I suppose I should introduce myself, even if this is my… journal, I guess. I suppose it’s simply a collection of events that have happened throughout my life. I don’t exactly know how to explain that I don’t think that something like this is a journal, but I’ll be putting my what my thoughts were along with what had happened with each event, so I suppose it’s a journal.

My name is Daniel. My surname isn’t very important. I wasn’t very fond of it, and those that I called a family away from my real family were all too eager to do something heinous… I suppose I should start from the beginning.

Before I ended up here, in this very odd, very dangerous, and very beautiful place. My parents, my biological parents, had gotten into some business that left them in a bad place, with bad men after them… I’m tired of trying to use softer languages for my own sake, so I’ll be blunt with what happens in here.

My parents had got a hit on them by the mafia.

I don’t know which one exactly, but I know that those bastards aren’t going to be bothering me anymore, so I couldn’t give two shits. Instead of leaving my older brother and I orphans, they decided to give us to the mafia when we grew up. We were only babies at the time, so of course we didn’t know what was going on. We grew up every day surrounded by strange men that always wore these suits and fedoras, and carried weapons on them at all times.

Every day, before school, they’d pick us up in some sort of fancy car, drive us to school, and then would be back as school ended, stuffing us into the back of the car and driving us home. We were constantly hounded by these men. They were constantly telling us small things, little tidbits of information that never really meshed together. I guess they were trying to groom us into being like them. To know how to live in their criminal world.

My brother was two years older than I was, and when he came of age, he was taken by the mafia, and was beaten to death while being ‘initiated’ into their group. I couldn’t believe hearing the words being spoken by the police officer when they said that they found his body lying in an alley in downtown Boston, ten miles away from where we were living, his body beaten black and blue with several new holes in him.

My parents knew exactly what happened, but they had their hands tied. They couldn’t rat the mafia out or else they’d end up dead, and I’d be stuck with them anyway since I was already promised to them.

So, I started planning, and plotting, and conniving.

I wasn’t just going to take this just sitting down. I could hear them mocking my brother, how he died, saying that I was going to be receiving the same treatment. They were throwing it around like I was supposed to accept it, like I was supposed to be EAGER to being beaten like a child.

I spent years, doing my best to work up as much cash as I could scrounge together and hide away from them in different areas of my house where they wouldn’t think to look. Weeks before I was supposed to be taken away, I started pocketing anything I could hide away from them when they weren’t looking. I swiped a stiletto switchblade from one of the guys when I brushed shoulders with him walking through a door, and hid it in my shoe. Idiot didn’t suspect a fucking thing when I told them I needed to tie my shoes. I knew I wouldn’t have long before I would become like an animal being hunted in the woods, so I did what I could to practice running throughout the house, but when they started sending men over to the house to watch me so I couldn’t run off, I was stuck for the time being.

The day before I was supposed to be ferried off by the mafia off to who knows where, I struck. I pulled that stiletto from where I had been hiding it and stabbed the bastard watching me in the back. I grabbed his gun and car keys, grabbed my bag full of stuff that I had to ‘earn’ (I had to fight a guy that was twice my size and three times as heavy, and if I didn’t get knocked out in the first fifteen seconds, I had done good enough to get what I wanted) that I had already prepared to leave, grabbed as much of my cash as I could, and ran for the bastard’s car.

I drove west, as far as I could get on that tank of gas, but they had caught up with me. They had been watching the house or something, and I couldn’t just stop running from them after taking them halfway across the United States, so I ran for a nearby forest. I did that stuff that you would see in movies, where I would hide in bushes and wait until I couldn’t see their feet or hear their shouting anymore before I ran away in a different direction.

I honestly thought I had shaken them off of me when I hit the edge of the forest, but that hope was drowned out in the sound of a gun firing.

The bullet cracked past me and whistled into the forest, and I knew that I was going to be in a fight for my life. I ducked behind a rotting log and did my best to try and fight back, but I wasn’t going to have much of a chance by blindly firing a pistol at a dozen guys, all armed with automatic rifles.

