An Existential Nightmare in Equestria

by Query

Chapters

• A Call in the Night
• Defense Attorney Creampuff Was Not Amused
• Fly Another Day
• The Worst Pegacorn of All-Time
• One Flew Over the Scootaloo's Nest

A Call in the Night

An Existential Nightmare in Equestria

Chapter 1: A Call in the Night

Music: http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=cSqZZHhQa_I

I have a lot in common with the page I am writing this on. It too has been folded many ways. Folded like... Well I suppose there are subtle creases running through all of us, riding along the razor thin edge of what is possible. I still envy the page, though. It has the same species and gender it was born with, has never been struck by lightning, demolished a floor with its own face, or gotten stuck on an escalator. Alas, I think I am getting vague already. This is a story of madness and intrigue, of great self-discovery. It is the story of how I came to be so appallingly loved and accepted that I still shudder to think of it. It is my story, and the story of those who were swept up accidentally or otherwise in the wake of confusion I dragged behind myself for so long. So where do I begin? Even when you've only lived a short time, it's so difficult to tell where one tale ends and another begins. I suppose I'll start with Saturday morning.

*EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE* I heard a sound that made me queasy just thinking about it. A quick glance at the clock by my bedside showed it to be 1:13AM. "NO! Anything but this!" I screamed inside my head. I knew it could only be one thing: a very specific ring I had assigned to a very specific number. I hobbled out of bed and walked across the room to find my phone in its usual place on the desk, but I had missed the call. "Maybe it won't ring again..." I thought. *EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE* The phone screeched out its high-pitched alarm once more. Oh bother...

"Hello... Alfred?" The cheery voice of my boss chimed.

"Eh... morning Max." I managed to rasp out through my midnight stupor.

"Sorry to call you in the middle of the night, but one of the burn-in stands at East Rivermouth is reporting a UPS failure and you're the closest technician." He said apologetically.

"Really... on a Saturday?" I asked. I sounded a bit more exasperated than I would have liked.

"I know, but East is getting ready to ship high-energy X-ray apertures on Monday and they're not going to if the tests all fail this morning." He responded, keeping an air of authority.

I paused for a moment, feeling seriously bummed.

"Alright, I'm going. I hope my alarm code is still good."

"It is. And, Al...?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks, Al."

"Heh. Well. No problem, I guess."

I hung up the phone. My boss was perhaps one of the nicest people I regularly had to work with, but almost too much so. He was one of those people who'd be okay with anything and never get mad. Seriously... I bet I could have pushed the guy down the stairs, and he would have just smiled and apologized. (and then told me what to do, of course) I was really powerless to disagree with him, and so, in the blackened haze of the night I turned on the upstairs lighting and proceeded to the bathroom. "Gonna have to do something about that..." I thought as I stared at a grey cartoon character of my own design which was printed on my t-shirt. A polo shirt and matching tie pulled over it did the trick. I put on a belt and attached a BlackBerry along with every other conceivable type of electronic device to it. Car keys? Check. I took one last look in the mirror and tried to rub the bags out from under my eyes with little success, my early-twenties blonde male visage looking particularly resentful of being awake just after midnight on a Saturday.

I turned out the lights and proceeded down the stairs very quietly, not wanting to wake anyone. I was still living with my folks while I saved money for a house or an apartment. The relatively high cost of living in what constituted a vacation town meant that I would be saving for a long time. The very fact that I had managed to find a good job as a computer technician in such a place was a small miracle. It was an exciting job, too, with particularly interesting projects to be had (except for when they decided to call me on a Saturday morning).

Have I made it clear that I really, really, REALLY didn't want to go anywhere at 1AM? I didn't.

Of course, despite the way I was feeling I found my way through the darkness and out to my Nissan in the driveway. I put my luggage and test equipment on the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition. It had just started pouring rain.

"You gotta shaaaaaaare! You gotta caaaaaaare! It's the right thing to do..." A VERY happy voice chimed from the stereo system. I had forgotten that I left my MP3 player plugged into the stereo. "It's a good thing no one else drives you, sweetie!" I said sarcastically as I tapped on the dashboard. That car really was my prized possession. It represented freedom (and didn't leak like the car I drove in high school). It cost me quite a lot, as well. After getting halfway down the back road I lived on I remembered to toggle the headlights and suddenly things got a lot easier. As the stereo cycled through the complete works of WoodenToaster, I came nearer and nearer to my destination.

Pinkie Pie on my radio... Sheesh... That reminds me of the time a client unexpectedly followed me out to my car to discuss something about their new workstation. I remember starting the car, checking the A/C, fooling with my water bottle, and then there was a knock on the window. I rolled it down as if by reflex. "You gotta sha----click" My hand shot to the power button like a dignity-seeking missile just as the radio kicked in. I smiled nervously and continued the conversation. I remember the whole thing. I could recount it, but it was boring. In a nutshell, no, there is no way to prevent other people from locking your computer if you leave it unattended.

I guess I'd always been a closet-geek when it came to cartoons. I loved anything cool or cutesy (preferably both) with an emphasis on anything with adorable talking critters. I wasn't picky in that I'd watch pretty much anything with pleasing animation, or characters, or just an interesting story. I always seemed to be immune to the youthfulness of certain shows. Oh, but then... then one fateful eve I stumbled across the holy grail of uncomfortably adorable cartoons and became a closet brony overnight. I woke up first thing every Saturday to catch the latest episode. There was something about happy, singing ponies that could bring me out of a funk even after a long soul-destroying week of paperwork and getting blamed for every equipment failure. I guess adorable cartoons had always been my escape vehicle from the pressures of the everyday and the mundane. Enough of this tangent, though.

After about an hour of driving a sign that read "East Rivermouth X-Ray Technologies Ltd." loomed in my blurry field of vision. I'd have known that place anywhere. It was easy to pick a parking space since nobody was in sight, so I unceremoniously overtook the nearest visitors' space and approached the front door after a lengthy fight with my laptop bag. "This is going to be a blast on no sleep at all." I thought to myself as I eyed the front door. After swiping my card I'd only have a minute to disarm the alarm system, or I'd be stuck apologizing to the police and the fire department and slamming my place of employment with a hefty fine. *beep* I was in the lobby, and the alarm terminal had begun issuing its warning chime. Uhh... I punched '9194' on the keypad. No luck. "Dammit!" I shouted aloud. I couldn't help but chuckle a bit and salute the 'Don't Panic' sign someone had positioned over the alarm terminal. Nervously keying '9094' on the number pad cooled my nerves as a calming 'DISARMED' flashed across the screen. Crisis averted! (...and to think that I thought the worst thing that could possibly happen was done for the evening)

The East Rivermouth X-Ray Technologies Ltd. campus consisted of several like buildings spread across the town. They were actually segments of independent technology companies which were bought out by a conglomerate. I worked for all of the segments as a mobile computer technician of sorts and although I was no engineer, I usually became quite familiar with the test equipment between facilities. Most of the systems designed to test or certify products were controlled by typical desktop computers, after all, and I was a sultan of computer hardware and the many flavors of Linux. If it isn't already obvious, it's very appropriate to say that I was, and still am, a nerd of great clout. If it had been any morning other than Saturday morning, I probably would have still been awake when the phone rang with my head buried in the glow of a terminal screen. Was I too quiet? Antisocial? (I hate that word!) ...and I really don't think so. I did nothing in my daily life but deal with people. People, people, people. Regrettably, and in retrospect, I think many of my friendships were forged out of necessity rather than just for the fun of it. I mean, having a lot of friends in the field was great, but a startling quantity of my relationships were just to do with my place of employment, not that I didn't have family members I was close to. It's funny how something right in front of your eyes can become a ghost of the past in double-time, but that's what it's like to speak of another world.

It was dark inside the lobby. I did the sensible thing and fumbled for the hallway lights. This was the largest of the three buildings which housed most of the offices as well as the main factory floor. As I walked in past the server room, *BOOOOOM*, a brilliant flash and a clap of thunder echoed throughout the place as the rain picked up. Thankfully the power decided to hold. We only had about 20 minutes on backup in case of an emergency. It was then that I realized just how soaked I had gotten from head to toe. I noted to myself that I would someday submit to owning an umbrella. Also, I was no wimp, but some places are just plain eerie when they're empty. The building was so busy during the day that it could have been likened to a mall. I rarely saw it in such a state of peace.

I shuffled tiredly past three blocks of offices before coming through the large double-doors leading to the manufacturing floor. This was the cool part of working for a science company. (In fact, just being there made me feel about 20% cooler, but it could have been more like 25.) After turning on the floodlights, I was left to behold a floor crowded with workbenches and tanks and flashing monitors. Almost every visible surface had a breadboard on it with some work of electronics half cobbled together. In fact, the state of some of the work seemed to suggest that the engineers were eager to get on with their weekends. ...and there it was: In the back corner of the room, I could see a large testing rig as well as hear the familiar squeal of a dead uninterruptible power supply. I hadn't gotten very close to this particular testing rig before, but it was already looking really cool! Cool, cool, cool. I'll say it again. It was like something out of a science fiction movie, except I was going to get to mess with it while I was half-asleep. A battery of 50 or so large x-ray tubes were stacked within a homemade mount about four feet off the ground. They were pointing down a long stretch of wall toward an array of sensors on the opposite side of the room and were boxed in by long, thin metal sheets running the entire length. A veritable umbilical cord of cables ran over and around a large semicircular desk with various computers and monitors on it. They were off, by the way: Undoubtedly a side-effect of having no power. It was then that I realized I'd forgotten to bring my radiation exposure badge. At least nobody was around to yell at me for it. (These systems were surprisingly safe to work on, as long as you were willing not to stick your tongue on anything important.)

I begrudgingly stuffed myself in the crawlspace behind the desk and reached about for the UPS. It was in almost as bad a mood as I was, and thus required some very foul language to come unplugged. The only problem with it was a dead battery so I found a replacement in the IT department. Isn't that just the way things always go? A ten-dollar battery was going to stop us from shipping one-hundred thousand dollars worth of tubes. Eventually I had the thing rewired and powered up the computers.

This is difficult for me to admit, but I think it's possible that I always spent a little too much time around computers.

So the thing was fixed. I had done my duty as a midnight runner and was feeling quite accomplished despite the solution being somewhat menial and silly. Of course, the tests were now stopped. I knew I couldn't just walk out of the place without getting the tests back in action no matter how desperately my head yearned for the sweet embrace of a pillow. Mark was the test engineer who built the stand. It would have been his head if the maiden voyage ended in a late shipment, so at least I would get the chance to pass on the gift of sleeplessness. "Oh Mark, you're gonna loooove me." I thought to myself as I keyed his number.

"Eh... What?" A tired voice mouthed on the other end of the line.

"Mark, this is Al with the IT department. Sorry to wake you up. I'm calling because your X-Ray test stand powered down in the night and I was called to fix it. It's just a battery thing, so don't worry. I'm sure nothing is wrong with the equipment." I began, very officially.

"What? What?!? You've got to be shittin' me! Right when things are down to the wire, EVERY TIME, it's your equipment that fails. You guys are never doing your jobs and-" An angry Mark shouted. At least he was awake now. While I was busy digesting how grateful he was for my midnight mission of mercy, I took the liberty of logging into all the computers at the stand.

"I'm logged in, by the way. Just waiting for instructions on how to restart the test." I said blandly, cutting him off in mid-rant.

"Well you're going to have to do this fast, so pay attention. It's your head if you blow up any of those tubes, Mr. I-can-fix-anything. This is a Linux system, so I'm going to have to hold your hand-" Mark began, condescendingly. I could almost see him twirling his villain mustache on the other end of the phone. Mark was relentless. I guess he was just naturally unlikable if I could wake him from a dead sleep and get this sort of treatment.

"Actually, I'm quite well-versed, thank you." I chimed.

"Whatever. Start by power-cycling all the DAQs. Turn all the meters off and then on again. Wait for them to zero out." He said. I walked about the test area and did as he requested.

"Now, the computer on the left is there just to read the test results. Everything here has to be in real-time, so we used separate computers for everything. Start 'testmon' on the system to the left." Mark added. My dialogue with the machine looked something like this:

TEST1 Login: root

Password: ****************

Linux 3.2.0-24-PAE x86_64

root@TEST1:~$ cd testmon

root@TEST1:~$ ./testmon

TESTMON V1.0ALPHA by Mark Alaconni (East Rivermouth X-Ray Test Services Ltd.) 2012

Calculating test vectors...

Initializing DAQ #1...

Initializing DAQ #2...

Initializing DAQ #3...

Initializing DAQ #4...

Please start the transmitter, and press any key to begin recording...

"Okay, it looks like it came up OK." I said. I swear I actually heard a sigh of relief from the other end of the call. A real emotion from him? Nah...

"So now you'll need to run my other program, 'xmit', on the right PC. It takes a file with random seed data as its input parameter. You'll have to find some junk to pass to it. Take the index page from a random website or something." Mark explained. He sounded actually nervous. Honestly, I wanted to just tell him off and storm back to bed at this point, but I knew better. Well, that's a bit of a lie. I thought I knew better. At any rate, my dialogue with the other machine went something like:

TEST2 Login: root

Password: ****************

Linux 3.2.0-24-PAE x86_64

root@TEST2:~$ cd xmit

I chuckled as I decided where I would get my seed data from.

root@TEST2:~$ wget http://equestriadaily.com -O random.dat

root@TEST2:~$./xmit --seed random.dat

XMIT V1.0ALPHA by Mark Alaconni (East Rivermouth X-Ray Test Services Ltd.) 2012

Reading random seed... OK

Hex Preview:

00000000   3C 21 44 4F  43 54 59 50  45 20 48 54  4D 4C 20 50  <!DOCTYPE HTML P

00000010   55 42 4C 49  43 20 22 2D  2F 2F 57 33  43 2F 2F 44  UBLIC "-//W3C//D

00000020   54 44 20 48  54 4D 4C 20  34 2E 30 31  20 46 72 61  TD HTML 4.01 Fra

00000030   6D 65 73 65  74 2F 2F 45  4E 22 20 22  68 74 74 70  meset//EN" "http

00000040   3A 2F 2F 77  77 77 2E 77  33 2E 6F 72  67 2F 54 52  ://www.w3.org/TR

00000050   2F 68 74 6D  6C 34 2F 66  72 61 6D 65  73 65 74 2E  /html4/frameset.

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--- 23000 bytes omitted ---

Generating random pool... OK

Checking serial link with receiving station... OK

Please check the transmit array and press any key to begin the test. ALWAYS STAY CLEAR OF X-RAY APERTURE WHEN IN OPERATION...

"It looks like we're ready to go, Mark." I said.

"Good! Now start both the sending and receiving stations at the same time. One system modulates a random signal from that array of X-Ray tubes, and the other tries to verify the integrity of the signal from sensors on the far wall. We've got clients doing some funky things with X-Rays lately." Mark replied. But suddenly... *BOOM* A huge clap of thunder made me jump out of the chair. It took me a moment to catch my breath.

"Uhh... *huff* Phew. Heh. We're OK. The system is still up." I managed to say. Mark was already cackling like a banshee on the opposite side of the call.

"Ahahaaaaa! Haa.... ha.... You. *gasp* You should have heard that scream. You screamed like a little girl, Al. I thought someone had snuck up behind you with a knife or something. I really wish I could have kept that on tape! You're a card!" He sputtered out in between fits of laughing. That really hit a nerve with me.

"Very funny, asshole!" I shouted, admittedly losing my cool. "Now that you're done having a blast at my expense, I guess I'll do the noble thing and save your ass anyway." I pounded the enter keys down on both computers like I was pounding into Mark's face. I did not see what I was hoping for:

Initializing power relay... OK.

WARNING: Expected response [ON], but got [*$0x043] instead.

Xmit failure...

Xmit failure...

Xmit failure...

"Hey, don't forget your place, little man! As far as I remember you were just an intern a couple years ago. Don't think you're irreplaceable enough to go around insulting the senior staff!" Mark's voice screeched into the phone. He was really getting hotheaded now.

"ME!?!? Maybe you shouldn't forget YOUR place! Aren't you supposed to design this stuff so it actually works?!?" I shouted, enraged. I described the error I was seeing on-screen while cursing the man under my breath.

"LOOK, JUST... DAMMIT! Just go over there and make sure the lines running to the back of the tubes are all in securely." He yelled.

"Are you sure I can do that while it's running?" I asked. I was seriously afraid to do it!

"Just do it!" Mark shouted.

I didn't want to, but I got right up behind the ominously buzzing array of fifty shielded X-Ray tubes and began to carefully nudge the connector leading into the back of each one. I had made it about halfway across the array when - *BOOM* - There was another clap of thunder, but this time something was wrong. I was twitching and jittering uncontrollably (and terrified). I couldn't move my arm! I couldn't let go of the cable! The lights were flickering as I fell backwards and took the whole energized X-Ray stand with me. *BOOM* There was another clap of thunder as I came face-to-face with the business end of the device. "This is it! Goodbye, nervous system!" I thought. I had taken not one indirect lightning strike, but two. Suddenly, there was a flash and a noise like I'd never heard before. Everything in my field of vision bleached white. And then... and... then... Well, that's the real question, isn't it? I can't really explain what happened next, but it was certainly something. I felt like I was falling, but faster than normal. Imagine jumping out of a plane and propelling yourself at the ground with a jetpack. That would feel sluggish.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"AAAAAAALFRED! ALFRED! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALFRED!"

The sound echoed in my head, but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. Splotches of blue and white were in my peripheral vision, but everything was so bright that I couldn't make out the details. Was I dead? If I was, than being dead was really scary. I felt that I couldn't move... like my consciousness was drifting away... but then.

*CRASH*

I... went through something. Something solid.

*KABOOOM*

I... went through something that was much more solid. Terrible pain. I had a headache not of this world. Shards of something flew everywhere.

*SPLASH*

I was... in water. I was paralyzed. I tried to call out for help but it was hopeless. I couldn't breathe, and it wasn't long before the last of the fight in me died down. I gulped cold water in a panic. Everything went black. Sweet calm at last. At least everything was calm again. Yes, calm...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then... memories came to me.

"And it is with great pleasure that I welcome our valedictorian to the stand, on behalf of all these fine students and staff, to deliver his speech. May we see a bright light in both the past and the future!" A voice boomed out over a crackly speaker system.

I was at my high school graduation again?!?! Somehow? It felt like this was ages in the past, but yet it was so convincingly real. I was even nervous as I walked to the stand... or did I really? I just remember ending up there, as if not by my own free will. I unfolded a lengthy speech, looked at it for a moment, and then a feeling of sadness overtook me. I hurled the speech off the stage and climbed up on top of the podium. A slip of paper came out of hiding from a pocket close to my heart, and I read aloud my favorite poem:

""" Here's To The Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the

square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have

no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them.

About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the

human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world - are the ones who DO! """

~ Apple Computer

The audience broke into a roaring cheer as I stood up and relinquished the stage. It was perhaps the happiest day of my life. I really believed in that poem, once. I took some naive comfort in imagining that I could go anywhere or be anything! I was either very wrong, or very right...

The whole scene faded to white as I tried to step off the stage. I couldn't feel my legs. I was falling again, and there was this ringing everywhere like I had the worst hangover in all of recorded history. I desperately wished for the part of that old fantasy where I jumped in my rusty old car and drove off with the biggest smile on my face.

Oh, the noise! The chaos! It was too much!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Finally, there was peace again. I felt like my psyche had been through the washing machine. But... now I was waking up? I labored to open my eyes just a crack. Everything was a bright blur again. How could I even be alive after all that? I really thought it was the end.

"We have signs of movement! Keep watch!" A low, stern voice quipped out excitedly. Then, taking a more soothing tone it became very close to me. "Shh... don't open your eyes. Be still. You've been out for a long time. You were quite injured, but you're making a full recovery. Just be still. Don't go anywhere. Concentrate on my voice! Can you understand me?"

Moving at all was a colossal effort. Somehow I managed to wheeze out: "How... how long...?"

"I don't mean to alarm you, but three weeks." The soothing male voice replied.

"Did... ... ... I... ... ... crash?" I labored.

"Uhh... I can safely say that you did." The voice replied, in a very matter-of-fact way. Oh no! I must have splattered myself all over the road. I knew it! I was way too tired to have been all over town when my boss called me. It's not uncommon to have a memory lapse when something so traumatic happens. I must have crashed on my way to East Rivermouth in the middle of the night, but, no... I remembered things after that. The X-Ray tube test stand? Did I... get up from that? Did I try to drive home?

"My family? Do they know?" I asked. Talking was getting a little easier now. My voice sounded really weird, though. I guessed that I must have had fluid in my ears and a scratchy throat. It sounded way too high and sort of gritty/raspy.

"I'm... afraid... well, er... nopony has come to see you in all this time." The male voice replied, sounding sad. Huh? What the hell? That didn't even make any sense!

"Whoa, doc... I must be on... *very long pause* ...some real good drugs. Because you're not making any... sense..." I said.

"You're not on any drugs. You are, however, doing an exceptional job of coming out of a coma. Keep doing that." The male voice said, reassuringly. "Now rest. Just stop talking. Be still." I was scared, but it wasn't long before I drifted off again. This time, however, it was just a normal sleep. There were no terrifying existential nightmares to be had in it for now.

Time passed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was some strength inside me again! My eyes opened about halfway, and I could just barely perceive the outline of a brightly colored hospital room. (Was it too colorful?) My breathing was shallow and panicked, but it wasn't long before I felt someone lifting me up and propping me into a position somewhere between sitting and reclining. A damp cloth was swished across my face, but it felt really odd in a manner I couldn't put my finger on.

"It's good to see you've finally come to!" The familiar male voice from earlier chimed at me. I could see the man now... sort of. He was nothing but a fuzzy brown outline. Obviously he could tell I was squinting at him, because the next thing he said was: "Ah, pardon. You'd probably like to have these back. Curious spectacles, I must say. We could fix those eyes of yours easily, you know!" I tried to take the glasses, but... I couldn't move my fingers. I had to accept that both my arms must have been in casts. How terrible!

"Ha, sorry... I can't really pick them up with these casts on." I said, raising my arms. "...and I never really liked the idea of laser eye surgery. It's way too creepy for me. I'll keep the glasses."

"Laser? What's that? I speak of but a simple magical procedure! No fuss. But of course, it's the patient's decision!" He replied, slipping the glasses onto the bridge of my nose for me. My vision was clear once more.

I jolted and let out the loudest, highest, most insane shriek of pure terror anyone could imagine. I shouted and spasmed so violently that I flipped right off the bed and landed on my back in a pile of sheets. The man was... well... he wasn't exactly a man. The... thing that had been looking at me the whole time appeared to be a talking, brown unicorn. He looked quite startled and came closer to the edge of the bed.

"Look... p-ppp-p-p-please tell me that I'm on some weird stuff, Doc. Something is really wrong with me! I SWEAR you look just like a talking miniature horse right now! This is freaky." I yelled at him in hysterics.

"Oh dear. I see that you are still quite disoriented. Please do try to remain calm!" He started. "My name is Doctor Willcrest. I'll stay with you until you can make sense of things." Dr. Willcrest came over to me with an assistant and they both heaved me back up onto the bed. His assistant was... blue?!? Oh, this was too weird. I thought I was on a bad acid trip. He turned to his assistant and said: "You can leave us alone for a while, Minty."

"Please tell me this is going to wear off. I don't want to go everywhere thinking I'm talking to unicorns! They're not real!" I sputtered.

"I'm not sure where you could be from where they'd have pegacorns, but not unicorns... Uhh... but, I most certainly am a unicorn, miss." Willcrest replied.

"WHAT!?!" I shouted.

"Calm down, calm down. Here..." He said quietly. "Feel..." Willcrest gently grabbed my arm and pulled it up to his face so that I could feel the contour of his muzzle. "See? I'm quite real. There's nothing to be afraid of. You had quite a run-in with some of the local architecture, so it's very understandable that you're confused."

Oh, I was confused for sure! I said that he grabbed my arm. I didn't say what was on the end of it, or what I felt his face with. It was no cast and could only be described as a grey, smooth, almost featureless foreleg ending in a hoof. I instinctively snapped up and stared down at myself. I saw... smooth grey fur, and haunches, and a great quantity of spiky blonde hair. I put my... hooves... to my face, not realizing that I was whimpering and sputtering pathetically.

"It's okay, dear. You're quite unscarred from the accident! We've taken care of that. Look!" The doctor said, lifting a mirror to my face with great trepidation. He could feel just how unstable I'd become.

I freaked out when I saw my face in the mirror. There's actually a bit of a gap in my memory here. I was a bit hysterical, I suppose. I think Doctor Willcrest finally pinned me to the bed out of desperation and tried to calm me. I was shaking and covered in sweat when I was finally able to speak again.

"I'm... not me...." I whimpered.

"You mean you're not the same girl as on your shirt?" Willcrest asked, trying to hold back a chuckle of pity. I looked down to realize I was still wearing the shirt I had woken up with... the morning I was called to investigate the power problem at work. It sported an illustration of a grey pegacorn  done in the style of My Little Pony. I had made it jokingly in Adobe Illustrator one tired night, sort of as an effigy of myself. I wore it admittedly less than jokingly, as such an avid fan of the cartoon.

"I'm.... Query?" I managed to squeak out.

"Well, it's good that you remember your name! I suspect that more and more things will start to come back to you now! You know, when you were first brought in here, we couldn't wrestle that shirt off you to save our lives. You were clinging to it so desperately. Who wears such a thing whilst flying, anyway?" The doctor asked. He was starting to get very curious about my circumstances.

"I... I guess because I made it..." I replied.

"Really? How lovely. You must be quite the talent. Is that whatever, well, that means?!?!" He asked, pointing to the odd symbols printed on my flank. They read, quite literally: ":~$" (The trailing end of a BASH prompt in certain distributions of Linux.)

"Oh... that's going to be difficult to explain..." I said.

"Well, I don't doubt it!" Willcrest replied. He could see that I was getting nervous and fatigued again. "Look. I can see that you're quite stressed. How's about I close these blinds, you get some rest, and then later when you're feeling better we can go for a walk about the hospital wing. There's a lovely garden outside that's sure to lift your spirits."

I just stared at the brown unicorn as he left me all alone in the room. "Ehh... some sort of mild selective amnesia, I think." I heard him mutter outside the door.

I gave up on trying to process everything and sunk under the covers into a deep sleep once more. I don't know how I was able to sleep in such a state of existential panic, but it's safe to assume that I was very, very exhausted. Little did I know, it was only the tip of the iceberg.

Defense Attorney Creampuff Was Not Amused

An Existential Nightmare in Equestria

Chapter 2: Defense Attorney Creampuff Was Not Amused

Music: http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=VDjPwkPazAI

For some reason my dreams had decided to return me to a computer programming course I had taken in college. It had been a community college experience and students of all types and ages were in the room with me, nervously bubbling and re-bubbling the scan sheets attached to their final exams. The whole room had this barely tangible smell of burning pencils, like the sheer momentum of the test was too much for them to handle. Me? I was about as nervous as a dolphin gets right before having a good swim. Programming 101 was a requirement. It was too easy for me.

One-hundred questions? I had them solved in 20 minutes and crept up to the professor's desk. I smugly circled my corrections to the test itself and awaited her response. I didn't know what was supposed to happen if I technically did better than 100%, but I wanted to find out. The professor looked mildy impressed. She opened her mouth and let out a startling: "RIIIIIIIIIIIING!".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*RIIIIIIIING* *RIIIIIIIING* *RIIIIIIIING*

I felt like I'd been hit by a bus... again. My eyes opened slowly and came to focus on a... mechanical alarm clock? I didn't remember owning a mechanical alarm clock. "Whatever..." I half mumbled as I rolled over and whacked the clock. My vision was blurry and muddled without glasses, but I really hit it a lot harder than I meant to. I was also feeling really hot in bed, even though I was just wearing the same silly illustrated shirt that I normally did.

"Ugghhh... what happened...." I wheezed out as I buried my head in the pillow. Oh man... that voice. I thought that I must have had the mother of all frogs in my throat. I rolled over again and squinted to see a glass of water on the stand beside my bed. Reaching out for the glass caused two things to happen.

First, I failed to grasp anything and sent the glass careening across the room only to shatter against a wall. Second, I realized that the tapered, grey, alien appendage which had shot out in front of me was not my own and promptly whirled into another panic attack. It was all real?!? Hearing all the clamor, a nurse from before hurriedly unbolted the door at the far side of the room and came rushing in. This was different from last time. I was finally wide awake. As I heard loud footsteps coming closer to me, I clamored to get out of the bed. I couldn't stand properly and wound up slamming my head against the bedside table. A bit of panicked stumbling and flailing and pressing my face against the hard surface somehow landed my glasses squarely on the bridge of my nose. Then I spun about and actually fell into the corner of the room by the window.

"Oh dear... again?" A female voice started. "You've got to stop doing this, or we're going to have to clear out the adjacent rooms, you know..."

Against all odds, my life's journey had somehow brought me face-to-face with a blue pony. She was an intermediate shade of blue with a swirly mint-colored mane and tail and was adorned with a sterile-looking white shirt and hat. Even worse though: She had just spoken to me.

"Stay away from me!" I shouted, perhaps a little too loudly.

The mare flinched as I shouted and replied. "Uhh... will do, I suppose."

I stayed pinned against the corner of the room, breathing heavily.

"Are you... sure you don't want help getting back on the bed?" She asked, more timidly. I feverishly shook my head side to side before a panicked leap sent me rolling and sliding underneath the nearby hospital bed.

"Right..." I heard the nurse say. "I'm just going to go get the doctor. You stay put..."

Her voice picked up somewhere out in the hallway. "Oh Doctor W! Your new special patient is awake and she hasn't changed a BIT!"

I was prostrate with grief under the bed trying desperately to make sense of things. Driving in the middle of the night, struck by lightning, colorful horses. It didn't sound like a logical chain of events. Furthermore, had I actually landed in the world of My Little Pony? Sure, everything was horribly colorful, but this didn't feel like a kid-friendly cartoon. It was downright terrifying. The world was less vector-illustrated and more shockingly detailed in every way. I was wide awake now and there was no denying that my splitting headache was real. I went limp looking down at a form that rendered me unrecognizable, yet I couldn't help but recognize it. 'Eerie' comes to mind.

