your list of top five things to do on a Wednesday. That spot is reserved for laundry for reasons you’re too angry to remember at the moment.
Princess Twilight was sitting behind a grand office desk, tall and proud. She was pretending to be all regal and... you know what? Fuck all that gay noise. You didn’t want to come here. You were so against the idea of being at the castle today that you risked life and limb to flee from the local spy and her teal terror. You had things to do today and none of it involved being here. You’re here under protest.
The princess of mouth noises had a list. She always seemed to be making a list or reading from a list. She probably had a list of all her lists. It was like she had some sort of memory problem, or used lists as a coping mechanism for her neurosis. This time the list was a bill of damages that your jolly chase through town had somehow caused. You’re pretty sure most of it was a complete fabrication. You weren’t anywhere near the firework factory when it was sparked off. You’re certain the fire was intentional, probably for the insurance money. But no, you are being charged with its destruction anyway and hundreds of other similar things you had nothing to do with.
You’re currently kneeling on the floor being blamed for countless thing you didn’t do. On the inside you felt like you could scream in frustration. On the outside you couldn’t actually scream because your captors decided to gag you. Listening to the talkative purple nerd drone on about the supposed damages accrued during your chase was about as entertaining as it sounds and from out of Twilight’s mouth it sounded excruciating.
Luckily, several milliseconds of uninterrupted, rational, justifiable anger had worked wonders for your ability to appear remorseful. You quietly amused yourself by trying to calculate how far you could throw her mangled body through the plate glass window she sat in front of, and for a brief moment, your smile was genuine. Or it would have been if you hadn't been gagged.
Twilight was still prattling on about more imaginary trash off her garbage list but you still weren’t paying attention. You take a deep, shuttering breath through your broken nose, trying to suppress the rising urge to charge head-first across the room, hurtle yourself over the desk, and rugby-tackle the tiny horse, plummeting you both through the window to your, hopefully, mutual deaths.
After what seemed like hours, the princess of dubious heritage was finally done reading her list of made-up charges. She rolled the scroll back up and tucked it into a drawer in her desk.
“So, what do you have to say for yourself?”
“Murf furfffr.” You say through your sock gag.
“Oh, right. I should remove that.” She said and used her magic to slip the gag down your face. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“Mother fucker.”
“I’ll just add ‘verbally insulting royalty’ to your list of charges. Since you have nothing polite to say, your judgement will be passed without hearing your defence. I think you’ll find that I’m a benevolent ruler. You have been sentenced to twenty hours of community service and for the next three months your wages will be garnished or such time as you have paid for at least one-tenth of the damages caused by your actions which comes to four-hundred-twenty bits even. ” Twilight tells you.
Manual labour for no pay plus having your already meager salary garnished? Hard pass. “And if I refuse?”
“Then you get sent to the dungeon until you decide to cooperate.”
You’ve seen what passes for what they call ‘dungeons’ around here. They’re clean, warm, get fresh bedding when needed, three free meals per day, and some even have private washrooms. The only thing not to love is you don’t get to come and go as freely you please. It is a jail, after all. They could give a room at a Motel 8 a run for their money.
“Then I refuse.” Your righteous words of protest were now flowing out of you like someone had thrown an open can of alphabet soup down a flight of steps. “Further more, your haircut is stupid. Cadence is best princess. Celestia doesn't control the sun. The changeling invasion was an inside job. Lunar republic forever!"
Twilight uses her magic to slip the gag back over your mouth.
“Right, off you go then. Bonbon, please take him to holding cell one,” Twilight was looking at you now, her brow furrowed like she was trying to smell her own nose, “Where he will stay until his attitude improves.”
Your sham of a trial had concluded. Marching orders had been given. Secret agent Sweetie Drops tugged at the ropes still holding your hands and dragged you across the smooth crystal floor out of the chamber. You could walk but you don’t want to make it any easier for them. You don’t want to give them the satisfaction. You hear that doing regular exercise is good for you and you thought Bonbon could use the exercise. Walking is for suckers, anyway.
“So, we don’t get to keep him?” A soft, scratchy voice asks.
Somewhere along your travel to the lower level of the crystal castle, Bonbon let you down from Lyra’s back, unbound your arms and legs, and let you walk with your own two feet like a sucker. Despite how soft the pony fur coats are, their lumpy backs were not meant to comfortably carry the weight of a human body. It’s also the premium spot where evaporative cooling happens on the equine species, so your little pony ride had become unusually damp with sweat. And Lyra was a punk of a unicorn with no stamina, much unlike your favourite apple farm pony. So you now you were walking alongside the beige one, about to launch into your brilliant plan.
“Did you know that a single spaghetti noodle is called a spaghetto?”
It is a very clever plan, indeed! You are currently trying to distract your clip-clop captors by starting a complex conversation. It is a well know tactic that super spies like James Bond use it to throw off the concentration of his captors. This will grant you a small window of opportunity to escåpé. It’s a plan so brilliant that it can’t possibly fail.
“Not interested.” Secret agent Sweetie Drops was having none of it.
Blast and drats. Your plan immediately failed. Who would have thought? You chose to discard that plan because you’re clearly bad a plans that depend on copying tactics used by government trained super spies. You’re much better at nearly everything else, anyway. It’s a shame, really. You have so much distracting trivia you want to share. Some of it even transcended across universes to be applicable to things here in tiny pony world! Like how a beam of light is a stream of free photons that have momentum but no mass. They move through space in oscillating waves and when they hit a surface they refract and the color it gives off depends on the crystalline structure of atoms they hit. But now Bonbon will never get to know that because she is lame and boring.
In very little time at all the grumpy boring pony and her sweaty marefriend had escorted you to the lower level of Twilight’s Irish-sunburn colored castle.
“Here you go, Anon. Cell number one, just like Princess Sparkle directed. You know the drill. Snacks are every two hours and meals every four. Lights out at eight.”
It’s a sad fact that you did, indeed, know the drill. Being a totally normal human transplanted from a different universe had landed you behind bars just for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. The most recent time before this time was a short time ago. And now semantic satiation just killed the word time for you.
Anyway, some racist yak guard saw you tumbling a golden bit back and forth across the backs of your knuckles and she thought you could have been an allomancer on the loose and wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with you. Thankfully you didn’t actually know how to perform allomancy, so when a battle unicorn from the mage tower finally showed up to test you for magical signatures you were set free with an apology. Unfortunately for you, it took the unicorn mage several days to show up to actually perform the magic scan. The worst part of the ordeal was that you didn’t even get your bit back because they kept it as evidence. You want that bit back and you will take it by force in any way that you can, even if it means just wasting the time of other guards, like for example, Bonbon.
“In there?” You ask.
“Yes, Anon. Cell number one. Just walk on in.” Bonbon replied.
“But it’s occupied.” You retort.
Normally inmates would get their own private jail cell. Large penitentiaries weren’t really a thing in Equestria because crime in general hardly existed when the really bad criminals were simply turned into garden statues. Owning acreage is much less expensive when it’s owns by the government, then you factor in the other running costs of things like guards, indoor lights, food, laundry, and walls. You understand the financial reasoning but actually seeing a field with thousands of statues of previously living creatures arranged in orderly rows and columns creeps you the fuck out. You prefer a large cell such like this one to the alternative of becoming a lawn ornament. You may hate walking but you would hate not being able to move at all even more.
In the occupied cell was a changeling. You knew that for sure because nothing else would have the deepest of iridescent green shell covering its back. But that is where the similarities ended. You were clearly looking at a creature that had a pony body but it was lacking the signature holes that the classic flavoured changelings had in their legs, which were covered, head to pastern, in patchwork splotches of pink and light blue fur, with white dapples across its barrel and butter yellow hooves.
If you didn’t know any better you could have been looking at inferior copy of Twilight Sparkle. It’s head was topped with a purple unicorn horn and a similarly styled mane but with the signature colored streaks of Rainbow Dash. The usual changeling tail fin was also gone but in it’s place it looked to be your favorite farm pony’s tail, complete with a red ribbon tying the end, but with the tail color of your least favorite pony: light purple.