I don’t even remember how I got away, just that I did. I had shaken them off and disappeared to the middle of the forest, where I knew that there was waves of men circling around me, slowly trying to choke me out by closing in around me. I ducked behind a big rock and crawled between it and an old tree and managed to escape the sight of two guys that walked right over me.

I had been hounded by them for hours. The time seemed to drag on for days as I either sat in complete silence, or I was running through the forest, trying to get away from the men taking me back to the godfather. I thought I was home free. I thought I had given them all the slip and was about to make it out.

I guess my luck finally gave out on me.

I was ducking between clumps of trees, doing my best to make as little noise as possible by avoiding the detritus on the ground or shifting my feet the wrong way when I heard a crack in the silence of the forest. It took a few seconds to register in my tired mind that I had been shot, and I found myself on the ground, clutching at the new hole in my leg and screaming bloody murder.

That was true pain. It started out as a dull fiery burning that quickly spread out through the area that I had been shot, before it started to increase until it felt like my entire leg was engulfed in that steadily increasing burning sensation. What stuck in my mind to this day was the horrifying feeling of my own blood running down my leg, leaving rivers through the hairs on my leg and across my skin, over and around my ankle, and pooling down into my shoes. That pain was more than enough for me to want to die, and I was ready to when I heard them marching closer.

I was too busy rolling around on the ground, clutching at the hole, moaning and whimpering at the pain, but I felt something rise up inside of me. It felt like a whole new person was trying to claw its way through my chest, and I found myself standing up, favoring my left leg over my right while I held the gun that I had swiped. I fired until the gun went click. I don’t know if I ever hit anyone, but I know that I saw just about all of them hit the dirt or duck to avoid being hit, and I took my opportunity to hobble away.

I managed to get away again, and it was now night time. I had taken my belt and wrapped it around my leg to help with the bleeding, but I was feeling cold all over and it was the middle of summer.

Three days of cat and mouse, doing my best to escape them across half of the USA. I wasn’t allowed to lay down and rest. Every time I found something good to lay against or a hole to crawl into, I would hear yelling and they would start getting closer, so I had to keep going.

Only a few moments of respite before dashing between trees or hiding inside of tall bushes. I could hear them all around me, yelling obscenities at the top of their lungs to either anger me and draw me out, or to demoralize me, and I saw the random flashes of light. I could only assume it was from flashlights they were holding. I could hear them all around me.

I limped into a random thicket, waiting for them to pass, when I caught the top dog from hell himself. The godfather was surrounded by three groups of men, all armed with rifles or shotguns, and I knew I was completely screwed if I stuck around. I did my best to hobble away from them without making noise.

My luck seemed to take another turn because I tripped on something and landed in a pile of crisp, dead leaves, making enough noise that I may as well have had a flare gun and had fired it up into the sky to show them where I was. I got up and started trying to hobble away, knowing that it wasn’t going to be long before I had them breathing down my neck, but another bullet, entering my other leg and stopping anymore of my feeble attempts to escape them.

I heard several dozen footsteps coming closer, several of them chuckling or laughing, some of them jeering or slinging insults at me.

“Nice try kid, but you’re going to be dog food when we get through with ya here.” One of them stated as he stood over me, a cocksure grin on his face. I heard another pair of footsteps walking closer and stopped right before me.

I felt something press into my left leg and my breath hitched as I let out a small yelp and groan, shaking as I bit back a scream.

“Son, do you think we enjoy chasing sixteen year old kids through forests?” The godfather’s voice asked, and Daniel gritted his teeth.

“Yes...” Daniel responded quietly in a smarmy voice, and the pressure on his leg increased.

“Huh?!” The godfather asked loudly, and he shook his head. After what seemed like an eternity to me, but was in reality only two seconds, he let off and I couldn’t help but take a deep breath out of relief. I was picked up off of the ground by two men scooping me up by my arms and another holding my head straight as the godfather stared at him.

“Answer me...” He snarled at Daniel, the wrinkles of his face contorting in fury.