"There you are, Query! You have us worried." chimed the cheery voice of Doctor Willcrest. He had crept into the room while I was preoccupied, presumably. I started and got my horn stuck in the box-spring. He was peering under the bed a little too closely to get to some(pony?) in a state of existential panic. (Pff... and he was about to think that I was the crazy one.)

"Why don't you come out from under there?" asked the doctor. I shook my head.

"You need to come out." I shook my head again.

"Query, I can't have a patient fortifying herself under the bed. You need rest." Willcrest said, ever patiently. A small "nuh-uh" escaped my lips.

Then Doctor Willcrest did something unexpected. He clamped two hooves right around my horn and dragged me straight out in one smooth motion. I tensed up for a moment, but quickly gave up and flopped on the floor.

"Tired of panicking?" he asked softly.

"A little." I sighed, and paused for a time. "Can you tell me more about how I got here?"

"Well, I'll take that to mean you can't remember..." Willcrest began. "Not that I'd expect you to, of course! You destroyed part of a roof, a stained glass window, and a double-tiled floor... with this!" he tapped me gently on the head.

"...and then you went straight into a swimming pool and nearly drowned. It was quite a task getting you here in time, but then again that was the most cooperative you've been all along." He chuckled. I just stared at him.

Responding to my silence, the doctor started up again. "Er, we don't have any other information. You just sort of dropped in. We put flyers outside, but nopony has come by claiming to know anything about you."

"Will... I be able to go see the place where I landed, then?" I asked.

"Er... actually... I think that would be prohibitive right now." Doctor Willcrest said, looking oddly a bit guilty. "We'll deal with that later. I think maybe you could use a tour of the hospital, though. You've been in this room so long that it's just oppressive!" He walked casually over to the window, stepping harmlessly over bits of the broken glass, and raised the blinds. I caught a glimpse of a very nice illustration of a stethoscope emblazoned on his flank. How... obvious? A quick check in the window revealed it to be very early morning and the sun was beginning to show up on the horizon. "Oh, finally..." he said, looking outside. I struggled a bit, but managed to sit up and the good doctor returned to me.

"Sorry about that alarm clock. I think somepony must have bumped into it last night...  by the way, you're sweating bullets. You probably shouldn't be wearing that." he said, pointing at my shirt. Before I could say anything he bit down on the collar and slipped it off of me. I actually felt a lot better suddenly, but then as if by reflex... *FWOOMP!* My back?!? "Ahhhhhh!" I started shrieking. Doctor Willcrest stayed as calm as a board and carefully pressed my wings back against my sides.

"Well... that was embarrassing." I admitted.

"How odd..." the doctor began. "Your behavior... all this shock at encountering normal ponies. How much do you remember from the time before your accident?"

"I should think I remember mostly everything." I replied.

"In that case, would you care to enlighten me as to where you came from?" he asked. This was it... the tough question.

"Um... er..." I stammered.

"I knew it, dear! You have some sort of amnesia. That explains all the confusion. I can assure you that you're safe and we'll get to the bottom of all this soon!" he said. I couldn't think of anything else to do. I was becoming agitated, so I ill-advisedly stammered out the truth.

"OK, OK! The last thing I remember was going to work in the middle of the night at an X-Ray company I work for. I was a regular guy, not a pony, and I didn't have wings... or... this thing." I blurted, tapping my horn. "There was an incident with some computers. I was yelling at someone... then lightning struck me... twice... and... uhh... You know, this all happened in... the town of East... Rivermouth... er..." I just blushed beet red and stared at him, realizing that I sounded completely mad. Doctor Willcrest blinked and in very rare fashion decided not to speak for a moment.

"Well... touche..." he muttered after some time. "In the politest way possible, I have to tell you that I'm afraid that makes almost no sense at all. You're definitely not a male... and, er, you most definitely are a pegacorn. These aren't attributes that change when one receives head trauma." I chuckled nervously, and then asked the dumbest question ever employed.

"You're... sure I'm not a male?" I asked. The good doctor wore an expression of pity. I couldn't be sure if he was trying to keep from bursting out laughing or not.

"I'm... afraid not. I'm a doctor. I can tell." he said quietly. The blue nurse from before had just started to enter the room, but without skipping a beat she scrunched her lips and reversed her way out again. The most exquisitely awkward silence followed.

Finally, the doctor spoke up. "Perhaps you need that walk more desperately than I suspected. Come on. Let's go, then! I'm not just a medical doctor, you know. I specialize in rehabilitation! We'll have you back up to snuff and remembering your life in no time." I desperately wanted to protest that I did in fact remember a perfectly respectable array of events from my own life, but I was beginning to realize that it would get me nowhere... and I couldn't lie to myself. The prospect of making it out of the slightly-too-cheery hospital room was becoming ever more attractive, even if I'd have to brave whatever hellishly colorful places awaited beyond that threshold.

"Well, this way!" Willcrest said, motioning for me to follow him. I started to rear up on my hind legs followed by more faceplanting. The doctor returned to my side and slid a pillow in front of me.

"Perhaps I'd better go find you a wheelch-" he began. I cut him off.

"Oh, no-no-no... Just give me a minute." I said. "Right... quadrupeds..." I added under my breath. I was relieved to find that I could actually walk, albeit clumsily. Well, 'clumsily' may be a bit of an understatement. I was wobbling and tripping over myself in grand style, and just plain lucky that nopony outright stuffed me into a wheelchair. As I followed Doctor Willcrest out the door at granny-speed, my face contorted with the thought that it was just plain impossible to be aggravated by a smiling, chocolate-brown unicorn. He was so sweet that it almost disgusted me! I mean, there's not supposed to be anything adorable or cheery about everyone else thinking you're brain-damaged. I half-expected him to take me down to the cancer wing for a good ol' song and dance.

We walked down long corridor after long corridor. There were pastel-colored walls everywhere which were surprisingly ornately decorated, many of them sporting huge glass windows with views into other parts of the hospital or just peering at the lush landscape outside. There were towers out there, and lots of trees, and... sheer mountainous cliffs and crags? It looked like a vacation resort out there. Various male and female ponies busily traversed the halls in white sterile uniforms, and rarely made eye contact. Eventually we came to stand outside a plain white door with a plaque that read... something strange like 'CIVCONCIO SLHEOICU'. (Not exactly. All the symbols were simplified and curved.) Before I had time to ponder further, the doctor turned to me.

"Oh, you're going to love it in here!" he said as a coy smile flashed across his face. "Huh?" barely escaped my lips before I was being shuffled into a room by three beautifully groomed female unicorns in yellow, pink, and powder-blue. They practically swept me off my feet and hoisted me onto a bench adjoining a basin. I gasped and choked on water as my head was tossed in before bolting upright.

"Stop! I've told you everything I know! Stop it! Waterboarding's not going to work on me. I have nothing to say!" I shouted. What appeared to be the older, yellower of the three unicorns looked down at me and sighed.

"How'd ya' like ya' hair done, miss?" she asked in a raspy voice. She sounded like she hailed from New England, of all places.

"It's not a torture chamber..." I muttered. "Or is it? How does one 'do' hair? Is it going to hurt?"

The powder-blue colored unicorn peered over me. Her voice was high and bubbly. "Oh, oh! We'll just keep it the same so you don't have a heart-attack. Sheesh!" ...and she set me back down into the chair.

"Agreed!" they all said in unison. What followed was an unnerving symphony of splashing, and finely-scented things, and hoof-buffing, and tail-brushing. (All the while I was probably making faces like they were trying to operate on me while I was awake.)

"Isn't it lovely?" I heard the doctor's voice chime. "We've got the most highly-funded facility in Canterlot, for obvious reasons... I thought maybe you'd come around if you felt like a lady again in our hospital spa..."

"Again!?! I didn't know there was a first time... It's like my troubles are just MELTING AWAY-ack" I snapped and coughed in the sink, very sarcastically.

The doctor just turned to one of the spa-ponies and mumbled "You might want to, uh, just speed this up a little bit." It couldn't end soon enough. I felt less like I was being pampered and more like I was going through a physically/socially awkward carwash. After what felt like an age, the pink unicorn rolled a mirror up in front of me.

"Ees good?" was all that escaped her mouth, in a very thick accent I couldn't settle on.

"Well... at least it's still jagged and tomboyish..." I said.

The older, yellow unicorn then spoke up. "Yeah, we usually know ta do that when a client acts like she's gonna burn the place down..."

"But you still. look. lovely!" the bubbly unicorn added. I just got up and walked out of the room without making eye contact. "Ughhhh..." I groaned as I simultaneously gave response to "Come again, soon!" and the fact that the lavender cloud from the spa was following me wherever I went. Doctor Willcrest tailed me out the door looking slightly concerned.

"Well, you do look rather nice now!" He said.

"Do I?!? You know what? I really can't tell right now." I responded. There was a bite in my voice. "You know, I was having a lovely monologue earlier about just how impossible it would it would be to get angry at a brown... ughhhh... UNICORN! I'M RECONSIDERING! You're a brown unicorn, and I'm very upset!"

"I... well-" the doctor began. I cut him off.

"...and thanks for asking me if I was interested in a trip to the spa!" I added. I walked down the hall at a faster pace, still stumbling at random intervals. I had no idea where I was going and my favorite unicorn kept pace.

"You're headed for the elevator that goes down to the emergency room..." he said.

"I knew that!" I quipped, wheeling around.

"Now you're headed back to the spa..."

"G-uhh-dh..." I blustered.

"Perhaps we got off on the wrong hoof?" Willcrest asked. I'd never heard him so apologetic. I was running out of steam already and returning to my previous sentiment about brown unicorns.

"Well I have two right ones, I suppose, and you've managed to miss both." I said bluntly.

"You know..." he began, sounding more casual. "I once had a patient in for psychological evaluation that looked and acted much like you. She was a pegasus, though. Crazy yellow eyes! Although... she was definitely easier to handle. *ahem* Loved the spa. Her family was worried about her, though. I'd send you to meet her if I didn't have to keep everything confidential."

"I don't think there's any other... pony... out there like me." I whimpered.

"Well of course not in that way! You're unique!"

"No... not like that..."

"Well now you're just being mysterious! Do you really know what you're talking about? I mean, no offense. I love a challenge."

"I might be a little too much of a challenge for you."

"This is getting us nowhere." the doctor said, stopping me. "You might not like the spa, but do you think you'd like the cafeteria? I'll let you pick everything out, and they won't stuff your head in the sink even for a moment."

"Alright." I conceded. I hadn't yet realized just how terribly hungry I'd gotten out of sheer existential panic. We didn't speak much during the following walk. I knew it wasn't his fault. He felt rightfully so that I was somewhat mad, but it was still excruciating for me. I knew or at least believed that I wasn't out of my mind, but I also knew that I couldn't expect these ponies I'd encountered to share the sentiment.

Ponies in an elevator... that wasn't something I'd expected to see. It seemed that I had started my journey on the second floor of a hospital. It was odd how the whole place could be so brightly colored whilst keeping a thick air of sterility. The first floor was more welcoming with carpet and wooden walls. I found myself following the doctor through wide, open spaces. The place was huge! Something was off, though: it just didn't look like something ponies would build. I mean, there were stairs in certain places! Stairs! Why would horses ever have invented stairs. I half expected to find out next that there was a colony of colorful, talking snails somewhere that had invented the ladder during the early stages of their development.

When we did reach the cafeteria, at least it was a scene I was familiar with. It had counters and tables and... chairs... and everything you'd expect to find in a less-than-gourmet hospital eatery. I stood before a lovely display case containing salad, and some more salad, and... salad... Crap. I had awoken unto the future, and the whole world had become... salad.

"It's just a salad bar...?" I asked, forlorn.

"No, no, no, no, of course not! There's fruit, too!" Willcrest quipped. I just stared at him with my mouth open. I clicked my tongue against my teeth... even my front teeth were flat. Bother.

"Oh fine... give me an apple and a pear, I suppose." I conceited. A chubby colt behind the counter put a tray in front of me so fast that it could have knocked me out.

"I threw in the punch! Fresh squeezed today, by yours truly." the attendant said in a low, gruff voice. I wanted to respond with something sarcastic about how proud his mother must have been, but I think the cute factor of the whole place was getting to me and I had my own struggles with the tray to iron out. I was on my haunches with the tray clamped in my hooves and about to fall backwards when the doctor came by and snatched it from me with his teeth. He set up at a nearby table.

"Uhh... thanks." I eeked out as I sat.

"So... simple tastes? Any cosmic reason for choosing the pear?" Willcrest asked.

"Mumph uph phttt umff?" was the response. At least I didn't eat like a dainty pony.

"Never mind. I'll just wait." he said quickly. I'd never been so happy to have a pear. It was like all the angst was draining out of me. The tray didn't last a minute... and I do mean the tray. There were bite marks on the edge and I didn't think they'd reuse it. Willcrest barely got out "Well, you certainly have been on plasma for weeks..." before I was steaming up the display window again.

"Whoa... slow down there! You don't wanna end up like me, do ya?" asked the gruff colt at the counter as he tapped lightly on his rather large, barreled midsection.

"Oh... er, no! Does that happen?" I asked. I didn't know anything about pony metabolism. "Uh, you know what? I think I'm full. Thanks." The colt just smiled and put some sort of fruit smoothie on the counter.

"Oh, I'm just razzin' ya!" he laughed out. (But everything he said was masked by obnoxious slurping.) His chuckling only got louder as my face contorted in the wake of an odyssey of brain-freezing.

"Tsk, tsk..." said Willcrest from across the room. "You're not going to improve if you insist on freezing your brain even further!" He was smiling at me, and I mean actually trying to be funny and lighthearted. It was quite an emotional rollercoaster, but I found myself actually laughing in response. I couldn't help but wonder if something WAS wrong with me. After all, I didn't remember ever having been so emotionally flip-floppy. I shrugged it off and chocked it up to the lovely blanket-excuse of 'coma'. I found myself back at the small, round table with Dr. Willcrest and my hooves folded. It was at that exact moment that I noticed something very odd about the world: Although we had been meddling about the hospital for what felt like an hour it was still dawn outside. The sun was just barely, barely peeking out as if it didn't want to come up.

At any rate, we just sat there and talked casually for quite some time. The good doctor chose to refrain from asking me any difficult questions.

"Well, I should put in my case notes that the way to get through to a small, grey pegacorn is straight through the stomach. Skip the pleasantries and find a pear, stat!" he said, still chuckling. Suddenly, though, his tone changed dramatically. "Now that you're feeling better, I, well... I do need to fill you in a bit about the 'situation' you're in." I felt sick almost instantly, and it surprisingly wasn't centered around my stomach.

"Is my situation something other than being full?" I asked, sheepishly.

"Well, yes... You see, there is the matter of your arrival and... How should I put this?" he paused. "Whether or not it was intentional, so to speak. It's... *sigh* a question of why and where."

"But I don't know how I got here..." I began, quite earnestly. "I remember being electrocuted, and some noise, and then waking up to your voice."

Willcrest wore an expression of almost-fear, and said: "I believe you don't. There is a complication, however... mainly to do with where you landed... There's going to be-" He just stopped in mid sentence and turned pale as a ghost.

"What?!? There's going to be a what?" I shouted. Then, I turned to look in the direction across from the doctor. Ominous. Were they... guards? Yes, guards approaching us. They were very large, tall white stallions with armor and almost roman-looking helmets with red brushes. Their hooves were loud and the sound echoed throughout the cavernous room.

"Doctor, I'm afraid the hearing has been rescheduled." said the taller of the two guards in a very commanding, cordial tone. His voice boomed.

"Oh, well, lovely!" sputtered the doctor. "We could use the extra time. You see, Query is probably still not well. She's better off in my care, and-"

"The hearing has been rescheduled for roight now." interjected the second, stouter guard. He had a low, goofy English accent.

"Why that's unacceptable! I was told I'd have a week and a half at the very least!" he responded.

"We're just doing our jobs. The hearing is now. Go and file your paperwork." said the taller, sterner guard.

I barely had enough time to think to myself: "Ponies do paperwork?" before I was being forcibly grabbed at the shoulders and escorted away toward the atrium. Doctor Willcrest was following shortly for a while, shouting and protesting until one of the guards shot him quite a stare. I'd only been awake as a pony for an afternoon and I already felt like my new profession was being manhandled at regular intervals. The two guards were keeping their shoulders firmly pressed against my wings as we neared an exterior door. (How quaint of them to think that I could have flown off.) When the guards stopped to open the door revealing the chilly night scene outside, my jaw dropped as I realized where I had been all along. There was no mistaking the colorful towers of Canterlot Castle. I was on the castle grounds. Our walk picked up to a brisk pace I had difficulty keeping time with as we set out on an ornate cobblestone pathway.

"Uhh... where are we going?" I asked in a panic. "I liked it in there, you know! That doctor fellow was nice. What did I DO?!? I know I took a second smoothie from the cafeteria, but no one told me it was illegal! This is all because I'm GREY, isn't it?"

The shorter of the two guards turned and looked at me. "Look..." he said. "We're not taking you to the court because you're grey. We're taking you there because you wen' off and almost creamed the princess last month. I'm Niles, an' he's Flynn, and we've both been forbidden to talk to you. At all." The taller guard, Flynn, smacked Niles on the head. "Quiet!" he seethed through his gritted teeth.

"What? What?" Niles asked, agitated. "I was just... oh... oops." The guards didn't say another word to me as we walked, and walk we did. The journey to the courtroom was a lengthy 20-minute stroll which put in perspective the grand scale of the castle grounds. We passed various beautiful gardens and buildings and stalls (although I was really too distraught at the time to enjoy them) and finally wound up at an ominously large set of white double-doors with golden handles. They looked like real gold. Flynn cracked one of the doors open with his teeth and sent me flying into the room by pushing my back legs. I looked up in awe and felt a cold breeze behind me as the door slammed shut...

It was a courtroom. A BIG courtroom. It was like the Vatican of courtrooms. I decided in my head that ponies must have been the most terribly gaudy, vain creatures of all time. Dark, wooden pews lined the sides of the cathedral room and contrasted against the marble and gold walls and pillars. The windows were humongous, colorful stained-glass murals at least 50-feet tall each, showing ponies and alicorns and mythical creatures in various poses. One great, clear, semicircular window stood at the far end of the room immediately behind a series of stands where some ponies were sitting. A red and blue runner carpet sat under me, leading all the way to the far end. One particularly snobby, wigged blue stallion eyed me carefully and spoke.

"You... are the one called Query?" he began. He pronounced Query like "Qwerry" in a very particular, haughty way. "You will approach the stand and await instructions. Do not speak until spoken to." I think he was the least inviting pony I'd seen so far. Ponies weren't generally very threatening.

"Uh... OK..." I managed to get out, but as I made a step forward something stopped me and I fell flat on my face.

"Oop! Sorreh!" I heard the voice of Niles say as one of the doors opened again and the rest of my tail was tossed through. I did the only thing I could think of and approached the stand as I was asked to. I looked nervously at the crowd of staring ponies and cleared my throat (which echoed loudly through the silent chamber). A very short, chocolate-colored colt with a picture of a shield on his flank and a grey vest stepped forth.

"ALL STAND FOR THE HONORABLE JUDGE BLUEBERRY, PRESIDING!" he boomed. It was a massive, low voice coming from a deceptively stout, round frame. I... clamped a hoof to my mouth, trying desperately not to snicker at the judge's name.

"Thank you, Bailiff." Judge Blueberry began. "You may be seated. I know you folks are *ahem* a bit rusty at this, but in the wake of two unavailable princesses it is our distinct honor to fall back on our traditional judicial system. This case will consist of a single hearing, with half an hour scheduled for deliberation after the facts have been delivered. Our jury has been selected in advance, and we have our very own esteemed Miss Cupcake Swirl, manager of the castle grounds, to stand in and represent for the part of our ruling hierarchy. Our prosecutor will be this pony, Miss Chocolate "Fudge" Delight. Our defense attorney, standing across from Miss Query will be this pon-" The judge just stopped and wore an expression of total shock and disgust.

"Ahh... ha... ahaaaa... *wheeze* Haaaaaaaaaa... *gasp*" I had finally lost it. I was laughing out loud... tearing up, even.

"MISS QUERY!" he boomed. "This is a SERIOUS proceeding. You're in a very rough spot. I suggest you silence yourself immediately before I put this court into recess."

"I--- I--- I'm sorry. It's just. *snork* Judge Blueberry, Cupcake Swirl, Chocolate Delight?!? Am I about to be thrown in jail, or is this a FOOD court?!? Bwahahaaaahaaaa! I-- er, so sorry! It's just: What's next? Does the court system supply me with a defense attorney? Am I going to sit here behind defense attorney Creampuff, or Wedding Cake, or something?" A young mare with a blue and purple mane got up in front of me, drilling into my eyes with an expression that seemed to say: "You iiiiidiot!" as she turned slightly to show me the wonderfully rendered graphic of a creampuff on her flank. Defense Attorney Creampuff was not amused. I made the call to shut up.

The expression just drained from the stoic face of Judge Blueberry. He composed himself and said: "I am going to do this one. more. time. Our defense attorney, standing across from Miss... Query... will be this pony, Jen Creampuff. We'll begin with our opening statements." Tears were streaming down my face as I fought tooth-and-nail to compose myself.

"Miss Query! Deliver your opening statement. It is your turn to openly address the court." I peered behind myself to see ponies trickling in and occupying the pews in the courtroom. They were... whispering and pointing at me with their hooves. I could hear bits of what they were saying. "Look... is that the one? She's the one?" "She did it, didn't she?" "A pegacorn? Wings and a horn and all that? She had her eye out for the big chair, I reckon." "I didn't know pegacorns could be so... small... so normal-looking." "Well there's nothing normal about her, is there?" "What in the hay IS that cutie mark supposed to mean?!?"

"I... umm..." I stammered. Defense attorney Creampuff was gesturing a hoof at me, telling me to 'pick it up!'. "I... uhh... have no idea why I'm here or what I've been accused of. As far as I know, I've never seen this place or any of you before today. I'm... not from here." Defense attorney Creampuff screeched "That's it?!?! That's your statement?!?" through gritted teeth and a furrowed brow. Prosecutor Chocolate just smiled as if to say 'too easy'. I think she whispered "...just like we planned..." to her client, Cupcake Swirl.

"Very well. Miss Swirl deliver your opening statement. It is your turn to openly address the court!" Judge Blueberry boomed.

"*ahem*" the white/yellow earth pony began from her side of the stand. "It has been reported, and confirmed by several eyewitness reports, that this grey pegacorn did appear in the skies over Canterlot castle at some point between 9:00 and 9:30AM on the morning of June 8th, promptly plummeting through part of a roof and a wall and landing with deadly accuracy not six inches from the foot of her majesty's royal throne. If she had not been reared up at that exact moment to take a slice of cake from a platter, she would surely have been no more. The princess did, however, sustain injuries from the debris tossed during the impact, and has been held in the infirmary ever since, unable to perform her royal duties. Her sister, Princess Luna, is reported to be (regrettably) away on other royal duties, and unable to return for the time being. The kingdom of Equestria hereby accuses this pegacorn, Query, of the terrible and heinous crime of a terrorist attack against our ruling hierarchy, undoubtedly with the intent to seize control of its ranks!" There was a humongous, collective gasp around the entire room. Some of the ponies started to cry when they heard about Celestia. It was... bothersome. My heart sank in my chest like a sack of lead. Apparently when the whole royal family was tied up, the local staffers just had to build a pony court out of nothing.

"I don't think I need to repeat that accusation, Miss... Query." Judge Blueberry said, through gritted teeth. "How do you plead?"

Real tears were streaming down my face now. Nothing was funny. "C-Clueless?" I squeaked out.

"That is not a plea! How do you PLEAD?" he boomed, again.

"I... I don't know!?!?!"

"Are you GUILTY, or NOT GUILTY?!?"

"I... uhh... Not guiltyyyyyy!" I sobbed. "I remember a lot from before the crash, but none of it had anything to do with princess-murdering! I don't even understand how I got here!"

"So you ADMIT that you crashed yourself right through the castle structure with deadly speed?" Prosecutor Chocolate chirped. Creampuff stood up and occupied the space between the stands.

"My client should NOT be required to answer that. She's distraught... and not in her right mind!" she protested.

"I think I'm in my right m-" I began, before Creampuff just stuffed her hoof right in my mouth.

The court proceeding went on and on like this for quite some time. I did a lot of sputtering. They called many witnesses with noting interesting to say and tried to figure out where I was from, even to the point of rolling a map out onto the stage. The bottom line was that I couldn't form a story that I believed, let alone that they would. There was talk about me perhaps being a changeling... and it was all very weird. Finally, as Creampuff was becoming desperate to form a line of defense, she decided to head out on a limb.

"I'd like to request the gem test." she said.

"...and why is that?" Judge Blueberry asked.

"Surely as we all know, in order to cause damage on the scale Query allegedly did and remain alive, she would have had to use very powerful magic to brace herself for the attack. Secondly, and again as we all know, Starswirl's gem test is the oldest and most universally accepted method of testing a pony for residual magic using a rare sort of reactive crystal. All ponies with a horn will generate some sort of activity in the crystals as a result of their recent magic use, but the reaction is proportionate to the magnitude of said magical activity." The prosecutor shrugged, like she couldn't think of anything to say to that. Judge Blueberry looked at his pocket watch. It had been hours since the proceeding started.

"You have 20 minutes to procure this test. No more. This court is in recess." he said. The ponies behind me started to roar with excitement. There was panicked and confused talking abound. I didn't ever get the chance to really talk to Creampuff as she bolted immediately out of the courtroom and across the grounds. I really just wanted to tell her "thanks". I can't say that any...pony had ever made it a habit of sticking up for me back home. I had to come to grips with the thought that I most likely did crash into the throne room. "...but it was an accident!" I kept telling myself. I actually felt pretty rotten, nonetheless. I just squirmed uncomfortably in my place for another fifteen minutes. Judge Blueberry was peering at me from across the room like I was a stain on the carpet, his nose all wrinkled up.

When Creampuff did finally return, she was carrying a small dish covered in a rag with her teeth. Judge Blueberry groaned and closed his watch.

"For those who are not familiar, I'd like to demonstrate Starswirl's gem test for the court." she spoke. "Under penalty of perjury, I claim that I have not used my horn in any capacity since lunchtime." She gently removed the rag from the dish to uncover a smattering of ground up red sparkly powder and placed her horn right in the middle of it. There was a brief purple glow as the whole dish shuddered and emitted a tone, almost like that of smacking a wine glass. The audience looked intrigued while Blueberry just sat up there, twirling his wig.

"I'd like to call Query to take the test." she added.

"Very well! On with it!"

I found myself really hoping that I wasn't magical. I didn't feel magical. I sure as hay had no clue whatsoever as to how the horn-thing on my head worked. I stood up and walked to the middle of the stage and placed my horn in the bowl with an unceremonious *plonk*.

Nothing.

The room just went silent, mouths agape. In fact... it felt as though quite a bit of time passed. "But how can-" I heard somepony begin, jut before a great crash interrupted the court proceeding. One of the ornate double-doors at the back of the room swung open.

"Stop this! I DEMAND TO BE CALLED AS A WITNESS! She's not in her right mind... *huff* ...no... condition to speak for herself..." huffed Doctor Willcrest, as he galloped down the aisle. He came to a gentle stop by my side.

"I'm sorry Query." he whispered, still out of breath. (he wasn't very athletic for a horse) "You wouldn't believe the paperwork I had to finish just to get in here!"

"Doctor, you're out of order!" Judge Blueberry scowled. "...and you're too late. This case has gone on quite long enough. It is the jury's turn to deliberate and come to a judgement." Willcrest just looked like he'd taken a blow to the stomach.

"It's OK. Thanks for coming." I managed.

Time passed. The next thirty minutes were excruciating. A rather large pony-jury had left the room to retreat and discuss what they had heard. I was sweating and looking about frantically. What sort of guilty judgement would a pony court come up with anyway? For all I knew I'd be sentenced to eat a bunch of marshmallows as punishment... but the worry was still there. So much for happy, singing, dancing, colorful pony-world. After what felt like an eternity rather than 30 minutes, a pink pegasus made his way around the stands and whispered into the judge's ear.

"Quiet in the court!" he boomed. "The jury has reached a conclusion!" My heart started thrashing in my chest.

"That conclusion is that the defendant is... NOT GUI-"

A blinding flash filled the whole room and sent everypony reeling. It was caused by... the sun?!? The sun had just now instantaneously emerged. I could hear ponies in the pews chattering: "The sun? The sun is out again!" Judge Blueberry had totally lost track of his sentence.

Another flash streamed across the castle grounds, and then a white light appeared right on the stage between myself and the judge's panel. As the beaming brightness cooled, I saw none other than the looming visage of Princess Celestia. The crowd gasped! Nopony moved or said a word for a while. I was dumbfounded.

"Guilty." she said, softly and with a scowl. Again, nopony moved.

"Guilty!" she repeated. "I am calling this proceeding to a close. It is no longer required." She stepped closer to me. I was shaking.

"Query, is it?" asked Celestia. My mouth just opened, nothing more.

"For your unforgivable attempt on my life I hereby sentence you to banishment, and to be locked in a dungeon in the place you're banished to." she added. My mouth opened and closed a bit this time.

"Your highness! I beg you to reconsider!" Willcrest pressed, his voice nearly failing him. "She's not in her right mind. She doesn't know what she's done!" The whole room was still reeling from the sudden appearance of the Princess and, er, daytime. I gathered that it had been dark out ever since my arrival.

"Silence." the princess hissed. "There's the matter of your punishment as well."

"My... but... I don't follow, your highness..." he replied.

"...for harboring a dangerous criminal in my castle, you can go with her. You are relieved." she said.

"TAKE THEM AWAY!" she commanded further. The whole place was filled with a blinding light. What must have added up to a dozen royal guards poured into the room and shuffled Willcrest and I out into the searing, Summer morning.

The guards were relentless. We were headed somewhere very fast.

Somewhere.

I fought back terrible guilt as I looked into the pained eyes of my only friend in the world.

Fly Another Day

An Existential Nightmare in Equestria

Chapter 3: Fly Another Day

The good doctor and I were being shuffled rather unceremoniously out the grand entrance of the courtroom. I saw with my excellent pony peripheral vision which left me a blind spot right around my nose, that Celestia was being practically carried out the side of the court, surrounded by an adoring crowd. They were elated and asking questions and really did love to have her back. Celestia was looking coyly pleased with herself as the entourage of guards surrounded the doctor and I and we made off in a different direction.