It was like some ass-hat made a random pony generator and did their absolute best at doing their worst at making an original character. They fucked it up like it was their day job and their boss had asked them to work unpaid overtime on a Saturday night. It broke your gigantic, super strong granite, manly-in-every-way, heart into pea-sized fish tank gravel chunks.
What was left of the changeling had collapsed into a heap in the center of the room. It looked to be either asleep or unconscious. It didn’t even flick an ear as your group approached the cell door.
“Don’t put me in with that thing. It looks sick and not in a good way.” You tell your captors.
“Princess Twilight said to put you in cell one so that’s where we’re going to put you.” Was Bonbon’s reply. “And I’m sure they won’t mind. Just hurry it up, Lyra and I have other plans for tonight.”
“We sure do! My marefriend and I have plans. I’m going to eat h..”
Bonbon cut her off. “Hush, you. Anon doesn’t need to hear about how much tossed salad you can eat.”
“Heh. You know me. I love to toss your salad, Bonnie.”
“Inappropriate, Lyra! Anon, get in the cage. We’ll check on you you in the morning.” Bonbon nudges you from behind with her forehead. You’re immediately thankful she is not a unicorn because you really don’t hate your kidneys all that much. They’re your fourth favorite body organ.
“Or you could stay the night with us!” The mint colored idiot suggested.
“Oh god no!” Was your reply.
You gladly stepped all the way into the cell and closed the door behind you, locking your arch nemesis and her secret agent marefriend behind a row of magic-proof steel bars. You are not locked in, they are locked out. The two ponies finally take the hint and leave which gives you time to reflect on your current location.
The jail cell you’re currently in is much larger than any other bedroom you have slept in since your arrival in Equestria. Directly across the room from the door was window that is too high up to see out of. It's most likely a foot or two above ground level to prevent ingress of snow and water. To your immediate left, just beyond the threshold of the door is the changeling laying in a crumpled heap. It was probably dragged down here then tossed in with unicorn magic. You can still see drag marks from where its hooves scraped the floor, or from many hooves over the years and the guards just happen to keep dragging bodies to the same location every time. It doesn't look like it has moved since it was thrown in here, however long ago that was. Along the wall directly to your right is a single bench that looked long enough that you could lay on it without your feet dangling off the end. A pile of thin, flimsy blankets flopped haphazardly in the middle, threatening to slide off onto the floor. There was no pillow. So, just like your average Holiday Inn, complete with your very own dead body.
But the most amazing feature in the room, in your mind, is the ceiling. For whatever reason it was painted to look like a bright, sunny day complete with fluffy clouds and a small flock of birds. Maybe it was there to remind prisoners of how this will be the only sky they will see so long as they are in here. It’s almost clever. You immediately hate it.
Like a cheap, first time prostitute, you haul your lanky frame to the right and immediately make a beeline for the bench. You sit your lazy self down and stare at the body across the room. That heap could have just as easily had been you were it not for your superior human fortitude.
It took you less than five seconds to make up your mind. You take the two top sheets off the stack and wring them together in your hands out of frustration. These fucking ponies, man. No decency for anything that’s not a pony. It just ain’t right. You can do better. You will show compassion where they have shown none. Against the protest of your leg muscles, you stand back up and walk over to the changeling laying on the floor.
You are the last of your kind, the seventh son of the second sun, the Everchanging One, the Lord of Chaos, the Ketchup King, but your friends, and more importantly Fluttershy, call you Discord. You are relaxing in your favorite tweed reclining lounge chair, in your lodge pole pine log cabin, in the very center of your chaos pocket dimension. Second star on the left, straight on until morning. It’s difficult to find but hard to miss.
On your lap is a large avocado shaped green ceramic bowl filled with chocolate-covered caramel popcorn. When the fancy strikes you, you use your left claw to toss a popcorn cluster high into the air to snatch it with your forked tongue. Despite them being caramel and chocolate, every single starchy puff has a different flavour. Your mouth still tastes of jalapeño and dill pickle from the last one.
In your right paw is a smallish rectangle covered in several even smaller rectangles. The origin of the plastic device and how it woks is irrelevant but its function is all that is important to you right now. You point the electronic clicker at a clever device in front of you and press one of the buttons. The flickering, animated picture it was displaying changes to something else, to something new. Right now, the moving picture on the device is showing you…
You, The Lord of Chaos, relaxing in a tweed lounge chair, in your lodge pole pine log cabin, in a pocket dimension. On your lap sits a large avocado green ceramic bowl filled with chocolate-covered popcorn. In your right paw is a smallish rectangle covered in even smaller rectangles which you are pointing at a box displaying moving pictures, of which is showing…
You, relaxing in a lounge chair, in your log cabin, in a pocket dimension. On your lap sits a large green ceramic bowl filled with popcorn. In your right paw is a rectangle covered in smaller rectangles which you are point at a box displaying moving pictures, of which is showing…
You, relaxing in a chair, in your cabin, at home. On your lap is a green bowl filled with popcorn. In your right paw is a rectangle covered in rectangles which you point at a box displaying moving pictures, of which is showing…
You in a chair, in your home. On your lap is a bowl filled with popcorn. In your paw is a rectangle covered in rectangles which you point at a box displaying moving pictures, of which is showing…
You in a chair at home with a bowl of popcorn. In your paw is a remote control for which you point at a box displaying pictures, of which is showing…
You at home with a bowl of popcorn. In your paw is a remote control which you point at a television, of which is showing…
You at home pointing a remote control at a television, of which is showing…
You pointing a remote at a television, of which is showing…
You pointing at a television, of which is showing…
You and a television, of which is showing…
You on a television, which is showing…
You on television, which is showing…
Did that one wave a claw at you? It was becoming hard to tell as the picture seemed to stretch into infinity becoming smaller and more distorted each time.
Discord, watching Discord, watching Discord, watching Discord. Turtles all the way down. It was making your head spin, both literally and figuratively.
You pressing a button on the rectangle in your paw causing the picture to change again. Ah, here we go. It’s back to what you were watching before. Your story already in progress.
You’ve done this more often than you care to count. So often, in fact, that you have developed a systematic approach. Once again, from the top!
You take stock of yourself. Breathing is good. Heartbeat is steady. You’re not cold or too warm. You remember the birth name your parents gave you and the pony given pseudo name you use. Memory seems to be a-okay.
You wiggle each digit slowly, counting each one in your head. Four fingers and one thumb on each hand. Two hands, one attached at the wrist to an arm, and two arms total. No noticeable inflammation, tenderness, or pain. So far, so good. You flex your toes in your shoes, then roll your ankles a little. They’re just like you remember them. Carefully, you curl your legs up, pivot your weight, and using your arms, gently push yourself up to a kneeling position to rest your bum over the back of your legs. You’re steady in this position. Knees and legs seem to be good. No balance issues.
What is the last thing you remember? You were summoned by Twilight to her pink crystal castle of friendship and evil. Secret agent Bonbon and her teal weirdo brought you down to the swankiest, well lit dungeon you’ve ever seen. There, you were overcome with emotions and did your due diligence to provide sanctity for a corpse. You took the thin blankets and draped them over the changelings body. That’s when it… attacked you?
You’re forgetting some small detail. That’s very unlike you. You’re normally much better at remembering everything with perfect clarity. You are able to remember that you didn’t have a chance to eat breakfast before coming to the castle, and that you still have laundry to do when you get home, but you can’t remember why you’re waking up on the floor.
“Huh.”
“Eee!”
Oh, that’s right! That corpse wasn’t dead but not in the fun zombie kind of way. It was just the normal, boring kind; alive. That was the small detail you forgot. Maybe it was sleeping? Or laying in wait? But now it’s awake, and so are you. And it just squeaked? It squoke, kind of. It was a simple sound. It wasn’t much more than a single raspy note. That means… something.
You’re still missing something, the bigger picture. Maybe you can get some answers from your guest. You finally open your eyes to search for them.