“You could’ve just… let me go, you know…? I mean, I’m sure… you’ve got better things to do with your time, like stuffing your head-” The godfather reeled back and smacked me across the face, stopping the insult before it got to the punch line, and the godfather took a step back and pulled at the cuff of his jacket down to cover his wrists again.

He leaned back down to Daniel, a cold expression on his face. “Your parents were cowards and sold you to us to be a part of this family. Your brother was a pussy and couldn’t take being roughed up a little. We ain’t here to be friends with ya, we’re here to collect that ugly head a’yers.”

He stood back up and rubbed his forehead for a moment, looking around. “Looks like I’m gonna have t’blackmail the docs so we don’t have to pay the bill-”

I don’t know what was possessing me at the time, but seeing him in front of me, after all he had done to me and my family, and hearing him talking about what he was going to do some poor doctors just so he didn’t have to pay, I had gotten loose from the guy holding my left arm and punched him in the face.

I could hear the crunch of his nose as he reeled away and fell onto the ground, cradling his now broken nose.

He wasn’t down for long, and was back onto his feet in a matter of seconds as the guards wrestled me to the ground and were currently stomping the lights out of me, before locking eyes with me with a fury on his face. I saw his nose was turned askew, and blood was running from his nose like he had been hit with a hammer.

I saw him flick his wrist out of the corner of my eye, and he turned away as he pulled a handkerchief from his suit and put it to his nose as I was grabbed by the guards and pushed against a tree. I felt them pulling at my arms as someone came forward with a bundle of rope, and I was tied to the tree.

“Take your time with him.” I heard the godfather say as the guys that had been following him seemed to line up in front of me. The first guy drove his fist into my sternum in a downward punch. I think he meant to punch me in the chin but missed. Still hurt like hell and I slumped over, gasping for breath.

The next guy was a psychopath, through and through. He took a scalpel from his pocket, removing a plastic cover over the blade, before he started to make slow, agonizing cuts. He made a single cut across each bicep on my arm, before he started to idly feel for my ribs with one hand as he started to twirl the scalpel between his fingers as he stared into my eyes, before he drew a line across the skin and meat on each of my ribs, cutting through the shirt I had been wearing. Then he cut the skin on the inside of the elbow, the part that’s between your forearm and upper arm.

I don’t know what it’s called, I just know where my bones are inside of my body.

He stood up, wiping the scalpel off on me, before returning the plastic cover on it. He took a second to admire his handiwork, before he stepped away and the next guy came forward.

He punched me directly in the ear, and that made my head spin and my ears to start ringing.

Another guy stepped up and he started to stretch a little. I knew it was going to be back when he got a running start and pulled his leg back, kicking me right in the ribs.

I couldn’t help but scream at this point.

The cuts on the ribs, and this grunt wearing steel toes, I could feel two of my ribs break upon impact.

Some of them starting chuckling like it was a good joke while he seemed to take it like it was a trophy, and he bowed in front of everyone before walking off.

The next guy pulled out a pair of brass knuckles from his jacket and grabbed a bundle of my hair, then proceeded to beat my face in. The first one cut the skin on my forehead, and probably broke the skull. He continued to pound my face in until the godfather walked forward and put a hand on his shoulder, and he walked off.

I couldn’t feel anything besides the world of pain that had decided to encompass me. “Gotta helluva punch there kid.” I felt two guys grab the rope that had been tied to my hands and another two grab my arms before I hit the dirt, and they put me on my back so that I was staring up at them.

“Too bad you’re a damn idiot… and you’re going to be an unmarked grave out here.” He sneered as he pulled out the stylized magnum revolver he kept on him at all times, a staple for his position as the leader, and pulled back the hammer with his thumb.

“Any last words, kid?” He sounded sincere, but I knew he was just mocking me at this point.

“The auditions… for Free Willy are… that way.” I pointed back towards the town I had passed before the car ran out of gas, and he turned around for a second, before a mirthless chuckle broke through his lips and he turned back around to look at me. I knew I had pissed him off at this point, but there wasn’t going to be much that I could do at this point. I was bleeding all over, and I had been bleeding from a gunshot wound for hours now.