The ponies who hadn't stopped to get a good look at the princess began to spill out the doors around us, sparing sheepish glances. But... ugh... there were these two colts keeping pace...

"Dreadful!" chimed the first.

"Unacceptable!" shouted the second.

"It's a nice building, but this court is a sham! They hardly discussed the issue of flight. What if that grey mare had been teleported. Oh... and this is rich. It's the first time I've heard of deadly accuracy that didn't mortally injure anypony." the first quipped.

"OBJECTION!" shouted the second. "Magical teleportation always creates very noticeable light and environmental noise. None of the witnesses mentioned that! If she could teleport, why did she not just enter the throne room? What sort of idiot plans an assassination that involves literally being a projectile?!?"

"Pish, posh! Unicorns can have very different teleportation effects! For all we know, there could be magical safeguards in effect inside the throne room."

"Magical safeguards?!? Surely a pegacorn could have enough magic to disable them for a short time!"

"You don't know that! Stick to the facts! The court has proven that she's not been performing magic. Also, there's no reason for us to expect Query to be a GOOD assassin!"

I sighed loudly. Doctor Willcrest was looking around a bit baffled. The guards didn't seem to mind these two ponies following suit and having their loud debate. I gritted my teeth as they accused each-other of improperly formatting their accusations. There was all this discussion of my shirt, and... oh, my shirt! I'd left it in the hospital room from before and I hadn't had the chance to go back. I rolled my eyes and concluded that I could just look in a mirror later.

"Well she didn't fly! Ugh! Three of the witnesses said her shirt was positioned OVER her wings." one of the colts astutely added.

"It wasn't proven. It wasn't conclusive!" the other replied.

I heard the doctor next to me mumble "He's right... you couldn't have flown..."

"ENOUGH!" I screeched, finally unable to take anymore.

"Erm... so... pardon my asking, but did you do it?" one of the colts asked.

"Pff... pfbbtf..." I blustered. "PROBABLY?"

The two colts stopped, sat right in the road, and did what looked sort of like a high-five. They were beaming, and it was the last I saw of them.

"The pony justice system needs them. It IS terrible..." I muttered as we walked.

"I haven't seen a trial here in my lifetime, Query." Willcrest said. "That building is normally just used for social functions. You see... we have the princess..."

"She was meaner and had a much bigger butt than I expected from watching TV..." I monotoned.

Willcrest blinked. "I... my goodness..." There was a hint of dejection in his voice. The doctor, despite being covered in chocolate-brown fur, looked rather pale to me. He was walking shakily.

"Look... I'm sorry I got you fired and banished." I was feeling very guilty. "I guess I just don't make a lot of sense."

The doctor perked up. "I'm... sure the princess will reconsider if she's unaware of that last comment. You just don't seem like the villainous type to me. Perhaps a bit dangerous at times, but..." His words had absolutely no confidence.

It was then that I realized our conversation was not going to last. A cobblestone building of lower quality than expected loomed nearer and nearer.

"Is that-" I started.

"Canterlot prison... probably just temporary..." he whispered.

"I don't want to go in there!" I replied.

"I don't... see much choice..." he added.

"But look..." I whispered. "We can slip through these guards. If we run in different directions, they can't follow us both!"

"Of course they can follow us both, Query!" the doctor hissed. "There are twelve of them... don't make this worse than it has to be!"

"Oh..." I said blankly, just as I was about to make things much, much worse. My trademark was soon to become daredevilism. I really didn't want to see the inside of that building! Every fiber of me cried out: "NOT GUILTY! You don't understand!"

Music: http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=eHbQXfqnjyU

With barely a thought, I put my head down and shot through the legs of one of the escorting guards. They were experienced, and immediately there was commotion. The whole group broke apart, save for one white pegasus guard who stayed on Doctor Willcrest. The doctor just shook his head as he sat shoulder-to-shoulder with the one guard and stayed put. Luckily for me, with a horde of angry protectors in hot pursuit my legs decided to start working. My heart rate soared like nothing I'd ever felt before and the ground was a blur beneath me. I couldn't help but let out a brief 'Waaah!' of delight. Equine adrenaline.

So... I had no idea where I was going, but I was okay with it. I suppose that at no point in my life had I ever actually been sure of where I was going. A part of me seemed to squee: "Those blokes think they're going to catch up to a horse... pff..." followed by another part of me that said: "Everyone's a horse, you idiot." The plate armor they were wearing looked like a drag, but as my lungs burned and my legs began to buckle, they caught up somewhat.

"Stop roight there!" One shouted goofily.

"Halt! In the name of Celestia!" another added.

"You're under arrest!!!"

"WHO GOES THERE? Eh... oops... got excited..." The first one added. I recognized the voice.

"Stop, criminal scum!" two said in unison.

I was quickly running out of pathway. There was a cliff up ahead and I didn't know how to fly, but I was in the clutches of bravery, sort of. I ran with every last ounce of strength, started to ruffle my wings, and then, well... I came to a sliding halt. Looking down hundreds of feet at the gorge below, a small "Nuh-uh... ponies build stairs, but not railings?" escaped my mouth.

And then? I spun around, horn down, and charged madly at the crowd of guards, slicing right between them. They didn't skip a beat and turned about gracefully. One of them managed to trip me up a bit as two more guards joined the chase. I was tearing up, heaving... I knew they would win eventually. My pursuers had been equine for more than, like, five seconds. I feel it necessary to note, however, that I was running like no computer nerd had ever managed back home. We were headed back down the cobblestone path in the direction of the castle compound and were about to pass by the courthouse again.

Doctor Willcrest was still sitting there with his guard, who quickly lost interest in the aging unicorn and poised to step into the path right in front of me. Oh, the guilt! I knew that I had no way of repaying the good doctor. He put himself in harm's way once more for me as he surprised me by tackling the lone white pegasus before he could complete his interception.

"Uhh... I accept full responsibility for that!" I shouted as I passed. (It probably didn't help.) I pounded down the pathway, this time towards the castle with the swarm of guards drawing even closer.

"UGHHH! How many of you ARE there?" I shouted.

"Iss' just us fourteen!" Niles said, close behind. "It's Saturday, and we drew the short straws!" Another guard whacked him on the head.

"So... no guards in the castle?" I asked, almost out of breath.

"Uh.. pf... I DIDN'T SAY THAT!" Niles blustered.

"Right..." I mumbled, smirking.

So... having nowhere left to go and with the knowledge of being within a castle compound on a high cliff, I did the reasonable thing (right?) and head-butted my way straight through the front doors of Canterlot Castle. I let out a gasp not of exhaustion... but just wow. I was right about ponies liking it gaudy. I butted into a much heavier set of doors this time, getting a bit bruised up. Castle staffers like waiters and attendants scrambled out of the way of the scene.

"Get the princess!" called a lanky, vest-wearing bellboy (bellcolt? bellpony?). I didn't want that to happen. I skittered down a marble hallway, knocking over a whole cart of beautiful potted plants in vases, which shattered.

"Ahhh!" an elegantly dressed pony screeched. "Come back this instant! This is royal property!" I said nothing. I ran past another crowd of very fancy, shocked ponies and into a much larger hallway. Flynn, the guard, got so close to me that he managed to bite off a tuft of my tail. We were in a room with high columns and windows and tables everywhere. A curly-mustached waiter pony threw a tablecloth over me, but I managed to slip out from under it (and send some place-settings flying). Forks, really? Before I had time to think about it, I was coming up on an even larger and more exquisite set of double-doors. A tan mare was talking nervously with another pony by the archway.

"Yes, yes... Silver Hammer is in there right now. We're going to have the throne room 100% for the princess when she gets back. It's why we've been stalling all morning!" she stammered.

"THE Silver Hammer is already here in Canterlot?"

"We've spared no expense for her highness in the wake of this tragic event. Of course!"

I whooshed past them and made my way into the throne room. Remember when I said that Canterlot's courtroom was like the Vatican of courtrooms? Well, this made the court look like a community center. A very careful silver stallion was hunched at the base of the throne, carving very, very delicate patterns on its base with a carving tool in his mouth. Some bits of the construction around the throne looked like new marble and wood. There was a heap of debris swept up in the corner of the room, and I swear I saw my tie and some of the casing from my BlackBerry absolutely pulverized amongst the wreckage. Even the guards were starting to breathe heavily now.

"We have you cornered. Give up now!" shouted the very authoritative Flynn. I was looking out one of the gigantic stained-glass windows at the far end of the throne room. I could see nothing but cliff and sky.

I put my head down.

"You have nowhere to go. STOP THIS INSTANT!"

I somehow ran faster.

*CRASH*

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was as if the world went into slow motion. I could hear the shocked yelling of the guards as my body crashed through the window. Sheets of its primitive lead-framed construction were raining down. I heard a hollow clang amidst the clamor and what was presumably the voice of Silver Hammer screamed "What??!?! COME! ON! Buh. YOU'RE KIDDING ME!!?!??!? UGHHHHH!"... and I fell. Opening my wings only lead to panic, since I began to spin wildly, unable to control my flight. The cliff face I thought I had seen from the window turned out to be a near-vertical grade leading to a much lower plateau of the city. Wings and legs flailing, I eventually landed hard on my back, sliding down with incredible speed. I shrieked and didn't manage to right myself. I was no longer having fun.

I finally hit the ground hard at the base of the cliff, horn first. On pure terrified adrenaline alone, I managed to wrench it free from the ground and sit up. The whole crew of guards were peering out the side of the castle while Niles and Flynn argued.

"It's always you and your big mouth..." Flynn began.

I wasn't sure if they could hear me or not, but I yelled back "I understand what it's like to have a big mouth!" at the top of my lungs. I sounded terrible, though, raspy and bruised and breathing shallow. Flynn flipped the armor off Niles' back to reveal... hmph... actually an embarrassingly tiny pair of wings. "He makes me look like an albatross..." I thought.

Flynn pushed him out the window as some other pegasi joined in. A few guards ran off to make their way around the castle and one or two brave/stupid earth pony guards tried to climb down through the broken window. One of them went tumbling. I tried desperately to roll over, knowing that time was short and, I did? Somehow I managed to get up. I'm being honest when I admit that physical prowess has never been my thing. I'm still wondering off and on about just how I did these things. Pegasi closed in as I leaped down onto a lower road, not running as quickly as before. I don't know what sort of hope had me clinging to my chances of escape, but up ahead I noticed my big break.

A crowd. It was a large one. There were ponies everywhere like someone chose to empty a truckload of skittles upon the landscape. There was a train station.

"Wahaa hahaaaaa!" I cackled as I motored into the crowd. The pursuing ponies were lost and slowed by the equine traffic jam that resulted. An ornate carriage ground to a halt in the road, just barely missing me. I finally managed to escape the gaze of the guards as I slipped into the train station. Slowing for the first time in some 30 minutes, I finally took the time to notice that I was absolutely filthy from sliding down the cliff-face. My feathers were pointed in all different directions and bits of greenery were poking out of my mane.

"Take that, spa!" I said. Aloud. I hadn't meant to say it aloud. Ponies everywhere were staring at me as I tried to casually walk throughout the station. Exhausted, I noticed a large hanging sign, hoof-painted, that listed destinations and ticket prices. It was written in the same odd angular script I had seen in the hospital, but upon close inspection I realized that the obscure symbols did have English counterparts. A little mental transposition produced:

Fillydelphia - Round Trip: 18 bits

Manehattan - Round Trip: 14 bits

Canterlot - Uhh... you're here. 0 bits

Las Pegasus - One-Way: 8 bits - Round Trip: 15 bits (What? I wondered. I thought that place would be in the sky.)

Trottingham - Round Trip: 13 bits

Ponyville - One-Way: 4 bits - Round-Trip: 8 bits

The only problem was that I had no possessions nor money, and looked suspiciously like an escapee. However, there was hope! Out of the corner of my right eye, I saw a golden glint coming from a drain in the floor. A very large stallion was standing over it, so I stalled nervously until he moved. I managed to flip the grate clumsily with my hooves. A lot of ponies were probably startled by the sheer amount of noise it made, but I had the golden disk safely pinned between my teeth in no-time. It tasted like dirt and metal.

Shortly after, fortune struck again! A little colt being escorted by his mother, some twenty feet away, was holding the money for his own ticket. As he bounced about, one of the coins slipped free and rolled far into the crowd. I heard his mother sigh and say "Just be more careful. Don't worry about it."

Naturally, I plowed through the crowd like a maniac and dove on it. That's when I noticed a bar against the south wall of the station. Several well-seasoned ponies were huddled around an old-fashioned tube radio with cider in hoof.

"...and Star Streak is coming up on the left..." crackled the radio announcer. "...It's going to be a close one, fillies and gentlecolts!" It sounded like very old-timey sports coverage. I saw one stallion slap a coin down on the table, but the bartender pony turned to the radio and was too distracted to notice. I briskly walked past the counter and quietly snatched it up, feeling like I was turning out to be a pretty rotten pony, after all. "I'm just desperate..." I tried to tell myself.

I wheeled around the side of the bar, walked down a short hallway, burst into a bathroom, and stuffed my head in the basin sink. I began an emergency sponge-bath and de-leafing of my mane, but then a stallion came out of one of the stalls, stared at me for a moment, and briskly walked out while checking the opposite side of the door.

I mumbled as I washed my hair. "Why do ponies have full-size doors? I'm like, four feet tall at best..." At one point, I was on my back, trying desperately to get my legs in the sink when another stallion began to walk in, and quickly backed out. Moments later, an attendant earth pony in a red vest came walking in.

"Excuse me, miss?" he began.

"Yup?"

"This is... the little colts' room, if you know what I mean? You need to leave."

"Whatever, I've done worse things already today..."

The attendant became agitated. "Please don't give me a hard time. What's wrong with you? Get out of here!" ...and suddenly I hatched a plan. I got off the counter, making sure to look as scraped/desperate and giant-eyed as possible. (The latter wasn't hard.)

"Uhh... just give me one bit, and I'll get out of here." I said quietly.

"Buh-what?" the attendant asked.

"Look... I'm desperate..." I replied.

"Ugh... you have no right to come in here causing trouble. Look at yourself! What do you take me for?!?"

I did look at myself.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's stop everything for a moment. Before any of this pony nonsense had occurred and I was just a normal guy (not a victim of some random quantum accident) I had this thing for cartoons. I loved cartoons. They were my innocent break from stress and the like. I had created this character Query, put her on a shirt, and worn it to bed in the least-creepy manner imaginable. It's safe to say that I could get really attached to a character. It's like... a self-representational character, however absurd, could be meant to exemplify some shining quality... something to live up to. That is, not in the sense of being attached to some fantasy world and distant, but as a means of expression. I looked at the face of Query in that mirror and saw how is was mottled and scraped and dirty. My pupils were like dinner plates. Deep down I was scared, and I suddenly felt uncharacteristically sad. I was just struck by the visage staring back at me.

"I'm sorry I ruined you..." I squeaked at the reflection. The red-vested pony just stood and stared.

He looked at me with the saddest expression, and finally reached into his pocket to place four coins on the tip of my muzzle. He didn't say a word.

I had gone into this planning to try and play the cute/helpless card, but I was really bothered by it. I started to well up with tears, but I knew there was no time for theatrics. I was sure the guards hadn't gone away. It was a wonder they were taking so long to find me. I wanted to hug the baffled pony, but knowing better I slipped out the door and back past the bar. I just kept telling myself that I'd have to sort out my identity crisis later.

"If this doesn't make any sense, don't worry about it!" I said, spitting two coins at the bar-pony I had stolen from before. He was actually sitting on a stool like a certain mint-green unicorn, and the coins landed in his lap. "Ptooie!"

They might have been a little spittier than I had intended. Eww. Oops. I made my way to the rear of the station and dropped the remaining four coins on the counter.

"Where to...?" asked a bored mare with a candy-red mane.

"Uhh... Ponyville. One way." I replied. It wasn't long before I was clutching a ticket. The lettering was once again in some script I couldn't make out. Actually, the big letters at the bottom did almost look like they spelled 'ADMIT ONE'. Odd. I began to step away when I realized there were six platforms.

"Uh... wait!" I said, barging back to the front of the ticket line. A purple pegasus I bumped into gave me a very perturbed look.

"Uhh... which train is it?" I asked.

The teller mare sighed loudly. "It says so right on your ticket. Good day!" I looked at the ticket again, which had a confoundingly stylized font.

"...............where?"

The teller pony just glanced at my ticket and said "Platform two".

I ran off, the purple unicorn still looking disgusted. I swear she mumbled "I hope that's a one-way ticket to a bathtub in Ponyville..."

Then, I nervously waited in a line of ponies on the correct platform. It wasn't long before steam was rising from the trains. There was a sense of urgency about the place.

"Last call! All aboard for Ponyville! All aboard for Manehattan!" yelled a tan-furred conductor. I approached him, excited by the thought of getting away. All I knew was that I didn't want to be in Canterlot. I'd happily take any place else. The conductor eyed me up and down. Most of the ponies I'd met did the same. Apparently having the wings, the horn, and being the size of a normal pony was pretty unusual and on top of that I was still looking mighty windswept, to put it gently. Maybe some of the locals thought I was secretly the alicorn deity of clumsiness and awkward interjections in disguise. Just maybe... Maybe their minds practically crashed when they saw ':~$' on me. The conductor squirmed about for a moment, like he was deciding whether or not he should let me on the train. I mean, he spent an unusually long time inspecting the ticket, but eventually he sighed, punched a hole in it, and said "This way. Watch your step." When my turn came, I faceplanted over the gap into the train car anyway.

Music: http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=KuYixP1IzEU

Ponies are a mixed bag... I thought from the cartoon that they'd all be super in-your-face and cheery, but the truth was that some of them were really sweet, and some maintained a very normal sense of public distance. An older yellow earth pony with an unflattering green mane said "Oh, poor dear..." and helped me up while she got my tail out of the doorway. I laughed nervously... and then I just felt awkward. The train car was almost completely full. There was nowhere to slip away and be alone.

"Come on!" I thought to myself. "Query's adorable... and, and confident! She's a true leader, and knows how to cut through the fluff. She doesn't care what others think. She... I..." I probably didn't realize that I was just standing still right in the middle of the aisle. "...but maybe I'm not a character that can be summed up in a sentence. Maybe life's not black and white. Maybe Query's not who I am... I don't even know why I'm running. Is running from this all some sort of weird metaphor for my life?"

"Baww! What am I so worried about?" I asked aloud as I turned to see the traffic jam of perturbed equines that I'd bunched up in the doorway. I walked briskly across the car until I came to the first open spot near the back. I slipped into a seat next to another grey pony, oddly enough. She didn't make eye contact.

"OK, that was the last call!" the conductor shouted, as he closed the doors on our car.

*chug* *pause* *chug* *pause* *chug* *pause* *chug* *pause* The train began to just barely, barely move. "I'm doing it!" I thought to myself. "I'm really getting away!" Oh but of course it was too good to be true. From outside the train I heard a voice bellow "In the name of Celestia! STOP THE TRAINS! I command you to STOP! THE! TRAINS!"

"Humph! Well we cahn't just stop the trains, they've already built up too much momentum." the conductor shouted out the window in his nasal voice.

The voice of Flynn continued to bellow outside on the platforms. "Alright, you two! Hop that first train! Go, go! You, second train! You, third! You, fourth! Niles and I will take this one!" They were long trains, and our car was already outside of the platform area itself. I still was able to hear a great deal of clamoring outside and I sunk in my chair.

*chug* *chug* *pause* *chug* *chug* *pause* The train picked up speed. I sighed and plonked my head back on the bench, peering over at the grey mare beside me. She just gave a very brief passing glance. I cleared my throat... she gave the daintiest little *ahem* I'd ever heard. Finally, I sat up and looked over.

"So... who might you be?" I asked, trying to sound friendly.

"Oh..." the grey mare said very softly "Uh, Octavia. Pleasure." She had dark grey hair and a purple G clef for a cutie mark.

"Octavia?!? Now there's a name I'm sure I've heard of!" I said excitedly.

"Oh..." she said, blushing "Surely not. You must be thinking of somepony else." ...and she started paying way too much attention to the newspaper page she had been cradling in her lap.

"Then you wouldn't just happen to be a renowned cellist, or anything of the sort?" I asked. (Come on, it was Octavia. I took some weird pleasure in having the upper hand in a conversation finally.)

"Uh, renowned? I'm not quite sure if I'd use the word."

"That's because you're more modest than I would be..."

Octavia actually giggled. "Oh my, so you are an appreciator of the arts, then?"

"Very much so!"

I must have missed a leaf from earlier, because as I leaned over one fell right off the top of my head and planted itself on Octavia's foreleg.

*chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* The train was going quite fast at this point. I could see trees flying by out the window.

"Uhh..." I said. "When I'm not appreciating the arts, I'm coming up with new ways to appreciate nature? They often involve sliding down a cliff on my head. Well, I take it back. That's more of a recent development."

Octavia actually busted out giggling in a still somehow reserved sort of way, but my fun was quickly halted by a white head peeking out the door at the end of the car.

"Check both front carts now! We can't afford not to be thorough." a familiar, dutiful voice said.

"Al'roight, al'roight... sheesh... I'm checkin' em!" Niles replied. He stepped right between the carts and started to meander about. The portly pegasus was unmistakable with his tiny wings and proud, gilded, red-brushed helmet.

"Hey, can I check that out?" I asked Octavia, pointing to the newspaper she had been clutching.

"Why, certainly." She said flatly. I fanned out the newspaper, sinking low in my chair (and pretending I was able to read the Equestrian alphabet). My heart pounded in my chest as Niles stood inches away. He craned his neck this way and that. I wanted to jump for joy at how lucky I was to get the bumbling, incompetent guard, of all ponies.

"What's the matter? They're not looking for you?" Octavia whispered.

"Shhhhhh!" was my response.

"Oh my."

"I don't want to talk about it." I said through gritted teeth. Niles did eventually make it in and out of the front cars.

"Well, I suppose I'll just mind my own business, then." Octavia said, sheepishly.

"It's nothing, really." I said. "...a relatively major misunderstanding. I'll take care of it when I reach my destination." Octavia seemed to relax again.

So, the raging, giddy fan in me was on cloud nine when it came to talking to Octavia... even if she did think I was a mysterious vagabond or something. Hours passed, and I never passed up the peanut cart as it made its way up and down the train. At about the two-hour mark, the attendant pushing the cart was actively trying to avoid me.

"Fo... *smack* I beff youf wondering how fomepony likeph me can eat like phis and ftay so fhin..." I said, through a mouth filled with an entire bag of peanuts, which I did finish chewing eventually. "The answer, most reserved one, is mortal terror. A little mortal terror every day is enough to keep you ready for a magazine cover."

It's funny how she stopped being shy around me... almost like she was used to my personality profile.

Time passed.

"So... one time she came home at the dreadful hour of 3AM... completely deaf after one of her concerts." Octavia began.

"Wait... Is this going to be another one about Vinyl?" I asked.

"None other!" she exclaimed.

Time passed. Evening was approaching. Ha, nighttime in Equestria. It was odd to see the sun wavering and jerking below the horizon as if someone was pulling it by a string (a sinister magical string). Even the other ponies seemed surprised by it. I was really exhausted and eventually both myself and Octavia must have passed out on the train. I had a considerably greater number of peanut wrappers on my side of the bench than she did. My dreams were of a mysterious world full of pink and brown primates who tended to worry too much and produce brilliant animation.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I felt a hard rapping on my shoulder.

"Mmph!" was all I said, stirring a bit.

The rapping came again. I opened my eyes to see a blurry image of Octavia.

"OK, girl... I'm not your cello, sheesh..." I mumbled. However, Octavia appeared to still be sound asleep. I sat up on the bench to come face-to-face with Niles.

"GOT'CHA!" he exclaimed.

"Waaaaaaaaah!" was all that came out of me. It was slightly girlier than I would have liked. He put his forelegs around me and tried to grab me, but thankfully horses tend to be pretty bad at restraining other horses, or maybe guard-duty just wasn't his thing, because I was able to scramble up and over the back of the bench I had been sitting on. I tried to run for the back of the car, but I careened headfirst into Flynn as he opened the door.

"Yeeeooooooow!" he screeched, as the part of me that transferred all my momentum to him was the tip of my horn.

"Heh, oops!"

"GRRRRR! Why, you little..."

I ran the other way and slid right under Niles. Most of the occupants of the train had woken up by now and were in quite a startled state. As I motioned to leap across the gap to the next car, I got stuck like someone who wasn't completely in tune with the operation of their own legs. My front half was in the next car, but my backend was dangling precariously on the hitch joining them. My hooves were drooping dangerously close to the track. Thankfully, a bit of scrambling did get me back up. I tried with all my might to remove the pin joining the cars, but it didn't budge. Before Flynn and Niles were on top of me, I pulled off the same daring maneuver and wound up in the engine. Again, the pin joining the cars was stuck fast. Also, the engineer wasn't happy with me but he was far too distracted with letting off steam from an engine he'd accidentally dumped a bit too much coal into. Ha... his cutie mark was a lump of coal, too! There was no time for silliness, though! Remember what I said earlier about 'daredevilism'? Well, there was nowhere to go, and the next thing I found myself doing was trying to force myself out the window of the engine.

"I should have a window cutie mark after all this!" I shouted. I was starting to hobble out onto the front of the engine, and Flynn was right behind me! He was seething and climbing fearlessly onto the exterior of the engine.

"Don't do it, Flynn!" Niles cried. "Yuh gonna' get 'urt!"

"Quiet, you coward!" he shouted. "Either get out here and help me or keep your mouth shut!"

"But how do you know she's not just trying to banish 'erself? Save us the trouble?!?!?"

"I doubt that's the case!"

Niles peeked his head out the right side of the engine.

"Come on, crazy grey lady... please tell 'im you're jus' banishing yerself?"

"I AM BANISHING MYSELF!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

"WARRRRGH!" Flynn bellowed as he lunged at me. I climbed up onto the roof of the engine. He followed.

"You can't run forever!" he said.

"I'm doing pretty good, though!" I said, as I jumped to the first train car. I ducked at the last moment as a heavy bough from a nearby tree grazed the top of my mane. Flynn spun around and dodged it. Then, I jumped to the second car. He was never very far behind me.

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but you're beginning to strike me as just crazy enough to fling yourself through a roof at some royalty!" he bellowed.

"I know... I know it all looks very bad, but I'm really a lovable sort of crazy once you get to know me! The whole princess-murdering thing was a terrible misunderstanding." I replied, making it to the third car. We were about to reach a bridge over a deep ravine with water at the bottom. There were arches up ahead. I just had to keep Flynn looking at me long enough.

"You go recklessly running from the law, charging through crowds, hopping trains, and... and THIS?!?!? ...and you expect me to believe you?" he asked, incredulously.

"It's a bit of a stretch..." I admitted. "...but so is my luck tonight!"

"Huh?" was all Flynn had time to get out.

*CRACK* "Waaaaaahhahauuuuugh! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" One of the short stone arches over the bridge hit Flynn squarely in the legs and sent him careening through the air. He caught on the side of the next car briefly before falling helplessly towards the water below. I just barely managed to dodge the arches, myself.

"F...FLYNN?!?? FLYYYYYYYYYYYNN???" Niles bellowed hysterically. He suddenly flipped onto the front of the engine himself and began to scale the train with startling prowess. "What did you do to Flynn?!??" *SPLASH*

I heard Flynn make contact with the water and start shouting some words at me I wasn't even aware that ponies knew.

Niles took one look at me and started blubbering. "I'M COMMIN' FOR YA BUDDEH!" he bellowed, as he tossed himself off the train and sailed on his stubby wings.

"What are you doing?!?!? Go back there and get her!!!!" Flynn cried, growing distant already. The train was moving quite fast.

"NO! *sniff* I'm not leavin' yew 'ere!" was all I could make out before they were both out of range. I knelt down on the top of the train and breathed a sigh of relief. I think I spent close to an hour up there, unsure of what to do. Eventually though, dawn was approaching and I was just a bit too cold to last much longer. I didn't have to think about how to get down, though, because in my dazed state I managed to miss another branch as we entered a wooded area.

*SMACK* "Oof!" I guess I kinda deserved that. The impact sent me into the crack between the rooves of two cars. My legs felt numb and I was unable to hold on. It wasn't long before I was sliding down the wall and onto the hitch joining them. "Just... gotta get back inside..." I thought to myself.

Oh, I should have known that karma would catch up to me sooner or later. Somepony opened the door to the front car at just that moment. It hit me squarely in the face and I lost my balance.

Everything happened so fast. There was an incredible noise! ...and then, well, there was just me lying on my back on a train track. I leaned up just long enough to make sure that all of me was still there, and it was. I collapsed back onto the track and stared into the morning sky, motionless.

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I'm not really sure how long I laid there, but it was quite some time. I couldn't help but feel like I'd had enough of being Bruce Willis in pony-form. I mean, I felt like some sort of cute terminator but it wasn't really on my list to see just how many death-defying stunts I could last for! I was pretty sore when I did manage to stand up and get a good look at my surroundings.

Music: http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=1iXzi9KpdKQ

Fields.

I suppose it's time to mention a couple of things about myself if I haven't made them clear already. One: I've never had even a reasonable sense of direction, and the pony global positioning system is still a few years off. Two: I've never had even a reasonable sense of direction, and th... Three: My short-term memory once belonged to a sand dune or something. I'm what you'd call 'charmingly absent minded' if you wanted to be nice. I remember a LOT of things, but I wouldn't make a good air-traffic controller.

So... fields. Yes, Equestria turned out to be a lot bigger than I'd ever imagined. I was looking out over a wide landscape of subtle hills and meadows with a dense wall of trees far in the distance. It was becoming very bright out, and the birds and wildlife were loud, but distant. I had positively no idea as to where I should have been going. For all I knew, I WAS banishing myself. In retrospect, anyone with even the slightest clue would have followed the train tracks, but I didn't. I meandered lazily right out into the open, flattening the untouched grass as I went.

Up until this point, I hadn't been anywhere without ponies. I just walked for hours, never coming across any signs of life. I picked a direction, then I changed it a few times, and then I wound up headed for the trees which were still very far away. I hardly made any progress on that first day and I found myself watching the weird sunset while sprawled out on my back at the top of a hill. The meadow-grass was crunchy, and I couldn't help but feel like it needed some ketchup, or maybe some mustard, mayonnaise, pickle juice, and cream cheese.