You let out a “Ffff…” sound. You wanted to say ‘fuck’ so fucking bad. Your head was pounding like Michael Flatley was rehearsing an adaptation of Riverstomp on your frontal lobe. But you didn’t because manners are still important, even in times of crisis like this.
Opening your eyes was a mistake. The soft pink glow of your cell stung your face lookers which you immediately had to close again. Sore eyes but no complementing headache or dry mouth, so this isn’t your usual hungover state. It’s all starting to add up.
“You doing okay?” You asked your guest. Your throat wasn’t parched and voice wasn’t raspy. You couldn’t have been out for very long.
You got a short, soft buzzing noise as a reply. Not exactly a helpful noise, but it’s a start.
Right. Let’s try the eye thing again, but this time you cover your eyes with your hands. You don’t feel any swollen sore spots or scabby dry blood around your ocular orbits. It would have been a shame if you damaged your money maker when you fell.
You peer through the cracks between your fingers. It’s an arctic survival trick you learned when you used to spend your misspent youth watching Discovery Channel. You wanted to make a timely reference about Bear Grylls drinking his own pee but you have more pressing issues at the moment.
Your cellmate had managed to push themselves into the farthest corner of the room. Far away from the cell door and away from you. They were curled into a lumpy ball and was either shivering, hyperventilating, or both. You couldn’t really tell from this distance with your eyes still bothering you.
“Just, uh, be more careful next time. I’m not a pony. Human, actually. Not really from around here. Or anywhere. Pony magic doesn’t work the same way on me.”
You were using small, simple words. You were trying your best not to spook the potentially dangerous creature that backed itself into a corner. You had seen many YouTube videos of what a fluffy kitten could do with its tiny fangs and claws. You woulden’t want to imagine what a 150-pound bugpony could do with those pointy hooves. A swift hoof to anywhere, let alone the face or groin, is something you never want to experience.
“My name is Anonymous. You may remember me from such things as the time when I was kidnapped by a dragon. Or the time when I became an Alicorn and was crowned prince.”
There was that buzzing wing noise again. Maybe it was a changeling signal of acknowledgment? Or could it be disagreement?
“Were you in Canterlot the day of my crowing ceremony?”
You received no reply from your guest. Signs were starting to point to a wing buzz to meaning ‘yes’. Good, you’re making progress. As a wiseman once said: a step in any direction, even laterally, is progress.
“When I arrived I Equestria I was human, then I was an Alicorn at one point, but that’s a long story for another time. So, there I was, kneeling in front of Celestia, golden crown hovering above my head, when, poof, I got better. Maybe someone will write a book about it. I dunno. Anyway, the transformation magic that made me an Alicorn wore off and I was human again. Cellie still managed to drop the crown on my head, ending the ceremony and making the whole thing official. Twilight was super angry that she never got to back to being normal. That poor little bookworm.”
The grisly disfigured changeling seemed to not completely hate the sound of your voice and maybe even liked your story. It’s even stopped shaking, which is a good sign. Time to sweeten the pot a little bit.
You’ve been running circles in this conversation for the last ten minutes. Ideally, you would receive feedback from your conversational partner but you’ve been getting almost nothing from this one. Remember back to when you had the thought that a step in any direction was progress? Well, you’ve been going nowhere very slowly, like a truck stuck up to its wheelwells in thick, goopy mud. Until just right now. What a happy coincidence!
“What are you even talking about? I’m telling you. It’s a great idea!”
You were arguing with your cellmate and you were somehow losing. Arguing with a creature that either wasn't able to speak or just didn't want to talk. Usually that would be just fine for you but right now it's proving to be difficult to hold this one-sided conversation. It’s a good thing your stubbornness is more powerful than their calm and collected silence.
“You know how trust is a two-way street? You just gotta trust me. It’ll totally work. I got this on lockdown. It’s in the bag! And the two of us walk out of here. You just gotta do the thing like we agreed.”
They had been just sitting there, on the crystal floor of the cell, a few body lengths away from you. Starting at you like you were a fresh coat of paint drying on a wall. Them, with their weird, frosted-glass looking, teal eyes, like they were trying to bore a hole through your head. Unblinking. Goddamn they were good at staring contests. Like, top three at least. No one, pony or otherwise, could out un-blink Pinkie Pie and survive. And the other was Twilight’s pet owl who’s name escapes you at the moment. Rupert, or something.
“Look here. See? I’ve got it all ready to go. Yeah, I know they are our only bedsheets. But it’s not like we needed them. It’s plenty warm in here.”
They were mostly unmoving. They were still breathing. Living things tend to do that. You’re pretty sure they were judging you, like the color of paint they were watching dry was the wrong shade of green and maybe they would need to go back to the paint store to pick out more color swatches or paint samples.
“And if my plan doesn’t work, which it totally will, I can always put them back. Easy peasey, lemon squeezy.”
Which is somehow making this conversation more difficult. You’ve clearly becoming flustered. Who the hell says lemon squeezy? But needs want, or something. You ain’t no poet.
“But it’ll totally work, so, no worries. We good?”
They snorted. Was that a reply? You’re going to take that as a derisive ‘yes’.
“Good enough. Let’s do this!”
Now’s your chance. If you take only one shot, then the shot you take is the best shot. And if you set the bar low enough, you can just walk over all the obstacles.
“Then after we’ll celebrate with a round of drinks. On me, of course.”
It would have to be, seeing as they don’t have any bits or even pockets to keep them. Do changelings even use money? Or do they exchange affection or something? Like, how many tomatoes can I get for a hug? So many questions.
“Ya know, If you want to stick around.”
They gave a sharp nod. Finally, a reply with no ambiguity. Everyone loves free drinks, even weird bug ponies from another world.
“Hell yeah!”
They tilt their head a little bit to their left, like a dog would when hearing a strange noise. Uh oh, your uncoolness is showing. Time for a cover story. Quick, brain, come up with something smart.
“Uh, because I’m… an alcoholic?”
Not one of your best lies but it’s at least plausible. You seem to be fabricating stories a lot lately.
“I’m am! Berry Punch can vouch for me.”
And you’re sure she would vouch for you seeing as you haunt her bar on a weekly basis for those cheap drinks. You’re such a regular customer that she even keeps a dedicated seat open for you right next to the bar. Lovely girl, that Berry Punch.
“She’s the mare that owns the bar. I was there last week. It’s called The Ragamuffin. Best pony bar I’ve ever been in.”
And you’ve been in several bars during your wandering adventures since you washed up in Al’ Salbaud. While Griffins have the best sour beer, it's the ponies that have the best hard alcohol, bar none.
“That mare pours a mean whisky sour. I’ll even save you the best seat in the house.”
Which would be the seat right next to you. Any seat next to you is the best seat because you’re so personable. And you won’t even creep on them. Maybe.
“I recommend trying anything made from Apple family apples.”
Because if you didn’t, you’re sure that, somehow, Applejack would hear about it and make your life hell. Or Tartarus. Whatever. Ponies are weird, man.
You went to bed early for once but couldn’t actually fall asleep. Some stray thought was itching the back of your brain. It was a curious feeling that was trying to tell you that you forgot something. You tossed and turned for several hours trying to remember the thing you were forgetting. You were sure it was something that needed to be done. Something important. You are a sleep deprived alicorn named Twilight Sparkle.
After several hours of fitful rest the thought finally hit you like a slippery fish. You had sent the human, known to you as Anonymous, and to the city of Seaddle known as ‘The Beer Baron’, down to the castle dungeon without telling him why he would be there. At the time, you were so distracted by the ruckus he caused during his chase through Ponyville that your intended path of conversation vacated your attention completely. You were justifiably angry.
During the invasion of Canterlot, when your BBBFF, Shining Armour and his wife, Princess Cadance, activated their spell shield to repel the invading changeling army, several things happened. The wave forcefully threw every changeling, queen included, out of Canterlot. At least the ones with a clear path to the sky. There were many who were not so lucky which ended up as unfortunate smears on various walls of buildings. Even fewer still ended up like your guest in the dungeon. You don’t want to think about the one changeling that was bisected by a park bench.