I’m only surprised that I was still conscious at this point. “Figured it out?… You are smart than… you look… Though your face… looks like it just went ten rounds… with a shotgun.” A kick stopped me before I could get to the next one. I coughed out a groan.

I could taste blood in my mouth, but that was more or less from the blood dribbling in from the multiple cuts on my face. My legs were shot, and I wasn’t just talking about the bullets in my leg, so I couldn’t walk even if I tried, and I’m bleeding from a metric boatload of cuts.

“You could’ve been a good example kid. Now you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.” The godfather stated as he raised the pistol up and fired. I heard the gunshot, but it felt like a cold wind had brushed along and through my body, holding my heart and caressing my spine.

I could see them walking away from me, leaving me for dead, and at that point, I was sure that it was going to happen. There was no way that I was going to live through that. At this point, I was making due with saying prayers and readying myself to meet my makers.

This is after the fact that I found it out. I asked what happened to lead up to me ending up here in Equestria. I sort of pieced together what was going on after asking the people were there, and I collectively added them to my experience here. There's only a few points where this'll happen since I'm either asleep, away doing something else, unconscious, or somewhere I can't witness what's happened. Not exactly all in that order, but they've all happened, and I won't say that they've all happened multiple times, fuck you.

It was a gloomy Wednesday afternoon. Clouds were blocking out Celestia’s sun. Few ponies strolled through the streets, with many deciding to stay home to avoid being caught outside when it rained.

Six ponies were gathered in the basement of a library, in a small village by the name of Ponyville. Tables lined the walls, but many of them had been pushed up against the wall as chalk lined the floors, with many different symbols and intricate runes dancing across the many different layers to the ritualistic circle in the middle of the room. Different colors of chalk were used for different runes and symbols.

All six of the girls were standing in the middle of the circle, five of them looking nervously at the six, who was studying intently through a book.

“Twi, are you sure that we’re gonna be okay during this trip of yers?” Applejack asked, arms crossed over her chest as she warily glanced at all of the symbols that danced around the ground. Anxiety had buried itself deep inside of her, but were curious as to what they were supposed to be doing exactly.

“It’ll be fine Applejack! We’ll be there for a couple of days, then we’ll come back and everything will be fine! Nothing will go wrong.” Twilight assured Applejack for the umpteenth time as she placed the book down on the nearest table to her, levitating it over to the table to avoid disturbing the drawn lines and symbols. "If we get lucky, we could even get somepony to come along with us to study!" Twilight exclaimed, practically bouncing in place, giddy over the possible knowledge that this somepony would hold, and how they would exchange scientific theories their worlds held.

She was the only one that knew exactly what they were going to be doing. She had been searching through old books in her library when she came across one that seemed older than the rest. She had read through the book and found it to be a collection of short stories about bipedal creatures, like the ponies themselves, but had no fur covering their bodies.

From the description in the stories, they were tall, taller than many ponies at the time, with flat faces and odd looking hooves that jutted outward and formed smaller things on the end of it. However, despite their rough descriptions, they held technology that had gone far beyond what ponies have even today. The author had given very bare descriptions about each of the objects he had seen.

In the book, they were called ‘hoo-mans’ but Twilight assumed that the author never found out whether or not it was spelled properly or not. He described them all as peaceloving warmongerers, which tickled her for its contradiction. He gave a few accounts of humans that were forced to fight others in a manner of self-defense, but had perfected fighting and was able to take down foes in even the most harrowing of odds, such as full grown dragons with only a shout and a regular sword or hunting down packs of wolves with only a knife. She believed them to be folly stories, simply told for exaggeration, but at the end of the book, there was a brief explanation of what had happened to the humans, claiming that they had been banished by Discord for causing more chaos than he could.

"What if that pony is dangerous?" Applejack asked, wrecking the train of thought that was in Twilight's head. Twilight bit her lip, drumming her fingers along the spine of the book as she continued to pretend to study the tome.

"I'll make sure that this pony is not dangerous." Rainbow Dash said, puffing out her chest with her hands on her hips. It would be a heroic pose if she wasn’t dressed as she was, in a pair of jogger pants and a half cut tank top and a pair of sneakers.

