Author's Notes:

Hey Guys, how's it going! Gordon here with some very exciting news! I'm back! Mostly! School's ended, so I no longer have to worry about that for two to three months! Unfortunately, this means I've hit camping season, which means that I'm gone almost every weekend and most weeks too.

However, I will work on things when I can, and that's why this chapter has been placed up again. If you notice, it now has the [REWRITTEN] thing next to the title. This means I have rewritten it. Duh. Basically I'm doing this because I was unhappy with how the first few chapters portrayed Richard's arrival into Equestria. Therefore, I will rewrite most of the beginning chapters. This chapter hasn't actually had much changes added to it, mostly cosmetic things, so if you're an old reader, you don't have to re-read it. But it's recommended thanks to a few tiny plot seeds I've planted into it.

So Hope you guys enjoy this, and I'll be working on the next chapter right now, Tchuss!

Meet Richard AKA Dick, loving referred to as "Turn that racket you call music down, you damned punk!" or, as I like to call him, me. I'm your slightly-above-average college student trying to achieve my Major in Software Development. I enjoy the little things in life, such as pizza, rock music, gaming, relaxation, and beating upon people with duct-taped sticks, the usual stuff.

What? That last one's not normal? Well, I guess I should elaborate.

You see, I'm apart of a group called the SCA, or the Society for Creative Anachronisms. We recreate the medieval periods, from about 600-1600 ACE. Everything from the arts and sciences to music and dance. However, my favorite part is the European swordplay and war maneuvers. We use real armor and facsimilie swords (rattan wrapped in duct-tape) as well as shields, polearms, axes, bows, siege engines, the whole schpiel. We follow certain rules and procedures mainly for safety, but yeah.

My kit itself weighs over a hundred pounds, about a hundred and twenty with my shield. I have a steel 'open-face' helm, with bars welded to the front to protect my face. It's the easiest helmet to use, because it allows the most visibility and air movement. I have a steel gorget which goes over my tabard, a steel breastplate that goes from just under my gorget to just in front of and below the top of my leather kidney/arming belt. Under the breastplate I wear a knee-length chainmail tunic, and under that a padded gambeson. On my sword arm I have an upper and lower steel bracer, with a steel elbow cap on both arms. My hands were in custom leather gloves, which were inside full steel gauntlets. I had steel pauldrons on my shoulders, and leg pieces that went from the bottom of my hip to my ankles, with a joint at the knee, almost encasing my legs in steel. I wore a cup and a half skirt of scale around my hip. I wore medieval leather boots on my feet, save for the steel I inserted to reinforce it. Don't want broken toes now, do I? I also had a large heater shield with a Mr. Yuck face on it, sticking it's tongue out as a taunt to the enemy.

Speaking of the SCA, I was currently standing on the battlefield, my whole unit around me, I was in the front rank, ready to crash into the opposing unit and hopefully break their ranks. There were about a thousand people on the battlefield at the moment, broken into two armies, further broken down into units. The horn blared out, signalling the start of the battle. The standardbearer of our group gave us a diagonal shift left, forward march command, and we followed along behind. The distance between the two armies shrunk, one of their units moving to match us. Our bearer signaled a stop, waiting as the rest of the army was in line, before finally giving out the order of 'CHARGE!' Letting out a war cry, I ran forward, careful to match my speed to those in the shield wall around me. The distance between our units shrank, their line now twenty feet away. Ten. Five. Heart pumping, I prepared to crash, steeling myself to crouch and turn all my energy into breaking their lines, but then the ground beneath me literally disappeared. I had the briefest flash of the face of the guy I would've crashed against, before I was swallowed by darkness.

"HOOLLYYY FUUUUUCCCKKK!!!" I screamed as I fell, until my scream suddenly cut off, along with a strange tingly sensation in my neck. Then I began screaming again, though this time it was much more animalistic, as if I was being burnt alive. Then the darkness abruptly ended, giving me another brief flash, this time of green, before I landed heavily on the ground belly down.

Ow I attempted to say, hearing no sound accompanying the thought. What the fuck? I tried. Nothing. I'm... I'm mute?!?!?! I asked myself. Needless to say, I was a bit upset about that. Upset enough that I forgot for a moment my current predicament, which was complete and utter unfamiliarity with the environment. After a few few minutes of silent fuming and self-pity, I finally looked around. I appeared to be in a well manicured area, tall bushes surrounding me in perfect rectangular fashion.

Wow, whoever owns this place must be obscenely rich, or have an insane amount of time on their hands. I chose a random direction and started walking. I met a fork no less than twenty feet later. It was about this time that I realized I must be in a maze or something. Shrugging, I took the left fork, continuing on my merry way, my armor clanking.