The changeling that that you hold in cell number one of one is such an anomaly. Prince Thorax believed it was attempting to dodge the spell shield by doing what changelings do best: changing into the something different. His hypothesis was that the two very different magics collided in an uncontrolled manner. Now the poor creature has to live the rest of their life with the consequences.
As much as some ponies protest otherwise, accidents can, and often do, happen and are often unavoidable. No amount of safety training, specialized equipment or guarding can prevent every possible accident from occurring. Even if you were to add bubblewrap padding to every available surface to prevent bumping your fetlock or booping snoot you’ve created at least two new problems: a distracting noise hazard and a risk of slipping. Sometimes there is no winning and the best anypony can do is be prepared to receive and treat the injured.
Unfortunately, it slipped your mind that you wanted to tell Anonymous he was going down to the dungeon to try to help the magically injured changeling. Now you are in a hurry. Legs pumping, wings flapping, anything to gain speed. Anonymous I could be trapped, without any instruction or even a checklist, with a potentially dangerous prisoner of war! Anything could have happened in the last several hours. He could have been attacked the moment he walked into the cell. He could be dead for all you know. Or even worse, bleeding his sticky, gross red blood all over your nice, clean floor. You are in a race against time. Oh, if only there was some magic way you could get there faster! A way for you to instantly move from one place to another. But now is not the time to stop and think, now is the time for action!
You round the final corner to the door that leads to the dungeon only to run face-first into somepony’s tail, causing you both to tumble to the floor in a pile of limbs. You hear a murmur of voices as you stagger back up on to your hooves.
“W-what?” You ask the line of ponies standing in front of the door. You count six, including the one you knocked over, who was still sprawled out of the floor.
“W-who?” Six ponies you don’t recognize standing in front of the only access point to your secure holding area. The mystery ponies were wearing white, ruffled sashes of some sort around their necks that draped along the length of their body and down their legs to hang just above their fetlocks. On their heads they wore simple crowns made out of some kind of small, green leaves.
“W-why?” Your speech therapy has failed you and your stutter has returned. Great, exactly what you don’t need: difficulty communicating just when you desperately need information. You’ll have to figure out why they are here at a later time. You still needed to get to the human. You scramble past the line and, with a quick bolt of magic, burst through the door leaving it in flinders.
Your voice died in your throat. The normally sparse room was decorated in columns and arches reminiscent of ancient Romane times, sootless flickering torches, and hanging ivy. Somehow, the room is full with even more similarly dressed ponies. Many of them were holding bronze goblets or clay plates of food. You could hear somepony playing beautiful music on a lyre. They all stopped what they were doing to stare at you. Amongst the crowd you could see the faces of all your closest friends and Rarity.
You finally found your voice, “I want every pony out! All of you! Get out!”
“Looks like the party is over, darlings.” Said Rarity.
“Awww…” said many of the unexpected guests who then started filing out of the room.
“Come on, everypony. Let’s move this to Sugarcube Corner!” A familiar bubbly voice said.
“Yay!”, “Ye-haw!”, and “Woo hoo!” other familiar voices replied. Your friends are some of the strangest, most frustrating, and greatest ponies that you know of. Maybe later you’ll ask them about what went on here but, for now, you had an otherworldly creature to verbally accost. Fortunately for you he is still in his cell, even with the door being wide open. You march up to the open door, grit your teeth and do your best not to scream in anger.
“Care to explain yourself!?” You snarl.
The infuriating human was reclined in a pile of pillows, wearing the same garb as the other partygoers, complete with a green leafed crown. Stretched out beside him and laying across his lap was the changeling. It was also dressed in a similar white body covering but it either didn’t have a leaf crown or it was missing. Anonymous waved one of his oddly shaped hands at you.
“Oh, hey Twi-twi. I’d invite you to my toga party but somebody called the poe-poe and had it shutdown. Help yourself to the buffet. There are lots of apple things but you should really try the large purple grapes. They’re pretty good.”
You couldn’t believe the sheer audacity of the lumbering oaf. You loved parties and he didn’t even think to invite you! And everypony knows that the best fruit to eat in Ponyville are apples. Who even eats grapes? They’re awful!
“I left you alone for only five hours. How did you get all those ponies in here and where did all this stuff come from?” You ask.
“Pinkie Pie,” was his reply, as if that was somehow a real answer that made any reasonable amount of logic. Sure. Fine. Whatever. You don't know how she does many of the things she does and you’re not looking to have another piano dropped on your head, immortal alicorn or not. You brush it off as ‘Pinkie being Pinkie’.
The changeling seems to be doing much better now, which is why you sent Anonymous down here in the first place, and Anon isn’t bleeding all over your floor. You delegated like a proper Princess. You’ll call that a win. But now you have a new mess to deal with and, more importantly, beauty sleep to get back to.
“Well, what are you still doing here?” You ask.
“I’m under arrest, remember?” Your overly relaxed, unwanted guest responds.
“Not any more. You’re free to go.” You state in a more concise manner.
“Cool cool cool, but what about my little friend here?” Anonymous ruffles the changeling’s mane with his hand.
“Anon, I’m angry and I’m tired. I don’t want to deal with this right now. Take them with you for all I care. Please go.”
“Are you sure? Like, they’re not also under arrest or something?”
“No, Anon. Get out.”
“What about…”
“I said OUT!” With practiced ease, you quickly charge your horn and fire, teleporting the human, changeling, and the entire pile of pillows to the castle foyer.
You briefly wonder what happened to the guards that were supposed to be assigned to guard the dungeon but that’s a problem for future Twilight. Right now, all you want is to go back to sleep.
“Uh, can we get a little help here?” You hear your number one assistant ask.
Your ears perk up as your eyes follow the sound of his voice and you look up. You’ll get back to sleep eventually, but first you need to remove the changeling resin adhering Spike and the two missing guards to the ceiling. This is going to be a long night.
You and Celestia had finished rummaging through your memories in that weird magic realm to discover what great deeds you had accomplished. When you discovered what all the memories had in common, what kind of Alicorn thing you would become, the realm spat you back out to where it stole you from. You were sent back to the guest room at Twilight’s crystal castle and Celestia was probably sent to a table filled with cake so she could continue to stuff her face. You had yet to move out of your house which was still under construction at that time. When you arrived in the castle guest room you were no longer a human. That would have been too easy. For some reason the God of the pony universe decided it was going to be racist against humans and had transformed you into one of them. Your look was complete: hooves, a flowing mane, wings, a horn, and a tail. You were taller than the average pony, about the same height as Luna. Twilight was super angry that you were taller than her. Twilight was often angry with a lot of things, which is really sad, but not everyone can be as happy and optimistic as you.
Already knowing the protocol, Twilight and her merry band of murderous misfits had ushered you to Canterlot where the common ponies could watch ex-Princess Celestia crown you and make you the very first Alicorn Prince of the realm. As you're already aware, pony magic and magic in general, doesn't work on you the same way as the other critters born of this mirror realm where animals run the farm and everything else. Your super-human immune system rejected the forced ponification just as Celly dropped the ugly, silver crown on your weird pony head. Poof, you were the first non-pony to be crowned a pony prince. That made everyone angry. Not that it was in any way your fault. You didn't ask to be a ponycorn or be crowned Prince or change back at the worst possible time. Things like that just seem to happen to you, like you're the main character in some author's poorly written fanfiction.
Now you live in seclusion in your home, located along the road a stone's throw away from the dirt path that leads through the Ghastly Gorge Flyway, outside of Ponyville. An unassuming house in a non-threatening location near the middle of nowhere. You’re far enough away from prying eyes, the press, and creepy stalkers but close enough that you could walk for ten minutes if you needed to do your laundry or get groceries. In a location that would look completely normal except for the fact that, occasionally, the dragons that sometimes fly overhead crash into the decorative rainbows the pegasus weather teams set up. It doesn’t always happen but, when it does, it’s hilarious.