"I beff all the ofer ponies fink in groff..." I mumbled through a slightly dirty mouthful of meadow-grass. There were no water sources anywhere. It worried me. What did I think I was I doing?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nothing much happened on day two. I found a horseshoe, oddly enough. It was about five sizes too big for me and covered in rust. I carried it for a while before getting annoyed. Day two. Sunset. More grass. Rinse. Repeat. Hmm... the fur on my back was looking pretty awful. It had acted as my braking mechanism I supposed, when I fell off the train.

Day three came along, and I was beginning to get legitimately worried. I'd seen nothing of interest along my trek, I was getting dangerously weak and lost, and I'd started humming 'been through the desert on a horse with no name' to myself.

"...it felt good to be out of the rain..."

So then it started raining midday. What a relief, to be honest. I would have killed at this point for the implied 'bathtub in ponyville'. I quietly wondered if I'd become an enemy of the state by then. If I did make it to 'civilization', would my giant-eyed grey mug be posted on every lamp post? Would the law-enforcement know my name? Could I explain myself to a pony police officer without busting out laughing?

The answer was: Definitely not. I don't know what really constitutes an 'element of harmony', but mine would have been laughing at my own demise. My own demise, by the way? What happened to me back home?!?!? I mean, I remembered waking up in the hospital, but... I wondered if they just found something comical like two smouldering boots at work where I'd touched the energized X-ray tube-array.

I had gotten so caught up in my own private deliberation that I barely had time to notice the wall of trees closing in on me. I finally looked up to see that it had gotten very dark and the rain had slowed. The trees were tall and gnarly and old-looking. I walked on... It was loud in the forest, just a cacophony of critters. There were all sorts of chirps and hoots and snarls coming from everywhere. I think I was actually beginning to miss Flynn and Niles. I decided that if I ever met them under non-running-for-my-life circumstances, I'd apologize for dragging them through all this. With every step into the forest it got a little darker, and I got a little sweatier, like a nervous prey animal. "Pshaw! I am a fearless predator of leaves and grass. This lush greenery should be trembling with fear!" I told myself.

"Oh, hi there mister leaf! I'm feeling generous, so I'll give you a five-second head start." *CHOMP* "Too slow..." Finally, I came across what I had really been hoping for: a stream. Hm... it was more like a tiny, tiny brook, but it was water. I quietly hoped that if this world allowed flying, talking ponies to make liquid rainbows in big vats in the sky, that just maybe it would be kind enough not to have parasites.

When I put my head down to have a drink, however, I was in for a start. After a minute or two, something touched my leg.

"Yaaaaaaah!" I shouted, whirling around only to come face to face with the most adorable thing (actually, there are several most adorable things in Equestria). A little grey, big-eyed sphere was buzzing inches from my muzzle. I uncontrollably clamped it in my hooves.

"D'awwwwwww! I get it! Para-'sprites'. Very funny, world!" I said aloud as I melted. It was exactly the same color as me, too. "You need a stupid computer-themed name to go with mine... hrmm... 'Quote' it is?" The little grey sphere made a sort of trilling noise and nestled in my mane. "Watch it, buddy..." I said. "You're pushing me dangerously close to a cuteness hangover! You won't like me when I get desperate."

Oh... and guess what happened next?

*ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!* A deep, throaty noise poured from the bushes. Birds flew everywhere even though they had begun to roost for the evening. I blinked.

*ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!!!!!* issued from the darkness, even louder than before. Yellow eyes appeared. I was actually... angry?

"Come on! No way!?!? COME! ON!?!?!? You've got to be kidding me? Why?!?! This. Is. UNREAL!!!!" I shouted furiously as I started to gallop. The little grey creature in my mane, I kid you not, actually shot me a nervous look. I guess where there are parasprites, there are manticores. If it's not clear, one was chasing me.

"Uhh... got any paw-thorns I can help with?" I shouted.

*RAAAAAAAWGH!*

"No? I'm pretty good at math. Need a tutor?"

*REOOOOOORGH!* It drew closer.

"Well, a lot of people are intimidated by the subject, but it's nothing to be ashamed of. I'll ask again later when you decide to calm down! I taste like dirt and peanuts, by the way!"

I was not in any shape to outrun the manticore, and probably did start screaming at the top of my lungs. As I ran and ran, the trees began to thin out up ahead. I nearly caught a break, but then, tree root. I had the wind knocked out of me, sliding on my back through the dirt, with hundreds of pounds of lion-ey thing in hot pursuit.

Finally, I did something very un-Query. In a state of complete terror and exhaustion, and in an act that would haunt me for months to come, I gave up. I just laid there, limp. Quote was actually making a sort of mewling sound and pulling my hair desperately. I sobbed.

"I... *sniff* ...hope you have a nut allergy!" I squeaked, hysterically. Oh yeah. Those were epic last words. I meant it!

I heard an exasperated shout (not from me), felt a hard blow, and everything went dark.

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Very far away, a group of exquisitely black, sinewy, perforated hooves made their way across an adorned marble floor.

"How many so far?" asked an unmistakable female voice.

"Six today, your highness." replied a nervous male voice.

"Not good enough! I want them in their places faster, loyal... servant..." hissed Chrysalis.

"But a thousand pardons! We're doing all we can..."

"How DARE you? I'll be the one to tell you what you can do."

The tall, male changeling cowered, silent.

"...and if you really can't? Ahaha!" she sighed. "Well... you'll find out."

The evil queen stepped her way out onto a balcony with her iridescent, blue-green, moth-eaten mane whipping madly. She leaned against the railing, wearing an expression of sinister glee. She cackled.

"You see..." Chrysalis began. "...I am EVER so clever. I hardly even need YOU anymore. This time... this plan is going to be..."

"...perfect?" the male changeling injected. She shot him a stare that could have killed.

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Music: http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=XIb6RoxF5tg

Honestly, I think that cartoon logic may have taken over completely. I hadn't stopped yet at this point to think that the event which sent me hurtling toward Equestria in the first place was infinitely more unlikely than all my recent close-calls combined. Anyway, it's easy to imagine at this point that I was very surprised to be opening my eyes.

"Mmph..." I groaned. I shuffled a bit under the... covers? My eyes creaked open to reveal a bright, blurry room. Why did I have to be a pony with corrective glasses? I tried to sit up, but a yellow hoof planted itself softly on my shoulder.

"Oh, thank goodness you're awake!" said a soft voice. "I can't imagine what got that crabby manticore so upset... are you alright?"

The voice was like velvet.

"Well... if that's... Fluttershy I'm speaking to, then you know what?" I rasped.

"Oh, it is. Do I know you?"

"You don't, and I'm OK. Got my specs?" They were quickly plonked on my face. A yellow visage just inches from mine made a 'squee' expression.

"Oh... OK. I think I'm going to throw up." I groaned.

"I'll get a bucket. Are you ill?" Fluttershy asked, very concerned.

"No... everything. It's just that everything is too cute for me." I sighed.

I got a good look around the room. It seemed like I was in the middle of someone's dream-treehouse. There were little cages and suspended walkways everywhere... and lots of small animals. A tiny blue bird was in a enclosure just inches from my bed, staring intently. It was very bright out, and morning already. Fluttershy put a cloth on my head.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Well.." I began, right before Quote decided to pop out of his hiding place in my mane. A gasp came from the demure little pony.

"Oh! Oh no... Oh my! Oh dear!" she gasped, as she began to run back and forth frantically.

I looked at Quote. He shrugged at me with his little beady eyes.

The Worst Pegacorn of All-Time

An Existential Nightmare in Equestria

Chapter 4: The Worst Pegacorn of All-Time

Music: http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=2ZfiyMKWPYs

My head was still spinning as I laid immobile, trying desperately to regain coherence, and it wasn't long before Fluttershy became still enough to look me right in the eye. Just a few waking days as a pony had been all I needed to dig into an impressive web of intrigue, and as I peered into the startled visage of the subtle mare, I found myself hoping that my wanted poster wasn't already affixed to the outside of her tree-house (or something equally congruent with my recent luck). I paused for a time as if trying to decide what to say, but ultimately my efforts proved unnecessary.

"Paraspriiiiiiiite!" shouted Fluttershy. She was whirling into a panic, but it was really about the most comical falsetto shout I'd ever heard. I squinted rather appraisingly at Quote.

"Uhh... that's Quote. He's with me." I said with an unsure smile.

"...but you brought a parasprite out of the forest!?!" she squeaked.

"Well, technically speaking. I didn't really plan it, I mean... I was running for my life, and, er, manticore, and..." I forced a chuckle.

"Oh, but he's so cute! ...and you named him? Is he yours? Oh, but this is still bad. I shouldn't... Keep it together, Fluttershy!" she said, nervously hopping from one hoof to another.

"Relax..." I mumbled, trying to sound nice. I was still mildly disoriented. "I found him, like, five seconds before being attacked." I stopped.

Fluttershy blinked.

"OK, I know what you're thinking, but you can actually name something really fast if it's just the right moment. He showed up. He blinked at me. I was in a creative mood. Why is this such a big deal?"

Fluttershy squeaked.

"Ohhh!" I exclaimed in a moment of epiphany. "...you're worried that he might eat everything and become a plague that engulfs the town! That is bad!"

"Yes, it would be so dangerous if he stayed, but... buh..." Fluttershy said meekly. She began to well up with tears.

"What? Don't cry! I can probably just put him back! It'll be fine." I reassured. Being in the presence of a crying Fluttershy manifested a welling anxiety not unlike that of being stuck with someone else's unstable child.

"But if he's your p-pet, I can't ask you to abandon him! It's just too-*sniff*"

"It's fine, he probably wants to go back to his natural habitat anyway, right?" I asked. Quote frowned and vigorously shook back and forth. I had the time to mouth 'Come on!' at him before Fluttershy finally had it and broke into sobbing.

"Ugh!" I grunted. I tried desperately not to get frustrated. "Did you or did you not save me from a 400-pound lion-beast-thing yesterday?"

Fluttershy calmed down for a moment. "Well, sort of, but this is different!"

"You bet it is! This should be much easier to deal with..."

"Buh-"

"Oh for Pete's sake... let's just go put him back, already!"

I tried to turn myself over in bed and realized how extraordinarily sore I was from the run-in with said manticore. I resolved to call the condition a near-death hangover, and then slowly made my front hooves flop over the side. Thankfully, the bed was low to the ground and I was able to lazily slip out of it. If I hadn't known any better I'd have thought I weighed about 1000 pounds that morning. At least my four-legged posture was beginning to lose its novelty oddness.

"Oh my... you don't look so-" Fluttershy began, as I wavered a bit.

"Let's go!" I sighed. Quote zipped onto the end of my horn as I trudged across the wooden cottage floor, intentionally nudging Fluttershy in the direction of the door. She reluctantly followed me in silence.

"Just..." I heaved. "Stay behind me and be on the lookout for anything that looks like it belongs to a lion, OK?"

Fluttershy sighed and said "OK". We began on a short walk, first beyond the threshold of her freakishly-cute cottage home. Clusters of small animals met her at every turn which, although in-character, was pretty strange to behold. Then we pushed forth past a slightly rickety but brightly painted fence and toward a misty outcropping of trees. It was true that the Everfree forest actually appeared to be quite a refreshing, bustling slice of nature in the daytime (when I wasn't terrified). Deep undergrowth and the noises of many insects reminded me of some of my favorite hiking spots back on Earth. I didn't really enjoy the trip, though. It felt odd having a wimped-out Fluttershy trailing behind me and an emphatic parasprite in my hair. There's also the perfectly valid point that I was feeling battered and bruised and exhausted.

Oh, I should mention that it also felt odd being stuck in the body of a female pony, more so one that I had (presumably literally) only drawn into existence a few weeks prior. I was pretty sure that I hadn't really changed on the inside. I mean, I'd bet that even Chuck Norris would shed one or two nuclear mantears if he were filly-fied completely at random. Or... who was I kidding? Chuck wouldn't draw himself with frilly wings and tiny, cute horse-glasses in the first place. In a stupid 'quantum accident' sort of way I'd practically been begging for it, and I had to at least face the possibility that I just was a big weirdo who could cope with the idea of being his own cartoon character.

In earnest, I hadn't really had the chance to experiment with what it was like to be a pony, anyway, at least not from within normal circumstances. I'd been constantly knocked out and on the run since my inexplicable accident. In all my interactions so far, other ponies had seen me as and expected me to behave like a slightly-offish grey pegacorn, and the part of me that had always wanted to know what it would be like to be something else couldn't help but oblige them. Perhaps that was a weakness of mine, acting as both a defense mechanism and a bizarre personality quirk. Still, confessions and panic would have to wait.

"Ah, home!" I exclaimed when I saw the familiar small brook from the past evening. Before pausing to wonder how I'd stumbled across it given my previously divulged total and complete ineptitude for navigation, I happily realized it was the very same place where I'd found Quote just several hours prior. Fluttershy looked on worriedly as I flicked the little grey sphere from my mane only to have him flit about erratically and plant it somewhere else on my head.

"Come on, you're making this difficult!" I insisted. Quote stared at me with round, totally black, sad eyes. Before I knew it I was spinning about in circles and vainly swatting at him. I finally clamped him between my hooves again.

"Don't you have a parasprite family or something that misses you!?!" I asked. Quote shook vigorously.

"Don't you miss this place?" (I received a repeat performance.)

"Uh... wanna play hide and seek? I'll seek!" I spouted, unconvincingly. Quote blinked. I tried stepping back but he kept exactly the same distance from me at all times.

"Awwwwwww..." Fluttershy sniffled. "He must really, really like you."

"No. No he doesn't!" I snapped at thin air. "If he really liked me, he'd go back to whatever he was doing yesterday afternoon and leave me be. I'm a walking disaster, and heck, I feel like I've been straight through Tartarus this week, and I don't need the pressure of carrying a town-devouring insect everywhere I go!"

Quote let out a low lamenting chirp and reluctantly turned about. I sighed knowing that I had won, but a pang of guilt for the tiny creature still stuck.

"Uh, well it's nothing personal you know..." I coughed, and there was a lengthy pause.

----------------------------------------------

Fluttershy looked better as we walked together out of the forest. Several minutes passed before it was she who broke the silence.

"Um, if you don't mind me asking, what was your name again?" she asked.

"I guess I never told you. It's, uh, Query." I said dolefully.

"Are you OK, Query?" she asked. The question was so terribly, sugary sweet coming from her. I kept my eyes on the hoof-prints appearing behind my front legs.

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure? I can usually tell when somepony is-"

"Absolutely fine!"

"Oh... umm, OK. Well, you look like you might cr-"

"Nope! You're seeing things." *sniff*

Somewhere inside my head I was screaming: "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I had totally freaked out and bawled when I first became aware of my pony-predicament. Sure, understandable. Banishment and fugitive status were a bit unsettling and tough to cope with. Heck, I was still pretty terrified by the notion that the entire royal guard was probably scouring the countryside for signs of me. OK, I'd cut myself some slack there, but I just could not believe that I was in such a state that tearing up in front of someone after telling-off a bug had become an option. Fluttershy kept to herself after that as we gingerly approached the entrance to the forest again.

"We could go back and check on him." Fluttershy added, somehow even more quietly.

"Nah." I said bluntly.

"Maybe later?"

A few things happened out of nowhere and in quick succession. First, I shook my head. Then, I heard a distinct *fzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz* approaching me from the distance. Finally, I felt something softly pelt me in the back of the head. Fluttershy and I both plunked down on our haunches just meters from the forest gate near her back yard. I had time to squeak out 'really?!?' before she and I were just leaning against each other and sniffling.

In between snirks, I managed to ask: "Why does being a pony have to be so hard???"

Fluttershy, in the same manner, responded forlornly: "I. Don't. Know."

Then with almost comical timing, we both snapped out of it at once and looked straight at Quote...

"Uhh, Fluttershy?"

"Yes?"

"What do we do now?!?!"

"I don't know!!!!"

A short period of panicked scampering followed until we both wound up in an accidental yellow and grey head-butt. (It must have hurt to be the non-pegacorn.)

"Wait!" Fluttershy exclaimed.

"Yeah?"

"Why didn't I think of it before?! We should go see my friend Twilight before this gets all out-of-hoof! I'm sure she'll know what to do. We should hurry!"

She wasted no time in galloping through the gate, and I have to be honest: my mood did a complete 180 the very instant I realized that I was going to personally knock on Twilight Sparkle's door. I did my best to shove aside the puzzling mixture of humiliation and fanboy-squee-explosion that was jostling about my head after having literally cried on Fluttershy. I felt a weird serenity knowing that at least she was as nice as I'd hoped. For the first time since my arrival, Equestria hadn't outright disappointed me.

So there I was: a scraped, dirty, emotional mess with twigs in my hair and an almost maniacal smile plastered across my face, the knowledge that I would very soon meet Twilight herself bouncing against my insides. Quote still clung to my hair and I really couldn't make out his expression. For an unusually smart-seeming little creature, well, he was still just a bug, right? It was a very bright, misty morning and I was assaulted with a dewy smell that seemed to emanate from everywhere. I guess Fluttershy really did live on the edge of town, because as we made our way down the stony path in front of her cottage I saw nothing but trees for a while.

"It's not much farther!" Fluttershy huffed from in front of me. It was mildly embarrassing to realize that she could easily outrun me and needed to keep stepping back. I wondered how I'd managed to beat all those guards from before. (Heavy armor?) She was right, though, as I soon noticed a few pastel-colored rooves peeking above the rapidly thinning wall of trees, and then we broke free onto the crest of a hill and I stopped in my tracks.

Ponyville.

Imagine some hopeless Star Trek fan actually meeting Leonard Nimoy in person... no, that's too plausible, I suppose. Imagine that same dude being picked up in a Ferrari belonging to Leonard Nimoy and then promptly being beamed onto the bridge of the actual U.S.S Enterprise where an attractive green woman waits to present him with a solid-gold Bat'leth. There we go.

I was looking at Ponyville. It was bigger than I had imagined and sported several dozen similarly-themed buildings which were architected in a style I could only label as 'effeminate-rustic'. There were ponies dotted about with adorable hats and baskets and whatnot. A long line of stalls and makeshift shops lined a few of the paths I could see at the center of town. The ponies were walking slowly and deliberately to go about their business in the morning mist, and the whole place seemed to exude an atmosphere of peace. I couldn't help but feel like something was off, though. The very air carried a vibe of 'relief'. Relief from what? From whom? I considered the possibility that maybe I was just paranoid and thinking to myself. Then again, I-

"Query? Yoo-hoo?"

I was still distant.

"QUERYYYYYYY!" Fluttershy screamed as she energetically waved a hoof in front of my face. I started, flipping over onto my back with wings outstretched. Quote began yanking my mane in the direction of the town as if he had become tired of waiting.

"Oh, oh no! Are you OK?" Fluttershy asked, peering over me. She had resumed her ultra-demure status.

A drawn-out sigh escaped from me.

"I'm so sorry I yelled at you. It's just, I was trying to get your attention for ten minutes but you just kept staring at the town with your mouth open and I was worried and-"

"OK, OK, I'm fine-" I started. "It's called slack-jawed delight and I'm sure it happens to every, er, pony from time to time..."

Fluttershy paused for a bit too long and flatly said "y---yes."

"You're not buying that, are you?"

"Well, it's just... you really don't look well and I probably should have kept you in bed..."

"Nah..." I said, twisting onto my feet. "Let's just take care of my little parasprite problem with this 'Twilight' lady first, and then I'll just pass out unwelcome on her couch or something." What followed was an agonizingly slow trot into town. It was punctuated by an endless defensive banter back-and-forth with my new caring, yellow friend. I was dizzy and had little opportunity to appreciate the tall, colorful buildings and gawking ponies of various ages as we approached our destination.

"She lives in that big tree up ahead. It's our town library." Fluttershy spoke. "Twilight knows more about magic than anypony else in Ponyville, and she's such a super-good friend. I'm sure she'll know what to do!"

"Pff... I knew that..." I chucked absent-mindedly.

"You.... did?"

"Oh, uh, no. I mean, you just told me."

Fluttershy blinked.

The fact that I was injured and dizzy didn't stop a childish spark of energy from welling within me as I bolted for the door of the colossal tree with its many windows and high balcony. I reared up and started rapping on the door with my right hoof. It was perhaps a bit more obnoxious and loud than I would have planned.

"Twilight Sparkle!!!! Twilight Sparkle, Twilight Sparkle, Twilight Sparkle!" I shouted at the door, bouncing slightly. There was a clanging sound from inside the library, then a crash as if something made of glass had met its end. A few seconds later the door handle was engulfed in a purplish glow and it swung open, leaving me waving my hoof in the air like a moron.

The voice of Twilight sighed loudly. "I'm really sorry, but the library is closed today. Would you mind coming back tomorrow?"

I was staring directly down my blunt muzzle at the mug of Twilight Sparkle, but it was not what I had been expecting. She was hunched over with baggy, creased eyelids and a mane frayed out in every direction. She was her distinct purple self, but also bloodshot and twitchy. She looked nearly as bad as I did. My clockwork masterpiece of a mind screamed into motion, allowing only the most astounding and eloquent first impression to percolate its way up from the froth of my consciousness.

".......hi." I squeaked, with a tone not unlike that of a mouse. The door of the tree-library gently smacked me in the face. After a moment of looking about, Fluttershy nudged me out of the way and began speaking to the door.

"Twilight, I'm really sorry to bother you, but..." She began. A long pause followed. "Are you still there? Twilight?"

"Fluttershy?" the door responded, as it swung open again with a series of hollow metal sounds.

"Can we come in?" Fluttershy asked.

"Sure, I guess so..." was the dejected response.

Fluttershy and I made our way past the threshold and into the rather rustic interior of the tree. It smelled just like an antique home to me and things were a little darker than they should have been. It seemed Twilight had neglected to open most of the blinds on the first floor.

"Twilight, is something wrong?" Fluttershy asked, scooting up to her long-time friend. I wanted to smack a hoof against my head and say: "Well, clearly!"

"Are you kidding?!?" Twilight screeched in exasperation. "What could possibly be wrong?!? It's not like we just got over weeks of uninterrupted nighttime. I mean, I know I sure haven't been awake since last month waiting for some sort of letter from a certain mentor that still, by the way, hasn't even shown up!" Her voice cracked hysterically right at the end.

Fluttershy squeaked and Twilight pointed her head downward.

"Look... I'm sorry, Fluttershy. I just haven't been this worried in a while. I mean, it's daytime again, but... Anyway, what did you need?"

"Actually, Fluttershy brought me here because of a little 'predicament'..." I interjected.

"...and who are you? I don't think I've seen you around Ponyville before." Twilight asked. She seemed mildly more composed, but eyed me up and down, nevertheless. I think she may have blinked a few times at the ridiculous cutie-mark. It dawned on me that probably no pony had ever gotten to choose their own cutie mark, so naturally I had cosmically blundered the design of my own. I was already beginning to wish that I'd put something insipid there, like a flower, which no filly nor colt would have bothered to wonder about.

"T-T-Twilight?" I sputtered.

"No, I'm Twilight. Who are you?"

"No, I mean... you're really Twilight Sparkle?!?"

She actually chuckled at the sheer silliness of my star-struck inquiry and said: "Well, I'm nopony else." Then, motioning her hoof in the air, she added: "And you are?"

I hugged her.

...and for slightly too long, I suppose, because she slid me back with a hoof whilst chuckling uncomfortably.

"Uhh... sorry. I'm Query." I managed, probably turning tomato-red under all my fur at the realization I'd evolved the tact of a six-year-old. Twilight brushed a bit of the dirt I was covered in from her left foreleg.

"Oh, that's OK. You look like you've been having a rough day." Twilight said with a forced chuckle.

"I guess can't argue there. I'm here because of this extraordinarily emotional, clingy, color-coordinated parasprite that I can't seem to get rid of. It feels like a really bad idea to just carry him around complacently." A thrashing of my mane sent Quote out into the room.

"...and he really likes Query! Just look at his little face... there must be some way she can keep him." Fluttershy added.

"Oh no... not these again!" Twilight sighed. "OK, so I get it now: You're new here so you asked around and of course anypony would recommend Fluttershy for help with animals. That must have been how you two met!"

"Sort of... actually, last night I almost got mauled near her back yard and she essentially karate-kicked a manticore and dragged my unconscious body indoors." I admitted.

"Oh..." There was silence. "Wow... are you OK?" Twilight's ears perked up.

"I guess so. I'm still a bit dizzy."

Twilight displayed a friendly smile. "Well, at least you'll be happy to hear that after a nasty parasprite incident that occurred right here in Ponyville a few years ago, I took the liberty of reading up on them... aaaaaaand I have just the perfect book to help you out!" Looking more and more pleased, the split-ended Twilight began walking about the room, magically upsetting various shelves around the inner circumference of the library. I think she was happy just to be distracted from herself, and this gave me an opportunity to get a better look at my surroundings. I'd have to admit that the library was slightly narrower inside than my imagination would have predicted, but most of the shelves, on different levels, continued dizzyingly high up the trunk of the tree. There were a few small staircases with landings, and I saw a number of doors to rooms that I hadn't been privy to from watching the cartoon back on Earth. However, I resisted the urge to further creep-out Twilight by snooping around her house immediately after introducing myself. That didn't really help me though, because I promptly failed to think about what I was saying.

"I wonder where Spike is..." I mumbled. I peered about nervously, unsure if it might have been ill-advisable to accidentally speak out of (however pointless) otherworldly clairvoyance.

Twilight turned to Fluttershy and myself and said "My, you and Fluttershy must have been chatting up a storm! He's still asleep in the observatory. I don't have it in me to wake him since I still feel bad about keeping him up last night with my pacing..." Twilight returned to her search and Fluttershy glanced at me with an odd look. I fidgeted about and tried to tell if I could hear any snoring coming from up above.

Moments later, a victorious cry came from Twilight. "A-ha! This is the spell you're after. It renders parasprites harmless without vanishing them or producing any even remotely orange-related side effects! It's super simple, too! I wish I'd found it a long time ago." A mildewy, green book whooshed over to me and hovered in front of my face, practically in assault. I was able to make out the title on the cover, again in that weird Equestrian script: "Perennial Pests, Plus Perfunctory Pedestrian Countermeasures" The Equestrian alphabet seemed to have a phobia for curves and I was still painfully slow at recognizing the letters. I decided to remove my glasses and rub them on the barrel of my chest, making them only smudgier in the process.

"So... just cast that on him and you'll be all set." Twilight added.

I think I audibly gulped as a few drops of sweat made their journey across my forehead. Apparently the book of magic sported a lot of fine print, and the center of the page was overwhelmed by an odd-looking circular diagram. It was like an ornate ring with stacks of a few different symbols arranged neatly in separate regions. I gathered that I was essentially staring at some sort of 'magical equation' or something. The first thing that came to mind was: "Well, Twilight, I don't think I can do this because I'm an otherworldly being in a pony suit with no understanding of magic whatsoever." Of course, I couldn't say that. What would Twilight have said if I just blurted it, though? I feared that, like with everything, she would try to involve me with the Princess. Twilight's default reaction: write a letter. It's obvious why I wouldn't have wanted that to happen. It's also obvious that as a fugitive from the Princess, hanging around with Twilight Sparkle was probably the dumbest thing I could have possibly been doing at the time.

"Oh, and be advised to use caution if you'll be carrying him around Ponyville, since, well, some of us still have nightmares." Twilight added to her statement again, chuckling, but with an expectant grin.

"You can do that spell, right?" Fluttershy asked, innocently.

"Of course she can." Twilight retorted. "I haven't known too many pegacorns, but most of the books I've read say that they're born with innate magical abilities on par with even relatively gifted unicorns... at the very least in a particular realm of magic, that is." I looked at the two, desperately wanting to know why Twilight had even asked me in the first place. Suddenly, it dawned on me as I understood the gleam in Twilight's eyes: "She's an egghead, and she wants to study some pegacorn magic... crap." In retrospect, I'm sure there were at least a dozen clever ways out of that situation, but sadly (or otherwise) I just went on acting like myself.

"Oh, yeah... no problem. I, uhh, just need to stretch first." I coughed. As I leaned forward in an attempt to steel myself for what may have been an epic exercise in bullshittery, I heard Twilight mumble 'stretch first' under her breath as she scribbled on a piece of parchment. "OK, Query..." I thought to myself as I figuratively searched around the interior of my head for a genuine pegacorn with a clue. "No dice... just cobwebs, equations, and pop-culture trivia... I have no idea what I'm doing, as per usual." With nowhere to run, I bent over Quote and concentrated with all my might.

I think the next thirty seconds sounded something like "HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG! GRRRRRRRRRR! *gasp*" during which time Twilight Sparkle opened and closed her mouth more than once with little sound. Finally, in a pitiful display, a single green spark shot, no, lazily fluttered from the tip of my horn and made its way to the ground. I collapsed on the rug from exhaustion.

"Uh, girls?" I began muffledly, without lifting my head from the floor. "I think my recent series of head trauma events may be catching up with me."

It was a lame save and I thought I was done for! I just waited there for the inquisition to begin. From the mouth of Twilight Sparkle herself, a non-magical pegacorn just wouldn't have made any sense in Equestria. Needless to say, I was quite surprised by the reaction that followed from a frazzled purple pony with rapidly-shrinking pupils.

"Oh, my Celestia!" Twilight shouted very quickly and with concern. "I----I'm so sorry, Query! You looked terribly weak from the moment you came in here. I shouldn't have ever asked you to do that..." Before I could really say anything, a purple-glow-engulfed bench was traveling across the room on its own as Fluttershy and Twilight flipped and/or hoisted me upon it.

"If I can just make it up to you... you really should rest here for a while." Twilight added as a slightly itchy quilt was tossed over me.

After some time, Fluttershy and Twilight were on the far side of the room with teacups. I was surprised to be aware that I really was becoming drowsy. I dozed on and off whilst catching bits of conversation.

"Oh Fluttershy, now I really feel terrible! Can anything else possibly go wrong?" Twilight asked. “Oh Twilight, if you only knew the truth!” I thought. My stomach was more than a bit turned by the reality of my guilt. I couldn’t bear that the whole ‘weeks of darkness’ thing which had just caused untold hardship for Equestria, not to mention my hero Twilight, was secretly all my fault (although not purposefully so).

"It's OK, Twilight. Query's really tough! You should have seen her pull me back into the forest right after she woke up! She was so afraid of what she'd done by taking on Quote as a hitchhiker."

"What?!?"

"It's like she didn't even know that the manticores would be twice as grumpy during the daytime..."