Now, you may be asking yourself why the hell I wasn't panicking. Truth be told, I was. But six years of battle scenarios had helped me find a place to store my panic so I could think logically. I was currently scared shitless, but I kept that locked in some far away corner of my brain.

Fifteen minutes and half a mental breakdown later, I found what I hoped was the exit. Making my way towards the archway, I saw a large expanse of lawn and garden, all leading up to the most magnificent palace I had ever laid eyes on. At that point, I deduced I was in a coma, probably from heatstroke or something. That maze was probably some psychological bull shit about how I was abused as a child but forgot about it. (I wasn't, but I was pulling shit from my ass to make sense to my brain)

A voice rang out, all authoritative and business. "Stop right there, creature!" I turned, and immediately thought Yup, coma. Definitely. because standing right about my waist level were two white, armored horses wielding spears. Upon seeing my face, they shifted into a defensive stance, raising their spears.

"Go tell the Captain that we have an armed and armored human" One of them said to the other. The second one nodded, unfurling wings that had been hidden by its side and flying off at top speed. Yup. Wings. I shook my head, hoping that I had missed it. Nope, still had wings, still flying.

"Okay, little guy." The horse still with me said, advancing slowly, spear still raised. "I won't hurt you. Shhh... shh... There's a good human." It was as if he thought he was talking to a dog.

I snorted, causing him to jerk for a moment, and gave him my best 'Are you serious?" face. I mean, come on. I'd been called stupid before, but a horse treating me like an animal? That just takes the cake. I so wished I wasn't mute now, so I could throw out some sarcastic response, but alas.

The horse took another step closer. He was now in spear range. I shuffled backward, switching into a defense posture, my shield raised. The horse quivered, taking a few steps back. It was at this point I realized it was scared of me. As it should be! a voice in my head thought, There's a reason Man is top of the food chain!

I kept myself in my defensive posture, not willing to test my armor on real weapons just yet. A commotion behind the horse, however, took my attention away and to the distance, where I saw at least twenty others, some flying, some levitating weapons, and some with nets, all rushing over to my spot. Behind me I heard more noises. Sidestepping the horse in front of me, I turned so I could keep all known threats in my view at once. I was good to do so.A net came flying past me, ensnaring the horse that had been in front of me in its folds.

I retreated a little bit, the horse that threw the net stepping forward, a sword in its hooves. How that was even possible escaped me, while it swung a wild swipe at my head. I blocked easily with my shield, sending a reply that put a sizeable dent in his helmet and dropped him to the ground. Turning again, I was just able to block a spearthrust from the group that I had first seen.

The next challanger approached me in a more sensible manner: With a large group of spearmen er... spearhorses. This time, I didn't give them a chance to attack. I rushed suddenly, knocking aside a spear with my sword and dropping low enough to hit them with the center of my shield. The half dozen horse things went flying, spears clattering uselessly to the ground. The rest of their force gathered together and retreated, giving me some breathing room. In the respite that I had, I looked down upon one of the creatures that I had given a solid smack with my sword and saw that its helm had a massive dent in it. Too massive for the helm to have been made out of any worthwhile metal. The color indicated gold, but that was probably the most useless material to make armor out of. Heavy, soft, easily dented. Why wold they-

My ruminations were cut short as a horse speared right under my distracted guard and rammed into my chestplate, bending me nearly double. I quickly did a half-spin and disengaged, backing off while I let the pain dissipate slightly. I knew I would havew a bruise there in the morning.

Once again my thoughts were cut short as a large unicorn stepped forward, two swords floating next to it. The light from the sun glinted off of them, allowing a flame-like apparition to appear on the blades. I had no time to spare a thought to how they floated, instead rushing forward to try to catch him off guard. Unfortunately for me, he was expecting my tactic and neatly sidestepped, laying the twin blades across my back with brutal force. I cried out in pain, picking my shield up and spinning to face him in the same motion. And it was that which saved me, because the two swords slammed into my shield right where my neck would have been. I saw a flicker of doubt in my opponent's eyes as he saw the blades skate off the shield, and I took that to my advantage, lashing out with my own sword, which still amounted to nothing more than a large stick. It was nonetheless effective, slamming into the foreleg of my opponent and sending him reeling in pain.

I faced two more of these horses in single combat, the rest of their group staying back for some reason. Both were relatively easy to dispatch, or, rather, injure enough that they crawled away. However, as I struck the last one down, another ran foreward and slammed it's spear upon my head. The blow was so hard it sent me to my knees, head spinning. Before I had a chance to react, I felt another impact, and then nothing.

[/hr]

I awoke lying on something cold. And metallic. And for some reason it was swaying. I groaned, my head feeling as if someone had steamrollered it. Then mugged it. Then shot it multiple times, brought it back to life with electo-shock therapy, then used it as a football. And now that same person was beating it with a lemon. Wrapped around a large, gold brick.