On this night, you are sitting on your couch. In your left hand is wrapped around a short, crystal tumbler filled with distilled moonbeams. It looked like water, smelled like cedar smoke, burned like fire, tasted of hate, and had a cool finish like freshly picked peppermint. Maybe one day Hell would freeze over and you’ll tell ex-Princess Luna that you may have accidentally somehow obtained a crate of her personal brand of magic liver poison. How amazing it was. How it helped you get through so many rough times living your new life in crazy pony world. Maybe you could ask Spike to write the letter for you because you don't know how to write pony script and have him sign it as ”from anonymous” so she won't know it's from you. It’s a kind and thoughtful idea that you’re sure won’t ever backfire.
Tonight had been a little different than usual. Your guest arrived on your doorstep just as you were getting ready for bed, nearly starving. You, being the most humble human in the universe, invited them into your home and did the decent thing any host should do. You gave them a warm meal and a safe place to rest. Your right hand is still slowly, gently sliding down the body of the very alien looking creature. Your guest, the magically injured changeling who has never once spoken a word to you, is laying across two couch cushions with their head resting across your lap. It’s a familiar position that the two of you have come to enjoy.
You call your changeling guest ‘they’ and ‘them’ because you try not to use gendered pronouns for a creature that can change their gender at will. And, since they have been unable to tell anyone what it is, you don’t use their name. You’re sure they have a name because everything does, including the bit of skin between your nostrils, the columella, and that giving them a new name could be seen as being insulting. I’m sure if they cared enough they could write it down and show it to a pony who could read it for you. But, for now, when some pony asks for the changeling’s name you refer to them as “my changeling” and neither of you mind.
You often tell them stories because you felt the need to fill the silence with something. But tonight your reminiscing, your retelling of the fateful day the two of you met, is more than just a story, it’s part of their meal. Dinner and a show, so to speak. But it’s now complete as it had been for some time. Well, mostly complete. You left out a bunch of details like; how you sometimes have memory problems, or how you got to Equestria in the first place, why you were working as a nurse in the port city of Al’ Salbaud, how you convinced captain Darkstar to smuggle Spike and yourself into Equestria, and why you sometimes have memory problems. But that’s what good storytellers do: keep the listener always wanting more. Your guest didn’t want to hear about any of those things but, like any good chef, you cut up the healthy bits into small enough fun pieces that they wouldn't mind eating them. It’s like some sort of super-healthy emotional chicken soup or Greek salad.
The sun was just starting to set when your guest had arrived. From your spot on the couch you can see across the room to the west facing window. You can see that the moon has risen fully above the tree line that is Whitetail Woods which buffers your little plot of land from the insanity that is Ponyville.
“It’s getting pretty late,” you say.
In response your changeling guest yawned. While it's not much of a reply, it’s not nothing. It indicates to you that they’re full, happy, and comfortable where they are. You personally know house-cats from back home who give less of a shit when they hear a human speak. Like, somehow the cat can’t hear me when I call its name from the same room but somehow it can hear me from across the house when I open a tin of food? Cats are tiny little jerks with fangs and claws. That’s why you’re more of a dog person.
“I could walk you home if you want,” you offer.
You didn’t get a reply that time, which means ‘no’ as all non-replies do. You know that because you're a decent human being.
“Or you could stay the night here,” you counteroffer.
They crack an eyelid to look at you with one glassy, teal eye. That had caught their interest. Now to reel them in.
“The couch is plenty big enough. I’ve got extra pillows and blankets. Or we could share my bed. Whaddaya say?”
With that they bolt up and rocket across the sitting room, hooves clattering on the hardwood floor, to your bedroom. How very forward of them. You've slept in the same bed with other non-human creatures before, your changeling guest shouldn't be any different. You just gotta watch out for sharp hooves and pokey horns. No biggie.
From the dark bedroom you see a green flash of light, then the familiar orange face of Applejack peeks out from behind the door frame. Your changeling guest still has its horn and the same mane style as Twilight but in AJ’s hay bale blonde color. It’s really great to see they’ve healed enough from their magic injury to do transformations again even if they’re still mostly incomplete.
It’s not necessary for them to transform into a different person because you’re not so shallow as to care what people look like, but you can still appreciate that they took the effort to do it anyway. If it helps them feel more comfortable to change their appearance, who are you to tell them not to? Your guest knows that you still have a deep fondness for your favorite farm pony and they’re going to exploit those feelings to feed from you a little bit more. It’s a win for both of you.
You stand up and stretch both arms high above your head. The familiar pops and cracks from your elbows and spine reach your ears. You let your arms flop back down as you follow after your guest to your bedroom. Maybe you'll get some shut-eye. Maybe your guest has other, more sexy plans in mind. You're fine with doing either of those things.
While you may be a recluse, hiding away from the ponies who don't like the idea of you being a crowned Prince of the land, you believe that your redemption arc may be coming up. After all, even if you no longer have hooves, you're still the Alicorn of Second-chances.
It was dusk in Ponyville. Almost all of the town had shown up for the event. Wooden towers and scaffolds were erected in the town square for ambiance lighting rigs and spotlights. The stage itself was set with many musical instruments that wouldn't be out of place back in your home universe. Somewhere behind the stage, a fog machine hissed and a jet of vaporized glucose and water billowed into the crowd. You are the only human in the audience which meant that you had the best view because all of the ponies in attendance were shorter than you.
You weren’t wearing anything fancy, just your everyday comfy clothes, except for the necklace of luminous stones jangling around your neck. It matched a smaller loop around your left wrist and right ankle. You saw a few of the ponies wearing kryptonite glow stick jewelry and you wanted some for yourself. You had also picked up a matching necklace and stuffed in in your right pocket for your changeling who had gone ahead and was probably already grooving somewhere out in the audience. Twenty-four bits at a merchandise stand run by a pony that didn’t recognize net you some cool new glow trinkets. Very nice, indeed! You hoped the lime green rocks were just magic or chemical and not some nuclear shit that would land you back in the local intensive care unit, again. Again, again. And maybe another again for one time you couldn’t remember.
“We’ve been Hamster Knives! Good night Ponyville!” A dark blue stallion wearing a maroon bandanna shouted into the microphone.
The band had just finished their set. The crowd around you erupted into cheers, yelling, whistling and stomping. If music could melt brains you would be a drop in a sea of melted pony grey matter. You didn’t hold back, you hooted and hollered along with them.
Ponies, once you get past the casual racism toward anything that doesn’t look like them, could be cool sometimes. One of the best things about them, other than when they sit their backs are the perfect height to function as fuzzy foot stools, is their talent for singing and playing musical instruments. Cutiemarks made less of an impact on being able to carry a tune and strum a guitar than you first thought. For all the performers playing here tonight, it was nothing but raw skill and talent.
Back on Earth you were never really into classical music but the version they had here got you really excited. Ponies finally had something you loved but it was mostly an import from another country which made it a rare find. Kind of how like how back home you had J-pop and K-pop, they have different types of classical music. And the one you fell in love with the hardest was Griffin-classical. It was straight-up fukkin’ Rock music like you could get back home. It was baller and you were losing your god damned mind over it.
During your musings, the next act had trotted onto the stage and placed themselves around their respective instruments and went about setting themselves up. Nearly everything a human needed to hold in their hands ponies needed to have on stands or strapped around their neck or body. During the concert you observed that their music gear was also physically larger. Like if ponies had done what humans did with smart phones, always making them smaller, but in reverse. Which made sense because of them having hooves and all. They were also stupid expensive in pony world because everything was hoof- crafted by small, family run, guild licensed local shops that were often run out of their own homes. Everything on stage, and even the stage itself, was either borrowed or rented because not everyone could afford to lug their giant pieces of equipment on the train.
The next band’s vocalist, a cream colored earth pony, stood on center stage, grabbed the mic and yelled, “I am Honey Badger and we are Geese of Fire. Alright, girls. One, two, three four!”
