One who is a particular brand…

Will not find others that can understand…

All will reveal, in due time…

Should two powers correctly align…

But even then, you ask, in this new world of unknown…

How will one force himself, to accept, and be shown?

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Chapter 3: Misunderstood

Chatter… Noise… He could hear words, words he was not familiar with, as he was in a deep slumber, it made him churn and mutter in his sleep. Like a button, the muttering stopped all the other words from being heard in his ears. But it was only a brief pause before chatter and words began again. He heard footsteps, hard ones, walking around as he heard only one person speaking, instead of the other garbled up noises. He couldn't make a word out of it, he just couldn't.

Naruto was tired; his eyelids felt heavy, and his entire mind, his body, even his own sleeping… It felt different to him somehow. But all he wanted to do was sleep…

But even if he wanted just slumber, it couldn't last for long. He could feel the side of his stomach being poked at with something slightly sharp, but not enough to pierce skin. His eyes squinted as he gave a big yawn. He lifted his head up, and slowly opened his eyes, vision slightly blurred, as his vision started to take form to what was poking him… or where he was for that matter. He blinked a few times as he looked at his surroundings. Bookshelves, full of books, books, and more books. It looked like he was in someone's study room, or maybe a library, or just an abandoned place no one uses anymore. He blinked a few more times until he felt himself being poked some more.

"Hey, wake up big guy, you alright?"

Naruto blinked as he heard someone's voice. It sounded like a child, and it came from his right. He turned his head to the right, and immediately went wide-eyed. It was all purple and looked scaly, with a different colored underbelly than its skin. It even looked like had some kind of fish fin on top of his head, and a tail to boot, with sharp eyes. A lizard, Naruto thought, but that's all he could think of. Naruto blinked a few more times, slightly freaked out by the lizard's appearance, but tried to remain calm. His breathing increased.

~W-who are you? Some kind of lizard thing?~ Naruto asked.

The lizard tilted his head, hearing a language he's never heard before. The lizard had his mouth in an O shape as he got curious about it. He got closer and sat down next to it.

"Wait, say that again?" The lizard said as he placed a hand at his ear, cupping it, as if using it to hear better.

This time it was Naruto's turn to tilt his head. What was the lizard saying? He couldn't understand a single word. Not a single one of it was Japanese. Or maybe he's just losing his mind from all that sleep he had? He decided to say something just to make sure.

~Er… I didn't catch that, what did you say?~ Naruto asked.

The Lizard raised his brow as he just shook his head and crossed his arms.

"I can't seem to understand a word you're saying… Um…" The lizard said. He got up and looked at him. "Um, let's see… uh…" The lizard started using his fingers. He pointed at Naruto, and pointed down at the ground below him, trying to sign language him to tell him to stay there. Naruto looked at the ground, and then looked at the lizard. He started to follow the message and nodded his head. The lizard nodded as well as he took off upstairs.

Naruto just shook his head. Where was he, and why did that lizard speak a language he's never heard before? From what he could tell, the lizard couldn't understand him either, so he was in quite a position. Someone around here had to speak his language. He scratched his head in confusion… only to realize his scratch confused him even more.

He felt something hard and rough. He froze for a moment. He was using his hand, right? He blinked a few times, not wanting to know what was scratching his head, but he needed to, if he wanted to know. He slowly brought his hand in front of his face… only to see it wasn't a hand, but a round circular part: A horse hoof, to be exact. Naruto raised both his brows as he twisted his hoof around, examining it closely. This made him want to look at his other hand. Look and behold: another hoof! The color in his face slowly started to dissipate as he used his hoofs to uncover the rest of his body under the blankets he was covered in.

The view made Naruto blink quite a few times, until he realized that it was no longer his human body… but a horse-like body. He was still wearing his jacket, but his lower half… nothing but horse, a fox-like tail, which seemed to be wagging on its own. His jaw dropped at the form he was in. He looked around quickly for a mirror to look in as he tried to get up. He tripped on his own four feet as he tried to walk around in this new form of his. Eventually, he found a tall mirror in a nearby corner, and looked in it.

~Wha… What the hell is this!~ He blurted out, not believing the view he's seeing.

He was a horse.

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"You can't understand him, Spike?" Twilight Sparkle asked. She was busy reading a book as she flipped a page with her unicorn horn, trying to catch up on some of her studies, while listening to Spike.

"No, not a word… He keeps saying a bunch of gibberish that I've never heard before." Spike said, scratching his head. "It's really weird; I never heard anything like it."

"Like… what did he say, could you make out any words?"

"Well… He said something like 'Nandato' and 'Orimasigh'… They sounded like sandwiches or food. I don't know…"

Twilight Sparkle closed her book and sighed. None of those words sounded familiar to her either. It was a long trek finding the mushroom she was looking for, for Pinkie Pie, and then suddenly finding a mysterious earth pony right at the entrance of Everfree. It was really strange to her, of why a single pony would be out in that dangerous forest. It got a little more annoying when a couple of her friends came over to check up on Twilight, wondering who her new sleeping friend was, since they saw her dragging in another pony with her, unconscious.