"Uh, Fluttershy, speaking of that... what was she doing before the attack? Did you find out why she was in the forest or where she came from?"

I quickly slammed my huge eyes shut and made snoring noises in avoidance.

"Well, not exactly..." Fluttershy replied.

Suddenly though, my concentration was shattered as I heard another familiar voice, preceded by a long, drawn-out yawn.

"Whoa, Twilight, what's all the excitement about?" a tiny purple dragon asked groggily as he pattered down one of the staircases across the room.

"SPIKE!!!" I shouted ecstatically, bolting upright from my 'slumber'. There was a moment where I just awkwardly stared at all three small-talking Ponyville residents as they did the same from across the room, before I silently retreated behind the backboard of the bench once more.

"Who's that?" Spike asked, looking at Twilight.

"No one." I coughed. There was a short silence.

"-pony!" I added. "I mean, nopony. Pretend I'm not trying to sleep in your foyer!"

Twilight laughed an exhausted laugh. "I'll introduce you to Query later, Spike. Maybe we should all go upstairs and chat..." I gathered that Twilight had deciphered my less-than-subtle hint.

"Actually, that's OK, Twilight." Fluttershy responded. "I just remembered I left some carrots simmering on the stove, and Angel always burns them if I leave him alone for too long... I'll come back and see you later, OK?"

Twilight reassured Fluttershy and sent her on her way. "That bunny sure is a character. I wish I'd looked for him instead of bolting out of the cottage." I thought to myself. On second thought, I wondered if it was really necessary to drive myself nuts with meeting everyone. I supposed that meeting people, er, ponies, which I'd only known to be cartoon characters before was like cocaine for me. Anyway, it wasn't long before I heard Spike and Twilight making their way up the stairs.

"Geez, Twilight..." Spike began. "It looks like you could use a nap, too. Did you even sleep last night?"

"Well, I... suppose I could..." she replied. "-but what are you going to do?"

"The same." Spike replied confidently, followed by another drawn-out yawn.

"Spike, you're unbelievable..." Twilight said with a warm smile. Then, they both disappeared with the gentle 'thunk' of another wooden-framed door.

"How am I going to get out of this mess?" I wondered, as my head met the semi-soft cushion of the bench. "Talking to all these ponies is fun, but I know last week's whole 'trial' thing might catch up to me sooner or later." My inner monologue was short-lived, as it stuttered and blurred with my fading consciousness. I was so tired that I could no longer worry myself awake. A thrashing slumber took hold.

------------------------------------------------------

I was in an eerily familiar place. Cap? Check. Gown? Check. Inexplicable sweating? That too.

"And it is with great pleasure that I welcome our valedictorian to the stand, on behalf of all these fine students and staff, to deliver his speech. May we see a bright light in both the past and the future!" A voice boomed out over a crackly speaker system.

"Not this again!?!" I thought. "How many times do I have to relive this song-and-dance?"

I was reminded that I was in a dream and resistance was therefore futile, because I quickly found myself before a crowd of thousands with no idea how I'd gotten there. My knuckles were white against the rickety on-stage podium and I was given no choice but to unfold my familiar speech. I began to read my favorite poem aloud:

"Here's to The Crazy Ones. The misfits. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes---"

"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed an agitated clump of people in the front row. "READ IT AGAIN!" I knew this wasn't how the dream usually went...

I picked up the page from the podium and scanned across the line for a second time: "The round pegacorns in the-"

"Now that's just stupid!" I yelled aloud, my voice cracking. "What are you getting at?" I shouted in a higher tone. My voice?!?!?

The crowd of thousands roared and churned with raucous laughter as I realized I was balancing the poem on grey hooves. A horn upset my cap and large grey wings 'fwomped' through the back of my gown. I let out a shriek, a girly shriek, and stuffed myself under the podium as groups of onlookers began to shout rude phrases at me. I teared up with humiliation as I hid from sight, that was, until the podium just wasn't there. Dreams can be strange that way.

Then my old High School gym teacher, Mr. Loven, jumped up onto the stage. I hated that guy. "I always did call you a lady when you missed out on the basketball team!" he snarked. This only garnered even more intense eruptions of laughter. "What's your name, Creampuff?"

"I'M STILL ME!" I shrieked unintimidatingly as I welled up with rage.

"I think you need a name, my little pony!" he cackled. "Perhaps the crowd would like to decide?"

"QUERY, QUERY!" chanted the crowd.

"That's right, everyone: the man you once looked up to is gone and has been replaced by this pathetic creature… of his own imagination, I might add!" The noise was unbearable!

"NOOOOOO!" I shrieked at everything and nothing. "HOW COULD YOU EVEN HAVE THE SLIGHTEST CLUE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE YOURSELVES?!?! LIVING JUST TO CONFORM TO WHAT OTHER PEOPLE EXPECT ISN'T LIVING AT ALL! STOP LAUGHING!" I spoke the last words with all the commanding energy of a twinkie.

Suddenly I was dizzy and stepping back as a thick fog enveloped everything.

"...and you've solved your problem by becoming that?" came an unidentifiable, seething voice.

"I'm not really a pony!" I shouted.

"That's right, you're not even good enough to be a pony!"

"What? No, not like that! Then I am a pony! I AM A PONY!"

"If you insist..."

"Huh?"

I felt something touch me on the back and whirled around to see that it was a hoof clad in a golden shoe. Celestia smirked with the most awful 'gotcha' smile and whispered "guilty".

"I'M NOT A PONY!" I cried desperately. I shook hysterically until everything faded to white.

------------------------------------------------------

"-NOT A PON-" escaped my lips as I bolted upright from my accursed slumber, dripping with sweat. "Great... I get to have transformation-induced nightmares now. Keep it together!" I thought to myself. "It was just a dream. I mean, I keep expecting the whole pony thing to wind up just as a dream, but..."

"Ohhhhh..." I groaned aloud. "C'est la vie, or something." I suppose a chuckle escaped me. "Since when is life like this?" I silently wondered whether or not there were other accidental ponies out there in the multiverse... an interesting and suddenly not-so-unbelievable possibility. I didn't want to drive myself crazy with that train of thought, though, figuring it would only end in Heartbreak.

"Are you OK?" asked a familiar voice. I hadn't yet seen that Spike was standing only feet away and fell startled off the bed with a "Waaaah!".

"..........elaborate." I coughed.

Spike gave an uneasy laugh. "You're Query, right? Twilight didn't say much about why you're here. She's still sleeping upstairs, by the way..." I supposed that statement was a hint to keep it down. He must have really been worried about Twilight.

"Yeah, I'm..." I paused. That dream had knocked the wind out of me (or I had). I shortly considered that maybe pretending to be something I wasn't was fast losing its fun and I half wanted to spill the beans to Spike. Still, my mouth formed the sounds: "Query."

"So you're not a pony, huh?" he asked. My brain stopped.

"How did you-bu-what?" I gasped.

"Relax! It sounded like you were having nightmares down here. You were pretty loud, actually. When I have nightmares, not that it happens very often, mind you, Twilight always says it helps to talk about them. That, and I wanted to see if you were doing all right..."

I yawned, slumping onto my haunches. False alarm. "Everypony does keep asking me that same question... and I don't want to talk about my dreams. They're stupid."

"Well, no offense, but you don't exactly look all right... That could have something to do with it."

"Huh?"

Spike reached over and pulled a twig out of my tail. He leaned back and started picking his teeth with it. To be honest, I was nearly angered by the cuteness, but indeed, I was still fairly gross-looking.

"Careful, even I don't know where that's been." I snorted. "You're right, maybe a pony bath is in order. You don't think Twilight would mind, do you?" A flick of my tail sent an errant leaf wafting into the kitchen as Spike embarrassedly dropped the twig. I immediately began to like him.

"Uh, no. Make yourself at home!" he chimed. I paced over to the far side of the room and eyed a door. They were stupidly similar to doors made for humans, in all honesty. At least a wide pad to engage the door latch combined with a relatively low handle-height made them usable in pony form.

"That's the storage closet. You'll wanna go upstairs." Spike added. I managed a 'thanks' and trudged my way over to them. The stairs were made of lightly-colored wood and far too narrow, but to forgo another discussion about ponies and stairs, it's acceptable to merely state that they aided me in reaching a higher landing. *creeeeak*

Twilight Sparkle's bathroom was painted in the worst shade of purple.

"I'll just take a bath with my eyes closed..." I thought to myself. At least I was pleasantly surprised by hoof-operable lights and a very clearly identifiable human bathtub and sink. Even the toilet and fixtures were exactly as per normal on Earth. I resisted the temptation to rage "WHYYYYYYYY?" with the perfectly agreeable excuse that it was just going to cause a snowball effect. Why was I now a talking horse? Why did a baby dragon just give me directions to the loo? Why was the universe so cruel that I'd been forced to come so far and not see a single pair of emergency edible boots? Those thoughts were pushed aside as I started filling the tub. I poured in a... damn... yes, a whole bottle of soap. I probably needed it, anyway. Soooooory, Twilight! I met the tub with an unceremonious plunge, the thought that I just may have been forgetting something pulling at my mane.

A dripping quote rocketed from one of the tufts of my mane and emitted a series of very pissed chirrups. I guessed he was cursing me in parasprite. He flitted angrily past the door and I suppose I started and laughed and hiccupped a few times in quick succession. My tiny glasses weren't damaged and they buffed out nicely as I leaned back in the tub. Then, all four hooves rose in the air a bit comically, almost as if in salute. "I can't decide if this is the coolest or the most awful thing that's ever happened to me..." I thought. I remembered how I'd felt during the dream and was unable to confirm whether being a girly horse was humiliating or not. I'd never identified as a 'tough guy' or acted particularly 'manly' before my incident of sorts. I always assumed that people who had to be masculine in all interactions were just insecure. As far back as I could remember I had always watched horror movies and mixed martial arts and ponies every weekend. Something had always told me that gender should have been a secondary characteristic in terms of identity-building, plus pony society appeared to be more than a little bit feminist-leaning at times, which worked out but perhaps did irk me slightly.

The morbid thought crossed my mind that at least I wouldn't have to worry about stallions once they tossed me in the insinuated dungeon in Zebra-land, or wherever Celestia wanted to send me. Like a big anxiety-stone weighing down my mind, the thought that I would most-likely be caught sooner or later hung in the air. Maybe if I told the truth she'd have me sent to an insane asylum instead... That was enough, though. I knew it couldn't help to dwell on those thoughts. If I had to be a pony, I'd at least squeeze some short-sighted fun out of it before luck caught up to me. If I'd been asked months prior what I thought I'd be doing at present, I probably would not have responded: 'Why, covering myself in Twilight Sparkle's shampoo, or course!' It smelled nice but I couldn't really figure out what it was. "It's magic-scented shampoo!" I thought, and I went with it.

Once all was said and done, brushing wasn't really an issue. Query's hair loved to snap back into the jagged pattern I'd originally envisioned it in with minimal prodding. Despite nervously rubbernecking to see if anyone was watching, I decided against touching Twilight's perfume. Well, maybe just a tiny bit... A proudly sparkling new Query descended the stairs to meet... Spike and Twilight in the kitchen? How long had I been in there?!? From the look of the light shining in through the windows (which were un-blinded again) it appeared to be late-afternoon.

"Hey Query, you look great!" Twilight chimed. She was more awake now and had fixed her mane, but still wasn't completely composed. I knew of her penchant for going totally off-the-handle when things went wrong. If messing with the Princess was a big deal for Ponyville/Equestria as a whole, then it was an even bigger deal for Twilight, and again I felt nauseated realizing that she'd probably loathe me if she ever knew the truth.

*sniff* "Is that my perfume?" Twilight asked.

"Uhh......"

She laughed. "I didn't think anypony else would like that. I bought it a year ago but Rarity just kept telling me how awful it was..." A tiny Query inside my mind was shaking her head.

"Oh..." Twilight added. "I fixed up Quote for you just now. He's 100% non-volatile. Just remember what I said before... and, Query?"

"Yes?"

"Well, sorry again for this morning."

"Aww, it's fine. You had no way of knowing I was a frau-f-fraaaaaaught with-you know-tired. You looked pretty shot, too! That sort of thing could happen to anypony." I still puked in my mouth a bit each time I said 'anypony'.

Twilight chuckled uncomfortably and asked "So, what exactly were you doing in the Everfree forest when Fluttershy found you? She seemed preoccupied and didn't really talk much about it."

"Uhh..." I stalled. "I... had a minor incident..."

Twilight gave a suspecting look. I was already beginning to miss Fluttershy, who had simply shied away from my evasive answers. "What sort of incident?"

"I may have fallen off some kind of train or train-like vehicle..."

Twilight gasped. "That's terrible!!!! Weren't you traveling with anypony? Why didn't they stop the train?"

"I was alone, and, well, nopony saw me."

"Where are you from, anyway?" Twilight asked.

"DAMMIT!" I thought. I didn't know if there existed an Equestrian analog for New England and I couldn't mention I had been in Canterlot. In typical Query-fashion, I tossed all my chips on the table. "Uhh, I was headed here for a vacation from my home in, uh, Eastern Neigh England!"

"Oh, that is far away!" Twilight said with a scrupulous look. "If I'm remembering correctly, my friend Rarity knows a few ponies from that region. Do you... have a place to stay for the night?" I wiped the sweat from my brow.

"I was, uh, just going to stay... in a hotel when I got here! Haven't you ever heard of just 'winging it' on vacation?" I flapped my wings a few times and gave a stupid grin.

"I have..." Twilight responded. She made a face that said: "Eww, no checklists?"

Twilight stared for a moment and added "You know there aren't any hotels in Ponyville, right? I think there's a bed-and-breakfast four or five streets over, though. Do you feel like going for a walk? It's probably only 25 bits per night or something."

I pawed at the floor. "Uhh, Twilight?"

*sigh* "Yes, Query?" I could tell she was becoming more and more agitated by my evasiveness.

"Let's just say, hypothetically, what if I were completely broke in the wake of said train-related incident?" I received an 'are you kidding me?' look.

"Why would you go on vacation to a random, tiny town? Do you even know anypony who lives here?"

"...................yes."

"They would be....?"

"Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy."

Twilight face-hoofed as I began to worry about the grave I was digging. As much as I adored Twilight and wanted to spend every free moment I had left drinking tea in her kitchen, I didn't think I could fool her for long. I was a terrible liar and she was fast becoming highly interrogative, so I reluctantly made a decision.

"Look, I'm sorry, Twilight." I began. "Thanks for the help. I'm just gonna get out of here..." Twilight blankly stared as I slowly made my way to the front door and experienced great difficulty in unlocking it. I thought about shouting "You might wanna pick up some soap tomorrow!" but I refrained from doing so. I stepped out and sniffed the lukewarm air with the door closing briskly behind me. Funnily enough, I thought twilight (the time of day, that is) was fast approaching. "What now?" I wondered as my stomach growled its dissent. As I coiled up to bolt down the road and get away from it all (possibly including further emasculation via pony-tears) Quote decided to yank my mane with surprising strength.

"Owwwww!" I yelled. "What now?" He just wouldn't stop tugging. I was frustrated, but eventually he pestered me back in the direction of... one of Twilight's window boxes? Mmmmm, they were filled with exceptionally strong-scented yellow flowers. I may have drooled slightly.

"Eww, no, Quote. I still have some dignity!" I whispered through gritted teeth. He just kept tugging on me and rolling his eyes. I looked at him and then back to the flowers. Without thinking (and in surrender) I scoffed up a big clump of them in one bite. They were, well, mushy and horrible. I decided I didn't really like flowers but hunger permitted me to swallow. The sensation of consuming them was probably on par with snorting the contents of a tea-bag.

"Thanks Quote, I feel great now." I whispered sarcastically. "Maybe Twilight will hear me out here and come smack me with a broom or something." The reality of technically being a homeless pony was not looking attractive. Yikes though, Quote was still pulling at my hair?!?

"What's your problem?!?" I whispered. He had only time to roll his eyes again before I heard muffled sounds from the other side of the window. I ducked low.

"Well I liked her... she was funny." Spike said.

"...I know, Spike... It's just... something is clearly wrong with that pony and I just don't have the nerves to deal with it! I can't believe a word she says." Twilight replied.

"I won't exactly argue... but I don't feel so good about watching her leave that way... we all go through tough times, don't we?"

"Spike..."

"Twiliiiiiight..."

Twilight sighed. "Maybe you're right, Spike. I haven't quite been feeling myself lately, and Query could sure use a dose of harmony..." I quickly scuffled out into the road as I heard hoofsteps echoing from inside the building, and then the door to the library swung open again. Twilight's head popped out.

"Query???" she shouted, looking in every direction. "I hope you're not gone yet!" She didn't have to say it twice as I ran up to the door with a smile. I was pathetic! All Twilight had to do was utter my name to make me instantly reconsider a rational decision.

"Query..." she began. ” I, well, you'll have to excuse me for not having been myself today. You're welcome to spend the night with Spike and I if you'd like to."

"Uhh... yeah! Definitely!" I squeed as I slid through the door. Quote slipped through in my wake at just the last moment before it closed like he was some sort of secret-agent parasprite. This time, Spike came right up to greet me before I made my way farther inside and sat down. Oh, and there's one of the things I liked about ponies right there: Haunches were like having a built-in chair that worked anywhere. That's something I felt every human was missing out on for not having tried at least once.

"You just make yourself at home and I'll put something simple together for dinner." Twilight said, calmly. "I have some really nice flowers growing in this planter that I pull out on special occasions! Hmm..." Twilight used her magic to effortlessly open the window and pull the box of yellow flowers inside.

"Huh?" she said with surprise. "I could have sworn there were more yesterday... Ah well..." I made a classic pony scrunchy-face and resisted laughing at myself. I was clearly not a genuine, harmonious Ponyville resident.

The next few hours of my evening were actually quite refreshing as Spike lead me to an upstairs room where I patiently watched him rifle through objects under a bed. He unclasped a box of gems given to him by Rarity and produced various other keepsakes he'd accumulated during his years with Twilight. The little guy sure could tell a story, too. He spoke like someone much older than he appeared to be, and I can't say it didn't strike me as a little bit eerie. He was so proud of the tiny little collection that I couldn't bring myself to joke about dragons being 'hoarders' by nature. I did, however, choose to stroke myself with some good, old-fashioned razzing.

"Uh, not to pry dude, but..." I began.

"Yeah?"

"Well, I couldn't help but notice that 80% of that stuff was somehow related to this 'Rarity' character."

"Oh... you noticed that, huh...?"

"It was more than a little obvious."

The tiny dragon blushed bright red and dug a claw into the hardwood floor.

"Well..." he said. He stopped for a while to think of what to say. "I can tell you about it, but you have to promise not to tell anypony, ever. Got it?"

"Relax, kid. My lips are sealed!"

"Do you Pinkie promise?" he asked sneakily. "...oh, and a Pinkie promise is, uhh... you have to... cupcake... well, it's pretty silly, actually, but it's a promise nopony dares to break."

"OK, OK, I Pinkie promise." I laughed.

"Well then, here goes..." Spike spoke barely audibly and with extreme speed. "IhaveacrushonRarity."

"It was pretty obvious!" I blurted.

"Wha... that obvious?!?"

"Your eyes were practically heart-shaped the whole time you were talking about her..."

Spike looked mortified, but I couldn't help but burst into a massive smile. I thought that perhaps what I'd done should have counted as an achievement. I mean, there should have been a brony trophy or at least a certificate for making Spike spill the beans. Anything for me to hang up on the mantle in my dungeon cell would do. Spike began pawing the ground more and more nervously.

"Well... if it's so obvious..." he began. “Well, what do you think?"

"Hmm?"

"I mean, you're a mare, Query... and so you know what they're like... so... well... do you think I'd even have a chance?" he asked, nearly muted. I couldn't believe that Spike had done it. He couldn't have! He'd somehow taken the one fun moment I'd had all afternoon and made me squirm under my skin. I suppose that as a defense mechanism I just kept forgetting what I looked like, and Spike's comment made me suddenly, brutally aware of what I was. I couldn't help but shift from side to side, nervously.

"Well, this conversation's been fun... I'm not really the authority on mares, so-" I began as I started to get up from my sitting stance.

"Come on, Query! You seem older than Twilight, and you must at least have an opinion? I can never talk to anypony about it. I'm just too embarrassed in front of Twilight's friends."

I burst into laughter. "Wow... I'm no lady, but you really don't know anything about mares!"

"Huh?"

"Well Query, you old horse, do you think I even have a chance?" I said in my very best Spike impression.

"Wait, that's not-"

"I know, Spike." I was tearing up at this point. "Look, I'm sure that if Rarity has even a tiny sense of humor she must adore you already. Don't worry about it!"

"But..." he asked. "Even though I'm a dragon...?"

"You're more fun to talk to than half the ponies I know. Dragons are great!" I added. "Yeah, half the ponies I know... one, two, three, four, five... well, not a lot" I thought to myself. At least I was able to do one good deed for the day. Spike beamed.

It wasn't long before Twilight called to us and we ate dinner as a group of three. The purple equine refrained from asking me further revealing questions, presumably only as a courtesy, and the flowers were really good when properly stripped and cooked and tossed with other greens. I mean, for a pony, that was. I figured I'd give myself a week before I'd start crying at the mere thought of a cheeseburger. Oh, bacon, my love! Anyway, I couldn't bear to linger on the subject. It wasn't long before Twilight and Spike decided to retreat to bed, leaving me alone with the bench I had napped on during the day.

Sleep didn't come, though. I upset the blanket in every possible orientation as the towers of books surrounding me waited silently and leered. With an exasperated sigh, I finally resorted to pacing about in the open. The question of how I'd even arrived in Equestria was still driving me completely mad. "Let's suppose there's a rational explanation for this, phony man-gone-mare..." I thought to myself. "I studied physics in college. How do you get to another universe in theory? Of course: A wormhole, perhaps?" It didn't make any sense, though. I had stared down the end of an experimental X-ray device... how the hell could that have created an unintended wormhole effect? I figured that producing any sort of observable wormhole effect for real would probably be the stuff of ten-mile-long particle accelerators and super high-energy collisions. Well, and then they'd probably be a nanometer long and microscopic and last for a femtosecond... "But... but suspend your disbelief and suppose if it were possible... Maybe the X-ray equipment hadn't necessarily caused the whole ordeal on its own."

I found myself absentmindedly pacing into another room of the library. Without thinking, I hit the lights and scanned around the study. To be honest, Twilight had quite a cozy little place to work, but for a normally organized unicorn there were certainly a lot of cluttered notes strewn about. She must have been working fervently on something before I dropped in. I sighed as I scanned the shelves, since the titles of most of the books didn't really thrill me:

"Practical Potions Purported to be Perfectly Potable"

"The Life and Times of Starswirl the Bearded"

"A Complete Unicorns' Guide to the Amniomorphic Spell"

What's this small book, I wondered as I squinted. "Fifty Shades of Hay?" I lifted my hoof for a moment, but then dropped it again, deciding I really didn't care to know. A few moments later my curiosity got the better of me as I tore it open. I chuckled out loud to learn that it was a detailed guide on grading and identifying various species of hay. “Enough, more books!” I thought.

"Silver Hammer's History of Equestrian Woodcarving"

"Supernaturals: Natural Remedies and Cure-Alls that are Simply Super" I knew that one!

"Advanced Topics in Calculus by Fetlock, Wintermane, et al." Bingo! I knew Twilight was a smart one, but I was really surprised to see a calculus book resting on her desk. "There might be something useful here after all!" I thought to myself. Perusal of a dusty corner shelf finally did yield the ultimate pony-science jackpot: "A Complete Deconstruction of Einstable's Theories of General and Special Relativity with Applied Field Equations" My wings shot upright and refused to go back down. (I wasn't really sure why.) Not wishing to disrespect Twilight, I moved some objects off the desk as gently as I could manage. After stuffing myself into a chair, I read for hours.

...and what I read didn't really wow me so much. Most of the material was familiar... until... no way... the cosmological constant! Cosmologists often used a ratio to quantify the rate of expansion of the universe back home. It was not what I expected: Equestria was in a more quickly expanding universe than the one I had originated from! As if I’d been shot in the head by inspiration itself, I stretched out a huge length of parchment on the table. A roll of masking tape served to secure a writing quill to my hoof as I mumbled to myself and drew a crude diagram showing the geometric (not topological) bridging of two points via an Einstein-Rosen bridge. (I refused to say Einstable, like, ever.) "Here's the format for a traversable wormhole metric... I've got field equations for Equestria in this book, and I remember my old magic number of 0.73 from back home where I paid attention in college... So, this is cool... I need a metric that can handle different universal laws on one end of the bridge... It's like, a system of field equations... fascinating... cool... hmm..."

I desperately wished I was smart enough to redefine some of the fundamental assumptions of cosmology overnight, but alas I wound up with a ten-foot-long roll of partial solutions and diagrams and even more questions. If I'd known my fate earlier in life, I would have devoted myself to learning everything about physics. I wondered if somewhere in Equestria there would be a Stephen Hawking pony I could talk to.

I was totally lost in thought, so naturally a however gentle shout of "Hey, Query!" sent me right out of my skin.

"Spike?" I asked.

"Somepony sure is up late..." he replied. "You can't sleep either, huh? I'm usually really great at sleeping, but I think I overdid it this afternoon. I thought it would all be future-Spike's problem..." Spike laughed.

"Well, yeah... I suppose I got real fidgety in bed... I-" I began.

"Whoa!!!" Spike interjected as he looked down upon the desk. "What are you working on? I had no idea you were an egghead like Twilight!" He scooted onto the chair right next to me.

"It's... late-night physics. Sometimes you jus-hey-what do you mean by having 'no idea'? I don't seem that smart to you?"

"No, no, it's not like that... I-" Spike began. I put a tiny black dot on his nose with my quill. "Heeeeey!" He retaliated by flicking the pen back in my direction. I decided to stop before we both wound up making a complete mess of Twilight’s study.

"I'm trying to find a traversable wormhole metric for two dissimilar parallel universes. Just, you know, a hobby of mine."

"Query... you don't get out much, do you?"

"Nope."

"But... but this is great! I bet you and Twilight actually have loads in common. I'm starting to get a feel for what that crazy cutie mark means!"

"I don't know, Spike. We probably have less in common than you'd think."

"What do you mean?"

"I... Spike..." I began. I shifted uncomfortably in the chair.

"Yeah, Query?"

"Well... will you promise never to tell anypony?" I asked.

"Uh, sure!"

"Will you Pinkie promise?"

"Cross my heart, hope to fly!" he said, robotically.

"Well..." I whispered. "sort of... it's..."

"Spit it out!"

"I-can't-do-any-magic-at-all" I blurted. Spike's jaw dropped straight to the floor.

"...but aren't you a pegacorn?"

"I'm not just a pegacorn, Spike, I'm the worst ever!" I curled up in a ball, wishing I could have headed back in time to tell myself to make an all-powerful, dungeon-proof, alicorn OC and put him on a t-shirt.

"Nahhh! That's OK, Query!" he said. "You're still great! ...and I bet Twilight would love to talk to you about science! ...and I won't ever, ever tell her if you don't want me to."

"Well... thanks, Spike. You're a good friend." I said. Our conversation descended into the mundane before he finally started to get groggy and bade me good-night. I tried to stay up and brainstorm further, but my gargantuan eyelids became heavier and heavier. Before I knew it I had passed out on the desk, only slightly covered in ink. At least I was blessed in my sleep with a great deal of nothing. No terrible nightmares haunted me. It was almost dreamless... Morning silently approached without my awareness.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I was grabbed from my restful state by the voice of Twilight Sparkle expectantly asking: "Query? Where have you gone?" I woke up in time to see the pile of paper and books strewn about in front of me and panicked. Quill? Back in the inkwell. The masking tape left my hoof with little stress, though it tasted bitter. I frantically rolled up my heap of parchment at the last moment and stuffed it with a pile of like scrolls in a crack between tables.

"Oh... there you are..." Twilight said as she burst into the room.

"Yeah, I guess I fell asleep last night while I was reading..." I replied. (For once, my speech wasn’t tap-dancing about her suspicious gaze.)

The last statement actually put a little gleam in her eyes. "Well, I hope you had fun, then!"

"Hiding in a library all night was, like, a silly ch-foalhood dream of mine!" I said.

"Well, come out here and get some OJ with breakfast." Twilight said, smiling. "...and, uh, I was thinking perhaps we should do something together this morning, you know, before you're on your way! I mean, only if you want to, of course."

"A friendly outing with you?" I squeed. "Of course I want to do that!"

Twilight smiled as I followed her out of the study. I wondered what she must have thought of my constant, unpredictable switching between ecstatic and evasive/doleful.

On the round kitchen table, a sandwich, mixed greens, and a tall glass of orange juice awaited me. I must admit that it was actually a very attractive breakfast for a pony. Bits of fruit and salad that I had enjoyed as a human (but hadn't found particularly filling) now left me content and relaxed. I smiled and watched Spike eat a bowl of cereal with emeralds as I barbarically scoffed the respectable meal. It could have been a normal-paced meal, but it wasn't. It was a standoff. Before I knew it I was steeling myself and staring menacingly into two green-rimmed, slitted pupils as their owner did the same to me. It was on. I practically punched half a sandwich into my mouth with a hoof as Spike opened his wide to force a whole stack of gems in. We were nearly tied as I threw my head back to chug a whole glass of orange juice and Spike lapped the last few drops of milk from the bowl. Sighing followed. I had only known him for a day, but Spike had already become the baby-faced little brother that I loved to tease.

"Well, just eww, Query!" Twilight said disgustedly. "Your manners are almost as bad as Spike's!"

"You sound just like my mother, Twilight." I quipped. "Now did you see who won or not?"

I sort of 'high-hoofed' the baby dragon from across the table as we both began to cackle. Twilight only stared and crinkled her nose, but as she turned around I couldn't help but hear a muffled snork that couldn't have been mine or Spike's. The startling thought crossed my mind that perhaps I was becoming even less-serious than before. Had I forgotten my life-situation? Did I no longer care?

Once breakfast was over and done with, Twilight lead me out into the street, refusing to reveal our destination. A barrage of prodding from me made her divulge that she had already planned to meet Rarity that morning, but no further details could be gleaned. We passed shops, houses, bakeries, and public sites of all sizes! I was a bit giddy at the opportunity to meet more of the mane six, and so my mind raced with all the possibilities as I bounced down the road next to Twilight. "Could it be? Are we going to make cider with Applejack, or maybe watch Rainbow Dash clear out all the clouds over Ponyville? What if Twilight has a magic show on her schedule, or Fluttershy needs an audience for her animal choir? Ooh, oooooh! I hope it's a picnic with Pinkie Pie! That would be amazing. Maybe she'll-"

"We're heeere!" Twilight sang as she shuffled me in through a glass door.