The crowd erupted into stomping and cheers as the band launched into their set and played their tiny little horse hearts out. That’s when a hoof patted you on your left thigh. You looked down to see a row of razor-sharp teeth smiling up at you. Unsurprising, your changeling had found your towering form in the ocean of shorty-short ponies and wanted to be by your side. They sat down by your leg and rested their head against your hip. You gently tussled their head fin with your hand. Your awesome night of bitchn’ rock music was pretty good but now it was perfect. Nothing could ever ruin this perfect moment.
You awoke to the familiar, rhythmic beeping of a heart rate monitor. You are no stranger to this situation. It’s amazing to you the amount of trauma the human body can withstand and still survive. You are probably naked and laying under a white bed sheet. You are most likely in Ponyville General because the rock concert in Ponyville was the last place you remember being. Somewhere off to the left side of your bed you can hear the faint jingle of magic and the scratching of a quill pen on parchment. You’ve been in various pony ICUs so often that you’re surprised they don’t charge you rent.
You could feel the pain all over your body. It’s the kind of pain you get when you freshly hurt yourself but brain chemicals are screaming through your bloodstream so fast that you can’t feel it. The kind of pain where you know you’re hurt but don’t want to look at it because it would only make things worse. You feel like you were a rabbit that had been hit by a truck, then several more trucks had run it over to make the rabbit into a road pancake. A four out of ten on your pain scale, constant full-body ache but still tolerable, which is a weird thing to think.
So you don’t even open your swollen, dry eyes when you say, “Give it to me straight, doc. How bad is it?” Your voice sounded raspy to your ears.
The scratching of the pen stops but you can still hear their magic field churning away.
“Two other ponies got sick but you got the worst of it. Severe burns around your neck, wrist, thigh, and ankle. I’m surprised you’re even awake right now with how many pain medications you’re on.” He didn’t even sound surprised to hear you awake, the jaded little waffle. Like seeing you here was just another day on the job for him. You recognized the voice of the doctor that, in your head, you referred to as Doctor Stabby because of his inability to find a vein with a needle.
It didn’t require the detective still of Sherlock Holmes to solve this case. You thought it was a little weird at the time. Laying here, now, it’s so much more obvious than last night when it seemed like a great idea at the time. You then say the quiet part out loud.
“Radiation poisoning.” It wasn’t even a question.
“Radiation poisoning,” the doctor confirms and goes back to writing on his paper.
Damn. And you didn’t even get any cool super powers.
Officially, you’re not supposed to be here. Unofficially, you have a guest pass for the day. You really should have been in the next town over, preparing to perform a great and wonderful show but you read a worrying article in one of Seaddle’s local newspapers. It was a short story about this expendable doofus, who is one of your closest friends, and how he had landed himself in the hospital, again. Not an unusual thing for him but it was still worrying. So you, being the caring and magnanimous pony that you are, you decided to postpone your show and take a few “personal days” to visit your injured friend in the Ponyville General hospital. You are a very anxious Trixie Lulamoon.
“Anonymous, what in the wide world of sports were you thinking?”
Your closest friend, other than your marefriend Starlight Glimmer, was an alien called a human which appeared in Equestria from another world. He is laying in a medical cot that is too short for his tall frame. His bare feet hung off the end which showed off those odd-shaped nubbins they have. His neck was wrapped in bandages and his mane seemed to be thinner than usual. His face and arms looked to be both more red and more pale at the same time. You’re not a doctor but it looked to you like Anon had taken several lightning bolts to his neck and arm. The burns were red, swollen, and seeping yellow liquids through the bandages that wrapped them. Why he wasn’t sedated you couldn’t even begin to guess. He must be in an unimaginable amount of pain right now. You should remember to ask the nurse if he could get some of the better pain medications. It probably wouldn’t make him feel better but it would at least make feeling awful a lot more enjoyable.
“That the cool glowing green rocks looked cool and would look very cool on me.” Was his off hoofed reply.
“They were clearly dangerous!” You huffed.
“Yeah, yeah. Hindsight is half-a-dozen or whatever. But they were being sold on a string. How the hell should I know. I don’t even know why you’re getting mad at me. I wasn’t the one selling the cursed stones of skin peeling.”
You crossed your hooves over your chest. “That’s not the point. You should have known better. Trixie is very disappointed in you.” You told him.
“In what way should I have known better? I’m the victim here and you’re literally blaming me, the victim. Pretty sure Equestria has laws against that sort of thing.” He replied.
“You know that magic affects you different than a pony. Given your track record with all things magical, you really should be more careful.”
All of which was true. You tried to levitate him once. You inwardly cringe at the memory. It took forever to scrape him off the ceiling of your trailer and you’re still occasionally finding and pulling out bone shards embedded in the walls. To this day you still have nightmares about it that exPrincess Luna can’t make go away.
“Trixie, I bought a necklace from a street vendor. Anywhere else other than Ponyville it would have been fine. And it wasn’t just me. Some other people got hurt by them, too. Tis’ Ponyville. Things like this happen all the time. You know that.”
You frowned. He was right, as he usually was, which you hate. You really, truly did know that these things just keep happening in Ponyville, somehow. This town has been a thorn in your flank from the very first day you arrived. Like with bone shards, it’s the smallest splinters that are the ones that hurt the most. Ponyville has been the place where unspeakable events that you dare not think about have occurred least your mood turn sour. Dumb Twilight and her friendship, and magic, and some other trash, yadda yadda yadda.
“Yes, well…” you pause to take a moment to adjust the clasp of your cape. You were in such a rush to see your friend that you forgot to take it off. It happens more often than you would like. Some might call you impulsive and they may not be entirely wrong. With a hoof you brush a mane curl behind your ear only for it to flop back over your eye. “So, how long until you are allowed to leave?”
“The horse doctor, Doctor Horse or something, says I need a few days of meds to clear out the bone hurting juice.”
He raised an arm and gave it a little shake. The tube attached the the needle stuck in his arm rattled against the metal bed frame. Your eyes followed the tube which was attached the bottom of a clear bag filled with a clear liquid which hung from a stand attached the the side of the bed. Beside that bag was a similarly clear bag of liquid hanging from a hook, ready and waiting to go. Some sort of intravenous drip, you suppose. You were never a fan of hospitals.
“A few days?” It was a relief to hear that the medicine for helping his condition actually worked and didn’t cause horrible mutations or some other such nonsense, “But while you’re in here, who’s looking after your changeling?”
Anon made a noncommittal shrug. “No one? They’re a rational, thinking individual. The doc said they can’t visit me while I’m stuck in here since they’re emotional vampires and all. I’m sure they’ll be totally fine without for me for a few days. What’s the worst that could happen?”
As an optimist, you like to think The Universe didn’t hear him say that, but, having once met the Alicorn avatar of The Universe itself and her proclivity of loitering around under open windows, you know better than that. And you’re in Ponyville of all places. You just hope that some pony other than you has to to clean him off the ceiling next time. Having done it once is more than enough for anypony.
You nosed open the front door and skipped out like a little filly into the quiet morning street. With a powerful flap and without hesitation, you launched yourself into the air where your could feel the wind furling under your wings and the early morning sun on your back. You float-dance through the air along the empty market street in gleeful, delicate torment. You are a menacing, unobtainable beauty of a pony. A golden maned goddess made manifest. You are the mailmare known as Derpy Hooves.
You are wearing your usual postal uniform, a navy blue cap on your head, and your well-loved brown saddle bags full of letters slung over your back. You’re ready to deliver the post that had arrived overnight. It may have only been a single package addressed to The Chezmerdillian but it is labeled for ’Rush’ delivery so you know it needed to be delivered to the shop before they open for business.
You hurriedly flap your way down Mane Street, the widest and longest street in Ponyville, toward the store where you needed to deliver the package in your saddle bag. That’s when you spot the pony.
Well, not a pony, exactly. You know who, and what, they are. There is no mistaking their unique look. It’s clearly the changeling that lives with Anonymous in the house North of town near Ghastly Gorge. What they were doing up and about so early in the morning had you curious.
