“Betrayaaaaaaaaaaal! Betrayed me!” Noah spat angrily, flailing against the straps holding him down.

“E-everything’s going to be fine, just… just calm down, will you? Um, please?” Twilight added, almost as an afterthought. She wasn’t certain, but the creature before her seemed to be undergoing some form of… nervous breakdown. Perhaps it used anger as a coping mechanism?
“I swear to god, if somebody doesn’t tell me what in the hell is going on, I’m going to rape you in the eye socket with an eggbeater!”
And using graphic threats. Anger and very graphic threats.

“Er… allow me to introduce myself.” Twilight said kindly, setting her clipboard down on the workbench next to her notes. “My name is Twilight Sparkle.”
Noah blinked at her, watching in fascination as her lips moved. The oddly animated face moved realistically, almost as if the pony were really speaking to him. But that was impossible…
Impossible just got thrown out the damned window with Insano!

“… Uh…” Noah breathed, thinking.
Okay. Okay, so it speaks English. That, or one of the flight attendants slipped me something in a Tylenol gel-cap of crazy..
“… Hi?” Noah said uncertainly, glaring down at his bonds. Chances were, if it could speak and introduce itself, it – or, she, gauging from the feminine tone and eyelashes – had some form of rational reason for tying him down in her basement. Noah could almost hear the voice of Doctor Insano mockingly commenting on the irony of chained-down-in-a-basement jokes.

For a long moment, she merely stood there, staring at him.
“… You, uh… are you going to let me up?” Noah asked quietly, uncomfortable on the steel slab. The violet pony looked vaguely familiar, before he realized that he’d seen her before. Hell, she even told him her name; this was the show. The show those maniacal ‘bronies’ had requested that he review.

Bronies – the worst kind of people.

“Oh, I-I’m terribly sorry about that,” Twilight flushed slightly, and the tip of her horn glowed momentarily as the links keeping him down suddenly snapped free, leaving Noah able to sit up and rub his aching wrists. “You were… well, thrashing about an awful lot. I honestly didn’t expect you to start speaking plain Equish, but really, who does?” she rambled excitedly, and Ryan watched as she telekinetically brushed a disturbingly large needle into a drawer.

She saw him eyeing it, and Twilight chuckled nervously. “Er… heh heh. I should have said, thrashing violently.”
“… Is that a horse tranquilizer?” he asked pointedly.
“Say, now that you’re conveniently speaking plain Equish and all, I don’t believe you’ve even introduced yourself yet!” Twilight said rapidly, awkwardly shifting from hoof to hoof. It was clear that she wasn’t too comfortable discussing the extremely large amounts of sedatives he’d nearly been injected with.
“… Noah. Noah Antwiler.”

“A pleasure to meet your acquaintance, Mister Noah Antwiler.” Twilight said cheerily, extending a hoof to shake his hand. She slowly dropped it, however, when Noah balked at her instead of shaking her hoof.
“… You tied me down.” Noah blinked, brows furrowing. “I’m not just going to shake your freakin’ hand, and then everything’s all hunky-dory!”
“I think you mean hoof,” Twilight corrected him, “and that was just as much for your own good as it was for everypony else’s!”
“You were going to stick me with a tranquilizer!”
“For your own good!”
“A fucking HORSE tranquilizer!”
“For your own good!”

Noah crossed his arms angrily, refusing to let her gain ground on the topic. Indeed, she did look slightly guilty about it, but still – tranquilizing the first alien you come into contact with isn’t very good for diplomatic relations.
Then again, Noah slowly came to the realization that he probably would have done the exact same thing if a techni-colored pony had shown up in his neighborhood.

After a long and uncomfortable silence in which nobody said anything, Twilight spoke.
“I-I’m sorry about that, Mister Noah Antwiler…” she said shakily. “May-maybe we could, er… try reintroducing ourselves over some breakfast?”
“Am I gonna get a clear goddamned explanation as to what the hell’s going on?” Noah glared back at her, but she simply looked too upset for him to remain angry for long. He was frustrated and severely confused about the entire ordeal, but he wasn’t a complete bastard; besides, staying angry all the time would eventually lead to the inability to keep a clear head.

“Am I going to have to inject you with a tranquilizer to get you to stop swearing at me?”

“Not real.”
“Nope.” Noah shook his head, taking a sip of his very-real tasting coffee.
“Not real.” Twilight repeated in disbelief, eying the human warily across the wooden kitchen table.
“Not even close.”

“That’s an absolutely ludicrous theory,” Twilight recoiled distastefully. “almost as much as the others!”
“Well, what else did you think I was going to say?” Noah rubbed his aching temples in exasperation. “Maybe there’s an infinite number of universes? Look, I’m kind of undergoing an existential crisis right now,” he groaned, wishing he had more of the slightly zingy coffee. “I have no idea where I am, I think my brother – and dog – might be dead, a motherfucking figment of my imagination just tried to kill me, and I’m starting to lose track of what’s real.”

Twilight pondered his concerns for a moment; indeed, he did look significantly traumatized. His foot tapped incessantly against the floor, and most of the color had left his face as the full weight of the situation gradually crushed in on him.

A billion miles from home.
In an alternate dimension.
With ponies.

“I think…” the purple unicorn began uncertainly, scratching her chin with the bottom of her hoof. “I think I know somepony I could introduce you to that might help. Or, at the very least, make all of this-“ she said, waving a hoof about at the room “-seem a little bit more ‘normal’ for you, if it helps.”
“… Normal.” Noah repeated, dumbfounded. There wasn’t a chance in hell that any of this was ever going to seem normal.
“You’ll see, soon enough.”

It was horrifying.
It was tortuous.
It was the most mind numbing thing Noah had ever seen, and that’s including Pumpkinhead.
It was sheer madness.

“Ohmygosh, I know! And then, and then-!” Pinkie Pie, the frizzled pink party pony pronounced whilst prancing playfully around him in dizzying circle after circle. “There was a dragon, can you believe it? I mean, not like Spike, but like a big ol’ frumpy one – ooh, and the streamers! But that was before Zecora even-“
“I’M SORRY!” Noah shouted out from the bakery door after Twilight in desperation, nearly weeping as he was dragged back inside. “I’ll take the tranquilizer! Willingly! I'll use it as a catheter if I have to! Anything but this! FUCKING ANYTHIIIIIING!”
“Yeesh!” Pinkie grumbled uncharacteristically. “You’re grumpier than Mister Cake when he got that rolling pin stuck in his poop chute!”
“BETRAYAAAAAAAAL!” Noah bellowed out the door, before Pinkie’s last bit of information that she’d been spewing at him for the last hour finally registered in his head. “Wait, what?”

“And then, I’m gonna show you to all of my friends!” Pinkie bubbled, instantly changing course as she slapped a large, frilly hat on his head. The name atop it read ‘Pumpkin’. The pink lace didn’t help.
“Fuck off!” Noah swore angrily, yanking himself free from her iron grip, and the accursed bonnet. “You’re out of your damned mind!”
“Pffft. Puh-lease,” she waved him off nonchalantly. “Didn’t bother me when my therapist said it, doesn’t bother me when you say it.”

“You’re not showing me to anybody!” Noah vowed, stomping out the door after the unicorn that had so callously left him to a fate that not even Insano deserved. “Screw you guys! I’m – going – home!”
“Good luck with that!” Pinkie called cheerfully after him as he tramped away, completely unaware of the rainbow colored menace stalking him silently from above.

Author's Notes:

THE 'SCIENCE' CONTINUES!