I goraned again, slowly waking up my systems one by one. Then, finally, my higher-reasoning system deduced I was naked. And proceeded to shout at my face.

How much did I drink last night? I thought feeling like I had the worst hangover in the history of hangovers. I slowly opened my eyes, grateful for the low-light of the room I was in. Finally, my brain started to process the visual input it was receiving, and I saw two huge blue eyes, each one the size of a dinnerplate. I screamed, flailing backwards until I hit what felt like jail bars. I covered myself, leaning against the bars while the swaying feeling intensified. I opened my eyes again, and saw the being that belonged to the eyes. It was a pale green horse, with a brown mane and a horn, wearing a labcoat. The horn was glowing, and next to the unicorn was what looked like a tape recorder.

I groaned as I remembered what happened last night. It would explain the bruise I had across my stomach, as well as the ones I could feel across my back and thighs.. At least the headache lessened in light of my situation I thought with the barest hint of dark humor. I also noticed I was in a cage suspended over some sort of pit. I could see the bottom of it below me, about twenty feet down. Next to my cage was a smaller cage made with wire mesh, almost like a shark cage. Looking left and right, I could see more cages, each one with a human in it, each one with some horse or horse-like myth next to it.

"Starting Log on Subject 447 dash Q3C, codename Ulrich. Current date is 3455 CLR, May 25, " I looked up as I heard my SCA name. They must have looked through my stuff and found my fighter's card. It had my SCA name on it, though I bet they couldn't figure out much else. "Dr. Melody Song observing. Subject has just awoken, and appears to be in a state of fear. Large musculature and abnormal height suggests it was bred for its purpose, which, while currently unproven, is suspected to be some form of combat animal." Wait. I was being... studied? "Furthermore, abnormal tooth structure suggests it requires a diet high in meat and and proteins, will submit a request to the Board at next opportunity. Subject has yet to show aggressive tendencies towards myself or the bars of its confinement, unlike other subjects brought in under similar circumstances. It suggests either training or a familiarity with cages, and both options are rather worrisome in their aspects."

I also notice that, despite injuries across its body, it still moves in a relatively fluid motion implying that it has suffered similar injuries many times before, which leads to an even worse assumption, that this human was or is a part of the human fighting rings. Hopefully, this is not the case, as its current behavior tends to suggest. Further study is required. I will now begin to lower the human into its new habitat and observe its behavior forthright."

Suddenly, the cage I was in started to lower into the pit. A minute or so later, it reached the bottom, and the gate swung open, releasing me into a surprisingly spacious room. Three of the walls were blank and perfectly flat, while the fourth was curved and had a small waterfall going down it made to look natural. Grass grew around the pool that formed at the bottom. Most of the rest of the floor was dirt, though a small strip of concrete at the far end showed it was completely artificial. A small alcove against the curved wall looked like it would serve as a bed, and a small tree shaded the area near it from the sun-like light source above. The whole place looked like a zoo exhibit, minus the windows.

I turned and saw the shark cage like thing in the air near my cage, the horse named Dr. Song inside it. "Subject shows curiosity about environment, which is a good sign. Hopefully it will accept its surroundings." She said. I ignored her and moved towards the water fall, trusting that it was filtered. Using my hands, I cupped some water before sipping it, and boy, was it the best water I had had in a while.

"Subject shows trained 'manners' when drinking, using hands like one would a cup, instead of the usually crawl to drink from the pool itself. This needs further study."

I looked up at the 'shark cage' curiously, wondering why the hell my 'behavior' is so abnormal. You'd think people who are apart of a race that reached the fucking moon would be more likely to drink water with their hands when sans a cup.

"The human also appears to be comfortable around ponies, which is strange considering the reports of the guards it first came into contact with. Perhaps it should be tested for Safe Pony Contact at some future point."

The next few hours continued in the same manner, with me doing whatever while the horse... pony... observed me. At one point, a slot in the wall across from the curved wall opened and a bowl was pushed through. When I inspected it, I found what looked like doggy kibbles and an apple. I ate the apple quickly, but the 'kibbles' I left, not quite trusting them. After an hour of it sitting there, the bowl was enveloped in a light pink field and removed through the same slit in the wall.

Finally, the unicorn said something about overnight surveillance and flashed her horn with a strong green glow, and an answering glow appeared in the far corner of the room. When I shot a glance into the corner, I saw a large green crystal there, pulsing slowly with a light green light. Then the unicorn raised both cages, sealing off the pit as she did so. The artificial sun winked out, replaced with dim lighting from a facsimile moon and stars in the roof. I turned and gave the finger to the camera-like crystal in the corner, before gathering my wits and slowly walking over to the bed-like alcove, hoping that this was just a particularly vivid dream.