You flapped in midair with very little effort. Out of curiosity, you drifted toward them a little bit while you watched them trot through town. When they turned the corner you flapped your wings to get a little higher. Over the rooftops, you watched them walk beyond town limits toward the Apple family farm.
“Huh. I wonder why they’re going out there.” You say to yourself.
“Why who’s going where?” A voice right beside your head said.
With an “Eep!”, your wings reflex and pin themselves to your sides and you drop out of the sky like a stone.
The voice that surprised you was back. “Hold on, I got ‘cha.”
Before you knew what was happening your rear hooves touched down on the cobblestone street. Then the hooves that had wrapped themselves around your barrel had let go and you fell forward onto your front hooves. The other pony must have caught you and glided you to the ground. You knew only one pony who could fly and was fast enough to do that.
“Thanks, Rainbow Dash.” You say.
“Uh, yeah, sorry. I was just, uh, wondering what you were doing? Like, drifting all over the place like that.”
That’s so nice of Rainbow Dash. She was worried for you. Maybe she would know why the changeling was heading toward the Apple farm. Or maybe it was a mystery! Oh, how you wish you had your honorary Junior Detectives badge. Maybe then the two of you could go investigate. You had to save up so many cereal box tops to get it and you haven’t even had the chance to use it yet.
“Right, heh, catch you later, Derpy!”
With a zoop, Rainbow Dash was off, most likely to go back to weather duty. You sat on your haunches in the middle of the street.
“Wow, she’s so cool.” You said to nopony in particular while you watched her fly off.
It was another glorious day under Celestia’s sun. You, ever being the early riser, were up with the sunrise. No sense lazing in bed all day when there was work that needed to be done. With a spring in your step you practically dressaged through your well trotted morning routine. Faster than a jackalope, breakfast was made, eaten, and cleared.
You plopped your Stetson on your head and made your way out the front door, your hooves striding around the squeaky floor boards so as to not wake Granny. Your plan for the day is to load the family wagon and take it to the Ponyville market. Eeyup, today was shaping to be another perfect day on the Apple farm.
You were just finishing up with packing the last crate onto the wagon. Somepony behind you cleared their throat. Startled, you wheeled around, your heart racing. You didn't mean to jump but some pony sneaking up on you when you thought you were alone was a right ol' fright.
It was that weird looking changeling that sometimes lived with the mostly-harmless monkey creature, the human known as Anonymous, North of Ponyville near the Ghastly Gorge Flyway. The mixed-up looking changeling that has Twilight’s face, Rainbow’s wings, and your tail. Spooky little thing.
"Oh, uh, hey... you," You say, your voice tinged with uncertainty. "Are ya here to see me?"
The changeling shook their head. It seemed to have a different purpose for being here.
You furrowed your brow, pondering who else the changeling might be looking for. "How about Big Mac?" you suggest.
The changeling seemed to blush and shook their head again but a little faster than before. No, you suppose nopony would want to have something like that happen again now that Sugarbell and Mac have hitched up, changeling or not.
“Well, I know you know Applebloom ain’t here,” because they, and the entire town, was at the train station to see her off for her first day of teaching in Seaddle, “So you must be here for Granny.”
The changeling's eyes lit up, and it nodded eagerly, confirming your assumption
“Alright then. You can go on in. She should be in the kitchen. Just uh …”
There was a lot you wanted to say. Granny is getting on in age. And you know - you know - that changelings take in the energies of living things. ‘Be careful’ and ‘Go easy on her’ immediately come to mind but that wouldn't be fair to them. You have come to know this changeling and their history. The why behind the attack on Canterlot. And why they look like Discord shredded photographs of you and your friends and made that collage into a single pony and brought it to life. And about their struggle to find a place in Ponyville.
“… Don’t let her talk your ear off. You know how she is.”
You got a quick nod in reply. They step past you and trot into the house.
Sometimes you can't help but to worry about the little things.
You awoke in your rocking chair with a start. Your mouth was dry and your bones ached. But being still alive is always a good sign.
“Consarn it.” You say, mostly to yourself. “Ah fell asleep ‘gain.“
You don’t hear any noise coming from the house so you suspect Applejack is still in town running the market stall. You can hear the occasional, gentile thumps of hooves hitting tree bark. That’d be Big Macintosh, still gathering apples in the southern field. And given the position of the sun in the sky, Applebloom would be just getting ready to end her class for the day. Plenty of time for another nap. You are Lady Smith, but most ponies nowadays call you Granny.
But something was off. You couldn’t put a wrinkly green hoof on it but the air didn’t feel right.
“There’s a storm a brewin’.” You say. “Eh, little critter?”
Your guest was still here. It had stayed while you dozed off in your rocking chair. It was easy for you to imagine why. Hospitality. Plain and simple.
When it arrived in the early morning, the poor thing looked hungry. The youngins had already cleared and cleaned the breakfast dishes, and made their way out the door for the day. You don’t rightly know what changelings eat but everypony loves apples and the Apple family grows the best apples this side of the Unicorn Mountain range. As you had some already prepared, you brought out a tray of caramel dipped Honeycrisp apples. No pony, or changeling, could resist ‘em. They’re made with love, after all. So, they choose to stay, happily chewing on the sweet treats while you got a little shuteye. You see that they had already finished off two of the twelve on the baking tray. The leftover wooden sticks were a dead giveaway.
“Eeyup. Storm’s a coming. Ah can feel it. Coming in the air. Tonight.”
With a jolt, you sit up with a terrified gasp as a sudden realization had shook you from your drug-induced slumber. You are none other than Anonymous, the legendary hero, and the sole human in Equestria. You awaken in the Ponyville hospital. Beads of cold sweat dotted your forehead. A wave of unease washes over you. You don’t know why but you were worried that your changeling, who didn’t have a name as far as you knew, didn’t know how cute they were.
"Oh, my dear God," you whispered to your empty room. “What if they’re out there all alone. With no one to tell them that they’re an adorable little snuggle-muffin who needs all the cuddles in the world?”
Your room remained silent as if holding its breath. It was dark, the curtains having been drawn to blot out the bright morning sun. You curl up under your sheets and began to audibly hyperventilate, rocking gently in your bed as dread washed over you like a tidal wave, that your dearest and closest friend had not been told that they were the greatestest buggopone who you loved to have nom on your human good-feels.
“I should've fought harder, goddamn it. Those evil, cute little pony doctors, with their gentile smiles and warm bedside manner. Now I’m trapped in their godforsaken communist healthcare system.”
Regret clawed at your insides, a relentless beast that gnawed away at your sanity. Either that or your somache was rumbling because you were hungry. Regardless, you aren’t going to take it lying down. No, sir. You are going to get out of this bed, come hell or high water.
You immediately uncurl your legs, and in one smooth motion, swing your legs over the edge of your bed, ready to conquer the world. With no fan-fair, you stand up and make your way for the door to your room. Or, you at least tried to. In reality, you didn’t even make a full first step as your feet had become tangled in your bed sheets. With a thunderous crash, your head collides with the floor. The impact is so tremendous that it knocks you out cold, leaving you sprawled on the ground.
This is how the doctors discovered you, lost in a delirious state, speaking in muddled words that your nurse didn’t understand. Your nurse, now desperately in need of a comforting hug, found you in a pool of your own vomit and an astonishing surplus of teeth. More teeth than could ever fit in your head spilling out from your mouth like an overenthusiastic party trick.
Some time later it will be discovered that an unknown pony in a snazzy purple cape had made an unauthorized change to your medication. But, in this very moment, you find yourself caught in a medically induced haze. Your consciousness had embarked on an unexpected vacation, leaving you sprawled out on the cold floor of your hospital room. Incisors and molars regurgitation from your mouth in a grotesque fashion that defies all reason. It was an above average, almost normal hospital visit for you.