Of course, she just said he needed help, and needed to be alone with this new pony, while giving Pinkie Pie the mushroom she gathered for her. Now, here she was, babysitting a pony she didn't know—or at least Spike was—wanting to know who he was, and why he was out in that forest.

She uses her horn to give out magical energy once again to grab the book off the table and place it back on the shelf, while sitting up from her desk.

"Let's see if I can figure out what he's saying."

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Naruto went back under the blankets, trying to figure out where he was, how he became a horse, and what that lizard thing was. As he tried to think out his next move, he heard footsteps coming from the stairs. He sat up from the blankets to see who it was. Was it the lizard? No… It wasn't just the lizard, but another horse coming down… with a horn on its head. A purple horse with a beautiful purple hair and mane, with some kind of marking on her rear end, looked like a star or something, he couldn't tell, but he could tell that the horse looked female, because of the face, the hair—it just screamed girly.

The next thing he heard, made him want to jump out a window.

"Can you understand me?"

It spoke, the horse spoke. He didn't understand it, but it was in an actual mouthed language, no actual horse talk. He stared blankly at the purple horse, and tilting his head at the same time.

~You can't understand me, can you, horse, um, thingy?~

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It was the horse's turn to tilt its head, not understanding a word it was saying. She turned towards the lizard and nodded.

"You're right Spike, I can't understand him either…"

"What should we do Twilight?"

"Hmmm…"

Twilight started to think. She knew one way that could be possible. She got closer to Naruto, and Naruto slightly scooted away from her in reaction. Twilight shook her head.

"It's alright little pony… I'm not going to hurt you, I'm just going to see if I can read your thoughts… that's all…" Twilight's horn shined with magic as she brought it up towards Naruto's forehead. Naruto didn't react to getting away because he was staring at her horn. Without realizing it, her horn touches Naruto's forehead, and his entire head felt really weird, as if he was forced to think about something.

Twilight focused more magic into her horn, trying to probe Naruto's head for his thoughts. Naruto was a bit scared. The magic wasn't hurting him, but he still got scared and freaked out regardless.

'Can you hear me?'

Naruto heard a voice in his head, getting a bit more wide eyed than he already is.

'I said can you hear me? Can you understand me? I'm trying to talk to you through my thoughts.'

Whatever this voice was, Naruto still couldn't understand the words he heard. He was getting a little frustrated with hearing words he could not understand.

But then, a freak accident occurred.

Twilight's magic slowly started to fluctuate as the color of her magic went from a soft purple to a fierce red. Twilight went wide-eyed as she tried to shut her magic off. But it was too late. As if the red mysterious aura didn't want it to be turned off, it had a better idea in mind: A small explosion.

The house rocked slightly as the small explosion took place in the library, filling it with puffs of red smoke and covering the rest of the three with coughing fits. Naruto tried to speak as he was coughing his heart out from all the smoke.

"*cough*, w-what the heck just happened you darn horse!" Naruto said… But even what he just said just shocked him as he closed his mouth. Did… Did he just say something different than what he was saying before?

Even Twilight tried to speak through the smoke.

"Spike, who are you calling… cough… a darn horse!" Twilight said in the smoke. Spike raised his brows as he said:

"I didn't call you a horse, someone else did!"

As the smoke cleared up, and the coughing fits stopped, he could see both of them, wondering what just happened. Suddenly, Naruto actually understood what they just said. His mouth felt different, but he could understand what he was saying too. Did that freak accident have something to do with it?

"Hey… I can understand you!" Naruto said in a happy glee.

Twilight and Spike went wide eyed as they saw AND heard Naruto talk!

"I… I can understand you too!" Twilight said with a smile.

"Me too!" Spike said.

"B… But how? What was that weird glowy thing you just did to me? I couldn't understand you before!" Naruto asked, curious.

"Neither could we!" Twilight said.

"So how…?"

"I… I don't know…" She said with a frown. "I was trying to read your thoughts, so maybe I could find some way to understand you, but then my magic shifted, and…" Her words trailed off. It seemed like she didn't know how it happened either.

"Maybe your spell backfired, Twilight?"

"No! It couldn't have been, I had it right…"

Twilight had her head drooped down, feeling a bit ashamed and refused to believe it backfired. She always thought her magic was perfect to the T, but it wasn't always true. But then Naruto spoke up to get her spirits back up.

"If you ask me… That backfire might have been a good thing… I'm somehow able to understand you all… and you're able to understand me. It worked better than you expected, I bet!"

Twilight lifted her head up and stared back at Naruto, with a slowly growing smile on her face.

"Really?"

"Absolutely!"

Twilight shook her head with a blush. "Well… thanks, I guess it all worked out after all!" Naruto gave a nod towards Twilight.

"I do have one question though…" Naruto asked. Twilight raised a brow.

"What is it?"

The blonde pony scratched his head with his own hoof, slowly getting used to it since he was freaked enough as it is.

"Where am I?"

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AN: Don't you just love cliffhangers? *trollface*