I stood inside the foyer of the Ponyville spa as one of the tiny Queries in my head raged with flailing wings and hissed "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-". Rarity was already seated in the back of the spa with dozens of curlers rolled up in her flawless, purple mane. My legs began to seize and resist Twilight's gesturing for an open chair as I was mentally traveling back to the hospital spa somewhere deep inside my mind. I could handle looking like Query, but this... this was crossing the girl-line.

"Ohhhhh, uhhhhhh... Well, I mean, this has been real nice, Twilight... you're a super friend and all... There's this, thing, I just remembered I'm supposed to be doing, and... I'm late, so... see ya. Thanks again! I'll call you!" I spouted sleazily, and coughed. My front hooves pushed the bar on the glass door to the spa as I stepped outside briskly, leaving an agape Twilight in my wake. The particular region of Ponyville I was standing in turned out to be surprisingly busy in the daytime as I worked my head left and right in survey of nearby shops and destinations. As I reared to bolt off in a non-spaward direction, however, something odd in the corner of one eye demanded full attention. My pony heart stopped for a brief moment.

I recognized the red-brush-topped helmet sliding between pony-heads amongst the bustling crowd, almost like a shark in a pool full of skittles. There had to be, without a doubt, a royal guard attached to the other end of it. I nearly kicked down the door of the spa with my change of plans. Once inside, I launched at the empty chair between Twilight and Rarity with the exact sound-effect of a bullet in a western saloon.

"I'm sorry!" I began. "I'm so absentminded! My appointment is scheduled for next week!" I was talking through a huge smile and with all the sincerity of a pony trying to sell a bridge.

"Uhh, well... OK..." Twilight said dumbfounded. "Rarity? This is Query. She stayed with me last night following the Everfree forest incident I was just starting to explain to you..."

"I'm a pegacorn!" received the trophy for the dumbest thing I'd ever said as I shook Rarity's hoof. My brain had stopped working as I put on an unbelievable, overly-chipper act out of sheer terror. My heart pounded in my chest as I felt the end of the line approaching. Several minutes passed while I listened to Twilight explaining what little she knew of my predicament, and Rarity 'ooh-ed' and 'aah-ed' and gasped in her usual dramatic manner, but I deceitfully claimed to be just fine. It wasn't long before Lotus Blossom and Aloe showed up, and I was finding it difficult to determine whether I'd rather face them or Celestia, herself. The spa ponies won by a narrow margin, and only because they had some of the most adorable accents I'd ever heard.

Twilight didn't talk much, as if it was her usual behavior to merely go along for the ride when at the spa. I, well, suspected otherwise. Unsurprisingly, Rarity broke the silence.

“Why hello, girls! Why don’t you two start us off with a few hooficures as per usual?” Rarity asked soothingly.

Aloe and her associate simply nodded and they both scoured nearby drawers, returning with identical, fine files in their teeth. As they moved to approach Rarity, she spoke up.

“Ah, ah, ah! Now Query, here, is a guest with us in Ponyville and I just wouldn’t feel right if she didn’t go first! Would you be so kind?” Rarity spoke, drawing another silent pair of nods from the super-frilly spa ponies.

“Query, darling…” Rarity turned to me. “I’m simply positive you’ll find these two can provide the most luxurious hooficure you’ve ever experienced in your life!”

I didn’t even know what to say anymore. A cracked smile was ever plastered across my face. “Just. Great.” I said quietly and without moving my jaw. With nowhere to run, I resolved to close my eyes and let the horror pass. The only thing I could feel was the gentle *schwing* of the files against my hooves, all four of which were immediately grabbed by the two spa workers. I felt as if I was being strung up like a chicken.

“My, my, miss Query…” Aloe said as I kept my eyes sealed. “You are far too tense! Fret not, for you are in capable hooves.”

“It is not every day we are given such an exotic pony to work on.” Lotus Blossom added. “You will not leave here as anything but beautiful and refreshed!”

I groaned pathetically.

“Relax, Query! What’s gotten into you? You’re worse than my friend Rainbow Dash!” Twilight whispered.

I went into a manliness coma as they ground my hooves into flawless shape whilst scolding me the entire time for being so rough on them. I squirmed as they insisted upon treating and curling my perfectly jagged Query-mane. I pleaded with both Twilight and Rarity as they insisted I’d look great with some purple polish on my hooves, and failed to escape the grip of what was (for them) only lighthearted teasing. For the first time in my life I ha-oh… never mind. I had worn mascara before. I have no desire to tell that story… There was also blush, and eyelash-curling, and me blushing, and-uuuuugh!

All in all, the traumatic experience left me a hollowed-out shell of the Query I once was (I was being dramatic). I only rocked back-and-forth in my chair as the other two mares received their own treatments and wouldn’t shut up about how great they felt. The thought that I was massively missing the appeal of everything bounced around in my head but didn’t stick anywhere. I was technically in-hiding and oh-so-close to being caught, but then, well, then… as much as I hated to admit it, things got pretty awesome.

More specifically: “Ho-o-o-f mass-a-a-ges are am-a-a-a-zing!” I managed to vibrato in between thumps. I was on a pony-tailored massage table with two sets of hooves tamping me vigorously on the back.

Aloe fluffed up my wings and scolded. “Oh dear… These beautiful wings are getting matted! Somepony hasn’t been flying often enough.” I desperately wanted to tell her to can it, but nothing was worth risking the end of a free full-body massage. I said nothing of the sort, but quietly thought “Wow, I… didn’t know they came with a maintenance schedule”. Could I even have flown if I wanted to? I mean, if there were some way for me to avoid mortal injury, I’d sure-as-hay have wanted to try! I knew the wings on my back to be ‘functional’. I could move them rather easily and smoothly, and I distinctly remembered catching some serious air immediately after jumping out of the castle window a few days prior.

Time passed. The spa ordeal was painfully long and drawn-out. I tried not to look too closely at the prissy Query that Lotus Blossom was pointing out in a tall mirror.

“Would you put this on my tab?” Rarity asked coyly, as we three approached the exit in a group. I had a good laugh imagining that she was perhaps the owner of an insurmountable spa tab, the likes of which were usually reserved only for severe alcoholics in bars. As I followed Rarity and Twilight out of the spa, they giggled and batted at each other like the best of chums. I felt outcast, like a bad actor in a pony suit who’d decided that he didn’t like his role. I stared down at my new metal-flake purple hooves with nothing but contempt. “This is not going to come off like regular nail-polish…” I mumbled. It looked like more like the paint and clear-coat combination used on an automobile rather than a beauty product.

“But Query, dearest…” Rarity cooed. Although perturbed, I just couldn’t ignore just how cute she was. “Your colors, *ahem* while matching, I’ll admit, are ever so subdued! There’s nothing like a little dash of purple if you want to catch the eye of a special stallion…” She flipped her mane as massive eyelashes batted. That finally did it.

“P—p-ppp-p-ff-f whaaat?!?” I shrieked in overreaction. “So you think I need to be p-p-prettied up and put on the market, do you?!? I’m just supposed to be catering for a big, strong staaaaaaaalion to take me away?!?” I spoke the word ‘stallion’ like it was ‘balderdash’ and waved my hooves dramatically. Twilight wasn’t having any of it, however.

“Ugh! I’ve had enough!” Twilight shouted, sounding hurt. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you’re in a different mood every five minutes! I allowed you stay in my home, fed you, and gave you free-run of the library after you refused to even explain yourself, and you repay me by making a scene like this in front of my friend?!? That is, after she gracefully paid in your stead, I might add. Just… goodbye Query.” I saw a few patches of her mane spring back up into ‘frazzled-mode’ before she turned on me and cantered off. Perhaps a single tear dropped in her wake as I, too, welled up… I’m sure the whole scene was like watching a little kid being told-off by Michael Jordan.

Surprisingly, Rarity didn’t follow.

“Well… I didn’t mean it like that…” she mumbled. Rarity was taken aback.

I sniffled loudly. “I… I know. You were just being your typical, fancy self. I’m really stressed! I-I…”

“I only wanted to make you feel good about yourself, my dear…” she said softly. “… but it seems like you have more, hmm , pressing concerns now. Why don’t you just go talk to Twilight.”

“I… I CAN’T!” I sputtered.

“…but why?”

“…because Twilight. Uh. She. She’s…” I sniffed even more loudly. I was beginning to make the confounded pony-mascara run.

“…she’s what?”

“Well, uh, in a we’d-never-actually-even-met-before-yesterday kind of way, she’s sort of always been my hero! I just wanted to be friends, but I knew if I told her how I ended up in Ponyville she’d never want to speak to me again!” Before Rarity could finish opening her mouth, I added. “…and now I’ve managed to ruin everything!”

“Well, it’s… It’s not very ladylike to pry, so I shall not, but would you at least ask yourself if the truth is really so bad? I’m sure if you’d just hurry off and rewind this conversation, you’d be able to save your friendship. Twilight is a very caring friend, you know.”

“The truth?!? Rarity, my whole life has become like a bad story somepony would write in their free time!” I squeaked. “If I tell Twilight the truth, she’ll just think I’m trying to make a fool of her… but I know I can’t just keep lying all the time. I’m sick of it!”

“Sometimes it’s just hard to tell the truth, even if it is to your own friend. You just have to trust that they’ll understand in the end!” Rarity spoke solemnly. She blinked her way through a long pause. ”Well, if you think you could use another spa treatment to mull it over, I suppose we could-”

“OK, OK, I get it, Rarity.” I managed a lame chuckle. “I’m going to talk to her, then. I mean, I’ll think of something. Thanks for, you know, helping…”

Rarity allowed herself to show a worried visage as I galloped on down the road, matching the last-known trajectory of my purple hero. I was so focused that I passed a bakery and a cider stand without even looking up. A fruit-laden cart pulled directly across my path without notice and I managed an uncharacteristically awesome, flapping leap over it. I prepared to bolt straight through the center of town, but…

A familiar face caught my eye. It was my own.

My mug was emblazoned on a poster near a fountain. Correction: It was on a wanted poster near a fountain at the center of town. The parchment rectangle was small enough that I desperately hoped Twilight hadn’t seen it already. I peered from side to side, then casually made my way to the bulletin board and tore it down. After wiping the mascara off my cheeks, I messily crumpled it up via hoof-power.

“Uh… miss…?” a voice came from behind which I hadn’t heard coming. It was a low voice that made me jump.

“Wha?” I squeaked, wheeling around to see the squinting face of a tall, blue stallion with a brown hat and coat. I craned my neck enough to be aware that his flank was decorated with a sharp graphic of a magnifying glass.

“I couldn’t help but notice that there was a wanted poster there earlier, and you appeared to have been taking something down just now…” he said, snidely. I silently dropped the crumpled parchment into the fountain, just beyond his view.

“I was making room for… a bake-sale flyer!” I said with a fake smile.

“Is that so?” he asked. “You know, you don’t look too different from the sketch that was posted here earlier… hmm? What are the chances that you could be the bad pony I’ve been searching for all day?”

I had to think of something quickly! I, well, I smacked him in the face with a hoof.

“Oh, I get it now!” I said, trying to sound insulted. “Well you can just can-it, you ogling lover-boy!”

“Ouch! Huh?”

“I know how you stallions are. Don’t play dumb with me!”

“What?”

I moved closer to him as he spoke, driving him across the street and against the antiqued, wooden front door of a barber shop. “Well if you thought that act was going to get you a date, then you’re sorely mistaken! Hoping I was just the bad pony you were looking for, huh? What’s that supposed to mean? Disgusting!”

“I, uhh…” he gulped. “I, uhh, didn’t mean. I guess I was in-error. Sorry, ma’am!” I was quietly pleased to realize I’d managed to make him sweat.

“Well, uh… be more careful next time!” I snorted as I wasted no time in speeding away from the scene. It took me some time to find the library, but I arrived to see a slumping, slowly-trotting Twilight before she managed to close the door behind her.

“Twiliiiiight! I’m soooory!” I shouted out of desperation. At least it was enough to get her to stop. She looked up at me with an equally-running application of pony-mascara.

“What now?” she sniffed. “Can’t I just go home and return to my studies in peace?”

“Whoa, Twilight…” I said as I tried to raise a hoof to her misty eye, but was swatted away. “Does this mean you’re as sad as I am that we don’t seem to get along too well?”

“Query, how can you expect us to be friends if you won’t tell me the truth?” she sniffed. “…and did you really expect me to believe that ‘Neigh England’ was an actual place?”

“Oh…” I said blankly. I’d thought that one was a freebie. Apparently it wasn’t.

“I suppose I’ve been afraid this whole time that the truth would make you hate me… Life has been a little tough for me in recent… days…” I mumbled. Had I really only been a pony for such a brief time? So much had happened that I was already feeling prepared for my attempt at an autobiography.

“I wouldn’t hate you, Query!” Twilight said, seeming reluctant. “Everypony has their own problems! I mean, look at me: I’m a nervous wreck lately, but an important part of every friendship still has to be honesty! *ugh* I’m willing to give this another shot, but you’d better spill the beans. You’d better just tell me straight! Who are you and why are you here? No funny-business.” She poked me right in the chest.

“You can do it, darling! We only want to help.” came the voice of Rarity. A white hoof curled over my shoulder.

“Wha? Where did you come from?” I asked with surprise.

“I followed you because I thought you might appreciate the support.”

“Ohh…” I moaned. “You’re both better friends than I could ever be…” I resisted the urge to sob again and hug Rarity.

“I know you can do it.” Rarity added sweetly. Then, she nudged me as Twilight offered an expectant look. My neck drooped in such a way that I probably resembled one of the depressed crystal ponies from the opening of season three.

“OK… I’ll do it. I’ll tell you the whole truth, but I swear there’s no way you’re going to believe me!” I began. “It’s just crazy, but-”

Something odd was happening. Twilight’s expectant look turned to bafflement. Rarity wheeled about and gasped.

“Uhh… is something wrong?” I asked.

“That’s her, right there!” a familiar voice shouted.

*chink*

My rear legs were cold and they no longer moved freely. I rolled around on my haunches to see a pair of leg-irons, a sleazily-smiling blue detective with a sopping wet poster in his teeth, and the large barrel of a white-furred chest poking me in the nose.

Flynn knocked me over with the swipe of a hoof and spoke sternly, but with a grin. “You are under arrest for the attempted murder of Princess Celestia, among other things.”

“What?” Twilight gasped in trembling disbelief.

Rarity fluttered and passed out with a dramatic cry. I was totally exhausted as I looked up at Flynn.

“Somehow I knew you’d be a recurring character.” I grunted sorrowfully.

One Flew Over the Scootaloo's Nest

An Existential Nightmare in Equestria

Chapter 5: One Flew Over the Scootaloo’s Nest

Music:

http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=7IzOprKaXQ0 or http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=m2WxgKw0kXk

(choose one)

Flynn merely blinked as my last statement slid off his face like an egg from a teflon pan. His stony, authoritative visage didn’t so much as curl a lip as several more guards approached from the surrounding area, finally cementing in my mind that there would be no more possibility of escape. I couldn’t run… I just couldn’t. I was exhausted; an insecure emotional mess with no idea what to do or to say. “Is there still a fight in me? Should I even bother?” I fruitlessly asked of my own subconscious. Unaware of the racket inside my head, Flynn spoke. He had more to get off his chest and I daresay his previously stony disposition boiled with a smug, acidic sense of superiority.

“You have the right to remain silent…” he sneered.

“Buh-“ I started, but Flynn put his hoof to my mouth like the cork on a wine bottle.

“For Celestia’s sake, please take advantage of your rights. Just this once, don’t say anything and don’t do anything and let me revel in the fact that on this day justice will finally be served!”

What a melodramatic outburst… My muzzle opened and closed a few times in shock before I decided to speak again.

“…but you don’t even know the whole story.” I whimpered. “Why me? Oh, but you wouldn’t even believe me if I told you what’s been going on…”

At the very moment I finished that last sentence, the oddest thing happened. I swear Flynn’s composure broke by just the tiniest bit. I swear a single bead of sweat slipped down from under his helmet. It was almost an intangible sign, though. The gears inside my head lurched and stuck fast.

He turned away and pompously grunted. “Then spare us…”

I was out of the energy required to be livid, and spoke after a drawn-out sniffle. “So… So that’s justice, huh? There’s been zero interest in hearing my side of the story all along?” More sniffling followed.

“There was a trial… and your story was incomprehensible.” he groaned. I didn’t even want to try and think back to the fiasco which had constituted my ‘trial’, nor the cackling, babbling mess I’d helped to make of it. If I hadn’t been in such danger, it would have struck me as utterly hilarious. That nearly summed up the Equestrian legal system: worse than bad, a joke. It had been a very insult to the civilized mindset! Everything which had happened to me so far was plain wrong.

Surprisingly, Twilight still stood next to me. She hadn’t gone crazy and showed no sign of imminent fainting, but I still couldn’t even bring myself to describe the expression that she bore. Her mane hadn’t yet managed to stay completely flat in my presence. She spoke with a frog in her throat, as though I’d managed to hurt her straight to the core.

“Is this all true?” she whispered, with a piercing stare.

“It’s, well, this looks really bad, a-” I started.

“I let you stay in my home!” she scratched through her tears. “Who are you?”

I teetered back and forth for a moment, not knowing if I even had the power to improve my own situation. I felt like the victim of some cruel joke. For the first time since my utterly random, arguably ironic incident, I just wanted to wake up, strap on my BlackBerry, and show up in the server room at my usual time. The shackles on my rear legs clinked audibly. A little fiber in my mind snapped and said: “to hell with it!!!”

“OK…” I started wheezily, with a long pause. “I promised before all this happened that I’d tell you the truth, no matter how stupid it sounds, so I’m just going to get it over with. If you don’t believe me, well, then it’s not my fault!”

Twilight blinked and Flynn glared.

“I used to be an, er, stallion from a technologically superior parallel universe. My name is really Al.” I blurted. Twilight’s expression had taken a turn for the worst, while Flynn just appeared to be dumbfounded.

“Well, I wasn’t really a stallion, per se… uh…” I stuttered. “I guess I’m sort of like an alien. …so, I went to work in the middle of a thunderstorm one night and had an inexplicable, well, particle-related incident… Actually, I’m not entirely sure what happened or why…” My speech was deteriorating to nothing more than a low mumble as Twilight filled up with tears.

“I look like this because… Query was… is… isn’t… a….. cartoon character I had on my shirt… at the time?” I mumbled. Twilight backed away slowly, and Flynn… Flynn was smiling?!? My face flushed red.

“Look!” I strained desperately. “As far as I knew a week ago, Equestria was just work of fiction! I ended up busting through the roof of the castle purely by accident! I didn’t mean to hurt anypony! I didn’t ask for any of this! Well, I sort of did, but in a cosmically karmic way that just isn’t funny anymore… I just want to go home!!!”

There was a long, deadly silence.

“Let me go? I swear I’ll never bother you again… I can-” I asked pathetically of Flynn. Now that must have signaled the absolute peak of desperation… They all thought I was barking mad. I, well, I wasn’t really surprised. I had managed to somehow put myself even more-so out of options than I had been moments before. Just as I had briefly managed my temper; just as things had almost looked up and I may not have appeared like a complete deceiver or nutjob or whatever, I, I pulled a Query. I had stopped thinking, and started acting. It hadn’t constituted the first occurrence.

“Query?” Flynn sighed. “I would sooner arrest my own mother than take a bribe from you, and I can honestly say that I’d feel better to have you off the streets at this point.”

I’m not really sure just how much time I spent looking at my hooves. Liquid pride continued to splatter and run off of them.

“Enough!” he added as he raised his voice and marched in the direction of the library. “This has gone on for far too long! I’m very sorry, Miss Sparkle, for what you’ve just been through, but we must summon the Princess at once! I ha-”

*SMACK*

No part of me could even register the humor, but the door of the library had struck him directly in the face. A tiny purple dragon rushed out and asked “Hey, what’s going on?” in a notably worried tone. He looked at me for just a second, baffled, and upon noticing the fainted Rarity in our midst he promptly forgot everything else and rushed to her side. She looked oddly peaceful; an unnaturally graceful, white body lying across a rustic, stone-paved path in the rapidly diminishing light, as if she didn’t belong with her surroundings.

Flynn just grunted, brushed himself off, and withdrew a tiny, bundled scroll from beneath his scarce armor. After an unceremonious trot to the side of the purple dragon, he picked him up in his hooves and toggled his head back just like a zippo lighter. The scroll disappeared in a green flash.

“Any second now…” he mumbled, looking up at the sky with an expectant stare. Spike seemed totally un-perturbed, as if he had grown accustomed to that sort of treatment.

I just slumped down on the ground with the knowledge that I’d finally blown it. I hadn’t weighed the wisdom of simply blurting out my story, and I hadn’t exactly delivered it with (even feigned) eloquence, either. A chilly breeze rolled across the town, ruffling my wings and making me shiver in place. I thought that all the fur would have kept me better insulated, honestly. The afternoon sun began to dim as it signaled the approach of late afternoon.

“What was I supposed to have said?” I asked myself. The snarkier half of my subconscious informed me that I should have tried to say something believable. I should have at least tried to appear rational. I felt like I had been set up, or as if the cruel, er, hooves of fate had chosen to wrap around me one way or another. Could there possibly have been anything I might have said to have made them believe me? Could I have woven a brilliant and believable story right from the start which would have freed me from any such injustice? It was a true case of fact being stranger than fiction. Upon waking up in Equestria I had first reacted with fright, followed by complete, passive refusal to take anything seriously, followed by denial and a nearly bipolar outburst to accommodate every situation. I’d gone from wanting to be Query in the worst way, to crawling in my skin with discomfort, to feeling that it was my duty to ‘live up’ to my own creation. I had a bit of an identity crisis in the works. The gender crisis seemed willing to wait just a little bit longer, but not much so. It felt… secondary to my circumstances.

I searched around the inside of my head, blindly hoping that the real Query would be in there somewhere. Perhaps she could take over and tell everyone that there had been a massive misunderstanding. Quickly, though, I came to terms with the reality that my head served as residence only to one.

*CRACK*

A blinding flash came from several yards away. I knew what it was. I resigned myself to just accept whatever was going to happen. The chatter of guards picked up and a collective gasp sounded as ponies from around the town gathered. The crowd grew, and I glimpsed the unmistakable, flowing, multicolored mane of a certain princess. It towered above the rest of the crowd, flanked by rows of newly summoned royal guards.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn I saw an aged unicorn slip amongst their ranks.

“Your majesty!” Flynn shouted above the din. “Please, I must speak with you privately for a moment!” He plowed through the crowd, headfirst, until he bumped into a familiar new arrival.

“BLIMEY!” Niles bellowed. “I knew yew could catch ‘er, mate! That’s roight good work, mate! AMAZING, really!” He clapped his hooves and beamed his usual goofy, trusting grin at Flynn. I almost felt sorry for him when Flynn cleared his throat and tried to slip by without even pretending to notice. Niles continued to speak, as if being clued-in by Flynn’s body language would have been totally alien to him.

My captor disappeared into the crowd as the wall of guards kept a diligent watch over me. It wasn’t long before the Princess and her entourage seemed to wander out of sight and I felt a bitter tension as the helmeted protectors shifted from hoof to hoof, boxing me in even more tightly. There was no intrinsic hope left hanging upon my delicate pony frame, so imagine my complete and utter disbelief when the next face I met practically lit me up with encouragement.

“Goodness! You’ve been straight through the ringer, haven’t you?” asked a soothing voice. I suppose it was a rhetorical question… A unicorn more or less plowed himself through between two of the skinnier guards. I was lifted by the shoulders into a sitting position as I came face to face with Doctor Willcrest from the castle hospital/infirmary. I think my mouth was hanging open before I spoke.

“Bu-ho-wh-how?” I whispered, wiping my face with the fur on my foreleg. The guards hadn’t even tried to pull him away.

The Doc just flashed a warm smirk.

“Didn’t they throw you in a dungeon forever or something? I thought you were a goner after what you did-“ I asked under my breath. Our conversation certainly wasn’t audible above the din of the crowd, but he leaned in and spoke with the same whisper, nonetheless.

“To make a long story short…” he began. “You put your best doctor in jail, wait a while, somepony important sprains an ankle… Well, guess who comes up first on the list for parole?” There was almost an inspiring confidence audible beneath his tired voice as he let out a brief sigh.

“Why would you come looking for me? I mean, uh, thanks… in advance, I mean, but I think it’s just a smidge late for me…” I asked, trailing off. My eyes were welling up again.

“I was worried about you, and, well, I never even got to hear your whole story, to boot! It took some serious convincing, but I managed to teleport in with the royal guard just now. I can be a bit of a wizard with the ol’ medical vocabulary, you know.” he replied, raising his voice a bit towards the end. Then, Doctor Willcrest did something totally unexpected. He leaned against the barrel of my chest and raised a hoof to pat it on my back. His eyes darted left and right as his muzzle brushed by my right ear. He spoke so quietly that I could just barely make out the sounds.

“Something is very, very wrong here Query. I’m going to try to help you. Don’t do anything…. rash.” He whispered. The Doc slipped back as one of the guards eyed him leerily, and a bead of sweat ran down his neck before he cleared his throat.

“*ahem* Well, like I said, I’ll be sure to help you! It’s only reasonable, of course.” said Willcrest, raising his voice so that it would be audible.

“Hu-?” I began. He rustled my mane to shut me up.

“Wherever you’re banished to, I’ll be sure that we send over some pills to help you with those darned chronic migraines of yours! Not to worry…” he added, overly emphatic. The guard seemed to buy it as he plowed his way back out into the crowd, straining to keep up the overly chipper facade.

“I knew it!” I thought to myself, slumping again. Deep down inside, I’d known something just smelled wrong about Equestria ever since my arrival. In fact, I’d always lived with a sort of strange, background feeling that something horrible and dark and sinister was going on in the world, and that it was out to get me. Er, wait, perhaps that was just a case of typical, garden-variety paranoia? Did other ponies get that? I made a mental note to ask the doctor if he was often overwhelmed by a nebulous sense of dread emanating from nowhere, if I ever got the chance.

I think that my self-pity knew no bounds. Oh, man, if only I could have avoided following a missile trajectory into the throne room! Images of my pony-self landing in a grassy field, unharmed and chipper, flooded my mind. Was I-well, it seemed slightly weird to just quantify an individual’s nature with something as insipid and subjective as ‘goodness’, but was I a good pony? More specifically, was I any good at anything? Could I have landed peacefully in Equestria and made best friends with Twilight, and attended parties instead of jumping off of trains, and held down a stupid pony-job, and, and…? What if? What if? What if?

My worrying just sort of scrambled into a loop and burned itself out. There was suddenly, well, nothing… in my head, I mean. Well, I was still obviously in my head, but I just went kind of blank and serene. I stopped sweating, and I craned my neck up just in time for the wind to deposit a solitary, stray leaf on the base of my muzzle. It caught on the bridge of my stupid horse-glasses as I crossed my eyes to look at it. There was something so quizzically calming about the experience, but another wave of anxiety soon took its place.

What about home, and my family? Sweet ponyfeathers, my family! I hadn’t even been able to say goodbye to them! I missed them! Based on the helpfulness quotient of the ponies I’d met so far, it wasn’t realistic for me to imagine there’d be a way for me to get home. I never even imagined that I’d be capable of missing my boss or that bastard engineer, Mark. …and what about all the things I loved to do?!? Equestria’s living conditions would have seemed downright medieval were it not for all the magical stuff. I knew I’d never be able to pick up the guitar again in my new body, and that there’d be no computers to program, and I’d never get to finish my novel… Actually, well, maybe I would have enough time to write a novel with my mouth during banishment? Is it possible to be banished along with tons of paper? Ugh! What about the girlfriend back home that I’d almost had, save for my incorrigible bashfulness? Did I even, ahem, appreciate the ladies anymore? No, NO, brain! I thought I’d already decided that could wait!

I caught myself making a scrunchy-face. The leaf was back again.

Fear is a funny thing. Er, well, I don’t mean that it’s hilarious, per se, but it certainly always managed to do a job on me with the help of its cousin, anxiety. I was a woefully anxious person and I was already making Query into a woefully anxious pony. No, not just anxious, but absolutely, bloody unpredictable! My liquid pride succeeded in abolishing every trace of the dreaded pony-mascara. During the entire span of time since my appearance, I’d been feeling hurt by the dissonance between being mysteriously telegraphed into my pony form, and simultaneously having been denied the opportunity to start fresh.

Or was it a coincidence that the first thing I faced as Query was the only thing I could never seem to overcome as a human?

“That’s it!” I thought to myself. “What’s the point in letting myself be this miserable and scared? What’s the point?” I sighed and felt an unusual relief in my shoulder muscles as I sat up on my haunches once more. I took in a deep breath, surprised by how much Query’s diaphragm could move when I really wanted it to. I clenched my fists and-uh, er, never mind. I stomped my hooves. I stood up on all fours and steeled myself as the guards corralled me and lead me a short distance up the stony street. It wasn’t long before they deposited me into a clearing with Twilight, Willcrest, Flynn, and what must have seemed like every royal guard, ever.

Oh, and standing right in the middle of the row was Princess Celestia. My brilliant, well-thought-out stunt in Canterlot had bought me how long? …and already there I was sitting across from the one and only. I raised my head to meet the hoof-chilling stares of her entourage along with dozens of inhabitants of Ponyville who’d chosen to show up. Nopony spoke for a time.

“Now I’m not sure what to make of you…” said the Princess. Her voice wasn’t anything like before. It was strangely calm and low and… vaguely threatening. My resolve may have loosened just a tiny bit.

“Can I at least be banished with enough paper to finish my blockbuster novel? Please?” I asked. That wasn’t a wacky outburst. I swear it was genuinely the only thing I could think of to say at the time. The line was delivered so pitifully that if I could watch it back in retrospect I’m sure I’d find it positively chuckle-worthy.

I could feel the stares of all the ponies burning into me. Princess Celestia merely tensed and blinked at my statement. “My head of security has informed me that… you think you’re an alien?” she added in the same tone. A brief look to her right prompted a subtle nod from Flynn.