"Ah don't know, Twi. But I'll come along with ya'll." AJ said. Everypony else added their own agreements and small comments to assure the spellcaster, and she gave a weak smile to the rest of them.

Twilight looked over the circle one final time before her horn colored, and magic started to flood the area around them. Some of the symbols seemed to fade from existence, before emerging once again and pulling themselves from the floor with small flashes of light. Several runes became unique colors that none of them had seen before, and several of the mares cooed in amazement at the display they were given. More runes joined the others as they came from the ground as the circles started to spin around them, and the runes started to spin around the mares, quickly picking up speed until they started to blur around the ponies.

The colors joined together into a rainbow hue, and slowly rose up to the ceiling, before it started to fold in on itself and make a dome around the ponies, still spinning in its brilliant colors. Each of the mares gave a sound of surprise as they felt something grab them, and they were each pulled backwards into a small ball of incandescent light. The dome disappeared with a sound akin to an explosion, leaving only a few scorch marks on the ground as the ball whisked its way across space and time.

Seconds crawled along like hours to me, and clouds slowly rolled across the night sky. I had closed my eyes, having made my peace, and was ready for death to have taken me when I heard a crash of thunder right over me as a bolt of lightning came down from beyond the clouds. I opened my eyes up as much as I could, shuddering softly as I could feel my blood pooling around my body more and more. Rain started to fall, and I knew that I wouldn’t be making it.

If I was still in town when I got shot, I might’ve had a chance to get to a hospital and possibly live, but I had decided to run out into the middle of a forest to escape a godfather hellbent on killing me, and there’s no chance for me to get out of here. I thought, before reflecting on my own decisions.

I was dumb enough to run out into a forest, near a small town of probably only five thousand people. I basically did all of the work for getting rid of the body for the mafia, I just didn’t need to deliver the killing blow myself. It would’ve been like putting a noose around my neck and stand up on a chair before balancing on one leg, and then that one guy who doesn’t like you comes by and kicks it from underneath you. And now there’s a thunderstorm, I figured that it would’ve been my luck to have gotten struck by lightning and that would’ve been wiped all of the evidence off of the slate.

Just a crispy body in the middle of the forest. Police would’ve probably thought I was just some idiot who had walked out into the forest during the storm and got struck by lightning. Of course, I’m still alive, so that who analogy doesn’t make any sense, but it’s the principle of it getting off of my chest for my poor decisions that led me to that point.

"Twi, you sure that we can just do this without causing harm to space and time and what not?" A southern female voice asked, and I lifted my head up in total shock. I set my head back onto the ground a second later, my body feeling like someone had filled me with cold lead, but relief washed over me as I heard another voice among the rain.

Someone’s out here in this storm… I couldn’t help but think. I was shivering as rain continued to pelt me, and something was telling me to get up. A voice in the back of my head was telling me to move. I tried to sit up. I tried to roll over. I tried to push my arms under me. I tried to even move my legs. Nothing was responding to me. I didn’t have the strength to do anything besides move my limbs slightly. They felt like concrete blocks had been attached to each of my digits, then another concrete block encompassed those block on each limb.

I heard footsteps coming closer to me, as well as some sort of electric humming that grew steadily louder as it came closer. I heard the footsteps stop, and I cracked an eye open and saw a dim purple light standing over me. I closed my eyes and lay my head back, wincing slightly as another wave of pain wracked itself over me as I wished for them to call an ambulance.

“I-is this what a human looks like?” Another female’s voice asked, sounding exactly as a nerdy girl would sound, her voice apprehensive. My mind was becoming muddled as I continued to lay there and bleed.

I know my thoughts would’ve been something along the lines of, ‘What kind of question is that?’ but it was getting hard to think, so I guess I’ll fill in for my past self.

I let out a soft groan, and several, about three or four (it was getting hard to remember how to count at this point), gasped in shock and surprise.

“Was that… the hoo-man? It looks positively dreadful!” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at her poor choice of words here, but I had a feeling that if I was going to make it out of here, I’d probably slap her a couple of times for commenting on my near death person.