You are sitting in a strange space filled with… space? You’re not really sure. Glittering pinpoints of light, really. Hardly looked realistic as, during your more formative years, you had often stayed up far too late to observe the night sky through your very own telescope, but it looked like somepony put in a lot effort to make sure all the constellations were accurate and represented. The false night sky seemed to extend in all directions around you, as far as you can see, which isn’t very far because there is also fog blanketing everything in the distance for some reason you can’t figure out. The ground looks like shimmering, crystal clear water but it’s as hard as stone against your hooves, but it was not as cold or wet as you would have expected. In front of you stands a very tall, white Alicorn with a flowing rainbow mane that claims to have been a ruling Princess of Equestria, before the reign of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Oh, and you are Sunny Starscout. Can’t forget that!
“But, wow, you're an Alicorn! You must have so much magic! Why couldn't you just use your Alicorn magic to leave?” You ask in disbelief. “Magic has all sorts of amazing uses. There must have been some kind of spell to let you out.”
“I’m afraid not. When Twilight Sparkle locked away all magic, my sister Luna and I were trapped here in the Ascended Realm, locked away from the rest of the world for our own safety. We would not have left here until magic had been restored to Equestria eve if we had wanted. To do so would have meant that we would have been susceptible to the ravages of time.” The unbelievable princess replies. Seriously, you don’t believe it. She must have been, like, super old.
“You've been in here for two-hundred years!”
The princess, this Celestia, looked off into the fog. She seemed to be lost in thought. Maybe she was trying to remember something from long ago. She looked… almost sad.
“I'm sure much has changed. Perhaps he is still out there. Survived like we have," Her voice was quiet but you could hear it with perfect clarity as this weird place didn’t have any other sounds.
"Who's that, princess?" You ask.
"A creature, no, a friend named Anonymous. He was many things; Brash, boastful, arrogant, easily excitable, too clever by far. Often unpredictable, which is why Discord liked him so much. He is out there somewhere. I’m sure of it.”
“Then we’ll go find him. I’ll gather my friends; Izzy, Hitch, Pipp and Zipp. We’ll go find your friend, carry him on our backs if we have to.” You stomped your right hoof for emphasis. Hay yeah, it’s adventure time again!
That got a smile from the ancient Alicorn princess.
“You misunderstand, my little pony,” She turned her head to face you again, her magenta eyes sparkled. She looked… happy? But still sad. Can a pony be happy-sad? You would have to remember to ask Izzy later. That feels like it would be something that she would know. “Now that magic has returned to Equestria it is only a matter of time. He will find you, not the other way around.”
He will be looking for us? For me? That can’t be good. You could feel your ears flatten on the top of your head and your new wings with actual feathers and not made of magic and light clamp to your sides.
“Should I be worried?” You ask.
“Oh my, no. He can be quite friendly. Sometimes, overly so. But you should bring him to a tailor once he arrives. He insists on always wearing clothes to cover almost all of his body, for social reasons.
Wait, hold up. That doesn’t make any sense.
“ … When he arrives, from where? And if he’s always wearing clothing, wouldn't he already be wearing something during his trot to find us?”
She winked an eye at you. “That would be spoilers. Oh, you and your friends are going to have so much fun! I wish I could share some of the letters my little Twilight sent me about her many adventures with him. Alas, judging by your hocks, it looks like your time here is almost over, my brave little alicorn.”
You spared a glance down at your hooves. Where are your hooves?! You can still feel them but you can’t see them. You start to prance in place in panic.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no! I still have so many questions. About you, about Princess Sparkle, being an alicorn, everything! I’m not ready to go back yet.” You can’t feel any change but you can see less of your legs now. You estimate only a few seconds and it will reach your head and the magic would send you back to your lighthouse in Maretime Bay. “Please, at least tell me his name!” You were shouting now. Why were you shouting?
“He is no one. He his everyone. He is Anonymous,” The princess’s smile grew. It looked to be genuine now. “Expect him.”
In the realm where imagination flourishes, reality twists and nightmares lurk, where dreams and magic intertwine, there exists a celestial being of ethereal beauty and grace. There walks a creature whose coat is as dark as the midnight sky, whose mane shimmers with the brilliance of the night sky. A powerful mare who captivates all who behold their celestial presence. A paragon of elegance and wisdom, every movement echoing the celestial dance of the stars. That beautiful and wondrous creature is you, Princess of the Moon, Luna.
As the guardian of dreams and the mistress of the night, you hold the sacred duty to ensure that the realm of slumber is a realm of tranquility. With your gentle touch, you guide the dreams of ponies, weaving tales of fantasy and adventure, and bringing solace to those who seek respite in the realm of dreams. Tonight, however, you are not but a messenger.
With barely a thought you easily found the slumbering creature. It was a simple feat as its dreams were so different from the common pony that one would have to be completely blind to be ignorant of its existence. You need not to ask the creature for permission before entering its dreams as it has been waiting for your arrival for quite some time. You boldly stepped from the dream realm into the mind of the creature.
Within the dream you discover a grassy hill, bathed in the soft glow of a calm summer day. It is a simple thing. Barely more than an elevation, with little actual texture and a warm green color. There, sitting atop the hillock, was the human named Anonymous. He may already be aware that this encounter is a shared dream, a meeting of your minds within the realm of slumber. For reasons unknown, Anonymous has always had the ability to sense your presence within his dreams. With that knowledge under your wing, and a winning smile, you approach the human.
"'Lo there, commoner. 'Tis I, champion of the dream realm and warrior of the night. No need to bow before me." you say.
The lone human was sitting atop the hill, doing little else. His legs splayed out in front of him, leaning back with his arms propping up his torso from behind. His gaze shifts from the lazaly drifting clouds to your radiant face. He sat up and gently waved his right hand in your direction.
"Hey there, big blue. What brings you to my dream?" You find his familiarity refreshing.
"I bring grand tidings, Anonymous. For you shall soon awake," you warn.
"Huh,” was his simple reply. After all this time, he is still a confounding creature of few words.
"Indeed. Much has happened as of late. Magic has returned to Equestria and many forces of power begin to stir. You have been sequestered here for many a year. I am not afraid to admit that I thought your isolation may have driven you mad. I am here to assess your situation and ease your re-assimilation into pony society if need be."
"Nah," he slowly stood up. His lumbering form was as impressive as ever. “I’m good.”
You raise a skeptical eyebrow. "Truly?" His reply had caught you by surprise. You completely expected to Star Swirl your way through a long, convoluted explanation of events to catch the human up with current times, such as you had put yourself through in the last few hours. Or, at the very least, do battle, pitting his psyche against your own. "Not even to enquire how much time has passed?"
In a few strides he was standing in front of you. "I dunno, like, a week or something? I don’t think it really matters."
Either he had a deeper wisdom than you had assumed or an ignorance far more vast that you could have ever imagined. Perhaps it would, indeed, do him no good to know that his slumber had been well over two-hundred years.
"If there is no knowledge you wish to gain, so be it."
"Well, let's go."
You shook your head. "Our power has only just returned. We cannot yet wake you from your dream Ourself and your sleeping chamber is very far from Us. Far enough that We are unable to prod you from slumber. You must wake yourself of your own volition.”
"Oh. So, I’ll just wake up on my own, then?” He stated the obvious.
You nod slightly. "Assuredly so. Perhaps, even soon.”
“Ah,” was his reply.
Anonymous isn’t some foreign dignitary whos appeasement is necessary for the betterment of Equestria. The vexing creature is little more than an acquaintance whos company you don’t immediately detest. There is no reason for you to be nervous, and yet, you are. You shift the weight of your haunches from your right hoof to your left.
“P-perhaps, while we wait, we c-could …”
“Mmm?”
Your throat involuntarily tightens. Your own mouth had betrayed you. You gently cough in an attempt to alleviate your discomfort.
“Play a game, you and I. With a wager. Like in the old times.” You remind the human.
A sly grin formed on his face. “Alright, you’re on. Same bet as last time. And I ain’t gunna go easy on ya. You know that, right?”
It pleases you that he still remembers the last time the two of you played a game together but you do not wish for it to show.
“I would hope not, you feral cad.”
You intend to let him win as you usually do but not without considerable effort on his part. In your eyes, even a victory thrown must still be earned. And you wouldn't want it any other way.