“Well… I am an alien, if that’s what you’re wondering.” I peeped.

She rolled her eyes a bit and took on slightly more condescension. “Then what sort of alien are you?”

“Aside from the sort with dismal taste in landing zones, well, possibly an individual from a universe that lies tangentially at the edge of this one, or… maybe the other way around. I’ve been working on a bunch of calculations. Do you want to see them? It seems-It’s just-I really love string theo-” I rambled, gaining more composure. Princess Celestia looked over at Flynn. She seemed to do that a lot.

“…and why should I even consider believing you, hmm?” she interrupted.

“I… wha… wait a minute. Why didn’t we have this conversation before?!?” I retorted. The sudden tensing of the ponies in the crowd informed me that it might not have been wise to answer royalty with a question.

“*ahem* Your majesty-” Flynn spoke up. “If you’re quite satisfied, I’ll be happy to carry out the banishment order just as you requested earlier!” The crowd let out a nerve-wracking gasp.

“Well, no…” Celestia said, sternly. She appeared to shrink ever so slightly from the crowd’s reaction. “I’m not finished.” She came closer to me and leaned over, making me cower even further. Just then, I finally saw what I’d been on the lookout for. Something was very wrong, after all! I swear that in the moment of her anger there was the faintest, briefest blue flash in her eyes. The very sight of it made my face twitch, and I found myself nearly praying that she hadn’t noticed my reaction.

“Did you have assistance breaking into the castle?” she asked.

“No.” I peeped. The Princess deadpanned.

“Are you answering to somepony you believe to be outside of my authority?”

“No.”

“I highly doubt you’re smart enough to do so, but was your intrusion made with the intent to engage in a rebellion against the crown?”

“I’m pretty sma-no! No, I swear.”

“And you’ll defend your story?”

“Certainly.”

The ‘Princess’ was scowling at this point. I just knew it couldn’t really be her. Up until that moment, every single character I’d met in Equestria had exactly conformed to my expectations from home, except for Celestia. She was downright tyrannical! I could even hear the crowd chattering more and more nervously. I think the only thing that really saved me was that I was far too intimidated by her presence to even let on that I had become suspicious. I began to wonder if ‘banishment’ could be construed to mean something even worse.

Oh, that good doctor… I’m not sure I ever really knew what to make of him. Like a polar opposite of me, he knew exactly when to open his mouth and when to put his chips on the table. Just as I thought my speech options were closing in around me, he spoke up.

“Please, I beg of your mercy, your highness!” he shouted, stepping forth. “I have been following Query since she first woke up in the castle infirmary. She was dazed at first, too dazed. She didn’t walk right. She was an emotional wreck. I’m not exaggerating when I say that she was genuinely surprised to give me her own name. After everything I’ve heard from her and from what I’ve seen and heard here tonight, it is my professional opinion that Miss Query is clinically insane. I’m convinced that she genuinely believes all that she’s been saying.”

Celestia turned and blinked at him, almost dumbfounded.

“Even if she was caught up in some sort of evil plot before, she’s no longer aware of it. Honestly, though, at this point all the medical factors are pointing to her being totally delusional. It could explain the irrational fear, running from the law, the unpredictable behavior, and so on and so forth! I have no choice but to recommend committal as a course of action.” he added.

I swear Flynn mouthed “We could commit her to a dungeon…” from the back.

All that the doctor was attempting to do hadn’t really clicked with me yet. In retrospect, my very lack of understanding probably contributed to my salvation. My mind was swimming with confusion and suspicion. Was he on her side? No, it couldn’t be! He wanted me locked up, too?!? Why, why had he deceived me with the whole ‘I’m going to help you’ gag? How was being publically declared as insane supposed to help me in the long run? Well, clearly something much more than met the eye was going on, but I just couldn’t process it at the time.

“No. NO! I’m not crazy. I’m telling the truth! I haven’t lied to anypony since I came here an- wait… Well, when I was lying it was because I thought you’d all think I was crazy, which you do now, so I was right about everything all along!” I shrieked in hysterics. Sensing my outburst, two of the nearby guards decided to flatten my wings and pin me. Apparently they had flared up on their own accord and without my notice. I didn’t struggle, rather, I just scanned the crowd with my gaze and wished for it all to end.

“I know for a fact that I’m not crazy…” I mumbled under my breath as I looked at the ground. Then, the absolutely terrifying notion of uncertainty struck me. How could I be sure? Had I imagined my entire life? Having travelled from another universe or quantum reality or whatever, was the truth of my own origin really as paper-thin as a story from a book? I let out a long sigh as I resigned not to go there. Whatever I was going to endure, I knew that introspective philosophy would only make me crazier. Then, I gulped as I realized I had reasoned all that aloud.

‘Princess Celestia’ blinked, looked at me, blinked, and looked at Doctor Willcrest again. She then frowned, and looked over to Flynn, and then at the crowd. The vividly colorful conglomeration eyed her anxiously and with great interest. Their innocent, appraising, compassionate glances most likely played a well-needed second or third part in my salvation.

“*ahem* Well…” the Princess began, carefully eyeing Willcrest. “You have been a great help to me as of late… and perhaps I shouldn’t have been so hard on you before… Your fervor for your line of work is… admirable.” She gave him… a funny look, and walked away. Upon reaching Flynn and his entourage of guards (only a few yards away) she knelt down with a lot of gesturing and whispering. Flynn raised a hoof in salute and nodded ‘I understand’. Afterwards, the Princess backed away and approached the center of the clearing, ready to make her announcement. As she drew closer to me, I couldn’t help but notice that I was shaking. It was just… criminy! She was so much bigger than me that it was practically comical (except it wasn’t).

“Very well.” She said, curtly, and with a gesture to the doc. “Take this pony and have her committed to the Ponyville Sanitarium. My head of security and his companions will accompany you to oversee the process. I’d like weekly updates on her treatment.”

“You!” she added, pointing a hoof at a nearby, nameless guard. He saluted in response. “Form a pair of teams and interview every pony this one has had contact with since arriving here. Report in two hours.” Immediately, several guards dispersed with mechanical obedience.

“And as for you all, my little ponies…” she added, peering about at the crowd with a newfound air of gentleness. “I know that recent events have been alarming, but I must urge you all not to credit every rumor you may hear. I have everything under control, and I can promise each and every one of you that everything is going to be all right.” She finished that last sentence with a convincing smile and a warm chuckle. Her speech had taken on an eerily-mothering tone. “Now off you go. I’d like to call this little, impromptu meeting to a close. Good night, everypony!”

Of course the ponies scuttled off complacently as they continued to chatter lightly amongst themselves. One of the still-functioning regions of my brain must have been dedicated to self preservation, because as badly as I wanted to, I found myself unable to scream: “That’s not Celestia!”. Would it have continued to hold, though? I’ll never know, because soon after I was looking up at the good doctor, Flynn, and… surprisingly Niles. From left to right, the doctor wore an expression of, well, I wasn’t really sure. Flynn’s brow was perfectly straight and he was not amused. Niles just sort of stared blankly with a tiny smile, advertising that he was just genuinely pleased to be standing in the middle of a town in uniform. He was an enigma, that one; a testament to ignorance as bliss. I wished that they could have sent him alone to apprehend me in the first place. Finally, I let out an exasperated, rattling sigh as the three escorted me down the road.

I had barely enough time to look back and see that Twilight was running up to Celestia and sobbing. Before long, they were in an awkward pony-embrace and the purple unicorn spewed out a string of phrases like “I missed you!” and “are you all right?” and “what happened?”. I was a bit too far away to make out what they were saying, but I’m sure I caught something to the effect of “blah blah… faithful student… blah blah”. It didn’t quite fill me with relief to realize that Twilight wasn’t even the tiniest bit suspicious. Despite being corralled up the street by three stallions with my rear legs in chains (an unpleasantly, weirdly intimate experience, by the way) I felt alone. Just alone. That was, until the loneliness turned to a simmering, confused anger as I squinted at the doctor.

“I trusted you… you said you were going to help me!” I barked at him, in a weird, wavering tone. I noticed that everything we said was being carefully scrutinized by Flynn.

“Query, I… This might be hard for you to understand, but I am helping you. Banishment is no fate for somepony who can’t even remember where she came from in the first place.” He cooed, pleadingly.

“After everything that’s been going on, you, you, think I’m crazy!?!” I pleaded in return. “You came searching for me all the way from Canterlot just to tell everyone I was crazy?!? You saw the princess, she w-” The doctor shot me a deathly glare and covered my mouth. I knew that he meant well, but I was just so hurt that nobody even thought to believe me.

“The princess has been through a terrible ordeal lately, and she just chose to show you mercy. Let’s leave it at that… and frankly, you need help.” He warned. I was so frustrated that my face must have been scrunched to the limit. I raised my right hoof into the air like I was planning to smack him one.

“Do it if you must.” He sighed. I couldn’t. I stomped on the ground and groaned as we continued our march. At least there was an intangible sense of ‘motion’ about Ponyville. That was definitely a funny feeling I remembered from my evening travels before spontaneous ponification. Perhaps it was the ambiance of the dimming sunlight, or the increasingly chilly breeze that ruffled my feathers, or the alien landscape, or the fact that I was being dragged to a mental institution, but there was definitely the sense that things were about to happen. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all due to my blasted wings. I had never flown, but whenever I found myself really upset, my shoulders just ached like mad. I caught myself stretching them out for a bit of relief before a stare from Flynn had me slowly retracting them again. I was beginning to understand why Rainbow Dash could never stay still in the cartoon.

After about 20 minutes of travel, Flynn hailed a horse-drawn carriage and motioned for us to get in. He told the ponies who were hitched to it (and were also apparently driving, and were the owners) where we were going. I just… oh, help me! My brain stopped when I realized I was a horse riding in a horse-drawn carriage. I stared at the floor, unable to make eye contact with the ponies on either side of me. It was the conflict! It was just… I knew Doc Willcrest was trying to help. I mean, I knew he thought he was doing the right thing. He’d probably spared me a much nastier trip to who-knows-where, but I was just so frustrated with the whole situation. Would anypony ever believe me? It was just that some little part of me was outright mad at him for not believing my story. I knew that I sounded crazy, but the other ponies with their stares of incredulity were the very stuff of injustice. Well, most of them. Near the end of our silent carriage ride, Niles broke the silence.

“OK, so… I can’t quite put my ‘oof on it, but this is gonna bother me if I don’ ask…” he began, motioning a hoof. “I dunno if I’m missing something, but is she an actual space alien from Planet X or somethin’?”

Flynn groaned as if to say ‘I’m surrounded by idiots’ nonverbally as he massaged his temples with his hooves.

“Yes.” I deadpanned.

“Well ain’t that somethin’…” Niles mused, rubbing his chin. He made a thoughtful face which did nothing to mask that there was no further activity taking place behind his brow.

A minute later, Flynn mumbled “I wonder if the loony bin will take two…” a bit too audibly.

“Why? Who else are we puttin’ in there?” Niles asked quizzically. He was beyond innocent. Flynn’s face contorted with the most atrocious expression of pure contempt I had ever witnessed. No matter how frustrated he became, Niles was just too thick to even make fun of. All of Flynn’s negativity just bounced right off. It was, well, mildly endearing (for me). I reasoned that beyond all expectations, the markedly thick stallion had actually just been more open minded with me than a judge, a princess, a student of magic, and a prestigious a man of medicine, all combined. It was remarkable to think of, and I couldn’t help but smile and wink at him a bit. He just imitated the same gesture back at me, blankly, and shrugged. OK, I didn’t know how long Flynn and Niles had been stuck working together, but perhaps I was able to sympathize with the stoic leader just a little bit. Bah, never mind, he was a jerk! I bet he deserved every dose of Niles he received!

My panic returned after we arrived at our destination: an unassuming, unmarked building done up in the typical, colorful architectural style of Ponyville. As I was ushered inside, the door was closed and barred behind me. I could have sworn there was the sound of distant barking. My gaze shifted about a sterile but homey room decorated in various lavenders and greens as the shackles were finally removed from my legs. Then, the doctor and Flynn got into a long discussion with the receptionist: a disinterested-looking, candy pink mare who probably hadn’t expected such a big showing so late in the afternoon. The whole experience was a blur, but in short, I was admitted under the pretense of ‘long-term rehabilitation with review’, whatever that was supposed to entail.

Before I knew what hit me, I was pleading from the opposite side of a wooden door with a high, barred window which required me to stand up on two legs just to reach. The room was white-washed, with a single window on the far end (so narrow that it would be physically impossible to get more than a leg through). There was a small end-table in the corner with a few sheets of paper on it, and a set of narrow bunk-beds on the opposite wall. Aside from those features, it was completely Spartan and bland.

“Look, I’m feeling better already!” I whimpered out into the hall. Flynn, Niles, the doc, and two hospital-staffers were all gathered. “Maybe we should rethink this. Just, just go with me here for a second. What if I’m not actually crazy, eh?” Flynn rolled his eyes. Niles just… looked.

“You’ll be well taken care of, Query.” Willcrest deadpanned.

“What? Come on! I’m not kidding when I say I’m not from Equestria! I don’t belong here! Don’t you believe anything I’ve been telling you?” I pleaded.

“I can tell you’re upset, Query. I know this means a lot to you, but I just can’t. This behavior is unhealthy.” the doctor put, simply. I couldn’t even process it. I must have worn an expression of total anguish to state the fact that my only hero in this brave new world of horses just wasn’t quite willing to take me seriously. Looking sedately content with our altercation, Flynn seemed to ponder for a moment before turning to face the exit of the hallway.

The doctor had no choice but to follow him, though much to my surprise he lingered for a brief moment. He approached the door with a weak smile just before preparing to follow my least favorite guard out of the place.

“Well… thanks, Doc… you know, for everything.” I mumbled through the bars, finally out of adrenaline. As much as the situation hadn’t reflected what I’d hoped, well, I couldn’t exactly hate the only pony ever to stick up for me in earnest. Perhaps he’d really done all he could? The good doctor knew something was fishy about this whole thing, but what could he even do? What did he suspect?

Niles was the last to leave. He stood in the hallway, waving at me doofily until one of the female nurses, a white unicorn, nudged him out of the way. Actually, I think she meant to nudge him, but instead wound up, er, poking him? At least that’s what it sounded like from the “Yeowch!” he emitted before they both made their way out of the hallway, chuckling and apologizing.

“That must be one of those unwritten cons about being a unicorn: you can accidentally poke people with that thing, get it stuck in mattresses, and who knows what else…” I thought to myself as I realized I was quite firmly lodged in the bars protecting the window on my door. “It’s a good thing I’m not one of them…” I mumbled sarcastically, as I scraped my hooves higher up on the door. Before long, I was completely pinned against the doorframe, pushing with all four hooves. I launched free with a resounding *shoonk* as I fell backwards into the room, thankfully landing on something soft. I let out a tired sigh.

“Hi…” coughed the ‘something soft’.

I snapped back up onto four hooves faster than one would imagine feasible. The ‘something soft’ was very girly, and yellow, and winged. The ‘something soft’ had orange hair, and bright blue irises. The ‘something soft’ tilted her head and stared into my eyes with just the most terrifying expression of pure elation ever witnessed, as though she’d just been given a pegasus made of 100% pure milk chocolate.

“Eeeeeee!” she giggled, clapping her hooves. “I-I’m Serene! Are you my roommate? They’ve never , ever let me have a roommate before! I mean, practically nopony even talks to me these days, but here you are! I can’t believe it. I’m just-so-happy-and-anyway-what’s-your-name-can-we-p-”

“Uhhhhhhhh…” I droned in interruption, unable to make heads or tails of my own feelings. I imagine they were akin to the tired dumfoundedness one would experience after blowing up an entire city and then immediately having to meet the happiest person in the universe.

“Oh no… uh, are you sad?” she chirped, not losing one bit of the chipperness in her voice, which was very feminine and bursting with enthusiasm but surprisingly not much in volume. “That’s great! I bet I can help you feel better! Let’s talk about it! So, uh, I’m Serene. Who are you?” She beamed.

I guess I was finally just done with the situation, because I remained locked in that gaze long enough for her to see the bags under my eyes, then I sighed and bolted straight for the bottom bunk. Once I had finished hurtling, I unceremoniously stuffed my head under the pillow such that I could no longer see anything happening in the room. I half expected my new crazy companion to just come running over and blabbing any second, but surprisingly I think that nearly a full minute passed before I even heard her move again.  Alas, that long, blessed minute did eventually end and I was subjected to another verbal assault.

“OK, OK… um, don’t say anything, then. I’m gonna figure this out.” squeaked Serene. “Umm, OK, that cutie mark looks sort of like… and those wings… *gasp* …and that horn! Are you an alicorn? Do I call you ‘Princess’? You’re uh, I got this… the princess of, umm… well, that mark looks kind of strange, come on, Serene, the princess of… uhhhhhhhh… crazy? Are you Princess Crazy? I mean, that would explain why they’d put royalty in the nuthouse, an-”

“It’s just Query.” I droned, but I’m assuming she heard something like “Imph uph meeree.”

“Uhh… pardon?” Serene asked. “Is it fun in there under my pillow? Can I come in?”

I pulled my head out from under the orange-scented pillowcase, wearing an expression that was most likely far too tired and serious for a cartoon horse. “It’s Query.” I deadpanned.

“Princess Query!” she giggled. “It’s so nice to meet you!”

“No, just Query.”

“…but aren’t you an alicorn?”

“Well, no. Sort of. I don’t even really know what I am. Does it matter?”

“No, not at all! Is that why you’re in here… because you don’t know what you are? I know what I am, for sure… at least I think I do. That’s a tough question when you really think about it. I think it’s probably a good idea not to think about it too much, I think...”

“Yeah...” I sighed, before stuffing my head back under the pillow. I just laid there and thought quietly to myself for a while an-wait… silence, again? What was up with that pony? I pulled my head out just in time to see her start from my gaze. She pawed (hooved?) at the floor for a moment before continuing the barrage.

“So why are you here?” she asked. “I’m being assessed for new-row-logical damage!” She giggled.

“Uhh… you don’t wanna know…” I sighed again. I stood up and began to climb my way to the upper bunk by hooking my forelegs through an aluminum ladder bolted to the side of the stack. Once on top, I tossed myself into the familiar ‘prostrate with grief’ position yet again. I turned so that I would be facing the white, plastered wall.

*flapflapflap* *clop* *flapflapflap* “Hey, do you-” *clop* *flapflapflap* “-like games?” *clop* *flapflapflap* “Let’s do something together!” On her third flapping leap right up to the height of my second bunk, she paused in the air for a moment with a scrap of paper and a pencil in her muzzle, and her pupils were dilated to the size of Ferris wheels. I was completely burned out, yet the sight before me was so heartbreakingly adorable that my cardiopulmonary system nearly threatened to go on vacation.

“Yeah, OK…” I mumbled. It was the best I could do. I didn’t exactly sound like I was interested. She hooked the railing with her forelegs and scrambled inside before loudly spitting out both articles. My face screwed up briefly as I realized I’d probably have no choice but to pick the pencil up with my own mouth if I wanted to write something, so next, it was pleasantly surprising to see her unfold a wing, slip the pencil in between two of her comically-oversized (but typical for ponies) primary feathers and draw lines as if it were natural. I performed a baffled double-take whilst looking at my own back, though the last thing I wanted to say was: “I didn’t know you could do that?!?”

Sometime around her eighth consecutive victory at tic-tac-toe, I think Serene could see that I was fast becoming bored and frustrated. (Seriously, Equestria? Haven’t you ever heard of a cat’s game?) Despite burning me out, the yellow nutter had managed to calm me down just a little bit, and for that I was genuinely thankful. It was pitch black outside as indicated by the high window, and I laid with my eyes plastered open as Serene descended to the bottom bunk. Poor, patient Quote had managed to hide in my hair all afternoon and through the whole proceeding, so I needed to get quite a lot of apologizing out of the way before he forgave me for nearly sleeping on top of him. I let him eat the corner of my pillow as a peace offering. Back on the subject of Serene, I blinked and fidgeted and tried to understand the sort of pony who would sit in a holding pen all day, desperately wanting for a friend, and not even have the urge to complain after having been given a sarcastic, sputtering depress-o-mare such as myself. Sleep was not willing to come quietly, but in the wee hours it finally surrendered.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The dreams… I don’t think it’s prudent for me to describe them in great detail. They were in keeping with the pattern I’d established. Scenes from my life played back in my head and I had to progress through them as if on rails, always bursting out with wings at the last moment or the least-opportune time, and it was much to the joy of my heckling subconscious.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I awoke as little beams of light had begun to creep across the room and toward the well-fortified doorway. Quickly realizing that I was definitely not well-rested, I cursed Luna under my breath. I wondered if she was unable to calm my dreams since I wasn’t, you know, a real(?) pony, per se. That, or maybe I was just unpopular with the royal family. Perhaps, ironically so, it may have just been foolish for me to expect life to conform to the parameters of a cartoon.

“What is real, anyway?” I sighed from my reclining position, directing the speech at no one in particular. I think I sounded a lot like Marvin, the paranoid android…

“I know, right? It’s pretty deep when you think about it…” came a groggy reply from the lower bed. Serene had obviously just awoken. I supposed that she sounded… well… serene (sorry).

“But I’ll tell you what…” she continued, always speaking quietly and with truly monstrous speed. “you are most definitely real. I mean, we talked all afternoon yesterday! I mean, I know in your sleep you were shouting all like ‘This isn’t me!’ and ‘None of this is real!’, but that’s not actually true, you know?”

“Well, sure-“ I began, before realizing what had just been said to me. In a start, I flipped over the top bunk, holding on with my rear legs whilst hanging upside-down and shouted “Wait-what?!?” in a more-than-anxious tone.

“Uhh, it’s nothing. You just talk really loudly in your sleep. Well, it’s more like shouting… um, at yourself.”

“I’m still doing that?” I wondered aloud.

Serene laughed. “Um, I guess so. It’s OK. I had some earplugs left in the table over there.”

“Hold on a second… what exactly did you hear?”

“Um, well… not, noth- well, you just said that you’re not a pony and that you really, definitely didn’t try to kill any princesses!”

Hearing that must’ve snapped a few more of my neurons, because I leapt to the ground, stuttering and looking all nervous. I wasn’t met with the reaction I’d expected though, as Serene tried to prematurely stumble out of bed with a look of utmost concern.

“Wait, wait! We can talk about it! They’re just awful dreams, right? Is… is that why you’re here? You just have really awful dreams?” Serene asked. She was beginning to reclaim her freakishly-optimistic tone from the day before, but thankfully not so intensely. The mare I’d previously thought to be mind-numbingly, sugar-coatedly, brain-mashingly hyper may have just been legitimately cheerful, or perhaps my unsavory attitude from the previous day had colored my interpretation of her personality. She walked gingerly over to the corner of the room I was standing in (I was hunched over like I was ready to be fitted with a dunce cap) and placed a wing over me. I looked up from my self-pity in shock.

“Hey… tell me about your dream.” She whispered.

“You’ll just think I’m crazy…” I sighed.

“Well, yeah… I mean, dreams are always crazy, right? That’s why they’re dreams.” She giggled.

Honestly, I’m not sure if I was being flippant, hopeful, or if I just felt guilty for being a wholeheartedly-lame pony-friend to Serene, because I started to lead her along.

“Well, if you must know… In all my dreams, I’m, er, someone else.”

“Cool! That’s not so bad, right? I used to have this recurring dream where I was a seapony and there was this-uh, nevermind. Keep going.”

“It’s just… it’s like, this existential crisis dream I keep having over and over again.”

Serene blinked.

“In some abstract way, I suppose you could imagine it reflects my life situation. Let me put it this way… I mean, in the dream, I’m not me, and I come from somewhere really far away, and I’m lost,  so that would be all fine and good if anypony else actually believed the place existed, but they don’t, and so they think I’m crazy.”

“…and in that dream, do you really want to go home?”

Frankly, at that point I wasn’t sure whether I felt like I was in the presence of a childrens’ book character, or a practicing psychologist. “Uh, well, yeah. More than anything! –in the dream, I mean.”

“Which hurts more? Not being able to go home, or not having anypony believe in you?”

A rare state to encompass me was that of speechlessness.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If Serene had really deserved to be a mental patient, I would go so far as to say she was the most level-headed one in all of Equestria. Some ten minutes or so into our conversation, I learned the reason for her committal, and it certainly didn’t come about because she had wanted to let me know. It was more of an inevitable event.

“-and that’s why I always used t-” She sputtered in her usual, chipper way, and stopped mid-conversation. Serene just stopped. As if someone had come around and flicked the ‘off’ switch on the back of her head, or as if she were a wind-up toy in need of, well, winding, she stopped dead, eyes still focused on me. I spent the better part of a minute walking around her, waving a hoof about, and checking the clock to be sure I hadn’t been sucked into a time vortex or something (not as ridiculous of a proposition as the reader may be thinking at this moment). I was just about to start banging on the door for help when she started again as if nothing had even happened.

“-o go there when-Eeeeeep!” She had picked up the sentence from where she’d left off, but promptly whirled about and emitted a sound worthy of Fluttershy when she found me to be standing behind her, mouth agape.

After staring at the floor for a moment, we both had a good laugh about it, though frankly her story was nothing deserving of mirth. I learned that Serene had once been an ‘air-traffic controller’ of sorts for one of the busier transportation hubs in Las Pegasus. I mean, I called it an ‘air-traffic controller’ though she hardly even spoke about her former occupation, and I had to glean from little fragments of stories that it involved a busy city in the clouds and scheduling pegasus-drawn shipping-runs and all that. The only time Serene ever seemed sad was when asked about her former lifestyle…

Apparently, one day on her flight home from work, she struck a cider cart head-on at an intersection. Now, from what I’ve been told, cloud-architecture isn’t quite as resilient as good old brick and mortar, and though it’s safe for supporting pegasi, pretty much anything with enough momentum will simply punch right through it. …and Serene sure did. Careening out of control, poor, young Serene rammed headfirst into street after street of the multilevel Las Pegasus promenade, finally winding up on the ground itself. The local guard recorded the incident as one comprised of exactly fourteen distinct, sequential crashes by the same pegasus (a feat which Serene was sure to remind me had since been entered in at least three books of world records).

Apparently later she came to in a nearby hospital on the ground, seemingly coherent and unharmed, yet it wasn’t long before whatever obscure, freakish, prefrontal cortex damage she’d sustained reared its ugly head. She froze up as she’d just done near the end of her pre-discharge interview at the hospital. Months passed, and the best medical unicorns they could get were unable to glean the nature of the anomaly which seemingly stripped her awareness of the passing of time at random intervals. Funds ran low. She had no family nearby to take care of her. It was far too dangerous to live in the clouds (in flight more often than not) when she couldn’t get past the hour without an episode which could send her hurtling at the ground. So, finally, in a roundabout, bureaucratic way, they sent her to the only place that remained and was willing to provide her with care: a sanitarium.

It broke my heart to see that a saner pony than I had been condemned to that place, and frankly, there was no sadder sight than the dinner-plate eyes of a pegasus who’d been told never to fly above eight feet. It was a sadness I quickly tried to diffuse by admitting that I couldn’t, neigh, had never flown before, though I had managed to glide for a few seconds on the side of Canterlot Mountain before spiraling into the ground. Serene didn’t believe it at first, and she seemed nearly offended, but aside from the occasional, suspicious glance at my sides, she dropped the issue altogether.

With nothing much left to hide, and certainly nothing interesting to do, I confided further with her on the subject of my ‘dreams’. In this perpetual, ponified, gee-I-have-this-friend-with-this-problem-who-isn’t-me-but-could-really-use-your-advice sort of manner, I told her, in no clear terms, about the details of my arrival. She listened patiently, never judging. I always waited respectfully when she zoned out except for one occasion where I was right in the middle of trying to piece together what I remembered of Michio Kaku’s contributions to string field theory. Other than that, I was a saint, I swear it!

Despite her ever so depressing story, Serene insisted she was pretty darned happy with most of the things in her life (albeit she was bound to be lonely at times), and honestly, I believed her. That yellow nut taught me something about what it meant to be at peace with my life situation. She reminded me that just perhaps I wasn’t the only one in the whole world who was having a rough time. Though I’m not entirely sure if it was her intention, she inspired me, and as the chime for breakfast sounded in the halls and a gentle rapping was heard on the outside of our door, she turned to me and took me totally by surprise.

“Those dreams that keep you up at night… they’re more than just dreams, aren’t they?” She whispered.

I was dumbfounded for a moment, and chose to reply cautiously.

“What? I don’t seem like enough of a madmare to you?” I Queried. (Get it?)

“…you’re really weird, but I like you.” came the giggled response.

“Why are you trying so hard to cheer me up?” I asked warmly.

“Well, first of all we’re stuck in this room half of the time by ourselves, and second of all… well, sometimes you just need somepony else to believe in you! Come on, let’s go! Breakfast on Tuesday is always haycakes…” Serene replied, trailing off.

“Oh, er, my… favorite?” I mumbled.

A slightly more aggressive round of knocks, coupled with the swift opening of our door soon had us complacently walking down the corridor in the general direction of a cafeteria I had never laid eyes on before, but quickly vowed to ignore the arrangement of, as it turned out to be an insultingly boring use of rectangular space. That is, it was completely out of tune for the people, well, ponies which occupied it. That cafeteria… I suppose the best analogy I could possibly offer is that it was very much like storing a bar of gold in a shoebox, or trying to cup hot tea in your hooves, or… Does that make any sense?!? On second thought, perhaps I really did deserve to be stuck there.

Despite the bleak, for pony standards, appearance of the whitewashed room, my experience within it was anything but. The characters I witnessed as I passed the threshold would share a permanent place in my memory.

“Ahem!” spoke the nurse who had ushered us out into the cafeteria. I was just standing barely inside the entrance while Serene remained behind me.

“As most of you should know to be a long-standing tradition within our little family, I’d like to take this opportunity for everypony to welcome a new member.” She added, speaking clinically. About eighty percent of the patients looked up. It wasn’t a very large room, accommodating only five or so tables. The nurse turned her attention to me.

“It’s OK, dear. Just tell them your name and where you’re from and we’ll find you a place to sit.” She added.