“Are you okay?” A contralto, tomboyish feminine voice asked, and I felt something poke me. I jerked slightly and coughed, the blood that had been forming in the back of my throat dribbling out as I could start breathing again.

“He’s still alive! We need to get him to a hospital!” The educated voice came back, and I could practically feel the warmth of relief wash over me at those words.

“How do you know it's a he?" The tomboyish voice said, and I felt myself die a little on the inside.

"Look at your body, then look at his. It’s like a stallions. Broad shoulders, very muscular, and-" I let loose another cough and the girl with the southern accent cut in.

“Is now really the time to argue over whether or not it’s a he or not? He’s injured and probably gonna die if we don’t help him!” The southern accented voice said.

Thank you for being the voice of reason in all of this, southern girl… I had thought at the moment.

“How do we know he’s not dangerous if we bring him back? I was hoping to ask him a couple of questions to gauge-” She was cut off as I felt a foot stomp on the spot where I had just been shot and I couldn’t help but cry in pain. I couldn’t tell if I had tears in my eyes or if it was the rain.

“I’ll make sure he won’t do anything!” The tomboy said, but the pressure was released off of my leg and I couldn’t help but grit my teeth.

“Why’d y’all do that Rainbow?! Don’t ya see his injuries right there?!” The southern girl yelled, before the girls started to argue, and I started feeling a little bit colder as the time went on.

“What could’ve caused this?” A new voice asked, almost too quiet to hear over the two arguing. I coughed slightly and felt a pair of soft hands cradle the back of my head and turned it over, and I spit out the blood that had started collecting in my throat once again. I could barely hear myself whisper the word as I said it. I think I said ‘mafia’ but I can’t be too sure. Everything that happened was a bit muddled. But she seemed to understand and lay my head back down onto the dirt gently.

“Stop arguing!” The soft voice that had spoken to him earlier shouted, and the others stopped. “We have somepony hurt here and you are doing nothing but arguing about it while he’s bleeding!” The rest of the people seemed to balk and I felt them collectively standing over me once again.

I felt something warming me up, and my lungs, which had been getting progressively slower and harder to use, started to pull in oxygen again.

I felt a hand touch my head and something started to… worm its way around in my head. I couldn’t really explain the feeling. The closest that I could give would be like someone taking their finger and running it across my brain, as if scouring for something. The hand removed itself a few moments later, and with it was the feeling of warmth, but I still feel like someone was massaging my lungs, getting them to breathe from inside of me. I couldn’t really understand what was going on, nor what had been doing it, but I’m glad it was because I wasn’t sure if I could still breathe by myself or not.

“...I just… I’ve seen into his memories...” The educated girl said, sounding like she was in shock. “His own parents… sold him and his brother to a mafia so that they wouldn’t be killed themselves...”

A collective gasp erupted from the group. “What in Tartarus’ name...” The tomboy murmured. “He’s barely older than Big Mac...” The southern girl chimed in. The rest of them gave a few words, but I couldn’t hear much over the rain.

“They-” The educated voice choked up slightly. “They killed his brother and were going to do the same with him… so he ran away and they hunted him down…” Another collective gasp erupted from the group, but I myself was at the point where I was on the brink of unconsciousness.

Everything sounded distant, I felt so cold. so very cold… I couldn’t even feel the hands on my limbs as I felt myself getting picked up. I knew that, even with them not arguing and doing their best to keep me awake and alive, I’d be dead before I reached the edge of the forest. The nearest hospital was too far for me to have made it.

But, you know, I’m writing out this journal, so you and I know that I made it, but it was a bit melodramatic for the moment, yeah?

And that's the prologue finished for its rewrite. After this, I don't think I'll be coming back to change things around again. Unless there's something wrong where I missed some words in a sentence because, I tend to write these on breaks or in the middle of the night and that leads to me either forgetting to fill in some sentences, or there's a missing space between words. That, or sentences run on for too long.

I blame my body for growing too tired to keep up with my demands. Damn you human capabilities!