“Well, er…” I stuttered. “You know what? Let’s just get this over with. I’m Query, and I’m a visitor from another planet.” I couldn’t tell if the nurse really rolled her eyes or not. Most of the patients just blinked and/or returned to what they had been doing previously. A few of them shrugged. One particularly striking stallion with far too many colors in his coat doubled over in a uniquely raucous fit of laughter, and then absent-mindedly continued to stuff a large chunk of bread into his mouth and choke on it. One of the sanitarium staffers had to run out and whack him on the back. A shy mare or two looked away, and a slightly intrigued-looking elder stallion at one of the nearby tables spoke up.

“Hey there!” he chuckled. “You know, I’m from another planet, too. Why not come and take a seat?” Having absolutely no idea what to do with myself, and scarcely caring at that point, I complied, taking a seat next to an orange mare with a carrot-and-trowel cutie mark who didn’t even bother to look up. Serene plonked down to my left, fluttering a bit and making the young mare next to her drop a fork, for which she apologized.

“So, where are you from?” continued the peculiar, pale stallion. I really must stress that he was OLD, and I mean balding, liver-spot-covered old.

“Uh… a little place called Earth.” Was my reply.

“Really?!? You don’t say? Me too! I‘m from Earth.”

“Wait… really?!?” I asked, perking up a bit.

“For sure, lass! Why one day, during my youth, I was just strolling around on good ol’ Earth when I-” he began, abruptly interrupted by one of the sanitarium staffers.

“Are you all done with that?” asked the stout, male unicorn, pointing to the crumb covered plate in front of him.

“No.” the old stallion deadpanned. The staffer blinked once at the empty plate and took it anyway.

“He’s a compulsive liar…” Serene whispered to me. I almost flustered a bit with embarrassment.

“Am not!” grumbled the old stallion. “I’m not one of those old folks who can’t hear, missy, by the way. The name’s Emerald Greens! I used to be the castle gardener for none other than Princess Celestia, herself!” ‘Emerald Greens’ extended a hoof with the intent to shake mine.

“His name is Silver Justice, and he was the standby small-claims judge in Ponyville when I was a filly…” grumbled Serene. Silver just darted his eyes around and nervously bit his lip. I didn’t really know what to do so I shook his hoof anyway.

I actually laughed a little, and spoke. “I’m guessing the reason you had the job for so long is that legal-system employees rarely get called to work in Equestria.”

“Darned straight!” retorted Silver “I held that position for the better part of one-hundred and three years!”

“He’s in his early seventies, at worst...” grumbled Serene. It was odd to see her suddenly so serious. If I had known better, I would have said that she was mildly embarrassed.

“Is this… something that happens regularly?” I asked cautiously.

“Absolutely not. That was a one-of-a-kind occurrence.” deadpanned Silver.

Serene produced a combination of a sigh and a giggle before burying her face in her hooves.

After a short time, trays containing syrup-covered, round things, which could only be described as ‘haycakes’ were gently placed in front of us (and Silver insisted that he had never heard of them before). As I switched alternately between devouring the haycakes and allowing my eyes to dart about the room, I couldn’t help but be amazed by a certain quality shared by all my fellow, ponyish mental patients. Their various disorders and/or difficulties were frankly cartoonish and exaggerated. I watched as a similar plate of haycakes was placed in front of a very frazzled-looking, blue mare with a screw for a cutie mark. She managed to express her gratitude in a high-class, proper English accent right before degenerating into a fit of barking. The oddly multicolored stallion from before was still laughing, and still, almost desperately, trying to finish eating. One young donkey was even sitting under a table with his cafeteria tray, animatedly talking to the nothing seated at his right.

I let out a melancholy sigh as I looked down to see that my last haycake had vanished on its own initiative, and also that a familiar grey orb was frantically hiding itself in one of the tufts of my mane. Serene had frozen up again, this time with a fork carrying a neatly-portioned square of haycake positioned just centimeters from her open mouth. For a moment, the syrup continued to drip off of it like molasses, leaving a neat little spot on the fur of her barrel, just below her neck.

“You don’t see that every day…” mused Silver.

When she came to, she wrinkled her nose and found that even with the enormous effort she put forth, it was a spot her tongue just couldn’t reach. I surrendered my napkin without really thinking about it. Later, (napkin-less) when I decided to lick a hoof clean, the other ponies thought I was gross. Once I was able to taste the bleach used to clean the cafeteria floors, I had no choice but to admit they were right. Just as the cafeteria staff brought us some little mint cookies and were about to lead us out, I felt almost possessed to ask a particular question. I suppose I just wanted to prove I was still as fiendishly clever as always.

“Hey Silver, do you always lie about everything?” I asked, politely of course (with a bit of a sly grin). I knew I had him the very moment he started to nervously bite at his hoof. It was the perfect paradoxical question. There was no way he could-

“You know the answer to that…” he said, smugly, before excusing himself.

I turned red for a second before bursting into a fit of genuine laughter. Surprisingly, Serene joined in too, and it wasn’t long before we were leaning on each other with tears in our eyes.

“I love that guy… He’s even harder to believe than I am, but, you know, completely sinister with sharpness, too…” I heaved. “I hope his, uh, foals come to visit all the time just to hear what he says.”

“Heh…” was all I received in response. It wasn’t long before we were ushered down the hallway and brought to rest in our room once more. After the door was closed, we just stared at each other completely stone-faced before falling into yet another fit of laughter.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dinner at the Ponyville Sanitarium was more of the same, and I must admit that as the days flew by, time seemed to move faster and faster. I had arrived on a Tuesday, and by Thursday I’d already consumed far too many haycakes, watched puppy-dog-eyed as Serene was allowed to head out on a short field-trip, and even managed to put in a few requests for the book-cart which made its way down the hall every few days. Serene had a large collection of mystery novels floating around in her cupboard. When I found out that the books were borrowed from a local library on rotation, I made sure that they got me some vector calculus and a big ol’ tome of matrix math. In the evenings, Serene and I would sit and read together, and after having surrendered two days-worth of cookies to her, I finally managed to keep the yellow mare in place long enough to explain Gauss-Jordan substitution.

I wasn’t fooled when her condition seemed to flare up just a bit too often during those times. Eventually I gave up and read Daring Do and the Hoof-brayed Prance. This was also a mistake, as Serene proved more than capable of expanding on every story element after I read it… to the point of acting as a sleep aid during the wee hours. Bringing up the right novel would get her just as bouncy and hyper as she had been on the day we met.

By the end of the first week, I was feeling, well… uneasy. This was certainly not the fault of Serene, who I must press had become the best roommate ever, and I singlehandedly owed it to her for not letting me introspect myself into a black hole. I just felt kind of useless and homesick.

“For all I know, maybe I am crazy!” I groaned from the top bunk.

“Well, silly, I’m pretty sure it’s not normal for crazy ponies to actually think that they’re crazy.” Serene offered.

“But what if I’m so insane that I’m willing to believe that I’m insane just so that I’ll think I’m not?!?” I cried.

“That is kind of crazy…” Serene mumbled.

“Exactly!” I whimpered.

“No, no, nonono… that’s not what I meant.” She started. “I just think you’re being too hard on yourself. I’ve already said a million times that I’m willing to believe you!”

“Am I supposed to believe that you really accept I’m an extraterrestrial who spent a lifetime, possibly in a parallel universe, studying the mechanics behind super-advanced machines capable of performing billions of floating-point math operations per second… and that I just woke up in Equestria one day, completely bloody baffled?!? Are you even listening to yourself?!”

“No, I’m listening to you… and you seem to always have the same story. You also seem to be super smart and an even better friend, so excuse me for believing in you!”

I merely stopped and blinked when I realized our conversation had degenerated into a shouting match where I was arguing for my own insanity.

“Well, thanks Serene…” I said, meekly.

Over the course of the week I had let certain miscellaneous details about my life slip, and Serene was the only pony I’d met who didn’t immediately resort to judgment. She always just listened to my story and seemed to take it at face value. At first I suspected perhaps it was just that my ‘stories’ were so fanciful to her, a self-confessed fantasy-novel maniac, but as time passed I began to develop the feeling that it was something more than that. Whenever I mumbled that I just wanted to get out of the sanitarium, she looked at me like she wanted to give two different answers. She always told me that if I was lying, I should have admitted it, walked out the door, and put A.K. Yearling out of business.

Of course, I always tended to leave out the one small detail of having been a dude before my ponification incident. I mean, that would have been awkward, right? Actually, what was I saying? Why would not being a mare feel awkward?!? I had to quietly accept that my gender identity was like a watermelon caught in an industrial diamond press. I just felt kind of stagnant. I’d spent so much time caught up in a real tale of intrigue and madness and running-from-the-law that it just felt really odd to suddenly be living the peaceful life in a mental institution. I couldn’t stop dwelling on my encounters with Celestia, playing them over and over; reliving the escape over and over. I pictured the scenarios organized in a dozen different ways. I quietly wondered if I could have handled my whole adventure more properly and won. I wasn’t sure exactly what would have constituted ‘winning’, but I’m pretty sure it would have involved bringing the questionable princess to justice and not being a mental patient.

There were two little voices inside of me. One was more and more afraid of digging in the dark and uncovering truths which would quickly swallow me whole again. Another was increasingly brave and fidgety and told me to go ahead and send those doubts to hell because my spirit wanted another chance at things. Geez, my subconscious could really percolate up some dramatic stuff when it wanted to!

Whether I truly felt the spirit of high adventure or not, and certainly to my great surprise, things were about to get much more interesting…

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It was the morning of my eleventh day of benign captivity when I woke up to rapping on the door, nudged Serene from her sleep on the bottom bunk, and drowsily made my way down the hallway to the cafeteria, just like any other morning. I sat in the same place as always; that orange-colored mare never bothering to speak to me or anypony else. It was the sixth day in a row where Silver insisted that he’d never before seen a slice of toast at any point in his long life. I suppose the charm of that was going to last a while, as I still smirked every time, without fail.

Every now and then something wonderfully chaotic would happen during a meal, and that particular morning was no exception. About halfway through, the odd, blue pony with the screw on her flank got loose and wound up chasing a guy in a wheelchair (don’t ask me why ponies have wheelchairs) to and fro through the halls. About three of the sanitarium staffers joined in the chase, tripping over each other more than they were actually helping. The strange, multicolored stallion from before just had tears in his eyes and wouldn’t stop rapping on the table. Good ol’ Silver pretended not to notice and simply told an ‘anecdote’ from his young life which was most assuredly something he’d read in a book.

After things calmed down, I got off my haunches and prepared to walk back down the hallway as usual. I always took a moment to glance in the direction of the exit, but frankly I was too scared to draw attention to my interest in said door. The place was no prison, for sure, but they did have absolutely the biggest pegasus I’d ever seen (In a blue shirt, to boot) guarding the only exit. I suppose they really didn’t want the negative publicity associated with ponies like Miss Screwloose busting out on the town…

I was very surprised when one of the unicorn staffers stopped me in my tracks and informed me that I needed to see somepony, hustling me up the stairs of a wing I was unfamiliar with and leading me into the presence of a frosted-glass office door. It read ‘Evaluation’ plainly and simply, in gold lettering. Well, to be honest it said something more like ‘]\/LICIO>’, but my ability to read pony-writing had taken a sharp turn for the better after having been locked in a room with books for more than a week. Hopefully at this point in the narrative it’s clear that I was always something of an intellectual. If not, let me say it: I was a terrible, terrible intellectual, and I always had been.

I was slightly nervous about walking into a room labeled ‘Evaluation’, but with really no alternative, I just squinted a bit as the door creaked and folded away to reveal... a completely plain, green-painted office with a dark, wooden desk. It looked exactly like a setting straight out of the sixties, actually. I meekly stepped in, closed the door far too violently with a hind leg (on accident), and blushed. Imagine my surprise for the umpteenth time when a certain chocolate-brown unicorn spun about in the chair.

“Doc?!? I-but-wh-” I sputtered. I sort of fell on my haunches.

“It’s nice to see you again, too.” said Doctor Willcrest, placing both his front hooves on the desk with a wry smile.

“I thought you only worked at the castle infirmary as some kind of big-wig physician/counselor!” I spouted.

“I do, but I’m now required to visit here every week and evaluate your mental health, for reasons you’re well aware of.” He said, calmly.

“Excellent! My mental health, I mean. My mental health is excellent! I think you should just tell everypony I’m OK and let me be on my way. The other nutters-I mean not like me-I’m not a nutter-are nice, but I really think I’ve gotten all the health I’m going to get out of this situation.” I pleaded.

The doctor sighed. “There are various categories of committal, Query, and yours, I’m afraid, is not of the step-out-and-do-as-you-please variety…”

I blinked, perhaps showing just a bit more irritation than was called for. “Oh, come on! You were all about standing up for me at the castle! You were fine with sticking your neck out for me then and look where it got us… Why did you take all those risks if you just wanted me locked up anyway? I’ve been sitting around eating haycakes all week and now you’re just going to show up and smile at me?”

“Haycakes are rich in several grains and very good for your heart. I happen to like them.” He mused.

“Yeah, yeah, I do too, but seriously what are you even up to?!?” I asked.

The doc took on a pleading expression before continuing. “Really, Query.. I didn’t want you to get hurt. That’s why I pulled all those stunts. Things have been very, er, unusual at the castle as of late, and-”

“-and if you’re not clueless you could probably tell that the Princess wa-” I interrupted.

“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!” he hissed, bringing his left hoof to his mouth. “The walls in here are paper-thin…”

“Sorry…” I added. “Just please tell me you have a plan. I can’t help but feel like I should be doing someth-”

“Query…” he began, nearly tearing up. “I don’t think that now is the time for that. I’m, shall we say, in over my head…”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I’m not exactly in this alone, Query. I have other ponies to be worried about.” His voice dropped to a low whisper. “Of course things aren’t as they seem, but I have a family to worry about, Query. I don’t much fancy ending up dead and having them dragged into this!”

“So don’t get involved. Just help me be on my way so I can do what I have to do.” I pleaded.

“And what exactly is it that you ‘have to do’?” he replied, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, I’m not- I haven’t- Don’t you trust me?” I sputtered.

“Another escape would just put us both in danger!” He said, slapping a crumpled, muddied sheet of paper on the desk. “This got stuck to my hoof as I was walking in the front door, by the way.”

I was immediately able to recognize my own wanted poster. “Please tell me these were only in Ponyville?”

“They were focused around the general area, I think, maybe a bit more. I don’t know! I’m not the royal guard. All I know is that we’d both be better off if you’d just calm down now and let me do my job. I need to have this formal evaluation in the mail by sundown…” he sighed.

“So you just expect me to sit here while you show me ink blots?!?” I asked incredulously.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d show me some thanks for keeping you out of the dungeon by not making this situation any more dangerous.” He said.

I could tell that my old friend was fast becoming more tired and flustered than ever. It seemed like he’d been under a constant torrent of stress which had worked to erode his patience, or his patience with his patients, or something. I spent the longest time staring at my hooves, just trying to come up with a plan. If my adventurous side was going to take over, I was going to have to start making my own path, solving my own problems, covering my own tracks. I knew that the only thing I really wouldn’t look forward to was saying goodbye to Serene. Eventually, I worked up the courage to speak again.

“Just… just what would it take for you to believe I’m not really nuts? Would you trust me again? You could just let me out the back door some night. I’d be gone.” I pleaded.

“You were committed indefinitely by royal decree. I can’t just release you! It’s mad, and short of anything but the agreement of multiple doctors on your condition, I wouldn’t even think about doing anything. You know, you could start by telling me the truth about who you are, where you really come from… You were incoherent when I met you, then you were delusional in front of the Princess. I’m not exactly convinced that you’re in your right mind, to put it bluntly. I take my job seriously, Query, and I am genuinely concerned for you.”

“But… who runs this place? Can’t you just tell the Ponyville Sanitarium I’m being transferred?”

The Doctor pulled on his face with exasperation. “Do you not remember what you are accused of? My psychological evaluations are supposed to go directly to the royal chambers!”

“…and are those royal-types ever going to think anything is up if those reports keep coming no matter what’s actually going on in the meantime?”

“Well, I… Query, if anypony found out… No. Just no… Perhaps we should start with the Horschach test…”

I felt my adrenaline running out. Nothing I had said was working, and I really didn’t want to have to bother and tell Willcrest the ink-smear he was holding up really looked like a rotating hypercube to me. Perhaps it sort of looked like a stand mixer? No? A ferris wheel being ridden by a T-Rex? Ugh, I had to focus. Finally, a lightbulb went off in my head. It was a fabulous, clever, gleaming, super-ultra-guilt-riddling plan of such total, pure brilliance that everything going on outside my head seemed to freeze for a moment. If I didn’t go through with it, though, would I ever get out of the nut-house? Oh man, would I even be able to live with myself after working this evil plan on the pony who once saved my life?

“Query? You seem a little spacey...” Willcrest cooed.

“Um, uh… wait a minute, Doc. You said that you’d take the opinion of another doctor into consideration with regard to my condition, right?” I asked.

“Well, I suppose. That is what I said. Why? Have you been seeing someone else at the sanitarium here?” he said.

“Just, um… I have somepony you should probably meet. Just give me a moment to get him!” I yelped, bolting for the office door.

“Query, I-”

“I swear it’ll only be a moment, just stick here and let me go get him! Please!”

“Well-”

I slipped out into the hallway and slammed the door behind me. Thankfully, there were no staff members patrolling about on the upper level, so nopony actually saw me leave the office. I knew that if my plan was going to work, I’d have to be completely stealthy. This would be an in-and-out kind of deal, and I’d need some very important preparation to be done. I started ducking into the hallways that spanned off from the primary one on the upper wing, and quietly unlatched the closets I found hidden in certain corners. As I checked each one, I became more and more crestfallen as I found nothing but brooms and mops and various walking aids and whatnot (pony-canes were pretty strange). It wasn’t until I reached a tiny linen closet by the stairwell that I really thought my plan could work.

I grabbed a white lab coat and a stethoscope and stuffed them under my right wing so they would be concealed from anypony who saw me scuttle by. There was only one ‘thing’ left to find. I gingerly began to make my way down the multi-landing industrial stairwells, taking extra care to peer around the corners, as I searched for one of the residence wings. I had generally been escorted everywhere for over a week, so I wasn’t totally sure which part of the sanitarium I wanted to find myself in. To put it mildly, I wasn’t exactly feeling confident. I had always been a gamer back home, and I was the running-and-gunning type through and through, but that just wasn’t going to work here. I thought I was nearly home-free until I whirled around a corner and smacked my muzzle straight into the barrel of a mint-blue staff unicorn.

“Uh…” I mouthed.

“Hi Query…” she said, seemingly unperturbed. “Did you have a nice visit with the Doctor? Shouldn’t somepony be walking with you?”

“Uhh… yyyyyyeah! It was a great visit. Doc Willcrest said I was done and I could just go back to my room.”

“He did, huh? He’s not exactly a trained staff member. I should have a talk with him about that…”

She stared for just a moment at how bulged-out my right wing was. I had to use some serious muscle to compress it up against my body.

“Well… I’ll just go get some rest, I suppose.” I fake-chimed as I started to ‘tiptoe’ away.

“Query?” asked the unicorn. I froze in my tracks.

“Yyyyyeah?” I nearly whined.

“Your room is down that hall. Third on the left.”

“Oh, duh… of course! Heh. Well, that’s why you’re the sane one, I suppose.” I said, forcing a chuckle. I briskly headed down the appointed hallway and sidled up against the wall near a water fountain. I could hear the sound of her hooves approaching. It must have taken all the willpower in the world for me not to breathe like a vacuum cleaner, but somehow I managed to plaster myself flat against the wall and remain semi-calm. One can only imagine my relief when the staff unicorn from just seconds before turned another corner and headed for the stairs to one of the upper wings. I made haste in bolting out into the hallway, across a T-junction, and back to my original destination.

As I passed the dormitory doors one-by-one, I carefully made out the names on each. “Screwloose”, “Mad Horseshoe”, “Nutter Butter”, really?!? I mean, had their mothers all wanted them to wind up crazy? Who in their right mind would actually name their foal ‘Mad’ in a world where the name ‘Golden Trowel’ most likely meant you were going to wind up farming for a living?!? It was a funny thought, but also one that I swiftly put out of my mind when I encountered the name tag I’d been hoping for: “Silver Justice”. The plaque on the door was slightly more tarnished than most of the others, and it sported a slightly different font, suggesting that perhaps old Silver hadn’t exactly shown up yesterday. I was almost tempted to cry with gratitude when I found that they key to the room was tacked to the wall inside a paper envelope. I wasted no time in frantically opening the lock and barging in. As it turned out, Silver was just calmly sitting on the edge of his green bed with a little notebook in hoof, writing with a melancholy look on his face. He sported a pair of reading glasses I’d never seen before.

“Silver!” I exclaimed in a normal tone.

“Who?” he asked.

“You like lying about things and telling farfetched stories, right?” I asked, much more sweetly.

“No.” he deadpanned.

“Excellent! Wanna come meet somepony with me?” I added.

“…not particularly.”

“Great, let’s go!”

I wasted no time in stuffing the poor guy into the lab coat I’d hidden under my wing. As I placed the stethoscope around his neck, I noticed that the coat had been wrinkled a bit more than I’d have liked, but there was no going back now... I stuck my head out the dormitory entrance cautiously, and waited until there were no staff members in sight. As I tried to usher Silver along, I began to worry again. There was just no getting this guy to go anywhere in a hurry. As soon as we reached the top of the stairs, I heard the sound of hoofsteps again and had to frantically drag the both of us around a corner.

It was another staffer, this time: a white, male unicorn. For a moment, Silver looked as if he was about to say something to me, and I nervously stuffed a hoof in his muzzle for nearly half a minute. When I was completely sure that we were alone again, I let go of him, and he scrunched his face up.

“Eugh, whippersnapper, your hooves taste like bleach…” he grumbled.

“I-” I just blinked for a second and licked another one. “Bleaaaaaagh, you’re right.” I sighed.

Silver just chuckled at me and gave a warm smile. “Now, what’cha do that for?”

I paused briefly. “I… I thought you’d be lying.” I said, blushing.

Mere moments later, we had reached the outside of Doctor Willcrest’s temporary office.

“Look, Silver, just be yourself in there… please!” I whispered, before pulling the handle.

“Hey, Doc! Sorry I took so long. Here’s the pony I wanted you to meet…” I chimed, intentionally putting up a chipper facade. As we all came to meet in the center of the room, Willcrest came face to face with the one and only Silver Justice. He eyed him up and down for a moment.

“So… May I presume that you’re the doctor Query has been seeing while in the care of this establishment?” asked Willcrest.

I bit my bottom lip so hard that it nearly bled. Silver seemed to think for just a moment before a wry smile flashed on his face.

“Why yes, good sir! I’m Dr. Beating Heart. I’ve been a psychoanalyst at this institution for the past several years…” he offered. Good, good… I could work with this. I was prepared to chime in with laser precision.

“Well…” Willcrest began. He looked genuinely surprised that I’d managed to produce a ‘doctor’. “Then, what has you analysis of the patient been so far?”

“On what, exactly?”

“Well, specifically, on the topic of her mental health…”

“Oh, yes…” Silver mused. He looked over to me for a moment. “It is in my opinion that she’s very healthy, yes, the very picture of sanity, more or less. You won’t catch her up to anything fishy.”

“Really…? I’ve already made notes about her supposed delusions, detachment from reality….” Willcrest nosed through some papers he held in his magical grasp. “Something about being a space alien from a storybook or something of the sort…”

Silver looked up at the ceiling like he was trying to remember our previous encounters.

“Oh yeah… she definitely gave that one up the first time I saw her.” he quipped. Yessss! I wanted to hoof-pump so badly.

“So… she opened up to you? Do you know anything about her past?” Willcrest asked, raising his eyebrow again. Aaaaaand, my heart turned to ice again.

“Why, yes, in fact. We’ve had the past week or so to make some nice conversation.” said Silver, without skipping a beat.

To my complete and utter surprise, Doctor Willcrest dropped his messy heap of notes and sat right back down at the desk, joined by my newfound savior. I watched, slack-jawed almost, as Silver expertly wove me a past. He was like an unstoppable machine! He invented me a hometown, and some parents, a couple of hobbies which were really emasculating and I would have loved to have kicked him for… I just could barely believe that my desperate, impossible plan was working. For nearly twenty minutes, they quipped back and forth without skipping a beat. Silver continued to pull university names and colleagues out of his proverbial hat! Only when Willcrest looked up at the wall and noticed the post office was about to close did he nearly turn white and politely excuse himself. As he scuttled to get out the door with his stack of papers (presumably to mail a report he was very nervous to be late with) I took the opportunity to speak up.

“So… so whadd’ya say, Doc?” I pleaded.

“Uh...pff...” Willcrest flustered. “Oh, I don’t know… Query, I need some time to think about what I’ve heard.” –and he was gone.

I wasn’t sure if I had been ultimately successful, but I was filled with the most immeasurable gratitude for Silver as we stood alone in the office. I was flabbergasted.

“Silver-buh-whuh-how?!?” I whispered. “How did you pull that off?!? I thought I was crazy. I thought you would spiral off on tangents like you always do and I’d be desperately interrupting! How??!”

He just smiled a wise old smile as he took the stethoscope off and tossed it in a nearby trash can.

“Let’s just say… that was my way of thanking you for being such a good friend to my daughter…” came his gravelly voice.

I just stared blankly.

“That, uh…” he sighed. “…wasn’t a lie…”

“Oh.” I mouthed. “Ohhhhhhhhhh.” Well, I supposed that made sense. Silver opened the door and began to exit before turning back.

“-and Query?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t ever put your hoof in my mouth again.”

We both slipped out of the room unnoticed, quietly chuckling to ourselves.

I very deftly made my way back to my room with Serene, clenching my teeth and praying not to arouse any more suspicion. I nearly collapsed with relief when I closed the door behind me and slid to the ground.

“I was wondering where you’d gotten to!” chimed Serene as she trotted over to me.

“Yeah?” I asked, nonchalantly. She narrowed her eyes.

“Did you have a visit with one of the doctors?” she asked.

“…yeah!” I parroted.

“So, um… how’d it go?”

I laughed out loud, before saying: “You’re not going to believe this…”

With nothing much left to do until lunchtime, we sat on the bed together and I recounted the tale of my nearly-brilliant escapade. Serene was a bit shocked with me at first, but then she wound up hanging onto the edge of her seat as I got to the grittier bits of the story. Funnily enough, Serene thought I would have long since figured out Silver Justice was her father, but I never really was too good at that sort of thing. After all was said and done, she asked me what I thought Willcrest was going to do, I replied that I wasn’t sure, and a pregnant silence descended between us.

“I don’t really want you to go… Is that selfish of me?” sobbed Serene.

I would like to take this opportunity to inform the reader that I did not cry, nor did I at any point hug and/or use the feathers of another being as tissue paper. As a complete and total man, and thusly being comprised of mostly baked beans, garden hoses, and drill bits, I saw it fit only to sit still, acting as a rock for the emotional turmoil in my immediate vicinity. I did not sob out loud that I was going to ‘miss her too’, nor did I do anything else which could possibly be construed to imply or suggest the showing of weakness. I give my word.

So, after much consoling, we headed out to lunch only to meet up with a very sly-looking Silver Justice, who had thankfully long since disposed of his lab coat. I could have sworn he looked younger immediately following our escapade. It wasn’t long before we were back to our usual routine of spilling food and listening to him tell more impossible tales. A little part of me felt like I was home… I felt as though I had a tiny surrogate family. Honestly, I wasn’t totally sure how to feel….

The rest of the day was quiet and routine. I fell asleep on my top bunk bed, right above a snoring Serene, after far too much time wasted looking into the patterns on the ceiling.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

*TAP*

…

*TAPTAP*

…

*TAPTAPTAP*

I was awoken in the wee hours of the morning by a suspicious rustling from the hallway. I bolted upright when the door simply swung open.

“Query?” came a nearly inaudible whisper. I cautiously slipped down the ladder and sidled around the corner of the bed frame. It was impossible to see what was happening in the near pitch blackness.

I blinked. I couldn’t see anything, even right in front of my muzzle. A faint light appeared, and I still couldn’t see anything. (That was when I remembered to retrieve my glasses from the table in the corner.) I was the thing which lit up when I laid eyes on Doctor Willcrest.

“You-!” I started. He shushed me fiercely and clamped my mouth shut.

“We need to move.” He said, barely audibly. He hefted a hooded cloak over my back, and shuffled us out the door, taking an absolute eternity to close it for fear of anypony hearing.

“So-” I started again, but a stern stare stopped me in my tracks. He didn’t speak until we’d both made it out one of the side entrances in the pitch blackness, as well as nestled around the back of the building a bit. I felt a fresh pang of guilt when I realized he was actually shaking from nervousness.

“As you may have deduced on your own, I’ve… reconsidered my position on some things.” He said.

“I know I shouldn’t, but, mind if I ask why? Did the doctor’s argument really put you at ease?” I asked, still in a whisper.

“Heh…” he chuckled quietly.

“You’re going to need these” he added, placing a small bag and a folded bit of paper into a pouch on the side of my cloak. “…and it takes a little more than the word of an old madman to change my mind, you know…”

“He’s not that mad ac-*gasp*” I began, my eyes alight. “You knew all along? How? Wha-wh-aren’t you furious?!?”

“No, I didn’t know at first, but a little suspicion and a look through the patient roster clued me in.” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Yes, I was upset at first, but then I got to thinking…” Willcrest trailed off.

“Look, you’re going to have to make some serious tracks…” he spoke, changing subjects. “The towns adjacent to this one, at least, were still probably clued in about you during the search. You should at least get past Hoofburg before you even speak to anypony. Start down that path, and keep out of the lights around Ponyville.”

“What, wait, wait, back up for a second. What were you thinking before?” I asked. Willcrest seemed to shift back and forth for a moment before responding.

“I was thinking that, crazy or not, a mare which could pull off a stunt like that just might be the right pony to get to the bottom of things, after all. Ultimately, I felt that perhaps I may have been right to place my trust in you all along when I first tripped that guard at the castle.” He said, winking, though he quickly started to seem nervous again. “We’re in a lot of danger, Query. I’ve chosen to trust you, just… Just please don’t do anything foolish.”

“I have friends in there, and I’m giving it all up because I want to be a hero and make things right!!!” I retorted, in my own defense. ”You can count on me. This time, you can count on me!” I added.

There was a long pause as we both stared at the cobblestone and grass beneath our hooves.

“You know what… don’t be so sure about that ‘giving up’ part, Query…” he whispered. “Your friends will still be around when you need them.”

I smiled at him, and disappeared into the night.